Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise to offer legislation that will help parents limit the amount of television violence coming into their homes. As my colleagues know well, Congress has been studying this issue for 40 years and the issues have not changed. Recent press reports continue to validate my concerns that all the talk and promises have yielded nothing but the status quo, and efforts to encourage the industry to police itself continue to yield meager results. Enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 marked the second time Congress has passed legislation to encourage the entertainment industry to limit the amount of violence seen on television. The first time was the effort in the late 1980's led by our former colleague from Illinois, Paul Simon. Senator Simon's approach, the Television Program Improvement Act, was designed to grant the industry a 3-year antitrust exemption to work together to adopt voluntary guidelines that would lead to reducing violence depicted in television programs. The result of this industry collaboration was announced in December 1992 with a statement of joint standards regarding the broadcasting of excessive television violence. In June 1993, the networks made a commitment that, before and during the broadcasting of programs that might contain excessive violence, the following announcement would be made: ``Due to some violent content, parental discretion is advised.'' The Independent Television Association, the trade group representing many of the television stations not affiliated with one of the networks, adopted a similar voluntary code. Subsequent studies detailed, however, that despite these voluntary guidelines, violence continued to rise. In 1993, therefore, I introduced my safe harbor bill for the first time. The Commerce Committee held one hearing in the 103d Congress and a second hearing during the 104th. The Commerce Committee reported my bill, S. 470, by a vote of 16 to 1. The hearing record substantiates the constitutionality of my safe harbor approach, with both Attorney General Reno and Federal Communications Commission [FCC] Chairman Hundt on record as testifying that the safe harbor approach is constitutional. My efforts to bring my bill to the floor for a vote were repeatedly blocked. The second time, Congress legislated in this area was last year when the so-called V-Chip provision was incorporated into the Telecommunications Act of 1996. I voted for this provision but had my doubts about its effectiveness. Once again, Congress relied on the industry to help parents limit the amount of violence. To make the V- chip work, the 1996 act encouraged the video programming industry to ``establish voluntary rules for rating video programming that contains sexual, violent or other indecent material about which parents should be informed before it is displayed to children,'' and to broadcast voluntarily signals containing these ratings. Pursuant to the 1996 act, all segments of the entertainment industry created the TV ratings implementation group--ratings group, headed by the Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA] president Jack Valenti. The group devised an age-based ratings system--not a content- based system. The proposal has been met with widespread criticism as being too broad and vague for parents. I recommend that my colleagues read this past Saturday's New York Times February 22, 1997, to understand the confusion surrounding this issue. The age-based ratings system does not give parents sufficient information. Parents want the ability and the choice to block out specific content they find unsuitable for their children. So, here we are. Congress passes legislation designed to limit the amount of television violence, again relying on the industry to act responsibly. The voluntary ratings system proposed by the industry, called the TV parental guidelines, consists of the following six age- based ratings:

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I moved at that particular time that we comply with the Greenspan commission and we put Social Security off budget, out of the unified deficit, so we could build up these surpluses so that the baby boomers and the next generation could be sure of receiving their money. We have lost trust in Government with the present activity. But here is what the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Domenici, stated at that time: I voted for Senator Hollings' proposal because I support the concept of taking Social Security out of the budget deficit calculation. I am going to read that again. Here is what the gentleman calls gimmick, here is what the gentleman called nonsense when referring to the Concord coalition's report yesterday. Senator Domenici: I voted for Senator Hollings' proposal because I support the concept of taking Social Security out of the budget deficit calculation. Then reading further: But I cast this vote with reservations. He says about my particular amendment: Unfortunately, the Hollings bill does not protect Social Security sufficiently. He says further: That's why Senator Nickles and I offered our firewall amendment. This amendment, drafted over the last 6 months by myself, Senator Heinz, Senator Rudman, Senator Gramm and Senator DeConcini, included a 60-vote point of order against