Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I am introducing a bill today to direct that the vessel Focus, U.S. Official Number 909293, be accorded coastwise trading privileges and be issued a certificate of documentation under section 12103 of title 46, U.S. Code. The Focus was constructed in Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 1983 and is a sailing vessel presently used for recreational purposes. It is 47.8 feet in length, 15.8 feet in breadth, has a depth of 6.5 feet, and is self-propelled. The vessel is owned by John Passaloukas of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Mr. Passaloukas would like to utilize his vessel in the coastwise trade and fisheries of the United States. However, because the vessel was built in a foreign shipyard, it does not meet the requirements for coastwise license endorsement in the United States. The present owner purchased the Focus in a state of disrepair, after the vessel had been neglected for ten years, and has totally refurbished the vessel in U.S. shipyards. Coastwise documentation is mandatory to enable the owner to use the vessel for its intended purpose. The owner of the Focus is seeking a waiver of the existing law because he wishes to use the vessel for recreational and ecotourism charters. His desired intentions for the vessel's use will not adversely affect the coastwise trade in U.S. waters. If he is granted this waiver, it is his intention to comply fully with U.S. documentation and safety requirements. The purpose of the legislation I am introducing is to allow the Focus to engage in the coastwise trade and the fisheries of the United States.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, these budget tables show the Government outlays from 1968 through 1995 and the CBO estimate for 1996. It shows the trust funds that we have borrowed from for a total of $1,255,000,000,000. Then it shows the term they use--``Unified deficit''--that is borrowing from the public and then also borrowing from your own pocket. I ask unanimous consent that I may continue for another 5 minutes to conclude.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, in this chart we have taken the outlays under the Republican budget proposal as promulgated by the Congressional Budget Office for the years 1996 through the year 2002, and the revenues from CBO for the years 1996 through 2002. If you look at the total for spending, it is $12,080,000,000,000-- $12,080,000,000,000. Then if you look at total revenues over the same period, it is only $11,008,000,000,000. By simple arithmetic we will be adding over $1 trillion to the debt over the next 7 years. In the year 2002, the gross debt will go from $4.9 trillion today to $6.728 trillion. In order to show good faith, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the budget paths that I presented in January at our initial meeting of the Budget Committee.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The Chair has been indulgent and I know my distinguished colleague from Tennessee is waiting to be heard. Let me conclude by asking people to look at the arithmetic and to help expose the fact that once again, we have lied to the American people.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the January table shows the deficit using trust fund and not using the trust fund. I have been in this budget game now for over 20 years at the Federal level. If anyone can show me any kind of realistic cuts that will by themselves balance the budget, I will jump off the Capitol dome. It is very easy to make that pledge because you see exactly from the arithmetic. The Republican budget can claim it balances the budget in 7 years only because they use $636 billion of Social Security between now and 2002. The other half of the trillion-dollar program comes from discretionary cuts, entitlement cuts, and interest savings of $347 billion in the year 2002. That should give us a dose of reality. At this very minute, we are struggling to find $45 billion in cuts for this fiscal year. In addition, you can add on the tax cut, which adds $93 billion to the debt. I ask unanimous consent that a Wall Street Journal article outlining this fact be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. So we have each figure in a separate column. Adding the unified deficit to the money we owe the trust funds gives us the real deficit which last year totaled $283.3 billion. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record another budget table.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Thereupon, Senators admonished the Director of the Congressional Budget Office that she was violating section 13301 of the Budget Act, which provides that Social Security trust funds shall not be used to hide the size of the deficit. On October 19, 2 days later, the same June O'Neill, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, sent a second letter in response to inquiries made by my colleagues from North Dakota, Senators Conrad and Dorgan. In that response, Ms. O'Neill explained that if you follow the law, you will end up with a deficit of $98 billion in the year 2002. I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Mr. President, what I do then is go to the figures themselves, because it is not very difficult. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a budget table.