John Breaux

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining on the allocation of time?

Mr. BREAUX. I yield another minute to the Senator.

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Nevada.

Mr. BREAUX. One additional minute.

Mr. BREAUX. I commend the statement of the Senator, and I yield 10 minutes to Senator Conrad.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. I commend my colleague for his comments on the issue pending before the Senate. It has gotten so bad it is hard to figure what is pending before the Senate. I want to comment on two things--what we are trying to do, and a little bit on the merits of one of the proposals. I said, I guess, 2 days ago the Senate looked like what we were trying to do is mix and match pieces of legislation in order to try to accomplish something. It is like a woman who goes shopping for an outfit. My wife calls it mixing and matching because she buys a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a little piece over here, and tries to put it all together and hope that it comes out in a wonderful, exciting new outfit by mixing and matching the different parts. That might be a good concept for buying clothes, but it is a very bad concept for writing legislation. I think that is exactly what the Senate is being asked to do here today, take a little bit of minimum wage, put it together with a little bit of TEAM Act, and stir in a little bit of gas tax repeal, stir it up, and hope it comes out as a good legislative package. It kind of reminds me in Louisiana of trying to make a gumbo. We put everything in the pot, stir it up, and hope it comes out eventually, after you cook it along with something that is edible. The problem is you have to be careful what you put in the pot. If you put something that will not fit, it will come out tasting pretty bad. The same analogy is true with regard to trying to legislate. There is no reason in the world why we should try to be putting a minimum wage bill on the back of a gas tax repeal and attach it to this TEAM Act dealing with labor-management relationships. There is not a lot of relationship between any of these three provisions, except politics. I said on the floor the other day, and I asked the distinguished majority leader, why do we not just take the bills up and vote on them in the normal course of following the Senate rules, debate minimum wage, vote on it, pass it if there is a majority for it and kill it if there is not. Do the same thing with the repeal of the gas tax. Let us debate it, let us vote on it, and then decide what the will of the Senate happens to be. The same thing on the TEAM Act. Bring it up, amend it, talk about it, debate it, have the normal rules of the Senate apply. I think our side has even gone further than that and offered bringing the measures up separately and give up one tool that the Democratic side, as members of the minority now, would have as a legislative tool. That is the filibuster. Just bring it up and agree that we will debate these measures and that we will offer amendments, but that we can agree on a time certain in which to vote, that we will not filibuster if it is not going our way, being willing to let us have a vote on these legislative packages. I think that is a pretty generous offer. I thought that the majority leader had agreed to that in his press conference yesterday but find out later on, no, that is not really what he meant. For the life of me, I do not understand why we do not just bring these three bills up and debate them and vote on them, and if we get a majority for them, they pass; if we do not, they do not pass. That is sort of the way legislation is supposed to be written. What we are engaged in now is a mix and match proposition where we are trying to mix and match things that do not mix and match. I do not think that is the way to legislate. Again, it may be the way to buy clothes, but it is not the way to produce legislation that is good for the people of this country. I think they desperately want us to start working in some type of a fashion that makes sense for the rest of the country. The other thing I want to comment on is the proposition that we should repeal the gas tax. There was an article that caught my attention this morning, the headline of the Los Angeles Times. The last time I was on the floor I talked about the law of supply and demand, which I thought really is what should govern this country, as opposed to price controls coming out of Washington, DC. What a frightening thought it would be to think that Washington will regulate the price of everything. I do not think we are qualified to come close to getting that done. Yet I think that, if we are going to say by removing the gas tax we will guarantee that people that buy gasoline at the pump are going to get the benefit of that reduction, the only way we can do that, folks, is very simple, and that is price control. The only way we can guarantee that tax cuts somehow worked their way through to the ultimate consumer is by passing a law that mandates that. That is price control. We have tried that, and it has not worked in the past. It will not work in the future. What does work and has always worked in this country is the law of supply and demand. The headline of today's Los Angeles Times is ``Gas Prices Show Signs of Decline as Production Surges.'' ``The average cost at the pump falls half a cent, and State officials predict more reductions. After lagging, refineries again operating at close to normal output.'' That really should not be a headline. That is normally what