Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, for years now, from the first time this amendment to balance the budget came before us, several of its features have caused me concern. In addition to the constitutional issues involved in how we will enforce a balanced budget, and the lack of any provision for long-term investments, I have been most concerned by the inclusion of the social security trust fund in the budget that House Joint Resolution 1 requires to be in balance each year. Those concerns have been the grounds not only for my statements here on the Senate floor, in the Judiciary Committee, and elsewhere, but also for my votes in the last two sessions of Congress. Last year, I voted for a constitutional balanced budget amendment, one that excluded Social Security from budget calculations. Back in my State of Delaware, my constituents share my concern about the Social Security trust fund, so when I raise that issue here I am speaking about their worries as well as my own. Social Security is a unique program with a unique impact on our budget. That is why we voted, 98 to 2, to take it offbudget in 1990. Here on the Senator floor, Senator Reid and Senator Feinstein have shown us the exact language with which we took Social Security offbudget in the 1990 budget agreement. By the way, Mr. President, we all owe them our gratitude for raising this issue, and for leading the defense of Social Security here on the floor. That 1990 agreement was made between the bipartisan leadership of Congress and President Bush. We took that step for a very good reason, Mr. President. We were undertaking significant budget reforms and deficit reduction, and concluded that the most honest bookkeeping procedure would be to keep the Social Security trust fund out of the calculations of the annual budget. I see no reason to reverse that decision now, particularly in light of its effects on future deficits, and certainly not in the Constitution. in our political system, and it deserves special consideration as we set a course for the Federal budget that could last for the next 200 years. The Social Security system has been the very symbol of the National Government's promise to provide a safety net under those who contributed to the trust fund, and by, extension, to this country's prosperity. Ironically, that same system that has been for so many years a symbol of a promise made and a promise kept is now seen by the generation just moving into the work force--the generation of my sons and, in a few years, my daughter--as a symbol of the Federal Government's duplicity and irresponsibility. We have all heard that humorous opinion poll finding, that more young people today believe in UFO's than believe that the Social Security system will be there for them when they need it. That might be funny, Mr. President, if it were not such a sad commentary on the attitude of our young people about our Government more generally. Of all the harm our inability to manage our finances has caused, that may be the most damaging--the declining faith in our Government's ability, even willingness, to keep its word. There are of course many reasons for the cynicism of our young people, which is just part of a wider national disaffection. But at the top of anyone's list of reasons must be the perception that Social Security--the symbol of a responsive Government for my parents' generation--has become for my children's generation the symbol of a Government that takes from the unorganized and gives to the people with the best lobbyists. For my parents' generation, Social Security is symbol of a Government guarantee of a secure future; for my children's generation, it is a symbol of why they are increasingly insecure about the future. I'm afraid, Mr. President, that keeping Social Security in the budget--by constitutional mandate, no less--we may well prove those skeptics right. Let there be no mistake, Mr. President, the money in the Social Security surplus--$69 billion this year alone, and it will accumulate to nearly $3 trillion by the year 2020--will be far too tempting for us if we are to be bound by the Constitution to balance our budgets. Those funds could be used to ease a lot of short-term pain as we face the major budget choices needed to lower our deficits. It is precisely because we do not trust ourselves or future Congresses to write responsible budgets that we are considering this balanced budget amendment right now. If we leave an extra $3 trillion on the table do we really expect that we will leave Social Security alone? This fiscal year, we will have the benefit of a $69 billion Social Security surplus, that under the terms of the balanced budget amendment, we would be constitutionally allowed to use to make the deficit in the rest of the Government's operations look smaller. By the year 2002, that Social Security surplus will be $111 billion. Every year thereafter, the annual surplus will grow, as it should, to cover the future obligations of the Federal Government to Social Security beneficiaries. And therefore, every year the task of balancing the budget to meet the requirements of the balanced budget amendment will be that much easier. At least, Mr. President, for the short term. Mr. President, by the very logic that led to this debate today, we will use that money to delay those tough choices for future decades. If we lack the will to do the right thing about our deficits without a constitutional requirement, why should we be trusted to leave Social Security alone if its surpluses will help us avoid some of the political pain of complying with the Constitution? The Social Security system is not the cause of today's deficit problem; it should not be made the short-term solution for those problems, either. That is why we should protect Social Security by accepting the Reid amendment. To be sure, the system faces its own imbalances--even monumental deficits--all too soon, when the baby boomers retire. At that time, the Social Security system will begin a freefall into deficits that will eventually swamp the rest of the Federal budget in red ink. At that time, our problem will be the reverse of the short-term temptation to use the current surplus to mask the cuts needed to get the rest of the budget into balance. When the Social Security trust fund heads south, when its surplus becomes an increasing deficit, we will then be scrambling to find ways to cut the rest of the budget to accommodate the requirements of the Constitution. The Social Security balances will accumulate surpluses up to roughly 2020, when the whole system just falls right off the table, as we spend out at a rapid rate to meet obligations to an increasing number of retiring baby boomers who will be supported by a declining number of workers. The Social Security system's financial problems are driven by a number of factors, some of which we can control. But there is one factor that will always be beyond our control. Demographic trends--the most famous of which we call the baby boom-- will determine how many beneficiaries will be receiving benefits from the system and how many workers will be paying their payroll taxes into the system. The Social Security system--no matter how well our policies are designed--cannot be balanced on an annual basis but must be balanced over decades, even over generations. Therefore, unless we do away with Social Security all together, the balanced budget amendment will mix--in the constitutional definition of the budget--programs with very different balances. I might add that is the same problem we will have if we neglect to provide for a capital budget, a way of carrying the cost of long-term assets on our books without having to count them as a current expense. By attempting to lump every kind of activity into a single definition of the budget, the balanced budget amendment ignores the kinds of distinctions we all make in our daily lives. Mr. President, we all distinguish between our savings accounts, our mortgage payments, and our monthly checkbook balances. We do not count our savings account balances--or the balances in our retirement accounts--when we balance our checkbooks every month. In the real world, it wouldn't do us any good anyway--we would still have to pay our bills. Unless we intend to use that retirement account to pay our current monthly bills, that retirement account should not even be considered when we balance our checkbooks. Unless we intend to use the Social Security surplus to cover annual operating expenses, Mr. President, there is no reason to keep the Social Security trust funds in the constitutional definition of our annual budget. No one here would deny that Social Security needs fixing on its own terms. And, Mr. President, we all know that we will never give it the attention it needs if we are able to hide behind a constitutional definition of the budget that uses the surplus to mask the true extent of the deficit in the rest of the Government's operations. I for one don't for a minute think that those choices--how to cut the deficit--will be made easier if we hold the system apart from the rest of the Federal budget. They will not be made more easily if we accept this amendment, Mr. President, but they will be made more honestly. Those tough choices should not be tangled up with the solution for other budget issues not caused by the Social Security system. The Reid amendment will preserve the Social Security system's unique place in our laws, and will permit us to address its very real problems on their own merits. That is, after all, only what the opponents of the Reid amendment say they want, too--to keep Social Security off the table when we start the cutting that will be required to comply with the balanced budget amendment. If that's what they want, then let them join us in taking it off the table now. amendment that we accepted earlier provides the protection that Social Security needs and deserves. As Senators Hollings and Heflin have conclusively argued, once the Social Security system is included in the constitutional definition of the Federal budget, no mere statute or statement of this Congress' intention will prevent future Congresses from using the Social Security surpluses to comply with the balanced budget requirement. So we can talk all we want about what we would do, or what we expect future Congresses to do. The Reid amendment takes care of this problem at its roots, in the Constitution. Even with Senator Dole's amendment, the temptation to use these funds--and the equally distressing prospect of saddling ourselves with those future deficits--will always be there. Even now, Mr. President, despite the apparently bipartisan chant that we should keep our hands off of Social Security, there are other voices out there that we should be aware of, too. The new Speaker of the House, in his opening address on January 4, referring to the balanced budget amendment, said, and I quote, ``I think Social Security should be off limits, at least for the first 4 to 6 years, because I think it will just destroy us if we bring it into the game.'' And the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, during hearings on the balanced budget amendment, said that failure to include the assets of the Social Security system ``would require us to make spending cuts more sweeping than currently contemplated.'' In other words, the House chairman intends that those funds be available to make the transition to a balanced budget easier--to cover the deficit in the rest of the budget with the assets set aside for future Social Security beneficiaries. It is statements like that, Mr. President, that make me more than a little concerned about the future of Social Security, especially now that the majority has rejected our call for a specific plan to bring our budget into balance. Having failed to get any specifics about a plan to get us to a balanced budget, we are now asking a much narrower, more focused, and easier question: ``Will you leave Social Security out of the constitutional definition of a balanced budget?'' Mr. President, that is all that Senator Reid's amendment calls for-- an honest accounting of one very important program. It calls for an honest accounting of how we will deal with the Social Security system. Those of us who want an honest accounting will vote for this amendment. I cannot understand why anyone would vote against it.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, at the request of President Clinton, I am introducing today legislation to combat international terrorism. The very grave threat to the United States posed by violent terrorist acts is documented by the events of this week, as well as of the past 2 years. Two days ago, Ahmed Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of New York's World Trade Center bombing 2 years ago, was arrested and extradited from Pakistan. Explosives and United and Delta Airlines timetables were recovered from his hotel room in Pakistan. Even as legal proceedings now begin against him, 11 other men are on trial in Federal court in New York City for conspiracy to commit several heinous acts of terrorism in and around Manhattan--including the World Trade Center bombing. These incidents demonstrate that the United States and its citizens continue to be the focus of extremists who are willing and able to use violence to advance their cause. The damage this terrorism causes extends beyond the tragic loss of life and damage of the World Trade Center bombing. Indeed, the revelation that terror networks are operating in our midst undeniably has its intended effect on of all Americans both at home and abroad. Equally important, the continued operation of numerous terrorist organizations around the globe undermines the stability of key U.S. allies and important foreign policy objectives. In the Middle East, terrorism perpetrated by groups supported by Iran and Syria pose a grave threat to the already fragile Middle East peace process. The recent bombing in central Tel Aviv, which killed 19 Israelis-- many of them soldiers on leave--was only the latest in a series of attacks carried out by Palestinian extremists since the signing of the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles in September 1993. In South America, terrorists in Colombia and Peru--often in league with narcotics traffickers--attack the very institutions of State, weakening the ability of those governments to confront the drug trade-- a trade that continues to plague our own society. A short time ago, international terrorism seemed to be in decline. But in 1993, the last year for which data are available, the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism reports that there were 427 terrorist incidents, an increase from 364 incidents in 1992. The main reason for the increase was an acceleration of the campaign conducted by the Kurdistan workers party--known as the PKK--against Turkish interests in Western Europe. But the raw numbers--and the dry statistics of which group perpetrated what attack--do not even begin to portray the harm caused by the heinous acts of terrorist violence. Wherever it occurs, the lost lives, broken hearts, and destroyed dreams of the thousands touched by terrorism is tangible, while the fear that grips the