[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 44 (Tuesday, April 15, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3192-S3193]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 TAXES

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I compliment my distinguished friend from 
North Dakota on his very prescient remarks, which I think are right on 
target. I listened to a lot of the debate today on the question of 
taxation, and I must say I find it puzzling. I do not really mean this, 
but I say quite often that I wish everybody had the opportunity to live 
through the Depression. My brother and sister and I were lucky. We had 
something to eat. We also had devoted parents and that makes up for a 
multitude of problems. However, not everyone is as fortunate. Some 
people need a helping hand.
  Nobody likes the idea of taxes. I coughed up a sizable amount 
yesterday to the IRS. I did not particularly enjoy it. But I have never 
begrudged the taxes I paid, even though, as a U.S. Senator, I see a lot 
of waste. I see money misspent. I see priorities misplaced. And 
sometimes it is kind of a bitter pill to swallow. But I can not accept 
the idea that some Senators that have propounded today that somehow 
there is something unholy and evil about paying taxes. As Justice 
Holmes said, taxes are necessary ``to make our society a civilized 
one.'' To complain about the taxes we pay in order to live in a 
civilized society is unfathomable to me.

  My brother, who is my best friend, does not like to pay taxes. I keep 
reminding him the thing he and my sister and I had that a lot of 
children did not have when we were growing up, is that we chose our 
parents well. A lot of children do not have that luxury. The fact is 
that the Federal Government has done a tremendous amount of good with 
our tax funds. I think about the house we lived in and the fact that 
the water well was only about 10 steps away from the outhouse, and 
people died of typhoid fever in the summertime and we could not figure 
out why. All of a sudden, Franklin Roosevelt was elected President, the 
first President of the United States who began to treat the South as a 
part of the United States and not as a conquered nation. So, we began 
to get paved streets, running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, 
natural gas, housing, medical help, free shots against typhoid fever 
and smallpox at the schoolhouse, by a nurse paid for by those insidious 
taxes that we pay.
  Mr. President, if I could just list all of the things that have 
happened since I was 10 years old, that have made us the great Nation 
we are, not one single Member of the U.S. Senate would take any of them 
back--not one. I am thinking about the housing programs we have, the 
farm programs we have, the medical research that we do, the medical 
help we give people. I think about the bank insurance fund. If we had 
not had the FSLIC fund when the S&L's were all going broke, you think 
about what a catastrophe that would have been in this country. That is 
what happened during the Depression, the banks went broke. And my 
mother, who had carefully saved $1,100 selling cream and eggs and 
chickens on Saturday, lost every nickel of it when the bank went under. 
And she grieved about it until her dying day.
  Who would turn their back on the environmental improvements we have 
made in this country? Mr. President, 65 percent of the streams were 
unfishable and unswimmable. Now 65 percent are swimmable and fishable, 
and nobody here wants to do anything but go to 100 percent clean water 
and air for our children and grandchildren yet to come.
  I could go on with many other things the Government has done to 
benefit us all. For instance, we have dammed the rivers that used to 
flood every spring. My mother and father used to go down to the 
Arkansas River every April, see people straggling along the road who 
had lost their homes and all their possessions, pick them up, take them 
home, keep them for a couple of nights until the water receded, and 
take them back to the area they had called their homes. We dammed the 
Arkansas River. It not only provides navigation but recreation and 
flood control. And people in those same areas of Arbuckle Island do not 
have to worry about it anymore.
  And now some in Congress want a constitutional amendment that would 
require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. You could not even correct a 
mistake with less than two-thirds of the vote. You could not close a 
tax loophole with less than two-thirds of the vote. It would favor the 
wealthy, who would be assured their taxes would never go up. And it 
would be a terrible disservice to the people who rely on Government 
services--yes, even welfare recipients. Like I say, everybody did not 
have Bill and Lattie Bumpers for parents.
  We talk about family values. I have the three greatest children and 
the greatest family a man could have. I know all about family values. I 
put mine up against those of anybody in the world. Yet you and I know 
there are a lot of children in this country who would be better off 
almost anyplace than where they are.
  So, I believe in helping these children. We keep on building more 
prisons and spending $25,000 a year for every person we incarcerate, 
and if we had given that child an education at roughly half the cost, 
he would not be in prison. When I was Governor I used to go to the 
prisons and talk, sit and have lunch with them, interview them, talk to 
them. I never met one with a college degree, though there probably were 
a few. I never met one who owned his own home. I didn't meet very many 
who did not come from a broken home.

