[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 5 (Tuesday, February 3, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S282-S286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there will be an opportunity this morning 
for Members of the Senate to discuss the President's submission of his 
budget to the Congress yesterday.
  The way the process works in our country is the President proposes a 
budget that contains his recommendations for spending priorities. And 
then the Congress deals with these recommendations in that way that 
Congress deems appropriate. The budget that the President proposes, and 
the budget that the Congress finalizes, reflect what we think the 
priorities are for our country.
  It is certain that 100 years from now none of us will be here; 100 
years from now we will be gone from this Earth. But if historians want 
to learn 100 years from now about who we were, and what we were, and 
what we felt was important to us, and what our priorities were, they 
could look at the Federal budget document and evaluate our spending 
priorities. What did we think was important? What did we invest in, in 
order to achieve a better future for ourselves or our country? And they 
could determine by our decisions about investment and spending what we 
held dear as a country.
  This President has proposed a budget that is vastly changed from the 
budgets we have seen in recent years. When I came to the Congress in 
1981, in the House of Representatives, a new President was assuming 
office here in town, President Ronald Reagan. He had a completely 
different vision of fiscal policy.
  He was supported by an economic theory that suggested if you had very 
large tax cuts, you would still achieve larger amounts of revenue and 
you could actually balance the budget with large tax cuts. And so he 
proposed with his Office of Management and Budget guru, Mr. David 
Stockman, a series of budgets that proposed very significant tax cuts 
and a doubling of the defense budget.
  And President Reagan's economist and others, particularly an 
economist named Arthur Laffer, who developed a Laffer curve, said this 
would all work out OK. They said you can provide significant tax cuts, 
double defense spending, and it would all come out just fine.
  In fact, that fiscal policy created a mountain of debt that began to 
choke this country. The President and Congress in combination embarked 
on a fiscal policy that was reckless. In fact, David Stockman, the 
chief strategist of it, said so in his book.
  It took a long while to get through all of that, and even through the 
end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s the Federal budget deficit 
was climbing and climbing at an alarming rate.
  President Clinton came to office in 1993 and said we are going to 
change that. And he presented the Congress in 1993 with a proposal to 
reduce the Federal budget deficit. As fiscal policy his proposal was 
tough, tough medicine.
  And by one vote in the Senate and one vote in the House it passed. 
Some of my colleagues who voted for that are not here any longer 
because it was tough and controversial. But it put this country on the 
right road. Over a period of 5 years the budget deficit has come down, 
down, way down.
  And some of my colleagues are unwilling to accept the fact that there 
is a cause-effect relationship between the actions you take to reduce 
this budget deficit and the results you get. But it is inevitable, if 
you look at the facts, to conclude that what this President and what 
this Congress did in 1993 to set this country on the right track has 
put us in the position today where we have a budget submitted to the 
Congress that wrestles that budget deficit to the ground and then says, 
as far as the eye can see in the years ahead, there is good news.
  And the good news is that this economy is working. It's working 
better for the American people. I do not want to attribute it all to 
one person or one party. That is not the case. Last year we had a 
bipartisan budget agreement between Republicans and Democrats and that 
helps as well, and both parties ought to be credited for that.
  But my point is I watched yesterday some people react to the 
President's budget submission, and it was the same cranky old tune you 
have heard from them every single year. It sounds like they have a 
permanent toothache. Nothing on Earth can make them satisfied or happy.
  Let me see if I can help them out. Let me try to explain why the 
American people feel differently. Here is what makes the American 
people feel good about the direction we are heading.
  The Federal budget deficit, as I said, has been down, down, way down 
now for 5 years in a row. And the deficit is almost nonexistent--not 
quite yet, but it will be.
  Inflation is almost nonexistent. Inflation has come down, down, down. 
It is the lowest it's been since 1986. Housing starts are up 
substantially. In 1996 they totaled 1.47 million housing starts. That 
is the largest number of housing starts in this country since 1988. And 
what we know so far about 1997 tells us that the figures for all of 
last year will be even higher.
