Neil Abercrombie

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. No, I will not read them all off. I will indicate that starting in this year, 1996, there is a $245.6 billion deficit and it goes on to the year 2002 over the next 7 years, and in 2002 it is indicated, and I grant you this is in January, the numbers could change up or down depending on what the Congressional Budget Office says this week to, $18.4 billion, $18,400,000,000. So each year there is a deficit. It does not bother me. I am not arguing that somehow the deficit is supposed to disappear in a year's time. I do not believe that would be good economically. We could have that discussion sometime: The philosophy of economics. But I think it is generally agreed, at least by those of us here in the Congress, to eliminate it all in 1 year would probably be impossible. But nonetheless, would the gentleman agree, and the gentleman has been talking about the budget, that in general, whether my numbers are exact or not, that there is a deficit proposed in this year, and a deficit in the Republican budget and the Democratic budget until the year 2002? Somehow it has to be paid for. That is the question, is it not?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Reclaiming my time. I thank the gentleman very much. This is getting productive. Under the way we score deficits right now.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would the gentleman agree that, reading again from the same title I where the deficits were, as I indicated, that the public debt, which this year, 1996, will be $5.21 trillion, $5.2 trillion. In the year 2002, the public debt will be $6.7 trillion. That is an increase in the public debt; is it not?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I would never say anything like that.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I think the Republican plan goes way too far. That is my point. I do not believe it is a plan. It is a kind of incantation, a magic formula that would have all of the reality of Merlin the Magician. The gentleman indicated that he would like to have a BRAC-like commission. BRAC, for those who do not know, is the Base Realignment Closure Commission. I think we may be closing down the opportunity for a whole lot of people in this country if we went as far and as fast as the gentleman indicated. I would never characterize the gentleman personally, but I believe that such an approach would be an extreme approach. It would not be warranted, given the social stability and the economic stability of our country. Now, I still have the time, if the gentleman would be kind enough to let me respond. The gentleman indicated that the freshman class of Republicans have put forward a balanced budget proposal which might succeed in 5 years, and he asked me at the same time, would we work, could we work together to take Social Security off budget? Mr. Speaker, I am sure the gentleman is aware, and therefore he must have misspoke, I am sure he is aware that in the budget proposals right now, that Social Security already is listed as off budget. The problem is that we are taking money from it. Now, does the freshman proposal of the Republicans, the freshman Republican proposal take money from the Social Security trust fund in order to help balance the budget?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I would be mightily amazed, then, as to where they are going to get the money. The gentleman is aware that the Republican proposal that is on the floor so far from the Committee on the Budget does take from the Social Security trust fund?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes, I am.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. My answer to the gentleman is I would be delighted to work with him at any time on such a proposal, and I would be delighted to have further discussions on the realities of the Social Security trust fund.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I reiterate, I would be delighted to work with the gentleman at any point. Speaking as I do as the Representative of the southernmost State in the United States, Hawaii, I would be glad to do that. Mr. Speaker, I particularly appreciate the dialog with the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough]. I have listened with interest and with close regard to his remarks on the floor in previous times, and I think that it is well worth it at this point to explicate just for a moment or two on some of the points that he raised, because they do fit into the context of my general discussion. Mr. Speaker, you may recall that I had indicated that there is, in fact, in the budget document proposal of the Republican Party, a deficit this year. Some $245 billion. There is, at least, in the budget resolution as presented so far, which will go on up to $108 billion in the year 2002. It accumulates, obviously. The public debt is increasing. We move then to Social Security, because the gentleman from Florida is quite correct. His constituents are sharp. They understand what is happening. We have an accounting trick in the Federal Government, which all parties have utilized to this point, in which we say that the Social Security revenues are off budget. Now, I do not know about your budget. Well, I do know about your budget, Mr. Speaker. I am sure yours and mine are exactly the same. We cannot get away with that. People who try to pretend that what they owe really does not count because it is off budget and act accordingly, sometimes end up in front of long-robed judges with prison sentences facing them. Or at worst, and I suppose at best, find themselves shamefacedly saying to their spouses, ``Yes, actually we have not balanced the budget. We actually owe more money than we can pay.'' But where Social Security is concerned, Mr. Speaker, I want to indicate that according to the Congressional Budget Office, the revenues for Social Security are in excess of what is needed for expenditure this year, and on up to the year 2002. Let me repeat that. There are more revenues coming into Social Security trust fund than there are revenues going out. That means there is a surplus. Here is where the real surplus is. There is no surplus in the budget. There is a surplus in the Social Security fund. So, the constituents of the good gentleman from Florida, when they say let us take it really off budget, what they mean is do not use it as an accounting trick. Do not take money to pay your bills from Social Security, and leave an IOU in the Social Security trust fund. My point, Mr. Speaker, is that this budget document put forward by the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] and his budget team, shows, for example, in 1996, $374 billion, almost $375 billion coming into the Social Security trust fund, and about $300 billion going out. A surplus clearly of about $74 billion, $75 billion. The problem is that in order to achieve this balance, both in the year 1996 and 1997, and on to the year 2002, the proposal of the Republican budget is to take money from Social Security, leave an IOU for the principal plus interest, and in the year 2002, be able to claim that by borrowing from Social Security, they have balanced the budget. I will indicate again, Mr. Speaker, that is not the case. What they have done is shift the deficit. They are not balancing the budget. They are shifting the deficit. It is as if we were taking our checking account and our savings account and then taking the savings account of our mom and dad, drawing down on the savings account of our mom and dad, and then telling our family that we have balanced the budget and paid all of our bills. Mr. Speaker, every bill that comes in in the year 2002, we will be able to pay, and the revenues coming in and the revenues going out will match. That is to say, they will be balanced. But we have neglected to tell mom and dad that we took money out of their savings account in order to accomplish that. Mr. Speaker, the way I add it up, and the way I went to school, as the gentleman from Florida indicated, I am sure we had similar math experiences, the way I add it up, we owe our mom and dad. The fact that we call it off budget in the Government does not mean that we owe our mom and dad any less money. What is the Social Security trust fund? The Social Security trust fund is for those who are eligible to collect those benefits at a certain time in their life when they have retired at a certain age and under certain circumstances. When they meet the qualifications of it, they get the benefit. One of the arguments made by young people is that there may not be sufficient funds in the Social Security trust fund to meet their needs when they are eligible for it. I would say if we keep taking from this fund, and leaving IOU's in it with no plan to pay it back, that is exactly what is going to happen at some point in the future. Not now. Not in 2002. But as we get past that time, 2013, 2020, 2050, you and I will not be here in 2050, Mr. Speaker, and that is one of the real difficulties that I have with this proposal. Mr. Speaker, what we are saying is for short-term political benefit, rhetorical benefit that will help us in an electoral capacity, ``I balanced the budget,'' that kind of discussion with the voters, that we are going to leave the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren bereft of those funds which are supposedly in there for their benefit. One of the reasons that that is so is that we are going to have an ever-increasing number of people who are eligible for Social Security and a decreasing number of people who will be working to pay the Social Security taxes to put into the fund to see that it remains solvent. That is a genuine problem that we have to look at. I believe that government is for the long term; not for the short term. I believe that the decisions that I make today have an impact on generations to come. I think I have to take that kind of responsibility. I cannot make a decision. I take that back. I am sure I am as human as anybody else. I think I start thinking at any given time during the day, ``What is in my immediate interest? How will I have to explain this? What is going to be the impact on me?'' I am up for election in 1996. I intend to run 1996. How do I explain to my constituents what they need to know, rather than perhaps what they would like to hear? Mr. Speaker, I think my obligation as a Member of Congress is to tell people what they need to know; not necessarily what they would like to hear. What they would to like to hear is that we can spend more and at the same time save more; that we can balance the budget, but at the same time we can increase the deficit. Mr. Speaker, I suppose that people would like to hear that, but I think my constituents, and I am sure that the constituents of the gentleman from Florida are the same, they do not want to hear a fairy tale. They do not want to be told something that is not true or that they are going to be all right or fiscally secure, that their future is going to be soundly based economically and socially and we will have stability in this country, and then find out that is not so. They would rather know what the truth is, so that they can figure out what needs to be done to get to the goal that we want to achieve. Yes, it is true that Democratic administrations and Republican administrations have used Social Security in a similar way. That does not make it right. The difference has been in the past that when they went into the Social Security trust fund, they never pretended they were balancing the budget with it. Rather, they were meeting current expenses. The debt that we have now, between $480 and $500 billion that we owe in principal, I am not sure whether interest is involved in that or what the interest is at this point, but we owe upward of half a trillion dollars right now to Social Security. I do not know of any plan to pay it back. It is a paper transaction, according to those who want to use it for the bookkeeping trick that it is. But, nonetheless, it is real people expecting real dollars to come out of that fund in the future. Now we propose, in the name of balancing the budget, not just meeting current expenses. Let me explain a little further. If we went to our mom and dad and said to them, ``Look, we are having a tough time. There was a hurricane.'' Mr. Speaker, as you know, Florida has suffered through more than one devastating hurricane. Hawaii suffered through a hurricane, Hurricane Iniki, that hit the island of Kauai. California's tragic earthquake. Just take those three national disasters. