[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 37 (Friday, March 27, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2711-S2713]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEARS 
                    1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, AND 2003

  The Senate continued with consideration of the concurrent resolution.
  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, we have before the Senate today, and will 
have on into next week, the budget resolution which has been reported 
from Senate Budget Committee, on which I serve. I commend ranking 
member Lautenberg from New Jersey for his leadership as well as 
Chairman Domenici for his work on the budget resolution. Obviously, we 
have differences relative to some components of the budget resolution. 
I think the current resolution is significantly lacking in many serious 
ways. At the same time, however, I want to acknowledge the 
extraordinary circumstance that we now find ourselves in as Americans 
here in the spring of 1998.
  Many of us recognize that, upon his election 5 years ago, President 
Clinton faced a pool of red ink totaling around $292 billion per year, 
a pool of red ink that had exploded through the 1980s. When President 
Carter left office, this nation had accumulated a national debt of 
around $1 trillion. At the end of the 1980s, the accumulated debt of 
this country was four times that, in the $4 trillion range, and growing 
beyond sight.
  After five successive years in reducing the annual budget deficit, we 
now find ourselves, in this fiscal year, with a budget surplus as 
measured under the unified budget-scoring system. We are in the black 
for the first time in 30 years. The last time the Federal Government 
had a unified budget surplus was in 1969 during the Lyndon Johnson 
administration when taxes were raised in order to pay for the Vietnam 
war. We slipped back into deficit again and then drowned in red ink 
through the 1980s.
  So, we find ourselves in an extraordinary time. We must decide what 
kind of framework our Federal Government should have, and what kind of 
framework our budget should have, going on into the next millennium. 
After 5 years of budget discipline--in no small measure as a 
consequence of a very difficult vote on the 1993 budget reconciliation 
bill, which laid much of the groundwork for this progress--we find 
ourselves with record low inflation, record low unemployment, one of 
the highest levels of housing ownership that we have seen in decades, 
record low levels of crime and, again, the first budget surplus, at 
least under a unified budget, that we have seen in 30 years.
  Where do we go from here? That is the question that the pending 
budget resolution asks. This is not just a budget issue. This is one 
that really reflects the values and the priorities and the philosophy 
of the American people. It has enormous ramifications for us all.
  There are some very fundamental areas where the two political parties 
are in agreement on the budget resolution. I am thankful for that. I am 
pleased we have found common ground, first of all, in deciding that the 
budget resolution should sustain and continue the budget discipline 
mechanism that has been a factor in producing a budget surplus for the 
first time in 30 years. We will continue on a pay-as-you-go basis. No 
more new spending unless the cost is offset by spending decreases or 
revenue adjustments; no more tax cuts, even in an election year, unless 
those cuts are paid for by reduced spending or revenue increases 
somewhere else in the budget.
  This is the kind of discipline that one would have thought should 
have been present in our Government for 200 years but, in fact, has 
been present for just this past decade. It is the kind of discipline 
that we must sustain. While there are some who, I think, are expressing 
some sense of giddiness over a budget surplus, we need to recognize 
that that surplus will remain only with continued budget restraint and 
discipline; that we must face the question of budget priorities; and 
that the election year Christmas trees that took place in the past are 
no longer an accepted part of budget strategy in this day and age.
  Secondly, there is agreement between the parties, at least in the 
Senate Budget Committee, that the so-called budget surpluses ought to 
be preserved for the purpose of strengthening Social Security. We ought 
not to run off in any number of directions with tax cuts or spending 
increases premised on utilizing those particular

[[Page S2712]]