  Mr. President, 14 million people are working now that were not 
working in 1993. Unemployment is down. I can recall when the Federal 
Reserve Board, that friend of mine, that institutional friend of mine, 
said if unemployment ever goes below 6 percent are we in for trouble; 
we are in for a huge wave of inflation. The Federal Reserve Board has 
been wrong, it has been consistently wrong about that. Unemployment is 
now at 4.7 percent, and inflation has not gone up, it has gone down.
  Crime? The crime rate has gone down at the same time. This President 
said let's put 100,000 new police officers on the street. Let's put new 
cops on the street, on the beat. Guess what is happening. As our 
economy strengthens, and as more people are working, we have a lower 
crime rate. Since 1993, violent crime has dropped 16 percent. Robberies 
are down, assaults are down, the murder rate is down by over 20 
percent, burglary is down. That is good news.
  Welfare? In the last 4 years we have seen the largest decline in the 
welfare rolls in the history of this country. There are 2 million fewer 
people on welfare today than there were in August 1996, when we enacted 
welfare reform. I might say that this was a bipartisan accomplishment: 
Republicans and Democrats in the Congress joined to pass a welfare 
reform bill. I supported it as did many of my colleagues on both sides 
of the political aisle. A good economy plays a major role in this, but 
the welfare reform bill also set us on the right track.
  Child support collections are up 50 percent after this Congress 
passed legislation cracking down on deadbeat dads who decide their 
children are not their responsibility and that the taxpayers should pay 
for them. The increase in collections is good news. Child support 
payments are up 50 percent.
  Access to health care for millions of Americans? Because of last 
year's action, 5 million American children without health care will get 
health care.
  Medicare? In the work that we have done to provide long-term 
stability for Medicare much, much more needs to be done, but we have 
done a great deal already.
  I have more to say and I will in a bit, but I notice the minority 
leader, Senator Daschle, is on the floor. Let me yield whatever time 
Senator Daschle might use of the hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Democratic leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. DASCHLE. I thank my colleague for his leadership and his usual 
eloquence. I want to associate myself with his remarks this morning. I 
appreciate very much his calling attention to the

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extraordinary and very historic accomplishment that we mark this week 
as we begin the debate on the fiscal 1999 budget.

  I have some charts here that I think probably tell the story as well 
as any three charts could. This first graph simply lays out our fiscal 
policy from 1980 through 2003, using the President's fiscal year 1999 
budget proposal to project from 1999 to 2003. The portion in red notes 
our struggle with the deficit from 1980 all the way up until the 
present. The deficits during this period total $3.1 trillion. Then in 
1993 came the very controversial Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, 
which was enacted only after the Vice President cast the deciding vote. 
Passage of this act allowed us to make a dramatic reversal in our 
fiscal policy, generating savings that exceed the entire deficit that 
we have accumulated from 1980 through 1999. The green, or blue portion 
as it may appear on the screen, represents a total savings of $4 
trillion. It shows that prior to the passage of the 1993 budget bill, 
CBO was projecting that the deficit would explode from $290 billion in 
1992 to $633 billion by the year 2003.
  Instead, a wonderful thing happened as a result of courageous 
decisions made by Democratic Senators and Members of Congress--some who 
are not here today because they voted on that deficit. I will never 
forget that moment as long as I live. After much consultation with 
Senators on both sides of the aisle, but especially our side of the 
aisle, a majority came to the realization that this could be a historic 
vote. Indeed it was. That vote brought about a precipitous decline in 
the deficit, to the point where we now see a surplus for the first time 
in 30 years. That surplus is projected to be $218 billion over the next 
5 years. In 1969 I was a senior in college. I didn't really know, then, 
whether we had a surplus or a deficit. I really wasn't following it 
that closely. But I look back now and note that it was a surplus, 
albeit a small one. By the rarest of circumstances we had a set of 
economic conditions that allowed us to reach surplus that year. 
However, it was a fragile one and would not be repeated for 30 years. 
Now we are being told that the budget before us could achieve at least 
$1 trillion surplus over the next 10 years. So this is not just a 
fleeting 1-year moment in time. Current economic analysis projects that 
it is very likely we could see budgetary surpluses for the next 10 
years. If in the years ahead we practice the same fiscal responsibility 
we have demonstrated the last 5 years, we could see a surplus of $1 
trillion. In other words, we would not only achieve a $4 trillion 
savings in projected deficits, we would add to that an additional $1 
trillion in surplus because of decisions we made in 1993 and again in 
1997.
