Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. Let me finish my statement. When the President is out there using Rosy to cover up what is a truly deficient budget that does not balance in the face of the tough decisions that this Congress is making now, it raises that specter of deceit that has been going on with Presidents for a long, long time to a new level. That is why this amendment is on the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Rosy is not unique among Democrats and Republicans in the White House. She has been a constant partner of Presidents for a long time. The unfortunate part is this is the first time that a Congress has come forward with a true balanced budget without Rosy, and what we are doing is very serious business and what the President----

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is correct, and that is why this amendment is here. If the President was not out running around saying that he has a balanced budget and he has a budget plan and the Democratic National Committee--by the way, this Democratic National Committee spot was not 3 months ago, 4 months ago, it was this weekend--this weekend. In the face of this, in the face of the knowledge that the Congressional Budget Office says this plan does not balance, does not deter the Democratic National Committee from running around lying to the American public that it does balance, and it does not. You have the Democratic leader who, after the President introduced his second budget that said balanced, when the Congressional Budget Office came out and said it did not, the Democratic leader said the President should use CBO numbers. Now you have the Democratic leader criticizing the President saying, ``Use the right numbers, don't cook the numbers.'' And yet the Democratic National Committee, in the middle of this Titanic struggle to balance the budget, is going out there trying to fool the American public, suggesting the President has a balanced budget plan.

Mr. SANTORUM. As the Senator from Arizona knows very well, the President broke his promise. He broke his promise that he made to the Congress in 1993 when he came to the joint session of Congress in his first speech before the Congress, and he stood up and said that we will use a common set of numbers, we will use the Congressional Budget Office numbers so we are working with the same numbers, so there are not going to be any games on wishing away the problems. He offered this budget using OMB numbers, the Office of Management and Budget within the White House, not the Congressional Budget Office up here on the Hill that we are bound to use. The Congressional Budget Office is more conservative. They have more pessimistic assumptions. And if you look at the history of budgets and the projections of balancing, I am sure there are a lot of folks who are listening here who remember Congress after Congress saying, ``We'll balance the budget in a few years; we'll get to it; we'll get to it,'' and projecting rosy scenarios out of the White House. The fact of the matter is, we want to take a conservative approach, and if we are wrong, what is the downside if we are wrong? We end up with a surplus, such a horrible thing to have. If the Office of Management and Budget is wrong and their projections are too rosy, what happens? We end up with a pretty good size deficit, that is the problem. So I suggest it is better to err and be cautious, as we are here in the Congressional Budget Office using these numbers, than it is to go out and wish away the problem like the President has done.

Mr. SANTORUM. I do not see anyone else seeking time.

Mr. SANTORUM. The Senator from Arizona again is exactly correct. What the President has trumpeted across this land and the Democratic National Committee has begun to run ads suggesting, is that the President has a balanced budget. No, he does not. He does not have any specifics. In fact, the entire package the President submitted back in June of this year was some 10 pages, 10 pages of broad outlines as to how you would accomplish it; no specifics, no itemized reductions, no specific plans on how to reform Medicare, no specific plans on how to reform Medicaid, no specific plans on how he is going to adopt his tax cuts, no specific plans on how he is going to increase education spending, which he says he wants to do. All of it is sort of vague, general numbers without the kind of detail that we are forced, and should be required, frankly, to produce here in a budget reconciliation package. We have come forward with the specifics. And, as you know, when you put forward specifics, you have a lot more to shoot at. In fact, I think the reconciliation package is a pretty sizable document, a pretty voluminous measure. And so I am sure within these documents you have a lot to shoot at. When you have 10 or 15 pages of broad generalizations, you do not have much to sink your teeth into. So the President has been able to run around and talk about a balanced budget, which he has never really produced in detail, No. 1, and, No. 2, does not balance, and then proceeds to take shots at a very well thought out, detailed description by the Republicans in the House and the Senate as to how we are going to get to the budget. It is a pretty neat place to be. You are sitting there taking potshots at folks without having to deliver leadership. Unfortunately, we have a President who does not think he has to lead, thinks he can sit back here and take potshots at what others trying to solve the problem want to do.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is correct. Earlier this year we had the opportunity to debate and discuss the President's budget. And I am not too sure how many Members on the Democratic side of the aisle defended it. I am not too sure very many did. There were admissions that the President's budget did not go very far. But I will give the President credit for this on his first budget: On his first budget he did not claim he balanced the budget. He admitted that he had $250 billion-plus deficits as far as the eye can see. He admitted it was a bad budget. What he has come back with is a ruse. You know, he and his buddy, Rosy, Rosy Scenario, have gotten together to come up with a budget by underestimating what the interest rates will be and overestimating growth. He and Rosy have figured out a way to balance this budget. Well, unfortunately, Rosy does not cut it. We need real reforms. People are looking for real changes, the changes that he campaigned on in 1992 that he is not delivering with these budgets. Mr. President, I---- [[Page S 15546]]

