[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15956-15958]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, in 1993, one of the most interesting times 
in my legislative career was when we in this Chamber voted on President 
Clinton's deficit reduction plan. It was a historic vote.
  As the Presiding Officer will remember, the bill passed the House of 
Representatives by a single vote without a single Republican voting for 
the President's plan. It came to the Senate and ended up in a tie vote, 
and the Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, broke the tie. It 
was a very difficult vote for everyone. In the Senate, as in the House, 
not a single Republican voted for the budget plan.
  There were people on the other side of the aisle who told of all the 
calamities that would take place in the country if that passed. Seven 
years ago, this is what we heard from the other side of the aisle, 
Senate Republicans, from then-Representative Wayne Allard:

       In summary, the plan has a fatal flaw--it does not reduce 
     the deficit.

  Of course, it has reduced the deficit from some $300 billion a year 
to where we now have a surplus.
  Senator Conrad Burns:

       So we are still going to pile up some more debt, but most 
     of all, we are going to cost jobs in this country.

  What the Senator from Montana said, in truth and in fact, was wrong. 
In fact, over 20 million new jobs have been created; over 60 percent of 
those jobs are high-wage jobs. Contrary to what the Senator from 
Montana said, we didn't pile up more debt. We have reduced the debt. We 
have not only cut down the annual yearly deficit, we have actually paid 
down the debt--not enough, in my estimation, but we have begun to pay 
down the debt.
  Senator Hatch of Utah said:

       Make no mistake, these higher rates will cost jobs.

  Again, not true.
  Senator Phil Gramm of Texas on August 5, 1993, on the Senate floor:

       I want to predict here tonight that if we adopt this bill 
     the American economy is going to get weaker and not stronger, 
     the deficit four years from today will be higher than it is 
     today and not lower. . . . When all is said and done, people 
     will pay more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, 
     Government will spend more money, and the American people 
     will be worse off.

  Everything he predicted is the direct opposite. The economy didn't 
get weaker; it got stronger. The deficit isn't higher; it is lower. 
Americans aren't paying more taxes; they are paying less taxes. He 
said, ``The economy will create fewer jobs.'' Of course, as I have 
indicated, it created more jobs. ``Government will spend more money.'' 
The fact is, the Federal Government today has 300,000 fewer Federal 
employees than it had when this statement was made by Senator Gramm. We 
have a Federal Government today that is smaller than when President 
Kennedy was President.
  He went on to say in September of 1993:

       . . . [T]his program is going to make the economy weaker. . 
     . . Hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their 
     jobs as a result of this program.

  Wrong, absolutely wrong; not even close. The program the President 
asked us to vote for, and we did, made the economy stronger. We have 
had the lowest inflation, the lowest unemployment in more than 40 
years. There had been economic growth as high in the past but never any 
higher than we have had. We hold the record for the longest period of 
economic growth in the history of this country.
  Phil Gramm went on to state, on another occasion on the Senate floor:

       I believe that hundreds of thousands of people are going to 
     lose their jobs as a result of this program. I believe that 
     Bill Clinton will be one of those people.

  Well, hundreds of thousands of people didn't lose their jobs; tens of 
millions of people got new jobs. And President Clinton was reelected. 
Again, my friend from Texas was wrong.
  The Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley:

       I really do not think it takes a rocket scientist to know 
     this bill will cost jobs.

  Well, my friend from Iowa was wrong, too. It didn't take a rocket 
scientist. It took people with courage to follow a leader who said: Do 
this and the economy is going to turn around. We did that. We are not 
rocket scientists, but common sense dictated if we did the things that 
were in that budget, it would make the economy better. It would set a 
new course in the United States for economic viability. We followed 
that lead, and here is where we now are.
  My friend Connie Mack, with whom I came to Congress in 1982, said in 
1993:

       This bill will cost America jobs, no doubt about it.

  Senator William Roth, chairman of the Finance Committee now, said 
back then:

       It will flatten the economy.

