[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 27, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13-S15]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SECOND SESSION OF THE 105TH CONGRESS
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as we begin a new year in the U.S.
Congress, the second session of this Congress, I look forward with
anticipation to a number of issues we must address. I hope we can do
that in a bipartisan way, and I hope we will not be distracted by a lot
of other things that come up during the year and that we will actually
accomplish some good things for the country.
I recognize that outside this Chamber there is now a scandal that
exists in this country. We will undoubtedly learn the facts about the
allegations that have been made, and the American people will make a
judgment based upon those facts. That is the way it should be. To make
judgments about allegations and about rumors and about planted stories,
and so on, before the facts are known is not a proper way to deal with
them.
But notwithstanding what is happening outside this Chamber, we have
responsibilities here. I was interested to learn that in the first hour
and a half of this second session, we had people come to the Chamber of
the Senate, once again, and tell us about how our country works and
what is wrong with our country. It was interesting to me that the
Chamber lights had hardly become warm when we had Members come to the
floor to, once again, talk about who the big spenders are. ``Oh, the
big spenders on this side'' and ``the big spenders on''--it is
interesting that nothing ever changes.
I watched the American music awards show on television last night. I
thought to myself as I listened to a bit of this this morning that, had
this discussion taken place yesterday, we could have entered some of
this dialog for best rap artist or best presentation in rap music. It
certainly is a rap. There is no tune there, but they never miss a
lyric. It is that this side represents the big spenders.
I just want to begin for a moment today to talk about where we are
and how we got here and what our need is this year to address critical
issues for this country.
First of all, where are we? We are in a country that is blessed with
a very strong economy. Things are going well in this country.
Unemployment is down. Welfare is down. Crime is down. Inflation is
down. Economic growth is up. More people are working. Things are better
in this country.
I heard not too many minutes ago someone say, ``But none of that has
anything to do with Congress; it has to do with a good economy.'' I
remind Members of Congress that in 1993, this President and this
Congress decided to take a tough vote. Are we going to put this country
back on track? Are we going to tell the American people that we are
serious about wrestling this crippling budget deficit to the ground?
Are we going to cast a hard vote, an unpopular vote, a tough vote? The
answer was yes. We did, by one vote in the U.S. Senate and one vote in
the U.S. House of Representatives, cut spending. Yes, we increased some
taxes, and we said to the American people we are serious about getting
this country's fiscal house in order. We are going to wrestle that
Federal deficit to the ground. And the fact is, it gave the American
people confidence. They said, ``These folks are serious; they
understand this is a serious problem for this country and they are
willing to make tough votes.''
I went home to my State and said, ``I voted yes. I voted yes because
I believe it is the best thing for this country to send a signal to the
markets, the American citizens and everyone in this world that this
country cares about these issues and we intend, this President intends
and this Congress intends, to get our fiscal house in order.'' And by
one vote we passed a plan in 1993 that set this economy off into a
universe of economic growth and economic opportunity--by one vote.
This economy rests on people's confidence. If people are confident
about the future, they do things that reflect that confidence: They buy
cars; they buy houses; they invest; they do things that reflect their
confidence about the future. If they are not confident, they make
different decisions. Based on people's confidence or lack of it, this
economy moves forward or lurches backward.
My point is, for someone to say this is all accidental is to ignore
history. This is not accidental. This President deserves some credit
for a fiscal policy that was tough and no nonsense and said we care
about wrestling this Federal budget deficit to the ground. And this
Congress, those of us in it who voted yes on that, participated in it.
I might add, while people are pointing across aisles, as I heard
earlier, about big spending in the Congress, we did not even get one
vote by accident from the other side of the aisle for a fiscal policy
that says we are going to solve this deficit problem.
We come to today with a good economy and, I think, some good news
ahead of us. I hope all of us, reaching across the aisle, can decide we
have a common agenda. When people sit around their homes in the evening
and have supper together and talk about their lives, what do they talk
about? They talk about these things: Are our kids going to a good
school, getting a good education? Do we have a good job or opportunity
for a decent job that pays well with decent benefits? Do our children
or grandparents have an opportunity for health care that is good? Can
they afford it? Are our streets safe, our neighborhoods safe? Is the
air clean, the water we drink safe, the food we eat safe? What about
our roads? In what condition are our roads and bridges? And what about
family farms and those who produce our food? Those are the issues that
people care about and want us to do something about.
