[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 111 (Thursday, July 31, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8513-S8515]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    RESULTS OF BALANCING THE BUDGET

  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, for the first time since 1969, 
Congress has balanced the budget. This is not just a victory for 
Congress. This is a victory for the American people.
  I am reminded of a term that is used in science known as ``vector 
addition.'' Simply stated, it says that you subtract forces working 
against one another and you add forces working with one another.
  While I am not here to talk about science or math, my point is that 
we diminish our collective energy when we work against each other, but 
we expand our ability to help everyone when we work together. When we 
set aside our differences, we are stronger as a Nation and stronger as 
a people. By working together we move forward, and that means that 
everybody wins.
  Mr. President, the American people are winners today because of the 
spirit of cooperation that went into the tax relief and spending 
reduction bills, a credit to the leadership of President Clinton, the 
leadership of the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, 
Senator Roth and Senator Moynihan, and the leadership of the Budget 
Committee chairman, Senator Domenici, and the ranking Democrat, Senator 
Lautenberg.
  Mr. President, this is people-oriented legislation, and I am pleased 
to be able to say that it is bipartisan legislation that invests in our 
children and in their futures. It achieves fiscal responsibility while 
at the same time it is socially fair. It improves health for children 
and health care for the elderly. It takes at least a small step toward 
rebuilding our Nation's crumbling schools and a much larger step toward 
expanding opportunities for our children to attend college.
  Most importantly of all, we are providing real tax relief for 
American families. For the first years of the new century we will see 
in this country a balanced budget again for the first time in a 
generation.
  This legislative victory did not come without sacrifice. The 
foundation for today's achievement was had in 1993 when Congress, by 
the narrowest of margins, enacted the highly successful 1993 deficit 
reduction legislation that has already brought down the Federal deficit 
from over $280 billion to about $65 billion, or perhaps even lower, 
this year. Critics argued at the time that the bill would plunge our 
country into a recession, that it would stoke inflation, and that it 
would throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work. A few of our 
senatorial colleagues who supported the bill later lost their elections 
because of that support. Those Members of Congress chose statesmanship 
over politics, and today I think it is important to pay tribute to 
their foresight.
  The legislation that we passed this afternoon builds on what we 
achieved in 1993. It nonetheless represents an enormous accomplishment, 
one in which every American can take justifiable pride. The United 
States is once again leading the way to get its fiscal house in order 
while investing in families, children and in students and in economic 
growth. By contrast, in Europe, deficits in many countries as a 
percentage of their gross domestic product are triple what ours is--and 
even higher--and they have no solution in sight. Again, I believe that 
we have shown the way to achieve fiscal responsibility and social 
fairness to the world.
  As a Member of the Senate Finance Committee, I am pleased that this 
bill reflects a number of my own particular priorities. First, it helps 
young college graduates to repay their student loans by making the 
interest deductible once again. We all know how rapidly college costs 
have increased and are increasing and how many students start out their 
working careers with huge debts, huge student loan debts. The proposal 
that Senator Grassley and I worked together on will make a real 
difference to graduates as they begin to start their careers to begin 
their families. They will be able to deduct the interest on those 
loans. And given sometimes that those loans can be as high as $80,000 
and $90,000, this should be a benefit to young people who want to 
pursue education.
  Second, the bill contains a version of the proposal that I offered in 
the Senate that will help to create new economic activity and new jobs 
at thousands of abandoned commercial and industrial sites around the 
world.
  There are all too many brownfields sites in our communities, property 
that had formerly been used by business but which has become 
environmentally contaminated or polluted and then abandoned. By 
allowing those individuals who want to clean up these polluted areas 
and use them for new businesses, by allowing them to expense the costs 
of their environmental cleanup rather than having to capitalize those 
costs over a period of years, it will create a brand new incentive to 
bring this property back into the economic mainstream, to create jobs, 
to clean up the environment, and to restore and reclaim parts of our 
communities all over this country.
  Third, this bill will begin to address a problem that I have spoken 
about on the Senate floor many times, the crumbling schools around 
America. Since I have come to the Senate, I have worked to forge a new 
Federal and State and local partnership to rebuild our Nation's 
crumbling schools. We cannot lift our kids up if our schools are 
falling down, and I am pleased that this bill has taken the first step 
in that direction by creating a new category of no-interest bonds for 
communities to use to rehabilitate their schools. High poverty 
districts will be able to issue $800,000 in bonds to repair their 
schools, to pay for new teacher training, new equipment purchases and 
other expenses needed for revitalization of educational facilities.
  I think that is an important step in the right direction. It does not 
begin to do all that we need to do, but it is a step.
  The bill also increases the small issuer arbitrage rebate exemption 
for certain school facilities funds which provide some small rural 
schools with relief from the burdensome administrative requirements 
associated with the issuance of tax-free bonds. And so everybody wins 
under this approach to rebuilding the schools. Although these 
proposals, frankly, are dwarfed by the $112 billion in school 
construction need