  Not true. Quite the contrary. My friend from Delaware went on to say:

       I am concerned about what this plan will do to our economy. 
     I am concerned about what it will do to jobs. I am concerned 
     about what it will do to our families, our communities, and 
     to our children's future.

  Well, he should not have been concerned. Or if he was concerned, I am 
sure he feels much better today because everything about which he was

[[Page 15957]]

concerned has been to the good of the country. The economy is better. 
It has been better for families and communities and the future of our 
children.
  Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania:

       People know it's bad policy. . . . Let's do something . . . 
     that creates jobs, that really will solve the deficit, not 
     just feed this monster of government with more and more money 
     for it to go out and spend more and more.

  He was reading a different set of blueprints than everyone else 
because he was wrong.
  Senator Strom Thurmond, longest serving Senator in this body, said in 
1993:

       It contains no real spending cuts to reduce the deficit or 
     improve the Nation's outlook.

  Representative Dick Armey, majority leader in the House:

       The impact on job creation is going to be devastating.

  Dan Burton, Representative from Indiana of longstanding, said:

       The Democratic plan means higher deficits, a higher 
     national debt, deficits running $350 billion a year.

  He was only about $450 billion wrong about the deficit. In fact, it 
has turned around. We have a $100 billion surplus or more.
  John Kasich, with whom I came to Congress in 1982, a Representative 
from Ohio, said:

       This plan will not work. If it was to work, then I'd have 
     to become a Democrat . . .

