John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this amendment does not ask Senators to vote on any number. It simply asks Senators, as a sense of the Senate, to say that before the end of the session we will vote and debate on the minimum wage issue. I will just share with Senators an article in the New York Times today. It says: The income gap between rich and poor was wider in the United States during the 1980s than in any other large industrialized country, according to the most comprehensive international study ever released on income distribution. Seventy percent of the poverty wage, $8,500, is the current income level. We simply want to vote and debate on it. And I hope colleagues will agree we ought to do that.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. There are 101 economists and 3 Nobel laureates, and 7 past presidents of the Economic Association who endorse this increase. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KERRY. No.

Mr. KERRY. I did not mean to. I meant to mention the one from Harvard.

Mr. KERRY. The minimum wage worker today will earn $8,500 for full- time work. The poverty line is $12,500. Every economist, conservatives and liberals alike--at Harvard, and Friedman, say you have to have a combination of the earned income tax credit and the minimum wage to truly permit people to break out of poverty. We can do this, as every study shows, without losing jobs--in fact, as New Jersey showed, creating further employment. I hope my colleagues will go on record as being willing simply to debate and vote on this issue.

Mr. KERRY. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. KERRY. I yield myself 3 minutes, Mr. President. I emphasize that this is a sense of the Senate, No. 1; and, No. 2, it does not set a specific figure at this time, though many of us would like to. It simply says that the Senate will go on record as being prepared to debate and vote on the raising of the minimum wage, which was introduced last February, that we will vote on it before the end of this first session. Why is that important, Mr. President? Well, from 1979 until 1995, 79 percent of the increase in household income in America has gone to the top 20 percent--the 20 percent wealthiest Americans. The minimum wage which, during the 1960's, was at about 52 percent of the nonsupervisory wage, and during the 1970's was at about 45 percent, and during the 1980's was at about 40 percent, is today at 37 percent of the nonsupervisory wage. That means, Mr. President, that for those two-thirds of the people on the minimum wage who are adults--60 percent women--they are working at 70 percent of poverty level in this country today--70 percent of poverty level. Now, the whole theory of this country for years was based on the notion that we would value work, and if people went to work they would be able to break out of poverty. During the 1960's and 1970's, we respected that by keeping the minimum wage commensurate with the poverty level. But ever since 1991, where we only caught up to a small percentage of the decrease of the prior 9 years, when there was no increase, we have had another 13 percent decline in the value of the purchasing power of the wage. So the wage, today, has a 26-percent purchasing power of what it had previously, and it is about to be at a 40-year low. In over 40 years, by 1996, if we do not change the minimum wage, it will never have been so low. Mr. President, if you are going to be pro-family, if you are going to be pro-work, if you are going to be pro-community, you have to respect the notion that somebody ought to be able to take home a decent wage for an hour's work and for a week's work. The fact is, Mr. President, that under the current constraints, it is impossible for people to be able to do that, and we must go on record as really being pro-family, in an effort to try help them. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the senior Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am delighted to join my colleague from Massachusetts in supporting this amendment. As I listen to some of the rhetoric on the floor, I really feel like this is Alice in Wonderland out here. This is not a debate about whether we are going to reduce the deficit or balance the budget. The Republicans keep coming back and saying, ``By God, the only way we are going to deal with the deficit and the budget is to do these things.'' The choice here is how we are going to balance the budget. They want to spend more money on B-2 bombers. They want to continue the Market Promotion Program. They want to take a $5 million asset on a trust fund and give people a $1.7 million tax break. It is a question of how we are doing it. What we all understand is, we should not be doing it at the expense of students and at the expense of the colleges and universities that have entered into the Direct Loan Program so that you can put more money back into the pockets of the lending institutions. It just does not make sense. The Senator from Idaho stands up and says, ``We are going to take a lesser amount of money, but we are still going to be able to give you the same amount of education.'' I wish he had been there yesterday when the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts and the folks from Lowell, MA, and New Bedford and Fall River, which have 15 percent unemployment, working class people came in and said to me, ``Senator, if these cuts go through, our kids are going to drop out of school.'' And they are going to drop out of school because they are going to have $5,000 of additional costs in interest on the PLUS loan that is going to be $700 to $2,500 of debt because they eliminate the interest subsidy on the 6-month grace period. They are going to have a transfer tax on colleges and universities participating in the student loan program, and they are going to end, for half the universities, direct participation. Mr. President, those kids cannot go to school paying that additional money. But they are giving the money to people earning more than $300,000, and to all of these other interests. They are continuing additional defense spending. The question is how we will balance the budget. It should not be done on the backs of the future generation in education.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KERRY. Will he yield for a correction?

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I really hope we are going to have a better sense of fairness here than is being exhibited in this approach to people who are working and trying to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, at the outset of the comments of the Senator from Delaware, he talked about telling the truth versus bogus claims. Then he refers to a Joint Taxation Committee study to try to refute some comments made by the Senator from New Jersey. If we want to talk about bogus claims, the Joint Taxation Committee-- which I might add is chaired by the majority party --sends a statement saying there is no linkage and no increase, but refers only to income tax. Here you have another sleight-of-hand, bogus effort to avoid the reality, the same way the reality is being avoided right now with the debate on the thousands of pages that takes place during the World Series. It is a great way of avoiding accountability. The fact is that the earned income tax credit is a credit not just against income tax but also against the payroll tax. The Joint Taxation Committee says nothing about the payroll tax impact. So, in effect, it is another sleight of hand. If you want to talk about bogus--you just heard the chairman of the committee say, Mr. President, that we are going to slow down the rate of growth of the program. What is the program? The program is a tax cut for working poor--by his own admission--when what he has come to the floor and said is we will slow down the capacity of working poor Americans to participate because we are not going to give as much of a tax cut to them. It is that simple. This is not complicated. We are going to slow down the rate of growth in the tax cut for working poor Americans, but we are going to increase the tax break for people who have it already in America. That is what this is all about. If you happen to have a $5 million estate, you are going to get a $1.7 million tax break. But if are a working poor person--and I have 194,000 families in Massachusetts that will be affected by the cut in this program, 194,000 families in Massachusetts are going to pay $370 more in taxes because they want to slow down the rate of growth in the program. That may not be a lot to the person who has a $5 million estate, but let me tell you something, for somebody who is working, working, working--which is what we all talk about here--to get off of welfare and make it, $370 is a lot of money. People count those nickels and dimes when they are in that position. It is whether or not they are riding on the T. There was a front-page story in the New York Times, I think last Monday. It talked about the impact of the earned income tax credit on working people. Here was a woman in New York City who, because she got the tax credit for working, was able to cut back on her apartment rent. She went back and got rid of a $700 rent, went down to a $400 rent so she could add it to the money that she got from the earned income tax credit. Do you know what she did? She bought herself a 15-year-old car so she could drive outside of the area that is served by public transportation so she could get a better job that earned more money. And that is exactly what she did. She broke out of poverty by making hard choices because she had the earned income tax credit. Our friends are coming along here. They are giving people who earn $300,000 a very nice, fat break. And they are taking away from the people who earn $30,000 or less. There is no way for them to cut it any other way. Is there some fraud in the program? Yes, there is some fraud in the program. Can we cure that without reducing the program for eligible people? Sure we could. But that is not what they are choosing to do. They are going to throw everybody in the pot of fraud. I keep hearing about illegal immigrants. That is a nice hot button in America now. I do not know many people who think illegal immigrants ought to be getting a lot. But that has now entered into this debate. That is not what we are talking about here. It just is beyond comprehension that in this country we are going to play such games with definitions and reality when everybody understands what the reduction means.

