Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Yes.

Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I rise today on behalf of myself, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Senators Daschle, Dorgan, and Lautenberg. The amendment we have sent to the desk--some have suggested, why are we continuing to do this; it looks like the train has left the station and no one is going to listen anymore to the argumentation for any change in this balanced budget amendment. It seems that somehow it was like the tablet that was handed down, chiseled in stone; even though privately Members who are inclined to vote for this amendment but think it is flawed now will say, ``Well, why don't you agree to this change?'' And they will look at us and say, ``Oh, it makes sense, but we can't change it; this is the best we can do.'' I do not think it is the best we can do and my colleagues who cosponsor this do not think this present balanced budget amendment is the best we can do. That is why we continue to talk about how we can improve it to make it workable. I wanted to make the case today that while it would be useful to establish a capital budget under the current budget rules and practices, it will be even more important if the balanced budget amendment is ratified and becomes part of the Constitution. The main reason budget experts advocate a way of designating specific capital budgets is to assure that we weigh the immediate benefits of spending for current operations against the long-term benefits of investments that pay over the years. They are the hard choices the distinguished Senator from Maine has had to make, as a Congresswoman and now as a Senator. We all make them. And that is, there are tens of thousands of needs out there. But what we tend not to look at closely enough, in my view, and will not be permitted to look at, as a practical matter, closely enough, is the distinction between short-term investment and long-term investment when we are dealing with limited dollars. Roads, bridges, dams, water, sewer systems, potentially even electronic infrastructures and, yes, even those major defense assets that assure the protection of our private economy and public works, all of these return benefits over more than the single fiscal year that the balanced budget amendment focuses on. We decide to focus on an immediate need of whether or not we are going to hire 10 more FBI agents. That is an immediate question. That is an operating budget. We are going to pay their salaries, an important consideration. And that focuses legitimately on what we do year to year. But there are others you focus on that have life expectancies and needs that go well beyond a year's time. Even under current budget rules without this balanced budget amendment passing, many observers believe our budget provides for too few of these long-term investments. We get much pressure on it from our constituents at home, as we should, to deal with the immediate needs that they have. It is a whole lot harder to convince them that maybe we should use some of that money to make a longer-term investment for which they will not see immediate benefit but will, in fact, have much greater benefit for them and their children than the short-term investment. So under our current budget system, we face this difficulty. In recent reports, the General Accounting Office, which has been quoted numerous times by people who are for the balanced budget amendment, against the balanced budget amendment, and not sure of their position on the balanced budget amendment, the GAO report has repeatedly emphasized the need for a budget process that forces clear decisions between our short- and our long-term needs. In fact, in the 1992 report on the dire consequences of our current deficit policies, the GAO declared, and I quote: A higher level of national savings is essential to the achievement of a higher rate of economic growth. But by itself, it is not sufficient to assure that result. . . . In addition . . ., economic growth depends upon an efficient public infrastructure, an educated work force and an expanding base of knowledge, and a continuing infusion of innovations. The composition of Federal spending, as well as the overall fiscal policy, can affect long-term economic growth in significant ways. Let me repeat the part that they emphasize: The composition of our spending, how we spend it, has as much impact upon our future growth as what we spend in the aggregate. The composition of Federal spending that was the concern of the GAO report, Madam President, was the mix between operating expenses and capital investment. Let me wrap up this extended citation of where the GAO comes down on this issue with the conclusion of the report's chapter on long-term priorities, and I quote: The recent approach to budgeting, focusing on each year's choices in isolation, has not served the Nation's needs. Only if we change the framework of the debate to emphasize the long-term consequences of both fiscal policy and relative priorities within the budget can we hope to develop a national consensus on the potentially discomforting actions needed to achieve the future we want for ourselves and for the next generation. How much truer will these words be, Madam President, after the balanced budget amendment passes, if it does, a balanced budget amendment that raises each year's fiscal balance to the level of a constitutional mandate? Madam President, you and I do not know each other well but we have served together in different bodies for a long time. How many times have we heard, in