Mr. SANTORUM. If I could interrupt the Senator from Arizona. Not only have they been unwilling to offer it, but during the time we have had the opportunity to debate this past Friday and here again today, not one Member of the other side of the aisle has even risen to defend it, much less offer it, to even question any of the arguments that we have put forward on this subject.

Mr. SANTORUM. Of course.

Mr. SANTORUM. The Senator from Arizona asks a very relevant question, because on Friday morning I took the floor and put forth this resolution, and laid it on the desk down here and said, ``If anyone on the other side wishes to take up the President's budget and argue for his budget, it is there. The sense of the Senate to approve the President's budget is there, if anybody wants to offer it on the other side of the aisle, to defend what the President wants to do, to talk about how he gets to balance, what his numbers are he used, what his assumptions are he uses, to speak on behalf of the President, to defend your President. Who?'' And I do not know if the Senator from Arizona knows this, but the Democratic National Committee is running TV spots all over the country, saying, ``There are values, there are values behind the President's balanced budget plan.'' Now you have the Democratic National Committee running around the country with TV ads proclaiming that this budget is a balanced budget, and yet you cannot find one Member of the U.S. Senate on the other side of the aisle defending it, to defend what the President has done in reaching his balance. I wonder why that is.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, we are now back to the original subject at hand before the Wellstone amendment, which is a sense of the Senate which says the Senate should adopt the President's second budget, his budget which he proclaims balances the budget over a 10-year period of time. I wanted to show in graphic terms what the President's balanced budget does. The red line is what the Congressional Budget Office says are the deficit projections for the President's balanced budget. You see over the next 7 years the President's budget, unlike the Republican budget here in the Senate that will be up tomorrow. You see the difference between what we are debating here today and will be debating the rest of the week is a vision, a vision of fiscal responsibility for this country. If you are to believe the President, what the President wants to do, he does not want to get to a balanced budget in 7 years or 10 years or any other time after that. You can see what the Congressional Budget Office says is the annual projected deficit for the President's budget. It is about $200 billion, give or take, over the next 7 years. And by the way, this line continues out for several years to come. In the reconciliation package we are going to debate tomorrow, we take the budget deficit from here and take it down to zero--in fact, a slight surplus in the year 2002. This right here is the credibility gap, the gap between what the President says he wants to do, which is balance the budget, to where the President really is in 7 years, which is at a $200 billion plus deficit. That is a $200 billion credibility gap that the President is trying to pull over on the American public. And somehow or another, a $200 billion deficit qualifies as a balanced budget. I do not think in anybody's book a $200 billion deficit qualifies as a balanced budget. So what we have been having today is a discussion on the President's budget and our budget and the differences between the two, and hopefully we will have a vote later today on whether we will adopt the President's budget, whether this body wants to go in the direction of red ink as far as the eye can see, of reductions--remember, the President calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions in spending, and even with all those reductions in spending he still has $200 billion in deficit because he does not do enough. He does not make the changes that are necessary to get this budget in order. Remember, just 3 years ago the Governor of Arkansas campaigned across America about change, change, change, change. How many times have you heard during the campaign of 1992 the word ``change''? How many times have you heard over the past year the word ``change''? Not very much. What you heard is there is too much change, according to the President. There is too much disruption. There is too much. ``Oh, we cannot do that.'' He has all of a sudden come from being the President of change to the President of the status quo. And my fellow colleagues, this is the status quo, this is continued deficits for as far as the eye can see. That is not change. That is not pro-family. It is not pro-family America; it is not pro-growth; it is not pro-anything except pro- deficits and pro-decline. We have an opportunity to reject the status quo here in a few minutes and start tomorrow on a fresh, new change in America's future, a balanced budget that we will get to later today.