legislation which would reduce the 75-year actuarial balance of the Social Security trust fund. There is the Concord coalition, the president, the former Senator Warren Rudman, the best of the best, saying, ``Fine, I'm voting for the Hollings amendment to put Social Security off budget, make it a trust fund, build up the surpluses so that the younger generation, who is working and paying their taxes, knows the money is not being frittered away by an irresponsible Congress.'' And we are going to go even further. We are going to say you have to get a 60-vote majority in order to reduce the 75-year actuarial balance. Now, they knew at that particular time it was going to be for 75 years, and here is the committee vote on July 10, 20 to 1. The one Senator voting against it at that time was our distinguished colleague from Texas, Senator Gramm. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the vote record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, now we have a complete picture. They are running around here with demonstrations, with piles of books and their pile of books is the quintupling of the national debt under their particular leadership and trust, the 12 years really of Reagan-Bush, because we have reduced the deficit since then under President Clinton. Here is one-tenth that amount for the 205 years of our history, and they have the unmitigated gall to come here and continue with that demonstration. It is the Reagan-Bush memorial deficit pile. They are the ones who ran up the national debt. They are the ones who quintupled the national debt, and we are fighting in order to protect the Social Security trust fund. I could go into other reports, but I have received a note from my distinguished leader, Harry Reid, of Searchlight, NV. What we are going to do is have a vote for the balanced budget amendment. I have cosponsored one. I have been working in the vineyards for years. I balanced the budget back in the fifties in the State of South Carolina and got for the first time in its history a triple A credit rating. I was the first State from Texas up to Maryland to ever receive that from Moody's and Standard & Poor's. I voted for a balanced budget. I worked with George Mahon in 1968. I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Senators Gramm and Rudman in the mideighties to cut deficits, and I am willing to work with them anytime anywhere. This is not a partisan fight. This is a bipartisan fight to keep the trust. The distinguished Senator from Nevada will have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that we can support that will protect Social Security, and I intend to vote for it. But I am not voting, Mr. President, to breach the trust to vote against my own bill that I worked so hard for that we got President Bush to sign into law. Mr. President, here is what really happens. Here is the President's budget, and on page 2--literally on page 2--you will find that in the year 2002, we have a surplus of $17 billion. But if you turn--this is the gamesmanship on both sides, both in the White House and the Congress--but if you turn to page 331, you find a deficit in 2002 of $167.3 billion. Why do we have to borrow $167.3 billion? That is because we increase the debt that amount, and we are going to have to go out and borrow to pay the interest costs. That is the real deficit. It is not a $17 billion surplus. If you don't protect Social Security, then I come as a budgeteer and say, ``Now, wait a minute, the other side is going to have $543 billion,'' which is how much they will have borrowed from Social Security under this particular budget that we are discussing. If they are going to use $543 billion, some will want to use it on defense, some will want to use it on education, and some will want to use it on highways. If they are going to use and spend the money, I might as well get my projects in there. That is wherein the discipline breaks. If you are going to use Social Security and turn it from a trust fund into a slush fund, you do not have the discipline. Again, Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague for yielding the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, that was before the Budget Committee. Again, on the Hollings-Heinz amendment, I got together with my good friend, the late Senator John Heinz, and we worked in a bipartisan fashion, and we got an overwhelming bipartisan vote--98 Senators out of the 100. We missed two of them, Senator Armstrong and Senator Wallop. But we got 98 Senators, and any Senator, Republican or Democrat, who was a Member of this body back in 1990 who votes for the proposed Senate Joint Resolution 1 that would eviscerate the Social Security trust fund, that would turn the trust fund into a slush fund, constitutionally, is breaching the trust that he voted for on October 18, 1990 at 4:41. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record that vote record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this is addressed to the Honorable Warren B. Rudman and the Honorable late Paul Tsongas. We lost Paul. I have the greatest respect for these gentlemen. They are the best of the best. I say here in this letter: Dear Warren and Paul: You two friends should be ashamed of yourselves. I have just received the Concord Coalition Social Security mailout, and in four pages and in a 13-item questionnaire, there is no mention of the willful bankrupting of the Social Security trust fund in violation of section 13301 of the Budget Act. Mind you me, I support such coalition initiatives as the age increase for retirement to help strengthen the trust fund, and I have voted three times, now, for the Danforth-Kerrey recommendations. But back in 1983, the Greenspan commission recommended that Social Security be put off budget so that we could take care of the baby boomers through the fiscal year 2056. President Bush signed this provision, making it illegal to borrow from the fund or use Social Security moneys to obscure the size of the deficit. Now we know both the President and the Congress violated this. We know both parties violated this. But if we cannot get the truth out of esteemed colleagues like you two, instead of being fiscally in balance until the year 2029 we will be fiscally bankrupt by the year 2002. Mr. President, I ask that my letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I have the greatest respect for our friends there in the Concord Coalition, the former Secretary of Commerce, Secretary Pete Peterson--I worked with him way back under the initial days of President Reagan when I opposed Reaganomics. We got Senator Mathias, the distinguished Republican Senator from Maryland, to go along with us. But there were only 11 of us here that were fighting at that particular time against this. What you do is you cut all your revenues and the money because, ``The people back home will know better than the politicians in Washington and they will have so much money, there will be so much spending, there will be so much income tax and sales tax that, my heavens, we will have growth and we will grow out of this.'' Go ask the mayor of a city to cut his revenues 25 percent. Go ask a Governor to cut his revenues some 25 percent. They work with common sense because they cannot print money like us up here in Washington. They have to have a credit rating. They have to be able to keep interest rates down and get the investments in their communities and in their States. But we come to Washington and lose all common sense. We engage in a tremendous charade up here about piling up books, and how sincere we are, when we disregard the Greenspan commission and we disregard the law. I have here the report of the National Commission on Social Security Reform dated January 1983. From that report I read, ``A majority of the members of the national commission recommends that the operation of these''--these are fancy words, but ``Social Security trust funds''-- they use the word ``trust funds,''--this is a study commission-- ``should be removed from the unified budget.'' They go right on down, ``The national commission believes the changes in the Social Security Program should be made only for programmatic reasons and not for the purposes of balancing the budget.'' So, pursuant to taking it out of the unified budget and building up the surplus funds, that is how we got the votes. If we had said at that particular time, ``Look, we are going to use this money for foreign aid, we are going to use this money for welfare, food stamps, anything else of that kind,'' you could not have gotten the votes. We had a horrendous tax increase in 1983, in a conscientious fashion, to build up surpluses to the year 2056. I can show you that right here in the 75-year period. But don't depend on just what the Senator from South Carolina says. Let's get back to the vote and the actions at that time of my distinguished colleague, the now chairman of the Budget Committee. At that particular time, the Senator from New Mexico--and I refer now to the committee report, Calendar No. 781, Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate, dated July 10, 1990, on page 29. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the additional views of Mr. Domenici.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, if you look back to 1968-69, back when we used to have budgets from July 1 around the clock to June 30. We have changed now the fiscal year, so October 1 is the beginning of the fiscal year. But under that last year of President Johnson, let us credit him, you can see going right straight across the board we had a surplus of $2.9 billion. Trust funds were only $300 million--but dispel from your mind that President Johnson used trust funds because even using trust funds he would have had a surplus. So, here comes President Lyndon Baines Johnson with a surplus that year, and all he had to spend was $16.6 billion on interest costs. Now, Madam President, do you see today's interest costs of $360 billion at the bottom of the page--$360 billion? This is how we have increased spending. The Grace Commission, upon which I served, came to town to do away with waste, fraud, and abuse. The biggest waste is spending money for nothing, just for extravagance. The biggest waste is the past profligacy of not paying the bills and actually increasing spending on interest payments by some $344 billion during that period of time for absolutely nothing. President Clinton is working on it. He has slowed it down. But they are the ones who increased it with Reaganomics, ``hope, growth and opportunity,'' and television buzz words they can buy up. But let us get to the truth. That