citizenry--the fear of the indiscriminate attack that can occur at any time--cannot be quantified. But its effect is all too real. In the 1980's, Congress and the Reagan administration worked together to empower law enforcement with many tools to counter the men of terror. Last year, President Clinton urged a refocus on terrorism--and sought recommendations from the executive branch agencies on new tools that might be needed in the fight against terrorism. Now, this bill includes a number of provisions to help in that fight. The bill expands the circumstances in which we can prosecute crimes committed overseas which affect our interests. It also prohibits persons in the United States from conspiring to commit terrorism overseas--and from raising funds for foreign terrorist organizations. In addition, the bill implements the convention on the marking of plastic explosives for the purposes of detection. That convention was an international response to earlier terrorist bombings of aircraft, requiring manufacturers of plastic explosives to make them easier to detect. The bill also expands the coverage of the existing statute involving transactions in nuclear materials, to cover materials from the dismantling of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. It also allows prosecutors to use the Federal RICO and money laundering statutes to attack terrorism, and fills gaps in current law by authorizing wiretaps for investigations of all terrorism offenses. Other more technical changes will also enhance the law enforcement response to terrorism. Finally, the bill includes a new Federal terrorism offense, with stiff penalties--including a new death penalty for terrorist murders. This is an important, an appropriate, new Federal offense. The expansion of Federal jurisdiction has been a contested issue in recent years. I have long opposed broad assertions of Federal jurisdiction over offenses which are more appropriately prosecuted in State courts. But, in my view, international terrorism requires a Federal response. As expressed in its letter transmitting the legislation to the Congress, the administration stated that it intends that section 101 confer Federal jurisdiction only over acts of violence that are, indeed, international terrorism offenses. I strongly support that intent, but I believe the language of section 101 could be improved to better reflect that intent. The administration has agreed to work with the Congress to make modifications to the legislative language to further that goal. I must also point out that the bill includes one provision which I strongly oppose in its current form. That is the provision which allows secret evidence to be used in a deportation proceeding against an immigrant--even a legal permanent resident--who is alleged to be a terrorist. Under current law, any person who is not a citizen--including legal immigrants--is deportable if the person is engaged in terrorist activities, even without a criminal conviction. This bill would create a new and, in my view, troubling court procedure which would allow the Government to deport an immigrant based on secret evidence, on evidence unknown to the immigrant or his counsel. The right to see and confront the evidence against oneself is a fundamental premise of the due process clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has held that the due process clause applies to aliens in the United States, and that it applies to deportation proceedings. Deportation can be a dramatic step. This procedure could be used, for instance, against a legal permanent resident who has lived in the United States with all of his family for 40 or more years. Deportation could mean separation from family, and could mean removal to a country in which the person has never before lived, since a person is not always deported to the person's country of citizenship. The use of secret information is unprecedented. Even in other cases where sensitive information is involved, the Government is required to give a defendant a summary of the evidence to be used against him. The use of secret evidence raises fundamental questions about the accuracy of any determinations made using that procedure. Our system of justice is an adversarial one. It assumes that by allowing defendants to see and challenge the evidence against them, the reliability and truthfulness of that information can be evaluated. That is what cross-examination is all about--to test the reliability and biases of the witness. That is why the defense is allowed to put on witnesses to rebut evidence presented by the prosecution. If a person does not know what evidence is being used against him, it is simply impossible to subject that evidence to the scrutiny our system requires. I agree with the administration that we must have the ability to deport aliens involved in terrorist activities. I also agree that we must be able to safeguard classified information. But I am not convinced that nothing short of secret evidence can protect our security. Why, for example, can we not consider applying the Classified Information Procedures Act--a tried and tested process--to deportation proceedings, before we sanction in this country Kafkaesque procedures requiring people to defend against unknown and unseen evidence. I have introduced this bill at the President's request. I support most of its provisions, as I am sure most Senators will. But as I have said, I will work to modify certain portions of the bill even as we move expeditiously to see it enacted into law. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. If the Senator will yield for an additional question, as I understand it, the distinguished majority leader is going to come to the floor at some point and offer a legislative fix for this constitutional dilemma, to try to convince all the American people that the Republicans or those who are for the balanced budget do not want to cut Social Security and are not going to be using Social Security trust fund moneys to reduce the deficit. Now, we both know that we cannot alter--the Senator said it more eloquently than anyone thus far--we cannot alter the Constitution other than by the rules the Constitution sets out. We will assume for just a moment the distinguished Senator from Kansas, if that is what he decides to do, comes along and says we will pass a resolution promising we will not do that. Is it the understanding of my friend from South Carolina that means, for calculation purposes of what constitutes the deficit, that between now and the year 2000, we will not count the $60 billion surplus this year and the $100 billion surplus in the year 2000, toward reducing the deficit? Is that what he is going to do?

Mr. BIDEN. I want to thank the Senator for allowing me to interrupt him with all these questions. It seems pretty clear to me this is about two things: One, they need the Social Security dollars to make the deficit look like it is less than it is, and then the next step is they are going to need to try to deal with changing it to increase the amount of money they get in the trust funds to make the deficit look even less, which means that Social Security is going to get hit. But I will withhold my statement on this until tomorrow. I thank my colleague for letting me interrupt.

Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for 30 seconds more?

Mr. BIDEN. Absolutely.

Mr. BIDEN. Right.

Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for another question?

Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield? Mr. President, is it not true--and I am not being solicitous. No one knows more about the budget process on this floor than the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, and no one has more credentials for making the tough decisions about what we should do to cut the budget than the Senator from South Carolina. He has always put his vote where his mouth is on this issue which, I might say, very few Members of either party have done in the past. The Senator just pointed out that we are talking about the difference between, for this next year, $600-some billion--not this year--$600- some billion, between now and the time it comes time to balance the budget, additional, we have to find, if the Reid amendment passes. Is it not true that in addition to that, what is likely to happen is that our friends, who are going to find increasing pressure to balance the budget and who have never been great friends of the trust fund to begin with, are going to, in the next year or 2 or 3, as we move toward the year 2003, since most young people the age of your children and mine believe they are not going to get Social Security, anyway, is it not likely that we will see a movement that we will cut Social Security benefits; that we will either raise the retirement age or cut benefits, further increasing the surplus that Social Security will generate between now and the year 2014, and further making the deficit look smaller, so that it is easier to meet the balanced budget requirement by the year 2003? Does the Senator think that is as likely a scenario as any other we are likely to see?

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I do not want to ask unanimous consent to continue morning business if my friends are ready to go on the bill. I do not want to do that. But, if they are in no hurry, I would ask unanimous consent to continue for another 15 minutes.

Mr. BIDEN. About 15 minutes.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank my colleague from Idaho. Mr. President, with the New York City community policing, since they instituted community policing, murders have dropped 19 percent, robberies have dropped 16 percent, burglaries went down 11 percent, and auto thefts were reduced to 15 percent. In Tampa, FL, police committed themselves to moving crack dealers off the street corners and forged an unprecedented alliance with the citizens of the community to achieve that. Through a combination of standard buy-bust operations, new outreach to the community involvement of other city agencies and local media, the dealers have been driven off within a year and the streets within the targeted area returned to normal. In New Haven, CT, one of the most innovative police chiefs in the Nation, Nick Pastore, with his aggressive community policing effort, led to a 10-percent drop in serious crime in the year 1992, the last time we have the figures. Policing community techniques were introduced in the New York subway system 4 years ago, and the results have been phenomenal. Robberies have fallen by 52 percent. In the Inglewood section of Chicago, community policing is credited with a 6-percent decrease in violent crime last year. The new anticrime law enacted last year targets $8.8 billion in funds to State and local law enforcement to be used specifically to train and hire 100,000 community police officers across the Nation. Like community policing itself, this program works. Already, the Justice Department has awarded almost 15,000 new officers to State and local communities. All of these are local officers with no Federal control, no Federal mandate. These are local cops for which the Federal Government is kicking in $70,000 per cop. In short, in only the first 6 months following the passage of the new crime law, almost 15,000 new police officers will be on the street. So much for the critics who claim that the new crime bill would fund only 22,000 police officers in 6 years. We have almost 15,000 that will be on the streets, new ones, in 6 months; not 22,000 in 6 years as our critics say. In fact, the law will fund 15,000, as I said, in the first 6 months alone, and we will be well on the way by the time the first year is over to surpassing the 20,000 mark. The effectiveness of the cops program derives from its design. The cops program is a result of setting a precise goal, and enacting in a responsible program to achieve a precise goal. When he took office, President Clinton called on us to put 100,000 more police on the streets over the next 6 years. To put it another way, we have roughly 530,000 local police officers in all of America, State cops to town cops to county cops. At the end of the process, there will be 630,000 cops on the streets of America. Already, that number will be up by 15,000 at the end of the first 6 months. So he asked us to put 100,000 cops on the street. We then designed a program that funds that effort and that effort alone. The Federal dollars were awarded for the sole purpose of hiring new police officers so that in 6 year's time America will have 635,000 police doing community policing. The position of this program stands in stark contrast to the Republicans' new law enforcement block grant which would spend roughly the same amount of Federal funds--to be specific, $8.5 billion--without guaranteeing a single, solitary additional cop back home. Read their proposal. Money is sent, not like it is now directly to a police department to hire a cop locally. Money will be sent to Governors back in our home States. With that money the Governor, out of that $8.5 billion we are going to send to the Governors now--not to the police-- they will be able to hire or pay overtime to undefined law enforcement officers, or to procure equipment, technology or other material that is directly related to basic law enforcement functions, such as the detection or investigation of crime or the prosecution of criminals. That may sound fine on the surface. But let us look at it a little bit closer. Let us call this what I call the first weakness of the Republican change. I call it the officer loophole because the Republicans do not define law enforcement officers as career officers dedicated to enforcing the criminal laws, as it is defined in the Biden crime bill. Indeed, the Republicans do not define law enforcement officer at all in their new crime bill. Let us call the second weakness what I call the equipment loophole. The Republican proposal would fund any equipment or technology related to law enforcement functions, and those functions are specifically defined to include prosecution. These two loopholes mean that the Governor of a State who will get the money now--it will not go to your local police department. It is the same old bureaucracy that is going to be set up. Right now all the police department has to do, they do not have to go to get anybody's permission. They can make an application. Once they check with their local government, their local civilian officials and send an application directly to the Attorney General of the United States, and the Attorney General of the United States can send back directly the money to hire those new local cops. But now we are going back to the bad old days, which is the Governors sit there and say, This is what I want to do with the money. Send me the money. I will take care of it. The two loopholes I mentioned means that the State can spend all of their money to hire prosecutors, all their money to improve the court systems or anything related to law enforcement. Arguably, the money could even be used to hire officers to enforce the civil laws as well as the criminal laws in the State. For example, the Governor could use the money to hire public health officers; they could use the money to hire