[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 1 (Monday, January 24, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3-S5]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  SECOND SESSION OF THE 106TH CONGRESS

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, let me again welcome our colleagues back. 
I had the opportunity this morning to discuss the schedule and the many 
mutual matters of concern with the majority leader. Let me again 
welcome back our staff and express heartfelt appreciation for the great 
job that so many of our people have done over the last couple of months 
while we have been gone. I welcome our colleagues back not only to a 
new session but a new year, a new century, and a new millennium.
  As we begin this new year, Americans have every reason to be proud 
and optimistic. In the last decade of the last century, we saw freedom 
and democracy triumph around the globe. We saw Eastern Europe abandon 
communism and the Soviet Union disintegrate. We saw Nelson Mandela walk 
out of prison and into history as the first democratically elected 
President of the new South Africa.
  Here at home we restored strength to America's economy. We started 
the last decade with the biggest budget deficits in our Nation's 
history, and we ended it with the biggest budget surplus. We have seen 
more than 20 million new jobs created in the last 7 years. Today we 
have the lowest unemployment in 40 years, and the lowest unemployment 
ever among African Americans and Hispanics. Americans are working 
again.
  Finally, after 20 years, real wages for America's families are 
growing again. Family incomes are up, and inflation is virtually 
nonexistent.
  We also made progress in the last decade on the many social problems 
that some people thought were intractable. Since 1993, we have seen a 
48-percent decrease in the welfare rolls, the largest decline in our 
Nation's history. We put 100,000 new police officers on the street, and 
today the violent crime rate is the lowest it has been in a generation. 
We enacted the single largest investment in children's health since 
1965 and the largest increases in higher education since the GI bill. 
Today our Nation is prospering, and we are at peace.
  The question facing us as we begin this new session of Congress, this 
first session of the 21st century, is: How do we keep America moving in 
the right direction? How do we provide the leadership that will help 
continue the global march toward freedom and democracy?
  Here at home, how do we keep our economy growing? How do we help 
ordinary Americans provide for their families and prepare for their 
future? How do we widen the circle of opportunity to include those who 
have been left out up until now?
  There are many, frankly, who believe we will not answer those 
questions this year. They look at how little we accomplished last year 
and the fact that this is a Presidential year and conclude that little 
or nothing will happen between now and November. It does not have to be 
that way.
  A month ago, a lot of people thought the Y2K bug might cause all 
kinds of chaos. Instead, almost nothing happened. When it comes to us, 
when it comes to this Congress, people expect nothing to happen this 
year. Why not surprise them? We have extraordinary opportunities to do 
significant work this year, and we should work together to seize those 
opportunities.
  Let's not worry about who gets the credit. Let's worry about getting 
the job done.
  If the best minds in this country could work together to kill the Y2K 
bug, surely the best minds in the Senate can work  together this year 
to protect Social Security, to modernize Medicare, and to pass a real 
Patients' Bill of Rights. We can work together to improve our 
children's schools. Working together, surely we can find new ways to 
help ordinary working families earn more and keep more of what they 
earn.

