[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 32 (Thursday, March 13, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2230-S2232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, one of the subjects that dominates 
the landscape these days, of course, is the budget. How we are going to 
function as a society, what are the priorities, how will we finance 
these priorities and at the same time reach an objective that all of us 
care about, and of course that is getting a balanced budget by the year 
2002. Of course, that is getting a balanced budget by the year 2002.

  The President has presented a budget to achieve that objective. There 
are disputes about how we reach that objective, where do we cut 
further, what is the revenue stream. I, therefore, Madam President, use 
this opportunity to comment on what I see as the lack of a budget 
proposal from the Republican side, from the majority side.
  The President has put down a budget. We have talked about it in the 
Budget Committee. I am the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. We 
have had numerous hearings as we explored various avenues, various 
parts of the equation with proponents and some opponents trying to 
dissuade us from proceeding with the President's budget.
  On the other hand, we have not seen anything yet from the Republican 
side, the majority side, I point out, Madam President. They have 
produced one piece of budget legislation this year, but it is not a 
balanced budget. It is the notion that we ought to be giving a big tax 
break, primarily devoted to the wealthy in our country. The Republican 
tax break will blow a huge hole in the deficit, even as we struggle to 
get down to a zero budget deficit by the year 2002.
  In the first 5 years, the Republican plan would cost $200 billion. In 
the next 5 years, these costs would increase 60 percent to $325 billion 
for a total of $526 billion over the 10-year period. This chart will 
help explain exactly where it is we are going.
  It causes a ballooning of the deficit. We see it from 1997, which is 
on the chart projected at $120 billion and expected to be less by the 
time we reach the end of the fiscal year, September 30. It continues to 
expand. In the year 2002, when we are striving to have a zero budget 
deficit, we are at $239 billion, unless some way is found to pay for 
these tax breaks. They are not free. If we adopt the Republican tax 
scheme, we would have to make deeper cuts someplace. I guess that would 
have to come from Medicare, Medicaid, education, transportation, 
crimefighting, and environmental protection.
  These tax breaks are also backloaded. Their costs explode, as we can 
see by the expansion of the deficit, after the year 2002. And, believe 
it or not, these tax breaks are bigger than those that were originally 
in the Contract With America, larger than the tax breaks that were 
proposed last year.
  This chart is from the Joint Committee on Taxation. It is now at $200 
billion, expanded to $525 billion. These are the tax cuts as planned, 
to $525 billion. That would be a terrible consequence. That is in the 
year 2007.
  Finally, the Republican tax breaks are overwhelmingly tilted toward 
the very wealthy. According to one analysis, on average, the Republican 
tax scheme would give a tax break each year of $21,000 for those who 
make $645,000 a year, the top 1 percent of the income earners in our 
country. But if you are in the middle 20 percent of our wage earners 
and you make $27,000 a year, you would get $186 worth of tax relief, 50 
cents a day--50 cents a day--for the average hard-working family.
  It borders on insulting to suggest that someone who makes $645,000 is 
entitled to a tax break of $21,000--I hardly think that those people 
need any help--and if you make $27,000, which is the per capita income 
of the middle 20

[[Page S2231]]