Mr. KERRY. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my friend from West Virginia. Mr. President, the Senator from Rhode Island said that he thinks it is eminently fair. Let me try to just reduce it to the simplest, and I think the most truthful assessment of what is fair and what is not fair. Most Americans, when they stop and look at what is about to happen, are going to wind up asking if it is fair to take an assessment by the trustees of Medicare that says there is a $90 billion problem, and turn it, through political sophistry, into a $270 billion problem so that you can give a $245 billion tax cut. That is absolutely what this comes down to. This is a zero-sum game. This is a process of balancing the budget. And in their balanced budget, they are offering a $245 billion tax reduction to Americans. How do they get it? They do not pull it out of the sky. It has to be balanced against other items in the budget. And in order to find the room to balance the budget and provide the $245 billion tax cut, they give a $270 billion definition to a Medicare problem that the trustees themselves call an $89 billion problem. It is that simple. Take away the smoke, take away the mirrors, and take away the rhetoric. You cannot balance the budget with a $245 billion tax break without finding the money somewhere. And they find the money by taking it from seniors. Is that fair? They say to Americans they are giving every American family a tax break for having children--the $500 credit. But analysis will show that, too, is not only not fair, but it is not truthful because not every American family will get the tax credit because not every American family qualifies because of income to have an income tax reduction. Most American families pay their taxes--a large burden-- many, through the payroll tax. And because the tax credit is not refundable to them at the lower end of the income scale, they will not get the benefit. So not only do you have a skewed tax relief, so to speak, but you have a discrimination against the hard-working average taxpayer of America. But it is even worse than that, Mr. President. Because while they give a tax break of about $5,000-plus to the person earning more than $350,000 a year, they raise the taxes on the person earning less than $30,000 a year. That is an extraordinary definition of fairness. I do not know where you get that definition of fairness. The Medicare cuts themselves are going to be devastating, devastating. There are more and more post- World War II baby boomers who are reaching the age of 65, and the number of people paying taxes to pay for them is diminishing. Today you have an estimated four taxpayers supporting a Medicare part A beneficiary, four people supporting one. But when the baby boomers retire between the years 2010 and 2015 you are going to go down to about two people paying for each one of those on part A. The result of that with these cuts is going to be that you are going to have an overall population increase of 2 percent, but are you are going to have a 30-percent increase of people on Medicare looking for their retirement benefits under Medicare? The problem is under the cuts and the reductions of the total pot that will be made available by the Republicans, you are going to be having people come in at a 30-percent increase saying, ``Where are the benefits that I am due?'' And they are not going to have them. Mr. President, this is not fair. It is not sensible. And I hope that we will adopt the amendment of the Democrats to have a fair distribution of solving the problem. Mr. President, the Medicare and Medicaid cuts proposed by the Republicans hurt people and families. The Republican cuts eliminate jobs, and these Democratic amendments protect jobs. Republican cuts affect the quality of care for nursing home patients, and these Democratic amendments maintain care--for seniors, for people with disabilities, and for children while still containing costs. These Democratic amendments scale back tax breaks for the wealthy to help people in my State and around the country who are struggling to make ends meet. My Republican colleagues are offering a $270 billion solution--at least $160 billion more than is necessary to ensure the financial solvency of Medicare. We have been told by the Medicare trustees that there is a pending financial disaster that could result in the total collapse of the Medicare part A program unless changes are enacted. According to the trustees, the magnitude of the crisis is around $89 billion. The Republican solution is to make changes impacting both beneficiaries and providers that would save $270 billion--three times the amount necessary to fix the current financial crisis. It is important that people across America recognize that Medicare is faced with a short-term crisis that can be fixed without totally dismantling a program that has provided economic health security to millions of retired Americans since its inception. While I fully recognize that there is a financial crisis confronting Medicare, and believe it is probably somewhere beyond $89 billion, but substantially less than the Republican solution, the Gingrich solutions are anything but solutions. The solutions being put forth fail once again to take into consideration the changing composition of the over-65 population. For example, do the solutions being proposed really fit the acute and long- term care needs of current and future generations of retired Americans? With more and more post World War II so-called baby boomers beginning to reach age 65, the number of workers paying taxes will continue to decline, while the number of Medicare recipients continues to increase. Today, an estimated four taxpayers support a Medicare part a beneficiary. However, when the baby boomers retire between 2010 and 2015, the estimated number of taxpayers paying for each Medicare part a beneficiary will have dropped by two. Thus we will have gone from a 4-to-1 ratio to a 2-to-1 ratio in just a few years. By 2008, our overall population will increase by 2 percent, but our retired population will increase by 30 percent. The Medicare changes will, however, cause one additional problem--a reduction in health care employment and other jobs that indirectly benefit from the health care sector. Let us look at the impact on my State: Jim Howell of the Howell Group has recently issued a study that shows that the proposed combined cuts in Medicare and Medicaid of $452 billion will conservatively result in a $13 billion loss to the State over 7 years. Massachusetts could lose 71,000--71,000--health sector jobs and the indirect employment impact could result in $165,000 lost jobs. The hardest hit towns would be Boston, Brockton, Cambridge, Fall River, Farmingham, New Bedford, Salem, Springfield, and Worcester. The proposed $1 billion cut in funds for graduate medical education will have a devastating impact on institutions and it will hurt Massachusetts' knowledge-based economy by disrupting the network of medical schools, research institutions, health care providers, and biotech firms. The proposed cuts would result in aggregate personal income losses in the State of $2.1 billion. The health of seniors and children, and the loss of jobs at a time when working families are struggling to make ends meet is just too high a price to pay. The problems for Massachusetts are intensified when we examine the potential impact of the proposed cuts in Medicaid--the health care program for poor children disabled persons, and seniors. Under the Republican plan, Massachusetts would lose approximately $4.6 billion. With regard to children, one out of every three low-income who is currently receiving health insurance coverage from Medicaid is in jeopardy of losing their coverage. For elderly persons in Massachusetts, the impact is more severe. Currently, 75 percent of all patients in Massachusetts nursing homes are dependent upon Medicaid to help pay for the costs of nursing home care. Under the Republican plan, more than 25,000 seniors would lose their Medicaid eligibility by 2002. I believe the Republican response to the Medicare crisis can best be summed up as follows: it does not focus on the future of the overall program; it does not address the growing long-term care crisis facing Americans of all ages but particularly elderly Americans; and it does not address or take into consideration the impact such dramatic cuts will have on employment in the health care sector, and on those communities who have become dependent upon this sector as a means of fighting or deterring rising unemployment. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to proceed for such time as I might consume.