  There are all kinds of reasons for inaction, but there is not one 
good excuse. Henry Ford once said, ``You can't build a reputation on 
what you are going to do.''
  You cannot construct much of an argument for governing either just 
talking about what you are going to do. Eventually, one has to act.
  I believe there are essentially three challenges facing us this year. 
If we meet these challenges, I believe, frankly, that it will be good 
for both of our parties next November. Good policy, as they say, is 
good politics.
  More importantly, if we meet these challenges, it will be good for 
America, for our economy, for our families, and certainly for our 
future.
  Our first challenge is to maintain our fiscal discipline. Later this 
week, we expect new estimates from CBO and OMB about how large the 
surplus might be in the year 2010. We do not know today what their 
predictions will be, but we do know today that the best first use of 
whatever surplus we have is to protect Social Security and strengthen 
Medicare.
  Now--when our economy is strong, when we have a surplus, when we 
still have time on our side--is the time to prepare for the baby 
boomers' retirement by extending the life of the Social Security trust 
fund. Now is the time to modernize Medicare and add the prescription 
drug benefit so people do not have to choose between filling 
prescriptions and paying utility bills. That is an essential part of 
maintaining fiscal discipline.
  Maintaining fiscal discipline also means paying down our $5 trillion 
national debt. Mr. President, $2,200 is how much our national debt will 
cost every family in America this year. Think what a family could do 
with that much money.
  My colleagues and I support tax cuts that help working families with 
real, pressing needs such as child care and paying for college and 
caring for sick and aging relatives. We support eliminating the 
marriage penalty tax for couples who pay a marriage penalty. We support 
tax cuts that help small businesses grow and make it easier to keep 
family businesses in families.
  We want to work with our friends on the other side of the aisle to 
pass responsible, targeted tax cuts this year, but we all know what the 
best tax cut is. The best tax cut for America's families and America's 
businesses is to pay down the Federal debt.
  This year, because of the progress we have made since 1993 in 
eliminating the deficit and reducing the debt, the average American 
family will save $2,000 on

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their mortgage, $200 on their car loan, and $200 more on student loans.
  The American people made it clear last year they do not want a tax 
cut that is so big it wrecks the economy. They do not want a tax cut 
that is going to explode in a few years and add to our debt. They do 
not want a tax cut that disproportionately rewards the people at the 
very top at the expense of everyone else. What they want is for us to 
maintain our commitment to fiscal discipline and to Social Security and 
Medicare.
  Our second challenge is to expand our economic recovery, not just 
sustain it, but to broaden and deepen it to include more families and 
more communities.
  These are extraordinarily good times for many Americans, but too many 
families in this country are still struggling to afford even the 
basics. Too many children go to bed hungry. Too many Americans still 
live on the outskirts of hope. The people who have been left out of 
this recovery include some of the hardest working, most decent people 
you would ever want to meet.

