[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 142 (Saturday, October 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12297-S12299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to make several comments 
concerning some of the negotiations that are going forward. I remind my 
colleagues in the Congress that the Constitution gives the Congress, 
not the President, the authority and the responsibility to appropriate 
money, to pass bills. As a matter of fact, article I of the 
Constitution says:

       All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a 
     Congress of the United States. . . .

  Not in the executive branch, in the Congress, in the people's body.
  It also says under article I, section 9:

       No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in 
     Consequence of Appropriations made by law.

  Again, made by Congress. I think some people in the administration 
think that they are Congress now, that they can write appropriations 
bills. That is not constitutional. The President has his constitutional 
authority, and if he wants to veto appropriations bills, he has a right 
to do so. Let him exercise that right. He doesn't have a right to write 
appropriations bills.
  For some reason, some people have gotten this idea that the 
administration is an equal partner. They are an equal branch of 
Government, but we have different functions in Government. The 
executive branch can submit a budget, they can confer, they can 
consult, but Congress passes the appropriations bills, and we need to 
do so.
  Now we have the President making ever-extending demands: ``Well, I'm 
not going to sign that bill if you don't spend so much money.'' Fine. 
Very good. He vetoed the Agriculture Department appropriations bill 
because he said we didn't spend enough money and didn't spend enough 
money under the guise of emergency agriculture assistance.
  He requested $2.3 billion for emergency assistance. We appropriated 
$4.2 billion, and he vetoed it and said, ``We want to spend $7 
billion.'' In a period of a couple of weeks, he more than doubled his 
demands. He has a right to veto the bill; fine. He doesn't have a right 
to write the bill.
  Many people in his administration, maybe the President himself, seem 
to think, ``We are going to write the bill; we're just not going to 
sign it; if they don't give us more money, we are going to shut down 
the Government.'' Fine, he can shut down the Government.
  I stated to the press, and I will state it again, this Congress will 
pass as many continuing resolutions as necessary, and it may last all 
year. We may be operating under continuing resolutions all year long. I 
personally don't have any desire, any intention of funding all of the 
Presidential requests that are coming down the pike, for which, all of 
a sudden, he is making demands. I hope that our colleagues will support 
me in that effort.
  I am not in that big a hurry to get out of town. I heard the 
President allude to that in a very partisan statement that he made 
yesterday with Members of Congress: ``We need to keep Congress in.'' 
Mr. President, we will stay in. We will pass resolutions continuing 
Government operations at 1998 levels, this year's levels. We will pass 
that as long as necessary.

[[Page S12298]]

  We passed one for a week. We passed one for 3 days. We may have to 
pass another one. We may have to pass it for the balance of this year, 
maybe into next year, whatever is necessary. But I do not intend on 
being held hostage. The President said, ``Well, give me more money; I 
want to spend the surplus, whether it be for education, whether it be 
for Head Start.'' He has a whole laundry list. He calls them 
investments, but, frankly, they are a lot of new social spending. I 
don't have any desire to spend that money.
  I am quite happy and willing to stay here all year, all year next 
year, if necessary, but I don't want us to succumb to his demands. I 
have no intention of succumbing to his demands. I am, frankly, bothered 
by the fact that at this stage in time, the President is really 
ratcheting up the partisan rhetoric. Frankly, that is not the right 
thing to do if he wants to work together.
  It is interesting, the President made a very nice bipartisan speech 
saying, ``Yes, I compliment the Congress, they worked together and we 
passed the International Religious Freedom Act.'' I was involved with 
that. We worked with the administration. We did do bipartisan work. It 
took bipartisan work. But you don't get that kind of cooperation on the 
budget when you have the President making all kinds of partisan 
statements. I will give you an example.
  In his radio address given to the Nation today, the President said:

       This week, unfortunately, we saw partisanship defeat 
     progress, as 51 Republican Senators joined together to kill 
     the HMO Patients' Bill of Rights.

  One, I just disagree with that. The majority of Republican Senators--
as a matter of fact, unanimous Republican Senators--said, ``We are 
willing to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights,'' not defeat one. ``We are 
willing to pass one.''
  We made that offer to our colleagues on the Democratic side. We made 
it several times in June and several times in July. We said we were 
willing to pass this bill. As a matter of fact, we wanted to pass it 
before the August break. We made unanimous consent requests and said, 
``We will pass either your bill or our bill. You have the best bill 
that you can put together. You worked on yours for months; we worked on 
our bill for months. Let's vote, let's pass it, let's go to conference 
with the House.''
  But, no, the Democrats wouldn't agree with it. The Democrats kept us 
from passing a Patients' Bill of Rights. You don't pass a bill this 
complicated the last day of the session. Senator Daschle offered some 
amendment and said, ``Oh, let's run this through.'' That was nothing 
but for show.
  Yet we even find an e-mail from the House Democrat events coordinator 
that said, ``Hey, let's put on a real show; let's have everybody get 
together; Senator Daschle can orchestrate this; we will have a bunch of 
colleagues.''
  Sure enough, they had a bunch of colleagues go over in some show of 
support on the last day of the session. Bingo.
  If they wanted to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights, they should have 
said ``Yea, we agree, we will pass them, find out where the votes 
are.'' The Democrats would never agree to a unanimous consent request 
to pass Patients' Bill of Rights.
  They are the ones who killed the bill. When the President said, ``. . 
. we saw partisanship defeat progress . . .'' he forgot to say the 
Democrats wouldn't agree to a process to pass the bill, which we 
offered in June and several times in July. He forgot to mention that. 
It kind of bothers me because, again, he says, ``We want 
bipartisanship,'' and he makes a partisan statement on a national radio 
address.
  I have also heard the President state, ``We can't have a tax cut 
because we're going to reserve every dime of the surplus to protect 
Social Security.'' All the while--he knows it and we know it--he has 
his staff members running around the Congress saying, ``We want more 
money and we want to declare everything an emergency so it won't count 
on the budget, so it won't be part of the budget agreement'' that he 
adopted and agreed to in 1997. ``We want more money.''
  The totals are right in the $18 billion, $20 billion-plus range. ``We 
want more money for a lot of things and, oh, yes, it is all off budget; 
it doesn't count; it's an emergency.'' What a great game.
  Again, I remind my colleagues that the Congress is responsible for 
passing appropriations bills, and we need to pass them. If he vetoes 
them, fine, he can shut down the Government. We can pass continuing 
resolutions, and we can do that as much as necessary.
  The President in his weekly radio address said:

