[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 56 (Monday, May 5, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3933-S3935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE BUDGET AGREEMENT

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the budget 
agreement. Let me start out with a little bit of context. I will just 
read a figure from the fine work of the Center on Budget Priorities. In 
the last Congress, the 104th Congress, more than 93 percent of the 
budget reductions in entitlement programs came from programs for low-
income people.
  Mr. President, in the last Congress, we cut about $50 billion in 
assistance for legal immigrants and also in the major food and 
nutrition program in this country, the Food Stamp Program. Please 
remember, Mr. President, that the vast majority of the beneficiaries of 
the Food Stamp Program are children in working-poor families, on the 
average, with an income of below $6,500 a year. Those benefits were cut 
by 20 percent over the next 5 years--a 20-percent cut.
  Mr. President, I give that by way of background because now we have a

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budget agreement, and I suppose it can be argued that an agreement is 
good because you have people coming together. But the question is: At 
what cost?
  Mr. President, I don't see much of a standard of fairness in this 
agreement. I suppose, in many ways, my challenge is more to Democrats 
than to Republicans when I speak here on the floor. I think that when 
we go through this budget and we look at the cuts in discretionary 
programs, we will find, again, that, inevitably, the disproportional 
number of these cuts will be in programs that are most important to the 
most vulnerable citizens in this country. Many of them are poor 
children in America. I do know, Mr. President, that the discretionary 
part of this budget in relation to GDP is the lowest percentage it has 
been in 40 years.
  Mr. President, if I juxtapose what will be further reductions in 
assistance for some of the most vulnerable citizens in our country on 
top of what we did in the last Congress, with $85 billion over the 
first 5 years and another $165 billion over the next 5 years, $250 
billion in tax cuts, and then looking from about 2008 to 2017, about an 
additional $400 billion as you look at the impact of cuts in capital 
gains tax and estate tax, many of those benefits will flow to the top 
1, 2, 3 percent of the population.
  I want to just ask my colleagues, and I would like to ask the 
President: Where is the standard of fairness? Where is the standard of 
fairness? Where is our soul as a party that has a reputation for being 
willing to fight for ordinary people, being willing to fight for 
working people and working families, being willing to fight for 
opportunities for children.
  Mr. President, I think we have to be very careful about what I would 
call, for use of a better description, symbolic politics. What do I 
mean by that? I mean, Mr. President, that if you look at this budget 
and you think back to just a few weeks ago, with the conference at the 
White House on the development of the brain and the importance of early 
childhood development and what we must do to make sure that every woman 
expecting a child has an adequate diet, make sure there is nutrition 
for children, to make sure that there is health care for children, and 
to make sure that there is intellectual development and good child 
care, remembering that one out of every four children in our country 
are growing up poor in America and one out of every two children of 
color are growing up poor in America. Mr. President, I don't see in 
this budget anything that advances the cause of these children. I see 
only a retreat. Where is the investment? Where is the investment in our 
children?
  Mr. President, we have been focusing on the budget deficit. How about 
the investment deficit? How about the spiritual deficit? I thought that 
now that the medical evidence is irrefutable and irreducible and so 
compelling that if we don't get it right for all of God's children in 
our country in their early years, they may never come to school ready 
to learn, and they certainly will not be ready for life. I thought we 
were going to make investments to make sure they had opportunities.