  They include working mothers who get up before it is light and take 
three buses to get to their jobs at nursing homes. They include former 
factory workers who lost their economic footing when the plant closed, 
who work now at jobs that pay one-third as much, with no benefits.
  They include farmers and ranchers in South Dakota and across the 
country who work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, who are out there right 
now in the bitter cold and snow, not even making back their production 
costs, earning less than their parents and grandparents earned in the 
Great Depression.
  Throughout our history, from our earliest days as a nation, Americans 
have always strived to do better. We did not stop when we cured polio. 
We said: Now let's cure cancer.
  Next week, we will become the first Americans ever to achieve 107 
consecutive months of economic expansion. Surely we will not be the 
first Americans to say: This is all we can do. We have reached the end 
of our possibilities.
  Let us together expand this recovery.
  Our third challenge this year is to finish what we left unfinished 
last year. We need to pass a real Patients' Bill of Rights that lets 
medical professionals, not HMO bureaucrats, make medical decisions. 
Senator Lott and I discussed that just this morning. I do hope there is 
a real possibility for compromise and ultimately for the successful 
completion of our work on a Patients' Bill of Rights.
  We need to increase the number of Americans with private health 
coverage. We need to help communities repair schools that are falling 
down and expand schools that are filled beyond capacity.
  We also need to help communities hire qualified teachers and keep the 
good teachers who are already in the classroom. It is the only way we 
can fill the 2.2 million teacher vacancies we know will exist within 
the next 10 years.
  We need to keep the crime rates moving in the right direction by 
making it harder for kids and criminals to get guns, keeping our 
commitment to put another 50,000 new police officers on the beat by the 
year 2005, and giving law enforcement the resources they need to combat 
hate crimes.
  We need to keep crime rates moving in the right direction by cracking 
down on scam artists who target the elderly and by filling the 
vacancies on the Federal bench this year--no more excuses, no more 
delays.
  Also this year, we need to make it easier for parents who work full 
time to raise their families out of poverty by raising the minimum wage 
$1 an hour and expanding the earned-income tax credit.
  We need to pass meaningful, comprehensive campaign finance reform.
  Finally, we need to continue opening up new markets for American 
goods and services by passing the Africa trade/Caribbean Basin free 
trade initiative this year.
  So those three challenges ought to be ones we all share:
  No. 1, maintain our fiscal discipline, protect Social Security and 
Medicare, and pay down the debt;
  No. 2, expand the recovery to families and communities that have not 
yet benefited from it; and
  No. 3, finish what we left unfinished last year.
  In the weeks since we were together, I was fortunate to be able to 
spend a wonderful holiday with my family. I got to spend a lot of time 
in South Dakota. I talked with some remarkable people--from business 
and education leaders who are working together in Sioux Falls to try to 
keep up with the demand for high-tech workers, to family farmers and 
ranchers who are working practically around the clock to scratch out a 
living.
  I talked to a farm wife who gets up at 4:30 in the morning and drives 
over 90 miles to get to Howard, SD, to work at the PMB plant there, as 
they wrap every Pokemon card that is distributed in the United States--
right there in Howard, SD--only to drive another 90 miles back getting 
home, sometime after 7:30 at night, to do it all over again the next 
day.
  That work ethic is representative of the work ethic all across South 
Dakota and the upper Midwest.
  I had the privilege of traveling with Senators Akaka, Dodd, and Harry 
Reid to one of the most amazing, and troubled, regions of the world: 
India and Pakistan. We went to promote trade and understanding, but we 
also went to encourage both India and Pakistan to defuse the tensions 
between their nations and to step back from their increasingly tense 
nuclear arms race. I am hopeful we made some progress on both matters.
  Being in those two nations reminded me again of how fortunate we 
Americans are. We talked to Tibetan refugees who fled Tibet over the 
19,000-foot Himalayan Mountains, suffering the worst maladies in 
health, recognizing that 40 percent of them might have to deal with 
serious frostbite on their feet and hands by the time they arrived in 
Nepal--only to do it because they wanted to be free, only to do it 
because they, too, wanted to experience at least some element of 
democracy.
  There is so much we as beneficiaries of democracy take for granted. I 
do not mean simply our material wealth and consumer comforts; I mean 
our most precious possession of all, our freedom. You recognize that 
every time you travel abroad, whether it is Pakistan, Nepal, India, or 
any other country.
  India, the world's largest democracy, is now celebrating the 53rd 
anniversary of its independence this year and the 50th anniversary of 
its Constitution. Perhaps because democracy is still relatively young 
in India, perhaps because of the high price they paid for their 
liberty, the people I spoke with in India seemed very much aware of how 
rare and how fragile democracy is.
  In Pakistan, we visited a country where a democratically elected 
government had only a few months before been toppled and replaced by a 
military ruler--another reminder of how privileged we are to live in 
the world's oldest and most secure democracy.
  I am encouraged by my discussions with General Musharraf and very 
hopeful they can restore economic progress, restore democratic 
institutions, and can find a way with which to begin resolving the 
regional conflict that is so prevalent in all the conversations we had 
with leaders in both countries, India and Pakistan.
  Democracies are not perpetual motion machines. As the great poet 
laureate Archibald MacLeish wrote:

       America is never finished. America is always becoming.

  Every American has a responsibility to make our democracy work. But 
we who have been granted the privilege of serving in this body have a 
unique responsibility. The Congress is no ordinary institution. This is 
where Americans come to solve our common problems and shape our 
national destiny. This is also where younger democracies of the world 
turn for guidance and where people and nations not yet free look for 
hope. That was so evident in our conversations with people in all the 
countries we visited on this too brief a visit to the subcontinent a 
couple of weeks ago.
  Are we going to live up to our responsibility to make this 
institution work, as we know it can? Are we going to meet the 
challenges before us and pass measures that will make a real difference 
in people's lives or are we simply going to pass time until the next 
election?

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  As we begin this new session of Congress, let us resolve together to 
surprise everyone and do what needs to be done.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

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