both political parties, all these experts who have come down and talked to us over the last 10, 12, 15 years, saying things like: ``You know, corporate America is shortsighted. The Japanese are farsighted. Corporate Japan is farsighted. They make long- term investments, they forgo short-term gains; they work on long-term profits, not short-term profits. And how many times have we heard managers from the Harvard business schools and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the other great business schools of America tell us the same thing? That is all we are saying here; that is all the GAO is saying here. As American corporations have begun to retool and not think of what the next quarter's profits will be but think about what the next 4 years' situation will be, and 8 years and 10 years, corporate America has gotten strong. We now, to take one anecdotal example, we now build better cars than Japan; they are higher quality. We are gaining a larger share of the market. We are doing better because the corporate executives stopped thinking about getting the price of the stock up to a certain price by the time they retired so their retirement benefits related to the value of the stock at the time. All I am suggesting, and others, and GAO is we have to do the same thing as we make this fateful step, which I think we should make, to having a balanced budget amendment. How much more difficult will it be for us to make these long-term decisions when we are operating under the constraint of requiring an absolute balance every year, every time we present a national budget? Will not our current incentives--what we all agree is a callous disregard for the burden of debt on our children--will not those current incentives just shift to a new incentive? Right now, rather than make the hard choice of cutting spending or raising taxes, we have an incentive to push off the burden of the debt we are accumulating onto my sons and daughter, onto your children, our children, the next generation. That is the incentive. That is why we say we need a balanced budget amendment. Once we pass the amendment, and I hope we do--I hope we pass a balanced budget amendment--once we pass it, the incentive shifts. We may no longer push debt onto our children, but we may well neglect the things we need to do in order to sustain our infrastructure and to raise the level of potential growth in our economy. Mark my words; when there is a short-term need to deal with an immediate problem when we have to balance the infrastructure of the country, the highway system or the port system or the sewer system or whatever it may be, or investing in long- term technology in a major growth requirement in the Defense Department, star wars, whatever you want to pick, you know what we are going to do? We are going to make sure we take care of the immediate need because we are going to go back home for election, and we do not want to tell anybody, by the way, the reason I did not vote to continue to fund this or that program is because I believe that if we invest more money in our ports, it will put us in a position to compete better with the Germans and the Japanese in the next generation. And that is why I cut your program and why I invested it in a long-term investment. Fat chance. Fat chance. If we have an incentive now to push off debt to our children, I think the incentive to neglect future investment under the balanced budget amendment will be even stronger. Madam President, it would be wrong to shift to a new incentive to balance each year's budget without adequate consideration for investments that are equally important to future generations. I believe that without a capital budget provision the balanced budget amendment will replace our current shortsighted budget perspectives with another potentially harmful perspective that only rewards current cash-flow balances without regard for the investments that are our generation's responsibility to the next generation. Madam President, we have heard repeatedly here on the Senate floor that virtually every State in our land has some form of balanced budget requirement in its constitution. We have one in Delaware, one that we added to our Constitution in the year 1980, and it has worked well. But all of the States, including my State, also use their bonding authority to pay for capital projects. Madam President, as a prudent way of living within the constraints of a constitutional restriction, without neglecting our future, I do not know how we can do anything other than what States do. I have heard, until I have had it up to here, the States and Governors telling us how they balance their budgets. Let me tell you they do not. They do not balance their budgets. I do not know of a single State that balances its budget, not a single one that I can think of. I am prepared to state for the Record--if any Senator can come to the floor and tell me otherwise, I will apologize--they do not balance their budgets. They balance their operating budgets, their operating budgets. I also hear my friends, who support this amendment a little more stridently than I do, say the following: why can we not balance our budget like the folks back home balance their budgets? Well, unless you hang out with a really wealthy crowd, I doubt whether you know anybody at home who balances their budget. I will bet you there is not a single person sitting in the gallery here who balances his budget like this amendment will require the Federal Government to do. I wonder how many people walk out and pay cash for their new house? I wonder how many