the public health officers to inspect restaurants and businesses. Equipment as defined by the Republicans could include not merely police equipment, which the new anticrime law already grants a portion of funds to provide for new equipment, but it could--in this case, they could use this money, which was heretofore only to or judges or telephone booths or lighting or whatever the Governor decided would relate to law enforcement functions. And 100 percent of the Federal funds could be used for this equipment, or to fund prosecutors, or to pay judge's salaries, without one single penny having to go to hire an additional cop. I support many of these functions. In the crime bill, for example, we provide for a significant amount of money to the States to hire State judges. We put in money for new equipment. But we segregate, in the present crime law, almost $9 billion. It says you must hire a sworn officer, that is somebody who is a criminal law enforcement officer. That is all you can do with the money now. This new law proposed by the Republicans will, in fact, guarantee that we will not get 100,000 cops on the street. I am opposed to replacing the program that guarantees 100,000 new cops on our streets with the proposal that could spend over $8 billion in Federal funds, without putting any new cops anywhere. The Republican proposal suffers from an additional fatal flaw. It requires no fiscal accountability or responsibility. I find this fascinating. They are talking about tightening the budget, tightening spending. Here they are going to take over $8 billion, with no accountability, and send it back to the States. Why do we not just have plain old revenue sharing? Why call this a crime bill? The bill uses a formula to simply hand out Federal funds to officials, with no strings attached and no accountability. That sounds great, does it not? Well, the anticrime law requires that States and localities match Federal grants with their own money. And this match requirement is not born out of a lack of generosity on the part of the author of the bill, me or anybody else who voted for it. The offer of $8.8 billion in Federal funds to assist what is purely a State and local function can hardly be characterized as not being generous. No, the reason I wrote in a match was to require accountability, a match required born out of experience. I started my career as a county councilman, and I know how local officials work. God bless them, they have a tough job. We would sit there in budget meetings when I was a county official, councilperson, and somebody would say, well we are going to buy a new park, or do this in the park, or we are going to add two more police, and I or somebody else would say, how much is that going to cost? I am not exaggerating when I say the answer would come back that it will not cost anything. Wait a minute, you just said we are going to hire two new cops. They said, that is Federal money. That is Federal money, and it is not going to cost anything. Well, it is my tax dollars. So I found when a county or city has to put up some money for a program, they think twice about whether or not they really want it. Remember the allegations in the old LEAA Program, where police departments are out buying Dick Tracy wristwatches, purchasing riot control gear in small towns that never even thought about a riot? In the LEAA Program, we went a long way to begin to work toward using our money wisely. We built in three key concepts. We targeted law enforcement to aid specific programs; required a match of one State or local dollar for every three Federal dollars that we spend, and required extensive State plans to explain what they are going to use the Federal dollars for. We do not demand that they do anything, except tell us what they are going to use them for. The resulting law was what we called the Byrne Grant Program, which is a predecessor to this crime bill, a fiscally responsible, well-run program that continues today. The same concept marks the essential elements of the anticrime law for 100,000 cops. In fact, we even improve the Byrne concept in one respect. We permit localities, not just Governors, to apply directly for the funds to ensure that the money gets where it is most needed. I think my Republican colleagues should go back and look at the experience of LEAA before they pursue their proposal of block grants for police and any other purpose. Their proposal is an $8.5 billion giveaway of Federal dollars with no specific goals, with loopholes, and loose language that would permit every cent to be spent without any increase in police on the streets to show for our investment at the end of the 5 years. In contrast, the anti-crime law enacted last year, which was bipartisanly constructed in the first instance, builds on the LEAA lessons. It sets specific goals, provides a simplified application, requires accountability for evaluation and matching requirements. In addition, the matching requirement is set up so the local share increases from year to year. In this way, we ensure that local dollars are to be used responsibly. I see my time is coming to a close. Those who say, wait a minute now, Biden, under your bill that is now law, you required the States to kick in money. I say, yes, that is right. They say, well, in our bill we do not. Well, I ask a rhetorical question. This bill they are going to offer is a block grant for 5 years. Say they go out and hire cops for the local communities with block grant money and we pay for all of it for 5 years; what happens at the end of 5 years? The Federal Government is guaranteeing that we are going to take over local law enforcement costs for the rest of eternity? Is that what we are saying? No. In 5 years, the mayor has to go back to the taxpayers and say, hey, now we have 50 cops on the street, 10 are being paid for by Federal dollars. We no longer have those Federal dollars. Now I have to raise your taxes or cut the 10 cops. Is it not wiser to make that decision at the front end, where you have to go to the voters or your community and ask, do we want more cops? The Federal Government will give us $70,000 to start off here, to keep this cop for 5 years, and we are going to have to kick in probably $50,000 over that 5-year period. At the end of the process, we have to pick it up. What do you want to do? I think it is time we asked citizens to be as responsible as legislators should be and are not. That is, if you want to have more cops, it costs money, flat out. It costs money. The local officials should have the guts to go to their constituency and stop talking about how tough they are. Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise this morning to begin speaking on the issue of crime and justice in America and the Democratic crime bill, the Clinton to change that crime bill. I realize there is sort of a frenzy underway here where, to use the old expression, the freight train is rolling down the tracks, the contract is underway, and we are in a great hurry to change everything here. I am going to spend a half hour or so this morning, and then future mornings, as we approach the debate on the Senate floor on the changes in the Biden crime--in the crime bill, and try to lay out some of at least what I see to be the facts. Last year, Congress completed a 6-year effort and enacted a major anticrime law in which the Federal Government launched a bold and multifaceted attack on violent crime and its roots back in our communities, not here at the national level. For the first time, the Federal Government made major commitments to help States and localities, the places where 95 percent of all the crimes are committed and all the crimes are prosecuted. We got involved, to help them redress the greatest shortcomings in our system. And after years of study and overwhelming consensus, it was agreed what those shortcomings in our criminal justice system were and are. No. 1, first and foremost, there is a shortage of police out on the streets of our communities. That is number one. No. 2, the shortage of prison space and the need for sentencing reform at the State level. No. 3, the shortage of effective responses to drug offenders. No. 4, the lack of serious response to rape and family violence. No. 5, the lack of safe places and positive activities for those children referred to as at-risk children, who grow up surrounded by illegal drugs, crime, and violence. Everybody I am aware of agrees these were the problems we had to speak to. I might point out we pretty well have taken care of--which is a much easier problem to take care--the Federal side of that equation. We have enough Federal prison space in the Federal prison system. When you get sentenced, you go to jail for the totality of that term. I was the coauthor of that bill. In the Federal courts, if a judge says you are going to go to prison for 10 years, you know you are going to go to prison for at least 85 percent of that time--8.5 years, which is what the law mandates. You can get up to 1.5 years in good time credits, but that is all. And we abolished parole. So you know you'll be in prison for at least 8.5 years. But in the States, the average amount of time people serve once sentenced in the State court is 43 percent of the time. So on average, in the States--my State being one of the exceptions, the State of Delaware, which essentially has the same records as the Federal Government; they keep people, on average, 85 percent of the time--but most States keep people in jail, if they get sentenced to 10 years in the State court, they only serve 4 years 2 months in a State prison. So we fixed it at the Federal level. This was to help begin to not send rules or regulations or mandates to the States, but to send them money to fix the problems. It was to help them fix the problems I have stated, which everyone agreed on: Lack of police, lack of serious response to rape, et cetera. Now, in its breadth, the crime bill we passed reflects the lessons learned over the past decade as we studied crime and law enforcement and worked on passing this law; namely, that all of the shortcomings have to be addressed at one time. Correcting one without the other is futile because crime knows no easy single answer. What we found out in the States and what we found out in our earlier experience in the Federal Government is when you increase penalties and you do not increase the number of prison spaces, you do not do much. If you put more cops on the street, they make more arrests, you increase the penalties, and you do not have places to put the felons, then the people just walk. So now you have convicted felons who are out on the street, not having served their time. So we learned we cannot just deal with one piece of it. The anticrime law we passed last year addressed each of these shortcomings, as I will detail in a moment. In its approach, as well as in many specifics, the law was a result of bipartisan efforts--at least at the outset. The law is already at work; $1 billion has already been awarded to the States and localities to put almost 15,000 new police officers on the streets in the community policing program. That is already done. The law only passed last fall and already almost 15,000 cops, new cops, brand new--not supplanting cops that were on local forces, almost 15,000 new local cops that were not there before--within the next several months, after they finish their training, are going to be on the streets in the United States of America because of this crime bill. Dollars, under the drug court program, the Violence Against Women Act, are going to be awarded over the next few months. I hoped I could spend the next several months watching over the smooth and speedy implementation of this law, as well as turning my focus to the substantial issues that still lie before us. Just to name two priorities, we must turn all our talk about our war on drugs into a real battle, and we have to reform our juvenile justice system as it struggles to deal with violent, youthful offenders unlike any the current system was designed to handle. That is work still to be done. I thought we would be on the floor here this next year and the following year, dealing with finally doing something real about the drug problem and doing something more about juvenile justice because when I wrote the crime bill, I never advertised it as--as my grandfather would say, this is not a horse to carry the sleigh. The whole sleigh on crime is more than what the crime bill was about, and we have said that, frankly, from the beginning. What we did, we thought we were going to have in place; we thought we were going to be just implementing. Very soon, the Senate will embark on a debate, not about new challenges, but of the anticrime law we just enacted last fall. The House is already taking apart this law piecemeal. What is motivating a retreat on the bill that contained so many provisions drafted and once supported by Republicans, as well as Democrats, quite frankly, escapes me. I will let you draw your own conclusions. But I ask you walk with me through the changes the Republican leadership seeks to make in the anticrime law. I suspect the merits will speak for themselves. At the same time, I want to make clear what I will fight for and what I will fight against, as we revisit the issues debated in the crime bill last year so thoroughly. Let me turn first to the central provision of the present new crime law, a program designed to address the first major law enforcement shortcoming I mentioned, a program that deserves, in my view, to be preserved and one I will fight to save from the Republican chopping block. Let me speak first about that program. That program puts 100,000 new police on the street. I do not know a responsible police leader, an academic expert, a public official who does not agree that putting more police officers on our streets back home and in our neighborhoods is a good idea, a good idea that goes by the name of community policing. The true innovation of community policing is that it enables police officers to pursue dual goals. They are better positioned to respond to and apprehend suspects when crime occurs. But they are also better positioned to keep crime from occurring in the first place. Today, too many police officers are strangers in their own communities. From headquarters or cruisers, they respond to radio calls only after crime has occurred, forever behind the curve. Police officers are a part of their community. Community police officers will be a part of their community. They know their community--the hot spots, the troublemakers, the gang members--and they can work to prevent crime in the first place. I do not want to go back to a nostalgic and romantic view of what used to be the case. But most of us who grew up in anything that remotely resembles a city or a town that had an identity when we were kids, those of us in this Chamber, when we were kids, we knew the local cop. He walked down the street. He knew everybody. He knew who owned what store. He knew the kids who were troublemakers and those who were not. We knew if we got into trouble, he would call our mothers or call our fathers. Things have not been working too well is for a whole range of reasons--mainly the shortage of bodies--but one of the reasons is that we have moved away from community policing. In my own State, community policing took the form of foot patrols with a particular focus on breaking up street-level drug dealing that had turned one of Wilmington's neighborhoods into a crime zone. These efforts successfully suppressed drug activity without displacing it to another part of the city. The Wilmington example fits the shorthand description often used for community policing; that is, putting cops on the streets to walk the beat. But in practice, community policing takes on many forms, depending on the needs of any particular community. The form of community policing takes various forms. From community to community, the results coming in from the field are all the same. Community policing works. In New York City, a place where crime can seem insurmountable, the police commissioner began an aggressive community policing program that contributed to a significant decrease in serious offenses last year.