[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22656-22657]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                 TAXES

  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, for the people of America who are 
interested in where we are on the tax cuts and the President's message 
regarding the veto, I thought I might share my version of what has 
happened.
  First of all, the main reason the President has given for vetoing the 
tax bill is we need to take care of Social Security and Medicare first.
  The question is, When will the American people ever get a tax cut? If 
we don't ask that question, we don't put anything in perspective as to 
where we are and where we will be.
  I will share why I believe the tax cut was right and why I believe 
what the President is talking about is not right and will probably 
yield to no tax cut to the American people.
  First, I might ask rhetorically, how long has the President been 
President? I guess he has been President almost 7 years. He will then 
have an eighth year. Whatever legacy he will leave the American people 
is close at hand. Why have we not solved Social Security in the 6 years 
and 9 months he has been President? But now that we have a surplus, 
when we can give the American people a little piece of it in a tax cut, 
all of a sudden the President thinks we ought to save Social Security. 
Why didn't we save it last year or the year before?
  Why didn't we save it after the President conducted hearings in three 
or four cities in America and said he understood it and he thought he 
knew what we ought to do and he sends a package. However, in terms of 
reform he does almost nothing and sets up a new fund to put in a piece 
of everybody's Social Security money, not in individual investment 
accounts but, in a new trust fund to be run by--whom? Seven or nine 
people; appointed by whom? The Government of the United States. Who 
believes the Government is going to manage the funds for Social 
Security in a way to make money and enhance the value of their pension 
plans? Who believes that? Hardly anyone.
  Second, who believes we ought to have the Federal Government, with 
appointed people, investing billions and billions, maybe even trillions 
of dollars in the stock of America and in bonds in America, without 
being very concerned whether they will distort the market? Instead of 
being a free market with equities, loans and bonds, it will be a market 
controlled by what the Federal Government thinks? Just think of that, a 
year after it exists there will be somebody on the floor of this Senate 
saying: We should not invest any of that money from Social Security in 
cigarette companies. Boy, everyone will say, of course, we should do 
that. Then next year there will be a report that obesity comes from 
McDonald's

[[Page 22657]]

and other companies that sell us quick-fix foods. So somebody will say: 
Why would we want to invest money in McDonald's? They add to obesity in 
America. Then, who knows what else? We will distort the American 
market.
  Everybody who is thinking understands the President has not submitted 
anything credible on Social Security. Is it not interesting, there we 
are showing a $3.4 trillion surplus over the next decade, $2 trillion 
of which belongs to Social Security, and they will get it--but what 
about the rest of it? Should we sit around and wait to spend it? Or 
should we give some of it back in an orderly manner over a decade?
  Mr. President, your concerns about Social Security and Medicare do 
not ring true. They come into existence when you do not want to give 
the American taxpayers a tax cut. That is why all of a sudden they come 
up. Now you have even indicated we might be able to get that done in a 
few weeks. Get what done? Fix Social Security and Medicare, which you 
have not been able to fix in almost 7 years in office? In a few weeks 
we can fix it so we can give the American people a tax cut?
  Friends, you understand in a Republican budget there is a very large 
set-aside that is not spent on anything that can be used to repair 
Medicare. The problem is the President does not have a plan into which 
anybody wants to buy. He sent us a plan to fix prescription drugs for a 
part of America that might need them under Medicare, and nobody likes 
his plan--Democrat or Republican. So why doesn't he sit down and talk 
seriously about fixing that?
  A commission that was bipartisan, that came up with a reasonably good 
plan--bipartisan, bicameral, citizens and legislators--he caused that 
to be distorted and thrown away by asking his representatives to vote 
no when everybody else voted yes. Because we needed a supermajority, it 
failed by one vote. We had a plan.
  If I were a senior, I would say: Madam President, it looks to me as 
if you do not want my children and my grandchildren to have a tax cut 
because you are trying to use as an excuse that we have to fix Medicare 
and Social Security when you do not need that money that is going in 
the tax cut to fix either of them. Why did it take him so long to fix 
them, if all of a sudden we must fix them in the next few weeks in 
order to get a tax cut?
  Frankly, there are a lot of other reasons the President has given, 
but these are the ones that are politically aimed at America. If you 
read the polls, if you ask the question the wrong way, Americans will 
say: Fix Medicare and Social Security first. But if you said to them in 
a poll question: If we have sufficient money left over to give the 
American people a tax cut and we have enough money for Social Security 
and Medicare, would you want to give them a tax cut? watch the answer. 
The answer, instead of what they are quoting around, would be 85 
percent. That happens to be the facts.

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