Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk, and I ask the clerk to report my amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The Senator indicates an hour, a half-hour to a side, just on this amendment. [[Page S 17124]]

Mr. HOLLINGS. I will be glad to enter into a time agreement.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Let me indicate, I have been here since 9:30--we all have--and I am not complaining about it, but I do not want any agreement, I say to the distinguished leader, to forego the chance to offer an amendment sometime today and a fair chance to debate it as relative to the unified budget versus using Social Security funds. We just voted on Monday not to use Social Security funds. Now today it appears by the resolution--and I want to be able to correct it with an amendment--we are going to use Social Security trust funds to balance the budget, and that is just a one-line amendment. I have it drawn, as the Parliamentarian has indicated, where I can present it again and again and again, second degreed or perfecting or otherwise. That is why I am stating this so the majority leader understands the intent of the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Talking about the budget, the editorial says: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office underscored that point recently. It pointed out that come 2002, when the budget will be ``balanced'' under the Republican plans, the Government will still be borrowing more than $100 billion a year. The truth is, it is over $348. But then: But after they compromise and begin arguing over who won a few weeks from now, one truth will remain: Both sides will be lying, because neither is talking about a truly balanced budget at all. That is what I want to do, is repair the lying with this particular amendment. So both sides can be telling the truth and we are not any longer embezzling Social Security. The title of this one is ``A Balanced Budget Myth.'' There is one particular entity, now, that has the truth and they are after us. I hope all the media will wake up and get after us. Let us start talking sense, rather than who is on top and who is lost and who is popular and what the polls show. I absolutely, since I have the time here, have learned one thing in 40 years of public service. That is, this political polling is a cancer. Yes, you have to [[Page S 17138]] get it. The opposition gets it when you run for office. But if you try to administer, if you try to govern with a poll--I think of the Marshall plan. Mr. President, 14 percent favored the Marshall plan at the time it was adopted. It was overwhelmingly opposed. I go back as a young House member in my own State legislature, when I offered the sales tax bill and education finance reform to start building up public education in my own home State. Sales tax, at that time, was totally unpopular. As of this minute, if you took a poll in South Carolina on the sales tax, I am convinced the majority, by far, would say they oppose the sales tax. But, in the 45 years, from 1950 to 1995, not a single bill has been introduced in the legislature to repeal it. The polls would show overwhelmingly it is a popular thing, but the people know if they did repeal it the government would go broke. We would not have any BMW's coming from South Carolina. We would not be correcting the illiteracy. We would not be giving the youngsters an opportunity in public education. So, let us get away from this cancer, in addition to the interest costs on the national debt, of how well the President or the Congress is up or down in the polls. We have a job to do. Under this job, let us have truth in budgeting. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No. This gentleman is working on his own. This is no White House amendment. I can tell you here and now, if I wait on that crowd over there, we would not get it done. Mr. President, there is one more thing to be recognized and that is the exception that makes the rule. That is, as I am critical of the media for just going fast asleep on this one, and battling the Greenspan unified nonsense, the one exception is USA Today just about a week ago--10 days ago, November 6, Monday. I ask unanimous consent this editorial and an October 20 column by Lars-Erik Nelson be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak for 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. They ought to put me in charge of the CIA. I know how to keep things secret. But just as the title of my budget tables say, ``here we go again''. Same thing we did in 1981. Same thing we did in 1985. Same thing we did in 1990. Here we go again in 1995, saying the budget is balanced when their budget is not even near balance and they know it. They know it. They spend $636 billion of surpluses in the Social Security trust fund. That is not eliminating deficits. That is moving the deficit from the general fund to the Social Security trust fund to make it appear like we are eliminating deficits. Not so. Today, we owe Social Security $484 