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, once again we have lied to the American people. Mr. President, once again, we are lying to the American people. For the past several weeks, we have heard the cries of the ``balanced budget'' and ``the first opportunity in 25 years really to balance this budget.'' Everywhere men and women cry ``balance.'' But, Mr. President, there is no balance to this budget. It is an outright fraud, and my friends on the other side should know better. It was an embarrassing moment at the Budget Committee last evening. The chairman of the Budget Committee had fallen into the trap of playing to the cameras. He had a clock flashing the amount of the gross debt and a chart showing the first page of the reconciliation bill with a ribbon, like in a horserace or the good housekeeping award, certifying that this budget was for fiscal responsibility. Not so at all. On last Tuesday, just a week ago, he inserted in the Congressional Record the letter from June O'Neill, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, together with the tables showing a surplus of $10 billion. I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record again at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Again the following day, October 20, the same June O'Neill acknowledged an accounting mistake and corrected her October 19 letter by explaining that actually the deficit in the year 2002 would not be $98 billion, but $105 billion instead. Now, calling this budget balanced is a mistake that is commonly made, Mr. President. Just two Sundays ago on ``Meet the Press,'' the best I have seen in the public media covering this budget, Mr. Tim Russert, asked Mr. Panetta, ``Will you withstand those political charges and go along with the reduction in cost-of-living increases in order to balance the budget?'' That question is based on a false premise, Mr. President. The reduction of the cost-of-living increase does not go to balance the budget, but, on the contrary, adds to the surpluses in the Social Security trust fund. We are getting all get boiled up around here, Mr. President, with respect to Medicare and Social Security, about things that are in the black and ignoring the part of Government that is not paid for. Specifically, let me cite Social Security. At the end of this fiscal year, Social Security will have a $544 billion surplus. Has anybody in this body, Capitol, ever heard the word ``surplus''? I have. I worked with President Lyndon Johnson, in 1968 and 1969 with our good friend, Chairman George Mahon, of the Appropriations Committee. In December 1968 we called the President and said, ``Mr. President, please allow us to cut another $5 billion.'' The outlays were for the entire Government in 1968-69, defense included were $178 billion. Today, just the interest cost on the national debt is projected to reach $348 billion, almost $1 billion a day. We have been fiscally responsible at times. And perhaps before I start, I ought to qualify myself as a witness, like they do in court. Mr. President, this particular Governor got the first triple-A credit rating, before Tennessee, before North Carolina, Georgia, before any Southern State. It was accomplished by hard work, but I, as a young Governor, knew I could not make any impression on investors by just talking about paving a road and serving barbecue. We needed a calling card of fiscal responsibility. Even back then I was trying to get business sense in Government, I asked the management consultants, to look at higher education, elementary and secondary education, the tax commission, insurance department. We went through Government making it more efficient and earning a triple-A credit rating, which incidentally, was subsequently lost by our former Republican governor. Then, as I previously stated, I worked in Washington with Chairman Mahon back in 1968. And we continued that work to try and cut spending without decimating the responsibilities of Government. When President Ford came in, we had an economic summit and we cut spending. When President Carter came in, I was the chairman of the Budget Committee. I went to the White House after President Carter had been defeated in November 1980 and said, ``Mr. President, you are going to leave a bigger deficit than you inherited from President Ford.'' He said, ``How much?'' I said, ``$66 billion.'' He said, ``Well, then, how much are we projecting?'' I said, ``We are projected to have a deficit of $75 billion. And if that occurs, no Democrat will ever get elected again.'' So we passed the first reconciliation bill, signed by President Carter on December 5, 1980, cutting spending. I went to my good friends, Senator Magnuson of Washington, Senator Church of Idaho, Senator Culver of Iowa, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana. I said, ``You fellows have got to help. We have got to cut back on the appropriations bills that we have already approved.'' And we did just that. In 1981, I worked with the then majority leader, Howard Baker. We could see that this supply-side economics was just exactly what Baker called it, ``river boat gambling.'' In the coming days, you are going to hear a whole lot of campy nonsense about opportunity and growth, about giving people their money back, and about people back home knowing more about how to spend their money. We should remember our experience with the supply-siders mantra of ``growth, growth, growth.'' We first called it Kemp-Roth, then Reaganomics, and finally Vice President Bush named it ``voodoo.'' And