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. And he did support me, I might add, to go on Foreign Relations. But he told me if I really wanted to affect foreign policy, I should go with the other Senator from Arkansas, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Chair. Before I begin what I wish to speak to, let me compliment my friend from Arkansas. I had the great privilege of being a young Senator serving with Chairman Fulbright. I did not know him nearly as well, nor was I as close to him, by any stretch of the imagination, as my friend from Arkansas, but it was a real honor and privilege and, let me say, something that I tell my children and will tell my grandchildren and I am sure they will tell their children, that their father and grandfather had a chance to serve with such a great man. I will tell you one anecdote in my relationship with him. I remember him as a young man. I had just been elected. I was 29 years old. I had not turned 30 yet. I came down here to meet with what was then referred to as the old bulls of the Senate. I went around and made my obligatory stops at the offices. Senator Fulbright asked me what I wanted to do, and I said how very much I would like to be on the Foreign Relations Committee. I say to my friend from Arkansas, back in those days I do not think there was anybody on the committee under the age of 55 and it was only senior Senators, very senior Senators who were on the committee, made up of great men like Jack Javits and Mike Mansfield, Bill Fulbright, Stuart Symington, Hubert Humphrey, et cetera. And I realized it was a reach, and I did not expect to get on as soon as I did. But I just wanted to let him know. He said, ``Why do you want to be on the Foreign Relations Committee?'' I said, ``Mr. Chairman, one of the great concerns I have is our foreign policy, American foreign policy. It is my avocation, my interest. Quite frankly,'' I said, ``Mr. Chairman, if as a Senator I would not be able to deal with foreign policy, there would be no reason to run for the U.S. Senate; I might as well run for Governor. But the reason I am here is because I care about that.'' He looked at me, and he said, ``Well, I understand your sincerity. Let me think about it.'' So I saw him coming over on the subway a little while later, a week later, and he said, ``I thought about it.'' He said, ``You really want to affect foreign policy?'' I said, ``Yes, I would like to eventually, Mr. Chairman.'' He said, ``Why don't you go see my colleague, Senator McClellan.'' I said, ``I beg your pardon, Mr. Chairman. He is the No. 2 man''--then was about to be the chairman-- ``of the Appropriations Committee.'' And I said, ``That's appropriations.'' He said, ``Yes, but that's where foreign policy is made.'' I will never forget that.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am very proud to come to the Senate floor today to announce that the 1992 Census of Agriculture has named Sussex County, the southern most county in the beautiful State of Delaware, as the No. 1 poultry producing county in the United States. As my hometown newspaper, the Wilmington News Journal, so eloquently stated it: ``Sussex County still rules the roost as the chicken-growin'est county in the nation.'' Of course, being the No. 1 producer is nothing new for Sussex County--the county has officially remained the No. 1 producer since 1982. In fact, Sussex County has been the unofficial leading poultry producer since the industry got its start in Ocean View, DE, in 1923. It all started with Mrs. Wilmer Steele when she placed an order for 50 chicks, intended for egg production, and ended up with 500. She decided to raise rather than return the extra chicks, and when they were big enough she sold approximately 400 of them to a local buyer. Three years later, she and her husband were raising 25,000 young chickens and selling them to the local population who were discovering the versatility of chicken meat. America is eating about 10 times as much chicken today as we were in 1925, numbers attributable to the fact that chicken is high in protein, low in fat, tasty, and very affordable. Mr. President, we are doing everything we can in Delaware to maintain the productivity of the poultry industry nationwide. Today there is a disease, harmless to humans but deadly for chickens, affecting the productivity of Delaware poultry industry flocks. Avian diseases such as this affect flocks across the country on a regular basis. In an effort to prevent the economic damage done by these outbreaks, the University of Delaware, in cooperation with the Federal Government and private industry, is building a poultry research facility that will help the poultry industry solve this type of disease problem. I have worked very closely with the poultry industry people in my State to get this facility up and running. The Delmarva poultry industry has an outstanding record of commitment to research and development in avian diseases and I am hopeful that the remainder of the funds needed to finish this project can be secured this year. The growers who are responsible for keeping Sussex County and the Delmarva Peninsula in the ranks of the top producers know the importance of this facility to the national production of poultry. Mr. President, I would like to congratulate Sussex County for, once again, achieving No. 1 producer status and for providing the American public with healthy and affordable nutrition.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, Senator Daschle has put before us a common sense addition to the balanced budget amendment, that requires us to tell the people of the States--the people who will decide on ratification of the balanced budget amendment--what the effects of their decision will be. Should we and the people who will be asked to ratify this permanent change to our Constitution not be given the facts we need to understand its effects? It seems to me that to oppose full disclosure is to say that we want this decision--that is a fundamental change in our Nation's charter--to be made in the dark, in ignorance. Two years ago, we voted for a budget plan that laid out a course of action that identified the specific changes that would be needed to cut half a billion dollars from our deficits over 5 years. That plan was clear and detailed; it was of course subject to both honest disagreement, and, unfortunately, some partisan distortion. But it has cut the deficit for 3 years running, for the first time since the Truman administration. We told the American people what we were going to do, and we did it. We cut over $500 billion from our deficits over 5 years. And a strong economy that followed passage of that plan has brought our deficits even lower. Like all of us here, I hope that the most recent action of the Federal Reserve Board will not be the one-two punch that wipes out the benefits of that plan--a blow that both flattens the economy and increases our deficits with higher interest rates. Our plans here in Congress, like the plans of private citizens and businesses across the country, now hang on the hope that the Federal Reserve has not gone too far. But that is a topic for another day. Some of my friends here who voted against cutting the deficit back then, and some of my newer friends, who do not like the way we did it, now act surprised to see that deficits will rise again in the future, even though no one--certainly not the administration--ever claimed they would not. We all knew that fundamental health care reform and other actions would be necessary to turn the deficit trend down permanently, and not just over the life of the 1993 budget plan. But the fact is that we passed that budget plan with the narrowest possible margin in each House of Congress. As for those who now complain, their own plan was less specific than ours and still could not promise as much deficit reduction as we have actually accomplished. So let us not be distracted from our duty of being honest about the future by arguments about the past. With the release of President Clinton's budget plan, we hear again from those who voted against deficit reduction in 1993 that they could do better. Well, Mr. President, I believe them. That is why I challenge them to tell us how they would do better, as specifically as the plan they are attacking. If an amendment to the Constitution is needed to keep building on the accomplishments of the last few years, to force us to confront the continuing deficits that are predicted through the end of this decade, then it only makes sense for us to prepare a document that sets forth the choices that will be necessary to bring the budget into balance. Right now, we are confronted with an interesting situation. A new majority in Congress, that promised a new legislative agenda, now tells us that they cannot commit themselves to bring the budget into balance until after the Constitution is changed to force them to do it. It is certainly within the competence of our budget committee and Congressional Budget Office to provide us with the specifics of a budget path that will bring us to balance by the year 2002. Of course projections are only our best scientific estimates of future economic activity. But virtually all of my friends who support the balanced budget amendment have made good use of projections of future deficits under current law. Those estimates are the best view we have of the future, even if we cannot be certain that all of our assumptions will hold true. So let us drop that argument right now--we all accept that it is possible to make useful estimates about our economic and budget future. It is because we accept such projections that we are here today, contemplating an amendment to our Constitution. amendment is part of an economic plan--as announced in the so-called contract--that, taken all together, raises serious problems. If we cut taxes, increase defense spending, and promise not to push any new costs off onto the Governors and mayors, the road to the balanced budget looks rocky indeed. It may be, Mr. President, that you cannot get to a balanced budget from here, if the contract is your road map. There is powerful evidence--the one-vote margins in both Houses for the 1993 budget package--that votes for deficit reduction are difficult to find. How much more difficult will it be if we reduce our revenues, and keep major segments of the budget safe from the requirements of the balanced budget amendment? Well, we know that it will be difficult, but we cannot know just how difficult until we see some numbers about where the axe is going to fall. Mr. President, I would like to echo the astute observation of a new member of the judiciary, the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Feingold]. During the debate in the Judiciary Committee on a similar proposal, Senator Feingfold responded to the suggestion that this was a transparent ploy to kill the balanced budget amendment. I want us all to reflect on that charge for a moment--that an attempt to find out just how a permanent addition to our Constitution will work is nothing but a ploy by those who oppose it. Mr. President, when I took on the task as floor manager for this important proposal, I did so because I am genuinely torn between my concern for our fiscal future and my concerns about the effects of this balanced budget amendment on our Constitution and on our economy. I did not anticipate that honest questions about the effects of a permanent change in our fundamental charter would be dismissed as insincere or disingenuous. But I ask my colleagues to consider Senator Feingold's response to that charge. He said that the American people would be more likely to ratify this amendment if they knew for sure what was in it, than if they had to buy it sight unseen. Those of us who have faith in the people who will make the final decision on this amendment believe--whether we support or oppose it ourselves--that it is our constitutional duty to establish a record of debate and evidence before we send this amendment to the people. Not often enough, I am afraid, does this chamber live up to its claim to be the world's greatest deliberative body. Certainly, we should aspire to fulfill that role as we debate a change in our Constitution. And certainly, the American people deserve to know what the new majority party has in mind when they say that they can comply with the terms of the balanced budget amendment. If we truly believe that amending the Constitution is the right thing to do, then let us give the American people the facts they need to make that choice themselves. Certainly, that is not too much to ask. In addition to the very real benefits of being honest with the American people, and restoring some of their faith in our ability to solve problems, there is another substantial benefit of accepting Senator Daschle's amendment. If we accept this amendment, we will have the assurance that we have in place a plan to get us from where we are today to a balanced budget by the year 2002. By itself, that is no small accomplishment. I cannot believe where we now find ourselves in this debate--where the call for a specific set of goals that provide a path to a balanced budget is denounced as a delaying tactic, a distraction. And where those who call for an amendment to the Constitution that will go into effect in the next century say that a promise to take action in the future is more serious than a call for action now. That does not make sense to me. If we accept this amendment, we will still have to send the amendment to the States. Let us assume for a moment that the American people lose their enthusiasm for the balanced budget amendment. What happens if we put all our eggs in that one basket? Will we wait for the year or more that ratification is likely to take before we decide what to do next? Or would we be more prudent, more serious, more committed to real deficit reduction if we were to also pass a binding budget resolution that sets a course for a balanced budget regardless of the outcome of the ratification process? I believe that the answer to that question is clear. The more serious approach is to pass the actual law that compliance with the balanced budget amendment would require, not simply to pass an amendment with the promise that at some future date we will get down to the real work of balancing the budget. And there is a further substantial advantage to what Senator Daschle's amendment offers--a commitment to start now on the very difficult journey ahead of us. Without a plan that starts now to build on the real progress of the past 3 years--without such a plan in place from the beginning, we will have established a collision course between our Constitution and our economy. In a game of chicken, we will approach the year the balanced budget amendment comes into effect, without the capacity to comply with its mandate. If we wait until the last minute, when huge budget cuts will be required--over $300 billion for the deficit in 2002--we will swerve, and avoid the economic crash that deficit reduction on that scale would cause. At that point, the balanced budget amendment will not keep us from extending the year of reckoning yet further into the future. As we all know, it will not make deficit spending--at any level-- unconstitutional. Lest we forget, Mr. President, the balanced budget amendment makes deficits difficult, not illegal. And if we make use of the established procedure in the amendment to permit continued deficits--probably rightly, if the cost would be a disastrous recession--we will only add to the frustration and anger of the American people. The balanced budget amendment will be not just another empty promise from Washington, but the most cynical one of all--one that we were willing to put into the Constitution, but not into action. And so Mr. President, to avoid making a mockery of our constitutional duties, to avoid a collision between the Constitution and the economy, to provide the American people the facts they need to make an informed decision, we should adopt this right-to-know amendment.