billion. Spending another $636 billion under their plan, we will owe over $1 trillion. So we will come in the year 2002 and say, ``Oh, what a smart boy am I, I have Medicare solvent.'' And then they will look over and say, ``Ye gads, I put Social Security into bankruptcy.'' We will owe it $1 trillion. Who has the plan to raise $1 trillion in revenues in 2002? Mr. President, we are fiddling while Rome burns and they know it. The GOP budget is nothing more then a political document to get by next year's election--excuse me, next year's election and the election in 2000. That is how arrogant they are. Avoid the tough decisions to get by two Presidential elections. Do you know how much they are supposed to cut in spending in the year 2002? Mr. President, $347 billion. Right now in debating the fiscal year 1996 appropriations bills, with all the attention, with the Government closed down, we are having difficulty saving $45 billion. But in the last year, they have to save $347 billion. The reason that this whole charade is transpiring is that they are trying to force-feed the President what they cannot pass by a majority vote. I am on these committees. I know. Do you think Republicans are opposed to legal services? I joined with the distinguished Senator from New Mexico to restore the funding. Do you think the Republicans really want to abolish the Department of Commerce? I know. We joined in to strike that language. We let the Senator who was trying to kill the Department make the motion, for some kind of political advantage. It was embarrassing, but that is what they wanted to do, and I wanted to preserve the Department. My point is that Republicans and Democrats are not for all these cuts and they know it. That is why 10 of the 13 appropriations bills have not passed. And it is Thanksgiving. We have the ``Grinch That Stole Christmas.'' Now we've got the Gingrich that is going to steal Thanksgiving with this nonsense. That is exactly what is going on. They cannot get their bills through the Congress, so they are piling it all up in a budget and saying, ``Mr. President, take it or leave it.'' Since he does not take it, ``Oh, you are not for a balanced budget.'' They ought to give it to him in an orderly process, let him veto it, and let them get two-thirds. Let us have the democratic process, the orderly process of legislation here on the floor of the national Congress and stop all this one-upmanship about who is going to win and who is going to lose in the polls. It is downright embarrassing. They cannot get it through the Congress. That is why they have not passed the appropriations bills. They cannot pass those appropriations bills because we have right-thinking Members on the Republican side as well as the Democratic side who do not want to do away with technology. They do not want to do away with the Minority Business Administration. I can go down the list of things on both sides of the aisle. They did not want to do away with the Department of Energy; with the Department of Education.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Mr. President, I ask to proceed just for a couple of minutes more.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Then in 1990, heavens above, you know what we said? They said in 1990 that by September 30, 1995, we would have a surplus of $20.5 billion. Look at the budget document. And now the chairman of the Budget Committee tries to justify his actions by saying, ``Well, that is what you all have done before.'' That is the trouble. We keep telling the American people that we are getting together on a balanced budget. Then when they finally get together they say, ``Oops, something else happened.'' They have no idea of actually balancing the budget. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point the budget tables along with my ``Dear Colleague'' letter of which each Senator, each Congressman, I sent to them.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. It pretty well explains the reason for our dilemma. Let me address comments of the Senator from Montana, and others, who have made the argument that President Clinton does not want a balanced budget. Those who have the unmitigated gall to come and contend that really ought to be embarrassed. They know no shame. For openers, we should note that President Clinton came to the Presidency having balanced 10 budgets in a row down in Arkansas. Some of my colleagues that bellow and scream and whine and cry have never seen a balanced budget. But the President did it. That was one of the Clinton campaign's clarion calls, that he knew how to put Government on a pay-as-you-go basis. What did he do when he came to town? He cut spending and put us on a path that has led to significant reductions in the Federal budget deficit. Even the opposition contends that it cannot be balanced except in 7 years. But let me address the issue of responsibility. That is what Republicans claim now--that they are responsible and the President is irresponsible. I think somewhere, sometime, somehow the record