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars worth of damage and subsequent investment by the people of this country in the infrastructure and social stability of just those three States, California, Hawaii, and Florida, all across the spectrum of our society, literally and otherwise. Mr. Speaker, I consider that an investment in the people of our country. I do not object to that. We have these kinds of disasters. So, I suppose I could go to mom and dad and say, ``Mom, we have had a disaster occur. We have had some difficulties and we did not get enough from you. My salary did not cover the expenses that came up. There was the car crash; there was the hurricane that came through. We have got to fix the roof. We have to get the plumbers in and the carpenters. We do not have enough money coming in. We need to borrow money from you in order to meet these expenses.'' Mr. Speaker, we could do that. We would prefer not to, but it could be done. So, when the accusation, if you will, is made that administrations in the past, and as I say, they have been Democrat and Republican administrations, when these administrations in the past, and the Congresses in the past have borrowed from Social Security and voted for the budget, it was to meet the current expenses. They did not come to the well of the floor, or go on television on news shows and to their constituents and say, ``Oh, we are balancing the budget now.'' Mr. Speaker, how can we balance the budget if we are taking money from the Social Security trust fund and have no plan to pay it back; pay the principal, let alone pay the interest back? That is what is to happen. The surpluses are here. There is no question that there is extra money. Now, is it really extra money? The reason that these surpluses are there, Mr. Speaker, as you may recall, in the 1980's, the same kind of argument was made that Social Security was going broke, therefore, we have to have a new system to deal with it. What we did, Mr. Speaker, is that the Social Security tax was raised, the amount of money that was required of us. We all see it on our paychecks. It is called the F-I-C- A, the FICA tax. That is our Social Security tax. We pay the tax and that goes into the fund. It goes into a fund right now, Mr. Speaker, and this was acknowledged by the Congress, acknowledged by the people of this country that they would put more money into the fund every year than was actually going to be paid out because at some point in the future those two lines would pass one another. We wanted to make sure that we had sufficient funds in the Social Security to take care of those folks that were coming after us down the line. That was our obligation, to look forward, not backward or look in place, run place, but to look forward. The whole society made the decision to do that. So when we use the word surplus, that is not really true. What it is, is a savings account to be drawn on at the proper time by those who are eligible for Social Security. I know, Mr. Speaker, that this sounds like pretty much of a basic course that I am delivering here. Some people may be saying: I know all of that; why is he going through something so obvious? The reason I am, Mr. Speaker, is I do not believe that most people in the country know that, instead of building up the savings in the Social Security trust fund so that everybody who is eligible for it is able to receive the benefits that we have been systematically taking the money from there, looting it, embezzling it, borrowing it, mortgaging it, you can run the whole spectrum of adjectives and descriptive phraseology. The fact of the matter is we have been taking from the Social Security trust fund, funds that were meant to be there to be saved in order to provide for the benefits for those who are eligible at the time that they become eligible. What we have is massive amounts of IOU's in there. That is not real money. That money has been spent.is budget and the Democratic budget are the same; the President's budget is the same. What the President is trying to say is, if you want to try and go through this balancing act, you have to admit that you are taking it from Social Security; and, if you do not want to take it from Social Security, you are going to have to make sure then that you do not make these drastic cuts. If you make these drastic cuts, you are going to have to take it not only from Social Security, but you are going to have to ncrease taxes or cost-shift the burden to others in the society in order to pay the bills. Now, there is one way not to pay the bill; do not let people be eligible for the payments. I understand that. When the gentleman from Florida said that perhaps they had not gone far enough, I cannot imagine what he would have in mind. We are already attacking agriculture, the people who grow our food. We are already attacking education, the future of the country and our children and young people. We are already attacking Medicaid, the last safety net, the last stop before you fall off the board, if you are ill or disabled. We are already attacking Medicare, the only health care system available to millions upon millions of people in the Nation at any kind of a reasonable cost. If one wants to talk about making savings, that is another story. Attacking waste, fraud, and abuse, I am all for it. Believe me, it can be done. But I do not want to hear a lot of discussion from people who a year ago said there was no problem with health care now suddenly saying, it is going to go broke. If it is going to go broke, you fix it. That is what you do. You fix it. You do not cut it. If you cut it, you have not dealt with the problems that are already being dealt with. Will people not be sick tomorrow? Will we suddenly stop having accidents? I understand now that we are going to increase the speed limit in this country. In some places I guess you will be able to drive as fast as you want. Do you think there is not going to be any automobile accidents, there is not going to be repercussion that come from those automobile accidents as a result of having no speed limits whatsoever, that somebody is not somehow going to pay for that? Are we going to take people when they come to the hospital after one of these accidents and say, I am sorry, we have got a budget that says we only have this much money, you will have to stay in the street? I do not think that is the kind of country that we want. The question is, Are we getting the kind of service that we need to have at a cost that is sufficient and fair and are we getting the kinds of services that we need at a cost that is sufficient and fair? Mr. Speaker, I want to indicate, I will reiterate from my previous discussion what is going to happen once this so-called balanced budget comes into effect. Mr. Speaker, let me take that time remaining then to give you some of the implications if this so-called balanced budget, which is really a shifting of the deficit, takes place. I will not use my own judgment on this. I will go to one of the editorials. The gentleman from Florida previously quoted an editorial to me from someone who no doubt has health insurance. So I quote an editorial as well from someone who no doubt has health insurance. The USA Today from November 6 of this year, entitled the ``Balanced Budget Myth'': ``Each day''--I am quoting now from that USA Today editorial. Each day the debate over balancing the budget produces another dire warning. The cuts are too deep, say the Democrats. Taxes must fall, say the Republicans. But after they compromise and begin arguing over who won a few weeks from now, one truth will remain; both sides will be lying because neither is talking about a truly balanced budget at all. This is my complaint, parenthetically, Mr. Speaker. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office underscored that point recently. It pointed out that, come 2002, when the budget will be balanced, under the Republican plans the Government will still be borrowing more than $100 billion a year. This is done by writing IOU's from the Treasury to Social Security and other trust funds that the Congress declares off budget. Mr. Speaker, that is not me talking. That is USA Today talking. They are quoting tables that I quoted from last week indicating that that is exactly the case. We are taking from Social Security in order to offset the budget deficit that we have. This is the point then, what happens from that. To understand, look ahead to 2005. That is just 10 years away. About the time it takes for an 11-year-old child to go from grade school through college. Think of that, Mr. Speaker, grade school through college. We have heard on this floor over and over again during this budget debate that we have to pay attention to the children. What is going to happen in 2005 when that 11-year-old child goes to college. That year a critical balance tips. Increased costs for Social Security will begin to deplete Congress' cushion because the Social Security Trust Fund is a fiction, filled with nothing but Government promises to pay. Congress will gradually lose its fudge factor. By 2013, when the trust fund peaks, taxpayers will feel a hard bite. They will have to start doing what the trust funds were supposed to do, pay for the retirement of 75 million baby boomers. The budget will plummet into a sea of red ink. That is what is going to happen. Mr. Speaker, the facts are these: Whether it is the Republican plan, the Republican proposal, or the Democratic response, unless and until we deal honestly with the issue of actually coming into balancing, we are not going to be able to succeed. With the President's initial budget, the deficit began to decline, the rate of the deficit declined. That is to say, the absolute number of the deficit has gone down. The rate of the deficit has gone down. It has done so for 3 years. This has not happened since 1948 and the Truman administration. This is what needs to be done. Instead of the hacksaw approach, instead of the meat-ax approach, we need to take a gradual approach that will see to it that we are able to meet our obligations to Social Security, able to meet our obligations to our children, able to meet our obligations to our national defense, able to meet our obligations to ourselves as a society. Only then when we are truly honest with ourselves about what the deficit will be, how to get it down gradually, and I have indicated that there are ways of doing that, paying for our capital expenditures the way cities, States, and families do, paying for our operating expenses within a budget that recognizes the fact that we do not operate on a year-to-year basis and other such reforms, I think we can achieve that goal. Until that time, Mr. Speaker, I remain most reluctant to countenance people coming to the floor and elsewhere and making the pronouncement that they are balancing the budget when they are in fact shifting the deficit and actually attacking the Social Security trust fund in order to provide the basis for that rhetorical device. Unless and until, Mr. Speaker, we deal honestly with the American people as to what the costs of Government actually are to meet our fundamental obligations, we will find ourselves subject to that kind of illusion. And the people who will have to pay for it will be our children, will be our grandchildren. They will look back on this time and say, they knew because somewhere, somehow, if only in the record of this Congress, somebody will be reading through the Congressional Record and say, it was there. They were on the floor. It is not just Neil Abercrombie talking about it. It is the USA Today. It is Bill Welch in USA Today. It is Lars-Eric Nelson in the Daily News. It is even the Washington Post editorial writers, when they get around to being halfway honest about the Social Security trust fund borrowing or embezzling, whatever word you want to use. It is on this floor now. A dialog and a discussion has been started between Republicans and Democrats, not just between myself and the gentleman from Florida, but others as well. If we want to deal with this, let us pass a budget that admits in 1996 that it is not balanced. But let us make a good-faith effort to try and keep that deficit from rising. Let us keep the rate of the deficit going down. And next year, let us come back here with a budget reform proposal, a bill, that will put forward a long-term plan, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. That is what a mortgage is, 30 years, whatever it takes in order to truly balance the budget and truly see to it that we meet our obligations to ourselves, our families, our children, and the heritage of this country.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am glad the gentleman thinks it is so historic.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that the special orders that I have been involved in over the past several days, actually week, of the discussions of the balanced budget are beginning to attract some attention from around the country and from our colleagues here in the House. As the Speaker knows, I have been indicating in my discussions that far from balancing the budget, in the proposals that are before us now, we are merely shifting the deficit. I have had people call in and express their gratitude that I am explaining this in a step-by-step manner so that it is easy for the average taxpayer as well as the average Member who might not be completely familiar with the budget process to understands what it is that we are doing, what it is that is being proposed. I have long since learned, and I am sure the Speaker would agree, that not just in politics but I guess in all of life, it is the obvious that you have to state over and over again because it is the obvious that you tend to take most for granted and forget first. The obvious in this situation is, is that every time you hear someone stand up and say, ``Oh, we're going to balance the budget in 7 years,'' you should immediately get on your skeptical clothes to protect yourself. You should be skeptical for the following reason. If you look at the presentation of the budget, do not listen to the rhetorical lines about balancing the budget in 7 years. That is the little prayerful ritual that is being recited on this floor and on the so-called news talk shows, on the news bites, the 9- and 10-second blips you get on television or here on the radio, that we are going to balance the budget in 7 years. It is merely a question of numbers. Today, for example, you can read in the New York Times or in the Washington Post arguments about whether or not we are talking about numbers on Medicare. You can see, and I have here, Mr. Speaker, the national edition of the New York Times for today with a headline, GOP, the Republican Party, emphasizes points of similarity on Medicare. That is the attempt. Then you have little graphs. Everybody has a graph that they want to show you, especially if the do not want you to understand what is really at stake. What is at point where Medicare is concerned in the budget proposal, Mr. Speaker, is that, yes, there will be a increase in spending in both proposals, the President's proposal is it stands to this point, and the Republican proposal. The question is, is there going to be a sufficient increase to cover the number of people who need it? The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] who spoke just before me indicated very clearly that we are facing a situation, because we did not do national health care in the previous 2 years, a situation which is dire, which is going to cause even more people to be lacking health insurance; going to cause us, I believe, the case can be made, to expand even more funds than are projected. Everybody is trying to say, the Republican proposal says they are going to save Medicare. How are they going to save it? They are going to cut it hundreds of billions of dollars. They are going to block- grant to the States the Medicaid Program, which means the States will become liable for Medicaid, or they will alter the eligibility requirements. Your mother, your father, yourself, you may not be eligible. Anybody out there who thinks that they are going to be freed of the consequences of these budget proposals, believe me, better think about it again. So I ask you, let us suppose, if both the Republicans and the Democrats are claiming, as they do on these charts, that they are increasing spending for Medicare, then how is it that they are going to take $270 billion in the Republican plan out of Medicare? How can you be increasing the spending and then taking money out of it supposedly in savings at the same time? I do not think you can do that. You cannot move forward and run backward at the same time. Well, I will tall you how they say they are going to do it. They say we will increase the amount----