happens; that is not news. But the law of supply and demand is at work. When the demand is great, the supplies are increased to meet that demand and prices adjust according to the ability to meet the demand. That is exactly what is happening. I also said 2 days ago that the price of crude oil in this country between April 23 and May 6 decreased 10 percent. That is over $2 a barrel that oil dropped. It usually takes 30 days from the drop of price in crude oil to be reflected in the finished product at the pump. It dropped 10 percent in 1 week, over $2 a barrel. That, naturally, shows up in the normal course of doing business at the pump and lower prices. This headline is not a surprise. It is not really news. Yet it is the lead story. It says ``Gas Prices Show Signs of Decline as Production Surges.'' That is what has happened. This Congress is in a panic. This Congress is running for cover. We are hiding behind our desks trying to say, ``Well, we will fix the problem. We are going to lower the price of gas.'' That is not what this proposition does at all. It only lowers the tax that oil companies pay per gallon of gas. There is no guarantee that they do nothing more with that than put it in their pocket and take it as an extra profit over their normal course. The less we get into the business of determining what prices should be for all products, the better off Americans will be. Every time the price of wheat or corn or cotton or rice is going to go up, are we going to rush in here and say, ``Wait, we are going to regulate the price''? Are we going to go back to production and wage and price controls? I think not. I want to say from my home State of Louisiana, I think people who are outside the thin air that sometimes I think we breathe too much of here in Washington are thinking, I think, more sanely and more responsibly than we are here, and less politically. I think they know what this is all about. We have a Presidential election, a congressional election in a couple of months, Senate elections in a couple of months. People are desperately running everywhere they can to try to do something that was not the priority of the people of this country. I think the priority was for us to balance the budget. When they say, ``We want to do something for families,'' I say the best thing we can do for families in this country is to produce a balanced budget. That is what families want, so we will give them lower mortgage rates, lower interest rates on home loans, lower rates on sending their children to college and educating their families, and produce a more stable environment, make more money available, and add to the economy for growth, expansion, and job creation. One of the papers in the State of Louisiana, the Times-Picayune, has a column written by a guy named Jack Wardlaw, whom I know. The name of his column, I say to the Senator from Utah, is called ``The Little Man.'' He always sort of takes the side of the ``little man'' and represents what is good for the little man as opposed to what is good for the ``big man,'' big business, or the big corporations. His headline in today's paper says, ``Gasoline Tax Cut Will Mean More Red Ink in the Budget.'' He makes some good points. I will refer to a couple because I think it really says what I think we should all be thinking. He says, ``Sometimes it seems like Members of Congress have the attention span of a honey bee.'' It goes on to say, ``Congress has just come through months of tedious in-fighting over the national budget, the goal of which we were constantly told was to agree on a way to, over a period of years, get rid of the red ink. Now, all of a sudden, nobody cares about balancing the budget anymore. All of a sudden, the main thing to do is to cut the gasoline tax. Is everybody crazy?'' I think that, by asking the question, he sort of also answers the question himself because of what he thinks we all are about at the present time by our actions. He says, ``It is a little hard to figure out what is going on, except that the national news media have been exaggerating what is going on. CNN puts on pictures of pump prices of $2.09 a gallon, but who is paying that?'' he asks. He points out that, in New Orleans, at his neighborhood gas station, the posted price for a gallon of unleaded regular was $1.19 a gallon, which had gone up from around $1.05 3 months ago. He later passed a convenience store offering the stuff for $1.14 a gallon. ``It appears to me that prices are dropping back into line on their own, without any action of Congress.'' The same thing in Los Angeles: ``Gas Prices Show Signs of Decline as Production Surges.'' This is the marketplace at work. We have had economist after economist--they generally are very nonpolitical--say this is the wrong thing to do. This proposal is a dagger to the heart of any effort to balance the budget. It would take over $30 billion out of any effort to balance the budget over a 7-year period. A penny tax per gallon is $1 billion a year. I suggest that we should be concentrating more on how we, in a bipartisan fashion, can come together and do the right thing with regard to balancing the budget. I think we clearly do the wrong thing when we do what I think is about to happen, and that is, to make it even more difficult, if not impossible, to reach a balanced budget agreement. Let me close by saying that I have expressed my opinion on the gas tax repeal. There are others who will argue that it is the most important thing we could do. I disagree. Whether we agree or disagree, we should not try to concoct this scenario, whereby in order to