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President; today I and Senator McConnell are introducing the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights Act of 1995, a bill aimed at protecting the rights of law enforcement officers on the front line of this Nation's fight against violent crime and drug trafficking. Police work is an incredibly difficult job, demanding split-second decisions that have life-or-death consequences. My colleagues may be surprised to find that despite the critical role that front-line law enforcement officers play to enforce the Constitution's rights and guarantees, and the related need to guarantee the highest standards of police conduct, internal disciplinary procedures in law enforcement agencies continue to vary widely across the nation. The often ad hoc procedures that many departments use to guide internal investigations frequently allows police executives to take arbitrary and unfair actions against innocent police officers, while allowing culpable officers to avoid any punishment at all. The law enforcement officers' bill of rights is designed to replace the ad hoc nature of many internal police investigations by encouraging States to provide minimum procedural standards to guide such investigations. The standards and protections offered by this bill are modeled on the Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies developed by the National Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement. As the preface to the Commission's standards on internal affairs notes: `The internal affairs function is important for the maintenance of professional conduct in a law enforcement agency. The integrity of the agency depends on the personal integrity and discipline of each employee. To a large degree, the public image of the agency is determined by the quality of the internal affairs function in responding to allegations of misconduct by the agency or its employees. The specific standards and rights guaranteed by the law enforcement officers bill of rights introduced today include: The right to engage or not engage in political activities independent of an officer's official capacity; The right to be informed by a written statement of the charges brought against an officer; The right to be free from undue coercion or harassment during an investigation; and The right to counsel during an investigation. The provisions of this bill will take effect at the end of the second full legislative term of each State. After such time, a law enforcement officer whose rights have been abridged may sue in State court for pecuniary and other damages, including full reinstatement. Although the bill provides certain procedural rights, it gives States considerable discretion in implementing these safeguards, including the flexibility to provide for summary punishment and emergency suspensions of law enforcement officers. It is also important to note what the bill does not do. The bill explicitly provides that the standards and protections governing internal investigations shall not apply to investigations of criminal misconduct by law enforcement officers. As a result, criminal investigations of law enforcement officers would not be affected by this bill. Moreover, the protections in this bill do not apply to minor violations of departmental rules or regulations, not to actions taken on the basis of an officers' employment-related performance. I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of several of the Nation's leading law enforcement organizations on this important bill. the real leaders behind this effort--and they have been the leaders since the police officers' bill of rights won passage in the Senate in 1991--are the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Association of Police Organizations, and the International Brotherhood of Police Officers. No one should be confused about where the force behind the law enforcement officers bill of rights lies--it lies with these organizations. Finally, let me say to the entire law enforcement community--you enjoy one of the most amicable and productive relationships between the rank and file and management. Many have observed that the reason for these relations is the fact that today's chief was yesterday's patrol officer--just as today's patrol officer will be tomorrow's sheriff. That is why I look forward to working with all members of the law enforcement community to pass legislation protecting the rights of all law enforcement officers. Mr. President, I have heard many Members of the Senate reflect on the commitment of those brave individuals who risk their lives as front- line law enforcement officers. Mr. President, the bill we introduce today gives every Member of the Senate the chance to provide at least some of the protections these police heroes deserve.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I am sorry. I did not see the Senator from Colorado. I yield time for the Senator.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I state the obvious. The Senate has begun debate on a proposed amendment to the Constitution. This is, as it ought to be, a solemn moment in the life of our Constitution, for what we debate today, and I expect in the following weeks, is whether to change, alter, or modify the basic document of governance that we have operated under. Members of Congress have introduced over 10,000 proposed amendments to the Constitution. Admittedly, the new Republican majority is making their weight felt here. We have not only this amendment, but I do not know how many more to amend the Constitution. But there have been over 10,000 proposed amendments to our Constitution. Of those 10,000 since 1791, we in Congress have approved just 22. And, of the 22, just 17 have been ratified by three-quarters of the States and have become part of the Constitution. We stand here again this year confronting one of our most profound constitutional responsibilities as we consider a change in our fundamental charter. It is one of the glories of the U.S. Constitution that it has been so resilient. Its authors' insight into human behavior and political institutions have proved accurate from our early years as an outpost on the coast of the new world to our current status of a space-aged superpower. Few changes have been necessary to permit the Constitution to keep pace with our social, economic, and technological revolutions that have transformed our Nation since its founding. But in recent decades, we have faced the problem that we do not seem to be able to solve. We cannot balance our budget, or, more correctly, we will not. And to put it in even sharper focus, I think it is much less important that our budget be balanced. There is nothing magic about the budget being balanced. But what is critically important is that our deficit continue to decline, and that we have a small deficit, if any deficit at all. At the beginning of the Reagan administration, we swerved from the course that had, since the end of World War II, shrunk the national debt, and we turned onto a path that has led us to where we are today; the so-called Laffer curve. Speaking of ``Laffers,'' it is probably the ultimate ``Laffer''--the ``Laffer curve.'' Many of us have worked to impose disciplines needed to restrain the temptation to spend beyond what we tax. (Mr. GREGG assumed the chair.)

Mr. BIDEN. When the Reagan administration deficits began, I proposed, along with Senator Grassley and Senator Kassebaum--and he mentioned this earlier--that we freeze every single solitary program in the Government, anything the Government had to do with, every single solitary one, that we not spend a penny more, not even accounting for inflation, than we spent the year before. Although I wrote the plan with my two Republican colleagues, we received very little support from either side of the aisle. I think our high-water mark 3 years later was 38 votes. I also supported the Gramm-Rudman process that has been much maligned here in the Congress. It has not worked, but I argue that absent that things would even be worse than they are today. Gramm-Rudman put caps on the amount of deficits allowed and required a balanced budget. But the requirements changed every year, and the only constant in the process was the annual increase in the national debt and the guarantee of annual deficits. Those are not the only things that we have tried. Over 10 years ago, I offered my own constitutional amendment to balance the Federal budget--and you might expect me to say, parenthetically, I think it was a superior document to the one we are about to vote on this year. Up through my vote for Senator Reid's balanced budget amendment last year, I have held that this is an issue worthy of constitutional consideration. Many suggest that this is not an issue worthy of constitutional consideration. Well, the fact of the matter is, I think my friend from Illinois is correct when he keeps quoting and referencing Jefferson. If this is not worthy of constitutional consideration--how we are able to bind or not bind future generations--I am not sure what is worthy of constitutional consideration. That in no way undercuts the opposing argument that writing fiscal policy into a constitution or into a document of governance is a difficult and maybe impossible thing. But the notion that this is not worthy of constitutional consideration, I think, is not accurate. The decision to encumber future generations with financial obligations is one that can rightly be considered among the fundamental choices addressed in the Constitution. But from the first time the resolution before us here today was proposed, I have been concerned that it could bring with it problems that, taken together, could be almost as bad as the deficit problem that we are all worried about. In the Judiciary Committee, I have described some of those concerns. This year, in committee a number of amendments were offered to fix what I, at least, perceive to be problems in this constitutional amendment. Some of us tried to make this a better proposal. We tried to avoid tying up the courts with constitutional questions about such important details as the President's role in enforcing the balanced budget. We tried to keep the Social Security trust fund off budget, where it is now and where it should stay. We tried to assure that the real cost of the balanced budget amendment, and not just its surface lure, is known to the citizens who will be asked to ratify this amendment in the coming months. We tried to provide a capital budget to treat public investments the way families, businesses, and States treat their own investments. These and other amendments were not accepted. The reason they were not accepted--and you will hear it repeatedly; my friend from Utah referenced it. It is the one thing that worries me most, as I am one of those undecided votes. I am told that there are five, six, seven, or eight of us in this place who do not oppose the notion that we have a mechanism in the Constitution to deal with deficits. But we are very unsure of this mechanism. The camps generally divide into two areas. One suggests that it is bad policy, period, to put anything in the Constitution. And there are those who suggest that this is the only answer. I am with that handful or maybe a couple of hands full of people here who find myself believing that it is not inappropriate but believing that what we have before us may not do the job. I have been here long enough to realize that there are often unintended consequences of our actions which are sometimes worse than the problem we have attempted to cure. Where do we stand now? We have before us the balanced budget amendment, about which many of us have expressed serious reservations, the effects of which in both the short and the long term cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty, although we will find plenty of people on the floor who will predict with certainty how they think this will work. I think any reasonable person, though, will acknowledge that it is almost impossible to predict with a degree of certainty what will happen if this passes. I hope we can improve the proposal by passing amendments. But there is a second refrain you will hear on the floor, I expect, time and time again: This is the best we could do. This is the best we could do. We have to pass exactly what the House sent to us, because we have never been so close before. We have to take what is before us. For example, I will, in my opening statement here, make reference to some Governors and others who have suggested that a capital budget is a good idea. When I ask people why it is a bad idea, the Senator from Illinois gives me his well-thought-out rationale why it is not necessary or why it is counterproductive. Most others look at me and say: ``We cannot fool with this or tamper with this because it is the only game in town now. We are getting perilously close, and we cannot change anything at all.'' I respectfully suggest that that is not a very enlightened way to deal with amending the Constitution. I cannot say that I am optimistic that the improvements, from my perspective, that I and others will suggest will be accepted. I fear that there are those who will believe that the mere fact that we will suggest improvements is really designed to kill the amendment. The truth of the matter is that these amendments are designed to make it better. I will speak to the specific changes I would like