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Certainly.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Reclaiming my time, this is a perfect example if what I was talking about. You just heard the ritual incantation of balancing the budget in the year 2002. That will not happen. You can recite that like a prayer. You have no proposal. You have never made a statement that remotely reflects a balanced budget in the year 2002.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Reclaiming my time, because it you are going to come into my time, you are going to have to be accurate. All the CBO scoring, and CBO for those who do not know, is the Congressional Budget Office. Every chart of the Congressional Budget Office shows that the budget will not be balanced in 2002 unless you play an accounting trick which takes your deficit off-budget. Your proposal proposes to take some $636 billion from Social Security, plus interest, put it off-budget and pretend you do not owe it in the year 2002. Every Congressional Budget Office chart, every analysis that they have, which I have before me, indicates that there will be a massive deficit shift in 2002 while you claim to have a balanced budget.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Reclaiming my time. You have asked me a series of questions. Let us go backward in them. Seeming less than sincere. I assure you I am quite sincere. Let us go over what the deficits are, and I will tell you, before we go to the deficits, I will give you the answer to the first part of your question about what proposals have been on the floor. No proposals that has been on this floor is going to balance the budget in 7 years. That is almost impossible.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I have never said on this floor that the Republicans do not go far enough. To the contrary, if you want to eviscerate this country, that is up to you, and if you want to run for office in 1996 on the basis that you want to strip this country of every value that means anything in a republic, you can do that.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I still have the time.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I have the time.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Not in Hawaii, because we have health care in Hawaii. We have had it for 20 years.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the majority leader has not left the floor, I would certainly like to ask that he come back and answer a question that I had in the minute that has been given to me. Mr. Speaker, if he will not, I would say, Mr. Speaker, that I am going to try and not use the word ``bitter,'' but I certainly object to the cavalier fashion with which the majority leader just left the floor talking about the Dallas Cowboys, when there were serious questions asked and no answer was received with respect to what is going to happen with this ostensible Christmas holiday that is coming up. Mr. Speaker, I want to know, not just for my convenience or inconvenience with respect to travel. I think the people of this country are entitled to know whether the majority of this House has come to a conclusion as to whether or not there is going to be a holiday; as to whether or not there is going to be a shutdown of the Government; and, whether they can give us a date as to whether we are going home. Mr. Speaker, I do not think we need to end today's business of the legislative week with the majority leader cracking jokes about the Dallas Cowboys, as if there is no serious business being done on this floor.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, as you know, I have been coming to the floor in past days to discuss this whole question of the balanced budget. The previous speaker mentioned it again. It comes up on this floor with a regulatory that I think lets it amount almost to the point of prayerful incantation, Mr. Speaker. We hear over and over again phrases, like ``This is for my children and my grandchildren.'' ``We must have a balanced budget in order to give them an opportunity.'' ``We have to have a balanced budget in 7 years.'' Mr. Speaker, I will say yet again, and say for the record, that there is no proposal from the Republican majority to balance the budget in 7 years. There is no such thing as a balanced budget. On the contrary, what is happening is a proposal that is now before the President and the negotiators that is now before the President and the negotiators from the White House from the Republican majority which mortgages the Social Security trust fund to the tune of some $636 billion, at least as of last January, and the conference report of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, that does not include the interest. The facts are, then, that we will be paying somewhere in excess of $1 trillion. I take that back, Mr. Speaker. I do not know if we will be paying it. We will certainly owe it. But I have not seen any plan whatsoever or language in the budget proposal which indicates how we are going to pay the $1 trillion back. For those who maybe have tuned in to our proceedings here and have been kind enough to contact me and ask for a little more detail and for those who may not know, of our colleagues, about this proposition that I am putting forward that there is no balanced budget, may not have heard it, let me reiterate where I get this proposition, Mr. Speaker. Let me indicate to you that I have in my hand a copy of the concurrent resolution of the budget for fiscal year 1996. This was printed on June 26, 1995, and this comes from your Committee on the Budget. This is, in fact, the official conference report. On page 3 of the conference report, Mr. Speaker, it lists the deficits, and I am quoting now from the document, ``For purposes of enforcement of this resolution, the amounts of the deficits are as follows:'' The fiscal years 1996 through 2002 then follow: In the first year, the deficit is $245,600,000,000. Deficits accrue each succeeding year until you reach the year 2002, the 7th year of this proposed balanced budget, in which the deficit amount is listed as $108,400,000,000. If we are talking about reducing deficits, that is one thing. President Clinton's budget did that. We reduced the deficit. We reduced the absolute number of the deficit, and the rate of the deficit has been going down and will have gone down for 3 years, something which I believe the record shows, Mr. Speaker, has not been done since Mr. Truman's administration in the late 1940's. So I repeat, the budget document itself, so we know the premise that I am operating from, indicates that we will have deficits, deficits starting in the $245 billion range this year and continuing on through to the year 2002, when supposedly we have a balanced budget. Let me indicate what the public debt is. The public debt, and these are not my figures, Mr. Speaker, this is what is printed in the record of the conference report of the Republican majority here, the public debt is as follows: The appropriate levels of public debt are for the fiscal year 1996, $5,210,700,000,000, $5.2 trillion; in the year 2002, 7 years from now, when we supposedly have balanced the budget, the number has gone to $6,688,600,000,000, almost $6.7 trillion from $5.2 trillion. I do not think it takes any great mathematician to realize that the public debt will have risen during the time we are supposedly balancing the budget by more than $1 trillion. Going on, again, quoting from the budget document itself, not figures I made up, section 103, Social Security, ``social security revenues,'' Now I think anybody that is observing our proceedings today or listening in to our proceedings, they know what they mean by a balanced budget. It is how much of the revenues you have, how much money comes in and what your outlay is, how much money comes in and what your outlay is, how much money goes out, and at the end of the year or at the end of a period of years, if you say you are going to balance the budget, that is what we mean by it, how much came in, how much went out. Well, I have just read to you that there is a deficit. Obviously, we are spending more money than we are taking in. Where are we going to get the money? ``Social security revenues, for purposes of this section, the Congressional Budget Act, the amount of revenues of the Federal Old Age and Survivors' Insurance trust fund and disability insurance trust fund are as follows: Social security revenues,'' Mr. Speaker, ``fiscal year 1996, $374,700,000,000,'' almost $375 billion, and again other amounts accruing each year from 1997 on through the 7- year period to the year 2002. How much do we get in revenues in 2002? $498,600,000,000. Now, where that money comes from, Mr. Speaker, is from your paycheck and mine and from paychecks all across the country, under the so-called FICA position on your paychecks, FICA. That is your [[Page H 14216]] Social Security payment. And I will explicate about that a little bit more in my talk. It is $375 billion in 1996, $499 billion approximately in the year 2002. What are the Social Security outlays? Okay, that is the income. What are the outlays? In 1996, $299,400,000,000, approximately $300 billion. In the year 2002, what is it? It is $383,800,000,000, approximately $384 billion. Keep those figures in mind. In other words, we have a surplus. If you look at the fiscal year 1996, this next year coming up, we are taking in $375 billion in Social Security revenues. We are laying out $300 billion. We have approximately $74 billion to $75 billion in surplus, what is called surplus. We all know that there are going to be more people in the next century utilizing the Social Security trust fund for their benefits than there are now because the age of people getting the Social Security funds is increasing; that is to say, their life expectancy is increasing. There are going to be more people drawing on the Social Security fund with less people paying into it, and yet here we are drawing on the Social Security fund, borrowing from it. I think that is the polite word for it. Other people have used other words, like ``embezzlement.'' I have quoted others in the other body who have used that word, embezzlement. I say we are mortgaging our future, our Social Security future, by taking from it. But that nonetheless, Mr. Speaker, is the surplus supposedly for this year. Under the outlays for the year 1996, as I said, it was about $300 billion. In the year 2002, the seventh year when we are supposedly balancing the budget, the Social Security trust fund will take in approximately $499 billion. Almost a half a trillion dollars will come in. And what is the outlay? $384 billion. Now, let us say that we understand that there is liable to be an increase or decrease in these estimations, because that is what they are, estimations, but take a look at that number, What did I say was going to be the deficit in the year 2002? According to this budget document, it is going to be approximately $108 billion. If we allow for a factor or $2 or $3 billion on either side, let us use that, say $105 billion to $110 billion. The $108 is right in the middle. That is the figure being used. What is the Social Security surplus? Wonder of wonder, it comes to about $111 billion, just about exactly what the deficit is, according to your own budget document. And what does that mean? It means that when the Republican majority says that they have a budget in surplus in the year 2002, what they really mean is they have magically worked the numbers so that the Social Security trust fund surplus becomes just slightly more than the amount of the deficit, so that you can claim there is actually a surplus in the budget. It is entirely illusionary, it is entirely a matter of doing ballet with the books, it is an accounting trick, it is just moving numbers around on paper, and it bears no relationship to reality. Why? Because the reality is at that point, even if you succeeded, Mr. Speaker, in doing exactly what you propose in the budget, of being able to have deficits every year and offset them with the Social Security trust fund by borrowing against that trust fund, in the year 2002, unless I am sadly mistaken and have misread the budget document, there is no provision in here whatsoever as to how the money is to be paid back. No plan. No proposal. No acknowledgment. As a matter of fact, the Congressional Budget Office even indicates to me that it is implicit that it will be paid back, but there is no explicit recommendation in the entire budget conference report as to how you will pay back the $630 or $40 