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Let me tick off about four areas that we have to grapple with
quickly. We just heard two discussions a moment ago about surplus. One
said we are not spending enough money; we need to spend more on
defense. The second one said it is the other folks over here on this
side of the aisle who are the big spenders, and so forth, and talked
about the surplus. There is no surplus.
The only basis on which anyone can claim they balanced the budget is
to take nearly $100 billion out of Social Security trust funds and use
it over in the budget to claim there is a surplus. There is no surplus,
and no one in this room ought to be persuaded to spend the surplus that
doesn't exist. To the extent we will have a surplus after we have made
whole the Social Security funds and used those trust funds for the
purpose for which they were intended, when we get to that point, and
only when we get to that point, will we have a surplus. And when we do,
I think at least a part of that surplus ought to be used to pay down
just a part of the Federal debt. In good times, you ought to be able to
reduce indebtedness. But no one ought to rush around talking about a
surplus that doesn't exist.
I believe that President Clinton will call tonight to use the
accumulated revenues that come from a better economy to make good on
those trust fund bonds, and that is exactly what we ought to do. No one
ought to claim a surplus as long as those who are using those trust
funds are using them as operating revenues.
Let me tell the Presiding Officer that, if you look at the
Congressional Budget Office, which puts out byzantine reports, their
most recent report shows that if a budget which they claim is in
balance at some point--next year, I guess--they claim that the debt
won't continue to grow. Why will they claim that? Because they don't
include all the debt. I have just written them a letter saying you
can't give us half-answers and half-truths. The answer is, when they
claim the budget is in balance, the Federal debt will continue to
increase, which is prima facie evidence that this notion of a budget
being in balance when you are misusing Social Security trust funds is a
fraud.
Campaign finance reform. We must address it and do it quickly. We had
a little house race in New York State. In the middle of that race for
one house seat in New York State, $800,000 of out-of-State money came
in under the notion of express issue advocacy, brought in against a
candidate--I understand that was not money accountable to anybody; it
could be soft money, corporate money--brought in precisely to defeat a
congressional candidate, but essentially laundered through a system
that now permits that kind of laundering so that no one in that
district will ever know whose money it was. Is it unlimited corporate
money that goes into this system and then is washed up through some
congressional district someplace to defeat a specific candidate and,
therefore, it is not accountable? It is polluting the political system.
It is wrong, and anyone in this Chamber who stands up and defends that,
in my judgment, doesn't understand what the Founding Fathers decided
about this political system of ours.
That ought not be the case, and we ought to take steps to change it.
We are going to push and push in this Chamber to get a vote on these
issues and get campaign finance reform done. Some will continue to
filibuster. They have a right to filibuster, but the American people
have a right to expect us to clean up this mess, and the sooner the
better.
Health care. We ought to deal with health care. We ought to do that
soon. I read in the New York Times about a woman who had fallen in an
accident. Her brain was swelling. She was in an ambulance being rushed
to the hospital. She had the presence of mind to say to the ambulance
drivers, ``I don't want to go to the nearest hospital,'' and she named
it by name. ``I want to be taken to a hospital farther away.'' This is
a woman with a brain injury, in the back of an ambulance, speeding down
the street. She said that because she knew by reputation that when you
are wheeled into that nearest hospital, your health is a matter of
their bottom line--dollars and cents. She said, ``I want to go to a
hospital where I am wheeled into an emergency room where they are not
going to look at me with respect to dollars and cents.''
Managed care. What does it mean to quality of care all across this
country? We ought to address that. Do patients have rights? If so, what
are the rights? Do they have a right to find out from their doctors in
this country what the treatment options are? If not, why not? Who is
withholding that information from patients and why? Which patient
doesn't get it? Is it some function of a bottom line in some company
that is making money off health care? Is it some 24-year-old accountant
in some office 200 miles away that is telling a doctor what kind of
health care that doctor can perform on that patient and what the doctor
can tell that patient about the patient's options? This Congress has a
right and a responsibility to deal with those health care issues, and
we ought to do it soon in this session.