dollars. These so-called surpluses are really surpluses only if the 
Social Security trust funds are included in the budget, which is the 
nature of the unified budget.
  We have an agreement on the budget resolution that has emerged from 
our committee that those two underlying principles will be continued. I 
acknowledge the very great importance of those two underlying 
principles.
  There are some great differences, however, that I am hopeful can be 
addressed with amendments during the course of debate this coming week.
  One of the most fundamental differences, frankly, is how to utilize 
any resources that might be generated by a tobacco settlement. We all 
understand that a tobacco settlement is still only a possibility--it 
may occur or it may not--and the terms of any tobacco settlement ought 
to be driven by the merits of that issue itself. We should not see the 
settlement as simply a revenue generator for other purposes, regardless 
of how worthy they might be.
  Nonetheless, the President in his budget and Democrats in their 
alternative budget recognize that we do need to be thinking about how 
to utilize most constructively additional resources if they are, in 
fact, made possible by a tobacco settlement. Therein lies one of the 
most fundamental differences between the two parties.
  We are in agreement on preserving the Social Security trust funds; we 
are in agreement that we need to shore up Medicare. I think few people 
have done more to protect, preserve and strengthen Medicare than my 
colleagues on the Democratic side. We are pleased, however, to have 
support from our Republican colleagues on an issue that ought not to be 
partisan and one where we should be able to find common ground.
  The budget resolution that is coming to this floor, over the 
objections of the White House and over the objections of Democrats on 
the Budget Committee, sees to it that none of the potential new 
resources from a settlement will be used for health care for children; 
for schools; for child care; for expanding the National Institutes of 
Health research on cancer, heart disease, and so on; for rural 
development, or for deterring youth smoking. That is not to say that 
there are not attempts in other areas of the budget to touch on some of 
these issues, but certainly none of the tobacco funds could be used for 
these purposes.
  I have to say, simply being candid and looking across the political 
landscape in the Budget Committee, that what we have here is not so 
much a concern about the long-term viability of Medicare--we all share 
a concern for that. It seems to me that those who are making certain 
that none of the tobacco money may be used for many of the other 
problems created by use of tobacco, or for child care or education, are 
less concerned about Medicare, than they are simply opposed to creating 
a better partnership among the Federal, State, and local governments, 
and public and private entities, to address the problems of education 
and child care and health care in general.
  Mr. President, we have some enormous needs that the Federal 
Government cannot fix by itself, nor should it attempt to fix by 
itself, but where a constructive partnership makes a lot of common 
sense.
  We have found over the last several budget debates that the American 
people are not terribly ideological in the sense that they are far 
right or they are far left, they tend to be fairly pragmatic and down 
the center. That is why Democrats on the Budget Committee attempted to 
pass an alternative budget. In doing so, we recognized that replacing 
and renovating schools has always been and will always be primarily a 
function of local school districts and local citizens, taking it upon 
themselves to determine whether a particular school needs to be 
replaced or renovated. Those are local decisions and will remain so. 
But we have suggested that a small portion of these resources ought to 
be used to help buy down interest rates for the bond issues that are 
supported at the local level.

  Because of the enormous backlog of school repair and renovation work 
that is out there--it is in small towns, it is in large cities, 
suburban areas, rural and urban alike. As we head into this next 
millennium, we understand that those countries which focus on quality 
education and developing the brain power of the next generation are 
nations that will do well; those nations that neglect those resources, 
those nations that think these needs will somehow take care of 
themselves will slide backwards.
  We need a new commitment to education and to providing the resources 
for education, not simply for the intrinsic value of increasing the 
intellectual capability of our young people--although that certainly is 
the principal goal--but also from even a purely dollars-and-cents point 
of view. Our economy cannot thrive, our communities cannot prosper, 
unless we do better at making sure that every young person in this 
country has an opportunity to develop his or her God-given talents to 
the maximum extent possible, and that the resources are there to make 
it happen. We must have a public and private, a Federal, State, and 
local partnership that can make it happen.
  So it is with some frustration that I view this budget resolution, in 
its current form, as a wasted opportunity.
  I am hopeful that we can restore some of these priorities in the 
context of a balanced budget in a way that does, in fact, make some of 
these key investments in other areas as well.
  In the area of child care, we have an increasingly stark reality of 
more and more children being unsupervised, not having constructive 
after-school programs, that they are getting along on a latchkey basis. 
More and more often we have single-parent households. We also have more 
dual-income households, not necessarily because they want that to be 
their circumstance but because economic reality dictates that 
circumstance.
  Yet, at the age when children have the greatest brain development, 
when it is determined how well these children will succeed in their 
later years in terms of their fitting into society and being 
constructive citizens, that is the one age where we make the least 
commitment, where we have the greatest patchwork system, where quality 
is uneven, where affordability is uneven.
  I have held child care meetings all around my State with parents and 
child care providers and other concerned citizens. I am pleased that 
the Republican Governor of my State is very supportive of strong new 
initiatives for after-school programs and for child-care. We ought to 
be able to bridge this nonsensical partisan gap and look after the 
needs of our kids and the future generations of this country. That 
means, again, some level of partnership, not a system that is 
micromanaged out of Washington or that involves a new bureaucracy out 
of Washington. We do none of that in the Democratic alternative budget. 
We allow the decisionmaking to be made at the local level. We allow the 
initiative to be there. We allow tremendous innovation at the State and 
local level, but we believe there is a partnership needed for those 
communities and for those nonprofit organizations and for those schools 
to make a viable investment in our children.
  Mr. President, there is no funding for President Clinton's education 
initiatives in this budget resolution. There is no help for school 
construction. Fourteen million children currently attend classes in 
buildings that need major renovations; 7 million kids in our country go 
to school in buildings that currently have safety code violations; 16 
million children are in classrooms without proper ventilation, heating, 
or air conditioning.
  This is where we get on to a particular concern of mine involving 
Native American children. We have currently 60 BIA schools that need 
complete replacement. We are replacing them at the rate of one per 
year. I thank Chairman Domenici for his sharing a concern with me about 
this. We haven't really reached an entirely satisfactory solution to 
this problem, but I do appreciate that we have joined together in the 
inclusion of report language expressing our concern to the 
appropriators that additional funds be allocated for these Indian 
schools. These schools have some children from the most difficult 
circumstances imaginable, with 40 percent studying in portable 
classrooms, with dropout rates and other attendant problems of poverty 
and desperation at such high levels.