or $50, or whatever the number comes out to be, $630-plus billion, plus interest, that has to be paid back into that Social Security fund in order for it to be utilized. If one and I obviously, Mr. Speaker, do not think you would believe for a moment that I am making any of this up, that I do not have the documents, but if one was to consider that that was merely my reading of the budget figures and that perhaps I was misunderstanding what the information was, let us refer then to the Congressional Budget Office itself. Now, I understand that there has been a great deal of discussion in the press and I have witnessed it myself with the Speaker of the House in great umbrage indicating that the Congressional Budget Office is the resource that we must refer to if we are going to make any pronouncements on the budget. So, Mr. Speaker, I take that, I am a humble serving Member of this body. I am in the minority. If the majority, the Speaker of the House of representatives, Mr. Gingrich, says that we have to use the figures of the Congressional Budget Office and only those figures when we comment on the budget, I will accommodate him. So I have before me the economic and budget outlook for the fiscal years 1996 to 2000 as of January 1995. The source, Congressional Budget Office. That is what I have in my hand, given to me from the Congressional Budget Office, the budget outlook through 2005 as a matter of fact. What does it show? It shows that in 1996, as of January 1995, we have a deficit starting in 1996 with the figure $207 billion. It goes on to the year 2002, where the figure is $322 billion. Then it shows the Social Security surplus starting at $73 billion and ending up in the year 2002 at $111 billion. Those are the figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Attached to those figures is a letter written to the Honorable Byron L. Dorgan, U.S. Senate, dated October 20, 1995, from the Congressional Budget Office, signed by June E. O'Neill, who, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Copies of this letter are sent to the Honorable Pete V. Domenici, the chairman of the Committee of the Budget in the Senate, and the Honorable J. James Exon, the ranking minority member on the Committee on the Budget, an identical letter sent to the Honorable Kent Conrad. I wish to quote in part from it. ``As specified,'' I am now quoting from the Congressional Budget Office letter to Senator Dorgan, ``As specified in section 205(a), the Congressional Budget Office projections''; in other words, the budget document, Mr. Speaker, that I just quoted from, ``was not arrived at randomly.'' Randomly. I am not accusing the conference committee or its author in the Committee on the Budget here in the House of just coming up with intuitive projections, although the Speaker of the House indicated at one point, Mr. Gingrich did, that he arrived at the 7-year period by intuition. I think that I would prefer to lay intuition aside for the moment and get right to the figures as provided by the Congressional Budget Office. Once again, ``As specified in section 205(a),'' we are talking about the act which forms the foundation for the budget resolution, ``the Congressional Budget Office provided projections.'' There is then a parentheses, ``using the economic and technical assumptions underlying the budget resolution and assuming the level of discretionary spending specified in that resolution.'' In other words, the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Speaker, in this letter, Ms. O'Neill, Director O'Neill, is indicating that the projections in the announcement she is about to make in this letter are based on the economic and technical figures that are in the budget resolution, and they assume the level of spending specified in the resolution that I have just quoted to you. Going on, the projections of the deficit or surplus of the total budget, that is, the deficit or surplus resulting from all budgetary transactions of the Federal Government, including Social Security and Postal Service spending and receipts, are designated as off-budget transactions. Now it comes out, this is how we perform the sleight of hand. This is the David Copperfield of budget tricks that takes place. You simply declare all the money that the people of this country have put into the Social Security trust fund as being off budget. Do I not wish that I could take what I owe on my credit card and declare it off budget? I would not have to take that into account when I balance my budget at the end of the month or at the end of the year. I can just ignore all the money that is on that credit card, because I am declaring it off budget. What happens as a result of that off budget transaction? Again, quoting from the letter from Director O'Neill: ``As stated in the letter to chairman Domenici, the congressional Budget Office projected there will be a total [[Page H 14217]] budget surplus of $10 billion in the year 2002.'' mark that, Mr. Speaker. A budget surplus in the year 2002. We have triumphed. We have achieved a 7-year budget balance. In fact, we will even have a surplus of $10 billion. Oh, happy day. Why has it not been done before? Why did the Democrats fight us all this time on it, when here it was, right before us, so easily accomplished, and we have the Speaker and everyone who supports the Speaker now ready to give us this wonderful present in 2002 of a $10 billion surplus. But, wait. That is not all. There is another sentence. And what does it say? ``Excluding an estimated off budget surplus of $115 billion in the year 2002 from the calculation, the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, would project an on-budget deficit of $105 billion in 2002. If you wish further details on this projection, we would be pleased to provide them.'' A staff member and number is then left. Yes, there is that little matter of the $105 billion deficit. But, of course, we do not want to count that, because we were able to put that off budget somewhere. That does not really exist. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have been in various legislative bodies for a long time. I have negotiated budgets. I have been a subcommittee chairman in which I received a figure, a spending figure, that I had to conduct my legislative affairs within, in higher education, in Health and Human Services, in education itself, in lower education. I know what it is like to have to live within certain boundaries that have been set. I have also served on the Committee on Ways and Means, a committee which decides what kind of spending can take place, what kind of appropriation is going to be allowed. I think I understand the process. I have served on a city council where we had to make those decisions. I have had responsibility in those areas. That does not make me an expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but I think as a citizen in a free country, someone who has had the honor and privilege of serving in public office because people exercise their voting franchise and put their faith and trust in my judgment, that I took it seriously, that I tried to do my job as well as I could and understand it. I think I am a reasonably intelligent person who understands the English language and the implications of it. I am here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, when I read those comments and when I see those numbers, there is no way that I could have gotten away with saying that we were balancing the budget, had I been proposing this in the Honolulu City Council or in the Hawaii State Legislature, nor could I propose it to my wife and family and get away with it, because they would understand immediately that there was no way for me to account for the debt that I had incurred and how I was going to pay it. Now, Mr. Speaker, let us move to another Congressional Budget Office deficit projection, if that observation of mine is not sufficient, because I want to point out yet once again that this is what the Speaker has told us to do. Speaker Gingrich has said as a matter of fact, I regret to say, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. Gingrich has put it in quite threatening terms as recently as the last day or so. And this is his general proposition for the country at large, and I grant you, Mr. Speaker, that I am saying words to the effect. Mr. Gingrich has said words to the effect, if you do not abide by the balanced budget proposition as put forward by the Congressional Budget Office, the stock market is going to crash, and the interest rates are going to go through the roof, or we will shut down the Government, and it will be all your fault. Now, Speaker Gingrich indicated he was going to bench himself previously. If this is being on the bench, I am not quite sure what being on the field would be. But, nonetheless, this is what he has done. He is the Speaker of the House, he won a majority of votes, and I think I would like to remind him that it is one thing to stand in the back and throw rocks when you are in the minority. I have been in the minority before. I have been in the minority even when I was in the majority. I understand what that is all about. It is easy to criticize when you are not in a position of authority. But now he is the Speaker of the House, and the things he says and the actions that he takes are taken very seriously by the people of this country. I assure you, Mr. Speaker, I take them seriously. So I stand here before you today, taking Mr. Gingrich's admonitions to heart, and so I refer to another document here in the economic and budget outlook of the Congressional Budget Office indicating the Congressional Budget Office deficit projections by fiscal year. This is the updated version. This is updated as late as I know one exists. Now, I understand the Congressional Budget Office is going to provide a further update next week, so the figures that I am going to cite to you, I do not cite them as if Moses has come down from the mountain and given them to me. The best source I have is what the Speaker says I should use, which is the Congressional Budget Office with the latest figures. Here they are. Congressional Budget Office deficit projections, August 1995, and what do I find on this page? By the way, this is in billions of dollars. I find a section of the Congressional Budget Office projections which say what? ``Off budget surplus.'' And what do I find under it? Social Security and the Postal Service. The Postal Service surplus is a minor amount. It is not a minor amount to the average family, I am sure, because we are talking about up to a billion dollars. But compared to the off budget surplus of Social Security, it is a minor amount. The off-budget surplus. Is that not a beautiful phrase, the off- budget surplus? I can imagine how virtually anybody in this country would be delighted to have an off-budget surplus available to them when it comes time to pay their bills. For 1996, it is $63 billion, and goes on up to the year 2002 in which the projection is $96 billion. Is that not nice to have that surplus available to us? So we go on then from the Congressional Budget Office, and we get what is the base line budget projections, and there we see a word which has been used on the floor of this House over, and over, and over again, but not since we started talking about the balanced budget. We used to hear about how we had to reduce the deficit. That was a litany that was recited with the fervor of a rosary being recited. We had to have the deficit be reduced. We do not hear that anymore, Mr. Speaker. Now we are balancing the budget. We have a new prayer, but this is an unanswered prayer, because this Congressional Budget Office base line budget projection for the fiscal year 1996 read in two ways, and it is really convenient. I am so pleased Speaker Gingrich asked us to use the Congressional Budget Office because they have this beautiful comparison here. On one line, the on-budget deficit. Unfortunately, our deficit cannot get off budget. There is no way to hide the deficit. We have to stay on the money, no pun intended, Mr. Speaker, on the money when it comes to the deficit, and the Congressional Budget Office understands that. So the on-budget deficit is $253 billion in 1996, as of August 1995, according to the Congressional Budget Office; and goes on, by the year 2002, to be a total of $436 billion. And do not forget we are accumulating 253, 286, 301, 338, 373, 397 and 436. We add all those numbers up to get what the deficit is. And what do we see as the off-budget surplus? We have an on-budget deficit in three figures, we have an off-budget surplus in the year 1996 of $63 billion, in the year 2002, $96 billion, and we have a series of numbers going on for every fiscal year up to the year 2002. So what we have there, Mr. Speaker, it seems pretty clear, is that we have an ever increasing deficit. An ever increasing deficit under our budget, under the Speaker's proposal. An ever increasing deficit and we have Social Security funds in a trust fund, supposedly off-budget, that we are going to use to try to reduce that deficit. But that does not take into account, then, how we pay for the money that we have borrowed from Social Security to make up for what we are spending in a deficit fashion in the budget we have proposed before us. Mr. Speaker, one does not have to be a Nobel prize winner to figure that one out. It means that we are going to keep on spending. In fact, I see members of the majority party come to the floor [[Page H 14218]] everyday and brag how they are spending more money on Medicare, more money on Medicaid, more money here and more money there. Charts come down on the floor, facts and figures are thrown forth, but I notice they never bring anything out of the budget document. I am the one quoting from the budget document. I am the one quoting from the Congressional Budget Office a to the actual figures. Mr. Speaker, I do not have some pie chart or something that has been drawn up in the basement down here on