pass one bill, you have to pass another bill, and in order to pass a second bill, you have to pass a third bill. Let us take them up separately, debate them on the merits. Let us consider and hear amendments that would be offered through these pieces of legislation. Perhaps the proposals can be improved by serious amendments that would be offered. But let us vote on the bills. Let us vote on the minimum wage. Yes, let us vote on the TEAM Act. Yes, let us vote on the repeal of the gas tax. What is wrong with taking up legislation, considering bills that have been offered, debating them? I think I signed an offering to do this without the use of the filibuster. It is a most generous offer-- incredibly generous. Look, we are in the minority, and we are not going to filibuster. We can take it up and vote on it. Why try to mix and match? Maybe that is good when buying clothes, but it is very bad when trying to write legislation on the floor of the U.S. Senate. A bad bill cannot be made good by adding another good bill to it. It still is, in essence, a bad bill. The converse is also true. So my suggestion is, let us follow the proposal of the leaders on this side of the aisle to take these pieces of legislation up, debate them, consider them, vote on them, and move on with what I think is a priority in this Congress: to try to reach a bipartisan balanced budget agreement. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. I ask unanimous consent that the time before the recesses be extended for 4 minutes.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, while the discussion has been interesting, I want to bring to the attention of my colleagues an article on Sunday with reference to the President's statement on welfare reform, which I think is very significant. While the Congress tries to come together on a welfare reform plan, it is very clear that the administration is trying to move forward on its own to get things done which are real reform. He said--and I totally agree--``We have to make it clear that a baby doesn't give you a right, and won't give you the money, to leave home and drop out of school.'' The President said that in his weekly radio address. The Executive order that followed up on that statement, I think, is real welfare reform. What it does is simply require, through Executive order, without waiting on the Congress, that States require that teen mothers, who are having children, stay at home or live at home in adult supervision, or go to school, and that if they do neither, their welfare benefits would no longer be allowed to continue. With this executive action, all 50 States will now be required to keep teen mothers, who are on welfare and who have children, in school; and that for the first time, the administration will now be able to-- and intends to--audit all of those States to make sure that, in fact, they are doing that. In addition, all 50 States will now be able to provide what are, in essence, rewards to encourage those who do stay in school, but also sanctions for those who do not. Teen mothers in all 50 States, who have dropped out of school, will now have to sign personal responsibility plans requiring them to get a job or go to school. The whole idea behind this is self-sufficiency. It is clear that the whole system has not worked. In addition, all 50 States will be encouraged to require minor mothers to live at home, or with a responsible adult, in order to receive assistance. Mr. President, it is clear, and we all know that about half of all welfare recipients in our country have their first child as a teenager. If we are really talking about true welfare reform, we have to encourage good behavior, staying in school, or living with an adult family, a mother and father, or a mother, or adult supervisor, to help provide the training for that person. This action by the President is part of an ongoing effort to try and reform welfare. The administration has given welfare waivers to allow States to be creative to 37 of our 50 States, allowing them to impose tough time limits and tough, new work requirements. The whole idea is to be tough on work but good for children. It is high time that the Congress enact real welfare reform so that we do not have to continue to do it from an administrative standpoint. But this was a very significant decision. I applaud the administration and President for taking it. Last, I think we are making some real progress in putting the welfare system back on the right track so that people will no longer have to be dependent on it. It is clear, the President said once again, that having a child does not give you a right; it really gives you additional responsibility. This step on the part of the President will ensure that that responsibility on the part of teen mothers, working with adult supervision and going to school, is going to bring about real welfare reform. I yield the floor.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Will the majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. BREAUX. I want to ask a question. It is a legitimate question. If we can all--almost all can--agree that the minimum wage increase is a good idea, the repeal of the gas tax is a good idea, and the passage of the TEAM legislation, as the majority leader described it, is a good idea, why should we not just take these up separately, debate them separately and vote on them separately? The ones that are good will pass, and the ones not good will not pass. What is wrong with doing them separately?

Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator from Texas yield?