is why I put this table here, so we can look at the unified deficit, the real deficit, and gross interest, Madam President, which is forced spending, just like taxes. It is an insidious way to raise taxes. We have $360 billion to be expended this year on interest costs. Because these interest costs continue to grow, the debt goes up, up and away. This year, it is estimated that the debt will go from $5.182 trillion to $5.436 trillion, an increase of $254 billion. So, while we are increasing the debt, we are spending $1 billion a day in interest. In essence, we are increasing taxes $1 billion a day. Because, like taxes, it has to be paid. It has to be paid. So the crowd against taxes is insidiously increasing taxes $1 billion a day. That is where the spending is. Let me get back up here where my file is, Madam President, and get to the proposition and join issue, if you please, with the statements made by the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Domenici. Again yesterday, and he continues this wherever he goes, he referred to the Concord Coalition report as evidence that the matter of Social Security, again, was a gimmick, that is was just all nonsense. I had hoped we could really avoid that, because I have tried my best to counsel the Concord Coalition. To justify the sincerity of my remarks, let me go back and show that I am not just saying so today. I will read into the Record part of my letter of August 16, 1996 to the Concord Coalition. (Mr. SMITH of Oregon assumed the Chair.)

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, here is the former law, section 13301, off-budget status of the Social Security trust fund. I ask unanimous consent to have that statute printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, this crowd on the other side of the aisle has no shame. Let me make it absolutely clear. They come here and use the floor of the Senate for these demonstrations. What that pile of books over there on the other side of the aisle says is any time that you can flash on C-SPAN, that side of the aisle is for cutting spending, reducing deficits, and balancing the budget, and this side of the aisle is for spending--you know, tax and spend, liberal Democrats. Let us find out what the record is. I believe it is too much, but let us just say my pile of books is about one-tenth of that pile over there. If you take the average real deficit--and I put a table on everyone's desk so you can verify the CBO figures, Madam President--in the 36 years from Harry Truman up until President Reagan--ah, those were a tough 36 years; we had to pay for World War II; we had to pay for Korea; we had to pay for Vietnam; and we had to pay for the Great Society that Lyndon Johnson started. During that 36 years, the actual average of real deficits is $20.41 billion. Now, in the last 16 years, from 1982 to 1997, without the cost of a single war or the Great Society, the average deficit is $277.58 billion. We have gone from $20 billion deficits with the cost of all the wars to the Republican initiative of growth, growth, growth. My friend, Steve Forbes, is running around again saying, ``Hope, growth and opportunity.'' What a charade. What a farce. They ought to be ashamed of themselves--the unmitigated gall to put those books up there and try to demonstrate that they are for cutting spending, that those are the deficits that we piled up casually. The truth is we balanced the budget under President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the reason this growth started was that silly Reaganomics, which Howard Baker, who sat in that chair as the Republican leader, called a riverboat gamble, and which then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush called voodoo. But there is no historical memory under these youngsters who come here to the Senate floor and try to demonstrate, with a pictorial thing here, with a pile of books: Now, we are concerned about these deficits, and the other side does not have any regard for them. They are the ones who caused it. That is the Reagan-Bush memorial deficit pile right there. That is what it is. In fact, Madam President, you can go back to 1776 and take 38 Presidents, 205 years of history, the cost of the Revolution and all the other wars, and we never got to a $1 trillion debt. When President Reagan took over, it was $909 billion, still not a $1 trillion debt. Now, under Reagan-Bush, President Reagan and President Bush, they have gone to $5.3 trillion. And do not blame President Clinton. Gosh knows, he did not know how to take credit. He went down there to Texas. I guess we all make mistakes running for office, but I think he overspoke. He said he raised taxes too much. But that did not take away from my vote. In 1993, we had a budget plan, and the budget plan was to reduce the deficit by $500 billion. It was to raise taxes on gasoline, and, yes, Social Security. And over on that side they said, pointing at us, you raise taxes on Social Security, they will be hunting you down like dogs in the street and shooting you. They said, ``We are going to have a recession.'' Ah, not even a recession, but a depression. Instead, the stock market is going through the roof. Inflation is down, jobs are up, and now they want to manufacture a problem. I say that is their problem. We did not get a single