the floor. I am quoting the facts and figures as they are, and I am here night after night bringing this out with no refutation from anybody. I do not seek a contest on this. I am just saying that these are the facts and figures for the American public to figure out. Now, let us take a look at what this means. I have cited a lot of numbers, and I am sure my colleagues that are tuned in, and others across the country who might be observing our proceedings, they are not sitting there with pen and pencil trying to copy down everything I am saying. I hope that they believe that I am quoting accurately from the figures. Certainly the staff here at the House takes these documents afterwards to check for what they are going to put into the Congressional Record, so I can assure everyone that these documents will be quoted in the Congressional Record and the sources will be there. So what do these numbers mean? If we take my fundamental proposition that there is not a balanced budget proposal on the table; that, in fact, we are increasing the deficit; that, in fact, we are borrowing money from the Social Security trust fund with no plan to pay it back, what does it mean? Well, there is a very interesting table that the Congressional Budget Office has provided, and it is as follows: What is the on-budget deficit? If the Speaker will recall, that is what I just recited. And the off-budget surplus, what does that mean in terms of being a percentage of the gross domestic product? That is, I think, a reasonable way for the average American, and certainly myself, I am an average American, I do not think, as I say, I have any special mathematical ability or any special insight into economics, but I think I understand a straightforward presentation, and these Congressional Budget Office tables are straightforward. The on-budget deficit. How much we are in the red. Off-budget surplus. How much extra money we have. What is it as a percentage of our gross domestic product? That is to say the sum and substance, the sum total of all that we have produced. What are we worth? Well, it is very interesting that the budget, which supposedly is going to be balanced in 2002, starts out in 1996 as a percentage of the gross domestic product. It starts off at 3.5 percent. 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product is the on-budget deficit. If we were really balancing this budget, Mr. Speaker, why is it that in the year 2002 the percentage of the gross domestic product, which is in deficit, is 4.4? I will repeat. How can we say that we have balanced the budget if, as a percentage of our gross domestic product, we move from 3.5 percent in 1996 to 4.4 percent of the gross domestic product in the year 2002? It cannot be done. It cannot be done. There is no way we can twist the English language sufficiently to enable us to come on this floor and say that the deficit is less in 2002 than it is in 1996 if we have moved from 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product to 4.4 percent of the gross domestic product as representing the deficit of this Nation. That is the fact. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, the off-budget surplus stays approximately at 0.9 percent. The highest it goes is 1.0 percent in the year 2000 and again in the year 2002. In only 2 of the 7 years does the off-budget surplus reach the level of 1 percent of the gross domestic product. Now, these are the facts and these are not facts that I have twisted and turned in order to make my case. The case came to me from reading the facts. I had no preconceptions on this. I do not sit on the Committee on the Budget. I had to do my homework on this. I had to read through these documents. I had to wade through all the piles of numbers and propositions, and decreased revenues stemming from downward revisions on income projections, and full percentage points lower than previous forecasts, and Federal debts held by public standing, and lower rates which translate into significant interest savings. I had to wade through that. It is my duty to wade through that. When I looked at it, and when I read it, I kept thinking, can this be true? Can someone be coming down here and saying we are going to balance the Federal budget by 2002? We are going to balance the Federal budget in 7 years? We are going to save our children? We are going to save our grandchildren? The Congressional Budget Office figures do not fudge anything. The Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich says, let us use honest numbers. Everything that I have read today, everything that I am speaking about on this floor comes from the Congressional Budget Office or from the conference document on the budget as presented to this Congress. Every single number. Nothing has been made up by me. I am not trying to put it in any particular order to try to make my case. The case, as I said, was made for me by reading the numbers and understanding what they meant finally. They meant to me that we are engaged in an illusion. I will not use the word ``fraud''. I may have used it in the past, because that just has a pejorative connotation, and I do not care to get into that. There has been enough of that kind of discussion taking place. I wish the Speaker himself, Mr. Gingrich, would take that to heart and come down here and start using some honest numbers that he admonished us with. Now, Mr. Speaker, let us take a look at what that means. Let us try to get some understanding, then, of what that means to the children; what that means to the taxpayers who have the children and the mothers and fathers who may be on Social Security. There is a phrase that has been utilized, Mr. Speaker, utilized on this floor and utilized in discussions, utilized in media discussion, and it is called backloading. It is called look-back provisions. Now, these are our little catch phrases that are utilized, and I do not think, necessarily, they are explained, and I fault the media. I do not fault the political figures that are trying to dance around this case. I mean I do not fault them in the sense of trying to figure out a way to fool people, because that is what the object of this is. I fault, frankly, the journalists and those whose job it is to cover what we are doing from inquiring further. Why are there not more probing questions? We could do with a few less celebrity journalists and entertainers disguised as journalists and get some people who will ask some serious questions of the people that are presenting these phrases about balanced budgets and lowering the deficit. What is backloading? What is a look-back provision? I will tell the American people what it is. What it means is if over the next 7 years some of these figures fall down, if they do not hold up, what it means is in the 7th year we will look back, see how much we are off the mark that we set for ourselves, and them impose draconian cuts. At that point that will eviscerate even further, if that is possible, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition programs for children and the helpless among us. How will we care for them? That is what look-back means. That is what backloading means. Backloading is when we start out and we have a lower number than we really need because we do not want to scare people too much. After all, there is a Presidential election coming up. Our reelection is coming next year. Let us not frighten them too much, but let us load that up at the backside, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 on to 2002, so that when we get to 2002, then we can whack them. By that time, a lot of people in here have said they are leaving office. There is all kinds of folks in here that have said I am for term limits. I am only going to be here three terms. I am going to come in, destroy the budget of the United States, I will take the social and economic stability of this Nation apart brick-by-brick, and then I am going to walk away and leave the mess for somebody else to clean up. That is what is going to happen. That is what the implications of this budget are. It goes beyond the partisan argument among Democrats and Republicans. It comes down to what kind of [[Page H 14219]] Nation are we going to have? What kind of people are we? Do we care about one another? Do we have any feeling for one another? Is it literally a case, as in the Gilded Age, in which a financial pirate like Jim Fiske could say, ``It is every man, drag out his own corpse.'' Is this to be a war of each against all? Is that what this country is all about? That is one of the reasons that we have the difficulty in Bosnia, because we have a war of each against all. I come from Hawaii where we do not have that kind of ethic. Our diversity defines us rather than dividing us in Hawaii. Mr. Speaker, we live on an island. I grant you, Mr. Speaker, not everybody lives in the kind of situation that perhaps you and I do. Island people, we know our limitations. We know that because we are on an island, because we recognize that nature in the end rules, that we have to get along with one another. We have to find ways to accommodate one another; not to set one against another. Mr. Speaker, that will be the inevitable result of this budget if we are not fair and honest and play fair and honest as we go into the budget. If we backload the budget to have the full impact come in a given year, we are not going to be able to do it without hurting people and hurting people deeply. That is not just opinion on my part. I think it is a reasonable projection that anybody who is being honest about it would make. Let us try to get a little more detail on that. What exactly is going to take place? Does anybody believe that in the year 2002, the Government stops; that there are no payments to anybody anymore; that we have no obligations, social or economic, to one another? What happens in 2003 and on out? It is very interesting. Again, Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to just bring my own opinion to the floor. I will quote from what they call a myth, the balanced budget myth, from USA Today written November 6 of this year, just last month. USA Today, Gannett Corp., they are no friends of mine. The Gannett Corp. in Hawaii, they would like to see me drop through one of those volcanic cracks on the Big Island and never come back. I am proud to say that those newspaper people in Hawaii, they have been against me all of my life. All of my political life they have opposed me. I know I am doing something right when I have the newspapers going against me in their editorial departments in my own hometown. Mr. Speaker, you know perfectly well that a person must have something useful to say. I am not quoting an organization that has any favorable twists towards me. There is no question about that. So, what does their editorial say? Let me quote. Each day, the debate over balancing the budget produces another dire warning. That cuts are too deep, say the Democrats. Taxes must fall, say the Republicans. But after they compromise and begin arguing over who won a few weeks from now, one truth will remain. Both sides will be lying, because neither is talking about a truly balanced budget at all. ``The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office,'' the documents that I have been quoting, as the Speaker admonished us to do underscored that point recently. It pointed out that come 2002, when the balance will be `balanced' under the Republican plans, the Government will still be borrowing more than $100 billion a year. This is done by writing IOU's to the Treasury, to Social Security and other trust funds that Congress declares off budget.'' That is what I have been saying all along in the course of my remarks. ``The bill for this little game will not come due in the political life of President Clinton or much of today's Congress.'' That is just what I indicated. ``But, the public will pay soon enough.'' Here is what the editorial says, and I quote: To understand, look ahead to 2005. That is just 10 years away, about the time it takes for an 11-year-old child to go from grade school through college. Let us think about that, because we have heard over and over again from our friends here on the majority Republican side, ``Think about the children. Think about the grandchildren.'' I hope it does not sound pejorative, Mr. Speaker, but there have been some crocodile tears shed on this floor about the kids and the grandkids. So, I am just going to talk about 10 years from now, in the time an 11-year-old goes from grade school to college. That year, 2005, that year, a critical balance tips. Increased costs for Social Security will begin to deplete Congress' cushion. Because the Social Security trust fund is a fiction, filled with nothing but Government promises to pay, Congress will gradually lose its fudge factor. By 2013, when the trust fund peaks, taxpayers will feel a hard bit. They will have to start doing what the trust fund was supposed to do: pay for the retirement of 75 million baby boomers. The budget will plummet into a sea of red ink with $760 billion a year deficits by the year 2030. By then, the Government will have had to double the current 12.4 percent employer-employee payroll tax to cover Social Security obligations. Again I emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that is not some partisan rhetoric that I made up in order to try to embarrass Speaker Gingrich, with his admonitions to us about having to balance the budget. That comes from an editorial from someone who is certainly not a friend of mine. But the fact still remains that they have hit upon what the real difficulties, and believe me that is a word that beggars the enormity of what is about to take place, the difficulties, the hardships, the pain that is going to be inflicted on this country as we apparently want to mutually agree to fool ourselves and, by extension, fool the American people into thinking that we are balancing the budget. Mr. Speaker, we cannot in good conscience come down to this floor and go through this ritual recitation about a balanced budget and not acknowledge the facts as I have presented them. Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that by borrowing from the trust funds, we are not really balancing the budget. By not being honest about what the deficits are, it simply means that we are going to have to raise taxes on the next generation, or else we are going to have to make cuts that are unacceptable in a civilized society. I suppose it would be possible to make the kind of cuts that would enable us to get into balance in 7 years if we decided that there were whole portions of our populace that were expendable, with whom we could dispense, that we have dispensable people. Right now, Mr. Gingrich is very fond of reciting individual instances where children who were on welfare have been killed or maimed or tortured or some horrifying element such as that coming into play, and cited it over and over again, and then associate that with programs that have failed, in his estimation. Well, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider if we are going to go by the number Speaker Gringrich raised with us, namely an intuitive one about 7 years, are we not then taking a chance, given the figures that I have outlined, of doing exactly that? Of having a society in which people, some people, will be considered less human than others; less deserving than others? In which providing for the general welfare of all of our people will be transposed into ``some will get and some will not,'' and those without power will be left without the capacity to defend themselves? The strong, the powerful, the wealthy, they can always take care of themselves. We all know the old joke about Democrats borrow and Republicans collect interest. Well, it has a certain cachet to it, and probably more than one person out there who is tuning in, including our own colleagues, will say, ``Yes, that, is right.'' Mr. Speaker, you may think that is the way we should put our budget together. I do not. I am down on this floor trying to exercise my franchise on this floor on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. That is why the 435 of us are here. This is a representative government. This is not a parliament. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Gingrich is not the prime minister. We do not have to follow blindly in the footsteps of anybody in this country, including the President of the United States, as he learns every single day, I am sure, more than once. Probably once an hour, once a minute, he probably feels it is like somebody is telling them that they do not have to pay attention to what he is saying or what he is requesting. Mr. Speaker, it is our obligation as men and women freely elected by a free people to come onto this floor and defend the interests of those who cannot [[Page H 14220]] otherwise defend themselves. That is what this budget is about. It is not about an abstract document. The fact that I happen to be able to grab a piece of paper and budget figures on a piece of paper does not mean that that is the budget. The budget is people. This is the people's House. We represent the people. We have a certain time on Earth given to us to justify our existence. That is the way I look at it. I do not deserve anything. I am not entitled to anything. But I will tell my colleagues what I am entitled to under the Government of the United States, is consideration. Consideration, based on the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence that formed the basis of our association with one another as a republic. So, it is important for us to transpose and translate this document, this budget, into human terms and to consider the human dimension. If we do, I think we are going to look at it a little differently. I am perfectly content, Mr. Speaker, I have been a legislator all of my life. I understand that not everybody thinks as I do, and I understand that positions I may have held at one time I have changed over the years. Mr. Speaker, I have changed them because I have learned more. Hopefully, I am not so set in my ways as to believe that revealed wisdom is somehow mine at a given point in my life and there is nothing else for me to learn. In this particular context, I think there is a lot for us to learn, and there is a lot for us to give to one another in terms of the knowledge that we have acquired. If we want to reduce the deficit, and I do think that is important, and if at some point we want to balance the budget, and I do think that that is important, by all means let us do it in a sensible way. Very few people, Mr. Speaker, are able to buy their house on the day that they move into it. The bank advances them a sum of money on the basis that they will be able to balance their budget. That is to say, they will have sufficient funds to be able to make the series of payments necessary in order for them to pay off that house. We do that as governments all the time. What we say, if we are on the city council or in the State government or in a village situation where we have a bond issue for sewers or for roads or for schools, we say that over a period of time we will pay for that, because not just the people of today, but the people of tomorrow, the young people as they grow older, will be using these facilities. We have a budget that takes that into account and over 5, 10, 15, 20, and 30 years, we pay the principal and interest associated with those projects and those expenditures that we feel are in the general public's interest; in the common interest of the people in our communities. We see this as being fair and equitable. That is all I am asking for, Mr. Speaker. So, I want to close perhaps by reiterating and summarizing as follows: If we truly want to have a budget that we can go before our families, our friends, our communities, go before those folks who depend upon us, and speak with them honestly about it; that will review the premises upon which this balanced budget is being proposed; that will deal with some honest number, recognizing that we cannot command the next Congress; that there are 2 Presidential elections over the next 7 years, then we have to try and set a basis, a foundation, for a budget that will enable us to be able to carry on the legacy, the heritage of freedom in this country, and to pass on to those who will have the responsibility after us, a responsible budget which has been arrived at in an honest fashion, and which preserves and protects not just Social Security and the other trust funds, but protects the basis upon which we are able to conduct the proper business of the people of this country. That budget, fundamentally, in the end, Mr. Speaker, is people, and unless we translate this budget into people terms, we are doing a disservice to the very people who have given us the responsibility to be here today.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, Mr. Dornan has given me, with his last sentence, literally a transition point for the issue that I wish to discuss this evening yet once again, and that has to do with the so-called balanced budget. Mr. Speaker, as you may know, and certainly others of our colleagues who have been paying attention to both debate during the bills at hand, and in special orders with respect to the budget reconciliation bill, that I have, among others, been saying for some time now, that this magic formula that is being proposed by the majority about a balanced budget is in fact an illusion. Now, Mr. Speaker, rather than just taking into consideration the observation of the majority leader, Mr. Armey, the other day that politicians could get hit by a train and get back up and say I got the best of that deal, so therefore, we cannot pay much attention to politicians, let me make some references then to some of the people in the press, some of the journalists who have been doing their homework on this issue. Here is the fundamental premise, Mr. Speaker. I am maintaining that there is no balanced budget in 7 years. What bothers me is that most journalists, when they report this, and when I say most journalists I am talking across the board up to and including public radio and public television, all of the networks, they simply report what is said and then what the reaction to that is as if they were covering a tennis match from one side to the other. Nobody asked the basic question of the Speaker of the House, who has, despite his indications that he was going to take a more reticent position, to step back; I think he said he was going to bench himself. In the last 2 days the Speaker has come forward with threats about crashing the stock market, driving interest rates through the roof, demanding that his plan for a balanced budget be the basis of the budget reconciliation bill. Mr. Speaker, I submit to you and to my other colleagues, and I have offered again and again during special orders the opportunity to other Members to come down and refute what I am saying. It is not that I want to engage in a contest, because this is far too important for trying to score points, but it is a simple question of whether we are in fact, as Mark Twain has said that the truth is so rare we ought to be very careful in spending it. The fact of the matter is that there is no balanced budget proposal on the table. There is no balanced budget proposal on the table that is being negotiated between Speaker Gingrich and the White House. I say Speaker Gingrich; I know there are other negotiators there, but I think we all know that nothing is going to move in the House, according to the Speaker, in any event today, if I am to understand his declaration today correctly, that we have to abide by his proposal for a balanced budget in 7 years, or we do not move. Now, as I say, all kinds of threats are involved in that. I am a legislator all my elected life. Maybe Speaker Gingrich, having only run for the Congress of the United States and spent all of his time in the Congress of the United States, and for the first time being in the majority, has not had the same kind of opportunities or experiences that I have had as a legislator. I have been a legislator as well as a member of civic organizations and community organizations; I have been an officer of them. I have been on the city council, I have been in the State House, I have been in the State Senate. I do not cite that as any particular virtue, but simply as a recitation of the record with respect to legislative experience. That experience tells me that you do not get anywhere in negotiations by threatening the other side or laying down absolutes to them, particularly when there is no basis from your side. I am perfectly willing at any time, and I am sure members of the Democratic Caucus are and those who are doing the negotiating, up to and including the President of the United States and his representative, Mr. Panetta, are quite willing to try to come to an agreement. This is not a Parliament. This is a constitutional system with a division of houses, a legislative and executive branch, and as much as the Speaker would like to be Prime Minister of the United States, he is not. He is the Speaker of the House. Therefore, if he is going to negotiate with the Executive, he is going to have to come to the table with some honest numbers. He says that that is what it is that he wants to do, but the fact is, and I will repeat it again and again and again until some people I hope in the media, whom we have to depend upon; and Mr. Speaker, Mr. Jefferson said at one point that he would prefer in a democracy as opposed to free elections and a free government and a free press, he preferred a free press, because the press is what secures our freedom. Yet the free press in this particular instance has been remiss and not doing [[Page H 14168]] its duty in asking the Speaker, what does he mean when he comes to the table and says a balanced budget. Mr. Speaker, I contend that there will be at least $1 trillion in additional deficit in this so-called balanced budget. Now, if someone can come to the floor and refute what I am saying, I probably should not use the word refute; again, it sounds like it is a contest, but if someone can come and explain how that is not the case, Mr. Speaker, I would like very much to hear it. Now, this is not merely an observation that I am making. Let me make reference to an article in USA Today, Monday, October 23, 1995, by William Welch. I called Mr. Welch because I was interested to see that there was actually a member of the working press who had gotten into this issue. Let me explain to you what it is that I am contending, that is to say what is behind my contention that the proposal for a balanced budget is in fact not a balanced budget. It is a political illusion because apparently, or for whatever the political reason, the political agenda, I presume it has to do with election politics in 1996, the Speaker wants to make the claim that his party has been for a balanced budget. What he is really talking about is whether or not the deficit can be reduced. There is not going to be a balanced budget in this century, I can assure you of that. There is not going to be a balanced budget, as the average person understands a balanced budget to be, in this century. If we adopt some reforms, some genuine budget reforms, as I have mentioned previously, like separating our capital spending from our operating budget, going to a biennial budget, and other reforms that we might take up next year, perhaps then we can move genuinely towards balancing the budget while we reduce the deficit. However, in the budget that is being proposed by the Speaker and is now the subject of negotiation, he is actually increasing the deficit. The deficit is going to increase. I can give you the exact numbers. For fiscal year 1996, $245.6 billion, and on through 1997 and on up to the year 2002. In the year 2002, when we are supposed to have a $10 billion surplus, we are actually going to have a deficit of $108.4 billion, according