[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 31 (Wednesday, March 12, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H896-H923]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REQUESTING THE PRESIDENT SUBMIT A BALANCED BUDGET
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I
call up House Resolution 90 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 90
Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it
shall be in order to consider in the House the Resolution (H.
Res. 89) requesting the President to submit a budget for
fiscal year 1998 that would balance the Federal budget by
fiscal year 2002 without relying on budgetary contingencies.
The resolution shall be considered as read for amendment. The
resolution shall be debatable for two hours equally divided
and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of
the Committee on the Budget or their designees. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution to
final adoption without intervening motion except one motion
to recommit. The motion to recommit may include instructions
only if offered by the minority leader or a designee. If
including instructions, the motion to recommit shall be
debatable for five minutes by its proponent and five minutes
by an opponent.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] is
recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr.
Moakley] pending which I yield myself such time as I might consume.
During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the
purpose of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 90 provides for consideration in the
House of House Resolution 89, which is a resolution requesting the
President to submit a balanced budget under a structured rule. The rule
provides for 2 hours of debate, divided equally between the chairman
and ranking minority members of the Committee on the Budget or their
designees.
Mr. Speaker, in trying to be as fair as possible, the rule also
provides for one motion to recommit, which may contain instructions if
offered by the minority leader or his designee. If it includes
instructions, the motion to recommit is debatable for 5 minutes by a
proponent and 5 minutes by an opponent, keeping in mind that there will
have already been 2 hours of debate on this entire issue.
Under the rules of the House, a motion to recommit is not required to
be given to the minority for the consideration of a House resolution.
However, the Committee on Rules sought to provide such a motion to the
minority for the purpose of the consideration of this bill to be,
again, as fair as possible.
Mr. Speaker, after the 1996 elections when the American people
returned bipartisan political leadership to Washington, the Republican
Congress offered to begin budget negotiations right away. As a result
of this bipartisan spirit, formal and informal discussions between the
Congress and the White House on reaching a balanced budget has been
ongoing. While these talks have been productive, they are not yet
complete, an that is the way it has been year in and year out. It takes
time.
As we all know, on February 6 of this year, President Clinton sent
his budget to Congress, a budget which, according to the President,
produced a surplus of $17 billion in the year 2002, 5 years from now.
Upon the receipt of that budget, the Republican Congress reacted in the
same spirit of bipartisan cooperation. The budget was not declared dead
on arrival, as was so often the case when Republican Presidents would
present their budget. Even though many of the budget specifics do not
meet the expectation of many in this Congress, we still have kept an
open mind on it.
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the Republican Congress sought to give the
administration every opportunity to explain and sell that budget to
Congress and to sell it to the American people through the regular
committee process, and that is as it should be.
After a thorough analysis by the committees, the bipartisan
membership, and the Congressional Budget Office, the President's budget
fails four specific tests, and I think that all Members in their
offices, or wherever they might be, should pay particular attention to
this, because it is what they were sent here to do, and that is bring
some fiscal sanity to this body.
First, it does not achieve a balance in the year 2002; it actually
leaves a deficit of almost $70 billion. So what have we succeeded in
doing? The truth is nothing in dealing with this terribly important
issue.
Second, it does not specifically reduce spending in the first 3
years. It actually allows, listen to this, it actually allows the 1998
deficit to increase; not decrease but to increase. That is this coming
year, to increase by $24 billion. And even more so important, listen to
this, it saves 98 percent of the deficit reduction in this whole 5-year
period, 98 percent of any cuts, for the last 2 years.
Well, we all know what that means, It means we will not get there.
Third, it does not save Medicare from bankruptcy. It actually does
less to save Medicare than even the last Clinton budget of last year.
Fourth, it does not provide permanent tax relief for American
families. It actually increases taxes in the last 2 years. Imagine
that. We are going to be coming down here and voting to increase taxes
when the American people are already the most heavily taxed people in
the world. As a result, the President's budget is found, believe me,
found wanting.
Mr. Speaker, while we as the Congress are committed to negotiating a
balanced budget agreement with the White House, there is one
nonnegotiable item determined by the American people, by the American
taxpayer: Any budget agreement must achieve balance in the year 2002
using the same deck of cards; in other words, comparing apples to
apples. And that means using the Congressional Budget Office scoring so
that we all can be playing with that same deck, as I said before.
This is a goal both the President and the Congress have embraced
publicly and privately, and was perhaps the only item agreed upon
during the budget negotiations of the last 2 years. Mr. Speaker,
without an agreement on the parameters of the numbers, no real
discussion on specifics can begin because no one will believe what we
are talking about.
The President committed to this last year by submitting two budgets
scored
[[Page H897]]
in balance by CBO. However, his most recent budget, the one we have
before us, reflects an abandonment of that commitment. We have to ask
ourselves why.
The resolution before us today calls on the President to reaffirm
that commitment to balancing the budget by 2002, using honest numbers
and up-front cuts; up front in the first few years, not the last few
years.
In contrast, the President's budget uses Gramm-Rudman. Now, many of
my colleagues were not here back in the days of Gramm-Rudman, but that
was even a Republican budget, and in that budget we had the cuts in the
latter years. And guess what? We never got there, because in the last 2
years it was too doggone difficult and we could not do it. We did not
have the guts to do it.
We cannot let that happen again. We cannot add another trillion
dollars to this accumulated debt. That Gramm-Rudman budget took credit
for cuts then, but they wanted to make the cuts at a later time and it
just did not work.
Now, once we agree on these goals and what those goals mean, Congress
and the President together can sit down and we can work out agreements
on the details, details like this. Here is $800 billion in cuts. Take
your choice, Mr. President; take your choice, Congress. But we have to
do it. We cannot just ignore it and let it go on year after year. Until
that time, budget negotiations will be little more than partisan
bickering and will never get us to where we all say we want to be.
Some of my colleagues will argue this resolution is meaningless
because Congress has not yet produced its own budget. Well, in response
I would like to just make three observations, and we will discuss this
during the 2-hour general debate coming up in a few minutes.
First, the current laws governing the budget process required action
by both the President and the Congress. Both of us. First the President
then the Congress. That is what the law says. It is in here. Read it on
page 802.
Now, it is true that the President has submitted a budget, which my
colleagues must remember was actually submitted to Congress late, and
that is the way it usually always is. And I will admit there is nothing
in current law that requires the President to submit that balanced
budget, although many of us would argue that. However, for the past 2
years and during the entire Presidential campaign of 1996, all
discussions of the budget have assumed a balanced budget. We all began
talking along that line, balancing the budget.
By submitting a budget not in balance, the President has submitted a
budget that in reality cannot be considered by this Congress. I, for
one, will not let that go through the Committee on Rules. Either it
will be balanced and it is going to be honest, without smoke and
mirrors, or it is not coming out of that Committee on Rules.
My colleagues may also remember that for the past 2 years the
Committee on Rules has required that all budgets, whether offered by
Republicans, whether offered by Democrats, whether offered by the Blue
Dogs, or the Black Caucus or anybody else, had to be scored by CBO and
they lived up to it. They went and they had their budgets scored. My
own budget was scored by CBO. They were all honest. That is not a new
requirement. This is what we agreed to in the last Congress and, by
golly, this is what we are going to agree to in this Congress.
This resolution, therefore, calls upon the President to follow that
process. If we were to take up the President's current budget, it would
have to be scored by CBO, which shows that it is, in fact, not a
balanced budget. Without a new budget, Congress' hands are tied by the
rules of the Budget Act.
Second, we must remember that over the past 20 years Congress, under
Democrat and Republican majorities, have only met the April 15 deadline
for considering the budget resolution once. Once over the last 20
years. And not one of those budget resolutions was a balanced budget.
Furthermore, according to my calendar, it is only March 12. We have
more than a month to work until that April 15 deadline.
Third and finally, if my colleagues went back and reviewed the
history, they would find that every year in which a budget agreement
was reached between Congress and the White House, whoever the President
was, the budget resolution was adopted later than the deadline. Why?
Because both sides sought to reach agreement on the priorities of the
budget up front. The actual implementation of that agreement came later
in the year, as we all know, through the appropriation process.
{time} 1230
That is exactly what Congress is trying to do this year. The
Republican Congress is acting in a cooperative way and I believe a very
productive manner by offering to use an honestly balanced budget
presented by the President as a basis for the debate. In the long run,
this will set the context for an effective and productive debate.
The President needs to lead by presenting his visions and his
priorities of how the country can reach its goals. However, he fails to
achieve the goal of a balanced budget. In these budget negotiations,
actually achieving balance through real and significant spending cuts,
it is the whole ball game, my friends. If we do not do that, there is
no reason to go through this whole exercise. The resolution calls on
the President as an exercise of good faith to actually submit a
balanced budget. Let us hope that he does.
Let me just show Members, there is a chart down in the well, I will
not bother presenting it now, but this is what Members better be
thinking about when voting on the resolution today. The deficit of $69
billion in 2002, that is what Members would be voting on if they voted
on the President's budget today: a $70 billion further deficit in that
year, an accumulated deficit all during the 5-year period, 98 percent
of the deficit reductions in the last 2 years.
That is not fair, to even come on this floor and talk about that. If
we have not got the guts to vote on those cuts up front in year 1, in
year 2, in year 3, then we should not be in this Congress. In this year
alone we would, under the President's budget, increase the deficit by
$24 billion rather than staying on that glide path to a balanced budget
over 5 years.
This is what this is all about today. We are urging the President to
give us that balanced budget, scored by CBO, so that we can compare
apples to apples and we can at least hopefully attain the balanced
budget that we all are fighting so hard for.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my dear friend, the gentleman from
New York [Mr. Solomon], for yielding me the customary half-hour, and I
yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that last weekend's promise of new
collegiality would last longer than 3 days, but this rule and this
balanced budget bill have melted away that bipartisanship all too
quickly.
Mr. Speaker, it should not come as much of a shock to anyone that my
Republican colleagues do not like President Clinton's budget. If they
do not like what the President does in the White House, I do not expect
them to like what is in the President's budget. But how the President
balances his budget is not the issue, Mr. Speaker. The real issue is
the Republican budget, which nobody has seen.
The most persistent and urgent question at this point, Mr. Speaker,
is where is the Republican budget? They have got 10 days left to
produce it. The House can spend all the time it wants trying to tell
President Clinton what to do, but the fact is the budget needs to come
from the House of Representatives. It does not matter how the President
balances his budget. It does not matter even if the President has a
budget, because the budget has to come from the House of
Representatives before April 15.
Mr. Speaker, section 301(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974,
as amended, says, ``On or before April 15 of each year, the Congress
should complete action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for the
fiscal year beginning on October 1 of such year.''
In other words, Mr. Speaker, the budget needs to come from the House.
Section 301(a) does not even mention the President. The House and
Senate have to agree on a budget by April 15, and as I said, we have
got 10 legislative days left to get it done. It is that simple.
Yesterday House majority leader
[[Page H898]]
Dick Armey announced that Congress will not consider a budget
resolution until May, one month after the deadline that has been
imposed by the law.
I might add, Mr. Speaker, that President Clinton submitted his budget
on February 6. His budget has been pored over for more than a month
while the Republican budget is still a figment of somebody's
imagination.
At this point it is easy for my colleagues to like the Republican
budget. Nobody has seen it. And although how much someone likes
President Clinton's budget is irrelevant, I would like to add, Mr.
Speaker, that according to the Office of Management and Budget,
President Clinton's budget is in balance. Even the Congressional Budget
Office's March 3 analysis of the President's budget shows that it is
balanced by the year 2002.
President Clinton has said in his own words that if the CBO's
deficits are larger than the OMB's, the President will make sure that
his budget balances with the higher deficit numbers. What could be
fairer than that? He will make additional discretionary cuts, about 4
percent; he will make entitlement cuts, about 2.25 percent; and he will
sunset some taxes. It does not get any better than that, Mr. Speaker.
But that is not the issue here today. The budget issue is the
responsibility of the Congress. Putting together a budget with which
both the House and Senate agree is the responsibility of the Congress.
Meeting the April 15 deadline is the responsibility of the Congress. No
amount of finger-pointing or politics is going to change that, Mr.
Speaker.
So I suggest to my Republican colleagues that we remember last week's
collegiality retreat and we work together constructively. The American
people are not going to stand to have their Government closed down for
the second year in a row because of Republican politics. And no matter
how long the House waits, it is going to have to come up with a budget
someday.
So I urge my colleagues, on this matter, to defeat the previous
question, to make in order the Minge-Tauscher-Stenholm alternative.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr.
Minge].
Mr. MINGE. Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with a very difficult question
here this afternoon, and that is, how does this institution reconcile
the serious political differences that exist in the country with
respect to the budget of the United States of America?
The President took a stab at this when he sent to Congress a budget
in early February. Unfortunately, he did not have the benefit of the
Congressional Budget Office in projecting revenues and expenditures in
making up this budget. CBO had not yet reached that stage in its
analysis that it could provide that type of assistance. Once the budget
arrived, CBO did attempt to evaluate, or score, the budget. In the
meantime, the Office of Management and Budget had provided the
President with that guidance.
We now find that the Office of Management and Budget and the
Congressional Budget Office disagree. The President attempted to
address this difficult situation by having a so-called fail-safe or
trigger mechanism, that tax cuts and certain expenditure programs would
be sunsetted, reduced, if the budget was not balanced by the year 2002.
For this reason, the Congressional Budget Office said that technically
it can balance by 2002.
Now, it would be nice if the President would simply respond to each
request that we send to him from the Hill, submit new budgets, and in a
sense be negotiating with himself. But the position that we have taken
and the amendment that we ask to be allowed in order to this particular
resolution would simply recognize that we cannot depend on the
President to do all of this. We have a responsibility here in Congress.
Some of us have put together a budget proposal which the
Congressional Budget Office has indicated will balance by the year 2002
without the use of triggers, but unfortunately that budget is not being
sponsored by the leadership of either party. We feel, those of us that
are asking that our amendment be recognized as a viable alternative,
that the leadership of this institution has a responsibility that is
parallel to the President's, to introduce its own budget. Then we will
have some choices on the table.
We are saying, introduce that budget on the majority side and ask the
President to send up a revised budget simultaneously. We feel that this
simultaneous obligation will move our process forward so that indeed we
can be effective, efficient and timely. We would request that this
amendment so be allowed, and if it is allowed, we would have the
opportunity for an intelligent vote.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], the esteemed majority leader. He is
one of the reasons we have moved toward fiscal sanity in this body in
the last several years.
Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for
yielding me this time. If I may, let me give my regards to my good
friend from Boston.
It is a pleasure for me to be able to participate in this debate, but
I do feel that I want to raise a note of caution. As we all know in
this town, it is all too often, I think, possible for people to gain a
wrong impression of what is intended and how we act. Sometimes that is
because we perhaps act in a clumsy manner. But if I could have my wish
for how the President and the White House and members of his party
would respond to or accept this action we are taking today, I would
hope that they could accept it as an invitation and as an
encouragement.
The President went out and campaigned, as well he should, for
reelection, and he campaigned on a commitment to achieve a balanced
budget that achieved many things, including tax relief for the American
people and including saving Medicare from pending insolvency. And the
President was reelected. Having won a reelection to the Office of the
President of the United States, it is absolutely clear to all of us he
won the right and I daresay the obligation to provide Presidential
leadership to this first, most important concern of the American
people.
When the President submitted his budget before us, we understood and
I think we need to understand the White House went through a fairly
large personnel change, two new persons at the White House, in
particular, that I have enjoyed working with: Erskine Bowles the
President's new Chief of Staff, and Frank Raines, his new Budget
Director. It is perfectly well understandable that, given this change,
that their first initial submission may have had some disappointments.
We have received the President's budget with all the consideration
and all the respect that a President's budget should receive, and we
have had it examined and scored by those agencies that must examine and
score and see how a budget measures up.
The clear definitive agency that the President himself has spoken of
so eloquently, even in front of this body in his State of the Union
Message, that is definitive, is the Congressional Budget Office. What
have we found? To our disappointment, and I have to say from my
conversations, I will accept to the genuine surprise and concern of
Erskine Bowles and Frank Raines, the President's budget just simply did
not do a good job of making the mark.
His current budget raises taxes instead of cutting taxes. It delays
98 percent of the spending cuts until 2 years after the President
leaves office. If we did nothing, we would be better off with respect
to deficit reduction next year than if you passed the President's
budget.
{time} 1245
I do not believe the President and I do not believe the people that I
have spoken to in the administration would find that an acceptable
level of achievement, given the commitment that has been so eloquently
expressed from the White House by the President, by the Vice President,
and by so many of the people in the administration, and what we try to
do today is extend an invitation.
Mr. President, as my mama told me so many, many times: ``Don't harbor
a disappointment, don't let yourself be defeated. If at first you don't
succeed, try, try again.''
Please let us work together. We are more than ready to welcome
another submission, to get down and look at that. We must acknowledge
one responsibility that this Congress has, and it
[[Page H899]]
is the responsibility this Congress will not step down from, and that
is to get before the American people in this year a truly balanced
budget that makes the hard choices, that fulfills the rigorous demands,
that calls on all of us to stretch ourselves out a little bit and
achieves the promised goals of a balanced budget by the year 2000, of
saving Medicare from the threat of insolvency and providing tax relief
for the American people.
I truly believe that this year is the best year for us to get
together, this body and the other body, working together and, in all
that process, to work with the inclusion and the enthusiastic support
and encouragement, one for another, with the administration. We can do
that. We ought to do that.
Therefore, I, as we have discussed this whole question of putting
this resolution on the floor today, have said from the outset we should
do so, and we should do so as an invitation and as an encouragement to
the administration to understand they put better work before us, and it
will receive even more respect than that work which they put before us.
We have understood their disappointments as the Congressional Budget
Office and Joint Tax Committee have examined their work, and we want to
work with them, and on that spirit I would encourage us all to vote for
this resolution and encourage the White House to work with us.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas [Mr. Stenholm], the ranking minority member on the Committee on
Agriculture.
(Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, the tenor of the last speaker, my friend
and colleague from Texas, is exactly why I wonder why we are doing this
today. It is just like last night when I appeared before the Committee
on Rules. It seemed like we were in more agreement than disagreement,
and yet I have to come to the floor expressing my extreme
disappointment that the amendment that the gentleman from Minnesota
[Mr. Minge], the gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Tauscher], and I
have suggested for today would not even be made in order, that we would
not have the opportunity to even vote upon that.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield at that point?
Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, we discussed this
at length, and we specifically cleared with the parliamentarian both of
the amendments that he and the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Minge]
were seeking, and they are germane and they can be offered.
Mr. STENHOLM. But only as an offer to recommittal, and I am
reclaiming my time.
Mr. SOLOMON. But with a clean up or down vote on this subject.
Mr. STENHOLM. But there again we both know that those are more
partisan than they are actual activities on the floor of the House.
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of our alternative is to try to put an end
to finger pointing and the blame game that has distracted us from doing
the serious work to balance the budget. I was reminded of a speech that
I was making not too long ago. When they point a finger at the other
side, they should take a good look at themselves; there are three aimed
back at them.
Our amendment recognizes that both the Congress and the President
must demonstrate more leadership than they have to date in order to
reach a balanced budget. We should not allow Congress or the President
to avoid this obligation.
The Minge-Stenholm-Tauscher amendment contains the exact same
language as the underlying resolution requesting that the President
submit a new budget by April 7. However, our amendment would hold
Congress to the same standard as the President by requiring the House
Committee on the Budget to report a balanced budget by April 7 as well.
Although the underlying resolution calls on the House to consider a
balanced budget resolution, it sets no deadline or timetable for
action. This will allow us to continue to postpone action and continue
the current stalemate. We should not vote to exempt ourselves from
responsibility to produce a credible balanced budget.
I believe it is very dangerous, in spite of the very eloquent words
of my colleague from Texas a moment ago. I believe it is very dangerous
for Congress, as an institution, to continue to shift responsibility
for the budget to the President. Article I of the Constitution gives
Congress primary authority over legislation dealing with tax and
spending and borrowing money.