should show exactly who caused these deficits and who is not responsible for the deficit. You can not accuse President Lyndon Johnson of causing the deficit. He left office at the end of 1968 with a surplus. Ever heard that word around here? Not just ``balanced,'' but totally in the black. I say in passing that President Nixon did not cause these deficits that we grapple with now. Likewise, President Ford worked his dead- level best even holding a budget summit to try and bring down the deficits. After Ford, President Carter worked to reduce the deficit that he had inherited from President Ford. Mr. President, it was not until we got to voodoo, Kemp-Roth Reaganomics, that we started this nonsense. President Reagan gave us the first $100 billion deficit in the history of the land. He gave us the first $200 billion deficit in the history of the land. President Bush gave us the first $300 billion deficit in the history of the land. And at the close of his administration, President Bush was fast approaching a $400 billion deficit. That is where the deficits have come from. I speak advisedly. President Bush voted for every dollar spent during his 4 years. Not this Senator. Not the distinguished Presiding Officer. But I can guarantee that of the 44 vetoes under President Bush, not a red cent of spending was ever vetoed. So now we know from whence we came, piling up annual shortfalls until they approached almost $400 billion deficits. President Clinton comes to town and what did he do? He put together a package to reduce the deficit $500 billion over 5 years. That is the one person that cannot be accused of causing the deficit--William Jefferson Clinton. The distinguished Presiding Officer as well as this Senator from South Carolina could be accused. We were here at the time that deficits soared up, up, and away. The expression used by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that the President's program leaves us with $200 billion deficits ``for as far as the eye can see.'' Heavens above, President Clinton did not cause it. He was down in Little Rock. The first thing he did when he came to town was to say that we are going to start balancing the budget. Here was a Democrat who said we are going to tax gasoline. We are going to tax liquor. We are going to close corporate loopholes. And not a peep was heard from that crowd over there. We could not get a single vote in the U.S. Senate from our Republican colleagues. We could not get a single vote in the U.S. House of Representatives from our Republican colleagues. Now, having caused the trouble, they act like they never heard of it and charge that President Clinton does not want a balanced budget. But what did he do? On top of the $57 billion in Medicare cuts that were part of his deficit reduction package, he followed up with a proposal to cut another $120 billion as part of comprehensive health care reform. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle countered, ``Why change the best health care system in the world?'' Now they say that unless we cut $270 billion Medicare will be broke. Let me quote for the Record from the 1994 report of the Medicare trustees. The trust fund ratio, defined as the ratio of assets at the beginning of the year to disbursements during the year, was 131 percent in 1993 and then under the intermediate assumptions is projected to decline steadily until the fund is completely exhausted in 2001. This year the same board says that exhaustion will not occur until 2002, as a direct result of the deficit reduction package that we enacted in 1993. President Clinton did that. Not one Republican on the other side of the aisle had anything to do with it. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, having caused the problem, fussing with the fellow who had nothing to do with the problem, who is trying his best. And the Republicans say that because he is up in the polls, he will not take a stand. He has taken a stand. It is they who would not. It is all political applesauce. They have been threatening all year, ``We will close down the Government.'' Read this morning's Washington Post. The Washington Post editorials say, why do you need the FDA? Forget pharmaceuticals. Why do you need the EPA? We can get clean water. That is freedom. I never heard such nonsense. Close down the Government, they say. And they are reveling in it, trying to act now like they are responsible. And every time we meet, they have to get the gang of 73 satisfied who came to Government with a pledge not to serve. They ought to get rid of the entire crowd. They ought to understand the charge. The truth of the matter is they have not done a thing to help us. We tried in the Budget Committee to show the extreme nonsense of having a $245 billion tax cut. Heavens above, we do not have enough revenue. That is why we have a deficit. When they proposed this in the Budget Committee, we said ``Let's not have the tax cut until we balance the budget.'' They all voted ``no.'' We said, ``Let's have the economic dividend go to Medicare if that's the problem?'' Red-faced, they replied, ``Let's change the subject.'' The chairman of the Budget Committee constantly says ``Well, that is the way they did it before; that is the way they did it.'' Well, I thought the election message of last November a year ago was that we were going to have change. It is the same act, same scene; same players. We said in 1981 we were going to balance the budget by 1984. In 1985 we had a similar document which said we would have a balanced budget by 1990.