[[Page S8514]]

that the General Accounting Office has documented for us, I think these 
two provisions send a message that Congress believes there is a Federal 
role for rebuilding our Nation's schools and for cooperating and 
supporting State and local governments in their efforts. This is not 
about interfering with local control in any way. We just want to begin 
to engage as a national community to provide support for States and 
local governments to do what they deem appropriate in terms of giving 
our young people the educational facilities they need in which to 
learn.
  I believe it is inexcusable that in our country, the wealthiest 
nation in the world, every day 14 million children go to schools with 
broken windows, leaking pipes and overcrowded rooms, and I appreciate 
the leadership that is being demonstrated in this area.
  I look forward to continue with Congressman Rangel on the House side, 
who made this one of his top priorities. I look forward to working with 
him and my other colleagues to create a true partnership among the 
Federal, State, and local governments, again, to get our school 
facilities in shape, to bring them up to code and to give our young 
people the kinds of facilities that they deserve for a 21st century 
education.
  I want to take particular note, also, of the changes that were made 
to the proposal for the $500-per-child tax credit. This portion of the 
bill provides real help to hard-working American families, and I am 
particularly pleased that millions of families with incomes as low as 
$18,000 a year, families who pay thousands of dollars in payroll taxes 
but who have little or no income tax liability, they will now be able 
to take advantage of the $500-per-child tax credit. Those low-income 
families are doing exactly what everyone says they should do. They are 
working hard and they are paying taxes. They deserve this tax relief, 
and I am very pleased that, at the insistence of President Clinton, 
they will receive it as part of the compromise achieved in this 
bipartisan legislation.
  In addition, this bill takes many other steps to expand opportunity 
and economic growth. The Hope Scholarship will provide families with a 
tuition tax credit to help families carry the burdens of college costs. 
After the first 2 years of college, a tax credit of 20 percent of 
college tuition costs up to $10,000 annually will be available to 
students and their families. Moreover, employers' ability to deduct the 
employees' college tuition will be preserved in this legislation. That 
is an important kind of incentive, I think, to keep for our country.
  Lastly, students will not be forced to pay taxes on the scholarships 
and fellowships they receive for their hard work. I, again, believe 
these are positive steps in the right direction.
  The bill further ensures that children will no longer have to go 
without adequate health care. The bill contains the single largest 
investment in health care for children since the passage of Medicaid in 
1965. It invests an unprecedented $24 billion to provide meaningful 
health coverage for almost half of the Nation's uninsured children.
  At the same time, the bill also protects something called EPSDT. That 
stands for Early Periodic Screening Diagnostic and Testing, which is 
very important in terms of the quality of service provided for 
children, eye and ear examinations and the like. It preserves a basic 
level of benefits and services for children under Medicaid, the 
Medicaid Program, and gives States the additional flexibility at the 
same time to assure that those children are covered with health 
insurance for the entire year, as opposed to the trend that we see now 
in which they come on and go off of the Medicaid Program. So children 
will have more insurance because of this bill that we passed this 
afternoon than they have ever enjoyed in this country before. I think 
that is important.
  Turning to the Medicare Program for seniors, I, like many other 
Members, had reservations, frankly, about the bill that we initially 
passed out of the Senate. I was one of the two members of the Senate 
Finance Committee who did not vote for the means testing or the age 
changes or the copayments on Medicare, simply because we had not looked 
at the issues enough, and because I think those changes simply shifted 
the program costs to beneficiaries rather than truly protecting 
Medicare. More important, rather than allowing us to bring more people 
into health coverage, it was pushing people out of the health care 
system.
  I am pleased we have not rushed to judgment in terms of changing 
Medicare, because, again, we should be moving in the direction of 
providing universal coverage and coverage for seniors that is 
comprehensive instead of cutting away arbitrarily and making arbitrary 
changes. So the commission in this bill will allow us to take up the 
debate of what changes should be made over the long haul to preserve 
the long-term solvency of Medicare so we can pass on to the next 
generation of Americans at least as much, in terms of health coverage, 