  So no one should be surprised at the ceremony at the White House 
yesterday or with the extraordinary optimism and excitement that many 
of us shared as a result of these tough decisions. We have all been in 
those rooms. We have all noted a change in discipline. We have all 
noted how difficult it is to say no. We have all noted that, were it 
not for tough decisions and the new discipline that we have been able 
to establish over the last 5 years, we would not be celebrating today. 
But, indeed we are, and this chart points out as well as any the 
reasons for that celebration.
  This next chart is also quite educational and informative. The dotted 
line shows the average federal outlays as a share of gross domestic 
product over the course of the last 17 years, from 1980, when Ronald 
Reagan became President, through 1997, under President Clinton. The 
average outlay during this span has been 21.9 percent of gross domestic 
product. In the early 1980s we exceeded this average pretty 
substantially. The red line indicates what actually happened. In 1988 
and 1989 we went below the average outlays and then during the Bush 
years we exceeded the average outlays. In 1993, upon passage of 
President Clinton's budget bill, those outlays dropped precipitously 
and have continued falling right to the present. We see a dramatic 
reduction. Never in 17 years have we seen anything close to the drop in 
outlays that have occurred in the last 5 years. So, as a percent of 
gross domestic product, the federal government is spending far less 
than we have ever spent in the last two decades.

  Receipts have also gone up during this same period. We see that 
expenditures and receipts meet about in the middle. Receipts as a share 
of gross domestic product have averaged 18.5 percent over the period 
1980 to 1997. This percent has gone up substantially in the last five 
years so that revenues and outlays meet in the middle to bring us that 
surplus. What is amazing is that even though average receipts are up, 
the amount of tax paid by the average American working family is down, 
the lowest it has been in 20 years. So, one might ask, why are receipts 
up? Receipts are up because people on Wall Street are making 
megamillions, the economy is stronger than it has been at any time in 
our history, and the explosion of economic vitality and growth has 
produced an economic engine that not only provides more after-tax 
income for working families and businesses and farms, but also for the 
governments. More governments today at the State and local level are 
declaring surpluses than at any other time. Why? Because the engine of 
this economy is as strong as it has ever been.
  So, by showing fiscal discipline, by creating fiscal and monetary 
policy that meld so well, we have created an economic engine that has 
allowed this economy to grow, to bring in the receipts, even though the 
vast majority of middle-income families have actually seen a reduction 
in their taxes over the last 20 years. These outlays have been reduced 
in large measure because we have been able to do something with 
government bureaucracy that we have not seen since John Kennedy was 
President: a lowering of the federal government's civilian employment. 
As depicted in this chart, we can see what has happened to Federal 
employment over the period of the last 30 years. When President Kennedy 
was in office, we had about 1.8 million employees working for the 
Federal Government. During the Johnson years that number shot up to 
over 2.3 million. It dropped in Nixon's time, went up a little bit in 
Carter's time, dropped somewhat in Reagan's time. But look what 
happened in President Clinton's time. The red portion of the chart 
shows the dramatic decline in civilian employment in the executive 
branch just in the last 5 years. It is once again at a level about 
where it was when President Kennedy was in office, when I was in 6th 
and 7th grade. So these outlays have gone down for many reasons, but 
they have gone down in large measure because we have the smallest 
Federal Government that we have had in more than 30 years.
  We have had an effective Federal Government. In education, health 
care, health security, especially for Medicare recipients--in a lot of 
ways, even though our Government is smaller, our country and the 
Government is stronger. Now we are at the crux of some very serious 
policy questions. Perhaps the most important policy question is what do 
we do with the surplus. I think the President last week laid out the 
blueprint as clearly and convincingly as anything I have heard him 
discuss in the 5 years he has been President. This President has said, 
before we do anything else, let's recognize one thing. If we don't deal 
with Social Security soon in a meaningful way, by the time he and I and 
many of us so-called baby boomers retire, security, the fund may well 
be exhausted. Let's fix the Social Security problem, but until we do, 
let's ensure that we don't do anything with the surplus. In essence, we 
should pay down the debt as long as the Social Security problem remains 
unrepaired; so long as we don't have the confidence that Social 
Security will be available beyond the year 2030.
