[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 128 (Wednesday, September 23, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10815-S10817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BUDGET DISCIPLINE

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I wanted to return to the floor; I have 
spoken about this issue before, but I wanted to continue to raise the 
issue because as we move into the final weeks of this session of the 
Congress, it is one of the core issues we have to address; that is, the 
question of budget discipline as a Congress.

[[Page S10816]]

  It has taken us a long time--29 years, I believe--to get to a 
surplus, but this year we finally have a surplus. The American people 
place great faith in that and appreciation in that, and we as a 
Congress, obviously, are proud of the fact we finally reached a 
surplus. It was done as a result of a lot of hard work. We made some 
difficult decisions. We tightened down on the spending of the Federal 
Government and we especially maintained fiscal discipline here in the 
Congress. We did that through the use of what are known as caps. We set 
a budget in place, we had a 5-year budget agreement with the President 
last year, and it has led us on a glidepath to a surplus. The key to 
that budget agreement was that we set spending limits. We said: ``We 
shall not exceed those spending limits.''
  Unfortunately, as we move towards the closing days of this Congress, 
we appear to be at the point of almost saying that the caps are 
irrelevant, that the disciplining effects which they had which got us 
to this surplus are going to be cast overboard. That is because we have 
something coming at us called an emergency supplemental.
  An emergency supplemental is not an emergency, it is simply a bunch 
of spending which is going to be done outside the budget process, 
independent of the caps. On top of the spending which we said we would 
make, we are going to add new spending. It is as if you were running a 
household and you had income of $100 a week and you set your spending 
on your grocery bills and your electric bills so they would meet that 
$100. And then suddenly you said, ``I happened to make $110 this week 
so I am going to spend $110--well, no, maybe I'll spend $120. I am not 
going to limit my spending by what I had originally planned, I am 
simply going to raise it arbitrarily.''
  That is what is happening here. We are using a vehicle called an 
emergency supplemental to arbitrarily increase the spending of the 
Federal Government. The projection now is that we are going to have an 
emergency supplemental somewhere in the vicinity of $20 billion. That 
is a lot of money. That is going to have a very dramatic impact on the 
surplus, because the surplus is projected to be not a great deal higher 
than $20 billion. It could literally, depending on the economic effects 
of the Asian situation and the slowdown of the American economy, it 
could literally slow down arriving at the surplus if we spend $20 
billion more than we budgeted for, to exceed the caps in that way.
  Why does it get designated as an emergency? It gets designated as an 
emergency because, if it didn't get designated as an emergency, it 
would be subject to a point of order and you would have to get 60 votes 
in order to spend it. But if it is designated as an emergency, it does 
not get hit with a point of order and therefore it can be spent with 
just a majority of Congress supporting it. So the budget discipline is 
lifted off.
  What are these emergencies? One of the emergencies is that the year 
2000 is coming. As my colleague from North Carolina, Senator Faircloth, 
who happens to be one of the more original folks around here, said: Are 
we just suddenly learning that the year 2000 is coming? That is hardly 
an emergency. We know and we have known for a long time that the year 
2000 is coming. Thus, the additional $3 billion to address that is not 
an emergency. It should have been budgeted for.

  Another emergency is Bosnia. Did we suddenly find out that we are in 
Bosnia? No. We have known we have been in Bosnia for quite a while. 
Obviously, that is not an emergency.
  Another emergency happens to be the farm program. Originally it was 
asking for $2 billion in emergency spending. Now it is up to $4 
billion. The leader on the other side wants to make it $7 billion. I 
have to tell you, every year that I have been in the Congress the farm 
program has come to us and asked for an emergency spending bill. There 
is no emergency here, other than the fact that that is the way the 
money gets spent--outside of the budget process. We all know that 
certain areas of this country every year are going to have problems 
with their farm program. It is simply a function of weather and factors 
like weather. In this case, it is a function of the international 
economy going flat. But every year we have this. It is a predictable 
event, so it is not an emergency. It is something that we should be 
anticipating.
  Then we hear also that the President is going to come forward with 
emergency spending for defense. Clearly, defense needs more money. It 
is rather unusual that the President should be saying this, because for 
the last 6 years he has essentially tried to cut defense and increase 
spending on all the other programs in the Federal Government on the 
back of defense, and now it suddenly becomes an emergency that he has 
figured out that after 6 years he has cut defense so dramatically that 
it is in a horrendous situation and we are basically heading towards a 
military establishment which may be a shell, which may not be able to 
deliver the defense of the United States.
  That may be an emergency in the sense that it is a clear threat to 
this country, but from a fiscal standpoint it was a known action which 
was taken by this administration over the last 6 years, to savage the 
defense budget, which has led us to this point. If it is the desire of 
the administration to suddenly increase defense funding, they should do 
it within the context of the budget process and take money from some of 
their beloved programs for which they have moved money out of defense 
and into those programs--take it back from those beloved programs and 
put it back in defense spending so this country is adequately defended.
  So the fact is, as we head towards the closing days of this session, 
we confront a potential hemorrhaging of the budget process through an 
emergency supplemental. We are hearing with crocodile tears, I think, a 
lot of talk from the leader of the other body and from the Vice 
President, and even the President to some degree, that any tax cut 
would be an attack on the Social Security trust fund because any tax 
cut would come out of surplus and thus would be taken from the Social 
Security trust fund. That is the mantra, now, of the political 
operatives of this world who work for the Democratic Party, the James 
Carvilles. That is what they are going to try to label Republicans: 
``You are going to cut taxes and you are going to cut Social Security, 
because that's going to come out of the surplus.''
  What is good for the goose is good for the gander. If that is the 
case when the President sends up here a $20 billion supplemental 
request, many of which are not emergencies but which are predictable 
events--like the year 2000, like the agricultural situation, like 
Bosnia, like the defense issues--if they are going to send that amount 
of money up and ask that it come out of the emergency supplemental 
funding process, which means it comes directly out of the surplus, that 
also is an attack on Social Security in the same context as a tax cut 
on the Social Security trust fund. You can't have it both ways, Mr. 
President and members of the administration. You can't be saying a tax 
reduction has an impact on Social Security but the emergency 
supplemental doesn't. They both do, because the surplus is a function 
of excess tax revenue coming in under the Social Security trust fund.

