[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 24795-24797]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 24795]]

                    CHOICES FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the assistant leader for the time.
  I was very interested in hearing the Senator from Utah talk both 
about the economy and about education. I may never have been in quite 
that high an


income bracket as he was, but I think I have a view that I learned 
growing up as a child of an immigrant family on my mother's side, a 
first-generation American who had to go to public schools.
  I know the assistant leader has a major story to tell. I think it is 
very important that we consider that when we are on the floor. We ought 
to be fighting for the people who really need to make sure they have 
the economic opportunity; and everything that we do, we should keep 
those working families in mind because I think that the people at the 
top 1 percent are OK. In fact, many of them live in my State and they 
are telling me: Senator, we don't want a great big, irresponsible tax 
cut. We are doing great. We want to make sure, in fact, that the rest 
of America can come along. I thank them for that progressive position.
  I think this Presidential race presents the starkest choice when it 
comes to our economy, and the good news is we have history to prove who 
succeeded on this economy and who has failed miserably.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. BOXER. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. REID. The Senator talked about tax cuts. You are aware, are you 
not, that the Vice President and the minority, the Senate Democrats, 
pushed very hard for tax cuts--for example, a tax cut to allow parents 
to deduct $10,000 a year to send their child to school?
  Mrs. BOXER. To college, absolutely.
  Mr. REID. Yes. Also, the Senator has worked since she has been in the 
Congress on afterschool programs and on child care. The Senator is 
aware that, again, Vice President Gore and the Democrats in the Senate 
have pushed for making sure that people who have to work have some help 
taxwise with child care.
  Mrs. BOXER. I think one of the biggest differences in the 
Presidential race, which is mirrored on the floor of the Senate as we 
debate tax legislation, is the fact that in Vice President Gore's plan 
it is the middle class who will get the breaks; in Governor Bush's 
plan, it is the very top 1 percent.
  I want to be specific because I think people are tired of hearing 
that, and they don't really know exactly what we are talking about. 
Under Governor Bush's plan, if you earn over $350,000 a year, you get 
back $50,000 a year. You get back $50,000 a year. That is more than 
three full-time minimum wage jobs, I say to my friend. If under 
Governor Bush's plan you earn $30,000 a year, you get back about $200 a 
year. So I think my friend is right to point out that the kind of tax 
cuts Vice President Gore has in his plan, the kind of tax cuts that we 
stand here and fight for, would be for those in the middle class who 
really need to have the help.
  I think that tax deduction for tuition is very important because the 
cost of college is going up enormously.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator also yield? I will make sure she has 
adequate time for her statement.
  Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely.
  Mr. REID. Has the Senator noticed what happened on the floor in the 
last couple of days? An independent group, the Rand Corporation, that 
doesn't have a political bone in its body--it is independent; it is 
bipartisan; it is fair; and it has been around for a long time. The 
Senator from California is aware that, in effect, the Rand 
Corporation's independent report came out yesterday and said the things 
Governor Bush has been saying about education in Texas are wrong, not 
true, misleading. The children in Texas, in fact, aren't doing any 
better than the children in other places. They are doing worse. Has the 
Senator noticed those statements from the other side in trying to 
explain education?
  Mrs. BOXER. I have.
  Mr. REID. Today, I got up and read the newspaper and the American 
Academy of Actuaries--another group similar to the Rand Corporation--
which also is not political, has said that what Governor Bush has been 
saying about his tax plan, his dream for this country, is flawed; it 
would bankrupt the country. In the last 2 days, there were two 
blockbuster reports, from the Rand Corporation and the American Academy 
of Actuaries, which say what Governor Bush said is wrong about 
education and that his tax plan would bankrupt the country.
  Mrs. BOXER. I am aware of those reports, and I am aware of yet 
another report that came out in the last few days as well. Another 
independent, nonpartisan report says Texas is 48th in ranking as far as 
a good place to raise a child. Only two States were worse than Texas in 
terms of raising a child.
  I say to my friend that I don't really know why we are in session 
now. We should have finished our work a long time ago. As long as we 
are in session, I intend, on behalf of the people I represent, to come 
down to this floor and make sure the folks in the country understand 
the choices they are facing, both in the Presidential election and in 
the congressional elections.
  When our friend from Utah comes and talks about the economy and says, 
amazingly, the reason we are doing well in this economy is because of 
what happened 20 years ago, I have to scratch my head and say this is 
back to the future, folks, back to the future. He is citing things that 
happened 20 years ago.
  I want to cite what happened when then-President Bush in the 1980s 
went to Japan. He was there to beg for guidance on what to do about our 
economy, which was failing. People had no hope. They were afraid. The 
recession was taking hold. Things could not have been worse. Deficits 
were as far as the eye could see. He went to Japan and said: Please, 
sir, tell me what you are doing.
  Well, the answer was right here in America: faith in the 
entrepreneurship of our people, faith in our children, investing in 
their education, and the guts to cut this deficit, to make the hard 
choices that President Clinton and Vice President Gore made. We were 
proud to stand with them and we saw Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. 
So our friends on the other side of the aisle are going to go back 20 
years. That is similar to saying if you had a disease 20 years ago and 
you took something for it and it didn't work, but something else in the 
nineties worked, you are giving credit to that medicine.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for another question?
  Mrs. BOXER. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. REID. The Senator and I were in the Congress in 1993 when not a 
single Republican in the House or a single Republican in the Senate 
voted for President Clinton's Budget Deficit Reduction Act. The Senator 
remembers that.
  Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely.
  Mr. REID. Does the Senator remember listening to Senator Wayne 
Allard, then a Representative, saying: ``In summary, the plan has a 
fatal flaw; it does not reduce the deficit.''
  Mrs. BOXER. I remember that.
  Mr. REID. Does the Senator remember Senator Conrad Burns saying: ``So 
we are still going to pile up some more debt, but most of all we are 
going to cost jobs in this country.''
  Mrs. BOXER. I remember that, and I remember serving on the Budget 
Committee and listening to these remarks in the committee by Senator 
Phil Gramm from Texas predicting the worst. What did he say?
  Mr. REID. Senator Gramm said: ``This 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.''
  He said: ``I believe hundreds of thousands of people are going to 
lose jobs as a result of this program. I believe Bill Clinton will be 
one of these people.''
  Mrs. BOXER. How about 22 million new jobs instead of 100,000 lost 
jobs?
  Mr. REID. The Senator knows that a majority of those jobs are high-
wage jobs. As far as the deficit they talked about--how this deficit 
was going to be exploding--$300 billion a year in deficit, and it was 
masked because there was about $100 billion a year we used to offset 
the debt, which would have been really $400 billion.
  Mrs. BOXER. That is correct.
  Mr. REID. We have a $260 billion surplus now. I say to my friend, you 
know what they are saying. I was on a little debate on public 
television with some of them. They are scripted. I didn't realize it--I 
said you got this from Frank