percent, $186 for the year. It is hard to comprehend how that is going 
to help our society or help hard-working families make ends meet, plan 
for their child's education, plan for a roof over their heads, plan for 
health care, plan for helping their parents, the elderly, achieve the 
tranquility and the peace that they need in their older age. Madam 
President, this is not a good way to do business.
  We have been down this road before. The Reagan administration gave us 
a tax break for the wealthy, and what was the result? The deficit 
exploded. It is time to get down to serious budgeting. It is time to 
balance the budget.
  I urge the Republican leadership, the good friends that I have on the 
Republican side of the aisle who are concerned about balancing a 
budget, to produce a budget that does the job. If the Republican 
leadership is committed to their tax scheme, they ought to put up a 
budget that reflects it. Show us how they would pay for it. But we 
can't continuously engage in this dialog without, at some point, having 
to put up a budget that reflects how they intend to get us to where 
they say they would like to be: Tax breaks for the wealthy, purportedly 
investments in our society to produce jobs, et cetera, while someone 
making $27,000 a year is going to get a $186 tax reduction.
  It is not fair, it is not just, it is not acceptable. The American 
people won't accept it, even though we could be bowled over by a 
majority vote. It is an outrageous scheme for doing things, the 
constant refusal to produce any kind of a response to a Democratic 
budget. We in the Democratic Party are not in charge. The Republicans 
are in charge, and if they are in charge, they ought to take the 
responsibilities of leadership. Produce a budget, show us exactly what 
you mean. Enough of this nonsense where they talk about a tax cut and 
no one willing to say where it is going to come from. If we have a $200 
billion extra cost for our society, where are we going to get the 
money?
  People are worried about their future; they are anxious about their 
jobs. Yes, there has been good growth in our economy, but the anxiety 
factor has continued to expand because people do not believe that they 
have the security they need for the years ahead.
  So, Madam President, I hope that we will be able to soon get on with 
our business, have the budget produced by the Republican majority, and 
tell us how they are going to pay for it.
  Let us have an honest debate about it. Let the American people know 
what is going on here and not hide behind a smokescreen that says, 
well, we want to give this huge tax cut but we are not going to tell 
you how we are going to pay for it.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, I come here to echo the words that I caught of my 
predecessor in speaking, and that is Senator Frank Lautenberg from New 
Jersey, who is the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee.
  I, too, am frustrated. I mean, there are lots of things to be 
frustrated about this year. The pace has been slow. There are things we 
should have been doing. There are distractions hither and yon.
  One thing we should be doing is the budget. The budget is the 
statement of priorities of the Congress, representing to the American 
people what needs to be done in this Nation. The budget, although it 
comes in a very thick book and has a very sterile appearance, in fact 
is a powerful and humane document about what our priorities are. It is 
the ultimate statement of what you believe in.
  I do not want to see a Government furlough, and I do not want to see 
a shutdown. I know the Presiding Officer does not want to see that. The 
American people certainly do not. In fact, it had a rather devastating 
consequence, far beyond what I thought would be the case, in States not 
only close to Washington, DC, but around the country.
  There is another reason I worry, and that is what we do know about 
the Republican budget, which to this point basically is tax cuts. It is 
not just a question of tax cuts, but the fact that the tax cuts are not 
paid for. There is no statement or sense or hint of where the money 
will come from.
  So, first, there is not a budget, and, second, to the extent there is 
a budget, it only relates to tax cuts. The Republican tax cuts add up 
to $526 billion over a 10-year period. They backloaded it so that, to 
the public, the more reasonable approach to a tax cut would be the 
first part, and then at the end the tax cut really bulges and the 
beneficiaries of that really benefit.
  What is interesting is that we have been through this exercise. The 
American people, and I thought the Republicans themselves, had rejected 
the idea that we could do the kinds of tax cuts that we were talking 
about and that we are now talking about, and that is tax cuts that 
favor the rich, tax cuts that do not favor working American families, 
the American middle class. Yet here they are back again.
  That is frustrating to me. I do not understand that. I am not being 
partisan in saying this. I am genuinely perplexed by it. I am more than 
perplexed, I am annoyed by that. But, first of all, I am perplexed.
  Why this statement of $526 billion? Incidentally, $526 billion--in 
the last 4 years of the 10 years, 325 billion of those dollars flow 
into the back pockets of those who benefit. So, therefore, those who 
benefit and those who do not is obviously very important. And I will 
get to that in a moment.
  There is a child tax credit the Republicans have put forward and a 
child tax credit the Democrats have put forward. That is something I 
feel very, very positively about, both in terms of Republicans and 
Democrats--with one exception.
  There was a policy that I helped advance, along with at that time 
Gov. Bill Clinton, on something called the National Commission on 
Children and Families, which I chaired for 4 years. We put forward the 
idea of the $1,000 child tax credit. It is put forward really by both 
parties to the extent of $500, but there is a difference.
  The Democrats adjust theirs, change theirs, with inflation. It is 
very expensive to bring up a child in this country. People do not think 
of it that way. You know, they do not quantify so much per child. But 
it costs about $7,000 a year on average to bring up an individual child 
in this country. If you have four, then it costs $28,000 a year. That 
is averaging in from the time that you are buying Pampers to the time 
you are paying college tuition. Obviously, it is an average, but it is 
a very expensive average. So it is a very good proposition, the idea of 
a tax credit, but it ought to be indexed to inflation. The Democratic 
tax cut is. The Republican tax cut is not.
  So, if my colleagues would just listen for a moment about what the 
experts found out about the Republican tax cut proposals and who gains 
and who does not, more than 75 percent of the Republican tax cuts would 
go to the top 20 percent of taxpayers. Well, that does not ring right. 
And it should not ring right.
  I mean, this is a country which is constantly--we have all watched, 
hopefully, the public broadcasting thing on Thomas Jefferson who wrote 
the Declaration of Independence. In that he talked about life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness. There was a sense of equality. People 
were created to be equal, to have equal opportunity.

  Well, that does not mean that all people work as hard as others. But 
does it mean that if you are in the middle class and you are a working 
family, much less a two-parent working family, and you are working 
very, very hard and you are working at a job that pays a lot less 
money, then should you be treated substantially differently than 
somebody who works hard but makes a whole lot of money or somebody who 
does not work hard and who makes a whole lot of money through unearned 
income? The fact of the matter is that only 8.6 percent of the benefit 
of the $526 billion in Republican tax cuts would go to the bottom 60 
percent of the American people. Let us call it 9 percent. Nine percent 
of the benefit of $526 billion would go to 60 percent of the American 
people who happen to be at the bottom of the economic scale, that is, 
to the extent that you are within the 60 percent. It ranges, obviously.
  This means that middle-income Americans with an average income of 
$26,900, which is high cotton in West Virginia, would get a $186 tax 
cut from

[[Page S2232]]

the Republican tax package. That is just the fact. But the top 1 
percent of Americans, myself included, I suppose, and people whose 
incomes average $645,000, would get $21,000--actually $21,306 in tax 
cuts.
  That is not the American way. That is not why we are what we are as a 
country. I understand that some people do better than others in life. 
And I understand that some people are propelled, through good fortune 
or through exceptional brain power, to be in a position to make more 
money. Often that is a circumstance of birth and often that is a 
circumstance of education, often that is simply a circumstance of life. 
And sometimes it is simply a matter that you really did it and you 
deserve it.
  But you cannot take something called the working middle class, people 
who work in steel mills, who work in factories, who work in grocery 
stores but who work all the time and work every day and pay taxes, and 
for whom every $10 or $100 is important, and say to them, ``You don't 
count.'' You do not do that in a budget. We do not do that, at least in 
a Democratic budget.
  So, Madam President, I appreciate your courtesy in listening to these 
short pronouncements on my part. But I think the budget process should 
begin. I think we should take the crazy idea of trying to cut $526 
billion of taxes, much less figure out how to pay for it, take it and 
sort of lay it outside the door and let it rest there for time 
immemorial. In the meantime, let us do a budget.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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