[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 124 (Thursday, September 17, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H8021]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    HOW DO WE DEAL RESPONSIBLY WITH THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Minge) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MINGE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by associating myself 
with the remarks of my colleague from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) with respect 
to Social Security and budget policy tax-cut issues. I certainly feel 
that he has accurately identified a problem that we face in this 
country: How do we deal responsibly with the Social Security Trust Fund 
and our obligations or the obligations which will be due from that 
trust fund in the years ahead? Although all of us, I think, would agree 
that the tax cut proposal that is being considered or has been 
considered in the Committee on Ways and Means is a moderate proposal 
and that it distributes benefits equitably among the American people, 
the really difficult question is at what stage should we implement this 
proposal? Should we implement it when we borrow from the Social 
Security Trust Fund yet to balance the budget, or should we postpone 
the implementation of a proposal of that type until after we know that 
we no longer need to use the Social Security Trust Fund to balance the 
budget?

                              {time}  2115

  I would like to, however, extend my comments this evening beyond the 
budget issues that are raised with respect to Social Security and move 
to a slightly different topic area. * * *
  We have many responsibilities here in Congress. Perhaps most 
significantly, we should not let those actions deter us from attempting 
to complete the work on the budget. The budget that this body and the 
body at the other end of the building would have agreed to is 5 months 
and 2 days past due.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an awesome responsibility here to comply with 
the Budget Act, and we are not doing it. It is difficult to prepare and 
bring to the floor appropriations bills which fit within a budget that 
we have not yet adopted, or to identify the scale of tax cuts that we 
would like to work on when we have no budget with which to place those 
tax cuts in context. In fact, it appears that many of these efforts to 
bring bills to the floor, to discuss tax cuts are lonely efforts, 
because they are efforts that do not have within them that budget.
  It reminds me of the claymation figure that was used in the 1950s, a 
little figure that one of my staff members found a replica of: Gumby. 
Poor Gumby. His friend was Pokey. They wanted company. These 
appropriations bills, this tax cut consideration needs a friend. It 
needs the Budget Act, or it needs the budget resolution, and the fact 
that we do not have a budget resolution makes me think that the old 
1950s figures live again here in Congress in the 1990s.
  Mr. Speaker, I challenge the leadership of this body and of the 
Senate to appoint a conference committee so that the budget resolutions 
that were adopted in the respective bodies can be reconciled, so that 
this body is acting responsibly, and so we know that we have complied 
with the laws that we ourselves have adopted and lay down the standards 
for responsible fiscal planning. We need a budget resolution for the 
1999 fiscal year.

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