I encourage my colleagues to read an opinion editorial on our desk in
last week's Washington Times by Professor Thomas DiBacco, who pointed
out that for most of our history, Congress had the primary
responsibility for budgets. Although Congress has given the President
more authority in budgeting in order to bring more discipline to the
process, the increased presidential role in the budget process has
actually coincided with increased deficits.
I would remind my Republican colleagues of the words of a previous
Republican Speaker, Joe Cannon, who said, ``When Congress consents to
the Executive Branch making the budget, it will have surrendered the
most important part of governing. I think we had better stick pretty
close to the Constitution with its division of powers well defined and
powers close to the people.''
The resolution before us today allows Congress to avoid its
constitutional obligations on budget issues. What they are saying in
their resolution is ``Mr. President, you submit the budget.'' Our
responsibilities in this body are for us to submit the budget, and I am
ready to reach out and work on both sides of the aisle on going through
the regular legislative process. That is what our amendment would make
in order.
I urge my colleagues, if they agree with the tenor of my conversation
and the concerns about the Constitution, I urge them to defeat the
previous question, allow our amendment to come up in which we say to us
and the President, ``Let's get on with the business of the American
people.''
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California [Mrs. Tauscher].
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the rule
before us today, and I object to House Resolution 89. I am disappointed
that the Committee on Rules has chosen to restrict debate on this
measure, and I hope my colleagues will vote to defeat the previous
question and allow us to offer the Minge-Stenholm-Tauscher substitute.
Our substitute, Mr. Speaker, is quite simple. It says that not only
should the President have a CBO-scored balanced budget plan by April 7,
but that the House Committee on the Budget must present one as well.
This is a reasonable request, and it is one that is made in the
spirit of bipartisanship. It is an effort to place all the parties on a
level playing field and to help facilitate useful discussions on
balancing the budget.
Mr. Speaker, I regret that we are here today not to debate the merits
of different budget proposals, but it looks like it is a cynical
attempt to make the President look bad. It is counterproductive to be
considering House Resolution 89, but it is even worse that the rule
prevents us from offering an amendment to apply the provisions of House
Resolution 89 to the Committee on the Budget as well as the President.
My colleagues on the Republican side say they are simply trying to get
the President to submit a budget using CBO numbers, but that begs the
question: Where is the Republican budget?
I came to Congress with a commitment to make the difficult choices
necessary to balance the federal budget. I am proud to be a cosponsor
of the Blue Dog Coalition budget proposal that makes those choices. Now
it is time for the Committee on the Budget to do the same. The Minge-
Stenholm-Tauscher substitute would apply the same rules of the game to
each participant.
I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question and support this
evenhanded alternative to House Resolution 89.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida [Mr. Goss].
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from New York [Mr. Solomon],
the distinguished chairman, and I also appreciate the assistance of the
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley], the distinguished former
chairman, who spoke fondly of our last
[[Page H900]]
weekend retreat on collegiality. It was not, however, a retreat from
our commitment to balance the budget. I thank those involved in this
debate because it is an important debate.
This resolution is very direct and very simple, and in fact there is
a provision in the motion to recommit for other views. It asks the
President to live up to his word with a budget that reaches balance by
2002, as scored by the independent Congressional Budget Office. They
are the scorekeepers on this; they are the referees. Far from
balancing, the latest Clinton budget is projected to have a $70 billion
deficit in 2002 by the scorekeepers. So we do not have a balanced
budget from the White House.
Now, some will contend that we should place Congress' own budget on
the table because of the President's failure to balance the budget.
Indeed we have heard that today. They say we need to begin now to do
the heavy lifting necessary to balance the budget, and I could not
agree more. I think we do need to get on with this, and I can assure my
colleagues this process is underway. But the fact is the President must
submit a budget. That is required under the law.
It is here; I could refer to it. It is page 872 of the House Rules
Manual, and when we get into the law and we get into chapter 11 of
title XXXI of the United States Code, section 1105, my colleagues will
find in fact several pages of very fine print about what the President
must do and when he must do it. And he has not done it in the sense of
providing us a balanced budget. That is just the fact.
So, as the majority leader said, we are sending an invitation.
Now judging by President Clinton's track record, I think it is best
to follow President Reagan's advice in these matters, and his advice
was trust and verify.
President Clinton used his first State of the Union Address to
endorse the CBO, and at that time it was important to use CBO
estimates, he said, ``so we could argue from the same set of numbers.''
I agree with that. Yet President Clinton fails to follow that pledge at
this time.
Many believe President Clinton effectively killed the balanced budget
amendment by demagoguing Social Security. A few weeks after sending us
a budget that utilizes Social Security trust funds for deficit
reduction, it is a rather curious situation.
So given these actions, is it not reasonable for Congress to question
the strength of President Clinton's commitment to balance the budget
and ask him for a balanced budget?
Mr. Speaker, the American people, I think, have had enough of the
rosy scenarios and the political gestures that have no particular
substance. If we are to be true partners in the process toward a
balanced budget, we need to know that both sides are working off the
same sheet. The people I represent expect those in charge to do the
job. It is therefore appropriate for us to ask the President to send up
a balanced budget.
Mr. Speaker, that is what this resolution does.
I urge support for this rule, which is very straightforward, and I
urge support for this resolution, which is also very straightforward
and gets the job done.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from
South Carolina [Mr. Spratt], the ranking member of the Committee on the
Budget.
(Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the
time.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 89 is a waste of time. To understand
what I mean one has to look no further than its title: House Resolution
89, a one-House resolution, totally ineffectual to accomplish the
purpose it proclaims, which is to make the President send up the second
budget because it could not possibly affect the President, does not
even bind the other body.
So we are doing today something we are spending 3-hours plus on what
amounts to next to nothing.
Now if we are going to take up a matter like this because a majority
feels that there is some purpose served by having a resolution like
this debated in the House, then why not have a full and open debate?
This is not a delicate, sensitive matter that cannot be entrusted to
amendment on the House floor. Why can we not have full and open debate
and an open rule?
Instead, we have got this rule before us, this resolution, which
takes this debate and makes it even more pointless, more useless, by
imposing upon it a closed rule and precluding virtually any amendments
to the language that is before us in the Resolution No. 89.
Now we all know that the Budget Act calls for the President to submit
his budget in early February. The President did that. He sent us a
budget which complies fully with the Budget Act, scored by his budget
shop, the Office of Management and Budget, not only to be balanced in
the year 2002, but to be in surplus in the year 2002 by $17 billion.
{time} 1300
Mr. Speaker, we all know as well that section 301(a) then calls for
the Congress, this House, to produce a concurrent budget resolution by
April 15. That is a tighttime frame, but it is a rule that we imposed
upon ourselves; we wrote that law.
We have missed that date for the last 2 years and we are going to
miss it again this year. As I stand here today, ranking member of the
Committee on the Budget, I am aware of no date in the middle of March
that has been set for the markup of a House budget resolution. I am
aware of no date that has been set for floor consideration of a budget
resolution. In fact, I am aware of no budget resolution.
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's remarks. I just
want to ask the gentleman, he said that we have not reached the April
15 deadline in the last 2 years. Is the gentleman aware we have not
reached that deadline in the last 18 years out of the last 19 years?
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, in the House, the House Committee on the
Budget in 6 out of 8 years that it was under House Democratic control,
6 of those 8 years, we reported and considered and passed a budget
resolution in 6 out of those 8 years.
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield, because I have a
chart here----
Mr. SPRATT. We did not have the current budget resolution, but we had
the House budget resolution before April 15. We at least got our work
done here in the House.
Mr. DeLAY. But if the gentleman would yield, the deadline is for a
conference report by April 15, and this House has not reached that
deadline in the last 18 years.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, that is beyond our control. That happened in
the other body. We got our work done on time. If they had been moving
in parallel process, we probably would have met that date.
The reason that we are doing what we are doing today is that we are
about some diversion, distraction. We are trying to keep the American
people from understanding that Congress is not doing its job, the
majority is not doing its job. We are trying to shift attention from
the fact that we do not have a budget resolution before us, have not
scheduled one to be brought to the floor, by shifting the blame to the
President of the United States when he has done what the law calls for
him to do. He has sent us a budget scored by his budget shop as being
in balance.
Everybody in this House knows what regular order calls for at this
point. It calls for a House budget resolution, and that is what I call
for today. Let us have a House budget resolution.
The gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] said, and I agree with him,
we need to sit down and negotiate. There are lots of things in the
President's budget that are not going to happen, I know that, and a lot
of things in the various budget proposals are not going to happen
either. But the way to frame those negotiations, since the President
has put his budget on the table, is for my colleagues to put their
budget on the table. We beg the question of the debate today, why have
my colleagues not done that?
Mr. Speaker, let me just back up and say where we stand with the
President's budget. As my colleagues all
[[Page H901]]
know, the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, took the President's
budget and scored it as producing a deficit in the year we are shooting
for, the terminal year of 2002, of $69 billion, not a surplus of 17.
CBO took the President's budget and said, per our economic forecasts
and our technical analysis, this budget will not be in surplus in the
year 2002 by $17 billion, it will be in deficit by $69 billion.
Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons that they found this budget in
deficit is that the President has requested $98 billion in tax cuts. He
has offset those tax cuts by $76 billion in tax renewals and extenders
and the repeal of certain tax expenditures, so there is a net revenue
loss in the President's budget of $22 billion.
In addition, the President has sent up over a 5-year period of time
new entitlement initiatives, spending increases, that come over 5 years
to about $68 billion, according to the estimates of his budget shop,
OMB. By the scoring placed upon this budget by the Congressional Budget
Office, this budget can accommodate these tax cuts and these spending
increases without producing a deficit; in this case the deficit is $69
billion.
But I say to my colleagues, if the present budget cannot accommodate
a $90 billion package of tax cuts and entitlement spending increases,
then neither can a budget scored by CBO accommodate $190 billion in tax
cuts, which is what the Republicans, my friends on the other side of
the aisle, have been talking about. That is the range of magnitude that
they have been proposing. That is why we are here today.
Mr. Speaker, they are unable to put before the House a budget
resolution which can accommodate the tax cuts they are proposing
without also necessitating deeper cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and
education than they want to be seen openly proposing because the
American people do not support it.
The gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] says that Congress has
never met the date; the gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay] said the same
thing. As I mentioned, 6 out of 8 years the House Committee on the
Budget had its resolution on the floor by April 15.
But the key point is this: Why chastise Congress for not meeting the
date that we have imposed upon ourselves with a resolution that calls
upon the President to do something else? If we want to chastise
ourselves for being tardy in the past, why not have a resolution today
that sort of calls for hunkering down, for putting our hand to the
wheel, for getting ahead with the problem, leaning into it.
We have a hearing today at 2:30 before the Committee on the Budget
that deals with one of the most critical components in the solution to
this whole problem, the so-called CPI, Consumer Price Index. Before us
will be the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics testifying
about ways that the CPI can work out some of the biases that lead to
overstatement of inflation in our economy.
It is a critically important hearing. Many of us on the Committee on
the Budget, because we have to be on the floor to debate this
resolution which amounts to nothing, will not be able to attend. That
is not the critical path. That is not what we need to be doing if we
are going to meet the self-imposed deadlines that we put in the Budget
Act ourselves.
So the best way to proceed with the resolution of the budget, proceed
toward a balanced budget is to vote against the previous question here,
vote against the rule, and vote for putting the budget process back on
the critical path and not chasing after red herrings like this
resolution.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, another reason why we have moved toward
some fiscal sanity in this Congress in recent years is because of the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay], our distinguished majority whip, and
I yield such time as he might consume to the gentleman from Texas [Mr.
DeLay].
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate those words more than we can
imagine, and I do appreciate it. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this
rule because I rise in strong support of this very important
resolution.
We said from the beginning of this Congress that we want to negotiate
with the President, but we cannot negotiate with a President that does
not want to balance the budget. We do not want to negotiate over
whether to balance the budget or not; we want him to submit a budget
that balances by CBO which he called for. We will negotiate with him in
the parameters of a balanced budget and negotiate over the priorities
within that balanced budget.
But if the President cannot submit one, how do we negotiate apples
with oranges? You know, the saying goes, if at first you do not
succeed, try, try again.
The President's first attempt at a budget this year did not balance,
so we are giving him a chance to try it again. The President has said
that he supports a balanced budget, and I hope he is honest in his
statement. He also said that we did not need a balanced budget
amendment to the Constitution if we had the will to balance the budget.
But this President, Mr. Speaker, has done everything he can to derail
the balanced budget process; first, by vetoing the first balanced
budget in a generation, the last Congress; then, by working overtime to
kill the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution; and, finally,
by submitting another budget that simply does not balance.
Why is balancing the budget so important? Why should we care whether
we pile up more debt on future generations? Mr. Speaker, I will tell my
colleagues why. At our bipartisan retreat this last weekend a lot of
Members in both parties brought their children. The place was
overflowing with kids. It was so much fun to see these kids having a
good time. We are balancing the budget for their sake.
The President should explain to those kids why he will not take steps
today to make their futures brighter tomorrow. The President should
justify why he did not have the political will to make commonsense
changes to entitlement programs so that those programs could survive
when those children decided to retire.
Mr. Speaker, this debate should not be about green eyeshades, it
should be about preserving the future for America's children.
So I just urge the President to be responsible and to resubmit his
budget. America's children deserve better than they are getting from
this President's current unbalanced budget.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas [Mr. Green].
(Mr. GREEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GREEN. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow my colleague from
Texas [Mr. DeLay] on the floor, and I look over and see the gentleman
from New York [Mr. Solomon], the chairman. We have worked together on
lots of bills, Mr. Speaker, but obviously today we disagree on the need
for this rule and also the need for the resolution.
We only have 11 days left until Congress by law must pass a budget
plan. But here we are today debating a rule and debating a resolution
that says, Mr. President, send us your second budget, and yet we do not
even have our first here from Congress.
While the President and Democrats have fielded criticism for weeks
now from the Republicans on the President's budget plan, we have not
yet seen their alternative. The Republicans need to respond with their
own budget before they can ask the President for a second budget. That
is what is called give and take, and that is what this process is
about.
This resolution calls for the President to submit another budget
because of the claims that the CBO found that the current budget
proposal from the President would not be balanced in the year 2002. I
happen to see a letter from March 4 that the director of CBO analyzed
the President's budget and showed that it would indeed be balanced by
the year 2002.
As Democrats, we are not opposed to criticism if it is accompanied by
concrete and realistic proposals. In fact, we have the moderate,
conservative group of Democrats who have a budget plan, but where is
the Republican majority budget plan? They do not have one. The
President has one out on the table, the moderate, conservative
Democrats have one, and yet the Republican majority does not have one.
We have had enough time to develop a budget alternative proposal
through
[[Page H902]]
our committee process. But yet, like my ranking member of the Committee
on the Budget said, we are spending time debating resolutions instead
of working in the Committee on the Budget.
In the 1980's we heard the slogan, ``where's the beef,'' and now we
are asking, ``where is the meat?'' Where is the meat in the Republican
budget from our colleagues? If they want to have a balanced budget, let
us see that meat that they have in their budget.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is ironic that I stand here because being
honored to serve 20 years in the legislature, I saw our Governor submit
budgets to us as a legislature, just like the President has done. And
most of the time we would say, thank you, we can present it; and then
we would work off of our own document. That is what Congress has been
doing for many years, up until now. Now we are going to let the
President provide that leadership?
I am not willing as a Member of this Congress to advocate that to the
executive branch, no matter who is there. That is why I think it is so
important that we have a congressional budget plan. I may disagree with
it, but the Republicans here in the majority, they need to get up and
find the meat and to do it instead of saying, well, Mr. President, you
need to do a second plan because we do not like your first. Let us see
what we can offer as a Congress to say, OK, Mr. President, this is our
plan.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, one of the really respected Members of this
body is a former fighter pilot and a great Congressman from California
[Mr. Cunningham]. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California
[Mr. Cunningham].
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, there may be a perception that this is
not important to the other side, but the reality is important. For 28
years we have not been able to balance the budget because it has proven
too difficult. In Gramm-Rudman, the deal was that for every tax dollar
we take in, we will cut it by 3, and we will push out the cuts into the
last year. We could not do that because the cuts were too hard.
Remember when George Bush moved his lips? The deal was that for every
tax dollar we take in, we are going to cut spending by 3, and we are
going to give you an absolute way to do that. We are going to put
firewalls between each of the appropriation committees and we are going
to put a cap. The leadership on my colleagues' side, how did they get
around it? With emergency spending. We found outlandish emergency
spending things on there, and the continuing resolutions that just
carried over the spending. And it was not viable.
Remember in the 104th when the President gave us three balanced
budgets? All increased the deficit by $175 billion. And then in the
fourth one he gave us, he balanced it using CBO numbers in 7 years, and
72 percent of the cuts came in the last year.
{time} 1315
It is not realistic, even if the President gave us a second budget
balanced but most of the cuts take place in the last year. We know that
that is not feasible. It is smoke and mirrors. It also happens to be
before the Committee on National Security, when the President has said
that he is going to increase modernization for DOD. Do Members think
that the more liberal Members on this side are going to decrease social
spending and increase national security in those same 2 years? It is
not feasible, Mr. Speaker.
We need to take a look at what reality is. We want a balanced budget.
They say we do not have one. Well, have the President give us a
balanced budget as he campaigned in the middle of the road and many of
the Democratic leadership said, we are not going to support that. We do
not want a balanced budget. That is what they are opposing this
resolution for, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I urge a note vote on the previous question. If the
previous question is defeated, I intend to offer a motion which makes
in order the Minge-Tauscher-Stenholm amendments which would require
both the President and the House Committee on the Budget to produce
budget plans by April 7 that achieve a balanced budget by the year 2002
using CBO assumptions. I believe that Members of the House should have
the opportunity to vote on this.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the amendment:
Amendment to H. Res. 90
On page two, line three, strike ``The resolution'' and all
that follows and insert in lieu thereof the following:
``The previous question shall be considered as ordered on
the resolution and on any amendments thereto to final passage
without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate
equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking
minority member of the Committee on the Budget; (2) the
amendments printed in section 2 of this resolution, which
shall be considered as read, and which shall be debatable for
a separate hour equally divided and controlled by the
proponent and an opponent; and (3) one motion to recommit
with or without instructions. If including instructions, the
motion to recommit shall be debatable for five minutes by its
proponent and five minutes by an opponent.
``Sec. 2.
Amendment (in the Nature of a Substitute) to H. Res. 90
Offered by Mr. Minge of Minnesota or his Designee
Strike all after the resolving clause and insert the
following:
That the House of Representatives requests the President to
submit to the House, not later than April 7, 1997, a detailed
plan to achieve a balanced budget by fiscal year 2002. The
House further requests that the Committee on the Budget
report, not later than April 7, 1997, a concurrent resolution
on the budget containing reconciliation instructions to
achieve a balanced budget by fiscal year 2002. Both the
budget submitted by the President and the concurrent
resolution reported by the Committee on the Budget shall--
(1) use the most recent economic and technical assumptions
of the Congressional Budget Office;
(2) reduce the deficit through programmatic reforms rather
than through such budgetary procedures as automatic spending
cuts and the sunsetting of tax cuts;
(3) realize a significant proportion of its total savings
in the first 3 years; and
(4) offer sufficient Medicare reforms to forestall the
imminent insolvency of the Medicare trust funds for a
substantial period.
