[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 24797-24798]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   GOP ATTACK ON VICE PRESIDENT GORE

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, last month, and again last week, the 
Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee released two reports 
criticizing what they wrongly described as the economic plan proposed 
by Vice President Gore and our distinguished colleague, Senator 
Lieberman. I wanted to come to the floor to discuss these reports, 
which I believe were inappropriate, and a misuse of taxpayer dollars. 
They also were grossly inaccurate and unfair.
  Let me read from a section of the Senate Ethics Manual.

                   Campaign Use of Official Resources

       Official resources may only be used for official purposes. 
     It is thus inappropriate to use any official resources to 
     conduct campaign or political activities.

  Mr. President, as we all know, and the Senate Ethics Manual makes 
clear, it is inappropriate to use any official resources to conduct 
campaign or political activities. Of course, it can be difficult to 
draw a clear line between official Senate business and campaign 
activities. And reasonable people can disagree about many of the 
documents that are produced routinely here in the Congress. But, having 
said that, the reports issued by the Budget Committee staff, in my 
view, go well over the line. These reports are focused entirely on Al 
Gore's campaign proposals, or at least the staff's erroneous 
interpretation of those proposals. And their obvious purpose is not to 
provide an objective analysis, but to attack the Vice President. These 
staff reports aren't just biased, they're pure propaganda. And I would 
note that the latest report was issued just hours before the last 
Presidential debate. Not surprisingly, they issued no comparable 
critique of Governor Bush's budget plan.
  Now, Mr. President, I recognize that the Budget Committee is not like 
the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is supposed to operate in a 
nonpartisan manner. The Republican staff of the Budget Committee makes 
no pretense to being nonpartisan, and serves only on behalf of 
Republican Senators. So one would expect them to issue reports that 
further a partisan agenda. But, Mr. President, that does not justify 
the issuance of reports that are so obviously intended for campaign 
purposes, and that are so blatantly misleading and factually 
inaccurate.
  Mr. President, I could take a long time reviewing the many flaws of 
the Republican staff reports, but let me mention just a few. Perhaps 
most importantly, the reports dramatically and inappropriately 
exaggerate the costs of the Gore plan. First, they suggest that the 
Vice President's $360 billion Medicare ``lock box'' represents new 
spending that somehow would use Social Security funds and increase the 
budget deficit. This claim is preposterous. In fact, the Medicare lock 
box reserves funds for debt reduction, not new spending. It wouldn't 
spend a penny of Social Security surpluses, or any surpluses, for that 
matter. Yet by, in effect, counting as spending the $360 billion 
Medicare lock box, and an additional $99 billion of General Fund 
transfers to Medicare, the Republican staff has artifically created a 
$450 billion raid on Social Security that simply does not exist. And, 
Mr. President, that's just the beginning.
  The GOP staff also charges the Vice President with the costs of 
budget proposals put forward by President Clinton, even though the Gore 
plan clearly does not endorse the entire Clinton budget. This results 
in doublecounting many similar proposals put forward by both Clinton 
and Gore, such as their different retirement savings plans. And, of 
course, it exaggerates the real cost of the Gore/Lieberman plan. 
Another way that the GOP staff inflates the costs of the Gore plan is 
to adopt its own scoring rules. The GOP staff went well beyond the 
scoring of the Congressional Budget Office or the Office of Management 
and Budget. It created its own special methods of evaluating the costs 
of the Vice President's proposals. And it shouldn't come as any 
surprise that they lead to much higher cost estimates.
  Take, for example, the Vice President's Retirement Savings Plus 
proposal, which the Gore campaign says would cost $200 billion. The 
Republican staff cites a figure of $750 billion. This number is simply 
made up, and is not backed up by any official CBO or OMB estimate. 
Similarly, the GOP staff exaggerates the cost of Vice President Gore's 
preschool proposal. Their report characterizes the Gore plan as if it 
were an open-ended entitlement, with no state match. That leads to much 
higher costs. In fact, though, the Gore proposal is for block grants 
that require a state match.
  Another trick that the GOP staff used to create a misleading 
impression about the Vice President's proposal was to deviate from 
standard practice and use a so-called ``freeze baseline.'' In other 
words, the GOP staff counted as a cost of his plan $1.2 trillion in 
discretionary spending, and related interests costs, that simply 
reflect the costs of maintaining current policy. These costs normally 
are considered part of the budget baseline, not new spending. The well-
respected, nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities made this 
point in a sharp critique of the GOP staff report. The Center concluded 
that the Budget Committee's analysis, and I quote, ``is marred by 
several serious flaws''--unquote--which the Center said inflate the 
cost estimate assigned to the Gore plan.
  Mr. President, the Republican staff was so intent on slandering the 
Vice President as a big spender that they went to extremes in 
characterizing some of his proposals. The GOP staff calls anything new 
spending--even tax cuts. Look at what they include in their long list 
of new ``spending and regulatory programs'':
  Marriage penalty relief.
  A long-term care tax credit.
  A disabled workers tax credit.
  Mr. President, is marriage penalty relief ``new spending''? Even 
George Orwell wouldn't go that far. In fact, the GOP staff's blacklist 
goes beyond tax cuts. It even includes gun control.

[[Page 24798]]

Closing the gun show loophole. Banning junk guns. Requiring mandatory 
gun safety locks.
  Mr. President, would closing the gun show loophole amount to a return 
of Big Government? Would requiring gun manufacturers to include trigger 
locks amount to a whole new spending program? I don't think so.
  Mr. President, I could go on and on about the Republican report, but 
I won't. And, frankly, the misstatements and distortions in their 
report are only part of the problem. This report should not have been 
produced in the first place. It's obviously intended to be used in the 
presidential campaign to harm the Vice President. And it's just not the 
type of report that should be produced with taxpayer dollars. Campaign 
materials should be produced by campaigns, Mr. President, not 
congressional staff. And, at a minimum, if reports on issues related to 
the campaign are issued, especially this close to an election, they 
ought to at least be fair and accurate. I don't think that's too much 
to ask, Mr. President.
  Let me recite some facts on Gore and the size of Government.
  Under the Clinton-Gore administration Government is smaller: Between 
1981 and 1992, the size of the Federal civilian workforce increased. 
Since 1993, however, the Federal workforce has been reduced by 
377,000--a 17 percent decline.
  The Federal workforce is now the smallest since the Kennedy 
administration in 1960.
  Under the Clinton-Gore administration Federal spending is lower: 
Spending as a share of GDP increased between 1981 and 1992--rising from 
21.7 percent to 22.5 percent. Since 1992, however, federal government 
spending as a share of the economy has been cut from 22.2 percent to 
18.7 percent in 1999--its lowest level since 1966.
  Although Bush promises to reduce government, under him, Texas 
government spending increased at twice the rate of the federal 
government. While the Federal workforce has been reduced by 17 percent, 
under George Bush, Texas has added 6,200 bureaucrats--a 2-percent 
increase.
  With that, I will yield the floor.

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