[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 27639-27641]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         BUSINESS OF THE SENATE

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I will take a few minutes and talk about 
some of the things we are doing. Obviously, we are heading toward the 
end of this session. There is speculation as to when we will conclude 
our work. Of course, before that is done, clearly the most important 
thing before us is the appropriations process, funding the Government, 
and we will do that.
  I had the opportunity this weekend to spend some time in my home 
State. I can always pick up things about which people feel strongly. 
They want to see the budget signed. There are differences of view as to 
what that budget should contain--legitimately, of course.
  Most of the people in my State--and I certainly believe they are well 
informed because I agree with them--think we ought to hold down the 
size of the budget because that is how we really put some limits on 
Government. That does not mean we do not fund the things that are 
essential. Certainly we will not always have unanimity on what people 
perceive as being essential, and that is what it is all about.
  People do want the budget signed. They do not want the Government to 
shut down, nor does anyone here, and I hope not the President. He has 
indicated he does not. We have about five bills to complete and get 
signed. I am optimistic about it. We will conclude our work without a 
shutdown. We will conclude our work without spending Social Security 
dollars, which was the commitment we made.
  Out of the surplus this year--a surplus, frankly, for the second time 
in 25 years--we will only spend that money when it comes in the 
operational budget and not the budget of Social Security. More 
important, not only will we not spend Social Security money, but we 
also have a plan to strengthen Social Security for the future. To save 
Social Security is not enough. We must do that, of course.
  The other thing I have heard--and I already mentioned it--is hold 
down the size of Government; we do not want the Federal Government to 
continue to grow and to be the dominating factor in people's lives. 
Indeed, there are essential elements of the Federal Government, but the 
strength lies in the communities, States, and counties of this country. 
The more decisionmaking that takes place there, it seems to me the 
stronger we will be and the closer we will be to the governed making 
the decisions, and the better off we will be.
  We will do well. We will have to make some adjustments. One of them 
may well be an across-the-board cut of 1 percent. I happen to favor 
that idea. We are talking about a discretionary budget of about $595 
billion. That is out of a total of about $1.7 trillion, the rest being 
mandatory. We are talking about actually below 1 percent, a .97-percent 
across-the-board cut, which is about $3.5 billion. That will bring us 
down to $592 billion. I cannot imagine that agencies with a budget of 
$15 billion or $260 billion are unable to find 1 percent that can be 
reduced. Generally, through things that are not terribly important or 
some even considered to be wasteful spending, they can find 1 percent. 
In any event, I am very confident that can be done.
  Some say it will require the military to lay off. The fact is, after 
1 percent, it would still be a substantial increase over last year and 
over the President's request for the military budget. We are closing in 
on getting that job done. Certainly it is the compelling task before 
us.
  It reminds me of one of the things I believe we ought to consider, 
and that is a biennial budget, so we can do this business of budgeting 
and allocating resources every other year, which has the advantage of 
giving agencies and the Federal Government a better opportunity of 
knowing what they will be doing for a longer period of time. But more 
important, it provides an opportunity for 1 year to do budgeting and 
appropriations and 1 year for oversight which, in my view, is equally 
important. It is important for the Congress to have oversight of the 
expenditures and to ensure these expenditures are implementing policies 
that have been passed by the Congress.
  Most States do biennial budgeting and find it very useful, very 
satisfactory, and successful. I suspect there will be resistance, of 
course, from those

[[Page 27640]]