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I am reminded that Patrick Henry said, ```Peace, peace.' Everywhere, men cry `peace.' But there is no peace.'' Now the colleagues on the other side of the aisle cry ``balanced budget, balanced budget,'' but there is no balanced budget. I ask unanimous consent to have printed at this point in the Record an article entitled ``Polls get in the Way of Washington's Work,'' from this morning's Post and Courier.

Mr. HOLLINGS. My point is they planned this scenario all year long. They had no idea of passing any appropriations bills. Last December I saw it on TV, and they were going to pass their bills and they were going to do this and that. But as we have already seen, they cannot pass a defense appropriations bill. Defense has been voted down, right over there with the gang of 73. I am on State, Justice, Commerce and they cannot get that bill enacted. So, not being able to pass them using their own troops, they just load them on to a debt bill and a continuing resolution. This is really just a terrible shame for Government to be conducted in this fashion. All to save that Presidential gang of 73. You see, the 73 control the Speaker, the Speaker controls Gramm, Gramm controls Dole, and Dole controls the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Domenici. I feel sorry for my friend from New Mexico. I hear statements that I know he does not agree with. I see votes that I know he does not agree with. All of these tricks--changing the CPI, back-loading the cuts, using the Social Security surpluses, creating a Medicare lockbox--are a bad mistake. I would not vote for it. President Clinton ought not to sign it. He ought to veto it. He knows that is just a document for the next two Presidential elections, to get them in office next November. I yield the floor. Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this section essentially says, ``thou shall not use Social Security trust funds in computing the deficit or the debt.'' We passed this provision back in 1990 after the Budget Committee had fully considered the particular problem. What we had been doing was obscuring the true size of the deficit, not by reducing it, but by moving it. In other words, we would take the surplus in the trust funds for Social Security and count them as revenues so that, when balanced against the expenditure column, it looked like we had reduced the deficit. The truth of the matter is that we were only moving the deficit--from what we owned the financial markets to what we owned the Social Security trust fund. That is why my colleagues on the Budget Committee voted overwhelmingly to take the Social Security trust fund off budget by a vote of 20-1 on July 10, 1990. I ask unanimous consent to have the record of this vote printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Senator Domenici, myself, and the rest of the Senate Budget Committee save the Senator from Texas, Senator Gramm, voted that trust funds of Social Security not be used in calculating the annual deficits or surpluses. Soon thereafter, on October 18, 1990, we had a vote in the U.S. Senate and passed the same legislation by a vote of 98-2. I ask unanimous consent that that vote be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, at that particular time, so there will be no misunderstanding, the present leader of the budget in the U.S. Senate, the chairman of our committee, Senator Domenici of New Mexico, said: I support taking Social Security out of the budget deficit calculation. I support the Heinz-Hollings-Moynihan amendment. Thereafter, the Senator did have some misgivings, and I want to quote him: The issues involved with taking Social Security, including interest, out of the budget deficit, are not as simple or painless as they seem, or as the sponsors of this measure have suggested. If we take interest off budget, then we have to come up with more deficit reduction, and that means only one of two things--more taxes or more spending cuts. Now, Mr. President, we get right to the meat of the coconut. The real fiscal cancer in the Federal Government today is the amount that we have to pay annually in interest costs on the national debt. The estimate for this fiscal year is $348 billion. We could adopt the GOP budget in the next 10 minutes, and we still would not have not cut spending. Why? Because spending for our interest costs on the national debt are up to a billion dollars a day. It gets worse and worse and worse every day, and it will be next to impossible to attack this problem