[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 25176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 25176]]

                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, continuing what I was talking about 
earlier, I would like to point out I am not


sure all my colleagues understand. But in this tax bill that we are 
going to take up tomorrow and next week, it has one key provision. 
Again, this was done with House and Senate leadership getting together 
and trying to figure out what was put in. It is tucked away at the very 
end. It is a provision not listed in any summary list by the bill's 
backers.
  The provision calls for the abandonment of the pay-as-you-go budget 
discipline which, since its initial adoption in 1990, has required all 
tax cuts and spending increases be offset with other tax increases or 
entitlement spending cuts. This provision would order the Office of 
Management and Budget to set the PAYGO scorecard to zero instead of 
reflecting the actual cost of the tax bill in order to avoid a huge 
sequester the OMB would order, since the cost of the tax bill, if it 
became law, would come from the projected budget surplus rather than 
the required offsets.
  I understand why it is being done. I understand we cannot do it any 
other way. But that is why we should not do it. All the way through the 
1990s when we had this PAYGO provision in there, we were able to 
maintain our fiscal discipline in spite of great pressure to do the 
contrary. Whether it was tax cuts or spending increases that were being 
proposed, we could maintain that discipline because every time we 
brought an amendment down here to the floor that spent more money or 
cut somebody's taxes, we had to have an offset. That is the PAYGO 
provision. And we are going to throw it out the window, it seems to me, 
and we are going to abandon a principle that has enabled us not just to 
balance our budget but to help produce the growth in our economy by 
keeping the pressure off private sector borrowing that we were 
competing with all the way through the 1980s.
  We are now paying down debt. I note Government treasuries are 
becoming of more and more value as they become less and less available, 
and because people are sensing the economy is growing a bit flat. But 
there is no pressure. It kept pressure off the Federal Reserve which 
kept interest rates low, grew our economy, and produced many of the 
jobs for which we all take credit. So this is a substantial change in 
the way we have conducted business previously.
  The second point I want to make, in spite of what the Governor of 
Texas has been saying about not targeting tax provisions, that is what 
this bill does. It targets tax provisions. Indeed, of the 119 targeted 
tax provisions--I note this amends the 1986 Tax Simplification Act. I 
think it is the twentieth or thirtieth time we have done that since 
1986 and the principal sponsor of it, I note with great amusement, is 
Congressman Armey, who is also the No. 1 advocate for tax 
simplification and the flat tax. But of the 119 targeted tax provisions 
in this tax bill, only one of the provisions is included in the Bush 
tax proposal.
  This is us saying, I think appropriately, that we are going to try to 
target the taxes. The last thing I would say, I reiterate--I am sure 
our colleagues have seen and know the numbers in your own State about 
the number of people who do not have health insurance for all kinds of 
reasons.
  Mr. President, 94 percent of the tax benefits in the health insurance 
category go to subsidize people who already have insurance. Only 6 
percent attempts to do what I think America has done at its finest, and 
that is to try to push the circle of opportunity out further and 
further.
  There is no doubt today there is a correlation between lack of health 
insurance and poor health status. It is most unfortunate that, if we 
are going to do targeted tax cuts, we do not do those targeted tax cuts 
in a way that increases our confidence, that as a consequence of what 
we are doing we will decrease the number of people in our States who 
currently are out there without any health insurance whatsoever.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, would the Senator from West Virginia 
allow me to have 3 minutes to comment on the remarks of the Senator 
from Nebraska?
  Mr. BYRD. Yes, I will be glad to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The Senator from Utah.

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