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, what is the legislative status at this point?

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I listened with interest to the comments of my friend from Minnesota, and I guess in a way as I listened to him I sort of felt sorry for Americans who try to follow this debate. It is going to be difficult because the rhetoric flies fast [[Page S 15564]] and furiously, and a lot of people evidently are going to have difficulty trying to figure out what is really true and what is not true. The Senator from Minnesota talked about the amount of taxes that were raised in 1993 and what a terrible thing it is the Democrats have perpetrated on the country. But the truth is--the truth, which often gets hidden in these debates--yes, taxes were raised in 1993, but only on 1 percent, the upper 1 percent of Americans, and that for 98 or 99 percent of most Americans taxes went down. The burden of the average working person went down in the United States. So when our Republican friends come to the floor and start lamenting the 1993 bill that gave this country a continued economic growth--I might add 7.5 million jobs added to the economy of this country in the last 3 or 3\1/2\ years compared with about 2.5 million during the entire 4 years of the Bush administration--that 1993 bill raised taxes only on the very wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, and yet our friends keep coming to the floor in defense of that 1 percent. And that is really what divides our parties at this point in time. Certainly, we are not divided by a desire to have a balanced budget because the vast majority of Democrats voted for a balanced budget this year. I voted for a balanced budget that will take place in 7 years. We did cut Medicare. We did cut Medicaid. But we did not turn around when the country has an extraordinary deficit problem and give back to people individually what amounts to a very small amount of money. I believe it is something like $1.69 a week that most people in America will get with this famous $500 tax credit that everybody is going to get, which incidentally does not go to everybody. The truth is that while our Republican friends talk about a $500 tax credit for every family in America, not every family in America will get that $500 credit because it is only a credit against income tax. The biggest tax that most Americans pay is the payroll tax. And for workers at the low end of the income scale, they are not going to get the benefit of that $500 income credit because it does not show up in their income tax. So it does not go to every family in America--another one of the deceptions in the rhetoric that people hear. We have heard a lot about how we are going to put taxes back in the pockets of Americans, but the CBO itself, which we keep hearing quoted by our Republican friends, will tell you that the Republican plan raises taxes on 49.5 percent of Americans. If you are earning $30,000 or less, you have a tax increase in the Republican reconciliation bill. For 17 million American families, a tax increase, an average tax increase of $352; for about 7 million families, if you have a family of two, it is about a $400 increase; for 4 million some families with one child it is again about a $410 increase, and for a family with no children, it is about a $300 increase. That is just the reality, a tax increase for $30,000 and less; a tax break for $350,000 and of over $5,600 a year. Now, the last time I looked, I really did not think that somebody earning over $350,000 a year really needed that $5,000 tax break this next year if it is at the expense of somebody earning $30,000 or less. Now, somehow in this country a fundamental notion of fairness has been distorted, and somehow, unfortunately, not enough Americans get the facts or the truth of what is happening. Mr. President, today I stood up with Senator John McCain of Arizona, Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and we offered some $60 billion of cuts that could be made in the budget that are based on fairness and common sense. One of them, for example, is this now infamous program called the Market Promotion Program. Now, we had a vote on that, and we lost. It does not mean we should not offer it and offer it and offer it until we finally win, as we did on the wool and mohair subsidy; as we finally won on the ALMR, the advanced liquid metal reactor; as we finally won on the supercollider, which the Senator from Arkansas and others fought so long to get rid of; as we finally won on the mink subsidy. Sometimes it takes time for people to understand the full measure of common sense the American people are asking us to exercise. But the fact is, the Market Promotion Program--how do you turn to the average American and say, ``We're going to ask you to pay more in your premiums in Medicare, we're going to cut working families off of Medicaid, we're going to cut school lunches and take away science research that produces more jobs for the future, but we're going to continue to let the Gallo Wine Co. get a subsidy from the Federal Government to sell its wine abroad, we're going to continue to let Japanese-made underwear, that happens to be made with American cotton, be advertised abroad, we're going to continue to allow major companies like McDonalds to be able to sell their products even though they make money''? They all make money. We are going to tell a senior citizen on a fixed income, ``You pay more, but we're going to help these companies that are making millions of dollars to sell their products.'' It does not make sense. I am not saying that in an ideal world I would not love to help our companies sell abroad, but we are living in a very tough world now where the average family in America, on a daily basis, is being asked to make tough decisions. ``Can I buy clothing for my family? Can I afford to take a vacation? Can I send my kid to even the parochial school where there may be a $4,000 or $5,000 tuition, let alone to a private school''? There is not a parent in America who does not feel the implosion of the school system around them, who is struggling to get their kid the best education possible. And these folks know that on a daily basis they are making decisions that are based on what they can afford and what they must get for their survival and for their kids' future. We ought to be making the same decisions here in Washington. What do we need? What must we provide for the American people? Must we provide a market promotion program when we are cutting people from a hot lunch that might be the only meal they get a day that is hot? Must we provide the Gallo Co. with an additional subsidy to sell wine at a time when we are asking senior citizens on a fixed income to tighten their belt and pick up more of the cost of absolutely predictable medical costs or in a time when we are telling certain people that they have to sell their home and go into poverty in order to qualify for the health care that they may need? It just does not make sense. You know, we woke up this morning to the umpteenth statistic of violence in the city of Washington. A young diplomat's son, sitting on the doorsteps of his home on Massachusetts Avenue, blown away, dead. That is an act of repetition that occurs in this city every day. And it occurs in New York, in Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, you name the city. And it does not have to be a big city. All over this country today the acts of random violence are increased. And where are the police? Where are the police? That is something we must do in America, is put more police on the streets. But instead we are going to build B-2 bombers. Even though the Pentagon does not want the B-2 bombers, even though the Pentagon never submitted a request for the B-2 bombers, even though Boris Yeltsin and President Clinton are meeting, talking about the cooperation of former Soviet troops now Russian troops in Bosnia. We are building B-2 bombers. For what threat? For what reason? The military did not even ask for an additional $6 or $7 billion. But this budget provides it, and provides it even while they are asking all these folks below $30,000 and all these other folks to tighten their belt. Mr. President, it does not make sense. And in the next hours, as we debate this, and in next days as Americans come to confront the realities of this budget, America is going to understand it does not make sense. Now, I keep hearing my colleagues say, ``Well, what do you guys want to do? You just want to continue the deficit? You just want to spend more money? You just want to build up the debt of this country?'' The answer is no. We voted this year for a balanced budget in 7 years, but we did not do it at the