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, what the majority leader has presented to the Senate as an option is the old idea of mix and match. My wife tells me it is a great idea when you are shopping for clothes that you go out and mix and match and buy different things and try to mix and match them until you come up with a pretty good outfit. The problem is mix and match does not work in dealing with legislation. It may be a good way to buy clothes but a lousy way to legislate. If you have three good ideas for bills, what is wrong with bringing them to the floor and debating? What is wrong with after you have dealt with the first, bringing up the second, follow the rules of the second, and then move on to the third. Let the Senate vote on each one of the appropriations. Why try and mix and match pieces of legislation that do not fit? When you are buying clothes and you mix and match and you buy the wrong size or color combination, you come out with a lousy product. The same is true when you try and put together pieces of legislation that do not fit, that are not the same color, that are not the same size. You come up with something that makes no sense. Mix and match may be good for buying clothes, but it is not for passing legislation. I suggest that what we ought to do is look at each one of these propositions and talk about, then debate them. Some have merit, some have less merit, and some, I think, should not be passed at all. But there is no reason that I can see that you should somehow bundle everything up and have one opportunity to vote up or down. If you have bad items with good items, it just did not fit and should not be put together. They should be voted on, should be debated, and we should follow the rules of the Senate in considering legislation when it comes up in an orderly fashion. I want to comment on the idea of repealing the 4.3-cent gas tax that has been suggested by the majority leader. I think it is an idea without merit. I think it is clearly a political idea, and being from Louisiana I have no problems with political ideas if they work. But if they do not work, a political idea is bad public policy. Here is a case of exactly that. I will comment on why. No. 1, it is a dagger to the heart of any effort to balance the budget. In 1992, before we had the 4.3-cent gas tax, the Federal deficit was $290 billion. People in this country said, ``Senator, do what is necessary to reduce the Federal deficit, get us on a slope, a downward path towards a balanced budget.'' Congress took some tough steps. No one said it would be easy. Our constituents said, ``Do it,'' and we passed a budget reconciliation bill that had the 4.3-cent gas tax in it. Today, instead of having a $290 billion Federal deficit, economists and the CBO tells us the projected deficit for this year is $140 billion. Did that just happen? No, it happened because Congress had the courage and the guts to do something to bring the deficit down, to cut it by over 50 percent, which is where we are today. The first time things get tough, people start running for cover, and the first cover is, let us repeal the 4.3-cent gas tax. But let us just do it until after the election. Is that the clearest political proposition that you could possibly ask for in a political year? I think it is. When we passed the 4.3-cent gas tax, after we passed it, the price of gas at the pump was lower than before. Do you know what caused all of that? The whole thing I thought everybody really believed in--it is called supply and demand. When you have a shortage of supply and a high demand, the price for the product is going to go up. When the opposite is true, the equal opposite result is also true. When you have an excess of supply and low demand, the price goes down. I thought our colleagues on this side of the aisle were real believers in the marketplace. And the marketplace is what has caused, along with other congressional actions, a spike in the price of gas between the months of April and May. Interestingly enough, last year, if anybody wants to look at the records--not Democratic records or Republican records--prices at the gas pump have increased before by 6 cents a gallon between April and May. And, as normal, toward the end of the summer and early fall, the price started going back down. At the end of the year for 1995, the average price of gasoline in this country was lower than it ever has been in recorded history, when adjusted for inflation, which is the only fair way of looking at it. It was lower in 1995 with the tax than in 1994, which was lower than it was in 1993, which was lower than it was in 1992, which was lower than it was in 1990. And you can go all the way back to about 1920. But what the 4.3-cent gas tax helped us do was to reduce the deficit from $290 billion down to $140 billion. It is a consumption tax. It all went for deficit reduction, which my colleagues on that side of the aisle said is the most important thing we can do--get the deficit down. We got it down. And the first time it gets a little difficult, everybody runs for cover--well, not everybody, but a large number run for political cover because we have had some complaints in that the price of gas is too high. Instead of saying to our constituents, ``Let me tell you what really caused it. We produced 8 percent more heating oil over last year because we had colder weather.'' That is not the fault of anybody in Congress. That is just what happened. That was nature. The colder winter meant that we produced 8 percent more heating oil than gasoline. In addition, something that Congress did was, we took the speed limit off and people started driving faster. Guess what? When you drive faster, you burn more gasoline. When you use more, it is going to cost more. Remember the law of supply and demand? People are using substantially more gas because of the repeal of the speed limit. In addition, because of the Clean Air Act, which most Members support, and which I support, we told refiners in this country-- particularly in California--``You are going to have to change your refinery, tear it down and rebuild it so you can now produce reformulated gasoline.'' Guess what? When they are not able to produce gasoline, you have less on the market