if we do not act now. We are 7 years and two Presidential elections from the time when Medicare will go into the red. We are 25 years away from the time when Social Security surpluses will be exhausted. Yet we constantly hear the rhetoric about the looming crisis in Social Security and the need to ``protect, preserve, and strengthen'' Medicare--all because we do not want to talk about the fiscal crisis that we are in this very minute. Why do we avoid this reality? Because if we were to talk about it, we might be forced to do something about it. In order to do something about it, you have to have a balanced approach that includes spending cuts as well as revenue increases. Our budget history for the last 15 years highlights this reality. When Howard Baker was the majority leader, he and I joined in trying to pass a budget freeze from 1981 to 1985. We said, ``Take this year's budget for next year.'' That would have saved billions of dollars, but alas, that road was not travelled. Having not succeeded there, I started working with Senator Gramm of Texas and Senator Rudman of New Hampshire and said, under Gramm-Rudman- Hollings, that we would have truth in budgeting. We would not only have the freeze, but additional cuts across the board as well. We were on course with automatic $37-billion-a-year cuts, in an orderly fashion, to give us a balanced budget by 1990. In 1986, we expanded our field of vision saying, wait a minute, it is not just the Appropriations Committee appropriating and spending more; that Finance Committee should be responsible as well in cracking down on unnecessary tax breaks. As a result, we had tax reform which purported to end corporate welfare. By 1987, we met in the Budget Committee and considered other freezes, cuts, loophole closings. I remember telling Dick Darman, Director of OMB for President Bush, ``Look, unless we grab a hold of this now with some kind of taxes, as well as the cuts and freezes and loophole closings, we are going to be in desperate circumstances. We are going to run up to about $400 billion deficits, the debt growing all along, and interest costs growing all along.'' As a result, eight of us in the Budget Committee voted in a bipartisan fashion to increase taxes. You cannot find that type of candor anymore around this Capitol, around the White House or anywhere else in this city. But, you are not going to get on top of this cancer unless you have that kind of surgery. Because, unless revenues are part of the solution increase taxes will continue to rise. So let me be clear, Mr. President, those who say they are against taxes and want to cut spending, and even taxes, are totally off base with respect to fiscal responsibility. They know it, you know it, and the blooming press knows it, but they will not print it because they have joined in the pollster conspiracy. When the question is asked: Are you for taxes? The answer invariably is: Oh, I am against taxes. So we all jump on the bandwagon. A public servant who comes out for paying a bill is portrayed as some fellow for wasteful spending. You cannot get any more wasteful than a billion dollars a day in interest costs for nothing. It was only $75 billion when Reagan took over. It is now $348 billion. That is an increase of $273 billion for absolutely nothing. So my point is, let us quit obscuring the size of the deficit. Let us quit moving the deficit from the general fund over to the Social Security. My colleague from Florida will talk specifically about the $12 billion they borrowed from the trust fund when they had to pick up votes on the other side of the aisle with the Roth amendment. In offsetting their amendment, they used $12 billion that under the law should not be used for additional spending but should be credited to the Social Security Trust fund. It is the height of what we call smoke and mirrors. People sincerely get on the floor and claim, ``We are not using smoke and mirrors.'' False. That is exactly what you are doing when you use the surpluses in the Social Security trust fund to claim that you are balanced and when you backload all of the tough choices. Indeed, 50 percent of the proposed cuts under the GOP plan do not come until after the Presidential election in the year 2000. This year, to be specific, we are trying to cut $45 billion in spending under the Republican budget. In the year 2002, Mr. President, we will have to slash $347 billion. We cannot get the $45 billion this year, much less the $347 necessary in year 7. That is why 10 of the 13 appropriations bill are not over to the President--because Republicans cannot agree on what to cut. We have friends on both sides of the aisle who think we ought to do more in education, more in technology, in legal services, and right down the list. Mr. President, we should look at what we have been doing. We have been long on sweeping promises to the American people and slow on results. In 1981 under President Reagan, the first concurrent budget resolution for the fiscal year 1982 predicted a deficit by fiscal year 1984 of