to the budget document that the Committee on the Budget has put forward. You need only read on page 3 of the budget document that Mr. Kasich and the Committee on the Budget put forward, which is sitting on the table down at the White House, and see that what I am saying is the case. Let me repeat it. We are going to increase the deficit all during this time. How then is it possible for us to say that there is going to be a balanced budget? How is it possible for the Speaker, although he has never been shy, as we know, in going on television and making claims of one kind and another, how is it possible for him to say that he is going to have a balanced budget? Mr. Speaker, the answer is very simple. He is not going to use the off-budget numbers. Now, I do not think that the average American is aware of the fact that we have two different kinds of budgets here. We have accounting games that go on at the Federal Government level. We have figures that are on budget and we have figures that are off budget. Now, Mr. Welch's article is entitled ``Off-budget Spending Hides Red Ink.'' That is not me speaking. This is the editorial judgment of USA Today in terms of those who are writing the headlines. ``Off-budget Spending Hides Red Ink.'' Let me quote from it for a little bit. ``Senate Republicans were crowing last week,'' I am quoting now from Mr. Welch's article, ``Senate Republicans were crowing last week after the Congressional Budget Office certified that their budget plan would bring the Federal books into balance in 7 years. But the Congressional Budget Office has another set of figures that GOP leaders are not talking about. It shows that under the GOP budget plan, the government will have to borrow at least $105 billion in the year 2002, the target year for a balanced budget. Only in Washington, to borrow a phrase from opponents of government, would a budget dependent on continued borrowing be judged in balance.'' Mr. Speaker, what that means is that Mr. Welch has hit upon the secret, the hidden secret of the Republican balanced budget: You take money from the Social Security trust fund. Now, the fact that it is in the Treasury, the fact that it is supposedly sacrosanct in the Treasury allows them the verbal gymnastics of being able to say, well, we are not really taking the money. Well, of course you are. You are borrowing the money and you have to pay it back with interest. You are going to borrow, if you use the figures of the original budget resolution, some $636 billion. That was the figure in January. I know that because I have a letter here dated October 20, 1995, from the Congressional Budget Office, and its Director, June O'Neill. It is addressed to a Member of the U.S. Senate and copies to two other Members of the Senate, including the chairman of the Budget Committee. ``Dear Senator: Pursuant to section 205(a) of the budget resolution for fiscal year 1996, the Congressional Budget Office''--and this is the office that is cited by the Speaker as being the source of his figures for this budget--``the Congressional Budget Office provided the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee on October 18 with a projection of the budget deficits or surpluses that would result from enactment of the reconciliation legislation submitted to the Budget Committee. As specified in section 205(a), the Congressional Budget Office provided projections''--this is what is being used for these budget figures, Mr. Speaker, projections of the Congressional Budget Office, that was insisted upon by the Speaker. Ms. O'Neill then has a parenthesis, ``using the economic and technical assumptions underlying the budget resolution and assuming the level of discretionary spending specified in that resolution,'' end of parenthesis, ``of the deficit or surplus of the total budget, that is, the deficit or surplus resulting from all budgetary transactions of the Federal Government, including Social Security and Postal Service spending and receipts that are designated as off-budget transactions.'' Now, Mr. Speaker, maybe you can get away with this in your household. I doubt it. I cannot get away with it in my household. So far as I know, there is not an American family that can get away with having off- budget transactions. Those who do off-budget transactions find themselves in the courts. They find themselves under felony indictment for fraud. They find themselves in situations in which they are accused of kiting checks. They find themselves in a situation in which they have written checks from accounts in which there are insufficient funds, or they find themselves under the racketeering statutes under indictment in court. But for purposes of accounting, for political purposes, the Republican budget says, ``Oh, we're going to count this off-budget transaction.'' Now what is off-budget? All the money that comes out of your paycheck for Social Security that you are paying in right now is being, as was described by one of the Senators who very unfortunately passed away, as embezzlement from the Social Security system. I go on, again quoting from Director O'Neill's letter of October 20 from the Congressional Budget Office: ``As stated to Chairman Domenici, the Congressional Budget Office projected that there will be a total- budget surplus of $10 billion in 2002.'' But the next sentence says, ``Excluding an estimated off-budget surplus of $115 billion in 2002 from the calculation, the Congressional Budget Office would project an on-budget deficit of $105 billion in 2002. If you wish further details on this projection, we will be pleased to provide them.'' Now, Mr. Speaker, we both know that there is a new set of figures that are going to come from the Congressional Budget Office. They were supposed to arrive this week. They did not arrive. That is why the budget negotiations are stalled. We are going to get a new series of numbers. So when I give you the number $636 billion, that is based on what took place from the Congressional Budget Office estimates in January 1995. They have a new set of projections in August of 1995, different numbers, and I expect they will have different numbers again. [[Page H 14169]] But whatever the numbers are, it is the process that counts. Here I have a letter from the Congressional Budget Office. This is the office that Mr. Gingrich says he wants to rely upon for the figures for his balanced budget proposal, and here you have the director of the office, in a letter written on Congressional Budget Office stationery on October 20 of this year, saying that, and I quote, ``Excluding an estimated off-budget surplus of $115 billion in 2002,'' parentheses, in the Social Security trust fund, ``from the calculation, the Congressional Budget Office would project an on-budget deficit of $105 billion in the year 2002.'' Mr. Speaker, there is no way that you can continue to have budget deficits year after year after year, take money from Social Security, the principal and interest of which is due to the Social Security trust fund, and then not find that you have actually increased the deficit rather than balancing the budget, and increased it by a sum in excess of $1 trillion by 2002. When you have done that, you have not begun to deal with the question of what happens after 2002. Is the Government of the United States going to stop in 2002? When you have this magic number of 7 years associated with the balanced budget, are people in this country under the impression that suddenly in the year 2002 we are not going to owe any money? And that which we have borrowed up until 2002 somehow will be paid in 2003 and beyond by some plan which has not yet been enunciated? Has any journalist asked the Speaker, what do you plan to do in 2003? And what do you plan to do in 2014, 2015, 2020 and 2030, when the money you have taken from Social Security is due to those who are then eligible for it? Where is the money going to come from? Mr. Speaker, I am down on this floor, I am in the special order, it is late at night here in the East. As you go across the country, it is a little bit earlier. I know people are tuned into the Government. I hope some people are listening tonight. I hope somebody out there understands that the Government is going to go on beyond the year 2002, and that unless you want the immediate political benefit of being able to claim that you are balancing the budget when in fact you are increasing the deficit, increasing it at a rate that is unconscionable, there is no cold war. The deficit increased by trillions of dollars at the time of President Reagan and through President Bush's administration, in which at least the argument was made that we had a foe that we had to fight and so it was necessary to borrow this money. There was some discussion that if we ran deficits and cut taxes that more revenue would come in. That did not happen, but at lest there was a rationale for it. So history now tells us that when you increase spending, when you cut taxes for the wealthy, when your revenues go down, that your deficit is going to increase. It is going to increase. And this does not change anything. It not only does not change it but it exacerbates the situation. Notice again I am down here talking, I know there are other people that are out there that are familiar with the budget. I certainly do not pretend to be an all-around expert on the budget, but I tell you, Mr. Speaker, I have not been elected for more than two decades by being slow on my feet and not doing my homework. I know that the budget is not going to be balanced. I know that the funds to offset the deficit are coming out of the Social Security trust fund, and I know that there is not a word in that budget reconciliation bill that proposes one single dollar of how that deficit is supposed to be made up, and how the money being borrowed from Social Security is going to be repaid so that the recipients who are due that money are going to be able to get it in the next century. It is right here from the Congressional Budget Office. Now, if people in this country want to have on-budgets and off- budgets, I suppose that we can do that. But do not tell me that is an honest number. Mr. Speaker, I have been in the minority of the majority before. When I served in the majority, in my legislature or in the council or now in the House of Representatives, I have been in the majority and I have been in the minority, I have won elections, I have lost elections. I have been a minority in the majority as I have said, but I will tell you this, I have never in my life, and I have served on ways and means committees and I have served as chairman of subject matter committees. So I understand what it is when you are told that you have a cap, when you have a certain amount of money that you have to spend and you have to make tough decisions. I have made thousands and thousands of those decisions, as has every other legislator who has spent any time thinking about what their legislative duty is. And I know that when somebody tells me that there is something off- budget that can be counted, it amounts to what at the State level, Mr. Speaker, or at the county level, at the village level or town level, would be a special fund. Now we special fund all kinds of things in the State of Hawaii, and I expect you do it in your State and everybody else does. Maybe it is the airport fund, where the fees that come in for the airport, landing fees and so on, are put into a special fund and you know that the money that comes in is going to be spent for airport activities, or highway transportation fund. People pay taxes on the gasoline that they buy and they know that the money that comes in from that the surplus, if you will, from those funds are going to be spent on highway projects. Well, the Social Security trust fund is supposed to be for Social Security. It is not there as a piggy bank to be looted at will with an IOU in it that says, ``I'll pay you back at some time in the future. Catch me on that when you can.'' But that is what this proposal does. Mr. Welch has caught it. Let me go on with some more of his article. ``In figuring the Federal budget deficit, Congress does not count the government's spending from certain trust funds, principally from the fund for Social Security benefits. By law,'' Still quoting from Mr. Welch, ``Congress has placed the Social Security trust fund off- budget,'' Quote, unquote. ``The surplus, the amount left after Social Security payroll taxes are used to pay benefits to current beneficiaries, is invested in Treasury securities. That money, in turn, flows into the federal treasury and is spent on everything from congressional salaries to fuel for battleships.'' In other words, we have borrowed against ourselves. We have borrowed our own money. When you borrow the money, you have to pay it back. It is not a paper transaction. It is real money we are talking about here. It is money that has to be paid back. I have asked my Republican colleagues again and again about this, and about the only answer I get is, other Democratic Presidents have done this, Democratic Congresses have done the same thing. I am not the one who came here saying, oh, it is not going to be business as usual, we are going to change the way everything is done around here, we are going to change the Government, we are going to do things the right way, we are going to be honest with our numbers. The Speaker says that over and over and over again. When you used off-budget numbers before, off-budget funding before for other things, it was to fund the budget for that year. Nobody was kidding themselves that they were balancing the budget. If anything, what we tried to do--and we started with President Clinton's budget, the first budget, I would remind the Speaker, since Harry Truman in 1948 that in consecutive years reduced the absolute amount of the deficit and the rate of the deficit. Mr. Clinton's budget did not get rid of the deficit but it started us on the path. I think that the Committee on the Budget and