Preamble Amendment to H. Res. 90
Offered by Mr. Minge of Minnesota or his Designee
Amended the preamble to read as follows:
Whereas a substantial majority of the Members of Congress
are on record in support of a balanced budget amendment to
the Constitution;
Whereas the President has observed on numerous occasions
that a constitutional amendment is not necessary to balance
the budget, observing in his State of the Union Address that
``. . . we don't need a constitutional amendment, we need
action.'';
Whereas the President and the congressional leadership have
repeatedly agreed to balance the budget by fiscal year 2002
based on the estimates of the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office;
Whereas the Congressional Budget Office has officially
estimated that the President's budget would increase the
deficit by $24,000,000,000 in fiscal year 1998 and result in
a deficit of at least $69,000,000,000 in fiscal year 2002;
Whereas the Committee on the Budget has not proposed a
budget resolution that could be scored by the Congressional
Budget Office, and the only tax proposals introduced by the
congressional leadership would increase the deficit;
Whereas article I, section 8 of the United States
Constitution grants Congress the power to lay and collect
taxes and to borrow money on the credit of the United States
and article I, section 9 grants Congress the power to draw
money from the Treasury; and
Whereas section 301 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974
requires that Congress shall complete action on a concurrent
resolution on the budget before April 15: Now, therefore, be
it''.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). The gentleman from New York [Mr.
Solomon] has 4 minutes remaining.
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, as Ronald Reagan used to say, Ladies and gentlemen, I do
not know what all the argument is about.
I really do not know why anyone can complain about this resolution
that is on the floor here today. Let me just read the key part of it:
``The House of Representatives requests the President to submit to
the House, not later than April 7, 1997, a detailed plan to achieve a
balanced budget by fiscal year 2002 for the United States, as estimated
by the Congressional Budget Office.''
That is so we can play from the same deck of cards. What is wrong
with that? That is what we did last year. That is what we did 2 years
ago. The President agreed to it.
Now, we also asked that he use these assumptions:
[[Page H903]]
``Uses the most recent economic and technical assumptions of the
Congressional Budget Office,'' that is No. 1. Who can disagree with
that?
No. 2, that ``reduces the deficit through programmatic reforms rather
than alternative budget procedures such as automatic spending cuts and
the sunsetting of taxes.''
What does that mean? That means we do not want to cut Head Start the
same as we cut legal services. In other words, let us offer the real
amendment. Let us see what you are actually doing, not across the board
where you are cutting good things and not cutting bad things at all.
Then taxes, what are we doing? In other words, the President in his
budget is sunsetting the tax cuts so that 2 years, 3 years from now
they go back into effect. What kind of smoke and mirrors is that?
No. 3, ``realizes a significant proportion of its total savings in
the first 3 years.''
Look at this, the President's budget. The deficit at the end of 2002
is $70 billion. We have not done anything. We said, we put out our
press releases and, boy, are we brave. We are going to balance the
budget. But when are we going to do it? We are going to do it 5 years
from now. We are not going to do any cuts in year 1, 2, 3 or 4. Is that
being fair to the American people?
No. 4, ``offer sufficient Medicare reforms to forestall the imminent
bankruptcy of the Medicare trust funds for a substantial period.''
The President actually agreed to those reforms last year. We enacted
them, but now is reneging on them.
Then finally somebody said, let us point fingers at each other. That
is exactly what we did. We wrote in to this budget resolution, it says
that the House of Representatives shall consider a budget plan to
achieve a balanced budget by fiscal year 2002 that is in compliance
with what I have just said, what we are asking the President to do. So
we are asking ourselves to do the same thing.
I could go on down through this President's budget. I could talk
about CBO by the way, their report on the President's budget. It says
on page 2, in 1998, in fact, the net effect of the President's policies
is to push the deficit $24 billion above the baseline level. This says,
this coming year. In other words, instead of cutting the deficit down,
we are actually going to raise the deficit by $24 billion. That is why
we need this resolution.
We treat ourselves the same as we do the President. We say, Mr.
President, Congressmen and women, let us act fiscally responsibly. Let
us pass this resolution here today.
Some Members say to defeat the previous question so that the
gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Minge] and others can offer their
resolution.
I went to the Parliamentarian. They told me that these two amendments
that they wanted to offer are germane, can be offered in the motion to
recommit and if they want to do that, fine. They are going to have 2
hours of debate on it and then they will have an up or down vote on the
Minge amendments. That is being fair to everybody. I move the previous
question at this time and I ask everybody to come over and vote for the
previous question and for the rule and finally for the resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the
previous question on the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous
question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not
present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
Pursuant to clause 5 of rule XV, the Chair will reduce to a minimum
of 5 minutes the period of time within which a vote by electronic
device, if ordered, will be taken on the question of agreeing to the
resolution.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 226,
nays 200, not voting 6, as follows:
[Roll No. 41]
YEAS--226
Aderholt
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bliley
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brady
Bryant
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Canady
Cannon
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Christensen
Coburn
Collins
Combest
Cook
Cooksey
Cox
Crane
Crapo
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis (VA)
Deal
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Doolittle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Ensign
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Foley
Forbes
Fowler
Fox
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Granger
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hansen
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Hefley
Herger
Hill
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Istook
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kasich
Kelly
Kim
King (NY)
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Lazio
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Livingston
LoBiondo
Lucas
Manzullo
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
Metcalf
Mica
Miller (FL)
Molinari
Moran (KS)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Neumann
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nussle
Oxley
Packard
Pappas
Parker
Paul
Paxon
Pease
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Riggs
Riley
Rogan
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Ryun
Salmon
Sanford
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaefer, Dan
Schaffer, Bob
Schiff
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Shimkus
Shuster
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Smith, Linda
Snowbarger
Solomon
Souder
Spence
Stearns
Stump
Sununu
Talent
Tauzin
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Traficant
Upton
Walsh
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--200
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Baesler
Baldacci
Barcia
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Bentsen
Berman
Berry
Bishop
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Bonior
Borski
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Cardin
Carson
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Condit
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Cummings
Danner
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dellums
Deutsch
Dicks
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Fazio
Filner
Flake
Foglietta
Ford
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gonzalez
Goode
Gordon
Green
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holden
Hooley
Hoyer
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
John
Johnson (WI)
Johnson, E. B.
Kanjorski
Kennedy (MA)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Klink
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Lantos
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Markey
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McDermott
McGovern
McHale
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Pickett
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rivers
Roemer
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith, Adam
Snyder
Spratt
Stabenow
Stark
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Taylor (MS)
Thompson
Thurman
Tierney
Towns
Turner
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Wexler
Weygand
Wise
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates
[[Page H904]]
NOT VOTING--6
Coble
Dingell
Dixon
Kaptur
Kennedy (RI)
Torres
Mr. FAZIO of California changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
So the previous question was ordered.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). The question is on the
resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 226,
nays 202, not voting 5, as follows:
[Roll No. 42]
YEAS--226
Aderholt
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bliley
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brady
Bryant
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Canady
Cannon
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Christensen
Coburn
Collins
Combest
Cook
Cooksey
Cox
Crane
Crapo
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis (VA)
Deal
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Doolittle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Ensign
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Foley
Forbes
Fowler
Fox
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Gingrich
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Granger
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hansen
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Hefley
Hill
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Istook
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kasich
Kelly
Kim
King (NY)
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Lazio
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Livingston
LoBiondo
Lucas
Manzullo
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
Metcalf
Mica
Miller (FL)
Molinari
Moran (KS)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Neumann
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nussle
Oxley
Packard
Pappas
Parker
Paul
Paxon
Pease
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Riggs
Riley
Rogan
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Ryun
Salmon
Sanford
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaefer, Dan
Schaffer, Bob
Schiff
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Shimkus
Shuster
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Smith, Linda
Snowbarger
Solomon
Souder
Spence
Stearns
Stump
Sununu
Talent
Tauzin
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Traficant
Upton
Walsh
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--202
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Baesler
Baldacci
Barcia
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Bentsen
Berman
Berry
Bishop
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Bonior
Borski
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Cardin
Carson
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Condit
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Cummings
Danner
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dellums
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Fazio
Filner
Flake
Foglietta
Ford
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gonzalez
Goode
Gordon
Green
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holden
Hooley
Hoyer
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
John
Johnson (WI)
Johnson, E. B.
Kanjorski
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Klink
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Lantos
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Markey
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McDermott
McGovern
McHale
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Pickett
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rivers
Roemer
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith, Adam
Snyder
Spratt
Stabenow
Stark
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Taylor (MS)
Thompson
Thurman
Tierney
Towns
Turner
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Wexler
Weygand
Wise
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates
NOT VOTING--5
Coble
Dixon
Herger
Kaptur
Torres
{time} 1350
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
So the resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 90, I call up
the resolution (H. Res. 89) requesting the President to submit a budget
for fiscal year 1998 that would balance the Federal budget by fiscal
year 2002 without relying on budgetary contingencies, and ask for its
immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
The text of House Resolution 89 is as follows:
H. Res. 89
Whereas the President has observed on numerous occasions
that a constitutional amendment is not necessary to balance
the budget, observing in his State of the Union address that
``* * * we don't need a constitutional amendment, we need
action.'';
Whereas the President has also repeatedly agreed, most
recently on January 28, 1997, to balance the budget by fiscal
year 2002 based on the estimates of the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office; and
Whereas the Congressional Budget Office has officially
estimated that the President's budget would increase the
deficit by $24 billion in fiscal year 1998 and result in a
deficit of at least $69 billion in fiscal year 2002: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That (a) the House of Representatives requests
the President to submit to the House, not later than April 7,
1997, a detailed plan to achieve a balanced budget by fiscal
year 2002 for the United States, as estimated by the
Congressional Budget Office, that--
(1) uses the most recent economic and technical assumptions
of the Congressional Budget Office;
(2) reduces the deficit through programmatic reforms rather
than alternative budgetary procedures such as automatic
spending cuts and the sunsetting of tax cuts;
(3) realizes a significant proportion of its total savings
in the first three years; and
(4) offers sufficient Medicare reforms to forestall the
imminent bankruptcy of the Medicare trust funds for a
substantial period.
(b) The House of Representatives shall consider a budget
plan to achieve a balanced budget by fiscal year 2002 for the
United States that is in compliance with paragraphs (1)
through (4) of subsection (a).
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Pursuant to House Resolution 90,
the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Sununu] and the gentleman from
South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] each will control 1 hour.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from from New Hampshire [Mr.
Sununu].
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, we are here today with what we feel is an open hand to
the President of the United States.
Yesterday the Washington Post ran a story stating that 75 percent of
the American people feel that it is incumbent on the Congress and the
President to work together to balance the budget. They know that a
balanced budget will bring them economic benefits in the form of lower
interest rates, more jobs and higher wages.
Here in Washington it is our job to hammer out an agreement that will
balance the budget. Both Congress and the President agree that we must
accomplish this goal. In fact, in his State of the Union Address the
President spoke clearly. He affirmed his commitment to balancing the
budget, and he
[[Page H905]]
affirmed his commitment and his agreement to use the estimates of the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In a departure from common
practice the Congress agreed not to declare the President's budget dead
on arrival and to try to use that budget as the basis for our
negotiations.
Unfortunately, when the President finally submitted his 5-year plan
we found that it was inadequate. That is why we are here this
afternoon. If we are going to heed America's call for a balanced
budget, we must get to work today.
This resolution moves us forward by sending an important message to
this House. To this House and to the President and to the people of
America, we send a message that we must take seriously and deal
honestly with the commitment we have made to balance our Nation's
books.
This resolution calls quite simply for the President to work with
this House toward a balanced budget agreement. We ask that the
President submit a budget that meets a set of basic criteria, and in
the spirit of bipartisanship we call on this Congress to abide by the
exact same standards.
This resolution is fair, it is clear, and it is intended to provide
an opportunity to work together with the President from a platform that
he provides.
Just what are these standards that we ask the President to meet in
his 5-year budget plan?
First, we ask that the budget proposal balance in the year 2002,
using estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. We feel it is
essential that we work from a common set of assumptions. We need to
work from a common set of assumptions in a dialogue as important as
this. The administration's current plan shows a deficit of $69 billion
in the year 2002.
Second, we ask that the budget proposal not rely on sunsetted tax
relief for automatic across-the-board cuts in order to achieve balance.
The administration's current plan uses such accounting provisions that
are triggered in its final years.
Third, we ask that the budget proposal achieve a substantial amount
of its deficit savings during the next 3 years. Unfortunately, the
President's current plan defers over 98 percent of the deficit savings
to the last 2 years of his budget after he leaves office.
Finally, we ask that the budget proposal preserve and protect
Medicare for our children and for future generations. The
administration's current plan simply postpones the bankruptcy of the
Medicare trust fund for another 2 years.
By asking both Congress and the President to meet these four basic
requirements in the submission of their budget plans we will establish
a credible platform from which we can move forward together. A budget
that increases spending by 200 billion over the next 3 years, it leaves
a deficit of $69 billion in the year 2002, will not put money back in
the pockets of working Americans, will not put money back in the
pockets of American families. The results of this kind of overspending
will be higher interest rates, higher costs to our families and
stagnating wages. We owe the American people more than that.
Some people have argued that this resolution is a waste of time. I am
sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that the substance of this
debate and its impact on America's families is too important to just
ignore or dismiss.
{time} 1400
Honest and reasoned debate of our differences is essential to the
strength and substance of this institution. Others have argued that it
is inappropriate somehow to ask the President to submit a new budget
when we have yet to complete work on our own. The fact is that Congress
is moving forward on its own budget. We will propose a budget to the
President, and this country, in compliance with budget law.
Two years ago critics claimed the Congress prepared its budget too
quickly and did not take the President's import, did not take his
concern into regard. Today these same critics argue that the pace is
too deliberate and too slow.
Many of us were not here in the last Congress, but I do know the
debate over the budget deteriorated to what a lot of American people
thought was petty bickering. This year we want to change that mode of
operation. We want to make things work, with the administration's
cooperation, and fashion a solid budget agreement that balances in the
year 2002.
But to do this we need the President to provide a realistic platform
for budget discussions. I am determined to keep my faith, to keep the
commitments I made to the constituents of the State of New Hampshire to
fight for an honest balanced budget. I urge your support for this
resolution that will enable Congress and the President to wage this
fight together.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Resolution 89. This
resolution demands that the President send us a second budget that
meets the specifications of the Republican leadership. All it does is
demand. It huffs and it puffs, but in the end it accomplishes nothing,
because it is a one-House resolution. Look at its title, House
Resolution 89. It is not binding on the President; it is not even
binding on the other body. That is why I said earlier in the debate
that this resolution is a waste of time.
It has been said that the President is obliged to send us a budget
that balances, balances according to CBO scoring. If you will simply
turn to the Congressional Budget Act and look at section 300, you will
see that it says the timetable with respect to the congressional budget
process for any fiscal year is as follows: First Monday in February,
President submits his budget.
That is what it says: President submits his budget.
The President missed that by just a few days this year because he
first wanted to make his State of the Union before he submitted his
budget, but he has sent us a budget scored by his budget shop, the
Office of Management and Budget, as being in balance; not just being in
balance, being in surplus by the year 2002 to the tune of $17 billion.
Let me back up a few years and just observe why it is that we are
here today earnestly talking about balancing the budget by the year
2002.
We are here today credibly talking about that goal which we commonly
share because 4 years ago when President Clinton came to office, he
took this challenge head on. I am sure there were other things he would
have preferred to do first.
The first thing he found on his desk when he arrived there was the
Economic Report of the President left behind a week before by President
George Bush, and in it Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisors for President Bush, on page 69 predicted the deficit
for fiscal year 1993 would be $332 billion.
Now, Bill Clinton has been blamed for a lot of things, but he was in
Little Rock when that bill was run up. He cannot be blamed for that.
On February 17, he laid on the doorstep of Congress a plan to get rid
of that deficit, or at least cut it in half, over a period of 4 years.
It did not pass the House by any substantial margin, two votes. It went
right to the wire. It passed the other body by one vote. There were
predictions it would cut the economy off at the knees.
But here we are, 4 years later, and here is what happened. In 1993,
when we closed the books on fiscal 1993, the deficit was not $332
billion, it was $255 billion. One year later, the first full year under
that Deficit Reduction Act of 1993, the deficit was $203 billion. When
we closed the books on 1995, the deficit was $164 billion. And last
September 30, 1996, the deficit was down to $107.3 billion, down 65
percent in less than 4 years, 1.4 percent of GDP.
That makes it the lowest deficit as a percent of GDP since 1974, the
lowest deficit in nominal dollars since Ronald Reagan's second year in
office. That is what has been accomplished on his watch. Say what you
will about his budget, the reason we are here and debating a plan to
get the budget in balance within 5 years is that those 4 years were put
to good purpose under a plan that he proposed.
Now, he set up a budget based upon a forecast of the economy done by
his budget shop. Every President does that. That is what OMB is there
for. According to their forecast, this budget will balance by the year
2002.
[[Page H906]]
Now, there are things that I do not accept about that, and I have
traditionally been a supporter myself of using CBO estimates, but there
are some things in this forecast where I think OMB has the better half
of the argument.
For example, OMB assumes that corporate income shares as a percentage
of our GDP will not decline. They have increased substantially over the
last few years because corporations are improving their balance sheets
and improving their P&L's. That makes for a third of the difference
between the two forecasts.
These are things that can be argued between reasonable people,
reasonable economists, and there is no use to have a showdown on the
budget today. We all know what the process calls for. We know what
regular order is. We wrote the act. The Congressional Budget Act,
section 301(a), says the Congress shall ``complete action on the budget
resolution on or before April 15th.'' The Congress shall complete
action. The President started the ball rolling. Now it is our time to
complete the action.
Since my friends on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans,
have been in the majority here in the House, the conference agreement
on the budget resolution has not cleared the House on April 15 in any
of those years; not until June, as a matter of fact, 2 months after the
deadline. In fact, the House Committee on the Budget in the last 2
years has not even marked up the budget resolution until a month after
the April 15 deadline. This kind of slippage, this kind of inattention
to the Budget Act and the deadlines we have laid down for ourselves,
led to 14 continuing resolutions and 2 Government shutdowns in the last
Congress.
I do not want to see that happen again. That is why I think this
diversionary tactic, to distract us from what we need to be doing, off
in pursuit of this red herring, is a total waste of time.
Let me say something else. It is now 10 minutes after 2. At 2:30 the
House Committee on the Budget will have one of the most important
hearings we will hold on the subject of how to get our hands around
this problem and bring it to resolution.
We will have before us Dr. Catherine Abraham, who is the Commissioner
of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and her responsibility is something
called the CPI, the Consumer Price Index. That is a critical component
to resolving this problem.
And where is the Committee on the Budget? We are over here debating a
resolution that is totally ineffectual. Instead of leaning into the
problem, earnestly trying to find a solution to the problem, attending
the hearing and asking intelligent questions and hearing what she has
to tell us, we are over here on the floor.
This is the first time in 14 years in the House that I have seen a
major piece of legislation or a piece of legislation come to the floor
at the time the committee of jurisdiction is holding a hearing. That is
why this is a total waste of time. But we are debating it.
The fact of the matter is, what we are trying to do is distract
attention from the fact that the majority would prefer not to have to
put up its own resolution. The reason they do not want to do this is
the same reason that they are able to use and criticize the President's
budget. The President's budget as scored by CBO does not produce a
surplus in the year 2002. According to CBO, per its economic forecast,
it generates a deficit of $69 billion.
But if you use that same economic forecast and apply it to a
reconstruction of what I would guess to be the Republican resolution,
which would incorporate tax cuts up to $190 billion, then the deficit
is twice the size of the President's recommendation; or there will have
to be deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and education and other
things that the American people broadly support, that they would not
rather embrace themselves. So they want to be allowed to have the
President take the hits on this.
If we are going to get this done, the President has sent a budget up
here, we need to have a budget resolution with the other side. That
will frame the debate and we can then sit down and negotiate, and we
will have to make concessions on both sides.
The President's budget is not going to be fully carried out, I know
that, nor is your budget going to be fully realized, and I think you
know that. The sooner we get around to that reality and start talking,
the better. The way to get there is for you to complete the process and
frame the negotiation by putting your resolution on the table, bringing
it to the House floor, getting it passed and getting a concurrent
budget resolution adopted by April 15 or shortly thereafter.