and the price will go up as well. I will give you another item that I think is one of the major things that has been done. Today, cars do not get as good gas mileage as they did when we were concerned about the price of gas, 4 out of 10 cars in America average about 14 miles per gallon. People are buying utility vehicles, larger cars, and they drive faster and further, and they are using more gasoline. Is it any surprise why the price of gas has gone up in the country? For the life of me, I cannot follow anybody's argument that when you take the 4.3 cents off of the refineries at the pipeline, that it is going to automatically translate into 4.3 cents less at the pump. When I first heard this idea, I said the other day that lowering the gas tax by 4.3 cents has as much to do with lowering the price to consumers at the pump as spitting in the ocean does to raising the sea level, because there is absolutely no correlation that if you lower the tax that is paid for by oil and gas companies, they are going to necessarily pass it on to consumers at the pump--just like they did not increase and pass the increase on to the consumers at the pump when we passed it back in 1993. After we passed the increase, the price of gas at the pump was substantially lower than it was before we passed the gas tax. Why? The law of supply and demand. The price of crude oil started coming down, and the price of gas continued to go down. Consumers were not affected by the adding on of the 4.3 cents at that time. I suggest that unless my colleagues on this side of the aisle or on my side of the aisle want to come in here with price controls--remember those, wage and price controls both?--come in here and mandate that everybody pass it all the way down the line to the consumer, there is absolutely no guarantee, or even a reasonable expectation that a consumer is going to really see the difference at the pump. So I think we have to be very careful, because I am concerned, as one member of a group that is trying to reach a balanced budget in a bipartisan fashion, where are we going to make up $30 billion in lost revenues, which can go to balancing the budget. If we lose this 4.3- cent gas tax, where will it come from? I heard a colleague on the House side suggested that we could cut education. Are we that weak in this country that we are willing to say we are going to cut education in order to pay 4.3 cents less at the pump? Is there no concern about our future and the future of our children, and we are willing to say we are so weak politically that we are going to cut education in order that we can have a 4.3-cent lower price at the pump, which is not guaranteed at all? Maybe all the oil companies--and my State has a few--will have a 4.3-cent increase in their profits per gallon, but there is no guarantee that the consumer will benefit. But to cut education to pay for this? Where are our priorities? Have we lost sense of the fact that education is the most important thing to do for our children and for future generations? Are we willing to say we are going to cut education before we stand up and do what is right regarding this? I think that is the wrong priority. I heard somebody else say, ``Let us sell the spectrum.'' We have heard that before. Boy, we have sold the spectrum more than we have sold the Brooklyn Bridge. Every time they want something, they say, ``Let us sell the spectrum, and we are not going to step on anybody's toes.'' We are going to get $30 billion from selling the spectrum-- again? For what purpose? I think that we have to be very careful about doing something in a political year and making it last only until the next election, which I think is very clear; you can see through it as clear as pure water. A lot of people talk about a flat tax. A flat tax is a consumption tax. I believe we ought to be taxing productivity less and consumption more. This proposal goes exactly contrary to that. We are taking a consumption tax, which, hopefully, regulates behavior in a proper way, and makes people more conscious about driving habits, and use it for deficit reduction. Instead we are chucking it and saying we would rather increase the deficit or cut education, or go back to selling something that we have sold so many times before that nobody believes it will ever work. The final point I want to make, Mr. President, is that the market does work. The marketplace does work. That is a fundamental principle in this country--that the law of supply and demand in this country works. This is from April 26. I am reading from the prices of crude oil on a weekly basis, west Texas intermediate crude oil prices, or the prices posted once a week for the price of oil per barrel. ``When the price of oil per barrel goes up, eventually it works its way down to the price of gasoline at the pump, and it goes up. But when the price of crude oil per barrel goes down, it generally takes about a month before it reaches the price at the pump. In this case, I will share this with my colleagues because it is an indication of what is going to happen. If we just wait and have some political courage for a couple of days instead of running off and doing something that I think is damaging--as I said, a dagger to the heart--to a balanced budget in this country, the average price of west Texas intermediate crude on April 26 was $23.80 a barrel. The price of west Texas intermediate crude at the close of business on May 3 was $21.36 a barrel. That is a 10-percent drop in 1 week--a 10-percent drop per barrel of crude oil in this country in 1 week, from April 26 to May 3. Mr. President and all of my colleagues, I suggest that if you just hang around here a little bit longer, you will see that drop in the price of crude by 10 percent is going to be reflected in the marketplace. If we believe in the marketplace, which I think we should, that is going to be reflected in the price of a gallon of gas at the pump. I think that is the way this country ought to address this problem. What we have before the Senate is a political idea that does not work, and political ideas that do not work are bad ideas, and sometimes I think too often politics makes bad policy, and this is an example, I think, of exactly that. I yield the floor. Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, America lost a real civic leader, Louisiana and New Orleans lost a political leader who believed in cooperation, not confrontation, and I lost a good friend far too early in his life. Don Mintz lived a beautiful life, raised a beautiful family and had a wonderful wife Susan, who together contributed so much to so many. I ask that an editorial on Donald Mintz that ran in the New Orleans Times Picayune on April 30, 1996, which expresses the feelings of so many, be printed in the Record. The editorial follows: Donald Mintz Donald Mintz, who died unexpectedly Sunday of a heart attack, was a New Orleanian first and foremost. Though he never held public office, Mr. Mintz set a highly public example of how to be a citizen in our complex, multiracial community. He was as much at home in a corporate boardroom as in the humblest neighborhood. He tried to connect our disparate worlds. He was a builder of bridges between his black and white friends, a man of faith nationally recognized for his work as a Jewish lay leader and, most importantly, a dreamer of dreams, which he worked with ferocious energy to realize. One of his fondest, of becoming mayor of New Orleans, was unfulfilled after unsuccessful campaigns in 1990 and 1994. But even without the portfolio of office, Mr. Mintz was a doer, a relentless actor and producer on the city's stage. There was nothing lukewarm about him. Whatever caught his interest had him thoroughly absorbed. And then he was relentless, driven, sometimes brazen, always dedicated, especially to New Orleans. As Marc Morial, the man who defeated him most recently for mayor, said: ``Above all, he was a committed New Orleanian.'' By his death at age 53, Mr. Mintz had well beyond a lifetime's worth of accomplishments. He had been chairman of the Anti-Defamation League's advisory board and achieved national stature in this country's Jewish community; he had been a founder of a law firm; chairman of the Dock Board, the Downtown Development District, the United Way and the Criminal Justice Task Force on Violent Street Crime, and president of the Metropolitan Area Committee, Kingsley House, Touro Synagogue and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. He was the managing partner of several Warehouse District renovations, a member of the Archbishop's Community Appeal campaign committee and a board member of The Chamber/New Orleans and the River Region and the New Orleans Symphony. Between mayoral elections, he was passionate in his leadership of the statewide committee that set up the Louisiana Health Care Authority to run the Charity hospital system and became chairman of the authority's board. The activities bespeak involvement and dynamism, but they don't describe Donald Mintz's spirit. With his wife, Susan, he exuded a love of people, a love of life, a love of community, a devotion to New Orleans. Coupled with this tireless drive, the result is that he made a difference in his hometown.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Yes.

Mr. BREAUX. Sure.

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, for colleagues who may be watching by their TV monitors, Senator Chafee and I have taken this time this morning to talk, once again, about the so-called Chafee-Breaux centrist coalition proposal, which I think is monumental legislation in that it presents to the Senate a way to achieve a balanced budget in a 7-year period and do so in a bipartisan fashion. A lot of people have said that something of this nature cannot be accomplished in an election year. Our operations and the legislation that we offer proves that it can be done. We have met since October 1995, last year, on a regular basis, sitting down and discussing the difficult problems that are facing this Congress. It is very clear that the alternative of doing nothing is not a real alternative. Unless we get a handle on entitlement spending, and unless we make major changes in the entitlement programs, our country is going to be in very, very serious trouble. The alternative, I think, is a bright future for this country and for our children. With a balanced budget, people see a number of benefits that are real, that are tangible, that affect their daily lives--lower interest rates on home mortgages, lower interest rates on car notes, more spendable money to spend at home on the things that families need in terms of education and health care. We have presented a package for our colleagues to consider, and we hope that after reading our plan, they will join with us in a true bipartisan fashion and move on and enact a balanced budget in this Congress. It is not too late. It is only too late if we do nothing. It is absolutely critical that we take this step in this Congress. I point out that here we talked about how close we are in the various proposals. There is much similarity in the administration's latest proposal and the proposal from the Republicans and the proposal from our centrist coalition, the Chafee-Breaux proposal. There is no reason that, with all of these things that we have already agreed on, we cannot take the next step and work out the differences that still exist. All three proposals have a balanced budget using CBO numbers. We save between $600 and $700 billion over the life of this plan, and we do it while protecting the needs of the must vulnerable in our country--the people on Medicaid, Medicare, and welfare. So it is not to say that you cannot save between $600 and $700 billion and not at the same time protect the most vulnerable in our population. Our Medicare proposal is real reform. It is not just cutting Medicare, but it is real reform in a major way in the programs, giving beneficiaries more choices, which will increase the solvency of the trust funds. We make reductions in spending. It is not as much as some would like, but it is more than others would like. In Medicaid, we have worked with the Governors in a bipartisan fashion to come up with our Medicaid plan, which I think has gotten a lot of support from the Governors. Democratic Governors have said they would like this to be done. Republicans, I think, would agree with the direction we are moving in. It maintains flexibility and some of the standards. It is basically