involved in the appropriations process because it will eliminate 1 year 
in which they have perhaps extraordinary authority in the direction we 
will take. Nevertheless, I hope this idea is favored by the chairman of 
the Budget Committee and by the leader of the Senate majority. That is 
something we ought to consider.
  As we talk to people at home, we ought to talk a little bit about the 
accomplishments of this Congress. I believe it has been extraordinary. 
It is a little difficult to keep up with it through the media's 
description of what we do; they don't like to talk about anything 
unless it is sensational; and also opportunities to communicate are 
very difficult. One of them is the budget.
  We have a surplus--the first time in 42 years. Two years in a row, we 
have had a surplus. Part of that, obviously, is we have more revenue 
coming in and a strong economy. But equally as important--perhaps more 
important--is the balanced budget amendments that were passed 3 years 
ago that have kept down spending. At the end of the seventies and 
through the eighties, into the nineties, growth each year was in the 
neighborhood of 10 to 12 percent. In this year, it is just over 2 
percent. Is it where we want to be? No. For many of us, it is not. 
Nevertheless, it is progress. We even have had, of course, a non-Social 
Security surplus.
  Instead of spending at 10 percent, which we did in the early 
eighties, we are spending at 2.8-percent growth. That is pretty good.
  Spending as a percent of gross national product has fallen during the 
nineties. Unfortunately, largely because of the President's tax bill in 
1995, the percentage of taxes with respect to the gross national 
product has increased, the highest since World War II. Of course, we 
tried to do something about that. We passed a bill that would have been 
a reduction in taxes, but, unfortunately, the President vetoed it.
  I mentioned Social Security and that we have to do more than simply 
talk about it. We can do that. Two years ago, President Clinton urged 
us to save Social Security first. Unfortunately, he has done very 
little since then, but there have been a number of things done here. 
Republicans have worked hard in seeking passage of a Social Security 
lockbox. Unfortunately, it has been filibustered on the other side of 
the aisle.
  One of the most fundamental changes I hope will be considered next 
year and passed is the notion of having private accounts where people 
who are closer to the retirement benefit age will continue as they are. 
But people 25, 35, and 40 years old will have the opportunity to take 
the dollars they have contributed to Social Security and put them in a 
personal account, directly invested in equities, directed by the owner 
through an investment program, that will have several benefits. One, it 
would belong to the taxpayer. If, unfortunately, you were not able to 
utilize it before you passed away, it would be part of your estate. The 
second is, the return on the investment would be more substantially 
invested in equities than it would be invested as it is now in 
Government securities. That is the real direction we need to take.
  Tax relief, of course, will be back again. It continues to be an 
issue. When you have taxpayers who are paying more into the Federal 
Government than is necessary to sustain the essential elements of the 
Government, then the money ought to be returned. It has been said--and 
it is probably true--that if dollars remain in Washington, they have a 
way of getting spent. So we ought to give some relief to taxpayers.
  I was out last summer, in August, talking about the tax relief bill, 
and people sort of rolled their eyes about it because they had heard 
that before. But when you talked about the elements of it, they became 
very interested and supportive of it.
  Estate taxes: For example, we have a lot of agriculture in Wyoming. 
Many agriculturists have almost all of their life's earnings in 
property, not in yearly income but in the estate they build up in that 
farm or ranch. Currently, they could lose nearly half of that through 
estate taxes. We would like to do away with those over a period of 
time.
  Capital gains: More and more people are investing money in the market 
and seeking to take care of themselves for their old age security or to 
supplement their Social Security. We need to encourage that. One way to 
do that is to reduce the tax on capital gains.
  The marriage penalty: Almost everyone would agree to the fact that a 
marriage penalty is very unfair, where two young people who are single 
at a certain wage level pay a certain amount of tax, but if they get 
married, they pay a higher amount of tax. That is not fair. We sought 
to change that. Unfortunately, as I said, that was vetoed. 
Nevertheless, I consider it to be an accomplishment for the Republican 
Senate because it sets the groundwork to move forward in another year.
  Education: This budget we are talking about contains more for 
education than the President requested. He is arguing about that. The 
big argument is not the amount of money. The argument is because the 
President wants to dictate, to stipulate where the money goes--in this 
case for 100,000 teachers. We think it makes much more sense to be more 
flexible. If you have the money, send it to the States, send it to the 
school districts, and let those folks decide where it is most efficient 
to invest the money.
  I have a strong belief that the needs in Greybull, WY, are quite 
different than they are in Pittsburgh. We ought to be able to adjust 
for that. I believe what we have done, in the case of education with 
Ed-Flex, is given local people more flexibility. So there is additional 
money in this budget for education. We had money in our tax bill to 
encourage education, as well. I am pretty pleased about that.
  National security: We have added $17 billion for the defense of this 
country. Probably, if you had to select the item and the issue that the 
National Government is most responsible for--the Federal Government--it 
is defense. No one else, of course, can participate as fully in the 
defense of our country as the Federal Government.
  Unfortunately, we have had more troop deployments over the last 
couple years than we have had in 50 years. But the administration has 
requested funds that would cause military readiness to go down. We have 
been in Haiti, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and a number of other places, 
which has been very expensive. We have found ourselves in the 
situation, with voluntary Armed Forces, where it is difficult to 
recruit people to come into the military. Probably the more difficult 
thing is to retain those people in the military who have been trained 
to be pilots or mechanics, or whatever, who can find, of course, much 
better jobs somewhere else.
  Health care: Clearly, health care is a vital interest to all of us. 
Again, folks in Wyoming are interested in that, in particular, because 
the changes that have been made over the last couple of years have 
affected rural areas probably to more of an extreme than nonrural 
areas. We are moving, of course, into an era where very small hospitals 
find it most difficult. We have some towns in our State with hospitals 
that have an average occupancy of one or two acute-care beds. That is 
very difficult. And there are shifts taking place. We have changed the 
definition of ``hospital'' so that HCFA, the funding agency, can fund 
hospitals that have less than full services, even emergency rooms, to 
move those patients off to somewhere else.
  We passed the Patients' Bill of Rights. I hope one of the things that 
will happen before we leave is some change in the balanced budget 
amendment on Medicare. That will probably be an additional $15 billion 
over 10 years, to take away what we think were the overcuts that have 
been made by the agency that pays it out. So we will be moving forward 
on that.
  Financial modernization: I think for the first time since the 1930s 
the whole financial picture has changed somewhat. That bill is prepared 
to come to the floor. We closed the deal last week. We have been trying 
for 10 years--and finally got that done--to change the regulations that 
were put in place during the Depression times to fit what is necessary 
now.

[[Page 27641]]

  So we have accomplished a great deal in the budget: Social Security, 
education, defense, tax relief, health care, and now a banking bill--
all things that are good for America--but yet without letting the 
Federal Government grow out of control.
  It is legitimate to have different views, and we ought to have an 
exchange of views. There are different views everywhere. One of the 
basic differences here has to do, frankly, with the size and 
involvement of the Federal Government; it has to do with spending. The 
liberals, of course, want to have more taxes, more spending, put the 
Federal Government into more things, override the States because they 
think that is a better way to do it. It is a legitimate point of view. 
I do not agree with it.
  We ought to try to limit those things that can best and must be done 
by the Federal Government. Do we raise money to do it? Of course. But 
after that we ought to let that be done closer to the people.
  Those are the real issues. Sometimes they do not show up. We get to 
talking about details, but the basic philosophy is there and it is 
legitimate and we need to work at it.
  I hope we can move forward. I think we have completed a good amount 
of work this year. We have some more to do. We have probably less than 
2 weeks to do it. So I hope we move forward.
  I now yield whatever time he might consume to the Senator from 
Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

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