For all of these reasons, I suggest that the House vote down this
resolution, send the Committee on the Budget back to its work, and not
after this pursuit of a red herring that leads us nowhere and
accomplishes nothing.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio [Mr. Hobson].
Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on the Budget,
I rise to support House Resolution 89 and join the House in asking the
President to send a balanced budget to Congress.
The President's budget was eagerly anticipated this year and there is
a genuine desire to work constructively with him to enact a historic
balanced budget plan that will eliminate the deficit by the year 2002.
The budget committees of both Houses have spent the past several weeks
examining the President's ideas in order to give them a full hearing
and find the areas where we can work together constructively.
This is a very different approach than previous years when the
Capitol was a morgue for the storage of budget plans declared dead on
arrival. This year, however, the Capitol has been an emergency room,
and though we are working hard to save it, the President's budget is
gravely ill, primarily because it is $69 billion in the hole,
backloaded to the extreme, and fails to save Medicare for any
significant period of time.
I can recall, as many can, the President campaigning that he was
going to save the Medicare trust fund for 10 years. I do not see that.
Where is it? Let us talk about it. If the President still wants his
budget proposal to be the starting point for consideration this year,
and I believe that can still happen, he needs to send us a budget that
meets the minimum threshold for consideration, a budget that balances
in 2002 according to the estimates which he said he would use, the
estimates of the independent budget office. I remember hearing him say
that right here in this House.
No gimmicks, Mr. President. Our friends on the other side of the
aisle are challenging us to offer our own budget now, but my answer to
them today is, we have already passed 2 years of balanced budgets in
this Chamber. Those two budgets were the first of their kind in 26
years. We do not need to prove to anybody on this side of the aisle
that we are committed to balancing the budget. The only reason it is in
front and center of the congressional list of priorities right now, and
the American people, is because we put it there. I am quite comfortable
with our record of writing, supporting, and passing balanced budgets in
this Chamber.
Frankly, the President should be thankful that he has been given a
second chance to fulfill the promises he made to this country. I hope
he takes advantage of this second opportunity, and I hope he sends us a
true budget that does balance without a lot of gimmicks after he is not
even President of the United States anymore.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Texas [Mr. Doggett].
Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, at this mellow time of interest in
bipartisanship and collegiality, I have to say that, frankly, this is a
weird resolution. Some might call it a back to the future resolution.
Do my colleagues remember the movie about going back to the future?
Well, this is going back all the way to the days of the Government
shutdowns of 1995. Those who liked those shutdowns will remember those
good old days. It only cost the American taxpayer $1.5 billion for the
kind of stunts that occurred in this House during 1995.
President Clinton in 1995 came forward and submitted a budget. It was
scored by OMB. Our Republican colleagues, as they have said today, came
forward and they said, ``We want it
[[Page H907]]
scored. We want it scored by CBO, and we are going to shut the
Government down until it is.'' I think some of them wanted to shut the
Government down until it was scored by HBO. But they delayed and they
shut the Government down in order to get the kind of budget that they
wanted.
Well, those costly Government shutdowns were not simply the product
of extremism. They were the product of this Congress messing around on
resolutions like the one we have before us today, instead of getting
down to the hard work of trying to get a budget agreement.
The Committee on the Budget did not comply with the law and get the
budget resolution heard and adopted on time. The appropriations
committees did not approve the appropriation bills. They did not
approve more than about half of them before it was time for the
Government to be shut down.
{time} 1415
So we got caught in a trap that was very expensive for the American
taxpayer. Today we are headed down the same path. History is repeating
itself. The Republican Congress has done practically nothing for the
last 2 months, and today, instead of working to try to achieve a budget
agreement, they are basically saying: We have not done our job, but,
Mr. President, you have completed your job and we want you to do it
again.
When it comes to the budget, the porridge is always too hot; and, if
the President submitted another budget, it would be too cold. It is
never just right for these folks.
Anyone who has ever bought a car or a house knows there is offer and
counteroffer. What they need to do is to shut down these kinds of silly
resolutions instead of shutting down the government and get to work
negotiating a balanced budget.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Texas [Ms. Granger], who is a member of the Committee on the Budget and
has put in a great deal of effort and time in her commitment to making
sure that this country balances its Federal budget.
Ms. GRANGER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleagues from New
Hampshire and Pennsylvania in offering this resolution. Our resolution
is not about shutdowns. Our resolution is not about CBO or OMB, and it
is not about politics or partisanship. It is not even about how we
score budgets. This resolution is about our America's children, about
our daughters and our sons.
Today our children face a $5.6 trillion debt, $122,400 for every
American. I have two sons and one daughter. That means my children owe
$67,200. Every child born in our country today will owe nearly $200,000
in taxes over their lifetimes just to pay interest on the debt. That is
because the Federal Government, the Federal budget has not been
balanced in a generation.
Who among our children will be able to share in the American dream if
each of them must pay $200,000 just to pay interest on the debt?
The answer is that our children will not be able to realize the
American dream, and they will not look forward to a future of hope,
growth and opportunity tomorrow unless we balance our budget today. We
can have a balanced budget for the first time in a generation. During
the campaign both the President, President Clinton, and leaders of
Congress promised that balancing the budget would be their top
priority. Now is the time for both the President and Congress to come
together to make good on this commitment. A fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn,
once said that anything ever achieved by Congress was done in a
bipartisan way.
Achieving a balanced budget would be a lasting accomplishment for
America's families. A balanced budget would reduce interest rates,
slashing the cost of a typical family's mortgage by $38,000. The cost
of student loans would be cut nearly $9,000. An estimated 4\1/4\
million new jobs would be created, and family incomes would rise.
This resolution will make this great achievement possible by
establishing the crucial first step for both the President and Congress
to come together to balance the budget. Step one is for both the
President and Congress to use the same numbers when considering budgets
and for both the President and Congress to balance the Federal books
the same way that hard-working families balance their checkbooks each
month. That is all this resolution does.
Families have to use accurate numbers when they balance their
checkbooks, and our resolution asks the President to submit a budget
that uses the most careful and accurate economic numbers of the
Congressional Budget Office. Families must watch their spending each
month. They cannot wait until the last week to use coupons or think
about how they will pay the electric bill. So our resolution asks the
President and Congress to present budgets that begin to save money
today, not tomorrow.
And families cannot ignore their most important obligations like
paying their mortgage. Similarly our resolution asks the President and
Congress to submit budgets that meet the Government's obligation to our
seniors by preserving Medicare and asks both the President and the
Congress for budgets that preserve Medicare not just for the next
election but for the next generation. It is not just American families
who must meet the standards contained in our resolution. Last year the
blue dog Democrats, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Republican
majority and others all submitted budgets that met these basic and
simple standards. Each these budgets use the most accurate CBO numbers,
each of these budgets achieve budget balance through programmatic
changes. Each of these budgets help to address the long-term problem of
Medicare. That is why each of these budgets would have met the
commonsense standards of our resolution.
Unfortunately, the budget that the administration submitted to
Congress last month did not meet these basic requirements. The
administration's budget increased the deficit while this administration
is in office promising to balance the budget after the President leaves
office. That is just not right for our children.
This budget increased the deficit by $24 billion this year and would
leave the budget unbalanced in 2002. That is just not right for our
children.
It used rosy scenarios and accounting contingencies, not tough
choices, to achieve deficit reduction. That is just not right for our
children. It failed to protect Medicare for this generation, let alone
the future. That is not right for our children, for their parents or
for their grandparents.
This resolution simply asks the President to meet the same standard
that the majority, the blue dog Democrats, and the Congressional Black
Caucus met last year. Since we must all work together to balance the
budget, it asks all of us to use the same basic standards in our budget
resolution.
I urge my colleagues to support this resolution to establish a
bipartisan, common ground for agreement on a balanced budget. Let us
ask both the President and the Congress to submit budgets that meet the
same basic requirements, the requirements that our families meet every
day.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes and 30 seconds to the
gentlewoman from Hawaii [Mrs. Mink].
(Mrs. MINK of Hawaii asked and was given permission to revise and
extend her remarks.)
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for
offering me this time to participate in this debate.
I find it very strange that we are having this debate in the first
instance on the floor of the House. This matter should be debated in
our committee. I am a member of the Committee on the Budget. We have
yet to really sit down and discuss exactly what kind of budget
resolution we are going to offer this House. We have a statutory
obligation to have this work done by April 15, and we have not begun
this job.
It is simply irresponsible for the majority to abdicate its statutory
duty. There is no way that they can pass the buck to the President.
Under the Constitution, he offers his budget and it is for us to
dispose of it. It is not to say to him, send another or send another
because we do not agree with the minutia of its contents. It is for us
to decide the details first within our committee.
So I find this a very shameful operation here today. Besides which,
the head of the CBO that everybody is lauding today has said that there
is
[[Page H908]]
substantial agreement and that the administration's budget actually
comes to a balance. We may not agree how it balances it, but the fact
is the majority chose 2002 as the magic date and the President has come
up with a budget that essentially does the job.
Now, who is the responsible body to make judgments as to forecasts?
Forecasts are very difficult. It depends upon what the individual
assumptions are, how we look at the future, the unemployment rate, how
much taxes are coming in, and so forth.
I have a chart here which I would like to point to my colleagues
where the Congressional Budget Office is off the mark. They are very,
very conservative. Each year they projected far deeper deficits than
occurred. And as a result, we cannot put much confidence on the CBO
estimates.
To make the final point, the budget figures which the President
offers have been equally conservative and equally conservative in
looking at the economic projections. They have not been any further
away from it than the CBO. So at this point bringing this resolution
today out of the Rules Committee, charging that rosy scenarios are the
culprit on the part of the administration budget, is absolutely wrong,
not based upon fact and, I think, pure politics.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to draw attention
to the fact that since 1993 there have been 20 deficit projections by
OMB and CBO, and in 16 of those 20 projections CBO was more accurate
than OMB in predicting the deficit.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes and 30 seconds to the gentleman from
Mississippi [Mr. Pickering].
(Mr. PICKERING asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. PICKERING. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of the resolution
as a new Member of Congress, coming with what I hope will be a new
start, a clean slate. There is much at stake, and we have great
opportunity to do something that has not been done in 28 years. That is
to actually reach agreement on balancing our budget.
I am disappointed in the President's budget that, as both the
President and Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, we all
ran on the same themes of a smaller government, of balanced budgets, of
tax relief for families. Unfortunately, the facts of the President's
budget do not meet the words and the rhetoric.
The facts are that the President's budget increased taxes, increases
taxes $23 billion over the next 10 years. In fiscal year 1998, it
increases the deficit $24 billion. It undoes more than 50 percent of
the savings in last year's welfare reform bill. It is $69 billion short
of a balanced budget in the year 2002. And instead of providing
entitlement reform, it creates $70 billion in new entitlement spending
over the next 5 years.
The saddest or the most troubling component is that it leaves 98
percent of deficit reduction until after the President leaves office.
Those are the facts, but it affects our families. I am here today
representing the Third District of Mississippi, which has been
represented in a tremendous way by G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery. He met the
challenge of his day. He built a strong defense, contained Communism.
Helped win the cold war. My children today have freedom and prosperity
in large part because he was willing, and his generation was willing to
sacrifice.
I have four small children, four boys, ages 7, 5, 3 and 1. At the end
of my days, I want to say, I was part of giving them the same freedom,
the same opportunity, the same prosperity. To do so, we must create a
new foundation, a new framework to reach a balanced budget.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of House Resolution 89 as a new
Member of Congress, coming with the hope for a new start, a clean
slate. I am here today not only as a Representative from the great
State of Mississippi, or the successor to the legendary G.V. ``Sonny''
Montgomery, but as the father of four young boys.
There is much at stake in this budget cycle, and we have a great
opportunity to do something that has not been done in 28 years. That is
to actually reach agreement on balancing the Federal budget. I am
disappointed in President Clinton's rhetoric concerning a balanced
budget because his words do not match his actions.
As the father of four boys, age 7, 5, 3, and 1, I would like to leave
a nation as great as the one I received from my father. Unfortunately,
at the rate our Government spends money, my four boys, and millions of
other children across this great land, will not receive an inheritance
from those of us in this generation.
No, Mr. Speaker, we cannot be confused, the children of today will
not inherit the legacy that we did. They will not inherit the classic
American dream. They will inherit our debt.
The President spoke often during the campaign of his bridge to the
21st century. And I look forward to the start of the 21st century--the
next American century.
However, we will not, and cannot stand by while this administration
builds a bridge to the 21st century on the backs of our children.
As of today, each child in the United States, will inherit over
$188,000 of debt from us.
Mr. Speaker, that is not the American dream. This is not the American
way. This is not how we restore public trust in our Government.
In America we have always passed on the hope for a better, bigger,
and brighter future. Yet the children of today can only look forward to
debt, our debt.
Mr. Speaker, this is not the right thing to do. Nor is it right for
the President to promise a balanced budget during the election and then
provide us with yet another budget that simply does not balance.
While the President claims his budget comes into balance by 2002, it
includes new spending initiatives and savings gimmicks that could cause
the deficit to balloon in the subsequent years.
The tax cuts he provides are temporary while his tax increases will
be part of the inheritance for our children.
Mr. Speaker, the tax increases are permanent while the tax cuts are
temporary. In the President's budget, if the deficit reduction targets,
based on rosy economic scenarios, aren't met, the President repeals the
tax cuts in 2001 but the tax cuts are still in place.
We have many choices to make in this Congress that will effect the
next generation. While we contemplate and debate which path to take, I
recommend that we use our God given common sense.
I would suggest that it is only common sense to balance the budget.
Millions of families across the Nation balance their checkbooks on a
monthly basis. Is it too much to ask that the Federal Government does
the same thing?
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that while we journey toward the 21st
century that we take the road to action to ensure that our children are
not stuck in a future with little or no hope.
We have made great strides toward balancing the budget, but we have
more to do. Balancing the budget is just the first step.
House Resolution 89 will ensure cooperation between the Congress and
the White House in working toward a balanced budget.
By using the same economic assumptions we can find the middle ground
necessary to make the tough choices that lie ahead.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Washington [Mr. McDermott].
(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we are engaged today in a very fraudulent
exercise. I will enter into the Record a letter from Dr.O'Neill, the
head of the Congressional Budget Office.
The question was asked whether the alternative set of policies
proposed by the President would achieve a budget balance in fiscal year
2002, which would be balanced.
And her answer is, ``Our analysis, which provides CBO's estimate of
the effect on the deficit of the President's alternative budgetary
policies, shows a zero deficit in fiscal year 2002.''
The President has submitted a bill, a budget that is balanced,
according to the very person that we hear the Members on the other side
saying they would worship at her feet. If she says it is balanced, it
is zero, if the deficit is zero, that is good enough for them. We have
the letter. This is fraudulent.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, why are we going through
this exercise? I will tell you. It is very simple: 1995-96, the
Republicans got burned by coming out here with policies that were
unacceptable to the American people.
{time} 1430
And now we are engaged in what I call the grand stall. The budget is
supposed to be ready by the 15th of April. Will that budget be done on
the 15th of April? We have 13 working days between now and then and we
are not in the committee.
We have not had a single discussion about any alternative or a
modification that we will make to the President's proposal. We are
getting a case
[[Page H909]]
built here that the reason we did not do it on the 15th of April was
because the President never submitted us a budget.
Now, some of the freshmen out here do not understand the game. But
let me tell them what it is. We will blame it on the President as long
as we can, and then, finally, we will try to jam something through here
without any discussion, the discussions about taking away quality of
care for senior citizens and a variety of other things.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against this.
The information referred to is as follows:
U.S. Congress,
Congressional Budget Office,
Washington, DC, March 4, 1997.
Hon. Frank R. Lautenberg,
Ranking Member, Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator: You asked whether the alternative set of
policies proposed by the President in the event that
Congressional Budget Office projections are used in the
budget process would achieve unified budget balance in fiscal
year 2002.
As we described in our March 3 preliminary analysis of the
President's 1998 budgetary proposals, ``the alternative
policies proposed by the President were designed to fill
exactly any size deficit hole that CBO might project under
the basic policies.'' Therefore, Table 6 in our analysis
which provides CBO's estimate of the effect on the deficit of
the President's alternative budgetary policies shows a zero
deficit for fiscal year 2002.
I hope that this answer meets your needs.
Sincerely,
June E. O'Neill,
Director.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to
draw attention to the CBO report. In fact, to be clear, I will quote
from it directly. ``The CBO estimates that there will be a deficit of
$69 billion in 2002 under the President's basic policy proposals.''
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Missouri,
Mr. Blunt.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here to support this
resolution. I think it is no accident that this resolution is
introduced by fellow freshmen, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr.
Pitts; the gentleman from New Hampshire, Mr. Sununu; and the
gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Granger, who are joining me in this
Congress and who come to this Congress from an understanding of how we
believe responsibility ought to be taken in the real world and in real
world budgeting.
Really, responsibility has to begin at the top. And this Congress,
the last Congress, has shown the willingness to do that by giving the
President for the first time ever the line item veto, saying to the
President, we know there are some things that you can do that nobody
can do as well. The President really has to lead in this area, and for
the President to lead in this area effectively, we all do have to talk
about the same numbers.
A great Missourian, Mark Twain, said that forecasting is always
difficult, particularly when you are talking about the future. And it
is difficult when we are talking about the future to predict. Everybody
understands that. Everybody understands that we ought to be talking
about the same numbers.
The President has said over and over again that we ought to be using
the same numbers. Over and over again the President has turned to the
Congressional Budget Office and verified that their numbers, over the
course of time, have been better than other numbers available. As late
as January, the President said we will work with the Congress to use
numbers that everybody believes, numbers that come from the
Congressional Budget Office.
This budget is out of balance. It has to be brought back into
balance. We need the President to submit that budget.
The Federal Government is not doing a lot of terrible things. The
tough choices in life are not between bad things and good things. The
tough choices in life are determining what kinds of things really have
to have priority, and that is what submitting a budget is really all
about, submitting a budget with priorities.
I was a president before I came here. Was not the President of the
United States. I was the president of a private university. We had a
$23 million budget. We had 300 employees. They all vigorously advocated
what they needed to have happen. We were able to balance that budget
over and over again primarily because we made those tough choices. We
prioritized.
That is what we need the President to do with this budget. We need to
get started with numbers that we can work with and agree with and move
toward paying the bills of the country for the first time in 28 years.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio, Mr. Kasich, the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the
Budget.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, let me make it clear that we will, of
course, have a budget and it will be delivered to the House. This is
not out of the ordinary, that the Congress has not brought this budget
up. In the last 20 years, 19 of the times the budget resolution has
come beyond a certain date required in the law.
The issue is not a hard fixed date, really. The issue at hand is
whether we are able to either reach agreement with the administration
and be able to bring a proposal forward; and absent an agreement with
the administration, we will bring one forward that we will draft
ourselves and that we will have an opportunity to consider in this
House.
The issue today is really rather one of no matter what budgets come
to this floor, they ought to be counted as being in balance. The Blue
Dogs have brought a budget. It is in balance. They are going to appear
before the Committee on the Budget. I have praised the Blue Dogs for
their budget. The Black Caucus, in the past, has brought balanced
budgets, as has the Republican majority, and we will bring one.
We are going to bring one on some date certain. I have already said
that the administration could bring a budget and slip a date. Who cares
about the specific date on a calendar? It is the work product we are
most concerned about and the quality of the product.
So today what we are trying to say, both to the administration and to
the Congress, and to anybody else that wants to draft a budget, use
honest numbers. No gimmicks. Balance the budget and put the children
first.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume,
before yielding to the gentleman from North Dakota, to simply note for
the record that in 1993 the House Committee on the Budget produced a
budget resolution on March 10; in 1994, on March 3.
Unfortunately, the last 2 years we have been May 10 and May 9, and
under the current schedule, debating things like this, that seems to be
where we are headed this year.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North
Dakota [Mr. Pomeroy].