expense of asking education costs to rise, we did not do it at the expense of trying to make life miserable for those for whom it is already hard enough to find a job and break out of poverty. We did it by fairly deciding [[Page S 15565]] that you should not give this enormous tax cut to those who least need it at a time when you are complaining about a deficit and the debt of this Nation. The Wall Street Journal the other day had an article that showed that even under CBO's own analysis, this ``reconciliation package,'' as it is known, will add to the debt of this country over the next 7 years, add to the debt service of the country, and that it will, indeed, raise taxes on people. Jack Kemp came before the Small Business Committee just last week, and he said, ``I hope you guys''--referring to those in the committee-- ``will not cut the earned-income tax credit, because if you do, that is a tax increase.'' Ronald Reagan called the earned-income tax credit the greatest antipoverty program, profamily program in this country. What is happening in the next hours is that $43 billion will be cut from the earned-income tax credit which will make it harder for people at the low end of the income scale to do what so many people on the other side of the aisle talk about, going to work, making work pay, living out the values of work, and being able to break out of poverty. Here we are taking this extraordinary program that Republicans and Democrats together voted to support in the past years, and cutting it. Mr. President, in the next few hours, in the next 2 days of debate and 1 day of just rapid-fire voting, because of the situation the Senate finds itself in, we are going to be debating on what I call the antivision, the counter reform 1995 reconciliation act. I know one thing in the midst of this debate, Mr. President. The American people want to put this country back on track. They want, and they deserve, a balanced budget. They want, and they deserve, a reduction in the deficit. But they also want us to exercise common sense in a way that is fair and that talks and thinks about the future of this country. What began in January of 1995 as an effort to work on a bipartisan basis to achieve change, Mr. President, has regrettably turned into a very partisan war of rhetoric and, I think, even some deception. Why do I say ``deception?'' Because under the guise of saving the Medicare Program, we have colleagues who have basically misled the public by calling for a massive change to Medicare that will increase the out-of- pocket costs to seniors. It will result in hundreds of thousands of health care jobs lost. And it will also change the fundamental relationship of seniors to their health care delivery system, while at the same time telling them they are going to get more money. Mr. President, what is the deception in that? Let me be very frank, very straightforward. The deception is that all seniors know, because they also listen to the trustees, that the trustees did not describe a $270 billion problem. The trustees described a $90-billion problem. I agree there is a $90- billion problem. But everybody understands that the real deception here is the effort to take a $90-billion problem and turn it into a $270- billion solution so that you can give a tax cut to the folks who least need it. I might add that one of the great acts in turning the table topsy- turvy was last year with Harry and Louise. Remember how everybody argued about, ``Gosh, we don't want the Government telling you what to do, and we don't want people to have choice taken away.'' And here, all of a sudden, is a formulation for Medicare that is the Government telling people what to do and narrowing their choices by requiring that they go into a certain kind of managed care as the only means of providing the savings that they are providing. What is equally egregious is, we keep hearing people say, ``We're not cutting Medicare; we're just slowing the rate of growth. It is still going to grow. There is still going to be a fixed amount of money additionally that everybody is going to get each year.'' So with that sort of great statement, that bond, that verbal bond, everybody is supposed to feel good: ``Wow, I'm going to get an additional $2,000 over the next 7 years.'' But the difference is, Mr. President, and everybody knows it, when you have a fixed amount of budget available and the costs of Medicare are going up at a fairly steady rate, even if you diminish that rate to what most people would accept as a reasonable rate of increase, the population is growing, the population of seniors in America is growing at a predictable rate. So you take this fixed pot of money, say to everybody, that fixed pot of money, even growing a little bit, is going to have to take care of the same costs as it did the year before, even though the costs are increasing, and it is going to have to do it for a larger population. Ask anybody in elementary math, any school in America and even with the problems we have in math in America, I believe they will understand that with a fixed amount of money, a growing population, increased costs, you have a problem in delivering the same level of care. That is why they want to take the standards off the nursing homes, because if you take the standards off the nursing homes, people can deliver nursing care without a registered nurse. We can have a turning back to the time when people were strapped in wheel chairs and where they were just, basically, drugged out as a means of taking care of people. We can step back, and that may be the antivision that a lot of our friends are expressing here. It is certainly a form of deception. Mr. President, at a time when this country is desperately in need of serious tax simplification, a tax simplification that really cuts tax rates for all Americans and American businesses, the Republicans are increasing taxes on the middle class and increasing the number of loopholes for business, contrary to the very reform effort that we tried to put in place in 1986. The Republican antivision, counterreform, tax-and-spend legislation sends a clear and unequivocal message to middle-income Americans across this Nation, which is: ``You're really not that important.'' How else can you explain to people who earn $30,000 a year, who comprise just about 50 percent of the people in this country, why it is that their taxes are going to go up? Nowhere in the legislation that will come to the floor tomorrow is there a demonstrated commitment to the 2 million Americans who work slightly at or above the minimum wage. Nowhere is there a clear commitment to continued environmental cleanup and the progress that we have made over the last 25 years, and for the working mothers of this country who cut the strings of welfare dependence and sought and secured employment. This legislation is saying to them that it is going to remain silent and even absent from helping them by proposing an increase in the minimum wage that has gone down now to a 40-year low level. For middle- class families that have an aging parent living in a nursing home, we may now find that those young people who once thought that their mothers and fathers were taken care of are now going to help them with the costs of care. And having already bankrupted the elderly nursing home resident because of the requirements we have, we are going to place additional burdens on their children. In contrast to that, the wealthiest Americans will reap a substantial bonus from this legislation. The richest 12 percent--and I do not want to get into a class distinction here, but fair is fair and we have to measure the notion of fairness. The fact is that at the upper level of the income scale, the upper 12 percent are going to receive a whopping 48 percent of the tax benefits, and people with annual incomes greater than $200,000 are going to find their taxes decreased by over $3,400, and the 13 million families that earn more than $100,000 annually are going to enjoy a new tax break of $1,138. I do not know how you explain that when the other people are paying more taxes. I do not know anybody who can argue that that is a sensible idea of tax equity or tax fairness. In the end, if you look at the various breaks that are continued and loopholes that are created, there is, in this reconciliation bill a new definition of welfare reform for those who are at the upper end of the scale, and I think it is part of a deception, or a counterreform, if you will, that literally turns back the clock to the time before we learned [[Page S 15566]] in this country that you needed to have a Government that was willing to respond and make a difference in people's lives. It strips away those protections that were developed through harsh