[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 55 (Thursday, May 1, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S3881]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    DEBTBUSTERS BALANCING THE BUDGET

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, very briefly, I may not even take the 2 
minutes. I just wanted to inform my colleagues that about a week ago, 
Congressman Chris Shays, of Connecticut, and I hosted a program called 
Debtbusters with a group of 200 of our constituents. We invited people 
to come together to sit down in groups and try to balance the Federal 
budget in 5 years. This is an exercise designed by the Concord 
Coalition, and it is the first time such an event has been done on a 
bipartisan basis. I highly recommend it to my colleagues.
  It is a fascinating exercise to watch people act as Members of 
Congress over a period of 2 or 3 hours, faced with the choices that 
many of us have to make here in Washington as we work toward a balanced 
budget by the year 2002. It was a tremendously worthwhile exercise. I 
want to commend the Concord Coalition for organizing it, for putting 
together the questionnaire. It was not perfect. Anyone who writes 
questions and makes choices obviously is going to bring some bias to 
it. But overall I found it to be rather fair and interesting. I would 
also like to commend the citizens of Connecticut, specifically the 
citizens of Stamford and the surrounding area, for taking the time out 
of their weekends to come together and work in such a constructive 
spirit.
  It was curious to see the choices that people made. People, when they 
sat down and had to work with six or seven or eight other people from 
their community with many different ideas and issues, were able to 
compromise and come to conclusions and even give up on things they 
cared about very, very much. It was instructive. It did not solve the 
budget problem. But last Saturday I was impressed that, on a gloriously 
sunny day, people came out and spent the 2 or 3 hours to try and 
resolve these issues. I thought my colleagues might find it 
interesting.
  As we are about to hopefully reach some sort of budget agreement 
ourselves, I believe it is worthwhile to appreciate what average 
citizens are able to do, just as I said, in a few hours on a bright 
sunny Saturday morning.
  Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Vermont for making the time 
available and I yield back any time I have.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

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