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, the people I represent in North Dakota are
tired of the debate in this House where one side points to the other
side and says they are terrible and get a ``they are terrible'' back,
and more of the fracas just continues. Unfortunately, a lot of the
debate this afternoon sounds much like that tired old partisan
dialogue.
We can do better than that. We stand at a great point of opportunity.
The deficit is down 63 percent from where it was 4 years ago. We have
made real headway. There is just that final push to get us to a
balanced budget. What is more, we stand at this point in time in
agreement that there ought to be a balanced budget. We stand at this
point in time that we ought to have that balanced budget achieved by
2002.
So with so much agreement, it seems to me we ought to be working hard
at negotiating our way to a balanced budget rather than having a
spurious debate of the kind before us.
No budget plan is perfect. There will always be a great deal of give
and take in crafting the final product. Now, the budget process is
structured in a formalized way. The President advances his budget, and
at that point in time all eyes turn to the majority party for their
budget plan. When they have their budget plan on the table, the sides
get together and negotiations begin in great earnestness in terms of
how the differences can be resolved.
So the President has advanced his budget. All eyes turn to the
majority caucus. They do not have a plan. They, in fact, want to waste
our time this afternoon asking the President to submit another budget.
They know very
[[Page H910]]
well the process. The process is it is their turn. Bring a budget
forward. It takes two to tango. It takes two budget plans to get
negotiated.
For the freshmen that for the first time are directing, I think
impressively, a floor debate, I would just say they are in Congress
now. There is something wonderful that comes with that. If they do not
like the President's budget, they should write their own. The Blue Dog
Democrats have already done precisely that. Other Democrat plans, I
expect, will emerge.
Rather than carp and gripe about the shortcomings of the President's
plan, just put pen to paper and come up with one. That would advance
the process very significantly. That would get us to the table with the
differences clearly etched so that they might be negotiated.
One final comment. We do not have much time. We want to get this done
by 2002. We need 5 years to get it done. If we fritter away this year
in partisan finger-pointing nonsense instead of earnest negotiation to
a settlement, it will be only much harder to do in the future.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SUNUNU. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform the Chair that I will be
yielding my time to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. McDermott]
before I go to a committee hearing.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson].
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, they say the difference between a good
baseball player and a great baseball player is the followthrough. Now
is the time for Congress and the President to knock one out of the park
for the American people and follow through on the promise to balance
the budget.
The distinguished gentleman from Washington referred to a comment
about my freshmen colleagues, and said, well, the freshmen do not
understand the games that are played in Washington. I agree that
perhaps we do not, and the American public does not. Whenever the
President promises to submit a balanced budget, and it is scored as not
being in balance, the American public understands that there is a need
for the President to go back to the drawing board, to resubmit his
budget, and that is what this resolution calls for.
The President has thrown us a curve ball with the budget he has
submitted. It claims to be in balance by the year 2002, and yet it is
not. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which the President
has agreed to abide by, concludes that the administration's budget will
produce a $69 billion deficit by the year 2002. This takes us in the
wrong direction. And in fact next year, if no action was taken under
the President's budget, there would be a $24 billion increase in the
deficit. We cannot get to zero by going the wrong direction.
I am concerned about the families of America. A government that
spends 15 percent of its income on interest on the debt is an
impediment to hope and prosperity for the average taxpayer. The
American people cannot bear the weight of an excessive and out-of-
control Federal Government.
We need only to look at the difficulties faced by the average
American family. There was a time in the not too distant past, when I
grew up as a child, when one parent could work in a factory or a store
or an office and the other stay home in order to take care of the
family.
My parents are examples of this. My father had a high school
education and was limited in his job opportunities. He worked as an
inspector in a chicken plant in northwest Arkansas, but yet despite the
modest income, he was able to provide for his family, raise his
children, allowing Mom to stay at home, and that is because the
government did not eat up his paycheck as is done today.
The American family cannot do that today and that is why we need to
balance the budget and that is why I support this resolution to give us
hope in America once again.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Maryland [Mr. Cardin].
(Mr. CARDIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, in the 11 years I have been in Congress to receive
Presidential budgets, this budget is the best received I have ever seen
by our colleagues. And there is good reason for that. The track record
of the Clinton administration has been excellent in reducing the
deficit.
It is the first administration in recent times that had 4 years in a
row in reducing the deficit. It has submitted a budget that balances in
the year 2002, according to OMB projections. There is a disagreement
between CBO and OMB. Why do we not look at the track record and look at
the past 4 years? In the past 4 years, OMB has been more accurate than
CBO. The deficits have actually been smaller than we thought they were
going to be. The President's has been more accurate.
The President goes one step further. He says if his economic
projections are wrong, he puts an enforcement mechanism in his budget
that guarantees us a balanced budget by the year 2002. That is why the
gentleman from Washington is correct when he says that Dr. O'Neill has
said that the President's budget will have a zero deficit in the year
2002.
The Congressional Budget Act says the President should submit his
budget by February. He has done that. It then says that Congress shall
pass a concurrent resolution by April 15.
Now, we have heard from the distinguished chairman of the Committee
on the Budget that we are not going to meet that deadline. I know that
the leadership has instituted a new process known as Correction Day.
Maybe we should put the Congressional Budget Act on Correction Day and
eliminate the time limits that are put in here.
Rather than wasting our time on this resolution, I would support a
resolution that would direct the Committee on the Budget to bring out
its budget in time so that we can act by April 15.
{time} 1445
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to note that with
regard to the triggers that have been discussed, there is a fair amount
of accuracy. There are triggers in the President's budget, and here is
what the triggers do: Head Start cut $400 million over 2 years; special
education cut $370 million over 2 years; Pell grants cut $680 million
over 2 years; veterans' hospitals cut $1.4 billion over 2 years. That
is what a trigger is all about.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr.
Shadegg].
Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time, I commend him for bringing this resolution forward, and I support
it.
Let me begin by pointing out that this resolution does matter. I sat
on the Budget Committee 2 years ago when Alan Greenspan pointed out
that if this Congress could balance the budget, it would make a real
difference to Americans. Interest rates would drop.
This chart shows that following the 1994 elections, interest rates
began to drop. But when we failed to agree with the President on a plan
that would balance the budget, interest rates began to go back up. This
debate does matter. It is critical that we balance the budget.
Mr. Speaker, I sat in this room and listened to the President
announce that the era of big government is over. I sat in this Chamber
and listened to him pronounce that this should be the Congress which
finally balances the budget, and yet the budget which the President has
submitted does not do that.
I rise in good faith to ask the President to join us in this effort,
and to point out that a budget which increases the deficit in the
coming year by $24 billion over doing nothing is not, in good faith, an
effort to balance the budget; that a budget such as the President has
submitted, which results in a $69 billion deficit in the year 2002 when
it is supposed to be balanced, is not a good faith effort.
This is not a partisan fight. Both sides of the aisle agree we must
balance the budget. I call on the President to join us in this fight,
to join us so that we can benefit the American people by the kind of
falling interest rates
[[Page H911]]
which will occur, the lower car loans, the lower student loans, the
lower home mortgage loan interest rates that Americans would enjoy if
we had a balanced budget. I call upon the President to submit a budget
which does balance and to join in this effort.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Texas [Mr. Bentsen].
(Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution.
This is nothing but a diversion, a political exercise and a futile
attempt to shift the blame where it does not belong.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to cover
their tracks. Having promised too much in their recent election
campaigns, they now find that they are unable to produce a budget that
is both in balance and fair. So instead they are taking the highly
unprecedented step of requesting the President to submit a second
budget, something which we have not seen with previous administrations,
including those who submitted budgets that were out of balance.
Before we vote, we should consider some important facts. The
Constitution of the United States clearly states that it is the
Congress and not the executive branch which enacts laws and
appropriates funds. Article 1, section 8, clause 18 states:
The Congress shall have the power to make all laws which
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the
foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this
Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in
any Department or officer thereof.
So, therefore, the Constitution is quite clear as to who is
responsible for forming a budget. It is the Congress. Second, while the
Congressional Budget Act of 1973 sets the procedure for the President
to submit a budget for consideration by the Congress, ultimately it is
up to the Congress to pass the laws enacting a budget for the United
States. In fact, if we are to rely on the 1973 act, we find that the
105th Congress is woefully behind, with only 10 legislative days left
in which the Committees on the Budget are to submit and the Congress to
adopt a budget resolution. Yet only yesterday the Republican leadership
stated that no budget would be submitted or debated until May.
We all know the President has submitted a budget, and while it may
not be perfect, and few budgets are, he has met his goals in both form
and substance. The administration can honestly state that using the
assumptions of the Office of Management and Budget, the President's
budget achieves balance by 2002. I might add that the CBO has also
agreed with that statement. We can disagree with the President over
assumptions and substance, but we cannot disagree with the fact that he
has submitted his budget and it is in balance using his assumptions.
So what is the problem that requires the other side to ask that the
administration submit a new budget? They have the power to submit their
own budget. Many of my colleagues on the other side were here during
the Reagan and Bush years. No one ever asked them to submit another
budget when in fact their budgets were never in balance.
The problem, my colleagues, is that the Republican leadership cannot
produce a balanced budget that cuts taxes by nearly $200 billion and
does not make deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the
environment. They have simply overpromised and now they are stuck. They
want the President to do the heavy lifting and that is why we are
considering a bill here today that is nothing more than subterfuge. Let
us be honest. The President has his budget, the Blue Dogs have their
budget. It is time for the Republicans to put their budget on the table
and let the American people compare.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht].
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the gentleman from
New Hampshire [Mr. Sununu] and the other freshmen who have put this
together because far from being a senseless debate, as we have heard
from some of our colleagues on the other side, this is a very important
debate. Let me explain the consequences. Who is right and who is wrong
is not as important as what happens if we are wrong.
As we have seen, we believe the President's budget is not in balance.
That is important. That is significant. The deficit actually goes up
and at the end of the budget cycle, according to the Congressional
Budget Office, which is our official scorekeeper, the budget is still
out of balance by $69 billion come the year 2002.
What does that mean? What are the consequences? The gentleman from
New Hampshire [Mr. Sununu] tried to explain, and I think Members need
to understand that if the Congressional Budget Office is correct, here
is what is going to happen in the year 2002. I daresay no Republicans
nor no Democrats want to vote for this, because it means that Head
Start will be cut $422 million, special education will be cut $369
million, education to the disadvantaged will be cut $707 million, Pell
grants for college students will have to be cut $680 million, the
National Institutes of Health will have to be cut over $1 billion.
Veterans hospitals, does anybody want to have to vote in the year
2002 to cut veterans hospitals by $1.4 billion? Or the women, infants
and children program, the WIC Program, by $353 million? The FBI would
have to be cut by $230 million; the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, $147 million; the Federal Aviation Administration, they are
the people who keep our airways safe, by $783 million; Federal highways
by $1.4 billion; the National Science Foundation, $269 million worth of
cuts if the President's triggers go into effect. Finally let me say,
and we all care about national parks, do my colleagues really want to
vote for a budget that could cause national parks to be cut by $105
million?
I say the answer to that question is no. That is not the budget that
we want. The debate that we are having today is an important debate for
this reason, and I am still wearing my name tag from Hershey because I
think we need a bipartisan budget. I think we have to work together. I
think we have to have an honest debate. But how can we have an honest
debate about the most important issue this Congress will deal with, the
budget, if one side is speaking Greek and the other side is speaking
Latin?
What this debate is about today, what this vote is about today is let
us all speak the same language, because if we are right and the
President is wrong, it is going to have dramatic consequences for lots
of our constituents. That is not what we want, that is not what you
want, and frankly I do not think that is what the President wants. What
we want is an honest and fair debate using honest and fair numbers. Let
us agree on the assumptions, let us agree on the language, then let us
have an honest debate.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I take 1 second to remind the gentleman
that last year he proposed the same kind of trigger in Medicare. He
trusted it then. I am not sure why he does not trust it now.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island
[Mr. Weygand].
Mr. WEYGAND. Mr. Speaker, I have some prepared comments which I would
like to submit, but I would like to depart from those if I could,
because in this discussion and debate today I have found some unusual
rhetoric that I think really does not strike home to anybody outside of
the beltway. I am just a poor kid from Pawtucket, RI, and when we talk
about work, we mean about rolling up your sleeves, working together,
agreeing to disagree but coming out with a budget.
What we have seen, though, unfortunately is a lot of political
rhetoric about it is not fair to the children, we are not following
through, this is a curve ball. The fact of the matter is whether you
are in Pawtucket, RI; Westerly, RI; Texas; Washington; or Washington,
DC, the issue before us is, let us get together and work on a budget
that works.
The President submitted a budget on February 6. It balances by 2002.
The Blue Dogs submitted a budget. The Black Caucus submitted a budget.
But the Republicans have not yet, not today and not tomorrow, submitted
one issue that is regarding a budget. Not even an amendment. Not a
plan.
[[Page H912]]
If we are really talking about bipartisanship, if we are talking
about Hershey, PA, if we are talking about doing the things that all
the people in my district in Rhode Island believe in, we should be then
debating the issues of the President's budget, the Blue Dog budget, the
minority caucus budget, and hopefully elements that you believe in, but
let us debate them. Let us put them on the table.
Let us work to resolve the issue, rather than this political
buffoonery that is before us today. This is wrong. This is not
legislation. These are people being political pawns, and quite frankly
everyone outside of the beltway is cringing today and saying, ``What is
wrong with these people in Washington? They just don't get it.'' Let us
get it, let us get on with it, let us pass a budget that balances.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to note that of
the budgets mentioned in the last presentation, the coalition budget
meets the criteria placed for it here. The budget put forward by this
Congress 2 years ago meets the criteria in this resolution. The Black
Caucus budget discussed meets the criteria in this resolution. This
resolution simply calls for Congress and the President both to fall
into the criteria outlined here.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania
[Mr. Pitts] who has put forward a great amount of work in supporting
this resolution and working toward a balanced budget.
(Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the resolution urging
President Clinton to submit a budget that balances by 2002. We are all
aware that balancing the budget is a top priority with the American
people.
The budget submitted by President Clinton was touted as a legitimate
plan to balance the budget by the year 2002. It does not do that.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the independent source
which the President himself has suggested we use, this effort falls
short of the balance goal by $69 billion. Not only does the President's
budget not balance by 2002, it leaves 98 percent of the deficit
reduction until after he leaves office.
President Clinton increases the deficit by $24 billion next year over
what would be if we did nothing, which is considered the baseline. If
we maintained spending next year at the same level as it is today, we
will have a budget deficit next year of $121 billion. That is the first
year. The President would increase that deficit spending by $24 billion
over that baseline, to $145 billion. That deficit spending increases
and continues every year until 2002. So we would be better off if we
did nothing, rather than using the President's plan.
Also, Mr. Speaker, looking at the President's budget, on page 331 we
see the amount of the debt over a 5-year period, the debt today being
$5.4 trillion, in 2002, $6.6 trillion. I would like to submit this for
the Record. In other words, we increase the debt in this 5-year period
by $1.2 trillion. Need I say more about needing a balanced budget?
We have not balanced the budget since 1969. To quote Thomas
Jefferson, ``There is nothing more important for our children and the
next generation of Americans than to leave them a Nation that is debt
free.''
For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, the out-of-
control spending must come to an end.
President Clinton said, ``We don't need a balanced budget amendment.
We need action.''
Well, we need action. He has given us neither. It is action that we
are calling for with this resolution, action that does not mean higher
taxes. This proposal does raise taxes. According to the independent
Joint Committee on Taxation, the President's budget would increase
taxes by $23 billion through 2007, hitting middle-income taxpayers
first. This will directly impact over 100 million workers across the
country. Another tax hike in the President's budget penalizes American
companies that create export jobs, changing the tax formula to increase
the amount of their taxes on income derived from sales abroad.
{time} 1500
That is a real disincentive for companies who rely on trade and
exports.
Another harmful tax is the capital gains tax, which is a tax hike on
10 to 15 million Americans that will occur. They are predominantly
middle-income families who own mutual funds and stocks, and these tax
hikes are all permanent, but the tax cuts are temporary. For example,
the $500 child tax credit is scheduled to disappear when a child
reaches age 13, just about the time when kids get expensive. That means
that single moms are left out in the cold after their kids are 13 and
growing.
That is irresponsible. To shut down a tax credit when the going gets
tough on parents like single moms is unwise.
The President's budget also calls for this tax credit to expire on
December 31, year 2000, just when he leaves office.
Mr. Speaker, it is vital that the President resubmit a budget that
serves as a starting point for discussion. Step one to an agreement is
the need to use the same numbers. By assuring that both the President
and the Congress use the same numbers, we begin to travel down the same
road to a balanced budget, and this resolution would do that.
Mr. Speaker, we are hearing a lot about ethics today in Washington. I
would like to ask a question. Is it ethical to spend money that we do
not have and to stick our kids and grandkids with the bill? Most of us,
when our parents die, expect maybe to inherit a house or maybe some
savings, but how would my colleagues feel if their parents went into
such debt that they had to spend the rest of their life just retiring
their debt? That is what we are doing to the next generation. The only
people who lose in this deal are the kids.
Mr. Speaker, I urge the Members to support this resolution.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton].
Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, this resolution really trivializes what is
perhaps the most significant legislative initiative we will undertake
this session. Our colleagues may disagree with the President's budget,
but it does indeed balance. Our colleagues may not like how it
balances, they may think it should balance early, but CBO really said,
``If you use his assumptions and his trigger, it would balance at the
year that he indicated it would.'' The budget, however, provides
guidance for how we spend our resources, who will we spend it on; it
determines indeed what our resources will be spent on and indeed who is
important.
The budget for our Nation is the most important plan that our people
will have. We will decide whether small family businesses spanning
generations will be able to survive through relief from unfair estate
tax, we will decide the kind of assistance we will give to those who
are aspiring for education, higher education, for Head Start, we decide
whether American children will get a healthy start or any assistance at
all. So this is no small matter talking about the budget, but it is a
small matter what we are doing on this floor.
Mr. Speaker, right now as we are talking about this budget the
Committee on the Budget is having a hearing that is on the issue that
we should all be there. It is no accident they establish a date of
April 15, tax day, the day that our citizens assume their share of the
budget of our Nation that we in Congress should have a budget
resolution. But at the rate we are going we will not meet that goal.
Why? Because of such activities as we are having today.
The President's budget has been submitted.
Now there are some issues I disagree with, but nevertheless I am
generally pleased by that budget and know that there are issues that I
disagree with and I will have an opportunity to express. I urge my
Republican colleagues to use that same effort: Go to the hearings,
express their view, submit their budget, find a better way to improve
this budget. If they want to submit a balanced budget, why not put that
balanced budget on the floor?
Mr. Speaker, I urge that this resolution should not be voted on, and
it should not be on the floor in the first place, and certainly we
should vote against it.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New
Jersey [Mr. Franks].
[[Page H913]]
Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by observing that
in my opinion both sides in this discussion are fundamentally committed
to balancing the budget. Nobody ever said that that goal would be easy
to attain. If it were easy, I suspect it would have been done long ago.
But it is now clear that reaching that goal will require not only
determination, but real leadership if we are to fundamentally change
Washington spending habits.
Against that backdrop the budget submitted by the President, in my
judgment, defers simply too many of the tough decisions. It leaves them
for someone else to figure out.
According to the CBO, fully 98 percent of the savings needed to
balance the budget will not come until the last 2 years. In those years
that responsibility will fall to a different Congress and indeed a
different President.
But let us be honest. Any plan to balance the budget relies on the
greatest portion of savings to be achieved in the final years. That is
because when we make changes in the way that Washington spends money we
do not see instant results. It takes time to accumulate substantial
savings. But the President's budget simply relies too heavily on back-
loaded savings.
But there is a different problem, and it is just around the corner.
For 4 consecutive years the deficit has been going down. That is to the
President's credit and to ours. But the deficit now we find is at its
lowest level in 15 years, but next year for a variety of reasons the
deficit will begin going back up.