Mr. President, the issue of education is also critically important.
There isn't a country that shortchanges education and remains a strong
world-class power. Thomas Jefferson, at the start of this system, said
anyone who believes this country can be ignorant and free believes in
something that never was and never will be.
We can do things to improve education in the country, but I am not
one who believes it is bankrupt. How did we get to where we are? Does
anyone want to leave this country to find better health care somewhere
else? Do you know anybody who wants to go to a world-class university
who looks overseas? Most of them are here in this country.
I am not one who says it is a bankrupt system, but we can improve it.
We ought to get reports on our schools. We get reports about our kids.
As parents and taxpayers, we deserve a report card about how our
schools are doing in educating our kids.
Finally, Mr. President, we need to deal with the highway bill, and we
need to do that quickly. On our agenda, we ought to decide tomorrow the
highway bill ought to be brought to the floor of the Senate. We were
supposed to have done it last year and didn't. And we were told now it
will be the first item on the agenda this year.
I am told it may wait until the budget bill. I appeared on a
television program this morning with the chairman of the relevant
committee in the House of Representatives. He says, well, he is ready
to bring up the bill in the House, but he has an agreement with the
Speaker not to bring it up until the budget bill. That means 2, 3, or 4
months from now. That cannot happen.
We cannot wait 3 or 4 months for a highway bill that was supposed to
have been passed last year. You do that and you have contractors in
States that cannot do bid lettings, you have people being laid off of
projects where the project should go forward to build and repair roads
and bridges. So we cannot do that.
We need to expect, in the next day or two, that the majority leader
will do what he told us he would do; that is, bring the highway bill to
the floor of the Senate. Let us debate it and let us move it out.
Oh, they are worried about an amendment that is going to be offered
to it. I understand that. But, you know, you can worry about amendments
forever. Bring the bill to the floor, let us have a vote on the
amendments and send the bill to conference --and let us put some
pressure on the Speaker to do the same on the House side--and get a
highway bill out so the American people can have some certainty about
what kind of investment we are going to make in bridges and roads and
repairs and the building of that infrastructure.
People pay taxes. It goes into a trust fund to do it. And I think
they should be able to expect that we are going to do what is
necessary.
Finally, Mr. President--and I know the Senator from Minnesota is
waiting to speak so I will finish--I want to say, in the midst of all
that is happening in this country now, there are some who perhaps get
discouraged about this process of ours. And I understand why that can
be the case. It is an unusual process.
A free and open democratic society is in some cases a society that
does not look good from time to time. And yet, if you look at our
system through a couple hundred years of very successful democracy, you
see as democracies
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pass through angst and anxiety and pain and suffering and all the other
things, it tends to make an open and democratic society make tough,
thoughtful decisions about its future.
We have abolished slavery. We have survived depressions. We have
defeated Hitler. We have cured polio. We have sent people to the Moon.
I mean, we can talk a lot about what this country has endured and what
this country has done.
My only point is, I do not think any of us ought to at this point in
time be discouraged about democracy and about Congress and about our
Government and about the press and about all the institutions in our
lives. It is a good place to be. I do not know of anybody who wants to
go elsewhere. I do not know of anybody who wants to exchange it for
some other location in the world.
We should not be discouraged. Our job, it seems to me, is to do our
work for the American people. And there is plenty of work to do. I have
mentioned some--education, health care, finish the job on fiscal
policy, deal with highways, deal with campaign finance reform, and
more. And that is just a start.
I am here and I am ready, and I hope my colleagues feel the same. We
ought to join hands and say there are things that Democrats and
Republicans believe in and can do together. And we will be persuaded to
do that if we can just turn off the rap music, turn off the rap that
one side is all wrong and the other side is all right, one side is big
spenders and the other side is not.
I finally say this. I do not think there is a plugged nickel's worth
of difference between the two aisles in the U.S. Senate--Republicans
and Democrats--in terms of how much they want to spend. Is there a
difference on what they want to spend money for? Absolutely. But I will
guarantee you, for everybody who stands up on one side of the aisle
wanting to spend money on one program, there is somebody on the other
side standing there saying, ``No. I want it spent on my priorities.''
What we need to do is join together and, through this process, find the
right priorities for this country's future.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
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