  This budget still doesn't fully fund the Head Start Program. I could 
explain that when there was a Republican President, President Reagan or 
President Bush. I have a hard time explaining that with a Democrat 
President.
  On the supplemental, in the Senate and House, we are still in a 
battle to make sure that we get the WIC funding that we need. We are 
still not there. Mr. President, I read a foundation report. David 
Packard, who used to be Undersecretary of Defense with President 
Reagan, points out that whether it is child care at home, or whether it 
is center-based child care, or whether you need to do to have more 
child care at a place of business, however you look at it--and we are 
not talking about just poor children or low-income families, we are 
talking about the vast majority of families in our country who are 
concerned about how to make a decent living and also how to give their 
children the care they know their children deserve. I think of our own 
children. Sheila and I have children in their twenties and early 
thirties. They have children, and I think of their incomes and the cost 
of child care and how important this is for families. Where is the 
investment? Where is the investment?
  Mr. President, I just suggest that there is something wrong. There is 
something terribly wrong. There is a quiet crisis in a Nation--our 
Nation--when we don't do better for our children. We have conferences 
and say we are for children and we love to have our photos taken next 
to children, and we don't make the investment. We now know the 
neuroscience evidence is compelling that children must have good 
nutrition and health care, and there certainly must be affordable, good 
child care, however delivered, at the local community level, and we 
know it is going to require some funding and investment. That is not in 
this budget agreement. Have we now locked ourselves in, over the next 
5, 6 years, to saying we will not make this investment?
  Mr. President, I say to my own colleagues--Democrats--in the past 
month or so, we have beamed back to our homes pictures of dilapidated 
school buildings. We were going to focus on doing something about too 
many rotting schools in our Nation. We, as Democrats, were going to 
take a stand on this, and we should. Mr. President, it is not exactly 
the right message for children when they go into schools, whether it be 
in Anacostia, 2 miles from here, or in any of our States in some of our 
inner city neighborhoods and the buildings are dilapidated, the toilets 
don't work, the heating doesn't work. We are saying to these children: 
We don't care about you. We don't give a damn about you.
  Mr. President, that is a Federal responsibility. That is 
infrastructure. And Democrats, we beam these pictures back of these 
buildings and we are the party of commitment. Well, Mr. President, in 
this budget agreement, the $5 billion plan for school renovation was 
knocked out. Now, actually, it would cost much more than that. It was 
knocked out. It was abandoned. So, to my colleagues, let's not say that 
we are concerned about rotting school buildings for too many children 
in America and then sign on to a budget agreement that doesn't invest 
one cent --one cent--in making sure that these are safe buildings for 
our children. Let's not do that. That is just symbolic politics. That 
is symbolic politics at its worst.
  Mr. President, we don't even take a baby step toward investment in 
children and opportunities for children. We don't even make a dent at 
all. At the same time, we are going to have $250 billion of tax cuts, a 
large percentage of which benefits those at the very top of the income 
ladder, at the same time we have done precious little by way of 
reductions in Pentagon budget, and at the same time this other whole 
area that apparently we really don't want to go after in any 
significant degree, called corporate welfare, the loopholes and 
deductions for a variety of interests in the country, remains almost 
untouched. What kind of standard of fairness is that?
  Mr. President, we have a quiet crisis in a nation that believes we 
can go forward as a national community with two Americas. We can't do 
that. There is another America. Unfortunately, that other America 
includes many children who will never have a chance to reach their full 
potential if we as a Senate and a House of Representatives do not make 
some investment in their future. This budget is a budget without a soul 
when it comes to the concerns and circumstances of these children.

  So, Mr. President, when it comes to investment in children and 
education, I do not believe I am articulating a position that is one 
that people in the country don't support. I believe people believe that 
this is the goodness of our country. This is the American dream to make 
sure that every child has these opportunities. We have set the bar in 
this budget agreement right here. I want the bar to be set up here. If 
my colleague, Paul Simon, from Illinois was here today he would say 
that we can do better. Mr. President, we can do better.
  So I am going to come to the floor of the Senate with some 
amendments. These amendments are going to call for us to do better. 
These amendments are going to essentially say to the people in the 
country, ``Don't judge us by the words we speak. Judge us by the 
budgets that we write.'' These amendments

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are going to say to colleagues, ``Please don't separate the legislative 
lives you live from the words you speak.'' And, if you say you are for 
the children, and you say early childhood development is so important, 
and you say you are for a quality of opportunity for every child, 
regardless of color of skin, regardless of rich, or poor, regardless of 
urban, or rural, then clearly we are going to have to do better. If you 
say that we should not have these rotting schools in our country--and 
what all of the local school districts say to us in their plea to us is 
important and please invest some money in infrastructure, then you have 
to invest. That has to be in the budget. And, if you say that you 
understand that these early years are so important, you know it as a 
father or as a mother, you know it as a grandfather, or a grandmother--
we have always known intuitively how important these early years are--
and they are important for all children. And children don't do well in 
school, if they don't have an adequate diet. And children don't do well 
in school, if they are in pain or discomfort because they haven't been 
able to receive medical care. And children don't do well in school, if 
they have not had really good child care that nurtures their 
development, whether they are at home, or one or both parents are 
working. And, if you say all of that--and almost all of you do--it is 
time to invest. Time is not neutral for these children. We keep talking 
about the children.
  So, Mr. President, I am going to introduce a number of amendments to 
take the bar up here. I might lose, or I might win. But I am going to 
really fight hard. I would just say to the President ``Mr. 
President,''--I am talking now to the President at the White House, 
President Clinton--``we can do better.''
  I don't see the standard of fairness. I don't see an agreement with 
major tax cuts, and so much revenue lost over the next 10 years and 20 
years to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars benefiting many 
people who do not even need the assistance, and at the same time a 
budget agreement that represents a retreat and abandon of too many 
children in America.
  We have had enough conferences. Enough books have been written. 
Enough pleas have been made. There has been enough blitz. It is time 
now that we match our words with the deeds. And the deed is to make 
this investment.
  Mr. President, this will be my major priority over the next month to 
come in the U.S. Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I have 
permission to speak for approximately 5 minutes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for that purpose.
  Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. President.

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