  So I think the President is absolutely right. Let's solve Social 
Security, let's pay off some of the debt and whatever other things that 
we want to do. However, let's use the same fiscal discipline that we 
have used for the last 5 years to ensure that we provide good child 
care, good education, good health care, and a vital economy. We should 
pay for new investments and that's what the President's budget is 
doing. Every single thing in the President's budget is paid for, every 
penny of it.
  So it's an exciting day. We celebrate success. We celebrate vitality 
in the economy the likes of which many of us have never seen in our 
lifetimes. We celebrate and perhaps look back with some satisfaction to 
tough decisionmaking. And we look ahead, having

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learned those lessons, with some expectation that it can continue. We 
will continue to make tough decisions. We will continue to keep this 
economy robust. We will continue to show fiscal discipline. We will 
continue to be sure that regardless of what else we do, when we invest 
in our future, when we invest in our children, when we invest in the 
things that our people care so much about, that we make those 
investments good by paying for them. First, by protecting Social 
Security; second, by paying off some of the debt; third, by investing 
in things that are totally paid for with offsets that are real and 
calculable.

  Mr. President, if that isn't a recipe for success, I don't know what 
is. I hope all of us, Republicans and Democrats, can acknowledge the 
importance of maintaining that success as we go forward. I noted that 
yesterday marked the first day of the debate of the 1999 budget. While 
we can debate a lot of things, I hope several things are off the table. 
I hope we don't go back to the old mistakes we made in the 1980s. I 
hope that we recognize that rosy scenario has no place in budget 
calculations any longer; that we have to ensure that the fiscal 
discipline and the leadership that we have demonstrated persists and 
can consistently be demonstrated through the decisionmaking process we 
make on the budget this year.
  (Mr. ROBERTS assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from South Dakota 
will yield.
  Mr. DASCHLE. I am happy to yield to my colleague.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know the Senator comes from a reasonably 
small town in South Dakota. I come from a much smaller town in North 
Dakota.
  I have said on several occasions that in my hometown, like most 
hometowns, we have a couple of people who get up in the morning and go 
down to the bar and play pinochle all day. They are retired. They sit 
around and play pinochle and enjoy life. The fact is, they sit around 
and play pinochle and complain while other people are out doing other 
things, like figuring out how to pave Main Street. Almost nothing 
satisfies them. There are people like that in every hometown, and there 
are people like that in Congress. The fact is, there is no amount of 
good news that can satisfy the people who are bent on having a bad day. 
I find it interesting that we went through part of the eighties and 
some of the nineties going in the wrong direction, and everyone was 
standing up and saying, ``Gee, we were right on course; the deficit was 
continuing to escalate, the Federal debt was continuing to grow and 
mushroom.'' Everybody said, ``Well, we're right on course.'' But we 
weren't on course.
  The Senator from South Dakota, I know, understands well the 1993 
vote. In that vote, we on this side of the aisle said, ``Wait a second, 
this train is running right down the wrong track. We are going to stop 
it, back it up, turn it around and move it in the other direction.'' 
That is what has gotten us to the point we are at today, where instead 
of seeing escalating budget deficits and mushrooming Federal debt, we 
are seeing exactly the opposite. We not only see reduced deficits, and 
a reduced debt burden, but also an opportunity, even as we balance the 
budget, to invest in critical things that are important to the future 
health of the country. Is that how the Senator sees it?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I appreciate the observation made by the 
Senator from North Dakota. That is true. There are some people who, 
given the kind of cards we have been dealt, you think would find some 
cause for optimism with all the good that is happening today: housing 
starts the highest they have been in history; the number of new jobs 
the highest they have ever been; the strength of the economy; the low 
interest rates; the fact that we are going to see a surplus; a growth 
in the economy that exceeds that of Europe and Japan together. That 
remarkable economic success ought to be cause for optimism for even the 
most ardent political pessimists sometimes found among our colleagues 
on the other side.