and bitter experiences, through the Depression years and through the long years prior to the Depression where we began to understand what abject poverty and racism did to the Nation. We learned that you needed a response. All we hear about is the failure of that response, even though, in fact, most people who dispassionately and apolitically analyze it will tell you that it is not that so many of those things have failed, it is rather that they have not been permitted to be completed or to go to fruition. Maybe this is what the real Contract With America is all about, Mr. President, creating a lesser America for those who are struggling at the middle and lower end of the scale and then increasing privilege for the few. The statistics on what has happened to income in the last 13 years dramatize this. From 1940 to 1950, 1950 to 1960, 1960 to 1970, 1970 to 1980, everybody in this country saw their income grow together. If you were at the lowest end of the income scale, the lowest 20 percent of Americans during that period of time, your income went up in the area of 138 percent every 10 years. If you were in the upper end of the income scale, your income went up in the area of 98 percent. That is not a bad balance. But from 1980 to 1993, the income of the lowest 20 percent of workers went down. Over a 13-year period, the income of the lowest 20 percent of Americans went down in the area of 17 percent. The next 20 percent, their income went down in the area of 4 percent. The middle two stayed the same, but the top quintile of America went up in the area of 105 percent. That really is the story of what has happened in this country in the last 13 years. Not very long ago, Speaker Gingrich talked about creating an ``opportunity society,'' as he called it--a society where problems would be turned into opportunities, where Americans of all ages, ethnic, or racial backgrounds would be afforded equal opportunity. Well, Mr. President, that rhetoric should be measured against the reconciliation bill we will debate in the next hours--a reconciliation bill where we see spending on middle income and average Americans decrease, where we see an increase of taxes on the middle class, an opportunity society that has really been left to the ``haves,'' and for those who have not, the opportunity is clearly going to continue to escape their grasp. Ironically, the choices made in this budget make some very, very strange and even bewildering opportunities. I do not think anybody wants the opportunity to drink dirty water. But for the first time in 5 or 6 years, the Federal share of helping Boston clean up its harbor and relieve the rates--what are now the highest rates of water in the country--is going to be diminished--diminished even from what President Bush was willing to give it. I do not know anybody who wants the opportunity to go to school without books or even be able to go to a decent school at all. But the chapter 1 education assistance and the Goals 2000 is going to be stripped away. I do not know anybody who thinks it is an opportunity to eat contaminated meat, but we saw that proposed in the course of this last few months. And even the taking of unsafe medicines--is that an opportunity? So how do our Republican colleagues come to the floor and tell the American people that opportunity means cutting cops on the streets, when children are being shot in cold blood on some of the streets of America. How do they say it is an opportunity when they raise $43 billion in taxes on low-income working Americans, who are struggling to make ends meet on what Ronald Reagan called the best antipoverty, profamily program in America and give a $245 billion tax break to the wealthiest Americans while increasing the national debt in the process? How is it an opportunity for students when we cut $11 billion from student loans and then increase the amount of taxes their parents are going to have to pay? In fact, Mr. President, over the course of the next 7 years, this reconciliation bill is going to now end the direct loan program for maybe 50 percent of the schools in this country that have entered into that program in the last few years. It is going to raise the burden on the average American borrowing money in order to send their kids to school and put that money through the tax benefit in the hands of the banks and the lenders even though it has been one of the most successful door openings to the information age that we ever could have anticipated. What kind of opportunity is it when this budget cuts $182 billion from Medicaid, but leaves intact an $11 billion international space program? What kind of opportunity do seniors get when our Republicans colleagues have chosen to cut $270 billion from Medicare and give the Defense Department a $6 billion bonus--money that it did not even request? What do I tell the people of Massachusetts when, if these Medicare cuts hold, we lose 129,000 health service jobs, when the State loses 4 percent across the board in general fund spending and has to make up for the $1.3 billion loss in Federal aid. When seniors in Massachusetts have to pay $1,000 more per year for Medicare and the interest on student loans for 4 years of college goes up $3,000? What do you say about opportunity in the face of the largest income earners in America getting a tax break? I was here in 1986, Mr. President, when we voted for the biggest tax decrease in the history of the country. We took the rates down to 28 percent and, for a few people in the bubble, 33 percent. We have been giving tax breaks to all Americans across the board. But in the face of these other reductions, it is unconscionable to suggest that that represents a definition of opportunity. Mr. President, I really think there is a reform agenda which we could have embraced in a bipartisan way, and I reemphasize that there are many of us on both sides of the aisle that I know could have found a common middle ground here, if politics and ideology and hot-button pushing did not put such a premium on the agenda of the House and on some who were elected in 1994. It seems to me that what we are seeing here is a program that, not intentionally--although, in some I am not sure--turns out to be anticommunity, even antipeople, certainly anticommon sense, in the context of the real agenda of this country. When those who espouse that agenda choose not to fund a successful program like YouthBuild in Boston--when they strip youth employment opportunities and educational funds that can keep kids in school or give kids structure in their lives--that disempowers communities and prevents people from helping themselves. We hear an awful lot of talk in the U.S. Senate about values, and we hear a lot of talk about family; but the truth is, Mr. President, that 36 percent of all the children in America today are born out of wedlock. The truth is that you can go into any community in America today and find kids who talk with a level of anger and alienation unlike anything any of us have ever known historically. The truth is that these are kids who do not have contact with church or school or parents. That is why they are in trouble. Now, we can talk about values all we want. But if somebody does not have some contact with that child, ages 9 to 16, where are the values going to come from? Most of us would come to the floor and extol the virtues of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownies, boys and girls clubs, YWCA's, YMCA's. But the truth is that, for the vast majority of the children in this country, they are just not available. Who is going to provide the structure? Or are we going to wait until we are forced to spend $50,000 a year to incarcerate that new felon? I keep hearing my colleagues perpetuate one of the great misstatements and myths of American politics today. They sweep every one of these efforts to reach children under the same rug. They brand it all with one great sweeping brush and say, ``The liberal programs of the past failed.'' But the truth is, Mr. President, that I can show you thousands of young people across this country who are working at jobs today, who are graduating from college today because one of these [[Page S 15567]] entities intervened in their life, whether it was a City Year, YouthBuild, or a host of other entities. I know a young man who graduated--I do not know him not personally, but I know of him--and I have seen his curricula and history, in the context of YouthBuild, extolled for having graduated from Rutgers this past year. He came out of the streets through a YouthBuild program and saved his opportunity. I know a young woman currently working as a project manager on the Boston third harbor tunnel project in Boston. She came out of gangs and drug use and a prison