[[Page 24796]]

Luntz, and I didn't realize he was up in the room and he briefed them 
beforehand.
  Mrs. BOXER. He is a Republican pollster.
  Mr. REID. I am sorry I didn't mention that he is a Republican 
pollster. He scripts them. They are saying the Republican majority has 
put this economy on the road to recovery even though not a single one 
of them had the nerve to vote with the Democrats to get the economy on 
the right track.
  I appreciate very much the Senator from California. I have so much 
admiration for the Senator from California because she represents a 
country, as far as most of the Senators are concerned. She represents 
35 million people. I think what you say we should listen to because you 
have seen the economy in California reverse itself.
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes. The economy in California was just on its knees; it 
was so bad when Bill Clinton and Al Gore took over. I remember being on 
an airplane talking to Leon Panetta, the then-budget adviser to 
President Clinton. And we were looking at every avenue to bring hope to 
the people. One of the things they did was invest in defense 
technology. We had the Technology Reinvestment Act. We did so many 
things to bring this country back. That is why I wonder why the Bush 
camp isn't ahead in California because they have spent $1 million 
practically every week--if not more--bashing Al Gore. People remember, 
I say to my friend. We were in a horrible situation.
  I was an economics major in college, which doesn't qualify me for 
that so much. But I do know something about Economics 101. It is pretty 
simple. You don't give a big massive tax cut in a time when the economy 
is running strong.
  We have been joined by our friend from New Jersey who ran an 
extraordinarily successful business and came here. We are going to miss 
him so much. He knows because it is so clear that you don't give the 
stimulus with tax cuts to wealthiest people in the middle of a 
prosperous time. You don't do that. You will only then add to 
inflation, which will lead to higher interest rates, which will then 
turn around and make it more expensive for people to buy a home, to 
send their kids to college, or to buy cars. As sure as you can bet on 
it, people will start retrenching, and it will lead to a recessionary 
atmosphere.
  We know the George W. Bush plan is wrong--not because we are talking 
about it from an academic point of view but the fact is we lived 
through the trickle-down economics. We lived through that decade. Oh, 
you could go back and find some quotes from those trickle-down big tax 
cuts to the wealthy. What were the wealthy going to do? They were going 
to invest in the businesses here and create jobs. Let me tell you that 
didn't happen. A lot of that money went offshore. The bottom line is we 
got into big trouble. While our Republican friends were talking about a 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget, guess what we did. We 
balanced the budget without one of their votes.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. BOXER. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. REID. The Senator remembers that the Senator from California and 
I sponsored our own constitutional amendment to balance the budget. 
Does she remember that? We wanted to exclude the surpluses from Social 
Security, but they wouldn't vote with us.
  Mrs. BOXER. That is right. We wanted to protect Social Security. They 
did not want to go that way, which really led me to Social Security.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
from California be recognized for 5 minutes. It is my understanding we 
would have 10 minutes remaining after that. Is that right?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator is correct.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, before the Senator from New Jersey takes the 
floor, he is a person who came to the Senate with wealth. He created it 
himself. He knows what it means to be an entrepreneur. Yet he has been 
someone who has fought for the working men and women of this country 
for his entire 18 years in the Senate. He recognizes that the business 
community needs direction to try to do that. There has been nobody in 
the Senate that has been more for the working men and women of this 
country than Frank Lautenberg. When he speaks on an economic issue, we 
should listen.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, Senator Lautenberg has been my real 
chairman of the Budget Committee. Senator Domenici is the official 
chairman. But I always call Senator Lautenberg my chairman because he 
speaks for me. He has incredible experience on growing a business that 
turns into a mega business with his compassion and his caring about his 
employees and people who work for a living. My friend helped on the 
issue of Social Security. We tried to protect Social Security and set 
aside that surplus in a lockbox, and we finally made it happen.
  I want to say again, if we had followed Governor Bush on Social 
Security, he promised a trillion dollars to the seniors, and he 
promised the same trillion dollars to the young people, telling them 
