[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 28, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S82-S83]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    STATE OF THE UNION--1998 AGENDA

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, last night we learned from our President 
that the state of the Union is the strongest it has been in decades. 
The ``misery index,'' that is inflation and interest rates combined, is 
at a 30-year low. Inflation is practically nonexistent. The Federal 
deficit is about to be eliminated. Over 14 million new jobs have been 
created in the last 7 years. We are seeing the lowest unemployment rate 
in a quarter of a century at 4.7 percent today. And we have seen the 
highest home ownership rate in history, nearly 6 million new homeowners 
since 1992.
  The booming economy and the bright fiscal picture give us a wonderful 
opportunity to continue to support a balanced budget, but one with a 
heart and one that makes critical investments in important areas, many 
outlined by the President--education, health care, health research, the 
environment, anticrime efforts, child care and, of course, ensuring 
that Social Security will be fiscally sound well into the next century.
  I am looking forward to working hard, on a bipartisan basis, with my 
colleagues as we write this budget. I am privileged to serve on the 
Budget Committee where we will take the first crack at crafting a 
Senate budget. I also sit on other committees that will carry through 
some of those priorities.
  I want to point out just a couple of issues that the President talked 
about which are very near and dear, not only to my heart but, much more 
important, to the hearts of the people that I represent, the people of 
California.
  This important issue is after-school care. It is a little-known fact 
that juvenile crime peaks up at 3 o'clock and begins to go down at 6 
o'clock. So, between 3 and 6 our children need something to say ``yes'' 
to. They need mentoring. They need help with their homework. The after-
school hours are an opportune time for business to come in and teach 
our young people about business, teach them computers and the many 
skills that they need to succeed.
  I have written a bill that would set up some model after-school 
programs. I was debating, should I offer it in the context of education 
or should I offer it in the context of juvenile crime reduction. After-
school programs both improve education and reduce juvenile crime.
  The President is launching a huge initiative there. He is also 
calling for and end to social promotion, 100,000 new teachers to help 
our children, and something that is important, reducing class sizes in 
the early grades. We need to implement voluntary national standards and 
we must rebuild our crumbling schools and build the new schools of the 
21st century. This President is on his way to being the true education 
President. I want us to be the true education Senate, and I very much 
look forward to the time we will spend on this Senate floor debating 
education.
  The President is calling our attention to the current health care 
crisis. We took a giant step in helping our young people last year, by 
giving a block grant to the States. They are going to work on making 
sure our children are insured.
  There is a big gap between the ages of 55 and 65, while people are 
waiting to get into Medicare, and the President proposes a pay-as-you-
go system to handle some of those people, to allow

[[Page S83]]