record, or at least a court-associated record. By virtue of this program that entered her life where there was no parent, where there was no affirmation, she got it from the friends that joined her in this effort to save their lives. Much of that is being done away with, with this effort by the Republicans. There are many of these efforts that are enormously successful across the country, Mr. President, and we should not have to fight for basic support to have a successful program to give some of these kids a chance. I think that what we need is a positive vision for a truly progressive revolution in this country that reforms the Government, and not just a negative vision that is guaranteed to take us back to darker times. The right choice is to empower communities to come together to do what needs to be done and to help them do it. I am not in favor, nor am I coming to the floor, to advocate that we should stay with the old programs that have failed. I am not even coming to the floor to advocate this ought to all come from Washington. It should not, Mr. President. I am not even advocating Government programs. I am advocating a new partnership between the Federal capacity to help distribute some resources and do it in an administratively cheap way that gets that money to those nongovernmental entities, to the nonprofit entities by the thousands that are out there, struggling to make a difference in the lives of young people. But we do not do that, not in this piece of legislation, even with this extraordinary opportunity to really create a blueprint for the future of this country. I think we ought to be encouraging partnerships for community progress all across the country between the Government and the private sector and churches and schools and community groups. We should rely on the community groups and on those local entities and on the local people to help define those efforts. One thing I know, Mr. President, when you have only 82 kids in a YouthBuild program in Boston and 400 kids on the waiting list, it is unconscionable to be continuing some of these other subsidies in giving tax breaks when we could be saving some of those 400 kids and providing the same kind of self-help program that truly embodies the notion of giving people values. Mr. President, the people in this country are really sick and tired of the lack of common sense that emanates from Washington. They are tired of the gamesmanship. They are tired of the rhetoric that comes off of this floor. It is hard. I must say I listened to C-SPAN a couple nights ago and I said, ``God, I really hope I do not sound like that,'' because the words just sort of bounce around. They sometimes have no real connection to the lives of the people that we were sent here to represent. There is more finger pointing and more gamesmanship. Sadly, we have arrived at a point where we have this extraordinarily important budget, and truly it can be said that there has been no real outreach, no real effort to try to find a bipartisan approach. We are implementing the Contract With America. We are implementing an agenda that was set in a campaign document, a document that does not even mention the word ``children.'' The word ``children'' does not appear in this contract. The words ``health care'' do not appear in this contract. ``Environment'' does not appear in the contract except under the concept of regulatory reform. Most importantly, those things that really matter to people, which is how am I going to get a job? How am I going to raise my income for the additional work I am putting in on a daily basis? That is the primary thing that most Americans are concerned about. People want to know whether or not they will have their kids be able to have an adequate enough education to be able to get that kind of job. They want to know whether or not they will be able to go home at night and literally not be so exhausted and burned out and frazzled that they can spend some time with a child, truly imparting values, and that they can have time for something we used to call quality of life. I think the people of this country want us to move inexorably to a stronger, richer, safer, better, and saner America for everyone-- everyone--on a fair basis. They want to fix what is wrong. They want to keep what is right. There is a lot that is right. Unfortunately, in this budget we are not going to have the opportunity to really present those choices to the American people. I am convinced that most Americans very quickly will understand what is fair and what is real and what is not. The American people believe unquestionably in their hearts that we have not been wrong to do what both Republicans and Democrats joined together in doing in the last years. Republicans joined with Democrats to guarantee that those who work at the low end of the scale of America have a reasonable wage. That we did together. They joined together to guarantee that we would put 100,000 cops on the streets of America. And yet here we are with a proposal that blocks it all into a grant, makes those cops compete with floodlights for prisons, computers for the precinct, new cruisers, all the other things--except that we so desperately need cops on every street in this country. Mr. President, the budget debate that we will embark on in the next hours really should not be so honed in political ideology or 30-second sound bites. I think it really ought to be a much more thoughtful discussion to the American who is listening and who wants to really consider how we will build the future of this country. It ought to be a debate based on facts, not on distortions and side bars and fictions but really on the facts. The implacable and irrefutable facts about where we are heading in terms of income and jobs, violence, education, environmental cleanup, and the other things that make up the quality of life. Mr. President, I think it is a discussion that should not be limited in this arbitrary 20-hour way of jamming all of the legislative effort and the 1,000 pages that most people have not even had time to read. The tax provisions contained in this legislation certainly require a great deal more time and exposure in order to really flesh out their fairness and also their long-term impact on the economy of this country. Maybe it is time we changed our rules, Mr. President, by voting to recommit the legislation of the Budget Committee to ensure that a tax- writing committee has had sufficient time to explore and debate all the issues not addressed, including real tax reform and simplification. This legislation leaves us with many, many questions, Mr. President. Why is it that we could not have used this as a great opportunity to try to make a stronger set of choices for the American people? Why could we not have lowered the tax rates for lower-income Americans and been fairer in the distribution at the upper end? Why could we not have used this as a means of debating how we will break people out of that lower end cycle, rather than sending them back into it by doing away with the earned income tax credit. Why could we not have used this to have a stronger real fix for the problem of the inequity of the delivery of health care in the country and the problem of the distribution of resources and the increasing numbers of Americans who have no coverage at all? Why could we not have spent the time on the floor really expressing the stronger vision of where it is that we are headed. I know my colleagues will come to the floor and they will say the Senator has it all wrong. What we are going to do here is we are going to balance the budget. We are going to end this cycle of spending. [[Page S 15568]] I agree, Mr. President. Balancing the budget is good for America, and reducing this deficit is good for America. That is not the issue. That is not what is at stake here because we are going to do that. The question is, how are we going to do it? Are we going to do it fixated only on the fiscal deficit, or are we also going to think about the spiritual, moral, cultural deficit in this country? Are we also going to think about the investment deficit in this country? You do not get from here to there in America on an old FAA computer system and call it safe. You do not get from here to there in America on trains that are predestined to crash because we do not invest enough in safety measures for our country. You do not get from here to there in America on roads that were not built in the National Highway System with the commitment of Federal participation. There are hundreds of examples, where responsible action at the Federal level has improved the capacity of this country to provide for its people and to help people provide for themselves. I am absolutely one who accepts the notion that we have to rethink how we deliver services. I am prepared to shrink the size of Washington. In fact we have been doing that. We will soon have around 200,000 fewer bureaucrats. It is the smallest Government we had since Jack Kennedy was President of the United States. You would not know that from listening to our colleagues. We have had 3 straight years of deficit reduction. And now we will move on to balance the budget, which is what we ought to do. But Americans are going to ask whether, as we did this, we did it sensibly; whether it is fair; whether we had a vision for what we want the future to be. Americans are going to ask whether or not this document represents an antivision, or a vision. I am confident that, because it represents an antivision, the President of the United States will ultimately veto it, because it is not bipartisan, because it is not reflective of the higher plane of vision of what this country ought to be and what we want it to be. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I do not want my vote for final passage of H.R. 927, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act to be misunderstood. I was strongly opposed to the centerpiece of the legislation--title III. This title would have altered 45 years of international and domestic law and practice with respect to the resolution of claims resulting from the expropriation of U.S. property abroad. I supported efforts to ensure that that title was deleted from the bill. I will oppose any conference report that restores this title or adds draconian provisions. I will join with my colleagues in utilizing all parliamentary procedures to ensure that a conference report containing what was title III is not enacted into law.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, in these difficult budgetary times we not only [[Page S 15036]] have a fiscal deficit that we must address, but we also have a savings deficit in this country that requires creative and innovative approaches to helping people save and plan for their retirements. That is why I am offering the Savings and Investment Incentive Act of 1995 which will expand deductible IRA's, create a special nondeductible IRA program, allow penalty-free withdrawals for specific reasons; and it appeals to our sense of fairness by targeting the middle class. What does this mean? It means that any individual who is not an active participant in a an employee-sponsored plan would be eligible for a deductible IRA, regardless of income. It means that income levels for participants in the IRA program would be doubled for those who participate in employer-provided pension plans. It means that all middle-income Americans who earn up to $50,000, and couples who earn up to $80,000, indexed for inflation, could fully deduct IRA contributions. It means that people eligible for traditional IRAs could now set up a special IRA that would provide a new saving vehicle that encourages middle-income Americans to save by allowing an incentive tax-free withdrawal without draining the Treasury. I did cosponsor, along with 60 of my colleagues, a more ambitious proposal authored by my friend from Delaware, Senator Roth, and my friend from Louisiana, Senator Breaux, but, given our budgetary constraints, I respectfully suggest that this bill is, perhaps, more realistic. While contributions to the new special IRA's, under this proposal, would not be deductible, if funds remain in the account for at least 5 years withdrawals would be tax free. Individuals in the upper end of the new income brackets would be able to convert balances in their traditional deductible IRA accounts to the ``Special IRA'' accounts without being subject to penalty. The amount transferred from the existing contribution-deductible IRA to the special IRA would be subject to ordinary income tax in the year of the transfer. But, this legislation recognizes people's real needs in the real world. Under this plan withdrawals of earnings for the ``Special IRA's'' within 5 years would be subject to ordinary income tax and a 10-percent penalty unless the withdrawals are for education expenses, a first-time home purchase, unemployment, or medical care. Mr. President, we need to invest more. We need to save more. We need to be fair and recognize the difficult economic times that middle-class Americans are suffering. We need to help them save for their future and find innovative creative ways to do it. This bill has the approval of the Treasury Department and does everything the Roth-Breaux ``Super-IRA'' proposal does in a way that does not inflate the deficit. I believe, Mr. President, that the Savings and Investment Incentive Act of 1995 is a moderate, fair, common-sense approach that doubles the income levels for participation; allows non penalty deductions for a variety of real life situations; and it will work for working Americans without busting the Treasury. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill appear in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, in these difficult budgetary times we not only [[Page S 15036]] have a fiscal deficit that we must address, but we also have a savings deficit in this country that requires creative and innovative approaches to helping people save and plan for their retirements. That is why I am offering the Savings and Investment Incentive Act of 1995 which will expand deductible IRA's, create a special nondeductible IRA program, allow penalty-free withdrawals for specific reasons; and it appeals to our sense of fairness by targeting the middle class. What does this mean? It means that any individual who is not an active participant in a an employee-sponsored plan would be eligible for a deductible IRA, regardless of income. It means that income levels for participants in the IRA program would be doubled for those who participate in employer-provided pension plans. It means that all middle-income Americans who earn up to $50,000, and couples who earn up to $80,000, indexed for inflation, could fully deduct IRA contributions. It means that people eligible for traditional IRAs could now set up a special IRA that would provide a new saving vehicle that encourages middle-income Americans to save by allowing an incentive tax-free withdrawal without draining the Treasury. I did cosponsor, along with 60 of my colleagues, a more ambitious proposal authored by my friend from Delaware, Senator Roth, and my friend from Louisiana, Senator Breaux, but, given our budgetary constraints, I respectfully suggest that this bill is, perhaps, more realistic. While contributions to the new special IRA's, under this proposal, would not be deductible, if funds remain in the account for at least 5 years withdrawals would be tax free. Individuals in the upper end of the new income brackets would be able to convert balances in their traditional deductible IRA accounts to the ``Special IRA'' accounts without being subject to penalty. The amount transferred from the existing contribution-deductible IRA to the special IRA would be subject to ordinary income tax in the year of the transfer. But, this legislation recognizes people's real needs in the real world. Under this plan withdrawals of earnings for the ``Special IRA's'' within 5 years would be subject to ordinary income tax and a 10-percent penalty unless the withdrawals are for education expenses, a first-time home purchase, unemployment, or medical care. Mr. President, we need to invest more. We need to save more. We need to be fair and recognize the difficult economic times that middle-class Americans are suffering. We need to help them save for their future and find innovative creative ways to do it. This bill has the approval of the Treasury Department and does everything the Roth-Breaux ``Super-IRA'' proposal does in a way that does not inflate the deficit. I believe, Mr. President, that the Savings and Investment Incentive Act of 1995 is a moderate, fair, common-sense approach that doubles the income levels for participation; allows non penalty deductions for a variety of real life situations; and it will work for working Americans without busting the Treasury. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill appear in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I introduce a ``Budget Buster Bill'' that strips more than $90 billion from the budget and cuts 40 programs which I consider to be pointless, wasteful, antiquated, or just plain silly. Our priority is people not ``pork'' or special interests, and this proposal recognizes the need to cut while at the same time understanding the need to invest in those things that bring this Nation its greatest return. I know that the budget debate is philosophically driven, and that there are diametrically opposed positions on the legitimate role of government. But no matter where one falls on the political spectrum, it behooves us to point to specific savings that cross philosophical lines which can and should be made. We came to our senses last week, and in a display of commonsense bipartisanship, we overwhelmingly passed an amendment that cut the mink subsidy. There are other similar programs that we should cut, and this bill cuts them. It cuts $11 billion for the space station. It cuts $10 billion from defense spending. It saves $360 million by reducing the number of political appointees in the Federal Government; and it cuts 37 other programs. I know that this bill, in and of itself, won't balance the budget, but it is one Senator's commonsense effort to answer the question, ``if you really want to cut the budget, what would you cut and how would you do it?'' Mr. President, there is no magic in this bill, but there is a healthy dose of common sense that seems to be sorely lacking in the ideologically driven budget debate that is speaking to the activist extremes and ignoring the silent middle. Despite the fact that a huge portion of the public has said they don't like the way we do business; despite the fact that we talk about change but rarely accomplish it; despite the fact that we claim to want bipartisanship and avoid politics as usual, Congress and the President together are willfully moving down a road that is guaranteed to leave most Americans questioning the degree to which people here are in touch. I find that a profoundly disturbing direction, and I find it contrary to all of the things that people are asking us to try to do. People want us to behave like adults down here. They want an assurance that critical services are not going to be made the poker chips of political gamesmanship. The point is that there are some basic needs that this country faces and, to the best of my knowledge, most Americans think about having a job and raising their paychecks sufficiently that they have quality of life to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. And most people think that the real concerns they express about making sure their kids have the best education in the world, and that they can walk through a neighborhood that is safe to get to a school that is safe when they get there. People are concerned about the quality of the education that they're going to get in that school. And yet, the debate in this country has been dominated by the return of a contribution to a campaign from a Republican gay person; the symbolic issue of English as our national language--which it is and ought to be; a constitutional amendment to protect the flag. These truly are not the paramount concerns of Americans but more of the traditional symbols of politics that are beginning to make people question the entire political process. Americans want to know if we're going to do the job. And the job we were sent here to do is to produce a budget by the end of this month. Rather than truly working on that budget, we are engaged in a charade where we're going to pass a continuing resolution and a series of appropriation bills without a true legislative effort but with one party ordained to march in lock step to refuse any legislative proposals that might improve it. I believe that is an unacceptable way to do business and an avoidance of our responsibility. Frankly, it is time we put the interests of the Nation first, get off the partisan track, and put America back on track. Mr. President, this is a debate about economic fairness. It is about what we believe in and what we stand for as a nation. It's about the creation and preservation of jobs. It's a debate not about class warfare--rich against poor--but about the working class and how we can legislate in their interests for their future. It's a debate about commitment to family, about realistic tax policy, about access to education, and investments in our future. It's about addressing the three deficits we face that I have mentioned many times on this floor: the fiscal deficit, the investment deficit, and the spiritual deficit. I believe that this debate is fundamentally about how we can grow as an economy, a nation, and a people, and about what the proper role and size of the Federal Government should be. For my part, any consensus on the budget must recognize four principles: First that we will not compromise our commitment to education, to jobs, to working families, and to senior citizens struggling to make ends meet; that we will not dis-invest in our economic, social, and cultural infrastructure; that we will not dis- invest in necessary technologies and science; and that we will not cut taxes unless and until we say to working Americans that there will be an increase in the minimum wage. I believe the cuts I am proposing and the bipartisan, commonsense direction in which they take us is in our best interest.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I come to the floor of the Senate today to convey my thoughts on the closing of the fabled Boston Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. To almost all of my constituents in Massachusetts, the Boston Garden represents the best in the world of sports. Many championship battles have been waged within the hallowed walls of this magnificent structure. Some were lost, most were won, but all are captured forever in the hearts and minds of the legions of Boston sports fans. Just ask any hockey player from Northeastern University, Boston College, Harvard University or Boston University what the Boston Garden means to them and you will hear war stories about two Mondays every February where seasons are made or broken during the Beanpot Championship. Just ask any of the high school athletes, whose teams were good enough to persevere through endless qualifying playoff rounds in order to play for a league championship on the Boston Bruins' ice or the Celtics' parquet floor, what the Boston Garden means to them and you will hear innumerable accounts of a dream come true. Just ask the scores of everyday people, who file into the Garden to sit together knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow, what the Boston Garden means to them, and you will hear recollections of rumors, myths, legends, and lore. Gallery gods, leprechauns, ghosts, and other beings are rumored to inhabit the Garden and wreak havoc with the fate of visiting, unfriendly teams. Some say they are responsible for turning up the heat on the L.A. Lakers and trying to fog-out and eventually powering down the Edmonton Oilers. Others claim they are to be credited with the infamous dead spots in the parquet and the impossible bounces of the puck off the boards. Other teams feared coming to the Garden. They declared it archaic and decrepid with abysmal accommodations and playing conditions. But Boston fans know the truth, they feared coming to the Garden because they hated to lose. Legends abound in the Boston Garden, and historical significance seemingly is a basic element of every event that has taken place there. On election night in 1960, then-Senator John Kennedy delivered his first campaign address in the city of Boston at the Garden. An estimated 1 million people flocked to the area surrounding the Garden and a precious few 25,000 were fortunate enough to be inside to hear his words. Many other great politicians of this century have addressed [[Page S 14703]] the people of Boston from a platform in Boston Garden. President Eisenhower, Horace Taft, Mayor James Curley, Gov. Thomas Dewey, and Winston Churchill are just a few who have contributed to the Garden's political lore. I could stand here and talk for days on the meaning of the Boston Garden and the tumultuous history it has enjoyed. I could recall the many games I have attended and rallies I have witnessed. There are many things worth mentioning, but I am certain I would be unable to recall them all. Tonight, in Boston, the people will re-live all of these and other memories in a ceremony full of history and celebration designed to mark the closing of one of the greatest venues in America. ``Havlicek stole the ball * * *, ``Sanderson to Orr * * *, ``Bird for three * * *, ``Penalty--O'Reilly, ``Russell with a block, ``Esposito shoots, scores! ``DJ steals, over to Bird, Good!, ``Cheevers stones him, ``Cousy tricky dribbles, lays it in.'' The voices of the past catalogue the great moments in a history soon to be turned over to a new building and a new era of sports in Boston. As the lights dim for the final time, echoes will resound through the city and people will think of their fondest memories of the Garden and celebrate the great times enjoyed by those who were there, or watching, or listening, when great things happened.