people who have purchased a house within the last 2, 5, 10, 12 years own the house outright and are not paying a mortgage? My dad used to be in the automobile business. There were not a whole lot of people who walked in and plunked down cash or a check for a brand new car. If they did, he wondered whether they were drug dealers most of the time. Who comes in and does that? Some people have the money to do it and some people have the discipline to do it, but most people buy their cars on time. A lot of us, myself included, have to borrow money to send our kids to college--take out loans, second mortgages on our homes. As long as we pay the mortgage payment, as long as we pay the principal and interest on the college loan, as long as we pay the car payment, we will assume we are balancing our budget. But if we passed a law saying no household in America could operate other than on a balanced budget, as we are about to pass here, there would be an awful lot of people in apartments. There would not be any new homes being built. I think we should be honest with the American people about what we are doing here. Now, there are some arguments which I will respond to--I am sure they will come up--about why the Federal Government does not need a capital budget. I respectfully suggest that is not the case. If the example set by the States is an appropriate one, Madam President, as we have heard so often over the years in regards to a balanced budget amendment, then certainly we should learn from the States' universal determination to borrow for those projects that they deem worthy of long-term funding. That is how they do it. The amendment I am offering with my colleagues today will put that lesson into effect. Madam President, I have here an editorial from the Wall Street Journal, not viewed as a liberal paper. Probably the news portion of that paper, if not the best, is one of the best in America. The editorial page, like many editorial pages, is often very strongly slanted. No one has ever suggested that the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal are a bunch of liberal big spenders and taxers. Let me read what they say in an editorial dated November 11 of last year right after the election. The editorial board expressed concern that Congress might move precipitously on a balanced budget amendment. Let me read a passage from that editorial: To understand the economics-- Says the Wall Street Journal. If all American households were required to balance their budgets every year, no one would ever buy a house. Of course, households don't think about their budgets that way. They figure balance means meeting the mortgage payment. Similarly, State and local governments with balanced budget requirements can still borrow money for capital improvements. . . . This amendment offers a simple mechanism to address the lack of a Federal capital budget in the proposed balanced budget amendment. It introduces the concept of capital investment and says that the Federal Government is not bound to pay for such investments out of operating expenses up to a total of 10 percent of the operating outlays each year. So, to make it simple, let us assume that there is a $100 billion budget--it is more than that, but let us make it easy, a $100 billion Federal budget. No more than $10 billion could be added on to that budget in terms of a capital budget. We can decide to build the bridges and highways out of operating expenses if we are flush. But we can also decide it makes sense to borrow the money, like we do in States with bonds, essentially saying we will pay it off in 2 years or 5 years or 10 years. And we must balance it, in the sense that States do in that we pay the yearly payment it costs to pay that off--the mortgage payment on the new airport, the new highway, the new exotic aircraft we have to build, the new whatever capital investment we decide upon. In other words, it permits borrowing, the issuing of bonds for such investments just like the States, up to a maximum of 10 percent of each year's operating expenditures. We would be able to issue bonds without the three-fifths supermajority requirement needed for an excess in outlays over revenues in 1 year. So, to borrow the money to do that, that is to make a capital investment, it would be a simple majority vote. Yet if we wanted to in effect borrow money, or go in debt in our operating budget, we need a three-fifths vote. And the rationale for that is simple, and that is we should encourage long-term investment and discourage short-term investment, given limited dollars. Above that 10 percent amount, you could not borrow without a supermajority with 60 votes--just like you have to have now in this amendment to borrow money or increase the debt. As the Wall Street Journal and many others who have commented on the balanced budget amendment proposal before us here today pointed out-- ``Borrowing for investments with long-term payoff is the practice of individuals, the practice of cities, the practice of State governments, and the practice economies.'' And it ought to be our practice, too. It is sound economic practice. The 10-percent cap on the investment budget is a rough average of what we have been spending on a restrictive definition of capital investment every year since 1980. I must say, many analysts believe that our investment budget has been inadequate to meet the needs of the future. They say we should be investing a lot more than 10 percent of our operating budget in long-term investment. That may be. But I am not willing to allow more of that to occur with a simple