All of us should find that change in direction very troubling, and we
should seek to limit the increase in next year's deficit to the
greatest extent possible. But unfortunately that is not what the
President's budget would do. According to CBO, the deficit next year
will be $24 billion worse than if his budget had been lost on its way
up to Capitol Hill. The CBO estimates that if we stayed on our current
path and did nothing, the deficit next year would be $121 billion. That
is $24 billion lower than under the President's recommended spending
plan.
There is another reality that we simply must face. We cannot expect
to credibly balance the budget and keep it in balance beyond 2002
without making some structural changes in entitlement spending.
Entitlements now account for over 55 percent of all Federal savings,
and they are going up every year at an astonishing rate. We owe it to
the American people to make the changes needed to keep entitlement
spending under control while preserving the essential purposes of those
programs.
We are committed to working with the President to end deficit
spending. This resolution takes us in that direction by asking the
President to take a second look at his proposal.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
The gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Franks] makes the best case for
not reducing taxes. The President's budget would continue down if we
did not reduce taxes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr.
Davis].
Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the American people sent us here
to get the job done, not to play games. As a freshman member of the
Committee on the Budget, I am eager to get to work on a plan that will
balance the budget, but here it is the second week of March and we have
yet to really begin an open and honest discussion as to Federal
spending and the priorities that we must face as a Congress.
There are legitimate differences over the merits of a tax cut and how
to best achieve savings in Medicare and Medicaid spending, but we must
start to work through these difficulties and begin debating the issues.
Unfortunately, today the House is debating a resolution which serves no
useful purpose. At best this resolution is a waste of time; at worst it
is a diversion from our work in the Committee on the Budget, which
should be meeting right now.
We have a legal obligation to submit a budget resolution by April 15.
We have an obligation to our constituents to work toward a plan which
will balance the budget. The time for action is now. The responsibility
is ours as a Congress. We should commit ourselves to reconciling our
differing visions of how to balance the budget and get to work on an
honest and open debate on the issues before us.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra].
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire
[Mr. Sununu] for yielding me the time. I would just like to take a look
at what the President is proposing in the area of education.
We all recognize that much work needs to be done in education. We are
currently engaged in a process which we call Education at a Crossroads
which examines what is working and what is wasted in education in
America today. We are taking a look at the Washington response, which
is 760 programs going through 39 different agencies, spending about a
$120 billion per year, and what we believe is that before we put
another overlay of new programs and spending on this education
bureaucracy, let us take a look at what is working and what is wasted,
and, if we have new priorities, let us find some money in the old
programs that appear not to be working, and let us reestablish
priorities.
There is enough money in education. We do not need more money.
The President is proposing a building program, recognizing that when
we put Federal dollars into building programs we prohibit the use of
volunteers on those projects and we have to pay premiums through the
Davis-Bacon law. And then the President on the other hand wants to
encourage volunteerism by expanding the Corporation for National
Service, its involvement in tutoring programs. So on one hand we are
saying volunteers are bad, on the other hand we are going to say we are
going to have more volunteers paid $27,000 per year involved in
teaching our kids to read. It is great that they are teaching our kids
to read because the Corporation for National Service cannot keep its
books, and just recently there was another report that said their trust
fund is now unauditable. These people cannot teach our kids math, so
maybe they can help on reading.
What is the President's vision for education? He wants to build our
schools, put in the technology, develop the correct curriculum, test
our kids, certify our teachers, teach them about sex, teach them about
drugs, feed them breakfast, feed them lunch, do midnight basketball,
and other than that it is your school. He has got a vision of big
government and more spending, proposing $55 billion of increased
spending, new spending, $11 billion per year for the next 5 years. That
means that 2.2 million American families will have to pay $5,000 a year
for increased spending on education when that money already exists.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] raises the
question. I say Put your alternative on the table; we would love to see
it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California
[Ms. Woolsey].
(Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, today's debate sounds like a line from a
popular song: ``Isn't It Ironic?''
Is it not ironic that the majority party is demanding the President
submit a second budget when they have not yet come about to present any
budget plan? Is it not ironic that the budget process is behind
schedule for the third year in a row under Republican leadership? Is it
not ironic that one Member of the majority party's leadership has
stated it would be inappropriate for Republicans to produce a budget
while another Member of the same leadership had said they will produce
a budget resolution in May. Is it not ironic?
Enough of this budget gridlock, Mr. Speaker. The President has
submitted a budget; the Republicans have not.
Today's resolution is nothing more than a diversion. It is simply an
attempt to distract, an attempt to distract the American people from
the fact that the majority is not doing its job.
[[Page H914]]
Do not fall for this trick. Vote no on House Resolution 89.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Minnesota [Mr. Minge].
Mr. MINGE. Mr. Speaker, earlier this afternoon we had before us the
proposition of whether we should adopt a rule that controls the debate
on this matter that is pending. We did adopt a rule, and unfortunately
that rule denied the minority a chance at asking this body to vote on
an equitable proposition. That proposition would have challenged both
the leadership of this Congress and the administration to produce a
budget that complies with the standards that are set forth and have
been so frequently addressed here.
I for one feel that these standards are important, that we should
have conservative forecasting, that we should have a glidepath to
deficit reduction or eliminating the deficit, that we should deal with
the problems of the Medicare system.
{time} 1515
Unfortunately, we are now grappling with just the politics of how
this is to be presented. It is cosmetics, and that is one of the
tragedies. We should be insisting, as newer Members of Congress, that
both the Republican leadership and the Democratic White House meet the
same standard and do so simultaneously. Both groups should be putting
their cards on the table and saying, this is what our hand looks like,
now let us sit down and negotiate the next step.
We all know those negotiations have to take place. The longer we
delay those negotiations, the greater the risk that we will again
experience the tragic shutdown of the Federal Government that occurred
in 1995.
It is my fervent wish that we put to one side this type of a dilatory
tactic and say: time to get on with the task; time, as Republican
leaders to present a budget; time for the White House to present a
budget that complies with the standards that we all know ought to be
the standards that govern budgeting in this institution.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Delaware [Mr. Castle].
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from New
Hampshire for yielding and congratulate him on his work in this area.
I do rise in support of the resolution, but I really take the floor
not so much because of this resolution, which I do not consider to be
either dilatory or a waste of time, because it is getting its focus on
what I think we should be talking about here in the U.S. Congress
today, and that is balancing the budget of our country. I think it is
absolutely vital.
Let us not forget that people such as Mr. Greenspan has said that we
will reduce interest rates by 2 percent if we can balance the budget.
We are all talking about balancing the budget, and I think we should go
with doing it. I think this is a good exercise to put some of these
issues on the floor.
I am not critical of the White House. As a matter of fact, I had a
very good meeting this morning with Mr. Franklin Raines, the budget
director, and Mr. Gene Sperling of the White House, and about a dozen
of us to talk about the budget issues, the numbers. I think they showed
some flexibility in terms of revisiting, relooking at some of the
numbers which are here.
However, I do become concerned when we do not move forward, and I do
become concerned with some of the numbers that we are dealing with with
respect to this particular budget. I think, first and foremost, it
really has not recognized the parameters of using the Congressional
Budget Office estimates and assumptions, and I think we should get to
that point so we can at least argue from the same set of numbers. I
realize there will still be some differences, but we did promise to do
that.
I think without the same economic baseline and numbers used for
comparison purposes, it is too difficult to decide which is more and
which is less. It simply allows no political accountability under the
President's assumptions as we have now.
I do congratulate, by the way, the Blue Dog Coalition budget makers.
I think they did an extremely good job of recognizing the issues before
us that are making the kind of hard decisions that I think each of the
435 of us should make and the President and his advisors should make
with respect to balancing the budget.
I might point out that it is not only the Republicans that called on
the President to issue a balanced budget, but the nonpartisan Concord
Coalition as well, that concurs with the Congressional Budget Office
that his budget postpones most spending cuts until after the year 2000
and after he actually leaves the White House.
So we have some serious problems with the delays, and I think we need
to address these and deal with it, and I hope we can keep moving
forward.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from California [Mr. Sherman].
(Mr. SHERMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are called here in this Chamber today
not to do the people's business but to engage in what I think is
dilatory tactics. We are called upon to spend a day in this Chamber not
making laws, but engaged in a ritualistic attack on President Clinton
and his fiscal record. So I figured we ought to take a minute just to
look at the President's fiscal record.
This chart here shows where we were headed in terms of a deficit
before President Clinton took office. We see this line exceeding $100
trillion. Now, I have only served in Congress for a short time. I
remember when $1 billion was a lot of money. And we used to explain it
as a line of $100 bills going from Washington all the way across the
country or a stack of $1 bills all the way to the Moon. We were headed
for a $100 trillion deficit. That is a stack of $100 bills going all
the way to whatever planet Yoda lives on.
Instead, we have fiscal responsibility in the White House, and we
have been able to bring long-term prospects represented by that lower
line to a position where a balanced budget, a long-term and permanent
balanced budget, is within reach.
Now, the laws says that we are supposed to have a budget resolution
just 10 legislative days from today. Instead of passing resolutions, we
should start by writing a budget in the Committee on the Budget. And I
felt, why have the Republican majority not put forward a budget? And I
thought maybe it was in absence of pen and paper and a chance to sit
down and actually write some numbers down. So I brought this here.
Mr. Speaker, as we can see, it sets forth everything we have been
told about the majority's budget. It comes equipped with a pen, and I
would hope that in the spirit of Hershey, PA, some of my colleagues
from the other side of the aisle would come down here and give us some
numbers, because a journey toward a trillion-dollar budget starts with
the first digit.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Maine [Mr. Allen].
(Mr. ALLEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, last weekend half of the Members in this
House participated in a bipartisan congressional retreat to help
restore civility in our debate. The American people want us to do the
people's work and to do so in a bipartisan fashion.
Today's resolution requesting the President to submit a second
balanced budget is partisan and counterproductive. The President
submitted a balanced budget in February. While we may honestly disagree
about the President's budget priorities, the Constitution gives this
Congress the power of the purse. Section 301(a) of the Congressional
Budget Act requires this Congress to complete action on the budget
resolution on or before April 15, 1997. That date is less than 5 weeks
away. To request a second balanced budget from the President is simply
irresponsible. He has done his job.
The Committee on the Budget must not duck the tough choices necessary
to balance the Federal budget, but that is what is going on today. Let
us do our job. Let us vote against this resolution and urge the
Committee on the Budget to submit a budget resolution to this Congress
by April 15.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
New York [Ms. Velazquez].
Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, this resolution is a waste of time. Why
do
[[Page H915]]
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to stall the budget
process? I thought that the clock was ticking for us to enact a
balanced budget, which I support. In the rush to pass a fiscal year
1998 budget, the Republicans are setting up another scenario for last-
minute legislation. In that rush, the most vulnerable populations will
be targeted again for the highest spending cuts and the lowest
assistance. It is remarkable how far the Republicans will single out
poor families.
The deadline grows near for our national budget to be balanced. Note
that my Republican colleagues have not submitted a budget proposal.
They must not be serious about negotiating a balanced budget agreement.
What is their strategy now? To shut down the Federal Government again?
Remember, it did not work before; it will not work again.
I ask my colleagues to consider the human face on this debate.
Consider Miguel Pena from Brooklyn, a 72-year-old Dominican legal
immigrant with mental illness who will lose his SSI disability benefits
within months because he is not a citizen. He, like hundreds of
thousands of other legal immigrants, has no other source of income.
Consider the 30 percent of the 30,000 Hasidic children in
Williamsburg who will lose their Federal assistance. Consider Maria
Rodriguez, 27 years old, a legal secretary with two children and no
subsidized daycare options. Hardworking people have to make painful
decisions on a daily basis about keeping a roof over their heads or
putting food on their table. We should not be spending precious time on
political posturing at the expense of America's future.
The families I represent in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens carefully
manage their limited incomes to make ends meet. They cannot postpone
their budget; neither should we. Let us get on with the people's
business.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Maine [Mr. Baldacci].
(Mr. BALDACCI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BALDACCI. Mr. Speaker, today we are considering a resolution
which demands that the President submit yet another balanced budget
plan. Apparently the first one was not to the House leadership's
liking. Such an ironic twist and somewhat bold in light of the fact
that the House leadership has failed to submit a balanced budget plan
of their own, one that meets the criteria that they have set forth that
they have asked the President to meet. To date we have the President's
balanced budget plan, we have the coalition's balanced budget plan, and
I have yet to see a plan from the Republican leadership.
Now, reasonable people can disagree over what should or should not be
in the plan to balance the but. The President's plan is very strong on
education and children's health care, and some may disagree about that.
But the President made a good-faith effort to meet the demands of the
House leadership, only to be told that he must submit a second budget
before they even submit the first one.
The President has submitted a detailed balanced budget plan that
includes the economic and accounting analysis, information on Federal
receipts and collections and detailed priorities. It is a good-size
document weighing more than a few pounds with a little over 1,200 pages
of great detail.
I urge my colleagues who dislike the President's budget plan to meet
him halfway and submit a plan of their own. The President cannot
negotiate with himself and should not be asked to submit a new plan
until those who disagree with him have an approach all their own.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Kansas [Mr. Snowbarger].
(Mr. SNOWBARGER asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. SNOWBARGER. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about one particular
aspect of the budget that is before us and the subject of the comments
today, and that is the issue of tax relief. The fact of the matter is
that over the next 10 years this budget proposes a tax increase of over
$23 billion.
Mr. Speaker, if a budget is going to promise tax relief, it should be
permanent tax relief. It is better to have no tax relief than phony tax
relief. The child care tax credit for children under 13 is only $300
for the first 3 years. Then it supposedly increases to $500. But the
budget also proposes that all the tax reductions will automatically be
repealed in the year 2000 if the rosy scenario and the imaginative
arithmetic conflict with reality, as CBO has said it will, and it turns
out the budget then will not be balanced.
A tax credit for children should not be scheduled to expire in a few
years. Neither should a tax credit for children disappear when the
child turns 13, just when children become the most expensive. You know,
when they eat everything in sight and go through two or complete
wardrobes a year. Under the administration's plan, a family will get
relief only if its children were born between 1985 and 1999.
While promising tax relief with one hand and taking it away with the
other, the budget also belies the President's assertion that the age of
big Government is over. The President claims to have reduced the
Federal civilian work force by 299,600 employees from 1993 through
1998. This is misleading on several counts, including the following:
two-thirds of these reductions are from the Department of Defense.
These personnel reductions actually come from the Defense downsizing of
the Bush administration, which occurred because the United States and
its allies won the cold war under the leadership of the Reagan-Bush
administrations. The new budget claims to reduce 26,600 additional
employees by the end of fiscal year 1998. But the President fails to
emphasize the fact that he is actually cutting 27,800 workers from the
Department of Defense, when the non-DOD Government labor force will
actually increase by 1,200.
The administration's budget also uses creative accounting to hide
increased spending. The President's budget actually makes substantial
increases in discretionary spending. Compared to 1997 levels the budget
increases discretionary spending by $100 billion over next 5 years.
I served in the Kansas State Legislature for 12 years. During that
time I worked with Republican and Democratic Governors, and reached
principled compromises. I want the Congress and the President to reach
an agreement on a budget that is balanced, and that will stay balanced.
But it has to be an honest agreement, with honest numbers. The only way
to accomplish that is for the President to submit a budget that is
truly balanced. Then we can engage in the true give-and-take of the
legislative process.
The difference between the President's current budget and what needs
to be done on this issue is the difference between saying we're going
to balance the budget and actually balancing it. To pretend we are
balancing the budget when we're not dishonors us, betrays our
constituents, and endangers programs like Social Security, which the
President insists he wants to protect. In the long run, the promises of
a bankrupt Federal Government are worthless. The best thing we can do
to ensure that Social Security is here tomorrow is to start balancing
the budget today.
For these reasons the House must pass this resolution calling on the
President to prepare another budget, one that really balances.
{time} 1530
A tax credit for children should not be scheduled to expire in a few
years. Neither should a tax credit for children disappear when a child
turns 13, just when the child becomes most expensive: when they eat
everything in sight and go through two or more wardrobes a year.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
North Carolina [Mr. Price].
(Mr. PRICE of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. speaker, one of my first experiences
in this body in 1987 came when we were voting on the floor on four
competing budget resolutions, including one offered by the majority
party, as is always done, at least until this year.
I remember at the end of the day it struck me that 140 Members of
this body had voted ``no'' on all four resolutions, in the spirit of a
comment made by the then-minority whip, Mr. Lott, who said, ``You do
not ever get into trouble for those budgets which you vote against.''
I am sure Members in this body also remember 1993, when we passed a
5-year budget plan that has since reduced the deficit by $700 billion.
Yet we barely passed that plan, by only one vote in both Houses.
It is easiest to vote ``no,'' and it is hard to produce a budget, but
it is our
[[Page H916]]
obligation to produce a budget. Particularly, it is the obligation of
the majority party to deliver what every majority party has delivered
in the past: A budget proposal which then serves as a blueprint for
subsequent congressional action.
The majority apparently does not want to put its fingerprints on any
budgetary unpleasantness, so they are trying to shift the blame onto
the President. But the President has already produced a budget. No one
is claiming that it is perfect, but our Republican friends are
exaggerating the difference between CBO and OMB projections as a
diversionary tactic, trying to divert attention from their own failure
to do the tough work of writing and passing a budget resolution. If
they do not like the President's budget they can produce a different
budget, but it is the Republican majority's turn to put its own budget
on the table so we can move forward to confront the country's
challenges.
Surely we do not want to repeat the scenario of deadlock and
Government shutdown. Time is almost up. The statutory deadline is April
15. Only 9 legislative days remain to pass a budget resolution. The
majority party is way overdue in putting their own budget on the table,
a budget proposal which we could be debating today rather than this
irrelevant and diversionary resolution.
Let us get the budget process back on track. Defeat this resolution
and bring a budget resolution to the floor, as the majority party has
always done and is still obligated to do.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Maryland [Mr. Ehrlich], a distinguished member of the Committee on the
Budget.
Mr. EHRLICH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me, and congratulate him for his important work on this issue.
Mr. Speaker, this is about principle. We have talked about what the
President has said, and the President's words are important. The
President has said, and we have repeatedly relied on these statements,
because words should have meanings, Mr. Speaker; the President said, I
have made it clear we will work with Congress, the Congressional Budget
Office, and we are going to do this. We are going to do the right
thing.
We are taking the President at his word. We are taking the President
at his word that he means to make the difficult decision and that he
means to be a leader and not a politician.
Politics have ruled this debate for too long on both sides of the
aisle. I have heard about Hershey and the spirit of bipartisanship, and
we need to treat each other civil. We should not have to be reminded
about that. We are adult politicians. But the fact is that we have very
legitimate policy differences, and they are subjective differences.
What is objective, Mr. Speaker, is that the President has said he
will abide by CBO. CBO has said his budget is not in balance. We expect
the President to give us a balanced budget. We want the President to
give us a balanced budget. The American people deserve a balanced
budget.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro].
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the majority leader announced
that the Congress will not consider a budget resolution until May, 3
months after the President submitted to this House a balanced budget
plan. Yet today my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to
vote on a resolution to force the President to submit another balanced
budget. They continue to criticize the President's plan, despite a
letter from the director of the Congressional Budget Office asserting
that the President's plan is truly a balanced budget.
Where may I ask is a Republican plan to balance the budget? My
colleagues on the other side of the aisle are too busy with partisan
attacks to focus on actually submitting a budget proposal of their own.
It is time for House Republicans to stop holding press conferences
and to start crunching numbers. The only bill today reflecting the
Republican budget priorities is a proposal by the majority leader of
the Senate, and it is a tax bill. This legislation, according to
Citizens for Tax Justice, would mostly benefit the wealthiest 5 percent
of Americans.
It sounds to me like the Republicans are up to their old tricks:
Balancing the budget on the backs of working American families while
cutting taxes for the rich. The American people deserve to see how the
Republicans plan to pay for these large tax cuts. Let us work together
on the issues that matter to the American people.