  So I acknowledge, as you do, that it is a remarkable day when, even 
with all of this good news, there are still some people who are trying 
to find the dark lining in the cloud.

  There isn't much dark lining there. If we stick to the text that we 
have been using for the last 5 years, there is a lot of silver lining 
upon which we ought to be building our future.
  Again, I appreciate very much the Senator's leadership in bringing 
this to the attention of the American people and helping us as we make 
these tough decisions each and every day.
  Mr. President, I know others are seeking time for the floor. So, 
again, I thank the Senator for allocating this time for discussion of 
the budget and our current circumstances. I yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me continue for a couple of moments to 
finish the presentation I was intending to make.
  The reason I come back to the 1993 vote is that it was so 
controversial and so difficult for so many people. There were people 
here who said, ``If you do this, if you pass this bill that makes a 
fundamental change in fiscal policy, you are going to cause a train 
wreck and you are going to run this country into a depression.'' We had 
people say that on the floor of the Senate. I won't read their quotes 
because that would not be fair. That was the intention of some folks on 
the floor, to say this is a terribly wrongheaded policy and going in 
the wrong direction. It turns out it was very important we change the 
direction of this country; it was the right policy.
  When President Clinton proposed this budget, he talked about saving 
Social Security first. This is another way of saying we ought to pay 
down some of this debt. The problem has been that the Social Security 
trust funds have been used in the operating budget. I have been on the 
floor repeatedly talking about how inappropriate that is.
  We ought to not step back into the same old hole we have been in for 
a decade and a half, or even more. We ought not to decide, the minute 
the budget picture looks better and we are headed in the right 
direction, that we are going to provide more tax breaks or more 
spending. What we ought to do is provide some confidence to the 
American people that we can manage this country's fiscal policy in a 
way that provides balanced budgets far out into the future. This 
President has done that in a way that says we are going to establish 
the right priorities for this country's future.
  I want to mention two of them because others will come and talk about 
different portions of this budget. I want to talk about two. Some of 
the things the President has proposed represent additional investment 
in certain kinds of activities, and he has achieved that by reducing 
spending in other areas. I want to mention a couple.
  Head Start. Does anyone in this Chamber who has visited a Head Start 
center believe that that is not the best kind of Federal investment we 
can make in young lives? Does anybody believe that program doesn't 
work? All of the evidence suggests that it is a wonderful investment in 
young lives. You go there and look in the eyes of these young children, 
4- and 5-year-old children who are getting an opportunity in Head Start 
that they wouldn't have had otherwise. It yields tremendous rewards in 
the lives of each and every one of them.
  When someone says, as we have seen in the past, ``Well let's cut the 
budget and cut 60,000 kids out of Head Start,'' I say, ``You tell me 
their names, which kids do you want to cut out of Head Start?''
  This President says, and I hope this Congress will agree, that 
program works, that program makes sense, that program improves young 
citizens' lives. That's why his budget proposes to increase Head Start 
funding by $309 million in the coming fiscal year.
  Let me make one final point. There is a lot in this budget that makes 
a lot of sense. The National Institutes of Health. This President says 
let's do what we ought to do. Let's increase spending of the National 
Institutes of Health, and he does so in a way that gets NIH funding to 
$20 billion in 2003, up nearly 50 percent over the coming 5 years, by 
achieving savings in other parts of the budget.

  But I want to tell you briefly what they are doing down there at NIH. 
They have 50,000 plants, shrubs and trees from all around the world 
they collected with USDA, and they are

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doing research. I encourage all my colleagues to go see what they are 
doing.
  Contemporary medicine derives many of its drugs from plant sources 
all around the world. They are doing an investigation of chili 
peppers--chili peppers. Do you know what they are finding? Chili 
peppers have a pain-killing extract. People knew that in folk medicine 
long ago, but now it is being refined and used.
  Sweet wormwood, a plant that has potency against malaria.
  The willow tree, aspirin. The Chinese knew that 2,000 years ago. The 
java devil pepper, a drug used as hypertensive agents against high 
blood pressure. Rose periwinkle, used in Hodgkin's disease, anticancer 
agents. Foxglove, used in congestive heart failure.