majority vote. If we want to do more than that, then it has to compete on the same basis that an operating deficit would compete. I think the capital budget should have to compete the same way, once it is beyond 10 percent. But a 10-percent cap on borrowing, without a supermajority needed for extension of the national debt, provides a reasonable minimum above which the approval of three-fifths of both Houses would be required. So we could have a larger capital budget in the future if we need it. But either borrowing more under the three-fifths requirement, or if we decided to, by putting some big investments in our operating budget, would be the only way we could do it. By accepting this capital budget amendment we will have established the formal procedure, with constitutional authority, for considering those projects which will have long-term payoffs and that, therefore, merit long-term finance. The capital budget includes only major physical capital assets, the kinds of purchases that individuals, businesses, and our State and local governments make by borrowing. It does not include research or education that many of us may argue are long-term and needed capital--investments in our future. They are important investments but they are more properly handled on a year-to- year basis, in the opinion of the authors of this amendment. Madam President, let me make it clear again that what constitutes a capital investment will be defined in the amendment. But we do not have to fund a capital investment through borrowing. We can fund a capital investment, if we decide to, through the operating budget. It will take a majority of Senators even to conclude that we should treat it as a capital investment. So the point is there are several hurdles you would have to cross here. This is not a giant loophole to allow us to continue deficit spending. You would have to meet the definition of a capital expenditure, you would have to get the Senate and House both to agree it was a capital expenditure, and then you would have to get them to agree to the fact it was worth borrowing money to in fact make that capital investment. And if the capital investment that was about to be made would exceed the 10 percent limit on what could be made, it would require a three-fifths vote in both the House and the Senate to do it. But at least the mechanism that is available to every State would be available to the Government. It can be argued, and accurately, I think, that the balanced budget amendment as currently written permits borrowing and, therefore, future Congress's could engage in a form of capital budgeting. By that same logic, of course, our Constitution now permits us to balance the budget. The point of a balanced budget amendment is not to correct the defect in the Constitution but to correct a defect in our behavior--not the Constitution. We do not need this amendment to balance the budget. There is no amendment now that says you cannot balance the budget. We just do not do it. So many of us think we need an amendment to say we must do it. I would argue the same rationale applies to those who say with the budget amendment we have up here, Joe, you could have borrowing if you get a three-fifths vote and you can call it whatever you want, capital budget or anything else. That is true. But it begs the question. It is in that spirit that we offer this amendment. Not because some form of capital budget is impossible under the present amendment, but because we need to provide an explicit mechanism by which we can distinguish between projects that merit long-term financing and those that should be funded year to year. One more point before I close, Madam President. My colleagues will know that we have provided that any revenue from the sale of public assets will and can be only used to fund capital budgets. So, for example, if we decide in order to raise money we are going to sell off Yellowstone National Park--and no one is suggesting that, that is why I pick it-- instead of that money going into the general fund that money would go to reduce the debt that has been accumulated on the capital budget and pay off the mortgage quicker. That is what it would do. This provision removes an incentive to sell off our assets in the name of short-term budget balances. Again, I want to protect our kids, not only from accumulation of debt and the interest they will pay on it, I want to protect them from the shortsightedness and the incentive to shift away from them the long- term investments they need. So, in order to satisfy our immediate need to balance the budget I do not want them selling off Cape Henlopen State Park, which is supposed to be there for posterity, in order that they not fire people who are on the Federal payroll to meet the balanced budget amendment. So, Madam President, without an explicit capital provision, our incentive will be to focus only on those spending priorities that have short-term payoffs, economically and politically. Madam President, I see the minority leader, the Democratic leader is here. I can refrain because I know he is on a very difficult schedule-- refrain from delivering the rest of my statement at this point. I will be happy, with the permission of my friend from Utah, to yield to him to speak on this or any other item he wishes to speak to. Madam President, this amendment is a genuine improvement, in my view, designed to protect our children just as the overall balanced budget is designed to protect them. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kerry be added as an original cosponsor of the amendment.

Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, in a minute and 20 seconds I will give five reasons why the Senator is wrong, in my view. One, he makes conclusory statements. Two, major physical assets is defined in the amendment, and it is amazing how inventive he is about redefining what is in the amendment. He accurately read everything the GAO said, but that is not what we say in amendment. Four, we want competition to be skewed between long-term investment so we do not have our children paying the same price they are paying for the accumulated debt we have here. And five, nobody else does it the way my friend from Utah wants it done. I think it is time we ask ourselves, ``I wonder why.'' I urge those of us in this body who agree with the need for a capital budget to vote against tabling.

Mr. BIDEN. Bingo.

Mr. BIDEN. Please, go ahead. I have 8 minutes left. Is 5 minutes sufficient?

Mr. BIDEN. Let us just hope everybody does not think we know what we are doing here and decide to pass in every State a balanced budget amendment like we have here, because we will be in chaos. Why, everybody who stood up--the distinguished Senator from Utah, the manager of the bill is here. His Governor, a really solid guy, a guy who is a fiscal conservative I assume, a guy who is straight as an arrow, and I asked him, ``Do you balance your budget?'' He said, ``No, we have a capital budget.'' I said, ``Should we have one federally?'' He said, ``Well, it is something you should look it. It seems like a pretty good idea to me.'' Did anybody go out there and survey the Governors, whom we all think somehow God invested them with some new knowledge now? Governors are in. That is great. Ask them do any of them object to us having a capital budget? This is silly, refusing to do this. I see my friend from New Jersey is on the floor. Would he like some time yielded?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, we talked about State total indebtedness. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this survey of State and local governments by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. It is in current dollars. Just going back to 1983, the total indebtedness was $167,289,000,000 for the States. In 1993, 10 years later, it is $387,680,000,000 indebtedness.

Mr. BIDEN. In 1 year.

Mr. BIDEN. I will be delighted to.

Mr. BIDEN. Right. Now, let us get it like the homeowner does. Let us say a homeowner decides, I want to retire, and I am just going to leave the State of Delaware or the State of New Jersey. I want to sell all my assets and pay all my debts. OK. Well, what he or she has to do is sell the house, sell everything they own. They take everything, all their income, that year. They pay everything off. And whatever they have left means they are either in debt as they leave town on borrowed money for an Amtrak ticket or they have money in their pocket. Now, how about if you put the State of New Jersey or any other State, or the Federal Government in the same situation. What happens now? In order for the State of New Jersey to pay off all that it owes, that is, its bond indebtedness, in 1 year, and all that it costs to operate the State for 1 year, it has to go and take money out of the pension fund. They could, if they took all the money out, settle all their debts. But now there is no money left for my uncle when he retires. Now, I do not call that solvency. It may be that technically it is solvent, but it sure puts a lot of people in jeopardy. I do not want to carry this too far except to say, look, there is nothing sacrosanct about the way this amendment is written--this main amendment is written. It makes sense to make sure we do not shift the incentive from accumulating debt on our children's backs so they have to pay interest on the debt, to denying them the ability to have any infrastructure left where they can make this country competitive.

Mr. BIDEN. Surely.

Mr. BIDEN. Precisely. If I can say to my friend, and he also thinks the State of New Jersey--I do not know that what they do is different than Delaware; I do not know what New Jersey does, but in most States they do not take that money and spend it to pay for roads. Some States do. Most do not. They have it segregated, their pension funds.

Mr. BIDEN. Surely.

Mr. BIDEN. Let me talk like a good old-fashioned Republican here. Let us talk about how people back home do it. Now, let us just look at what the Senator said. He said States have debt. Well, they have debt. We are just saying we should not have any debt. But he is saying--let us get this straight--we are going to collect in taxes in New Jersey as we collect in taxes federally from the FICA tax for Social Security and the income tax and excise tax and all the other taxes, the State of New Jersey, the State of Delaware, the State of Illinois, the State of Utah, we are going to collect this money. Now, under the system that they are setting up, the total amount of money we collect cannot be less than the money we pay out. Right? OK, so far so good. New Jersey does the same thing. But what we are doing in our unified budget is we are spending the Social Security pensioners' money.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, on my own time.

Mr. BIDEN. Sure, on the Senator's time.

Mr. BIDEN. Yes, on my time. As I understand what the Senator just said, put another way, if New Jersey wanted to pay off its bonds, it would have to take all the money it has in its pension funds. Bingo, that is a great idea, is it not? What does that do? I mean look, this is not real complicated. The Senator from Idaho just laid it out. He said, look, if you take the money that is in here for the pension funds, all that money that is saved up, and you take the revenues that are coming in on a yearly basis and you look at the money that is being paid out and the indebtedness, you are almost balanced. That is almost balanced if you empty the bank account, the bank account being the pension funds, which means those people do not get paid their pensions. What are we talking about here?

Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for a moment for me to respond?

Mr. BIDEN. I will be happy to yield on the Senator's time.

Mr. BIDEN. One of the reasons why, as I understand it, some of us-- myself, I know the Senator from Illinois feels this way and I suspect the Senator from Idaho--feel we need a balanced budget amendment is because now the incentive is to thrust off onto our children the obligation of paying for what we are unwilling to make tough decisions. When the President put his deficit reduction package down, the three of us voted for it but we could not get anybody else to vote for it because we did not dare to say we were raising taxes on the very wealthy among us, we did not dare to go back and say we were going to cap spending for social programs, et cetera. So it was easier to let the debt accumulate and the incentive was to shunt it off to our children. My question is this: Will we not just be supplanting that incentive to shove off onto our children debt that we do not want to meet and instead shove off on our children the lack of the infrastructure they are going to need to be able to compete? How many people in here are going to go home and say in New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, wherever, ``By the way, the reason why I voted against providing more money for education is because we think that the Port of Wilmington and the Port of Camden need an investment of 12 new cranes which are going to cost a half-a-billion dollars, because in order for us to be able to compete with the Germans, we have to be able to export more to Europe of the automobiles that we are building. How many people are going to find that their town meeting folks are going to say, ``Now let me get this straight, you mean to tell me my kid is not going to have as much money for school this year or for a college loan program this year or for tuition this year because you are telling me you invested so my grandkid will be able to compete with the Germans 10 years from now?'' Has anything in the political experience of the Senator from New Jersey led him to believe that will be the norm for American politicians?