to see. But the changes I suggest will not in any way undermine the principle of this amendment and would make it more workable, not less workable. Whether or not we amend this amendment, Mr. President, this balanced budget amendment, may in fact a constitutional constraint and make the tough choices to restore sobriety to our budget process. I devoutly hope so. Of course, it may be that we will decide that the economic and political cost of an annual budget balance are not worth the benefits. It may be that we will make use of both the legitimate escape clauses in this amendment, and other, unforeseen devices to evade the intent of the amendment. Mr. President, I hope we do not, if this passes. We, quite frankly, cannot be sure that a vote for this amendment will have the effect the authors promise. But we can be sure that if we try nothing, we will remain on the path that we have been on for too many years now, with the notable exception of the last 3 years under the leadership of this President. I know the stereotype is that all Democrats are big spenders and that all Republicans are conscientious with the taxpayers' dollars. Obviously, history does not support that conclusion. If we had not had the Reagan budgets that we all voted on-- and we could have stopped them--but had we not had the Reagan budgets and that unusual theory of the Laffer curve, we would have a budget in balance right now. It's out of balance just because of the interest accumulated on and the debt that has occurred as a consequence of the Reagan additional deficits--I should not say Reagan--the deficits produced by Reagan and the Democratic Congress both. But we will hear a good deal of hyperbole on this amendment. Its supporters promise that it is a cure-all, and its opponents promise that, if it passes, we are going to go to hell in a hand basket rapidly and all our liberties will be taken from us. I hope we keep our eye on the ball here and at least have an open mind to the prospect that we can make this amendment better and still have an amendment. We will continue to add every year to the debt burden of future generations. We will steal today from the future, squeezing out the savings and investments that could increase our future wealth if we do not do something about stopping the size of these deficits, even if we do not actually balance the budget, if we do not make a change. The Senator from Iowa pointed out--I think I heard him say, and I stand to be corrected--that in 1969, the last time we balanced the budget, for every tax dollar collected, six cents, or thereabouts, went to pay interest on the debt, and every tax dollar collected in 1993 or 1994--I forget which year he used, maybe it was 1991--but anyway, every tax dollar collected in the last year or so, 29 cents, I believe was the number he gave, or 26 cents, goes to pay interest on the debt. I am sure someone has looked out over the next 15 years and concluded that if we stay on the track, even the one predicted by the President of the United States, that we will be requiring an increasingly larger share of every tax dollar just to pay the interest on the debt. And to me that is the driving force behind this amendment. To me, the beginning, middle, and end is not whether there is a mechanism that guarantees a balanced budget amendment. It is not whether or not there is any magic about it being actually in balance. It is not whether or not we come close. It is about that increasingly larger proportion of the tax dollars collected going for the most useless investment of paying interest on the debt. When I introduced my budget freeze proposal years ago, the liberals of my party said, ``It's an awful thing you are doing, Joe. All the programs we care about, you are freezing them--money for the blind, the disabled, education and so on.'' My argument then is one I make now, which is the strongest, most compelling reason to be for this amendment--or an amendment--that if we do not do that, all the things I care most about are going to be gone-- gone. So what do we have? We end up with essentially a net reduction in the programs that I cared about over the last 10 years, a net increase in other programs, and a net increase in the portion of the budget that goes to pay interest on the debt. So the people I care most about--the reason I ran for public office in the first place--are the people that got hurt the most in this process and are likely to get hurt the most because they are the weakest in our society. When an interest group like the PTA comes down here to support money for education, and other interest groups support money for tax expenditures for major businesses, I have no doubt who is going to win that fight. I have no doubt how that is going to turn out. So if this debt continues to increase, we will continue to tie our hands and our ability--indeed, our responsibility--to set national priorities in our annual budget process because of the interest on the debt required to be paid every year. This year, the interest on the national debt will cost us $235 billion. The entire domestic discretionary budget will be $253 billion. Now we use phrases like that ``discretionary budget,'' and my staff writes that stuff in. And I keep telling them nobody in the world but people in this Chamber and inside the beltway know what ``discretionary budget'' means. Let me translate. The discretionary budget includes everything from the FBI to education, from help for the mentally retarded to the Library of Congress. That is everything. Everything out there that people think is the place where we are wasting money, that people think is the place we can cut to cut the deficit, does not include Social Security, does not include entitlement programs, does not include interest on the debt. The point is, it is all those things that everybody when I go home who says, ``Joe, if you just cut the waste in Government''--if we shut down every department in the Government, we would in effect have an inability to balance the budget in the outyears because we are already talking about interest on the debt equaling almost the same amount of money of all the money we spend on the Government for what the average person thinks are Government expenditures. They do not usually think of Social Security as a Government expenditure. They do not think of the things we generally talk about as the big-ticket items here as expenditures. By the time this amendment is intended to become law, in the year 2002, the interest on our debt will be $344 billion, larger than every other category in the budget except Social Security. That is just interest on the debt. If we do nothing, our inability to control the growth of debt, and the cost of carrying that debt, will tie our hands, preventing us from shifting resources to meet changing needs, which is the essence, in my view, of responsible budgeting, responsible Government. So, Mr. President, the question before us today and in the coming weeks is not the simple one: ``Are you for balancing the budget or not?'' Under most circumstances, everyone would agree we should balance our books. No, it seems to me Mr. President the question is: ``Does our repeated failure to balance the budget necessitate a response that all of us agree is extraordinary?'' And that is amending the Constitution. It is by no means that clear that the amendment before us will eliminate deficits. It certainly will make deficits more difficult-- which in and of itself is a worthy undertaking--but with a three-fifths vote, we can in fact continue to borrow. And I hope no one is under the delusion that by hook or by crook some future Congress, less virtuous than we, will not be able to find ways around the restrictions in this amendment. With little faith in human nature, but a healthy respect for human ingenuity, we should have no delusions on that count. I think both the supporters and the opponents of this amendment quite frankly overstate the case, though. I expect the supporters of this balanced budget amendment will, as they already have, proclaim it as a panacea that will cure a structural defect in the way that a democratically elected legislature weighs fiscal responsibility against the demands of constituents. The supporters will proclaim its passage as the end of deficit spending. The opponents of this amendment may agree that it will drastically change our Government, but, they will argue, for the worse. I expect they will describe the pain that the deep cuts will cause to the American people--the elderly, the poor, the military, the paint a bleak picture of life under a balanced budget regime. I say to my colleagues on both sides of this debate that all these claims overstate the case. This amendment will not magically cause deficits to disappear. The hard work of cutting must still be done--and it should be done by us. This is hard work. Evidence the fact that everybody acknowledges that the President's budget package reduced the deficit, yet everyone went out last year and ran on this gigantic tax increase. It increased it only for the very wealthy. The middle-class taxpayers paid no more. In fact, they got reductions in some cases. And those who were low- or middle-class income taxpayers with children, they got an actual reduction in their taxes. But yet this thing, this horrible thing we did, which touched the top 1 percent of all the taxpayers in America in any meaningful way, was so horrible and so bad--even though, by the way, in that same document the President said and we voted that we would freeze spending; we would freeze spending in all these other categories--it was so bad the other side could not even muster up the courage to give one single, solitary vote for reducing the budget deficit by a half-trillion dollars over the outyears. And the deficit went down. It actually went down. Yet, if they could not muster the courage for that vote--which obviously cost a lot politically because if you notice there are fewer desks on this side of the aisle than there are on that side of the aisle; obviously they were right, politically anyway. If they could not muster the courage for that vote, how are we going to find over $1 trillion to cut? I mean, this is incredible. It is incredible the degree of self- delusion you will see us all engage in over the next couple days, the next couple weeks. But this amendment will not magically cause deficits to disappear. Nor will this amendment turn democratically elected officials in Congress, as the opponents say, into hardhearted authoritarians who will ignore the cries of their constituents. That is what my friends opposed to this amendment basically will say. Even under this amendment, the economy will falter and need shoring up. That is going to happen no matter what we pass. I do not think anyone can tell me that this amendment is going to take us out of the cycles we have been in for the of the past 200 years, particularly the past 60 years. The economy will falter at some point and it will need shoring up. Foreign dictators will rattle their swords and we will be called upon to respond by spending billions of dollars to send armies somewhere. Rains will fall and plains will flood, and Federal disaster relief will be called for, to the tune of billions of dollars. I remember when, in the section of the country of my friend from Illinois, he and others were in here pleading that we should continue to reroute the Mississippi and every other river in America and we should reimburse people for that disaster. And most Members stepped up to the ball and helped. Now our friends on the west coast are accurately pointing out that there is billions of dollars worth of damage because of earthquakes and fires and floods and rains. Are such natural disasters going to stop? Is anyone going to suggest that this balanced budget amendment will send a message to God, as well, and say, ``OK, God, we balance our budget, now you hold off from here on.'' Our population will age, and the need to support the medical and social needs of those who supported us when we needed it will not diminish. It will grow. Costs will grow. And on and on and on and on. I predict that from time to time--perhaps more frequently--three- fifths of Members in Congress will agree that some need of our people is so great that we will agree that this year we will not balance the budget, or this year we will screw up the courage to have people pay for what they say they want through the Tax Code. I realize, incidentally, that is a horrible thing to suggest. I always find interesting, everything that we hear about the balanced budget--with the notable exception of my friend from Illinois and a few others that are the chief sponsors of this--is always in terms of ``cut spending.'' Whatever happened to the old conservative discipline about paying for what you spend? Paying for what you spend. I thought that meant that if we spend, then we ought to tell people how much it will cost to spend. If they do not want Members to spend, then we should not spend. But if they want to spend, we should be honest, must tell them what it will cost. Which brings me to the argument raised by some that before passing this amendment we should tell the American people how we intend to balance the budget. There are those who claim that this is just a sham on the part of the opponents of the balanced budget amendment. Well, I am not an opponent of that amendment, but I want to tell Members it does not seem to be unrealistic for someone to lay out in broad details at least how it will work. Those people say, ``Wait a minute; if you are for the balanced budget amendment, you ought to say how to balance it.'' Most people who are against the balanced budget amendment are not saying that we have to balance the budget; they are saying that our budget should be somewhere around 19 percent of GNP, that we should not put ourselves in the position where we are out of whack. They argue, like many economists, that balancing the budget in and of itself is not a sacred undertaking and could be counterproductive. It seems to me that we should tell the American people. I look at the polls out there. For example, I want to go on record, and I am up for reelection this year, and I will remind everybody what I did at home, which will cost me politically. When I argued that we should freeze Federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the Government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time. Somebody has to tell me in here how we are going to do this hard work without dealing with any of those sacred cows, some deserving more protection than others. I am not quite sure how you get from here to there. I am sure that we should tell the American people straight up that such an amendment is going to require some big changes. The balanced budget amendment will not end our deficit in one fell swoop, nor will it cause our Nation to turn its back overnight on those who depend on us. All it means, as the Senator from Utah said, is that we will have to stand up more often and be counted on these things. I find that a good thing, not a bad thing. As we begin this debate, let Members keep a decent perspective on the true consequences of this amendment. It is important that we not overstate nor