[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 134 (Wednesday, September 30, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11152-S11154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          APPROPRIATIONS BILLS

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I have been wanting to come to the floor 
for some time to talk a little bit about the situation that we are in 
here in the Senate, here in the Congress, the amount of work that we 
have to do in a relatively short time, and, frankly, to urge my 
colleagues that we get on with it.
  The immediate need, of course, is to deal with the appropriations, to 
deal with continuing to finish what has to be done this year so that we 
keep the Federal Government operating, so that we do the things that 
need to be done.
  At last count, it seems to me, out of 13 appropriations, I think only 
three have been passed: one prepared by the Presiding Officer, which is 
the only one I think signed by the President.
  In any event, we have a great deal to do. Of course, as is always the 
case, there are many things being talked about, some of which are 
amendments on appropriations. Others are freestanding bills. But a lot 
of things could wait. None of us like to see things wait that are ours, 
of course. But I guess I am prepared to say that the appropriations are 
what we need to do, and finish this job so that a week from Friday we 
will be out of here. I think that is what we really need to do.
  It is an opportune time, having had almost all year dealing with 
appropriations, to remind my colleagues that we ought to take a look at 
a biannual appropriations process where we do that every other year, 
where we appropriate for 2 years as they do in almost all legislatures, 
which not only gives the agencies more time to know what

[[Page S11153]]

money they have to spend, but I submit to you that one of the important 
things that the Senate doesn't do as well as we should, which is 
oversight. One of the reasons is we spend all of our time on 
appropriations. So I hope that is something that we can do.
  I understand it is perfectly proper to promote those things that you 
feel strongly about. I understand that there are different points of 
view. That is part of the reason for this system. Substantially we have 
different points of view: The more liberal point of view, and the more 
conservative point of view. Those are valid, and we ought to promote 
them. But I think when we have diversionary tactics, as we have seen on 
the other side of the aisle over the last month, that keep us from 
doing what we ought to do, that we have to take kind of a long look at 
it.
  It has been clear for some time that has been the strategy--to move 
off of appropriations--a strategy of my friends on the other side of 
the aisle to move off of those onto other kinds of things.
  I hope the total end game is not to get us into this business of 
threatening to shut down the Government so that the President has 
leverage to tell the Congress we are going to do this or else. That is 
not good government. That is not what we ought to be doing. And I hope 
that doesn't happen.
  The Interior bill is a very important one, particularly to me. I 
happen to be on the Interior Committee. I stay very involved because of 
the large amounts of Federal lands that have been sidelined largely 
because of unrelated issues that have been used almost daily--issues 
like campaign finance reform, important as it may be. We have already 
dealt with that several times. It continues to come up. It continues to 
be threatened. Minimum wage--we have been through minimum wage, which 
continues to come up constantly. Patients' Bill of Rights. Good idea. 
And there are two Patients' Bills of Rights out there--one, of course, 
by the Senator from Massachusetts, one by the Republicans. Many of the 
components of the bills are the same. There are some very important 
differences. But that comes up constantly, and I am afraid what is 
happened is, it is simply being used to extend it as a political 
activity through the election time without really the purpose of 
passing it at all. I think the majority leader has said that there is a 
desire apparently to debate the bill as long as possible to use it as a 
campaign issue.

  Now, that is too bad. That is too bad. There is no one who likes to 
argue about different points of view better than I, but we have things 
to do and we ought to be moving, we ought to be moving on them.
  So the President, I think, has joined in that diversionary tactic 
now. His spokesman, McCurry, is saying that these appropriations bills 
will have to be done to the President's satisfaction. Well, I want to 
remind the Senate, as did our good friend, Bob Byrd, the other evening, 
that--let me quote from his talk to the Senate a week ago--

       The legislative branch must be eternally vigilant over the 
     powers and authorities vested in it by the Constitution. It 
     is vitally important to the security of our constitutional 
     system that checks and balances and separation of power be 
     maintained.

  He said further:

       We as legislators have a responsibility to work with the 
     Chief Executive, but it is intended to be a two-way street. 
     The framers did not envision the Office of President as 
     having the attributes of royalty.