  I thank the chairman for his work with me on this very significant 
problem, and I understand his profound appreciation of the challenges 
we face in that regard.

[[Page S2713]]

  So, we have a budget resolution, Mr. President, that contains some 
strong underlying principles, and I am very, very pleased at that, 
because I think by maintaining a balanced budget, we can do more than 
almost any other single thing the Federal Government can do to reduce 
the cost of borrowing money. That makes going to college, buying a 
house, buying a car, expanding a business, hiring more employees, all 
more affordable. That will do more to maintain America's role as the 
world's great economic superpower than any other single thing we can 
do, and there is strong bipartisan support in that regard.
  But we have these other fundamental differences that I am hopeful can 
be addressed, at least in part, in the course of this coming debate on 
the Senate budget resolution. We can create a framework for investment 
in our communities, investment in our kids, in our schools, in health 
research, in a more meaningful way than the budget resolution that we 
currently have on the floor allows.
  We can do that. We can sustain Social Security, we can sustain 
Medicare, we can make other needed investments, while keeping the 
budget in balance. This is a remarkable point in time, one that many 
people thought would never occur in our lifetime. This, along with the 
fall of the Berlin Wall and some other events, are things that many 
people thought would not happen, but they are on the verge of 
happening. Now it is our responsibility in this body, the U.S. Senate, 
to make sure it happens in a responsible, sustainable way and we 
continue to make the key investments that will create the framework, 
create the foundation, for our country to prosper and to continue to 
grow, to create greater opportunity for all of its citizens. Not to 
guarantee success for anyone--that comes only about through their own 
labor, their own efforts, and their own talent--but to create the 
tools, the starting point for every American, regardless of his or her 
background, as an opportunity to prosper and to succeed.
  Mr. President, I want to make one additional comment unrelated 
directly to the budget resolution but on an issue which does impact our 
overall economy. I wish to express great, great concern over recent 
action by our colleagues in the other body who have failed to extend 
the ethanol fuel tax incentives that the Senate, by a large bipartisan 
majority, included in the ISTEA legislation.
  It appears, at this point, that our colleagues on the other side 
managed in effect to terminate a critically needed tax provision. This 
provision will not only allow ethanol fuel usage an opportunity to 
reach critical mass, a substantial benefit to farmers, but also will 
help clean our air and make this Nation less reliant on unstable Third 
World nations as sources of petroleum. At this point, however, it 
appears that there will not even be an opportunity for members of the 
other body to vote for an extension of the ethanol tax incentives.
  I am very concerned about this, and it is certainly my hope and 
expectation that Senate conferees, in the course of negotiating 
differences between the Senate and the House highway legislation, will 
give this a very high priority. It is important that we make the proper 
investments in our Nation's transportation infrastructure.
  It is also important that we move forward with a commonsense, cost-
efficient strategy for expanding use of clean, American alternative 
fuels. That can only be done by the conferees on the Senate side 
looking after the interests of the American people in that regard when 
the conference committee comes about.
  So, Mr. President, this coming week should be tumultuous but very 
important for the American people as we deal with the fundamental 
issues in the budget for the coming fiscal year, as well as 
transportation and fuel strategy into the next century.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield back my time and suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). If there is no objection, time 
will be divided equally between both sides. The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAMS. 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. GRAMS. Also, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak for up to 3 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much.

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