  The point is, go down and look at what they are doing and what we are 
getting for this investment. It is going to improve the lives of people 
in this country because it will lead to significant medical 
breakthroughs. And this is just one part of their research, in the area 
of evaluating plants, trees and shrubs all around the world for what 
folk medicine used to understand they can contribute. We are 
understanding in a more significant and sophisticated way that these 
natural resources can help people live a healthy life.
  Go over to the Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and take a look at 
what they are doing with respect to heart disease and genetic research. 
It is possible some day in the future that someone whose arteries 
become clogged will have their body grow a new artery link around that 
blockage. That comes from genetic research.
  My point is, that is an area of the budget that I am very excited 
about. Gosh, that makes a lot of sense because that is an investment in 
the future, that is an investment that is going to help this country 
and all people of the world.
  I think it is exciting that we can come to the floor of the Senate at 
a time when the country is headed in the right direction. We have more 
jobs, more opportunity, more confidence in the future. The things that 
were troubling us--inflation, welfare, budget deficits, unemployment--
are all of them down, down, way down. That ought to give cause for 
optimism to all Members of the Senate. And it should give the American 
people the confidence that finally we are moving in the right 
direction.
  That is why this budget document is important. It sets out some 
priorities. Are some of them maybe adjustable? Are some of them wrong? 
Yes. Are a lot of them right? Yes. Let's have a debate about that, and 
let's describe and select those priorities that we believe will 
strengthen and improve this country.
  I am happy to yield such time as he consumes to the Senator from 
Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for 
this opportunity to speak.
  I came to Washington 15 years ago to be a Member of the House of 
Representatives. I can recall that one of the major items that we 
discussed in the entire 14 years that I served was the budget deficit. 
It seemed like such an impossible, intractable problem. Through 
President after President, we had these theories on how we were finally 
going to reach balance.
  Oh, there was this steely resolve from everyone that we are going to 
get it done, and it seemed to be an elusive target that we missed year 
after year after year. As the balanced budget effort failed, the debt 
of the Nation grew and our deficits grew. We continued to shell out 
millions and millions and billions of dollars in interest on the 
national debt, money wasted that couldn't be spent for other good 
purposes.
  Thank goodness we are in a different era. I pick up the morning paper 
and see the President of the United States has submitted to Congress 
for the first time in over 30 years a balanced budget. I read as well 
the last balanced budget submitted by President Lyndon Johnson was the 
result of a substantial tax surcharge which was imposed on the American 
people. So this President has brought us to a point with a balanced 
budget without this increase in taxes on working families, but giving 
us, I think, a better opportunity in the future.

  How did we reach this point? I think you have to go back at least to 
1993 when we passed the budget of the President. A Democratically 
controlled Congress, with not one Republican vote in support, passed a 
budget which moved us substantially toward a balanced budget.
  It said that in the outyears, we would reduce spending, we would make 
certain that our books would be in balance, and then, to give credit 
where it is due, with the Republican Congress, just this last year, we 
came together again and, on a bipartisan basis, finished the job, 
finished that last important but small piece that needed to be added to 
reach balance. Add that to our bustling and thriving economy, and we 
have a situation that all of us can finally take pride in that we have 
a budget that is balanced for America and is balanced in its 
priorities.
  Speaking to that budget, my friend from North Dakota mentioned 
several areas that are near and dear to my heart. The whole concept 
that we would finally find the resources in this budget to help working 
families pay for child care is one that is long overdue. During the 
break that we just completed, I traveled the length and breadth of 
Illinois visiting child care centers, seeing what was going on in the 
small communities and large cities of my State.
  I can tell you, it is heartening, it is encouraging--but there are 
many challenges there--to go to St. Vincent de Paul Child Care Center 
in the city of Chicago and find 400 children in a very positive, warm 
and safe environment and to know that those children are receiving the 
very best care. But then I hear from Sister Katie that there are, in 
fact, a thousand more children waiting to come to that center. Where 
are those kids today? Who is watching them? What are they learning? Is 
it good or bad?