We cannot afford to have another Government shutdown because the
Republicans are too busy attacking the President to work on a balanced
budget. It is time for us to work together on the issues that matter to
the American people.
We have seen the Democratic proposal to balance the budget. The
American people deserve to see the Republican budget proposal.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to note that this
resolution is precisely about working together. This resolution is
about working to get a platform from the President from which we can
conduct bipartisan budget negotiations.
If we truly want to move in that direction, we need a substantive
balanced budget, one that does not include triggers, one that does not
include a $69 billion deficit in the year 2002, one that does not
increase the deficit $24 billion in 1998. That is all we seek. We lay
out criteria that will give us this platform, and we apply the exact
same standards to this House that we ask the President to abide by.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr.
Parker].
Mr. PARKER. Mr. Speaker, the matter before us today is viewed by many
as a useless exercise in political finger-pointing. That is precisely
the way it was defined in the Committee on Rules yesterday.
Perhaps we are being a bit too subtle. This is not an attack on the
President or on his budget. House Resolution 89 is simply a message to
the White House. It is an appeal to the President to recognize the
historical opportunity available to him to actively participate in a
bipartisan effort to finally craft a balanced Federal budget.
There is a genuine desire on the part of the Republican Members of
this House to work with the President in such an effort. We anxiously
awaited submission of his budget last month in order to let him
establish the starting point in this process. My feeling is that he
passed on that opportunity. Instead, he sent us a political document. I
think perhaps it is the best political document that I have seen in my
tenure here in the House.
Still, many of us remain prepared to work with the President and our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That is what this resolution
is all about. We need to debate policies, programs, and spending cuts.
Instead, we are debating, once again, whose economic assumptions,
either the OMB or CBO, should be the basis for more substantive debate.
The fact is, the House will use CBO assumptions. The matter is no
longer subject to debate. The Committee on the Budget will present a
balanced budget, a proposal scored by CBO, in the near future. This
process could be eased somewhat if the President worked from the same
assumptions. In the past he said that he would, but as his budget
proposal demonstrates, he will not.
This exercise today is simply one last appeal to him to join us,
rather than confronting us. It is my belief that we will work with him.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Fattah].
Mr. FATTAH. Mr. Speaker, what we have is seemingly a disagreement
between two groups of economists about what might happen some 5 years
out in terms of the largest economy in the world, a slight difference
of opinion about that between the President's economists and the CBO.
But we should not waste our time here today with this resolution. This
has no import or impact on the President of the United States in terms
of any legal meaning.
The result of the passage of this resolution is just that the House
will have taken up the time of the House, rather than working on
producing a budget that could be scored by CBO and that could take into
account the President's
[[Page H917]]
priorities which, by the way, are the Americans' priorities, as
illustrated in the last election. The public wants more investment in
education and environmental protection. These are issues we should be
debating, we should be working toward. This political one-upsmanship
between the House and the White House does not make a lot of sense.
We have a role here in the Congress to play. We are one of two
Houses, and along with the White House, and we have to do the most
important thing we do every year, which is to pass a budget. I would
ask that my colleagues vote ``no'' on the resolution, and then urge
ourselves to get to work, not through the words we speak on the floor,
but in the hard work of designing a budget to take this Nation into the
next century.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
Connecticut [Mr. Shays].
Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me.
Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to this debate from the beginning.
One of the things I am very impressed with is the demeanor on both
sides of the aisle. I am particularly impressed with the contributions
of the freshmen Members from both sides of the aisle, and my colleague
who introduced this resolution, the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr.
Sununu]. We are talking about ideas, we are talking about policies, and
we are talking about the direction this country should head.
This congressional majority has three major objectives. We want to
balance the Federal budget and get our financial house in order; we
want to save our trust funds for not only future generations but for
present generations, because Medicare in particular is running out of
money; and third, we want to transform this caretaking society into a
caring society. We want to transform this caretaking social and
corporate and agricultural welfare state into a caring opportunity
society.
In the process of doing all three of those things, we want to move
the power and the money and the influence back home and away from
Washington. That is our objective. That is what we will seek to do.
That is what we will do with our budget when we present our budget,
which we will do, and which we are required to do.
The President deserves a tremendous amount of credit for deficit
reduction since he has been present. The first 2 years he achieved
deficit reduction with a Democrat majority by tax increases. The last 2
years of his 4 years as President he reduced the deficit, with the help
of this new Republican majority, by spending cuts. It is clear that we
are going to continue to go on a downward path by spending reductions,
not tax increases.
What is alarming, however, is the President still insists on not
using the same budget numbers that we are required to use, the
Congressional Budget Office. This resolution soundly requires that we
use the same set of numbers so we do not have a Government shutdown. It
argues that we not have automatic spending cuts so we do not have a
Government shutdown. It argues as well that major savings take place in
the first 3 years, not the fourth and fifth year, so we do not have a
Government shutdown.
Why is it important? Because we are in Congress for the next 2 years.
And why is that significant? Under the President's budget, scored by
CBO, they say the deficit goes up $24 billion. This year it would go up
an additional $1 billion from his plan, and next year it would go up an
additional $24 billion, to a $145 billion deficit.
For 4 years the President and Congress have succeeded in going down,
and under his plan it is now going up. It goes up the next year and the
year after that, and only slightly goes down the third year, and then
the fourth and fifth year, when we are not in Congress, when he in fact
is not President, in the fifth year we do most of the deficit
reduction.
Mr. Speaker, I have a big problem with the argument on the other side
that it is balanced in the fifth year. It is balanced in the fifth
year. It is like the person who says I am going to lose 50 pounds in
the next 5 years, and seeks to gain pounds in the first 2 years, and
then in the fifth year basically says, I am going to lose 49 pounds out
of my 50.
{time} 1545
Technically, it is balanced, but it is just a fraud. We know the next
White House cannot do that, and we know that the Congress, from the
next one and the one beyond, will not do that. We have got to make
constructive reductions each and every year.
This resolution requires that we work together in both the White
House and Congress and in using the same budget numbers so we can
compare apples to apples, so we do not have automatic spending cuts. It
requires Congress to do that as well and that we make substantive
savings in the first 3 years of the 5-year plan, not in the fifth year.
So for that, Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to be associated with this
effort.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Connecticut heard Mr.
Rubin yesterday say that if the----
Point of Order
Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). The gentleman will state his
point of order.
Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I mean this graciously, but if the gentleman
would yield time instead of just speaking without yielding himself
time, I think it would be fair for both sides.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman recognizes it is
taken off my time by the timekeeper.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Washington [Mr. McDermott].
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume. The gentleman from Connecticut knows that, if we took the tax
increase out of the President's budget, we would have balance now. The
question is, where is the gentleman's budget? The gentleman says
everything is wrong with the President's budget, but he will not put
anything on the table.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California
[Ms. Sanchez].
Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Resolution
89. This resolution unnecessarily singles out the President by telling
him to submit a second budget while ignoring the fact that the
Republican leadership has yet to present a budget of its own.
We are fast approaching the statutory deadline by which we must adopt
a budget resolution. Now, I have seen plenty of budgets around here:
the President's, the blue dog budget, the progressive budget and
several others; I might add, all of which were put forward by the
Democrats. Some of them I like some pieces. Some I do not agree with.
I, for one, believe we can balance the budget before the year 2002. But
the problem is, without having a budget from the Republican leadership,
we have nothing to talk about and no debate to go on.
Today's vote is really a waste of time, and it is so sad that we show
up here every day, doing the work of the people and have nothing to
show for it in the end.
It is time that we get beyond this. It is time that we get to work. I
ask the other side to please put forward their budget, and I ask my
colleagues to stand strong and work together to bring forward a budget
that the American people can live with for the next year.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas [Mr. Stenholm].
(Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, it is difficult not to be discouraged by
this debate today. Why in the world are we wasting time debating a
meaningless one-sided resolution which has little or no value other
than seeking political points?
I must clarify several points. First, those of us who were gagged by
the closed rule today are not interested in letting the President off
of the hook. We wanted to include every single requirement on the
President, even though he had already met his legal responsibilities
that the majority created. We simply wanted to demand the same sort of
responsible behavior from the Congress. We were denied an opportunity
to debate our amendment.
Second, the last-minute provision added by this resolution's sponsors
does not set the same requirement on
[[Page H918]]
Congress. It does not set a deadline for action. It does not
acknowledge Congress's constitutional and statutory responsibilities.
It does not reference, in an equal manner to the President's budget,
the shortcomings or the outright absence of the Republican budget
efforts. It is a false statement to make on the House floor that the
resolution creates the exact same standard for Congress as it does for
the President.
Americans are tired of us making unfulfilled promises about balancing
our budget and trying to place the blame on the other side. The public
wants us to roll up our sleeves and just do it. The current standoff in
which both the congressional leadership and the President refuse to
move until the other side goes first simply increases the public
cynicism about us all.
That is why the blue dogs have stepped up to the plate with a
balanced budget plan that we believe represents a credible fair
approach to balancing the budget. We have already received a good deal
of editorial praise for our approach. We have the support of the most
credible fiscal group out there, the Concord Coalition, received warm
reception on the Senate Budget Committee the other day. Frankly, I
appreciate the praise, but we would like to have some support.
That is what we are looking for now. I appreciate the fact that we
are beginning to sense that on both sides of the aisle.
The chart that I have up here, the blue line shows the blue dog
budget. It brings the deficit down. The other line, the red line, is
the criticism that we join in on the President's budget because it does
increase the deficit. But the yellow line is the baseline with the
Senate recommended tax cuts, which we have to assume. And I know this
is a relatively cheap shot and I am not taking it as a cheap shot. I am
just pointing out that, until we have a budget resolution, that is all
we have to go by.
I share the disappointment, as I mentioned, the shortcomings of the
President's budget. And I know that my good friend, the gentleman from
Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the chairman, is soon to be on the floor with a
budget. And I know that, once we get through this little exercise
today, we are not doing irreparable harm, but it has been a great
disappointment that we are even here debating this today. It is not
helpful in finding a solution when we have a one-sided finger-pointing
operation.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, may I have a quantification of the time left
for each side?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr.
Sununu] has 10\1/4\ minutes remaining, and the gentleman from
Washington [Mr. McDermott] has 11 minutes remaining.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the previous speaker
for his generous qualification of his rhetoric as a relatively cheap
shot, and I want to further commend him in all seriousness for the
quality of the budget that the coalition has put forward.
Parliamentary Inquiry
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will state it.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire on a parliamentary basis,
is this being credited against the gentleman's time?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Yes, it is, indeed; as was that of the
gentleman from Washington, the Chair might state for the record.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, the coalition budget, as I have mentioned in
remarks before, has met the four criteria placed out in this
resolution, and this resolution further asks that Congress consider a
budget that meets these criteria and that the President submit a budget
that meets these criteria. It is in the essence of fairness and
bipartisanship that we put this resolution forward.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr.
Radanovich].
Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, in hearing the debate today, I wanted to
announce myself as being one of those freshmen of the class of 1994 who
during the course of the 104th Congress had the unfortunate, felt the
unfortunate necessity of voting to shut down the government. A little
bit earlier in the debate it was mentioned that the reason that we
voted to shut down the Government was because of the fact that we did
not get the budget that we wanted. I wanted to come down and clarify
the record that the reason that we unfortunately had to go through a
Government shutdown 2 years ago is that we felt that rhetoric was not
being matched with deed as far as the seriousness of putting forward
straight proposals to balance the budget.
The budget process, many of us believe, is an opportunity to
accomplish four things for this country, for America. The budget
process could end with better health for Americans. It could end with
better protection for every senior citizen in this country, better
environmental protection and better education. A budget that serves as
a blueprint toward these things would work. Unfortunately we have to
get serious about our budget. This one is not serious.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
New York [Mr. Engel].
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, what is happening today is a classic saying
of an old adage, the Republicans are doing that, it is, do as I say and
not as I do. They are criticizing the President for purportedly not
submitting a balanced budget when in fact they have not submitted a
balanced budget. They have not submitted any budget at all.
So how can they be critical of the President's budget when they have
not even put forward their plan? We saw the Republican plan last
Congress in the 104th Congress when they put forth their balanced
budget, which gave huge tax breaks for the rich at the expense of
cutting Medicare and cutting Medicaid and giving us the largest
education cuts in the history of the United States and gutting the
environment and hurting working men and women in this country. That was
their proposal for a balanced budget in the 104th Congress. They were
burned by it. The voters saw what it was, and the voters answered it.
And a lot of them were burned by it.
So being afraid to be burned again, they are just sitting tight on
their hands, not submitting a budget, and pointing fingers at the
President. It would seem to me that it is absolutely preposterous to
point a finger at the President when at least he submitted a budget.
You may disagree with his budget. You may not like his budget. You may
say it is not balanced, and that is in question. Some say it is; some
say it is not. But how do you point a finger and criticize when you
have not even put forward one of your own?
The fact of the matter is, under this President the deficit has gone
down 3 years in a row. That has not happened since Truman's
administration. It has gone down. It needs to come down further. We
need to have a balanced budget. No one is disputing that. But it would
seem to me in a deliberative body like this, when we have to make
decisions, we need to have a budget. We need to have the Republican
budget.
And so we have the President's budget and the Republican budget and
then we can compromise somewhere in the middle. But when you have not
even played the game and you will not play the game, how do you point a
finger at anybody else? This is preposterous and this resolution ought
to be defeated.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Pitts].
Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, we have heard the argument that we are
wasting our time. Nothing could be more important than relentlessly
pressing for a budget that truly balances by the year 2002.
On a bipartisan basis, the President's plan has left many Members
very disappointed. We just heard a representative of the blue dogs
recognize that Clinton's plan does not balance. The concern is not just
coming from Republicans. Members of the press have expressed
dissatisfaction. Even Members on the other side in the Committee on the
Budget have expressed concern about backloading tough decisions.
We do not want to punish President Clinton for a disappointing first
attempt. We just want him to try again and use the same numbers that
Congress has to use, CBO numbers. Unless we use the same numbers, we
are never going to reach agreement. I urge Members to pass the
resolution.
[[Page H919]]
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Massachusetts [Mr. Neal].
Mr. NEAL of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, before I begin I would just
like to make a brief comment about the gentleman from California's
suggestion just a few moments ago that he was guided by principle when
it came to shutting down the Government. The most telling quote about
the Government shutdown came from that sage of wisdom in the Republican
leadership on the Senate side when he looked at the House at that grim
moment and said, ``It is time for adult leadership over in the House.''
For anybody to suggest that the Government shutdown ought to be used as
an example for not getting the budget resolution out on time fails
under any sort of scrutiny.
As of last night in this institution, we had cast about 38 rollcall
votes. We have been in session since the beginning of January and we
have had few legislative days. Now I know we all would say that that is
a welcome contrast to what we had done 2 years ago. But who even in
this institution today speaks of the Contract With America? Who even
remembers the term the ``Contract With America''?
What I think is more telling is that there must indeed be a middle
ground between what we did 2 years ago and what we are doing so far in
the 105th Congress.
It strikes me as being odd that while we have had, since January 3 or
January 4, an opportunity to proceed with a budget resolution, that we
have accomplished so little.
I used to do a lot of contract negotiations. I can tell you that in
successful contract negotiations, both sides offer up opening
positions. To have meaningful, substantive accomplishment at the end of
the day, we simply go back and forth until we reach a resolution that
all might not love, but all can learn to live with. Have we seen any
evidence of that from the other side? The flat response is, absolutely
not. We should have seen some guidelines for spending. We have seen
none on this occasion.
{time} 1600
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to note that this
resolution is not about Government shutdowns. In fact, the three
principal sponsors of this resolution are the three new members of the
Republican Committee on the Budget. We were not here 2 years ago.
Our interest is not in moving to the past, it is to move forward and
it is to move forward in cooperation with this President.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas
[Ms. Granger].
Ms. GRANGER. Mr. Speaker, wasting time pointing fingers is not what
we are about here. This resolution is about working together in a
bipartisan way to balance the budget. That is why our resolution
invites our President to take the lead and for this Congress to follow
the President's leadership.
As a freshman, I was sent by my district to work in a bipartisan way
to solve our problems. They believed and I believe also that we can
solve the problem of the deficit if we work together. This resolution
makes this possible by asking the President and the Congress to use the
same numbers.
I spoke about our responsibility to children, the children of this
Nation. I have spoken to the young people who have sat in this Chamber
listening to this debate. We must work in a bipartisan way to leave
them a nation that does not spend their future.
I say no to partisanship rancor and debate over numbers, but I do say
yes to bipartisanship and a balanced budget.
Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution and hope we have support in
this Chamber.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New
Jersey [Mr. Pascrell].
Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Speaker, working families from the Eighth
Congressional District in the State of New Jersey elected me to solve
problems, to work together across the aisle and, specifically, to bring
closure on issues such as campaign finance reform, environmental
sensibility, and balancing the budget.
Mr. Speaker, it is ironic that the majority is bringing a resolution
to the floor to demand that the President submit a second budget when
the majority has yet to present their first budget. Where is the
Republican budget?
Section 301(a), the Congressional Budget Act, requires that the
Congress complete action on the budget resolution on or before April
15. Since the majority became the majority party in the House, the
conference agreement on the budget resolution has not cleared both
houses until June, 2 months after the deadline.
Over the last 10 years, the House Committee on the Budget marked up
the budget resolution well in advance of the April 15 deadline. Six out
of the eight times it was controlled by the Democrats. In 1992, the
Committee on the Budget markup was on February 27. In 1993 the markup
was on March 10, and March 3 in 1994.
This budget resolution is behind schedule for the third year in a row
under Republican leadership. And there is a simple reason why
Republicans have not released the budget. They want $200 billion in net
tax cuts, but they have not figured out how to balance the budget and
enact huge tax cuts without imposing deep cuts in programs such as
Medicare, Medicaid, and education.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee].
(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise
and extend her remarks.)
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member
very much for allowing me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I think we are confused here this afternoon. We are
confused because even in the Washington Times it clearly says that for
most of the Nation's history, Congress simply did the budgeting.
This resolution shows that we are overly confused. The President has
done what he needed to do, and that is to offer us an advisory budget.
The Congressional Budget Office indicated that the estimate of the
effect on the deficit of the President's alternative budgetary policy
shows a zero deficit for fiscal year 2002. What more do we want?
Actually, what we are saying is that the President has offered a
balanced budget; but while we need to move forward and discuss Medicare
and Medicaid, affordable housing in the 18th Congressional District,
the need to preserve education and higher education for our youth
around the Nation, and, yes, in my district, NASA and the space
station, and ISTEA 69 and the provisions for transportation, we are
here debating whether the President has offered a budget.
If we ask the American public, they recognize that not only has the
President offered a budget, but he has his philosophy. He agrees we
should enforce and be concerned about children's health care, he
believes we should be the education Congress and the education Nation,
he believes that Americans should have affordable housing.
The real issue is that we will be jeopardizing our business if we, in
this Congress and the Republican leadership, do not insist upon putting
forth a budget that does not have the drastic tax cuts that will have a
negative effect on bringing down the deficit.
The failed balanced budget amendment took up most of the time when we
here can actually balance the budget. I voted for a balanced budget,
and I believe we can do it, considering the responsibilities to
education, to senior citizens, to affordable housing, to
transportation, to the space station, to science. We can balance the
budget. The real question becomes: Do we know our job to handle the
pursestrings for America and to do it right?
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the absurdity of this motion.
The Constitution gives Congress authority over the Nation's purse
strings. This authority bring with it responsibility. And it is a
responsibility that the Republicans seems eager to dodge.
The President is required by law to submit his budget proposals to
Congress. He has done so. The President's budget proposal is not law,
it is precisely that, a proposal. It is nothing more than his request
or recommendation to Congress. Once he has made these recommendations,
it is the responsibility of the Members of this Congress to review the
budget and to pass a concurrent resolution on the budget by April 15.
I believe the President's budget, deserves our serious consideration.