a Federal program working with the States. Yes, there should be Federal standards about how the programs are going to be worked out. On welfare, as President Clinton said, a welfare reform bill should be tough on work but good for kids. Our plan does that. Our plan takes care of children. It provides more child funding for parents who are working, for child care and day care. At the same time, we have vouchers for children after their parents are terminated off of welfare. If the parents are able to work, they should work. Welfare cannot be a permanent way of life. We have time limits. We have a block grant to the States. Yes, there is more cooperation between the States and the Federal Government as to what they have to do. Yes, we have a tax cut. Some say we need a $245 billion tax cut. Well, we have a real $105 billion tax cut, with $25 billion of loophole closings, which I think most people can agree to. We have a tax cut for families, $250 per child tax cut, which goes up to $500 per child if they invest in an individual retirement account in that child's name. We have reductions for education. This is a family friendly tax proposal in the sense that it helps working families. We have some alternative minimum tax relief, which many people will agree we should have. We have a capital gains tax cut, which we think is important to create economic incentives for individuals and for corporations in this country. Finally, we have an adjustment in the Consumer Price Index. A lot of people said you cannot do that. Well, we have done that in a bipartisan fashion. Economists who are both Republican and Democrat have told us that the CPI, Consumer Price Index, which is the vehicle that is used to project all of the cost-of-living adjustments, is overstating what those adjustments should be. So we have taken the step of saying we are going to have a reduction of five-tenths of 1 percent, one-half of 1 percent for 2 years and then three-tenths of 1 percent for the remaining years in our budget plan. That saves $110 billion. For a Social Security recipient, it means, instead of getting the normal increase, they would still get an increase in their benefits, but it would be approximately $3 less than they would normally get per month. But what it does is help save the system. I suggest that most people who are on retirement programs would say it is important to save the system, not only for me as a selfish reason but for my children and my grandchildren, and we are asking everybody to have a more realistic adjustment in what their increases should be-- still get an increase if the cost of living goes up, of course, but guaranteed, guaranteed in a better fashion because the system is going to be stronger. All of the retirement programs will be stronger and more solvent as a result of our Consumer Price Index adjustment. People will get an increase. The increase will be smaller than it might have been, but the principle is that the formula is incorrect, and we are trying to correct the formula. What is wrong with that? So, Mr. President, let me reserve my time and conclude by saying that there is going to be an opportunity perhaps in the next couple of weeks to present our budget in this Chamber, to have our colleagues take a look at it and to, yes, vote for it because we think it truly represents the only bipartisan effort that has a real chance of passing and getting the job done. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. BREAUX. If the Senator will yield for a response to the question, the Senator has outlined a formula for failure, a formula for disaster. If every Member comes up and says, ``I like what you have done except one little item,'' we will never get any agreement. The essence of the agreement on this issue is a compromise between those who want to do it all one way or all the other way. So, yes, there will be differences, as there was--and I know the Senator remembers this--in our own discussions. The Members said, ``It is a little too far in this direction,'' or, ``It is not far enough in that direction.'' What we have shown, however, is that you can come together in a bipartisan fashion and reach an agreement that gets the job done. I think it is a genuine compromise. That is the only way the job can get done.

Mr. BREAUX. The Senator is absolutely correct. We discussed and had heated discussions about the size of all of these reductions in spending as well as the size of the tax cut. But this is reflective of a genuine compromise reached between people of differing opinions. But it reflects, I think, the only way we can get the job done.

Mr. BREAUX. The Senator is correct. I think both sides have sort of polarized on whether to have a tax cut or not. But we have tried to listen to both sides and try to come up with a recommendation that meets the concerns of both sides but reflects a true compromise.

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to ask a question of the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, because he was talking about the Consumer Price Index adjustment. He and I served on the Senate Finance Committee together. We know we had asked for a study by a commission to report to the Finance Committee. I think the commission was asked for by the distinguished Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, and, at that time, Senator Packwood, to report to us as to whether the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, was correctly reporting the cost of living or not. That commission made a preliminary report and said no, it is incorrect, in that it overstates inflation by anywhere between 0.7 percent up to 2 percent. So what we have done is suggest we make an adjustment, that we make a correction, that we make it more accurate than it was before. Our plan says we are going to take a low estimate--let us use one-half of 1 percent--and make the adjustment there. It seems to me, and I ask the Senator, that what we are suggesting makes such great sense I am wondering if he could comment on why there is so much opposition. It seems no one wants to touch this part of our plan for fear of the political consequences. Could the Senator shed some light on why something that seems so reasonable is such a problem to do?