here we go again with the voodoo. We are heading full-tilt toward enacting a massive tax cut, when we are looking for money to pay the bills. It is absolutely irresponsible. We have lied again to the American people. President Reagan came to town promising to balance the budget in 1 year. Then having been sworn in, the President said, ``Oops, this is way worse than I ever thought. We will balance it in 3 years.'' We could not pass a budget freeze, so we tried Gramm-Rudman-Hollings which was a freeze plus automatic cuts across the board. The trouble is that we are about to see history repeat itself. We may pass this budget but then, after 2 or 3 years, they will throw it away just like they threw away Gramm-Rudman-Hollings on October 19, 1990, at 12:41 a.m. in the morning. I stood at this desk and raised the point of order against doing away with the fixed deficit targets of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, but Senator Gramm and others voted me down. So it is not accurate to say, ``Oh, it didn't work.'' It was working too well, that was the problem for some of my colleagues. Instead, they said, ``Let's have caps on spending and we will balance the budget.'' And you can see the caps have gone up, up and away. My Republican colleagues have, to their credit, mastered the rhetoric and the lingo: Balance, balance, balance, balance, first time in 25 years, solid [[Page S 15509]] budget, certified by CBO--it is an absolute charade. CBO says that by the year 2002 there will be a $105 billion deficit. But Mr. Archer, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee over on the House side, was quoted yesterday in USA Today. He said: House Ways and Means Chairman Archer (R-TX) denies that his party's budget is balanced with borrowing through Social Security dollars and angrily denied Hollings' allegations. ``I don't know where he comes up with that,'' Archer says of Hollings. Mr. President, I would recommend that he go to the conference report of Mr. Kasich's budget on page 3 where it says: Fiscal year 2002, $108,400,000,000 deficit. ``Deficit'' is the word used, not surplus or balance. No wonder we're in a pickle. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee does not even know that the budget provides for a deficit in 2002. Here in the Senate, the chairman of the Budget Committee charges that we are using a phony argument. But I would invite my colleagues to look at the Congressional Record of last Tuesday, October 17, and you will see that Mr. Domenici himself says that we will owe the Social Security fund. I quote from S. 15193, October 17 and Mr. Domenici: So we owe it, in fact, we owe part of it to the Social Security trust fund. So please spare me this about phony. They think as long as they holler ``balance'' and holler ``phony and fraudulent'' people will ignore the fact that the law plainly says that Social Security shall be excluded from deficit and surplus totals. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record that section 13301 of the Congressional Budget Act.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the junior Senator from South Carolina. I thank the distinguished Chair. (Mr. FRIST assumed the chair.)

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, what I want to do, right quickly is, first to put in the Record the letter of October 20 from June E. O'Neill. I ask unanimous consent to have the letter from the Congressional Budget Office printed in the Record at this particular point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, as they demonstrate, you can add up the CBO outlays--the spending of the years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002--and find that over that 7-year period, we will spend a total of $12.06 trillion. Over that same period, CBO estimates that revenues will total $11,008 trillion. So you can see that spending will actually increase over revenues during the 7-year period by $1.052 trillion. Even that figure is low is it requires what the former Senator, John Heinz, called ``embezzlement''; namely, using the Social Security trust fund to mask the true size of the deficit. I just heard in the Budget Committee the distinguished chairman, Senator Domenici, call it a phony argument. But he voted for it and all the Members who were present in 1990 voted to stop using Social Security surpluses to mask the size of the deficit. Senator Heinz and I put it into the law, section 13301 of the Congressional Budget Act. There is nothing phony about it, but I hear the Senator from Washington coming in and quoting Charles Krauthammer as saying the argument was fraudulent. I know that Mr. Krauthammer was a psychiatrist before he started spilling ink in the editorial page. It reminds me of the old saw that a psychiatrist is the fellow who goes to the burlesque show to look at the audience. Let us not use economic figures from psychiatrists, let's use the $105 billion deficit cited by CBO.