they could have their private stock market accounts.
  The other thing I didn't mention today is I used to be a stockbroker 
after I graduated from college with my degree in economics. It was a 
long time ago. But I have seen the market go up, and I have seen the 
smiles on the faces of the people who entrusted me with their 
investments. I have seen the market go down.
  I think what we need to keep in mind as we talk about privatization 
of Social Security is this: If you happen to retire on a day when your 
stock market funds are turned into an annuity and prices are high, you 
are doing great. But with a volatile stock market that can go down 400 
points in one day, and that happens to be your day, or within the days 
of the month that you are going to turn that stock market fund into an 
annuity, you are going to find yourself in deep trouble.
  That is another reason why Al Gore makes so much sense because he is 
saying save Social Security; keep it the foundation of the house. And 
if you want to do a voluntary stock market investment on top of your 
Social Security foundation, that is fine.
  My friends, that makes sense. It is conservative. It isn't a river 
boat gamble. It is another great issue at stake. Great issues are at 
stake in this election. It is an exciting election. It is not an 
election between two people who agree on everything. They do not agree. 
We have a Republican candidate who wants to go back to the 1980s with 
trickle-down economics of the past, with small investments in 
education.
  I will end my remarks with education because the Senator from Utah 
said there is a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. He 
said Democrats want the Federal Government to tell the local school 
districts what to do. That is incorrect. Every single program that we 
support dealing with school construction, dealing with smaller class 
sizes, dealing with after school, dealing with high tech in the 
schools--those are all options the school districts can take advantage 
of if they so choose. There is no program on this side of the aisle, or 
any in Al Gore's portfolio, that says that any local school district 
has to take these funds. I think that is key.
  It goes back to Dwight David Eisenhower, whom I always quote, because 
he said you can't really be a strong country and you can't be secure 
unless you have an educated workforce. This was a Republican President. 
I liked Ike. My family liked Ike. One of the reasons they liked Ike was 
because he said that educating our children was a national priority and 
the Federal Government shouldn't just say: Here, States; take a whole 
lot of money and do what you want. He started the National Defense 
Education Act. That wasn't a blank check to the States. It was clearly 
for a purpose, and the purpose was to make sure that our teachers knew 
math and knew science and could teach math and science.
  We know if you follow the Dwight Eisenhower kind of system that we 
need to look at our school districts and say: What do you need help 
with? Can we

[[Page 24797]]

help you? We have the resources thanks to the great stewardship of the 
Clinton/Gore team. We have the great stewardship of the economy. We can 
invest some money.
  Do you know what they told us? We need to help with the hiring of 
teachers. We need school construction. We need afterschool funds so our 
kids can learn after school. And the Democrats responded.
  The big fight at the end of this year is over a lot of those issues. 
We stand with the children; we stand with the families; and we stand 
with the seniors against the HMOs. That will be a big issue in the last 
few days. Are we just going to do giveaways to the HMOs and keep 
letting them drop the seniors out of Medicare? We on this side of the 
aisle and Vice President Gore are ready to stand up to the HMOs. We are 
ready to stand up to the tobacco companies. We are ready to stand up 
for our children. In the waning days, I think these issues will play 
themselves out.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of New Hampshire). The Senator from 
New Jersey is recognized.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has approximately 9 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I say to Senator Boxer and Senator 
Reid, thank you for your comments, but, more than that, for our ability 
to work together to try to take care of our citizens as we believe they 
would want, to look at the issues fairly and squarely, and not spend as 
much time dancing around the truth and around the issues, as often goes 
on here. I thank the Senator, and I will send my thanks to Senator 
Reid. I will miss working with both of you and colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle.
  I am particularly grateful to the occupant of the chair, the chairman 
of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who, although we had 
some disagreements in terms of particular policies, always tried to 
work them out. I appreciate that balanced view, even though we didn't 
win as many as I wanted to.

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