Republican vote in the Senate, we did not get a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives to do anything. We passed it by ourselves. And President William Jefferson Clinton is the only President since Lyndon Johnson to reduce the deficit. He spent 10 years as Governor down in Arkansas, each with a balanced budget. Then he comes to Washington and he changes the direction of increased deficits. You can see the real deficit under the last year of President Bush exceeded $400 billion. Madam President, $400 billion. The exact CBO figure for 1992 was $403.6 billion. That is where the spending comes from. And they get up here and put on these silly shows of piling up books and everything else to appear on C-SPAN and make the most extravagant statements you have ever heard, really totally out of whole cloth. Where is the spending? Interestingly, Madam President--and I wish someone would give my table of spending in real and unified deficits to our distinguished Presiding Officer so this can be followed. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this table be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts yielding just momentarily. According to the unanimous-consent agreement, I would just call up the amendment at the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Bryan and ask that the clerk report and then have the amendment set aside.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. HOLLINGS. This is the amendment on the Constitution with respect to campaign finance that was just listed by the majority leader. I thank the distinguished Chair, and I thank the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. All right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No; I was told otherwise. When he took the 8 minutes, I was told that the Chair had given me past 3. It was from 2:30 to 3:15, 45 minutes.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I quote: We need to balance our non Social Security budget so that the Social Security trust funds surpluses can be invested by lowering our national debt instead of using it to pay for other Federal operating costs. If we take Social Security without any new protection for the trust funds, Congress could spend the reserves without facing new spending cuts or revenue increases in other programs, and, if we spend the trust fund reserves today, we will threaten the solvency of the Social Security program putting at risk the benefits we have promised to today's workers. Then the Senator goes on to submit firewall protection. He said this particular statute is not enough. Here he is adamant about this statute, says it is necessary, says it has to be done so you can't use the money for anything else. Yet he insists now using the money for anything else as just hunky-dory, and the law itself is a gimmick. Let me make sure so they don't have to look it up, subtitle C, section 1301. I ask unanimous consent to include it in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. You will find that in the 1997 budget we use $78 billion from Social Security; military retirement, $9 billion; civilian retirement, $28 billion; unemployment compensation fund, $7 billion; highways, $3 billion; additional borrowings from banking, $10 billion; Treasury loans, another $11 billion. So you can see the tremendous amounts that we do to obscure the size of that deficit. And this has been quite a problem for this particular Senator, because I have been trying to get one vocabulary, if you please, so when we go into the Budget Committee we all talk the same language. Then, we can have ``slush'' funds instead of ``trust'' funds. We, very lightly, make a motion and say the money is there and we will use it there, and we will use the CPI and pick up a trillion dollars over 10 years. Oh, there are all kinds of gimmicks to use. I got an initiative in the formal statutory law, which was called a gimmick less than 24 hours ago by the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee. I don't think the law is a gimmick. I want to talk seriously about that, Mr. President, because we can go back to the National Commission on Social Security Reform in January 1983. You will find, under section 21, a majority of the national commission recommends that the operations of OASI, DI, HI, and SMI--the trust funds, Social Security trust funds--should be removed from the unified budget. In the operations, the Social Security trust funds have been included in the unified budget. However, by including Social Security trust funds in the annual budget process, it gives a false impression to the American public. The national commission believed that changes in the Social Security program should be made only for programmatic reasons and not for balancing the budget. Then, they projected as the reason for removing it from the unified budget was to take Social Security from a pay-as-you-go program to building up surpluses--tremendous reserves--to take care of the baby boomers in the next century. They use the year 2056 in one instance and talk about protecting the fund for 75 years in another. Now, in all the litany from these reports and emergency committees that go around studying this, they are coming back in and saying it will be broke in the year 2029, not 2056 or 75 years out as the Greenspan Commission reported. What