Mr. HOLLINGS. While the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire said that the Republican budget was ``certified as being balanced,'' this letter certifies a $105 billion deficit. Now, I would also ask unanimous consent that we insert two budget tables in the Record which have been prepared with the help of my staff.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Very good. I thank the distinguished Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Let me just highlight the pertinent part: As specified in section 205(a), CBO provided projections on spending specified in that resolution of the deficit or surplus of the total budget, that is, the deficit or surplus resulting from all budgetary transactions of the Federal Government, including Social Security and Postal Service spending and receipts that are designated as off-budget transactions. As stated in the letter to Chairman Domenici, CBO projected that there will be a total budget surplus of $10 billion in 2002. Excluding an estimated off-budget surplus of $108 billion in 2002 from the calculation, CBO would project an on-budget deficit of $98 billion. So, unlike 2 days ago, when the CBO scored the GOP budget as having a $10 billion surplus in the seventh year, yesterday CBO scored it as leaving us with a $98 billion deficit. It piqued my interest because the CBO used the expression in the letter to Senator Conrad ``including Social Security and Postal Service spending and receipts.'' What bothers me about that clause is that, this Senator, along with my distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania, the former Senator John Heinz, cosponsored an amendment that passed the Congress and was enacted by the President--namely, section 13301 of the Congressional Budget Act, which orders that Social Security funds shall not be used in citing in deficits or surpluses of the Government. That particular section puts Social Security off budget and in trust. But today we learn that a mistake was made over at CBO. In considering the size of the Social Security surplus in the year 2002, they did not catch the fact that the Finance Committee had banked on a small change in the CPI, otherwise known as the Consumer Price Index. In turn, a reduction in the CPI reduces the amount of cost-of-living adjustments paid to Social Security recipients. Under the law, this change in Social Security payments does not divert money to lower the deficit or to fund the general budget. Instead, if you save money in Social Security, the money merely adds to the surpluses in the Social Security trust fund. Right now, Mr. President, we have a surplus of $481 billion in Social Security. We have a surplus in Medicare of $147 billion. And instead of recognizing that fact, we run around knocking over desks to get on TV and carry on about things that will happen 7 years from now for Medicare, 30 years from now with Social Security. What we don't do is to pay attention to the crisis that is happening right this minute. And that brings me to the morning editorial by our friend, Mr. J. W. Anderson of the editorial staff of the Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial in its entirety, entitled ``This Is Leadership?'' be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Summarizing, if you please, Mr. President, Mr. Anderson states that ``from the late 1940's into the early 1970's, standards of living have improved faster than ever before'' in the history of this Nation. We had surplus moneys, and the only question was ``how best to spend the flood of wealth, private and public. . .'' And, as a result, we greatly increased Social Security, health care, Medicare, Medicaid and all these particular programs. Then Mr. Anderson goes on and says, now wait. Then, in 1973, the boom suddenly ended. . . (T)he oil crisis had something to do with it, taking the dollar off the gold standard had something to do with it. . . . The budget deficit has become central to American politics. He cites how Europe has confronted this particular problem whereby the European countries have agreed that their deficits must be reduced as a condition of joining the common currency and, emphasizing, I quote, The strongest political leader in Europe is Helmet Kohl, Germany's Chancellor, who has responded forcefully to deficit dangers by slamming a heavy surtax on top of a tax burden that was already high. Now, that is historic, having the media praise somebody for increasing taxes. Let me go to the concluding sentence here of the Anderson article that I included in the Record. And I quote: Nothing short of a genuine crisis, it seems, can generate enough public attention and concern to make a real solution possible and return the Federal budget to the small deficits of the years before 1973. Now, my point here, Mr. President, is, we have a crisis right here and now. The gentleman says, ``Nothing short of a genuine crisis * * * can generate enough public attention.'' The only hope we have is to use the free media to reveal that crisis. The press corps absolutely refuse to do it. They continue to report deficits in the terms of what they call a unified deficit, which, contrary to the law, includes the borrowing from the trust funds. I can show you what I mean in article after article where $161.4 billion is cited as last year's deficit. The true deficit was $283.3 billion--because that is what you get if you subtract out your Social Security moneys, your civil service and military retirement, your Medicare and all the rest of the trust funds that you are going to have to pay back. And as of this minute, we owe the trust funds $1.255 trillion. Now, under the Republican 7-year budget, we are going to use another $636 billion of Social Security moneys. So instead of owing Social Security $481 billion today, in 2002 we are going to owe over $1 trillion all the while beating our breast and saying that we are balancing the budget. We have got to cut out