overpromise what the amendment will do. Let Members debate this amendment with all the seriousness that a constitutional amendment requires, to ensure that the amendment we propose to the States and the American people merits the honor of being included in our most fundamental covenant of self-rule. So what, then, are the concerns that many Members, those so-called undecided voters, bring to this debate? First and perhaps foremost, it seems to me we must examine whether the amendment is likely to shift the balance of power between the branches of Government to an extent never experienced or expected by our forefathers. It was the wise position of the drafters of the Constitution in 1787 that the Congress, being the most representative branch, the most democratic, and the most sensitive to--and ironically that is why we are needing this amendment. Everybody should not lose sight of that. We say that Congress is not responsive, and that we should be more responsive to people; and then we are told the reason we need this amendment is we are too responsive to the people. Whatever they come and ask for we give to them in a painless way. Kind of fascinating how we sort of turn these arguments to whatever benefit the moment allows. The fact is we are the most representative branch. We do respond to the people, and that is how we were supposed to respond based on what our Founders intended. And we are the Because of all that, the drafters of the Constitution spent a lot of time debating this little point on the second floor in Philadelphia, because they did not want the debate to take place on the first floor. They were afraid people would eavesdrop and hear what is going on. This was before ``Government in the sunshine.'' The delegates to the Constitutional Convention sat in the second floor so people could not walk by and eavesdrop. What they were saying on the second floor is, ``Look, if we are going to give the power to tax and spend, we better give it to the outfit that will most directly respond to the people. Taxes, we will give that to those guys in the House that get elected every 2 years. We do not want the Senators--who were not popularly elected in those days--to do that. They can only respond to a tax bill proposed by the House.'' So there was a real solid reason why, in setting out the balance of power, taxing and spending was put in the Congress. James Madison, who is recognized as the father of the Constitution, called this power of the purse ``the most complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people for obtaining a redress of every grievance and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.'' That power of the purse has remained with the Congress for over 200 years. This amendment threatens to take away a good deal of that power and to share it with the President, a fundamental shift of authority that will irretrievably alter the balance of power established in the Constitution. Senators might say, well, how, in fact, does this amendment threaten to shift the power to the President? Because, I am convinced, Presidents will seize on the language of this amendment to claim a constitutional power to impound; that is, to refuse to spend money that Congress has duly appropriated. This power to impound would give the President wide-ranging authority to undo or redo Congress' spending priorities without limits, or at least so a President would claim. Now, you may say no President will do that, Joe, and as a Democrat I am happy that this guy downtown is of my party. I am sure he would not do that. But let me ask you, what do you think Nixon did? What do you think old Lyndon Johnson would have done? What do you think Franklin Roosevelt would have done with his power? Now, maybe we are not going to have any more Roosevelts--I hope that is not true--or Johnsons or Nixons, but we just may very well. What does it mean for a President to wield this power? It means the President could decide to change the way the Congress had allocated funding in spending bills; for example, taking away money that ensures that small States get their fair share. Let me be parochial for a moment. I am a Senator from Delaware, one of the smallest States in the Union, the fifth smallest population in the Union. When we pass bills here to make sure that all persons benefit, whether they live in New Hampshire or Delaware or Utah or Wyoming or Alaska or other small States, we sit and we make sure the formulas we write into the bills do not let all of the money go just on a per capita basis. We usually get together--and there are probably somewhere between 18 and 20 of us, that is, States who find themselves in that position. Well, if the President gets to the end of the line here, the budget is not in balance, we have not passed a balanced budget--I might add we will not know whether or not this will be in balance as we go along because it is based upon predicted revenues. So we spend based on predicted revenues. That does not account for emergencies. That does not count significant downturns in the economy, or a lot of other things that come into play. But if, at the end of the line, we pass a budget that we thought was in balance but, in fact, was out of balance, that means the President, under this amendment, arguably, could say, ``That is my job. I will redo this.'' I know what I would do if I were President and I wanted to balance the budget. I would pick off the smallest States and cut the moneys that were allocated for them. They are the least powerful in Congress. They cannot do much. They do not have that many Representatives. Over here, because we make up a minority, we might find ourselves in difficulty. Now maybe a President would not do that. But he would have that power, under the amendment. The President could change detailed policy set by Congress; he could conclude on his own that Congress put, for example, too many military bases in South Carolina or Kansas or was spending too much on medical treatment in Utah or Mississippi. Do we really want to give the President that kind of power? I think not. Along with this power to spend, according to Walter Dellinger, a noted constitutional scholar and now the President's top constitutional adviser, this amendment could even be construed to give the President the power to levy taxes, to raise needed revenues. I think that is much more unlikely, quite frankly, although it is arguably possible. Do we want to give the President that kind of power? I do not think we do. In committee, I supported Senator Kennedy in offering an amendment to make it absolutely clear that the balanced budget amendment is not intended to shift to the President a major piece of Congress' historical power to tax and spend. Not a single one of my colleagues that I am aware of disagreed with the point of the amendment. Nobody disagreed with the point of the amendment. Some said not to worry, it cannot happen, or it probably will not happen, or it is unlikely to happen. But everyone acknowledged that if it happened, it would be a bad thing. And yet a majority, all the Republicans and a couple of Democrats, voted en bloc to defeat this amendment claiming it was not necessary, that after-the-fact legislation could take care of the problem, the so-called enabling legislation. I sure would like to know that before we pass this. I would like to know whether or not a President can do that. Why do we not just make it clear that Congress has the power to resolve any discrepancy between spending and revenues that is left at the end of the year--the Congress, not the President. Now, maybe that is what the Congress will do. Maybe the President will not over-reach. But I have never seen, as a student of history, any time where there has been a vacuum in power created that the administration, Democrat or Republican, has not stepped in to fill. And I have seen very few times when the Congress on its own volition has stepped up to the ball to fill a vacuum when filling the vacuum would require them to make hard decisions. And so I do not think it is unreasonable to suggest that future Presidents may seek this authority to impound. It's not necessary to spell out in the amendment that the President should not have this power? Well, I say that a principle as important as preserving the balance of power should be stated as plainly and boldly as possible in the balanced budget amendment itself. Now, as we debate this, I will be happy to hear anyone say that the President should have that power. I suspect everyone is going to say he should not and this amendment does not give it to him. Well, if that is true, what is the big deal of including it in the amendment? It is not inartful. It can be artfully done. It does not ruin the symmetry of the amendment. It does not go to the heart of whether we have to balance the amendment. It merely says we are not going to shift the balance of power, no doubt about it. Our Constitution, that durable and flexible document, has endured for over 200 years. The chief reason it has endured is because the self- correcting checks and balances that have kept one branch from dominating the other have been maintained. In the days to come, I will support, if not offer, efforts to modify this amendment to ensure that in addressing this important issue we do not risk undoing 200 years of history. The second concern that I have is not a constitutional one. It is a very practical one but no less important for that fact. The balanced budget amendment makes no provision for a capital budget to pay for long-term capital improvements. This amendment will require roads, bridges, schools, aircraft carriers, all of which are designed to last for decades--on a pay-as-you-go basis. Now, this is not the way States or local governments or our families or businesses, for that matter, treat these sorts of long-term items. No. All of these recognize that it is permissible, even prudent, to go into debt to pay for long-term items such as a house, a factory, or a road or an aircraft carrier. State and local governments that are required to balance their budgets every year are permitted by their balanced budget rules to set up capital budgets. They are permitted to borrow money to pay for long-term capital items even though they must balance the rest of their budget. Now, we hear the phrase used all the time: ``States do this; why can't we do it?'' States do not do this. If you look at the numbers, the total accumulated debt of the States over a comparable period for the Federal Government over the last two decades, the States have increased debt more rapidly than the Federal Government--almost a 2-to- 1 margin. So before you get on the floor and pound your chest about how your State balances its budget, say how would your State balance this budget if it had the same exact amendment as this. Now, some States may. Mine does not. Mine is a little tighter, quite frankly, but we are smaller and we are more manageable. Most States that have balanced budget amendments do not, do not, in fact, balance their budgets. They have a capital budget which allows them to go in debt. I believe the Federal Government should have the same ability to borrow to pay for capital items as State and local governments do and that we should amend the balanced budget amendment to assure that we give proper weight to our long-term needs. I am not alone in this view. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, that bastion of conservative thought, has criticized the balanced budget amendment because it lacks such a capital budget. Here is what the Wall Street Journal had to say. To understand the economics, start here: Referring to the balanced budget amendment. Start here. 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 their mortgage payments. Similarly, State and local governments with a ``balanced budget'' requirement can still borrow money for capital improvements. So I say to everyone here in the gallery as they walk out and say, ``We balance our budget; why doesn't the Federal Government do it the way we do,'' well, unless you are a very wealthy person--even then it would not be good economics to do it this way--unless you are a very wealthy person and paid cash for your house and paid cash for your car, you do not balance your budget. You do not balance your budget like this amendment requires it to be balanced. I want the Federal Government to have to balance their budget the way households have to balance their budgets, the way States have to balance their budgets. And that is with a capital budget. I have a capital budget--I have a mortgage on my house. I have a capital budget--well, I do not have a capital budget on my car, but most people, when they buy a new car, have a capital budget. I meet that by paying as everyone does and the States do, paying on it monthly, in my case, and the States yearly, the cost of that borrowing and the principal. We pay it down. We pay it off. But the Federal budget, under this amendment, would not allow that. Now, Gov. Mike Leavitt of Utah, a prime supporter of enacting the balanced budget amendment, testified before the Judiciary Committee that his State has a capital budget provision and recommended that we look further into the question before enacting House Joint Resolution 1. My own Governor, Gov. Tom Carper, former Congressman of 10 years here in Washington, the strongest supporter from my delegation for a balanced budget amendment, a Democrat, told our Constitutional Subcommittee the same thing last year. But despite that good advice, this balanced budget amendment does not follow that almost universal practice of capital budgets because it fails to set up a separate capital budget for major physical improvements. It will surely mean less of those improvements, or we will make those improvements and we will further cut in other areas of the budget or raise taxes in other areas of the budget which will cause more great pain, when the more reasonable way to do it would be to do it the way the States and households do it. After all, if families could not borrow to pay for their houses, there would be many fewer homeowners. And if States could not borrow to build their roads, there would be many fewer roads. Why enact a balanced budget amendment and fail to distinguish between projects that merit long-term financing and those that should be funded from year to year? Under this balanced budget amendment, the incentive will be to focus only on those spending priorities that have short-term payoffs, economically and politically. That is not good for rebuilding the infrastructure of this country, which we all say we have to do to compete internationally. Because that is where the political pressure will come. If, in my State, they come to me and say why do you not vote to spend more money for the Corps of Engineers that will allow them to dredge the Delaware River and the Port of Wilmington, why do you not do that versus spending more money for drug treatment programs. I know when I hear a mallet going down; I can tell it. I yield to the President, obviously.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, unless it is contrary to a standing rule, that I be able to take 10 more minutes to finish my statement, unless someone objects to that.