as we in our time inherited from the last generation of decisionmakers. 
I think that is our obligation here.
  I am pleased, also, that this legislation no longer includes the 
provisions to charge income-related part B premiums, increase the 
Medicaid eligibility age, nor charge seniors who prefer a home setting 
as opposed to institutionalization a $5-per-visit home health care 
copayment. These are vitally important improvements on the legislation. 
While many Members on both sides of the aisle disagree, I believe, 
again, we need to take this up, to have a public debate about what 
changes are appropriate before we rush to judgment in regards to that.
  The conference agreement also makes major improvements in the 
Medicare managed care payment rate changes. While I continue to believe 
that moving to a 50-percent national/50-percent local payment rate 
blend moves too far away from recognizing local cost differentials, 
guaranteeing a minimum payment update is a marked improvement over the 
original provisions as they even came out of our committee. So, again, 
the conference agreement strikes a more equitable balance between 
encouraging managed care growth in rural areas and underserved areas 
and not undermining the existing managed care enrollment.
  The legislation also retains a number of important aspects from the 
original Senate bill, including prevention services, if you will, 
coverage of diabetes self-management training, colorectal cancer 
screening, mammography screens without the deductible requirement. We 
had to fight and raise the point that the deductible on mammograms was 
absolutely inappropriate, so the investment in mammograms without 
deductibles will benefit an additional 2 million women.
  Again, a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows 
that a copayment causes a threefold dropoff in the number of women 
getting mammograms. So, providing this screening without deductible is 
vitally important to the health of American women.
  My praise for this legislation does not mean that I do not continue 
to have some major concerns about certain aspects of the bill. There 
are several non-worker-friendly provisions that I believe move 
completely in the wrong direction. One of those provisions has to do 
with overruling of the court decision in the Pennington case, which 
came out of my State of Illinois. Despite our success in stripping the 
preemption from the original Senate bill, the conferees have decided to 
restore it. I think that is unfortunate. But it is an issue that was 
folded in this legislation, and, again, the benefits of the bill 
weighed against these changes are something we will have to take up 
separately. So, while we did not Byrd-rule the issue on Pennington at 
this time, I understand there is legislation that I strongly will 
support in regards to that issue of unemployment compensation and 
security.
  The agreement also punts on the long-term Medicare solvency issue. 
Again, the commission will have to take up that issue. I look forward 
to their deliberation.
  One last thing having to do with my State specifically, and those 
parts of the country that we like to call the heartland. We were very 
interested in the ethanol tax credit. Ethanol has an important place in 
our energy future in this country. I believe we should be aggressively 
moving to promote its use. This legislation kind of keeps the ethanol 
tax treatment the same way that it is currently, instead of extending 
it into the future in ways that I thought would have been more 
appropriate.

[[Page S8515]]

 There were a number of us--in fact, 70 Members of the Senate voted for 
the more extensive treatment and support for ethanol. Again, that came 
out in the conference and that is regrettable. But we will continue to 
fight this fight on behalf of ethanol. I have every expectation and 
confidence that we will be successful in the long run.
  There are a lot of other provisions such as capital gains and estate 
tax provisions that I have not taken the time to discuss here today. I 
will not take the additional time to do so now. Instead, I just want to 
make it clear that I strongly supported the overall bill and the 
bipartisan approach that made it possible. It was that cooperation, 
that coming together, that building on our strength with the view and 
the interests of all the American people, that allowed us to have this 
victory today.
  We did the right thing for America's children. We did the right thing 
for America's students, our families, and we are doing the right thing 
for the next generation of Americans. Achieving fiscal responsibility 
and social fairness simultaneously is something that many thought could 
not happen. We have done it with this legislation that we passed, and I 
think every Member of this body who voted for it has reason to be proud 
of the work of this Congress.
  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. LOTT. Mr. 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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