  That is a direct quote. Kasich is retiring from the House this year. 
Maybe he is doing it so he can reregister. It is quite clear that if he 
is a man of his word, he should become a Democrat because he was wrong 
in his prediction.
  It is good once in a while to revisit history, to talk about what 
people said will happen, to go back and see what the record is.
  Let's look at the record not in 1993, and what has transpired that 
has turned this economy on fire, but let's talk about the future. We in 
the minority believe in the future. We don't believe in the past, even 
though once in a while it is important that you look at history. We 
believe in the future. We believe the future in this country has been 
hampered, hindered, slowed down by the majority in the Congress, the 
Republican House, the Republican Senate.
  We believe we should be able to have up-or-down votes and have a full 
debate without any restrictions. I know we have people who come and 
say: Sure, you can debate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 
but we are going to limit debate. We want you to have five amendments, 
and we will have five amendments.
  Let's do it the way we have always done it in the Senate. Let's bring 
out the elementary and secondary education bill, complete it, vote on 
it, and go on to something else.
  One of the actions we should take when we finish the debate on the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act is to provide money for 
modernizing our schools. We need new schools some places. We need to 
renovate schools in other places. This is important for our children.
  We need to do something about the health care delivery system in this 
country. Forty-five million Americans have no health care. The greatest 
power in the history of the world, and we have 45 million people who 
can't go to the doctor when they are sick. That is an embarrassment. 
How can President Clinton go to the G-8 when we have 45 million people 
who have no health insurance? I, as a Member of the Senate, am not 
proud of that fact. That number is going up 1.5 million every year. 
Next year, it will be almost 47 million. We don't even talk about that 
anymore. We don't talk about the uninsured.
  We are now talking about a small number of people who are insured. We 
are talking about the Patients' Bill of Rights. I am glad we are doing 
that. But we are ignoring the 45 million people. We need to pass a 
Patients' Bill of Rights so we have doctors again taking charge of 
patients, not a clerk in Baltimore determining whether or not someone 
can have an appendectomy or an MRI.
  When I was a young man, my first elected job was to the board of 
trustees. I was elected to the board, and later I became chairman. I 
was a young man. This was for the largest hospital district in Nevada. 
It was called the Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. When I came there, 
over 40 percent of the seniors who came into our hospital had no health 
insurance. In those days, when you came to the hospital, you had your 
mother, brother, neighbor, or somebody else who had to sign and be 
responsible for that bill. If they didn't pay the bill, just as all 
hospitals in America would do, we would go after you with a vengeance. 
We would go after your wages, your car, your house. We had a very 
aggressive collection agency that would go after bills of seniors who 
did not pay.
  When I was on the board of trustees, Medicare came to be. Bob Dole 
voted against that, and he was proud of that. Dick Armey said it was a 
bad idea. Medicare is not a perfect program--far from it--but it has 
given dignity to senior citizens because they don't have to beg for 
health care. When it came into being, prescription drugs weren't a big 
deal. Prescriptions did not keep people alive. They did not make people 
live more comfortable lives. Today, the average senior citizen gets 18 
prescriptions filled every year. We can't have a program for senior 
citizens in health care that doesn't include prescription drugs. That 
is part of the future in the Democratic vision. We want prescription 
drug benefits in Medicare. We want prescription drugs to be more 
affordable for everybody.
  There is a stereotype out there that someone who gets minimum wage is 
a teenager flipping hamburgers at McDonald's. Over 60 percent of the 
people who draw minimum wage are women, and for over 40 percent of 
those women, that is the only money they get for their families--
nothing else. Minimum wage is not just for people flipping hamburgers 
at McDonald's; it is for people earning a living, keeping people off 
welfare. I think it would be nice if we increased the minimum wage. I 
believe people need dignity with work. The minimum wage is one of those 
things that does just that.
  I come from the West. I remember with fondness that on my 12th 
birthday my parents ordered me a 12-gauge shotgun out of the Sears and 
Roebuck catalog. I was 12 years old, and I had a 12-gauge shotgun. They 
paid $28 for it. I loved that gun. I still have it. I got the stock 
reworked. It was bolt action. I have been a police officer and I 
carried a gun. I have a lot of guns--a rifle, a shotgun, pistols. So I 
understand guns. But I still think it is not a bad idea if we have a 
law so that crazy people and felons can't buy guns.
  What have we as Democrats been trying to do? We have been trying to 
close loopholes, saying that at pawnshops and gun shows where there are 
loopholes, where criminals and crazies buy these guns, we want to close 
those loopholes. We can't even vote on that. They keep stopping us. We 
don't have the opportunity to do that. As my friend from North Dakota, 
Senator Dorgan, has said--he uses these one-liners--I don't believe you 
need an assault weapon to go deer hunting. If you do, you should find 
another hobby. Some of these comments on the gun safety issues reflect, 
I think, what the American people really think.
  I could talk more, but I think it is too bad that we are here in 
morning business, not able to address some of these very important 
issues.
  One of the issues that tears into my heart every time I mention this 
is that we need to do a better job of helping kids to stay in school. I 
say to my friend from Minnesota, who was a college professor before he 
came here, at one of the very fine institutions of higher learning in 
America, Carleton College--and we have lots of them--I know the Senator 
from Minnesota got the best students. But there are a lot of the best 
students who didn't have the opportunity to come to his institution. A 
lot of them dropped out of school.
  We have 3,000 children who drop out of high school every day in 
America and 500,000 a year. Every time a kid drops out of school, he or 
she is less than they could be. I have tried on the Senate floor, with 
my friend from New Mexico, Senator Jeff Bingaman, to

[[Page 15958]]

pass legislation that would set up in the Department of Education a 
branch whose sole function in life would be to work on the dropout 
problems we have. The House passed it. Last year, it was defeated on a 
straight party line vote in this body.
  I think we need to do something about that. I think we have the 
luxury of doing so. I think we should do something. I know my friend 
from Minnesota is an expert in this field. I talk about people having 
no health insurance and people who have health insurance treated 
poorly. What about the problems we have with mental health in this 
country? It is an ignored segment of our society. The Federal 
Government, I believe, has a role and obligation to do something about 
the many problems facing Americans today, not the least of which is 
31,000 people who kill themselves every year. We have to better 
understand that. I wish we were debating some of these issues today.
  I didn't want the day to go by, when we have time on the floor, 
without talking about some tough votes we have taken and how important 
it was that the 1993 Clinton Budget Deficit Reduction Act passed, how 
important it is to the history of this country, and how well we are 
doing as a result of that, and how much better we could do if we could 
vote on some of these issues I have outlined today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The Senator from Minnesota is 
recognized.

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