Mr. BIDEN. On behalf of the minority leader, I ask unanimous consent that a list of some of those in support of the amendment be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN. Maybe we can be different, but I hope we are not.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, this is not a very propitious time for me to send an amendment to the desk. Let me, while Senator Bumpers is still here, say one thing to Senator Bumpers. I was with Senator Bumpers and others on the 50th anniversary of D- Day on those beaches, including down in Italy in Anzio. I was 2 years old when the people of Dale's generation, although I do not feel like he is a different generation than me --and I mean that sincerely, and I do not--until I stood on those beaches. I came home and said something to my father that I never said before. My father was not on any one of those beaches. As I stood there and watched Senator Heflin, Senator Bumpers, Senator Hollings and Senator Glenn and others with whom I was attending these ceremonies, and the thousands of veterans who were there, I marveled at one thing. Being a U.S. Senator for 22 years, I have been to a lot of veterans' events. I did not see one bit of revelry. I only saw reverence. I watched these men and their counterparts--civilians--walk out on those beaches--which seemed to be 20 miles wide--in solitude. There were 10,000 individuals there, all lost in their own memories. It impressed me in a strange way, I say to my friend from Arkansas. Here is what I told my dad. I came back with such a sense of awe. As a student of history, thinking I was a pretty smart, well-educated guy, until you stand on those beaches. Now I understand why they all came in at midtide. I am assuming it was equally as bad or worse at Iwo Jima, and I have never been there. I not only had a sense of awe and pride in my father's generation and a renewed respect for that generation, of anger. John Kerry is a veteran. John was a decorated veteran in Vietnam. My generation went to war in Vietnam without the benefit that your generation had. When you stood there on the beaches of Iwo Jima, or deciding whether or not to get out of the landing craft on Omaha Beach, you knew, had you failed, all of humanity would have suffered. There was no question that the fate of mankind hung in the balance. Had you not prevailed, your wives, mothers, and children would have lived under an oppression unlike anything that had been seen in the previous two centuries. When John Kerry rode down some god-awful river in Vietnam, he did not know who the hell he was after, was not quite sure why he was there, did not have any idea anymore than my friend from Virginia had as to who might be shooting at him, and I suspect never had the absolute certainty that what they were doing, as difficult as it was, was something that, beyond question, had to be done. I understand my dad's generation better, having been there, because now I understand why guys like my dad--and God, it seems ridiculous to talk to you as if you were my dad's age because I have worked with you all my professional life--why you have such an incredible sense of optimism. Why on either side of the aisle, whether it is you or John Chafee or whomever it is, have this unabating notion that we can, in fact, get things done. I look at my generation and those who are younger, and I am not nearly as surprised as to why they are as confused as they are about the ability, and not even thinking about it in your generation, why they wonder whether or not this institution makes any sense, whether or not the system works. It seems to me you not only did something incredibly courageous--and I see Dan Inouye, and nobody in this whole body have I ever felt closer to than Dan Inouye, and he knows I am not just saying that. Here is a guy, he goes and loses his arm. He should have gotten the Medal of Honor, in my view, if you read about his exploits. And he acts like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He acts like not a single thing ever happened to him in his life that was difficult. He acts like the world is just a cupcake, and we can make it great for everybody. It is an incredible, incredible thing that your generation has passed on. I do not know how it gets renewed. But I know one thing: More people should hear you talk about it. More people should go and stand on Omaha Beach or go to Iwo Jima or go up into the hills in Italy where these guys--Bob Dole and others--got stopped. I know it sounds corny, but I defy anybody of any generation to have been there on D-Day and not walk away with a deeper understanding of why your generation has done so much for this country and why other generations have been so uncertain about what they can do. The biggest thing it does, it seems to me, is hopefully remind people in this era of bitter politics, of political invective, of the mindless things that are being said on the left and the right, of the personal characterization of political motivation of whatever anybody does, of the era of 30-second personal attacks on anybody that disagrees with you, you must be un-American or must be less dedicated than whomever it is they are arguing with. I hope they understand that, as corny as it sounds, the women and men who served in this body--and I have been here for 22 years--I have not met a one, I have not met a one in either political party when they walk out of here and get in their car at night or go down to the train station like I do and look in the rear view mirror, they see that Capitol dome, do not still get a chill. I noticed people when we were over there on D-Day, Dale, there was not anybody watching us. Everybody was the same. I watch people when they play the ``Star Spangled Banner.'' There was not any hometown crowd. I watched peoples' eyes mist and people got goosebumps. I know it is not in vogue to say those things, and probably an editorial will say how corny we were today--or I know I was. The best thing that can happen in this sick political atmosphere we find ourselves in, is for more people to understand, whether it is the Rush Limbaughs of the world or a left-wing version of Rush Limbaugh on the air who makes everything personal about what people do, there is so much more that we agree on in this Chamber than we disagree on. There is so much more that your generation did for this Nation than you understand and appreciate, if I can say so, so much more. But you had something that I think we are all still searching for, and that is the absolute certainty that what we were undertaking needed to be done, was noble, was moral, was necessary, and was right. I think that is what everybody is searching for. You paid a horrible price for having found it in your generation, but having found it and survived it, you made this country something that it never had been, because of the growth and the optimism and the absolute enthusiasm you all brought back from having done what you did and literally saved the world for democracy. I want to tell you I had not planned on speaking on it at all, but my respect for my father has always been great. My respect for his generation and my mother's, as well. I end with one little story. I was with you, and we split up after the President spoke. I went up to the cemetery. I was walking around the cemetery, just kind of in a daze. My wife and I--my wife was not even born during any portion of World War II -- were looking at the crosses, just wandering through, and this guy was being pushed in a wheelchair by his two sons. And I am looking at a grave marker. I did not even see him. And he said, ``Is that you, Senator Biden?'' And I turned around. I did not know the fellow. He was from Indiana. I turned to him and I was like most of us were, somewhat emotional about what we just observed. And I said, ``Thank you for what you did.'' And he said, ``Don't thank me, thank my wife.'' And I turned around, and his wife was not with him. And I said, ``Thank your wife?'' I said, ``Why, sir?'' He said, ``My wife did as much to make sure I could get on that landing craft and get here because she made it. She made it at home. She produced the reason we were able to win, because of the industrial might of the people we left behind to produce and outproduce the Germans.'' But it was typical. Here is a guy going through a graveyard where his friends are buried. I compliment him and he tells me to thank his deceased wife who made the landing craft. I sure as heck hope there is some way we can rekindle that kind of notion of sense of duty, sense of responsibility, sense of shared glory that seems to be missing so much in this country today. And I hope in God's name we can do without another war. But I want to compliment you all.