       Our Nation needs 100,000 new, highly qualified teachers to 
     reduce class size in early grades.

  He said, ``We need more teachers, more buildings.''
  The President said:

       So again today, I call on Congress to help communities 
     build or modernize 5,000 schools with targeted tax credits.

  Mr. President, I want more money for education. I want a lot better 
education, but I really don't want the President of the United States 
or some bureaucrat in the Department of Education deciding which school 
in Oklahoma gets a new teacher or which building in Oklahoma is going 
to be rebuilt or which classroom is going to be modernized or updated.
  Why should we have that decision made in Washington, DC? Why should 
Federal bureaucrats be involved? Maybe our schools in Oklahoma need 
more teachers or maybe they need new buildings or maybe they need new 
computers. Why don't we trust Oklahomans to make that decision? Why 
don't we trust the parents and the teachers and the school boards? No, 
this administration does not trust local school boards, local teachers, 
parents, Governors to be making that decision.
  He wants to mandate it from Washington, DC. This is a new demand. 
Guess what? We have had votes on these issues. He did not win. The 
President's program did not win. We had two or three votes earlier this 
year. He did not win on the school building program; did not win on the 
100,000 new teachers. But yet this is a new demand, that he is going to 
try to get it, he is not going to sign the bill unless we fund it.
  I am going to tell you right now, at least as far as this Senator is 
concerned--and maybe I do not control the conferences--but I do not 
have any intention to ever fund those programs. I think decisions on 
hiring teachers and building school buildings should be made in the 
local school districts, by the local school boards, by the parent/
teacher associations, by the Governors--not by those of us in Congress 
or, frankly, by some bureaucrat in the Department of Education.
  So maybe we will be here for a long time. Again, the President has 
the right to veto the bill. Fine. Let him veto the bill. Maybe we will 
be operating on continuing resolutions for the rest of the year. If 
that is what happens, that is what happens. I will, again, repeat that 
we will pass enough continuing resolutions as necessary to keep 
Government open.
  Maybe we will have to pass one every day. Maybe we will have to pass 
one every week. Maybe we will have to pass one every month. But we are 
not going to shut Government down. We are not going to demand anything. 
We will pass the continuing resolutions to keep Government operating at 
fiscal year 1998 levels as long as necessary. We will stay here. We are 
happy to stay next week. We are happy to stay the following week. We 
are happy to stay all year, if that is necessary. But I hope, and I 
believe, we are not going to succumb to this last-minute politicization 
of, ``We want more money. Let's spend the surplus.''
  I have even heard, in the President's radio or in his speech 
yesterday--``We've got the first balanced budget in 29 years. Our 
economy is prosperous. This budget is purely a simple test of whether 
or not, after 9 months of doing nothing, we're going to do the right 
thing about our children's future.''
  ``We want more money'' is basically what he is saying. I also heard 
him say we should save the surplus for Social Security. Now he is 
talking about new investments. In his speech yesterday, he said we need 
new investments for everything I have mentioned, but he also runs 
through a whole list of other new spending, social spending, that he is 
trying to crowd through in the last minute.
  I do not have any intentions of succumbing to these demands. I hope 
my colleagues will not. I just say this, with all respect, how the 
President

[[Page S12299]]

could demagog that we cannot have a tax cut because of the Social 
Security surplus and then in the next minute, propose to spend the so-
called surplus on all these investments is beyond me. I just have no 
intention whatsoever of going along with that.
  I think we should abide by the budget. I do not think we should 
squander the surplus with new Federal spending. Some of us were 
interested in tax cuts because we knew that if we did not allow 
taxpayers to keep their money, that Congress and/or the administration 
would say, ``Well, let's have more spending.'' There is a real 
propensity around the place to spend money.
  I just hope that our colleagues will resist that temptation. I hope 
that they will resist these new overtures by the administration that 
seems to think they should be an equal body with Congress in writing 
appropriations bills. I think we should have legitimate negotiations 
but, frankly, that does not make people equal partners.
  We have equal branches of Government with divisions of powers. Again, 
the Constitution says that Congress shall write the laws and Congress 
shall appropriate the money. We need to get on with our business and do 
that, send the appropriations bills to the President. If he vetoes 
them, fine, then let's pass a continuing resolution to keep Government 
open.

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