them to buy into Medicare. I want to emphasize this is a pay-as-you-go 
system. We have heard criticism that we can't do anything to expand 
Medicare without harming Medicare. I don't think there is anyone in the 
Senate who would do that. We want to make sure that anything that we 
put forward pays for itself.
  The President also touched on the rights of health care consumers to 
get quality health care from HMOs. These health maintenance 
organizations often deliver care in a very efficient manner. The 
question is, is the quality there? I wrote a bill, the Health Care 
Consumers' Bill of Rights Act, which parallels a lot of what the 
President talked about. I hope we can enact a patient's bill of rights 
this year.
  When I was in my State, I had the good fortune to meet with a 
gentleman named Harry Christie, who had a poignant story to tell. His 
daughter Carley at age 9 was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form 
of kidney cancer. His HMO refused to allow him to take that child to a 
pediatric surgeon who specialized in this very delicate operation. So, 
Mr. Christie was faced with a terrible choice. What to do? He dug into 
his own pocket, he somehow got the thousands of dollars--$40,000 to be 
exact--to pay for Carley's operation. This story has a happy ending. 
Carley had the operation. She is 14 years old. She is cancer free. But 
only because her dad went against the HMO.
  I don't want to see any other parent in America go through that 
torture. If there is a specialist available to handle a crisis, anyone 
in this country who has health insurance should be able to go to that 
specialist. That would be part of the patients' bill of rights.
  I am ready to work with my colleagues to develop a consensus HMO 
reform bill that we can pass and send to the President for his 
signature. In the end, it doesn't matter whose name is on the bill. I 
do not care if it is a Democratic bill or a Republican bill. Our task 
is simply to get the job done. I look forward to working on this 
legislation and I hope the Majority Leader will schedule action on it 
this year. In my view, HMO reform must be a top priority of this 
session of Congress.
  In the crime area, I will be urging my colleagues in the Senate to 
agree to legislation that will require all makers of handguns to 
include child safety locks in the weapons. The President proposed this 
last year, a number of manufacturers have voluntarily complied, but I 
want to ensure that all of them do.
  I will also continue to make the case for my legislation to ban the 
manufacture and sale of ``junk guns'' or ``Saturday night specials'', 
which are cheap, poorly made guns that are so often used in the 
commission of crimes. I realize that the chances of such legislation 
passing are low, given the current makeup of the Congress, but I think 
that it is important to raise the issue, nevertheless.
  As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I will be 
working a number of bills that are of great importance to the people 
and communities of my state, including reforming the Superfund program 
to clean up contaminated sites across the country.
  I will seek opportunities to enact my legislation, the ``Children's 
Environmental Protection Act'', which would require all of our 
environmental health and safety standards to be set at levels that 
would ensure protection of children, the elderly, and pregnant women, 
and other vulnerable groups. It would also require the EPA to establish 
a list of ``safer-for-children'' products such as pesticides and 
household cleaners, to give concerned consumers more information on the 
products found in all American households.
  I also applaud and will work to enact the President's ``Clean Water 
Initiative'', which will provide substantial new resources to fulfill 
the promise of the Clean Water Act to give all Americans clean, safe 
lakes, rivers and coastal waters.
  Sometime in the next few weeks, the Senate is expected to take up the 
transportation infrastructure bill--ISTEA--and I look forward to that 
debate. Californians are anxious to see quick action on that 
legislation, which provides funding for highway, transit, and other 
transportation projects throughout the state.
  Last night, the President announced that his budget, which he will 
submit to Congress next week, will be in balance beginning in fiscal 
year 1999. The Budget Committee, of which I am a member, began its 
hearings on the state of the economy and the federal budget this 
morning. I believe that we can balance the budget next year, and I will 
work to ensure that it happens. Hopefully, we can start seeing budget 
surpluses in future years. But I want to be very clear about that: 
before we do anything else, we must ensure the integrity of the Social 
Security trust fund, so that baby boomers and future generations can 
count on getting the benefits for which they have contributed all their 
working lives.
  Within the context of a balanced budget, I believe we have the 
resources for limited, targeted tax reduction. I will introduce a bill 
in the next few days to provide a tax deduction for the cost of buying 
health insurance to people whose employers do not provide health plans 
and for those who are unemployed.
  There are many other issues I could go into. I see my friend Senator 
Grams is here. We just spent about an hour together in the Budget 
Committee. I am sure he has some valuable issues to lay out for the 
Senate. But I do think it is important to know--and I am putting it in 
very blunt terms--that although we celebrate a balanced budget, if it 
weren't for the surplus of Social Security that we are borrowing, we 
would still be in debt. It is time to pay back the Social Security 
trust fund. You know, there are many trust funds that we have, that we 
should pay back--they are much smaller than Social Security; we can do 
it easily--the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Aviation Trust 
Fund, the Highway Trust Funds. Those are small. We can pay them back. 
But Social Security is large.
  If you owe a debt to someone in life you have to pay him or her back. 
When I have young people standing up at my community meetings, looking 
me in the eye, who say, ``Can you tell me Social Security will be there 
when I need it? I'm 30 years old and I'm not sure.'' I tell them when I 
was 30 I wasn't sure Social Security would be there. But because of the 
policies of the Senators, the Congress, the Presidents of both parties, 
Social Security will be there for me and my family. ``I assure you,'' I 
said to this last gentleman that mentioned it, ``it will be there for 
you. But only if we heed what President Clinton said.''
  We have to pay back the Social Security trust fund and then we will 
have something to be very proud of. We will look back at this time in 
our history and the people will say about us that we made the right 
investments in the right things. They paid dividends. They made our 
people strong and our country strong. And, yes, we saw a looming 
problem called Social Security and Medicare and we acted to shore up 
those funds to make sure that future generations will have what this 
generation has--peace and security.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to 
speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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