  Mr. President, I stand here on April 15 and we are still without a 
budget. Instead, we are wasting the peoples' time with a debate between 
the Democrats and Republicans about taxes. So far as I am concerned, 
the whole country loses with that debate. If you really want to restore 
confidence in the American political system and you want to stop the 
alienation of people's attitudes toward Congress and what goes on here, 
do two things: Balance the budget and change the way you finance 
campaigns. Anybody who thinks a democracy can survive when the laws

[[Page S3193]]

we pass and the people we elect are totally dependent on how much money 
we put on it is dreaming.
  And, if you want to stop alienation and really cause people to dance 
in the streets, balance the budget. In 1981, Fritz Hollings, Bill 
Bradley and Dale Bumpers were the only three Senators who voted for 
Ronald Reagan's spending cuts and against his tax cuts. I can show you 
absolute documented proof, if everybody had voted that way we would 
have had a balanced budget in 1985. But, no, the herd instinct swept 
across this body and we voted for those massive tax cuts that 
guaranteed the budget was going to go out of control. And it did. Just 
as I screamed from this very spot in 1981.
  Here we are, back to the same old stand. It reminds me of trying to 
housebreak my little dog. I just could not do it. His memory was just 
too short. And he is not alone. The memories of people in this body are 
awful short, too. Nobody seems to remember how we got an additional $3 
trillion in debt from 1981 to 1992.
  So, it is nonsense to talk about a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. 
Even the Articles of Confederation, which started out by saying you 
have to have 9 of 13 States agree to raise taxes before you can do it, 
had to be changed because they knew that would not work.
  Mr. President, I have tried to make two points today. As I have said 
many times before, if it had not been for a generous, compassionate, 
caring Government, who had taxes to pay for my education on the GI 
bill, I would not be standing here right now. I have been trying to pay 
back this great Nation, the oldest democracy on Earth, with an organic 
law which we call the Constitution; next to the Holy Bible the most 
sacred to me. And every time we get in a tough political spot somebody 
says, ``Well, let's amend the Constitution.'' When I think about some 
of the people here trying to tinker with what Ben Franklin and James 
Madison and John Adams and Alexander Hamilton did, crafted the greatest 
document and delivered under that document the greatest Nation, the 
greatest democracy on Earth, and people are constantly trying to 
destroy it, undo it--I shudder when I hear some of my colleagues 
wanting to undo what the greatest assemblage of minds ever assembled 
under one roof did to bring this all about.
  What do they want to do? Make it impossible to raise taxes because 
the rich would have to pay. I am not going to be caught voting to cut 
Medicare and welfare and Medicaid and have somebody come to me and say, 
``Did you use it for balancing the budget?''
  No.
  ``Did you use it for education, so that everybody can have a college 
education?''
  No.
  ``Did you put it into housing? The environment?''
  No.
  ``What on Earth did you do with it?''
  Why, we cut taxes for the wealthiest 5 percent of the people in 
America. That is what we did with it.
  I will be 6 feet under before you catch me voting for something like 
that.
  I just came over here to say that the citizenry of this country, when 
you stop and talk to them from the heart, if not the head, talk to them 
from the heart and the head, let them know we are the luckiest people 
alive.
  Yes, I paid a lot of taxes yesterday, and I did not like it, but I 
will tell you what I do like. I enjoy living in a civilized society 
where the crime rate is down, where the unemployment rate has been 
dramatically reduced, where inflation is under control, where people 
have jobs and where some Senators are trying to figure out a way to 
educate every child in this country who wants it.
  So, no, I am not voting for any of this nonsense that would require a 
two-thirds vote to raise taxes. That is not a democracy. I consider 
myself just about the luckiest man that ever lived, No. 1, because of 
my parents and No. 2, because I got elected to the U.S. Senate after 
serving my State as Governor for 4 years. Why? It is the greatest place 
in the world to keep faith with humankind, to give other people the 
same kind of chances you had.
  So I am very fortunate to be an American, and I did not begrudge the 
taxes I paid yesterday, just as I never begrudged the taxes I have 
paid, and I think most of the Members of the Senate agree with that 
when they stop and really reflect on it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, thank you.

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