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I will yield whatever time he needs to the Senator from Wyoming. I will conclude by pointing out that I think we have laid out a good package. We have indicated that there will be an opportunity in the next week or so to present our package on the floor of the Senate as an amendment on a substitute to the Budget Committee resolution. We hope that between now and then we will have a chance to talk to our colleagues and go into greater detail with them as to what our package contains, to try and answer the questions they have, knowing that it is not perfect, but that we think it represents a true and fair compromise. With that, I yield to the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. BREAUX. What this simply shows is that it has a very small dollar impact on a retiree when you look at the great benefits of shoring up the system. For instance, the average Social Security monthly benefit in 1995 was $637 a month. With no change at all, that will go up to $656 a month in 1996. With our change--and people say, ``Oh, it's so difficult. It is impossible to do politically. You will have all the seniors unhappy. It is a terrible thing to do''--with our change the person who is averaging $637 per month in 1995 will still get an increase next year; it will go up to $653 instead of $656. That is $3 less. It still is a substantial increase. What is more important, it is a more accurate increase because it more accurately reflects what the adjustment should be. How can anyone stand up and say, ``Not only am I going to have my benefits increased for inflation, guaranteeing an annual increase, but I want it to be overstated, I want it to be inaccurate, and I want it to be a mistake, which determines how much I get.'' How can anyone stand up and say, ``I want an error in the adjustment of what the increase should be to determine how much I'm going to get from my Government,'' putting in jeopardy the entire program for future generations? I cannot think of a senior who would ever want to stand up and say, ``I want more than an inflation adjustment accurately says I should get,'' when it runs the risk of destroying the very program that their children and grandchildren, as well as themselves, have come to depend on. So we have taken a great, courageous political step, some say. I think it is a factual step that has to be taken in order to preserve the system. I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. BREAUX. Let me thank the Senator for that comment. I want to talk about why we did what we did with regard to the CPI adjustment, because it is controversial. But I think, as our colleagues understand better what it actually does in the real world, they will agree with us that it is the right thing to do. I think it is the correct thing to do, not only economically, I think politically it is the correct thing to do because we are telling senior citizens and everybody else who benefits from programs that are indexed for inflation, that we are going to take the steps necessary to make sure the program is there for the future. Unless some corrections are made, you are going to have an indexed program that does not have any money in it. So if the program is broke, what in the world is the benefit of having it indexed to inflation if there is no money left in the Treasury? I will give an example. Just with the Social Security Program, the estimates are, by the year 2030, the number of people receiving benefits is expected to rise to 43 beneficiaries for every 100 workers. Right now it is 27 beneficiaries for every 100 workers. There is an explosion with the baby boomers who are going to be retiring. What that means in real terms is that by the year 2013, not that far off--by the year 2013, Social Security benefit payments will exceed the tax revenues dedicated to the program. That simply means we are going to be paying out more than we are taking in. So if we are going to pay out more than we are taking in, what benefit is it to say it is indexed and I will get an increase every year to make up for inflation? If you do not have any money left in the pot, it does not matter it is indexed to any kind of standard because there is no money left to pay a person. So what we have suggested is a fix in this area. It is not the only way to solve the problem, but it is part of a package. Increasing gradually the retirement age is part of that suggestion, and that I support as well. Let me tell you what that means in the real world. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a table which is entitled ``Impact of 0.5 percent CPI Change on Social Security Beneficiaries.''

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. I thank the Chair. I will yield myself 5 minutes under that unanimous consent.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I will make a quick comment regarding the comments that the leader made on a repeal of the so-called gas tax of 1993, the 4.3 cents. Well, I think that if you look back in history, when we passed that 4.3 cents, after it was passed, the price of gas at the pump was actually lower than before we passed the tax. It is something called supply and demand, which I had thought the folks on this side of the aisle were particularly enthusiastic about. It is very clear that there are market forces at work here. Repealing the Federal 4.3 cent tax on gasoline of 1993 is certainly no guarantee that that is going to mean a 4.3 cent lower price at the pump for the citizens of this country, unless someone is going to start mandating to private industry what the price of fuel is going to be that they sell. I point out, if we remember history, last year at this time, between the months of April and May, the price of gas rose about 6 cents a gallon because of greater use and higher crude oil prices in the world. During the middle of the summer and toward the latter summer, gas prices started coming down because of supply and demand. At the end of the year, in December, the price of gas in the country averaged about $1.16 a gallon. All of last year, in 1995, the price of gas at the pump for the whole year averaged the lowest it had been since we started recording the price of gasoline in real terms in this country--lower in real terms than it was per gallon in 1920. All of that, I suggest, has a great deal more to do with the price of crude oil in the world. The fact that we had about a 6- to 8-percent increase in heating oil production because of a colder winter, and also because of the fact that we are now driving faster because of actions of this Congress, when we increased the miles per hour people could drive, the speed limit, up to the higher levels that we now see throughout the country. So I just say that if anybody can guarantee that any time we reduce the gas tax it means a lower price at the pump, I think we would be willing to look at it. I do not think history proves that. I think we ought to know where we are going before we start off in what I think is a political direction.