should we do? We should reduce benefits and increase taxes. But do you know what happens? The trust fund surpluses created by the tax increases are spent on other programs. The Social Security taxes that we passed in 1983 were formally declared as revenues for Social Security surpluses, a trust fund for the baby boomers in the next century. They were certainly not to be used for defense, or foreign aid, or housing, or any of these other endeavors. But we are spending it for any and all purposes except Social Security. It is a dirty shame what is going on. You cannot get it reported. And the effect is on us immediately, not in the next century. The effect is this particular minute. We are running up these horrendous deficits and debt to the tune now--as you can see from the table that I put in--of $1 billion a day in interest costs. It was only about $1 billion a week when President Reagan came to town. He was going to balance the budget in 1 year. I can show you the talk. He came to town and he says, ``Oops. This is the way it works. I am going to balance it in 3 years.'' He came in with ``Reaganomics.'' Brother, I can tell you the debt just went soaring through the ceiling. We had 210 years of history with the cost of all the wars, the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Mexican War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam--we had the cost of all the wars; we had 38 Presidents, Republican and Democrat; and we never got to a $1 trillion debt. Yet, without the cost of a war in 15 years, we now have $5.3 trillion in debt. That is the crowd around here talking about they are concerned about deficits and the next fellow is not. When the Greenspan commission made this recommendation I was on the Budget Committee. I cosponsored and worked in a bipartisan fashion on Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. Then I went to work on really stopping this debt from soaring that nobody knew was soaring because we were using billions from the Social Security trust fund. And it took me until 1990, Mr. President, to do just exactly that. And in July of 1990, as a member of the Budget Committee, I made the motion that we do as the Greenspan commission had recommended and put it off budget; build up an accounting surplus. And the vote was 20 to 1. I ask unanimous consent to include the vote in the Record at this particular point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, thereafter we had a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record that particular vote.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, that is pretty serious business when the distinguished chairman of your own Budget Committee, who is supposed to lead the discipline, leads the nondiscipline. I have laid it on the line. When you spend these moneys to obscure the size of the deficit, thereupon that discipline is broken because you are spending it. We have already spent about $570 billion, at this particular point, Mr. President, and by the year 2002 we will owe over $1 trillion. In any of these budgets that will be debated here this year, we will use over $1 trillion of Social Security trust funds to balance the budget. (Mr. FRIST assumed the chair.)

Mr. HOLLINGS. I stood here with the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, the chairman of our Budget Committee, 2 years ago and said if you can give me a balanced budget by the year 2002, without increasing taxes, I will jump off the Capitol dome. Right to the point, we have tried our best, Senator Dorgan, myself and others--there are five of us--and I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a letter dated March 1, 1995, where five of us said just reiterate the law rather than repeal the law.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is why I ask unanimous consent also in addition to the letter that we include Senate Joint Resolution 1.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I quote from this: Because a balanced budget amendment requires that the required balance be between outlays for that year and receipts for that year, the moneys that constitute the Social Security surpluses would not be available as a balance for the payment of the benefits. Now, Mr. President, we are talking about serious matters--the American Law Division, the priorities on budgets. You have a very serious matter which has been called by the chairman of the Budget Committee a ``gimmick.'' I ask unanimous consent that at this particular time the letter of the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, dated January 13, be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Quoting on page 2: Under this version of the balanced budget amendment, total Government expenditures in any year, including expenditures for Social Security benefits, could not exceed total revenues collected in the same year. The implications of this requirement for Social Security are profound. It would mean that Social Security surpluses could not be used to cover the benefit costs of the baby-boom generation when it retires. The benefits for the baby-boom generation would, instead, have to be financed in full by the taxes of those working in those years. Continuing to quote: The leadership version, thus, would eviscerate the central achievement of the Greenspan Commission. Mr. President, that