  The President's budget says let's start providing more money for 
families to pay for child care, and he issues the resources from the 
tobacco agreement--one that I think should be one of our highest 
priorities this year. If we leave town in 1998, if this Senate and 
House leave town without enacting tobacco legislation--a tobacco 
agreement, a comprehensive approach--we will have turned our back on a 
golden opportunity for families across America to help pay for child 
care.
  In the area of medical research, it always puzzled me that this area 
of research, which is so popular among the American people, didn't 
receive the kind of investment that it was due. I will give credit 
where it is due, within the last year or two my colleague from 
Illinois, Congressman John Porter, and others, have moved forward to 
increase NIH funding.
  We can do better. We can do more. With this tobacco agreement and the 
proceeds from it, through this budget, we will finally start making the 
kind of investment in health research which every family cares for. 
Now, people may not come up on the street and say, ``Senator, I hope 
you will do something about health research,'' but I say just visit a 
hospital. Visit a hospital where some family member is seriously ill 
and sit around for a few minutes, and you know what they will say. ``I 
hope that the people working in Washington and all across the country 
can help spare my family or at least some other family what we have 
gone through with this health problem.''
  The last point I will make is critically important. There is a lot of 
talk about what to do with our surplus. There is kind of a surreal 
quality to this--a surplus? It was just a year ago that if you came to 
the floor of this U.S. Senate you would have found several Members--one 
parked at this desk right over here--with a stack of books higher than 
his head, all the budgets that have been submitted that were not in 
balance. And what was his suggested solution and the solution of many 
of my colleagues? An amendment to the Constitution.
  It is fortuitous that on the floor waiting to speak next is Senator 
Robert Byrd. Senator Byrd of West Virginia has led the fight against 
this notion for a long, long period of time. Senator Byrd will recall 
the speeches, ``If we don't amend this Constitution, if we don't put a 
balanced budget amendment in the Constitution, we will never reach 
balance. We have to change the Constitution.'' Senator Byrd had the 
wisdom and the leadership to stand up and say, ``You are

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wrong. This can be done with political will. It need not be done by 
changing the Constitution of the United States.''
  Here we are 12 months later, I say to the Senator. I don't hear the 
hue and cry on the floor anymore from our friends on the other side of 
the aisle about amending the Constitution. They pick up the paper in 
the morning and say, ``You've reached a balanced budget.'' We didn't 
have to put that travesty in our Constitution. I think there is a 
lesson there. We certainly owe a great debt of gratitude to Senator 
Byrd for his leadership in reminding us that we ought to step back and 
take a look at the course of American history before we jump and run 
and add things to that great document.
  Now today, I say to the Senator, there are people who say we don't 
have to worry about the deficit anymore, our biggest problem is trying 
to figure out how to spend this surplus. All this extra money, what can 
we do? Can we declare a dividend for the American people? Give them tax 
breaks and become the most popular politicians in a generation? I 
suppose we could do that, but I think that is shortsighted. We don't 
know where this economy will be 6 months or a year from now. We don't 
know where Federal revenues will be. It is far better for us to take a 
cautious course.
  I think President Clinton was right in his State of the Union 
message. Our first stop on that course should be Social Security. Let's 
make certain that if there is a surplus that we can count on, that we 
invest it back into Social Security so that it is there not just for 
generations to come but for the next century. We can do that, and we 
can do it if we don't rush to judgment here, if we don't spend this 
phantom surplus, if we don't overinvest.
  As we were caught up a year ago in the idea of amending the 
Constitution, let's not get carried away in 1998 with overspending this 
surplus that may be illusory or only temporary.
  I stand today happy that this administration has brought forth the 
first balanced budget in 30 years, but understanding that within that 
budget are important priorities for the working families of America, 
priorities which will never see the light of day unless this Senate and 
the House of Representatives work together to make certain that we keep 
your eye on the goal. The goal is making sure that we have a better 
standard of living for families across America.
  I thank Senator Byrd for giving this opportunity to speak and I yield 
the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the very distinguished Senator from Illinois. He is 
an extremely able Senator and he is focused on the betterment of the 
country and always with the interests of the people of his State 
uppermost in mind. I am glad to serve with him.

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