  I certainly agree with that. And that is kind of what you see as we 
come down to the end of the appropriations--some attributes of royalty: 
It is either my way or the highway.
  Well, that is not the way you do legislative business. That is not 
the way it turns out best, and it is not the way we ought to be doing 
it.
  My good friend from Arkansas spent some time the other day speaking 
in terms of where we are with the economy. He was talking specifically 
about the proposed House tax reduction and was citing the 1993 Clinton 
tax increase as the reason for the balanced budget.
  I take exception to that. I don't think there is any evidence of that 
at all. He pointed out it was the largest tax increase in history, with 
not a single Republican vote. But anyone can raise revenue to close 
down the deficit. What you have to do is hold down spending, which has 
never been done by the White House, has never been done by this 
administration, but has in fact been done by the Republican Congress 
since 1994.
  Really, balancing the budget is the control of spending, and that is 
the way it ought to be. That is the way it ought to be. We have the 
highest taxes now that we have had since World War II, and we ought to 
do something about that. The American people and the business community 
are the ones who have balanced the budget by successfully competing in 
the world marketplace, by creating jobs and paying taxes.
  I had a letter from a constituent in Cody, WY, who has a point of 
view not everyone would agree with, but I thought it was interesting. 
He was talking about President Clinton's claim to have balanced the 
budget, and he said--this is from his letter:

       This is an extraordinary conclusion. It is mind-boggling 
     because President Clinton has nothing to do with the 
     successful economy. In fact, his efforts have only created 
     problems for the business community--overtaxation, 
     overregulation, endless legal challenges.

  That is a point of view. In any event, I think it is necessary to 
really be more precise about where we are.
  It is interesting now; we hear, of course, the President speaking out 
several times talking about ``save Social Security,'' and that all the 
surpluses ought to be saved for that. I think we ought to keep in mind 
that the Social Security surpluses over time have been used for 
Government spending, have constantly been used by Democratic Congresses 
all through the years, without having a balanced budget. The idea from 
the White House of ``saving Social Security'' has been a soundbite 
really without any outline particularly of how that is going to happen. 
We have to have some ideas, and there are some out there that are 
legitimate and good ones.
  The idea of saving the surplus and then coming up with almost a $20 
billion supplemental request out of the same fund doesn't make any 
sense at all. It doesn't make any sense at all. We need to do something 
about Social Security. I am not a big fan of tax cutting, frankly. I 
think it might be more important to pay off some of the debt. This 
year, the defense budget will be about $250 billion and interest on the 
debt will be almost $25 billion more than that, about $275 billion--
interest on the debt, paying for things that some of us have enjoyed 
and these young people sitting down here are going to pay for because 
we put it on the credit card.
  It wouldn't be a bad idea to pay off some of that debt. It seems to 
me maybe that is what we really ought to do.
  There are ways to fix Social Security, even though the White House 
hasn't come forth with any program except to say ``save Social 
Security.'' There are some ideas that are good ones. Take part of the 
12 percent, let it be made into a personal account for you and for me, 
and be able to invest it. And we can do that. And the return, of 
course, would be much greater. Furthermore, if for some reason you 
don't utilize all of it, it becomes part of your estate. It is 
something that people then would own.
  Now, that is a solution. That is more than just talking about ``save 
Social Security'' without having any plan to do that.
  So, Mr. President, I hope that we can address ourselves to this idea 
of completing our work here. I hope that we don't find ourselves using 
the special allocations beyond spending limits as a means of increasing 
the budget without moving the spending limits. I think we have promised 
ourselves we were going to do that. It seems to me that we--and this, 
of course, is my view; not everyone shares it; I understand that--ought 
to have several objectives over time, and one is to have a smaller, 
more efficient Government. I think we ought to constantly work for 
that.
  There are lots of things we are doing that the Federal Government 
doesn't do perhaps as well as local government, doesn't do as well as 
the private sector. We ought to pay down the debt so that we don't have 
this problem of the single largest line item in the budget is to pay 
interest on the national debt in this time of great prosperity. We 
ought to reduce taxes. We have, since World War II, the highest taxload 
on families in this country, and we ought to

[[Page S11154]]

change that. Generally, in my view, they ought to be taken in that 
order.
  So, Mr. President, I guess I have shared my view that we have some 
really important things to do. We have a very short time to do it. I 
hope we can get the obstacles out of the way and deal with our 
differences. We have them, but let's resolve those questions that are 
our responsibility to resolve.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________