Mr. BIDEN. Without a capital budget provision, I fear, this amendment could skew the way we spend money, and in a way that could hurt the long-term future investments this country needs. It does not have to be this way. In committee I offered an amendment to provide for a capital budget. It was modeled on the capital budget provisions in the States, including my own State of Delaware. My amendment established a capital budget for major public physical capital investments. It limited that budget to 10 percent of total outlays--about what the Federal Government has spent on such items in recent years. It required a three-fifths vote of both Houses to place any item within that capital budget. My amendment was not designed to build a loophole into a balanced budget amendment. Under my amendment, it would not be easier to treat an item as a capital budget item as opposed to a current item. It would be harder. It would require a three-fifths vote. But it would be right. My amendment failed in committee. Without a capital budget provision, I fear that, not right away but as the years go by, this amendment may skew the way the country invests for the future and we may be able to balance our budget in the end, but we will not spend our money as wisely as we should. A third concern about this balanced budget amendment relates to the way this amendment treats a program that is arguably the most important and most depended-upon program in the Federal Government. I am talking about Social Security. As we all know, the Social Security trust fund is designed to spread costs over many years of caring for working people after they retire. We pay in today, so 10 or 20 or 40 or 50 years from now we can live out our lives, knowing that we have that minimum Social Security payment. The Social Security fund is not supposed to be in balance every year or even every 10 years. It is meant to be people pays its Social Security taxes the Social Security trust fund is gathering in a surplus of tens of billions of dollars. Because the Presiding Officer and myself and others are of a generation that is the baby boom generation, or just before that generation, we pay in tens of billions of dollars in excess of what is drawn down by present Social Security recipients--my mom and dad and my uncles and aunts. So there is a surplus. A surplus of $100 billion will be paid in each year, more than is taken out, around the year 2000--$100 billion surplus. Right now $60 billion more is paid in this year by those of us paying our FICA tax than is paid out to Social Security recipients--$60 billion. My mom and dad think that money goes into an account. They think that is over there for Social Security. A lot of people in my generation who in 15 years will be eligible for Social Security think that money is being put in an account. Guess what, folks? We are spending it. We are spending it now. But before the year 2014, that Social Security trust fund will have generated a great surplus. But after 2014, we will have substantial deficits. The reason for that is that the baby boom generation will be collecting Social Security and my sons and daughter will be paying into it. There are fewer of them than there are of us. So fewer people will be paying in and more people will be taking out. It sounds like I am stating what is obvious to everyone but it is not obvious to everyone, obviously. The fact of the matter is, after the year 2014 we will be in deficit in the Social Security System. The balanced budget amendment makes no provision whatsoever for the unique characteristics of the Social Security trust fund. Instead, it treats Social Security revenues and outlays as ordinary Federal budget. This means in the years that Social Security is generating hundreds of billions of dollars in surplus revenues it will be used to cover hundreds of billions of dollars worth of deficits that the rest of the Federal budget is creating. After 2014, when the trust fund goes into deficit to the tune of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year, we in Congress will have to cut that much from the rest of the budget to make up for the deficit. What does it mean? It means that for the next 20 years or so, revenues from the Social Security trust fund will make it look like we have balanced the budget when in fact we have not, and after that the huge outlays from the trust fund will force drastic reductions in the rest of Federal spending, or drastic reductions in Social Security. And that means the pain of cutting will be delayed by years from the effective date of this amendment, but it will be that much sharper when it comes. So we should get Social Security out of this mix, make it clear that the balanced budget amendment does not deal with Social Security, it is not able to use the surpluses and not deal with the deficits. We should be more honest about it with people because Social Security is at stake, in my view. For all the reasons I have stated I supported Senator Feinstein's amendment in the Judiciary Committee to keep Social Security right where it is now: off budget. The Feinstein amendment recognizes Social Security is not designed to balance its budget every year but over the years, and it recognizes we cannot honestly balance the rest of our Federal budget if Social Security and its huge swings are included. It recognizes that Social Security is a unique institution that deserves unique protection. The fourth concern I have is this amendment will shift power to the large States at the expense of small States. By imposing supermajority requirements of three-fifths on both Houses it permits a minority of two-fifths plus one to block an unbalanced budget, no matter how necessary for our fiscal and economic health it may be. This minority veto could be marshaled by representatives of just the five or six largest States in America. If the five or six largest States in America get together and agree on something that they need that the rest of the States do not want, they can prevent us from acting on a national emergency by all of them voting as a block--just six or even five of our 50 States. The fifth and final concern is that nothing in this amendment forces Congress to begin the work of cutting the budget before the year 2002, the first year we require. What will happen when Congress tries to balance the budget all of a sudden in fiscal year 2002? I fear it will be cause an economic disaster. This amendment ought to have some mechanism to guarantee our Government and our economy moves toward a balanced budget on a ``glide path,'' a gradual descent in the deficit that will get us to a balanced budget without forcing a crash landing in the final year. But this amendment does not do that. It is possible it could be done by enabling legislation but I would sure like to see it. In the days ahead I and my colleagues will be offering amendments to address these and other legitimate concerns. I hope these amendments receive the full debate they deserve. There are none in this body, I hope, who will argue that an amendment to the Constitution is not worthy to receive that full and open debate. Under the watchful eyes of our forefathers and with the humility that this awesome task engenders, as the debate unfolds in the days to come I will listen to my colleagues, I will support amendments designed to improve this amendment, and I will urge my colleagues to do the same. I hope at the end of the process I will be able to do what I intend on doing now, and that is to vote for a balanced budget amendment. I thank the Chair for its indulgence and I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. We used to do that in the bad old days when the Democrats controlled.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will necessarily make this quick. I am fascinated by these arguments, particularly the last two arguments I have heard. The fundamental question here is: Do we want to, in fact, deal with Federal mandates which should be local decisions or paid for by the Federal Government, or do we want to set in motion more gridlock? If we want to do the former and not the latter, we should vote for this amendment, No. 1. No. 2, my friend from Washington is engaging in what I think is part of the litany that we have been hearing. Why do we in Washington think we know so much, and why, in fact, do we not have more personal humility? If he means it, why are there exceptions in it? Why are there any exceptions? If he means what he says, why is there an exception here for civil rights? I will tell you why. We got in the business of being involved federally because States acted irresponsibly on occasion. So if my friend from Wyoming has such humility, let him come and offer an amendment to strike out all the exceptions. Why are we keeping in here ``constitutional rights of individuals''? They are not mandates. ``Discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, handicap or disability status.'' Why is that not a mandate? It costs the States money to do those things. Why is that not a mandate? So this unusual argument about whether or not we have humility or do not have humility, or Washington knows all or does not know all, that is a nice campaign rhetoric. What it is about is, why do we not stop telling the States to do things which are not essential unless we pay for them? Why do we not do it in a simplistic, straightforward way that does not allow a minority to tie up this body in gridlock for greater political purposes having nothing to do with looking out for the interest of the States? If we want to do that, we have a bill that was introduced last year that the manager of this bill was a cosponsor of last year, that does not create that complex chart that allows any one or two or several U.S. Senator or Parliamentarians to get involved in gumming up the works and creating gridlock. Mr. President, like many of my colleagues, I was a local official before coming to the Senate. I know what it means to have to comply with legal duties imposed from a higher government. As a former county council member, I understand, and am sympathetic to, many of the complaints and concerns we have heard from State and local officials who must respond to Federal mandates. The bill before us today, S. 1, is not the legislation that we worked on so long and hard last year to address the issue of Federal mandates. That bill, S. 993, is being offered now as an amendment by Senator Levin; it will focus the Senate's attention on the costs involved in setting new requirements to be met by States and local governments. It will raise our awareness of the financial price that must be paid to meet our goals, and permits us to determine how that price will be paid. Senator Levin's amendment changes the way we handle mandate legislation in this body, but it makes those changes subject to a sunset, in 1998, when the new process would end unless we choose to extent it. It will be an experiment--I believe a worthy experiment--to be sure that our attention is directed to all the consequences of new legislation. Last year S. 993 had the enthusiastic support of a broad bipartisan coalition. Senator Kempthorne, the acknowledged leader on this issue, was the original author of that proposal. But I am afraid, Mr. President, that S. 1 could prove to be a recipe for confusion, frustration, and more political gridlock in the legislative process. It was rushed through committee, with no debate and no amendments. Indeed, it came from committee without a report explaining how it would work. This should not be how we legislate. The public debate about unfunded mandates over the past few years has been a healthy one, and has succeeded in bringing to the forefront the continual need to examine the costs associated with Federal requirements and, indeed, the appropriate role of the Federal Government. There are limits to what the Federal Government should do and should require. We need to approach our many real public policy problems with common sense, to give greater flexibility to those who implement our laws, to be more goal-oriented and less process-oriented, and to reign in bureaucrats that get carried away with their charge. As one example, I spent quite a bit of time last year, along with the Governor of Delaware, trying to demonstrate to the EPA that our State could meet new clean air standards without making all our citizens run their cars through an expensive treadmill test that yielded little pollution reduction. EPA got the message; the treadmill test is out. We will pass an unfunded mandates bill this afternoon. If I had my first choice, it would be the substitute before us now. It had the full support of State and local government leaders last year, and is free of the hastily drafted, last-minute additions of this year's version. assure that decisions that materially affect State and local governments are made from now on with a clearer view of their costs as well as their benefits. Mr. President, if I have any time left--I may not--if I have any time left, let me say that this is about making local decisions that deserve to be local decisions at a local level. And if we impose more on local organizations, then what they have a right to ask for we should pay for. But let me close by saying, I live in a city, in a State that has the highest cancer rate in the Nation. We, coincidentally, are on the border of southeastern Pennsylvania which has more oil refineries per square inch than any place in the Nation, including Houston, TX, and the prevailing winds are south. If we did not have the Federal Government setting out a Clean Air Act, the idea that the people of Pennsylvania would vote to expend the money to clean up the air, the ambient air quality in Marcus Hook, PA, to save the lives in Delaware is zero. That is why we have national legislation.