is followed up, finally, here, of course, with the Congressional Research Service, which on February 5, came out with a report from the American Law Division. I ask unanimous consent that this CRS report be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I read on the first page of that letter the last line: It is equally true that excluding Social Security would allow us to run massive budget deficits equal to the deficits that are projected to occur in the Social Security trust funds beginning in 2019. These deficits would be real deficits. That is what I am talking about, real deficits, not gimmicks. When you borrow from one to minimize the size of the other; namely, the deficit itself, then you really mislead the real deficit; you misreport it. Again, on yesterday, the distinguished leader for the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the distinguished Senator from Utah [Mr. Hatch], said on page S1336: The 1990 Budget Act basically stated in one section to take Social Security out of budget. It said in another section to leave it in. That is not the case. Only one law passed in 1990. It is not a different section. He said: This is confusing: Well, the statement made by the distinguished Senator from Utah is what is confusing. But both Congress and the President have construed the Budget Act of 1990 to allow Social Security to be included within the unitary budget. How? This is in violation of the 1990 law. If we had an enterprising free press, a media who would go for truth in budgeting so that the public would be properly and accurately informed, the Members themselves would begin to command discipline rather than broken discipline when deficits are misreported. Mr. President, you can see what we really have here. Now, they come, of course, and say that what really has occurred is that this is a vote for the senior citizens. Not at all. I readily acknowledge that Social Security is the senior citizens' program and they are vitally interested in it. But between Medicare and Social Security, the present-day recipients have yet to be heard from. I haven't heard from them. I have asked why not. Of course, the obvious reason, Mr. President, is they are going to get their money. They know they are going to be paid right now. So they are putting all their efforts on saving Medicare and health costs and could care less about the baby-boom generation. In contrast, the baby-boom generation are being told they are not going to get it, so why should they show any kind of interest in the thing that they say is not going to be there for them anyway? And the politicians sometimes say: Why should we concern ourselves about the baby-boom generation? Why should we not look to the next election rather than the next generation? Of course, that occurs. They look just to the next election. This particular initiative--the amendment that will be presented by the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Senator Reid--is not a gimmick. It is based in law. It is one worked on by the Senator from Utah, who voted for it, the Senator from New Mexico, who voted for it and said it has serious purpose. He did not call it a gimmick in 1990. We thought we had it all down and understood. But that's what happens when they go out to Andrews Air Force Base. They went out there in 1990 and they repealed the targets of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. So often, having been a principal cosponsor, I am asked, ``Senator, what about Gramm-Rudman- Hollings?'' Oh, no, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was working. We had an automatic cut across the board, and they eliminated it. I made the point of order at 1:15 in the morning on October 21, 1990, that is exactly what they were doing. They voted that point of order down. So don't come to me and say Gramm-Rudman-Hollings didn't work. It worked and would have continued to work had they not repealed it in 1990. My final statement is to the effect that the distinguished President of the United States, for 10 years prior to his arrival here for his first term in 1993, spent 10 years balancing budgets down in Arkansas. He is the only President since Lyndon Baines Johnson balanced this budget in 1968 and 1969 to reduce the deficit 4 consecutive years. President Clinton is the only President who has come to Washington and lowered the deficit. Listen to that statement. He has lowered it each year and every year. Yet, there is a crowd here on the Senate floor which keeps running around in a circle like the President is a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat when they are the ones that tripled--excuse me, quadrupled--excuse me, quintupled the Federal debt. Five times $1 trillion is $5 trillion. It was less than $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan came to town. Now it is $5.3 trillion. They are the ones, not President Clinton, that ran up this horrendous debt that is causing us to spend $1 billion a day in interest costs which increases taxes $1 billion a day. Because you add it to the debt, you have to pay for it, and it is a subtle way of increasing taxes. And running around fussing at the President saying, ``Where is his balanced budget? And he has not balanced it.'' Where is their budget? I am looking for one. I am on the Budget Committee. I attend meetings. I look around. They don't have a budget. It is wheeling and dealing, and all these other things going on. If that is what we are going to have, let us get rid of the Budget Committee so we can put our effort and time somewhere else. But that is the gamesmanship that is being played. They don't want to put up a budget because they know that budget will show massive tax cuts in that 5-year period being offset by cuts in Medicare. And on up and up and away the deficit goes. So I think the gamesmanship as we go on our break here in February ought to conclude. Let us get their budget. Let us compare the two budgets like we do in the regular sense of the word, reconcile the differences, and go forward with the work of the American people. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from North Dakota. I yield the floor. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The distinguished Senator from Arkansas is right on target, it is the king of corporate welfare. The Senator from Arkansas has been at this for years trying to save the conscience of this particular body. I have been most interested in his factual, indepth study and report to the Congress, and particularly here to us in the Senate. It is just astounding to me that it continues. As he said, the public can hardly believe what he says. I want to turn to a subject that the public cannot believe, and that is what we say, because we have a funny way of talking about deficits. Specifically, if you look, Mr. President, at the budget message of the President in the budget green book, fiscal year 1998, on page 2, and you want to see what the deficit is after the fifth year out, it says on page 2 at the bottom, ``Surplus deficit.'' Why doublespeak? You would not get that from your accountant. Do not, by gosh, make your income tax statement in April on the basis of surplus deficit, on budget/off budget, unified budget, unified deficit. But you will see here that they show a $17 billion surplus on page 2. However, Mr. President, if you turn to page 331, buried in the back, you will find table S-16, ``Federal Government Financing and Debt.'' All one needs do to ever determine a deficit is to just look at the increase, if you please, of the debt each year. If the debt stays the same, you have a balanced budget. If the debt goes down, then you have a surplus. But, if the debt goes up, as it says on page 331, clearly you have a deficit. You can see that the debt in 2002 is $6.6525 trillion on the line which says ``Total gross Federal debt.'' Then, if you subtract the previous year's debt of $6.4852 in 2001 from the 2002 figure of $6.6525 trillion, you will get, of course, a $167.3- billion deficit. This is not a surplus as you find on page 2, but a deficit, as it states on page 331. That is the real world, and it should be our real world. It should be our real world, Mr. President, because, otherwise, the discipline has broken here in this body. Specifically, if you are going to use some offset borrowing, it is like going to the bank and the teller says, ``Well, Hollings, you don't have any money left,'' and I say, ``Well, let me borrow from the next fellow's account over there and put it in mine.'' So what we do for the unified budget is borrow from Social Security and highway trust funds. Let me give you the list, Mr. President. This chart lists each President since Harry Truman in 1945, the U.S. budget, the trust funds that are used, the real deficit, the gross Federal debt, and then the gross interest costs. I ask unanimous consent to have this printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today I recognize Lockwood Greene, and its chairman, Donald R. Lugar, for the company's donation of 5,000 original engineering drawings to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The Lockwood Greene Collection dates to the mid-1800's and is the largest single holding of early American engineering and architectural drawings. The drawings offer a window into the U.S. industrial history and the changes that occurred with the harnessing of electricity and the invention of the automobile. The donated drawings, mostly on linen using India ink and still in mint condition, reveal the skills and talent of 19th and early 20th century draftsmen. They document information unrecorded elsewhere such as: The first application of electric drive to an 1893 manufacturing operation in Columbia, SC; modifications providing for the transition from horse and buggy to automobile to the important east west route, the Lincoln Highway in Lake County, IN; designs for WWII era radio stations; and drawings of the Androscoggin textile mill in Lewiston, ME, from the 1890's depicting power transmission through the factory prior to the introduction of electricity. The official ceremony for the donation will take place at the Smithsonian's Ceremonial Court Hall on February 19, 1997. Museum officials are delighted by the gift and they have begun compiling a computerized index of them. I congratulate Lockwood Greene's generous decision to make this priceless gift to the Smithsonian Institution, thus securing it for future generations. Lockwood Greene, one of the country's most prominent consulting, design, and construction firms, was founded in New England in 1832 and is now headquartered in Spartanburg, SC.