zero. No deficit, a balanced budget. I ask unanimous consent to have that page printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Then in 1985--we need not put that in; everyone knows that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was a 5-year path to a balanced budget. They talk about fiscal responsibility. I will show them the TV where I got the Good Government Award for ending deficits for all time from President Ronald Wilson Reagan. By 1990, we got together--and please, my gracious, put this in the Record, please. I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution on the budget for the year 1991 be printed at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The record I read--and everybody should fall down dead from shock--``The amount of surplus is as follows: Fiscal year 1995, $20.5 billion.'' That was at the end of September, a month before last. We are supposed to have a $20.5 billion surplus. Instead we have a $283.3 billion deficit. Here we go again, balanced budget promised in 1981. Balanced budget promised in 1985. Surplus promised in 1990. Now they come, with a 7- year promise that gets by two Presidential elections, and relies on completely unrealistic cuts. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the particular chart entitled ``Here We Go Again'' that gives the true facts.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank my distinguished colleague from Florida. Mr. President, the reason we make this motion is not simply to obey the law, but to understand and appreciate the reasons that we overwhelmingly passed this law back in 1990. Let me ask unanimous consent at this point to have section 13301 of the Budget Act printed in the Record at this time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The unrealistic cuts are completely unrealistic. We cut Medicare and Medicaid under President Reagan. We cut Medicare and Medicaid under President Bush. We cut $57 billion under President Clinton from Medicare. At that time when we could not get a single Republican vote in either the House or Senate, we cut Medicare. Now, after all of those cuts, Republicans are arguing to reduce Medicare by another $270 billion just to give everyone a tax cut and reap the political benefit in next year's elections? It is a disgrace. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. You cannot generate that amount of savings. It will not happen. Nor will you save the over $80 billion banked on from welfare reform. You cannot set up a jobs program, a training program, a day care center program and everything else to put those on welfare to work without spending more money. Ask your Governor, because I can assure you, you will be hearing from him or her in the coming months. It is totally unrealistic. As a final trick, the GOP plan borrows $636 billion from Social Security over the next 7 years in order to obscure the size of the deficit and say the job is done. Added to the over $484 billion that we already owe Social Security, we will owe the Social Security trust fund $1 trillion in the year 2002. It is sordid [[Page S 16962]] gamesmanship, Mr. President. Sordid gamesmanship. With this one instruction, Mr. President, we can hopefully sober them up. Maybe the media that is supposed to keep us honest can help out a bit. I think it was Jefferson who said, if it is between the free Government and the free press, I choose the latter. Why? You can get a free Government, but you will not hold it along unless you have free media. I hope that still holds true for the press in Washington, DC. This media crowd is fast asleep. There one exception that I have found in a recent USA Today article entitled ``The Balanced Budget Myth,''. I ask unanimous consent that this editorial be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. ``Both sides will be lying,'' it says. ``After the compromise,'' and again arguing over who won a few weeks from now, ``one truth will remain. Both sides will be lying because neither is talking about a truly balanced budget.'' Once again, Mr. President, we have lied to the American people. In this context, I just hope the media will wake up and start reporting it. The real deficit had to be reported by Chairman Kasich in the conference report. He reported $108 billion deficit. June O'Neill, in a letter on October 20--and I ask unanimous consent to have the letter printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The Director of the CBO, estimates a projected budget deficit of $105 billion in 2002. We had to write and insist that she follow section 13301 of the Budget Act. Two days before, she had said ``Why, heavens above, we have a $10 billion surplus.'' Two days later, obeying the law, she found $105 billion deficit. No wonder in the New York Times Adam Clymer wrote the article here about 10 days ago that 81 percent of the American people do not believe the budget will be balanced. God bless them for their common sense. I yield the floor. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Let us voice vote.