the gamesmanship and get down to truth in budgeting. Mr. President, it is a heck of a note to have to write the Congressional Budget Office and ask, ``In accordance with the law, would you please cite the deficit?'' On one day, they cite a surplus of $10 billion. Then when we asked them to comply with the law, they said, ``Excuse us, there is a deficit of $98 billion.'' Now they have corrected that little mistake and got it up to $115 billion. Just the other Sunday, I was listening to Mr. Russert on ``Meet the Press'' asking Mr. Panetta: ``Will you withstand those political charges and go along with this reduction in cost-of-living increases in order to balance the budget?'' Going along, with lowering cost-of-living increases in Social Security, does not balance the budget. It enhances the Social Security surplus. He said time and again on that particular program to Mr. Moynihan. My point is that historically we have gotten into the hands of the Philistines. I saw this start back in West Virginia with our friend, President John F. Kennedy, when he was Candidate Kennedy. They never expected in West Virginia that upbeat Harvard graduate was going to best the populous Hubert Humphrey. But Jack Kennedy had Lou Harris and played all the hot-button issues like a Stradivarius. He came out on top, and then the rule of thumb came for all national elections, ``Get yourself a pollster.'' Our trouble is that the media act in complicity with the politicians. They get irritated or annoyed if you try to explain an issue. They want a quick, pithy, confrontational answer to any particular item. They do not care about an issue, they do not understand it, and they continue to report what is not the fact, namely, that you are balancing your budget when they know otherwise. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the budget table be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. You can see how the spending has gone up. For example, from 1995 to 1996, spending goes from $1,530,000,000,000 in spending to $1,583,000,000,000 in spending. In other words, while we say that we are cutting spending, in fact we have increased spending 53 billion bucks. Under the GOP plan we are supposed to cut $45 billion in spending this year. If you see in the last year of their plan you have to have a freeze of $96 billion, additional cuts of $25 billion--cuts in entitlements of $159 billion and interest savings of $67 billion, for a total of $226 billion--plus the Social Security trust fund of $115 billion. Now those are a lot of facts and figures, but what I am saying is you have to have total reductions in 2002 of $462 billion. Let's get real. If you cannot, with a new group of freshmen spurring us to cut, get $45 billion, how are you going to get $462 billion? That is why I told my colleague, the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, if this particular plan balanced in the year 2002, I would jump off the Capitol dome. There is no chance of that. They know it and I know it. In the Commerce Committee, for example, we have presumed to save $15 billion. The truth is--and we all know it in the Commerce Committee-- that $4.5 billion of the $15 billion is already expended in the telecom bill. That has occurred in a lot of these other committees. In the Finance Committee yesterday, they have a mechanism for Medicare called BELT. You find out that the poor, the sick, and taxpayers in America are the ones that are going to be belted. That little phrase requires that if Congress comes in say $40 billion shy, they push off the heavy lifting on to the next Congress. I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, that a chart which I compiled earlier this year with respect to ``The Realities on Truth in Budgeting,'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I showed the cuts necessary at that time and showed that if you wanted to balance the budget without using the trust funds you had to increase revenues as well as cut spending. Governors pay their bills, mayors pay their bills, but not us in Congress and the President. We have no idea of paying the bills. We blissfully continue this one grand political charade, this one grand fraud. The only way I know to expose it is through the free press. Thomas Jefferson once commented that between a free government and a free press, he would choose the latter. You can have a free government, but you cannot hold it long unless you get a free press. But unfortunately, the free press here is a pollster press. In today's paper it says that the best of the best reporters were out eating supper instead of listening to the President's speech in Houston. They do not care. They get little snippets and stories, and you cannot get the truth. The truth is, Mr. Anderson, there is no crisis we are going to have to reach. We are in crisis now. We have spending on automatic pilot. Next year we will have to pay $348 billion in interest costs on the national debt. That is a billion dollars a day. If that is not a crisis, I don't know what is. We can straighten out Medicare, but we do not have to devastate the Government in doing so. Neither side, including the President, has a balanced budget. The Democrats do not have a balanced budget, and the Republicans do not have a balanced budget. So we should not act like there is a choice at the present time. The truth of the matter is that next year we will pay $348 billion in interest. They say you cannot avoid death and you cannot avoid taxes. Well, you cannot avoid interest costs. As such, you have tax increases on automatic pilot of $1 billion a day. That is the hemorrhage we have to stop. That is the real problem confronting us. And we are not doing it. We are arguing whether it is for the middle class or rich, and who is going to get the political credit. We ought to stop these shenanigans and get down to the business at hand. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I want to touch on an article in the morning news relative to how we have historically dealt with the problem of budget deficits. But first, let me touch on the point raised by my distinguished colleague from New Hampshire relative to the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the Republican budget as balanced. I hope everyone within the sound of my ears and the view of this particular C-SPAN coverage will look at the Record. Yes, on the day before yesterday, on October 18--and you will find it in your Congressional Record at page 15263--a letter was included in the Record from the Director of the Congressional Budget Office doing exactly as the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire claimed. CBO said that not only was the GOP budget in balance but that by the year 2002, there would be a $10 billion surplus. That was day before yesterday. On yesterday, October 19, if you please, Mr. President, another letter was sent from CBO to Senators Conrad and Dorgan. I ask unanimous consent at this particular point that the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask consent that morning business be extended for another 20 minutes and I be recognized for that period.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Since my time is limited here, let me just point out one thing. The interest costs are growing faster than the cuts. The interest costs on the gross debt are scheduled to total $348 billion for this fiscal year. That is almost $1 billion a day. In addition, over the 7-year period you know how much we use of Social Security, $636 billion. It is not a balanced budget, Mr. President, and it's high time we recognize this fact.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Mr. President, my friends on the other side are well rehearsed in repeating their little drumbeat--balanced budget, balanced budget, balanced budget, balanced budget. But like they say back home: no matter how many times you say it, it doesn't make it so. Chairman Kasich filed a conference report on June 26, 1995, and on page 3 you will see the word ``deficit''--not ``balance''--for fiscal 2002, $108.4 billion. We need to open our eyes. When we started the budget process at the beginning of the year, the distinguished chairman of the committee said that we were going to provide the American people with a down payment. We were not going to balance the budget. As we marked up the budget, the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee said, ``Now, we require that the reconciliation bill be passed into law before we do any tax cut.'' That has been changed, Mr. President. Now we have a different process where we give CBO certain assumptions. We send them over one day and they say we have a $10 billion surplus. We come back the next day and they say you have a $100 billion deficit. In the Commerce Committee, where I am the ranking member, we are charged with saving $15 billion. Mr. President, $8 billion of our allotment has already been spent on the telecommunications bill. Half of our assigned savings in the Commerce Committee is absolutely false. The same may be true in other committees as well. It is like Cato's famous couplet, ``The politician makes his own little laws and sits attentive to his own applause.'' Why, heavens above, you will probably be able to say something else tomorrow. What we are trying to do is to level with the American people. What we are trying to do is cut spending, freeze spending, close loopholes. But you cannot balance the budget, Mr. President, you cannot do it without also increasing revenues. Nobody around here wants to say that, but that is the truth. I was put to the metal when the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, and others, appeared on December 18. Mr. Kasich, Senator Domenici, and others, said, ``We are going to have three budgets. We don't care what the President has got. We are going to balance the budget without taxes.'' I went to the budget staff and said, ``I'm missing something.'' I had worked with Senator Baker on a freeze and back in 1981. Then I got together with Senator Gramm and Senator Rudman, and we had a freeze and cuts across the board. In 1986 we closed the loopholes with tax reform. Then in 1989 and in 1990 we appeared before the Finance Committee and in the Budget Committee proposing a value-added tax. We got eight votes in the Budget Committee on that proposal. We got Senator Danforth, Senator Boschwitz and others to work as part of a bipartisan group with truth-in-budgeting. But now we have a big act going on now. Pressure is being exerted by the House leadership over there, pressuring my friend, the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee. He should know better than anybody else that this budget we are talking about has no idea of being balanced by the year 2002. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a budget table compiled by my staff using CBO figures at this particular point.