  What should we do? The proper fiscal thing to do is to offset this 
funding, these expenditures which we are going to undertake on the 
emergency supplemental. Granted, we can't do it all, I accept that, but 
we should certainly offset a large percentage of it. So before we come 
out here and hemorrhage the discipline that got us to a surplus, 
undermining the core elements that gave us fiscal solvency as a Nation 
for the first time in 29 years, I think we should pause and think about 
that and say, ``Listen, maybe we ought to step back, try to figure out 
a way to pay for this supplemental so we don't undermine the budget 
process and undermine the surplus and, to some degree, undermine the 
Social Security trust fund.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. FORD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. FORD. Madam President, I appreciate the remarks of the Senator 
from New Hampshire. Many of the economists give credit for the 
financial position of this country to the President and those who voted 
for the 1993 Budget Act, for which not a one on the side of the Senator 
from New Hampshire voted.
  Secondly, the CBO, which is an appointment of the majority party, has 
said there will only be a $31 billion surplus in the general fund at 
the end of 10

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years. He is partially right in saying if we have an emergency 
supplemental that it would come from the surplus, which is basically 
Social Security. Any tax break that is given comes from Social 
Security. I think whatever we might believe about the President, if a 
bill that goes to his desk that takes part of the Social Security trust 
fund money and spends it for a tax break or anything else that he will 
veto it, because the economic situation of this country is still an 
amazement to the rest of the world, how we have put our economy and our 
economic position in place.
  What is an emergency? I think the rules are basically something 
similar to this. I don't have it before me to read. But it is something 
that doesn't come all the time, it is unexpected. The Senator from New 
Hampshire says you can expect a drought, or you can expect too much 
water, or you can expect all these things, so you should fund for it. I 
have gone through years when we didn't have an emergency in the farm 
community. I have gone through years when we did not have an emergency 
appropriations. So, therefore, you didn't need to budget it.
  Secondly, the emergency is something that occurs and is not in 
perpetuity. The tax cut goes on; it doesn't stop. If you have an 
emergency now, you try to take care of that emergency; if it doesn't 
occur again, you don't have to do it again. If you give a tax break, 
that goes on forever, in perpetuity. So there is a difference between a 
tax cut and an emergency supplemental appropriations. It isn't 
something that reoccurs; you do it one time.
  As we look at the Freedom to Farm bill that was heralded as the 
savior for the farm program, we see now that it really doesn't work; 
there is no safety net for the farmers. There is a crisis in the 
Midwest. The farmers who raise the grain have had a lot of trouble, and 
it is not necessarily no rain, a drought, and so forth, but prices. The 
North American Free Trade Agreement, which only seven of us in the 
Senate voted against at the time, has now come back to bite us. When 
you find farmers standing at the border between the United States and 
Canada preventing those 18 wheelers from coming in, it is somewhat 
understandable that we should be concerned about it.
  I hope we can sit down and work out whatever moneys are necessary as 
it relates to an emergency supplemental, particularly for our farmers 
and particularly in defense.
  I did not want the Senator from New Hampshire to get up and say all 
these things as fact without having a little bit of the other side from 
whom some people refer to as a moderate Senator from Kentucky. I yield 
the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gorton). The Senator from Arizona.

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