In it he provides $100 million for a new access to jobs and training
initiative; $10 million to expand HUD's
[[Page H920]]
Bridges-to-Work project, which links low-income people in central
cities to job opportunities in surrounding suburbs; provides an
increase of funding by more than 50 percent for basic skill, high
school equivalency, and English classes for disadvantaged adults; and
expand the Community Development Financial Institutions fund, thereby
expanding the availability of credit, investment capital, financial
services, and other development services in distressed urban and rural
communities.
But whether you support every item of the President's budget
proposal, or even support the budget as a whole, is irrelevant. The
point is that we need to move forward. It is our responsibility to move
forward. If there are problems with the budget, we can hammer them out
here.
The Republicans have yet to show us an alternative to the budget
proposal that is now on the table. Obviously, they have discovered that
it is awfully easy to sit back and criticize and poke holes. It is
considerably more difficult to actually put together a responsible
constructive proposal.
Let's stop this posturing, vote against this motion, and move forward
with the people's business.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to
close in the same manner that I started.
This resolution before us today accomplishes very little. We will
have a vote in just a little while. The House will declare itself,
probably in favor of asking the President to send up another budget,
and little will be noted after that.
I understand the other body has no intention to follow up and, in any
event, this is designated House Resolution 89. It is not binding on
anybody, barely binding on us. What we need to do is take the
resolution, the earnestness that we have seen here on the floor today,
and put it to work getting a budget resolution produced by the
Committee on the Budget and on the floor of this House according to
regular order, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. Speaker, I will offer at the close of debate a motion to recommit
which will go just to that objective, getting on with the business at
hand, getting the budget resolution passed in the House, sending it to
the Senate so that we can complete our work on time this year.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to offer a closing
note before yielding to the chairman of the Committee on the Budget.
I want to make the point, Mr. Speaker, that we have attempted today
to carry on a reasoned debate about an important subject matter, not a
waste of time. Terms like ``political buffoonery'' were used, and I do
not think that those are the most appropriate terms to discuss the
important matter of balancing this Nation's budget, of putting money
back in the pockets of working American families, and trying to move
forward in a bipartisan way with the President.
We have encouraged the President with this resolution to put forward
a budget that can be used as a platform for bipartisan negotiations,
and that is the intention of the resolution. The goal of the resolution
is to apply to the President the exact same set of standards that we
applied to this House of Representatives.
By treating each other fairly, by trying to move forward together, by
trying to work with a budget that the President submits, meeting some
basic criteria of fairness and financial legitimacy, I think we will
have that opportunity.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr.
Kasich], chairman of the Committee on the Budget.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, let us try to get to this all in
perspective. The President came up here several years ago and stood
right at this podium and the President said, we are going to use the
same arithmetic; Congress is going to use the arithmetic that I use, I
am going to use the arithmetic they use, and we will use the most
conservative numbers.
Some of the Republicans booed him when he said that, but we decided
to take him up on the challenge. We might argue a lot about policy, but
we should not argue about arithmetic.
The simple fact of the matter is the President sent us a budget and
it is not in balance. It is $69 billion short. So for the Americans out
there hoping that we can finally get this done, they need to understand
that we now have the first part of this. The President sent us a
budget. It does not balance. It is almost $70 billion in the hole in
the last year. Plus, in the very first year, the first real test of the
intent of the President's budget, the deficit is $24 billion higher
than if the President's budget had never gotten here.
In other words, if the guy coming from the White House with the
documents up to Capitol Hill stopped at a pizza shop and somebody broke
into his car and stole the documents, next year's deficit numbers would
be $24 billion less than if that budget had never gotten up here. So in
the very first year we go up.
Let me say there are also six new entitlement programs. The President
says he wants to declare an end to the era of big government. He can
hardly declare an end to the era of big government while creating six
new entitlement programs to drain resources from hardworking families
in this country. We want to let families keep more of what they earn so
that they can stay together, be stronger and more prosperous.
In addition to that, we have the typical Washington diet budget. The
typical Washington diet is, I am going to lose 50 pounds this year. In
the first 51 weeks, I am going to lose 1 pound, but in the last week, I
am going to lose 49. Now, that is the way we do things in Washington.
And it is time to stop that process.
In other words, let us start doing the job right today. Let us not
push up the deficit, push up the spending, keep the spending real high,
and then when the President leaves office, it falls off of a cliff
using a bunch of gimmicks.
We do not want to do that anymore, and I do not think the President
wants to do it, honestly. This is really an opportunity for the
President to come back and to complete his job, to give us a document
that meets the arithmetic as he promised.
Now, what about us? What about our budget? Why have we not seen it
yet?
What is interesting is that the President of the United States is the
leader of the free world. He is the big man. He ought to be. He is the
man we revere and respect regardless of what party or what personality.
He is the leader. The country, the American people have a right to
examine carefully, closely, and take some time in understanding exactly
what the leader of the free world is proposing for the way the
Government of the United States ought to look.
Frankly, what we are saying today is the President has fallen short.
We need a better effort on his part. And Congress will have to meet the
same standard. Congress cannot weasel out. We cannot wiggle out. We
cannot go out the back door. We have to send the budget that has the
integrity where the arithmetic adds up.
And when will we bring it here? We are going to bring it here really
very soon, and we are going to bring it here like we have, and I have
been involved with, since 1989. I brought budgets up here in 1989 and
1990 and 1991 and in 1993. Two in 1993 with Penny-Kasich, and in 1994
and in 1995 and 1996, and there will be one in 1997.
Have no doubt we will produce a budget and have no doubt that it is
going to meet the arithmetic challenge. In fact, we will start to
improve the lives of Americans by beginning that road to improving
their standard of living by raising wages and giving their children a
chance at the future.
Let me just suggest to my colleagues here today that the bigger
disappointment in some respects than the President not balancing the
budget is he does not have a plan to save Medicare. He does not have a
plan to solve the long-term problems of Medicaid. He has not addressed
the Consumer Price Index and the way in which we can have more accurate
projections. These are big issues and we have to get at them and we
have to get at them together.
At the end of the day, we will come forward with our plan. Maybe
before we come forward with our plan, we will be able to reach an
agreement with the White House. But that plan ought to put us on the
road to using honest arithmetic, leveling with the American people,
starting the progress now, letting people keep more of what they earn,
addressing the problems that provide security for our senior citizens
[[Page H921]]
while, at the same time, not bankrupting our adult children, and
beginning to restore the American dream as we all knew it as children.
Mr. Speaker, I would say to this House, let us pass this resolution.
And this is not just a signal to the President of the United States.
Frankly, it is a signal to my colleagues as well. My Republican
friends, we have to do it. We will do it right and we want the
President to join us.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I am supporting House Resolution 89 today
because it is vital that the President submit a true balanced budget
proposal so that serious bipartisan talks on balancing the budget can
begin. Unless both the President and Congress are willing to confront
the hard choices a balanced budget requires, we cannot succeed. The
burden of starting the process rests squarely on the President.
The truth is that there are no gimmicks, no sleight-of-hand tricks or
silver bullets to magically make the Federal budget balance. We have to
cut spending and change programs to spending cuts work. We cannot flip-
flop, reversing our course depending on how close we are to an
election. Republicans offered the President clear examples of the hard
choices that need to be made when we offered our Balanced Budget Act of
1995--much of which the President would later sign into law. For a true
bipartisan effort, we need the President's budget to show where he and
his party are willing to make hard choices now.
The President's February budget does not do the job. First, it will
leave us with nearly a $120 billion deficit in the year he leaves
office and a $69 billion deficit 2 years after he is gone. In fact, the
Congressional Budget Office says 98 percent of the spending cuts
proposed in his budget are scheduled to occur after the President
leaves office. The new spending he proposes, including $60 billion in
new entitlements, goes on forever.
The President's budget also produces a $23 billion tax increase, not
a tax cut, over its lifetime. The targeted tax breaks he offered people
for education, savings, and several other things completely vanish in 3
years when he leaves office. The tax increases he proposes are
permanent.
With regard to Medicare, the President certainly missed the mark. We
should be striving to save Medicare for current and future retirees by
dealing with the factors that make Medicare spending grow by billions
of dollars every year. The President's budget proposes to hide
Medicare's problems through illusory savings that are actually
accounting tricks.
We want a bipartisan budget that gets results. The President claims
to want one but he opposes amending the Constitution to require a
balanced budget. If he's serious about making discipline the key to
Federal budgeting, he can end the mistrust of his policies by
submitting a new budget that actually meets the goals he says he wants
to meet.
Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this
resolution calling for the President to submit a new budget using the
most recent CBO assumptions. Last month, our President presented a
budget that did exactly what both parties have identified as a priority
and that is having a balanced Federal budget in 2002. The President's
budget proposal makes tough choices but is responsible economic policy.
I strongly oppose the efforts of this resolution. The President
should not be required to submit two budgets before Congress even comes
up with one. Does this resolution's sponsors have a prepared
alternative for us to review? Since the President introduced his
budget, there have been no concrete alternatives proposed by the
Republican leadership. In fact, the Republican leadership has indicated
it would be May before a budget resolution is passed. By law, the
conference report is supposed to be done by April 15. Even as recently
as 1992, with a Democratic Congress and a Republican administration,
this body has passed the budget resolution on March 5--well over a
month before the required April 15 deadline.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question so
that we can move on to the real work before this Congress, and that is
getting the budget resolution ready as quickly as possible. The
President has done his part; this body must do ours.
{time} 1615
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 90, the resolution is considered as read
for amendment and the previous question is ordered.
Motion to Recommit Offered by Mr. Spratt
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman the designee of the
minority leader?
Mr. SPRATT. I am, Mr. Speaker.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman opposed to the resolution?
Mr. SPRATT. I am, in its present form, Mr. Speaker.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion to
recommit.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mr. SPRATT moves to recommit the resolution, House
Resolution 89, to the Committee on the Budget with
instructions to report a detailed budget plan to achieve a
balanced budget by fiscal year 2002 in sufficient time for
the House of Representatives to fulfill its obligations under
section 301(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which
requires Congress to complete action on or before April 15 on
a concurrent resolution on the budget for the fiscal year
beginning on October 1 of such year.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr.
Spratt] is recognized for 5 minutes in support of his motion.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I do not need to take the allotted time of 5
minutes to explain this motion because it does not need much
explanation.
What we are calling for is purely and simply regular order. What we
are asking for in this motion to recommit is to follow the procedures
that this House, this Congress has laid down for our own internal
processes that have been observed ever since the Budget Act of 1974 was
first adopted, for more than 20 years.
This resolution, House Resolution 89, does not advance the budget
process. It does not move us one single inch. In fact, it retards the
process. It slows us down. It does not focus the House on the hard
decisions that have to be made, on what needs to be done here in the
House itself, in the Committee on the Budget, and on the floor, in the
well of this House.
What we need to be about is the formulation of a budget, making the
hard choices that will go into our budget resolution and bringing them
to debate here on the House floor before April 15, well before April
15. Instead, what we do with this resolution is shift attention from
the work at hand by trying to shift the blame, by pointing the finger
at the President and saying to him that he should come, present another
budget even though he has complied, literally complied with the Budget
Act by sending his budget up within the time that is required under the
law.
This is no way to advance the budget process. This is no way to move
us toward a balanced budget in 5 years, pointing fingers, wasting a
whole legislative day on a fruitless resolution.
The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] says the President needs to send
us a plan to save Medicare. He sent a plan up to save Medicare. Part A
would be rendered solvent for years to come. They do not agree with the
manner in which the President does it. They do not want to see part of
the cost of home health care shifted out of part A into part B. Fine.
Put up your substitute. Put up your alternative. Put up your plan to
save Medicare.
The same with Medicaid. The President has taken a bold step there,
bold enough that almost all the Governors in this Nation have opposed
him. He says we are saving substantial sums because the cost of
Medicaid has come down 4 percent in 1995, 3.3 percent in 1996. We need
to hold those cost savings in place, and if we can, we can realize as
much savings in Medicaid or more than we were attempting in the last
session of Congress.
He has proposed per capita caps. The chairman of the Committee on the
Budget does not support per capita caps. Fine. That is what this
process is all about. Put up your alternative. That is the point which
we are now on. What we need to do is frame this debate.
The other part of the frame that is missing and required at this
point in time is a budget resolution adopted by the House which we can
put on the table, and at that point we can then sit down and talk about
everything, including CPI adjustments as part of the whole mix.
We need to be about regular order, we need to be focused on the
procedure that is time-tested and been shown to work. We need to be
about our own business. We need to bring a budget resolution to this
floor so that we can have a concurrent resolution by April 15. That is
exactly what this motion to recommit calls for, regular order towards a
successful outcome.
[[Page H922]]
Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone to support this motion to recommit so we
can get on with the business at hand.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Ohio is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing I have been lifting
weights. This is what I could accumulate in terms of what the
Republicans and any budget team that I have been associated with since
1989 have put together in terms of details. See this? This is pretty
heavy. Most Americans would probably have a little trouble, and I am
not sure if the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] could hold
this up, actually. This is pretty heavy. But, nevertheless, all that is
detailed work to provide for a balanced budget.
This was an effort that some of us started in 1989. When it was not
cool to be for balanced budgets, we were out here doing it. We got as
many votes as you could put in a telephone booth, but the fact is that
we came in 1989 and I came on this floor against a Republican
President. I came on this floor in 1990 against a Republican President.
I came on this floor twice in 1990, the first time in 1990, the
second time I went to the Rules Committee with about $780 billion worth
of savings and the Rules Committee would not let me offer it on the
House floor because it was $10 billion short. Then in 1993 the
President said show us your budget, and the Committee on the Budget
wrote the most detailed and extensive budget ever produced since the
Budget Act of 1974. And then we came back in 1994 and then we came back
in 1995 and in 1996.
I have got to tell you this. I am so proud of my colleagues, the ones
that voted for the first effort, frankly the first effort, real effort
since 1969 to actually put our detailed program on the floor. You have
got to give me a break when you start wondering whether we are going to
have a budget. Of course we are.
This motion to recommit is designed to send this back to committee
and kill this whole idea that the President has fallen short in his
arithmetic. The simple fact of the matter is that we have got to defeat
the motion to recommit, we have got to pass the resolution, and of
course we are working. We are working right now with the
administration. We are working right now internally to develop our
package, and at the end of this year I suppose I will be able to come
back and add to this amount that is the most detailed work by any
congressional committee in recent memory to actually meet this
challenge, and I suspect at the end of the day I am going to have to
have lifted more weights, because that next document is going to make
this even heavier.
So let us defeat the motion to recommit, pass the resolution, and let
us get off to a good start in terms of fairness for America, a good
future for our children, and a stronger American family.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KASICH. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman makes my case. All of
that is the handiwork of the Budget Committee. We have done it in years
past. All this resolution calls for is that we do it again this year,
all of that effort there.
Mr. KASICH. Let me tell the gentleman two things. First of all, I am
the one that worked to get the President the economics as early as was
possible, and I am the one that said to the President and his
administration officials, ``You don't have to meet some deadline on
your budget. If you need more time, you take it.'' You see, I think
that deadlines and calendars are not the key. What is key is the
quality of the work.
Unfortunately the quality just is not there with the President when
it comes to meeting the challenge. The quality has been there for us in
the past. No one ever criticized the intellectual honesty of our
proposals. You may disagree with the policies.
And we are going to try to come in with an April 15 deadline if we
can, but deadline is not the deal. What is important is that we reach
agreement, and we will, and you have got my word on it in terms of
coming before us with a proposal.
Let us not send this thing back to committee and kill this whole
resolution. Let us reject that, let us get on with it, and this
resolution will force the Congress to do precisely what we are asking
the President to do. If we ask for anything less than that, it would
not be fair. Let us pass the resolution and defeat the motion to
recommit.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is
ordered on the motion to recommit.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to recommit.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the noes appeared to have it.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not
present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 202,
nays 225, not voting 5, as follows:
[Roll No. 43]
YEAS--202
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Baesler
Baldacci
Barcia
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Bentsen
Berman
Berry
Bishop
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Bonior
Borski
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Cardin
Carson
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Condit
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Cummings
Danner
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dellums
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Fazio
Filner
Flake
Foglietta
Ford
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holden
Hooley
Hoyer
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
John
Johnson (WI)
Johnson, E. B.
Kanjorski
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Klink
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Lantos
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Markey
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McDermott
McGovern
McHale
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Pickett
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rivers
Roemer
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith, Adam
Snyder
Spratt
Stabenow
Stark
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Taylor (MS)
Thompson
Thurman
Tierney
Torres
Towns
Traficant
Turner
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Wexler
Weygand
Wise
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates
NAYS--225
Aderholt
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bliley
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brady
Bryant
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Canady
Cannon
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Christensen
Coble
Coburn
Collins
Combest
Cook
Cooksey
Cox
Crane
Crapo
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis (VA)
Deal
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Doolittle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Ensign
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Foley
Forbes
Fowler
Fox
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Goode
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Granger
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hansen
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Hefley
Herger
Hill
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Istook
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kasich
Kelly
Kim
King (NY)
[[Page H923]]
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Lazio
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
LoBiondo
Lucas
Manzullo
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
Metcalf
Mica
Miller (FL)
Molinari
Moran (KS)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Neumann
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nussle
Oxley
Packard
Pappas
Parker
Paul
Paxon
Pease
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Riggs
Riley
Rogan
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Ryun
Salmon
Sanford
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaefer, Dan
Schaffer, Bob
Schiff
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Shimkus
Shuster
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Smith, Linda
Snowbarger
Solomon
Spence
Stearns
Stump
Sununu
Talent
Tauzin
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Upton
Walsh
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NOT VOTING--5
Andrews
Dixon
Kaptur
Livingston
Souder
{time} 1642
Messrs. DUNCAN, BONO and POMBO and Mrs. CUBIN changed their vote from
``yea'' to ``nay.''
Mr. FLAKE and Ms. VELAZQUEZ changed their vote from ``nay'' to
``yea.''
So the motion to recommit was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). The question is on the
resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Ms. GRANGER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 231,
nays 197, not voting 4, as follows:
[Roll No. 44]
YEAS--231
Aderholt
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barr
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop
Bliley
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Brady
Bryant
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Canady
Cannon
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Christensen
Coble
Collins
Combest
Condit
Cook
Cooksey
Cox
Cramer
Crane
Crapo
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis (VA)
Deal
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Doolittle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
English
Ensign
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Foley
Forbes
Fowler
Fox
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Goode
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Granger
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hall (TX)
Hansen
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Hefley
Herger
Hill
Hilleary
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Istook
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kasich
Kelly
Kim
King (NY)
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
LaTourette
Lazio
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Livingston
LoBiondo
Lucas
Manzullo
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
Metcalf
Mica
Miller (FL)
Molinari
Moran (KS)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Neumann
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Oxley
Packard
Pappas
Parker
Paul
Paxon
Pease
Peterson (MN)
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Riggs
Riley
Rogan
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roukema
Royce
Ryun
Salmon
Sanford
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaefer, Dan
Schaffer, Bob
Schiff
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Shimkus
Shuster
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Smith, Linda
Snowbarger
Solomon
Spence
Stearns
Stump
Sununu
Talent
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Upton
Visclosky
Walsh
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
White
Whitfield
Wicker
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--197
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Baesler
Baldacci
Barcia
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Bentsen
Berman
Berry
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Bonior
Borski
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Cardin
Carson
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Coburn
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Cummings
Danner
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dellums
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Fazio
Filner
Flake
Foglietta
Ford
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hamilton
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holden
Hooley
Hoyer
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
John
Johnson (WI)
Johnson, E. B.
Kanjorski
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Klink
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Lantos
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Markey
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McDermott
McGovern
McHale
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Nadler
Neal
Nussle
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pelosi
Pickett
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rivers
Roemer
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith, Adam
Snyder
Spratt
Stabenow
Stark
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Thompson
Thurman
Tierney
Torres
Towns
Traficant
Turner
Velazquez
Vento
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Wexler
Weygand
Wise
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates
NOT VOTING--4
Andrews
Dixon
Kaptur
Souder
{time} 1700
So the resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________