others always use the words glide path. This has become the new catch word. A glide path. The glide path does not start with this budget--I do not want to characterize it as phony, the way the Speaker uses the word phony all the time, because that is pejorative. I am not going to say that. But what I will say is that illusionary budget, the illusion of this so- called balanced budget is such that you do not have the glide path that President Clinton started sustained. President Clinton's budget has reduced the deficit and reduced the rate [[Page H 14170]] of the deficit and has done so far 3 years running. You cannot take it all out or the economy would collapse. This is the same kind of thing, no different than when you are trying to pay your mortgage and buy a car and get the washing machine. You figure out how much money is coming in, you figure out how much you can spend a month or over the year, and that is how you balance your budget. It is your ability to pay, and that has to be judged against your gross income, your expected revenues. That is what banks do when they loan you money for a house. They are betting that you will be able to sustain your payments on the mortgage for whatever the period of time is for that mortgage. Now, this is what people understand to be a balanced budget. But does anybody presume that they do not have to pay the mortgage? That when they borrow the money they do not have to pay it back or they just pay a portion of it back, that thee is no plan, that there is no obligation? We are mortgaging the Social Security trust fund so that the Speaker can say he is balancing the budget. I do not know if you will be here 7 years from now. I do not know if he is going to be here next year, unless we do change the system of government here to the prime minister or parliamentary system he seems to admire so much. I think he is subject to election just like I am and just like you are, Mr. Speaker. We talk about 7 years as if we can commit the next Congress to this 7 years. We cannot commit the next Congress. We cannot even commit this Congress next year to what the budget allocations are going to be. And there will be two Presidential elections before this 7 years is up. We have no idea whether President Clinton or anyone who might succeed him will have the same desires, the same plans, the same proposals. But even if we grant this 7-year process and do our level best in a manner of good faith and goodwill to try to implement it, the fact still remains the question has not been answered about what do you do with the mortgage on Social Security. And unless we can answer the question that is inherent is Mr. Welch's article, it cannot be done. Now Mr. Welch is not the only one who has brought this up. Mr. Lars- Erik Nelson, in the New York Daily News, October 20, scarcely a little over a month ago, let me quote him from the article entitled ``Borrowing from Social Security to Aid the Rich,'' Lars-Erik Nelson, ``See that social security deduction on your paycheck? It is the key to the Republican plan to `balance' the Federal budget while giving tax cuts to the wealthy.'' That is not me saying it. That is Mr. Nelson's observation from reading the budget. Again quoting, ``In 2002, the year Republicans have been promising a balanced budget, they will, in fact, come up $108,000 billion short. According to the House Budget Committee's report.'' Now there, Mr. Speaker, I submit to you is a third party, not me, not someone with a partisan political agenda, someone else coming up with the exact same figures that I just gave you from the budget. Again quoting, ``The Republican plan makes up the different by borrowing, the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania called it embezzling, from the social security trust fund.'' Going on, ``The Republican plan continues the embezzlement in pure accounting terms. The Republicans are right, if the amount of money the government collects in a given year equals the amount that it pays out, the budget is in balance. But borrowing from the trust fund to cover current operating costs means raising taxes on the next generation, our children, to pay back the debt to the trust fund.'' I will say one thing on this, Mr. Speaker, and I hope it does not sound pejorative because I try to keep comity on the floor. I like to have good relations with all my friends and colleagues here, despite whatever differences we might have. I am getting a little sick of hearing people talk with crocodile tears about their children and their grandchildren and how the balanced budget proposal is on behalf of their children and their grandchildren. I would like those people to explain, not to me, but explain to the American people and explain to those children and grandchildren how they are taking care of those kids by upping the ante on what they have to pay for what their mothers and fathers borrowed without paying it back. Let me read it to you again: ``The Republican plan continues the embezzlement. In pure accounting terms, the Republicans are probably right.'' In pure accounting terms, parenthetically, in pure accounting terms, that is what the Republican Party always wants to do. The old saying is the Democrat borrow, Republicans collect interest. Hah, hah, where this balanced budget is concerned, let me tell you, that will be true with a vengeance. Reading again from Mr. Nelson, ``If the amount of money the government collects in a given year equals the amount that it pays out, the budget is in balance. But,'' and there is always the ``but,'' ``But borrowing from the trust fund to cover current operating costs means raising taxes on the next generation, our children, to pay back the debt to the trust fund.'' I have yet, Mr. Speaker, despite my best efforts, and as I say, I believe I am open and available to anybody on either side of the aisle on this, I have asked again and again of my friends with whom I have had discussions of varying lengths about this issue, how do you propose to pay back the money to the Social Security fund? Nobody that I speak to, by the way, Mr. Speaker, on this issue denies to me that this is what is going to happen, that this is how the budget ostensibly is being balanced. Now I will repeat, I could not get away with this in my family. I could not get away with it. I do not know of a Member here that can get away with it in their own family budgeting. It cannot be done. We propose to do it and get away with it. The press is letting this slide. This is almost the only way we have to try and get this out is to take advantage of the fact that we have our special orders and hope that somebody in the press, like Mr. Nelson, like Mr. Welch, will pick up on it and begin to explain to people from the Fourth Estate, from the press, from someone who is not directly involved in the political process, from partisan views, partisan viewpoints, begin to explain to people what exactly is happening. In addition, quoting again from Mr. Nelson, ``In addition, using Social Security deductions to balance the budget means that working people who cannot escape that FICA deduction,'' that is what is called the FICA deduction, that is your social security deduction, who cannot not escape that deduction on their paychecks make up the shortfall caused by tax breaks for the wealthy and for business. Mr. Nelson quotes internally, ``It is the largest transfer of wealth from labor to capital in our history,'' Senator Daniel Moynihan, Democrat, New York, said yesterday. We are using a 15 percent payroll tax, the combined burden on employer and employee, to pay the interest on Treasury bonds, which are generally not owned by blue-collar workers. It is the working people. So when people say is there a difference in the parties, I say there is. Mr. Speaker, I respect the position you have and other Members of the majority have. You are freely elected by your constituents. But I believe I also have the right and the obligation to point out, I believe, the position we are taking as Democrats is to defend the working people of this country and to defend their interests against great wealth. Great wealth can always take care of itself. Great wealth can take these bonds and get this interest. What I ask, Mr. Speaker, is that these points be taken into account, and I hope that we will find ourselves dealing honestly with this budget. You will find in days to come, Mr. Speaker, that the plan that the President is putting forward, that is to say, the proposal, the elements of the proposal are going to be those that will be recognized by the American people as the basis for a fair conclusion to this budget debate. Mark my words, the Speaker of the House will not be able to say, ``Do it my way or no way at all.'' He will not be able to continue this, it is hard to characterize because I have never seen a legislative situation like this in my life in which the leader of a legislative institution sets an immutable standard [[Page H 14171]] against which no one can dissent and that there is no room for discussion. I have never experienced that before, because you cannot do legislation that way. So what the President is saying is that the agreement that was reached, and I think this is very, very important, the agreement that was reached on the balanced budget over the 7-year period, and, by the way, Mr. Speaker, parenthetically, this is closer to 8 or 9 years because we are halfway through this spending, not halfway through but by the time we get this budget reconciliation finished we will be halfway through the year. So I submit to you, as I bring my remarks to a close, Mr. Speaker, my point would be this, that the proposal that the President has put forward is, and he is acting in good faith on that proposal because that proposal said that we would try to deal with 7 years, and as I indicated, it will be 8 years or longer, in effect, because we are already months into the fiscal year without an agreement, in the 1996 fiscal year without an agreement, and using the Congressional Budget Office figures or whatever they turn out to be, these are all guesstimates, and as I have already indicated, the Congressional Budget Office, at least when you ask them the right question, does not give you an answer which is not true; they have indicated that we are going off budget to balance this so-called budget, going into the Social Security funds. It says we have to protect Medicare. We have to protect Medicaid. We have to protect our children. We have to protect those who grow our food. Now, minus protecting these elements, Mr. Speaker, our health, the health of our people, the health of our elderly, the welfare of our elderly, the health and welfare of our children, education, nutrition, and those who grow our food, agriculture, and unless we protect those things, we are not going to have this balanced budget despite anybody's best effort at it. So I submit to you that the President is acting in good faith. The President has a proposal on the table. The President understands negotiations. He has been a Governor. He has worked with legislatures before. He understands the executive-legislative relationship and the Governor, that is to say, Governor Clinton, who is now President Clinton, will be prepared, along with members of the Democratic Party, to take our proposal to protect people while at the same time reducing the deficit and try to structure from that a compromise which will lead to eventually a balanced budget. I have no objection to the phrase. I have an objection to the illusion that it is going to be implemented in 7 years. So I want to conclude, Mr. Speaker, at this stage by saying once again that I will be on this floor up to and through the time of the conclusion of the budget negotiations so that at least there will be one voice on this floor and speaking out from this body, someone like my colleagues who are sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, taking as that obligation to speak the truth on the budget, something which is as fundamental as anything that there is that we do. All money measures come from the House of Representatives. We are the people's House, elected by the people. It is our responsibility and obligation to say that we are working with an honest budget, with honest numbers, and that if we are not and there is a continuation of this proposition that somehow the budget is being balanced by mortgaging the Social Security trust fund, that I speak out against it, and others speak out against it. So I believe, by the time these negotiations are concluded, President Clinton will have put forward a series of proposals based on the proposition that there is give and take in every legislative activity and that if the Speaker is refusing to negotiate by simply setting down an immutable standard from which he will not deviate, that the American people will make their judgment known on election day in 1996 as to the efficacy of the Speaker's policy. I believe that if we deal with the situation honestly, we can bring the deficit down, that eventually the budget can be brought into balance, we can salvage the Social Security trust fund rather than ravage that trust fund, and see to it that Medicare and Medicaid, the welfare of our children and the people who grow our food are protected and that we have a budget that we can honestly put forward to the American people as being in their best interests.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mine will not take the full hour. I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan]. keeping america's troops out of the baltic conflict

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I believe, if I understood the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] correctly, he was not quite finished with his remarks. If he would like, inasmuch as I have something I have to do off the floor for a few moments, I would yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] at this point. Did I understand correctly that he was not quite finished?