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I send a modification to the desk.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I offer this amendment. It is not the identical amendment that we voted on previously. The first amendment, sense-of- the-Senate amendment was on the President's first budget that he introduced back in February. This is on the revised Clinton budget that purports to balance the budget over the next 10 years. And the reason, if I may respond to the senior Senator from Kentucky, that I am introducing this is not to vote on the same thing we had before. If the President were not running around the country talking about how he has a balanced budget over 10 years, there would be no need for us to bring this to the Senate floor and have a debate exposing a phony balanced budget. However, the President continues to go around the country saying, as he did on September 30, I have proposed a balanced budget plan that reflects our fundamental values. This is September 30, 1995. I am sure we can find hundreds of quotes as he has campaigned around the country where he has said that this budget comes into balance and reflects his values and all these things. It may reflect his values. Principal among his values is he does not want to balance the budget because this does not balance the budget. It may reflect other values in spending more money and all the other things that he wants to do, but fundamentally this budget does not balance. And so the President's actions are the reason we have decided to bring this amendment to the floor and debate this issue. I think we need to expose this budget for what it is and have a vote here on the Senate floor to determine whether we want to take the course the President would like to take us on, which is unbalanced budgets, according to the Congressional Budget Office, of $200 billion or more for the next 10 years and beyond. Let me read you what the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Clinton revised budget will result in. In 1996, the Clinton budget will produce a $196 billion deficit; in 1997, a $212 billion deficit; in 1998, a $199 billion deficit; in 1999, a $213 billion deficit; in the year 2002, a $220 billion deficit; 2001, a $211 billion deficit; 2002, a $210 billion deficit; 2003, a $207 billion deficit, and in 2004 and 2005, a $209 billion deficit. That is not a balanced budget. It is not a balanced budget in 10 years. It is not going to be a balanced budget in 20 years or 30 years or 40 years. It is a phony, and the President should stop running around trying to convince and fool the American public into believing that he has this grand scheme to balance the budget when in fact it does not balance, and to say that our reductions in spending are somehow mean spirited and draconian, that we do not have to do these things to balance the budget when he knows in fact that is probably the only way we are going to balance the budget is to do what we are suggesting. And so that is why this amendment is here. It is here because the President refuses to come to Washington and solve the budget crisis and instead decides to run around this country and promote a phony balanced budget. We want to bring this phony balanced budget back to where it can be seen in the light of day and understand that this does not quite wash. Now, the Democratic National Committee has the audacity to put on TV spots. Let me quote for you this TV spot that they have. ``There are beliefs in values that tie Americans together. In Washington these values get lost in the tug of war. But what's right matters.'' I agree; what is right does matter. ``Work, not welfare, is right.'' In the budget reconciliation bill that will be in the Chamber tomorrow is a welfare reform bill that passed 87 to 12 on this floor. And it does require work and has strong bipartisan support. ``Public education is right.'' Again, if you look at the budget reconciliation bill, very little of it--very little entitlement education spending. The bulk of the education spending is in the education appropriations bill, of which of the $23 billion that we are going to spend this year, it is a reduction of $400 million. By the way, we spend in public education in this country $400 billion. We are talking about a reduction of one-tenth of 1 percent in the amount of money we spend on public education. That is hardly a draconian cut, one-tenth of 1 percent, in a system that everyone agrees could use a lot of belt tightening. So we have public education I think pretty well in focus here. ``Medicare is right.'' I agree; Medicare is right. Medicare deserves to be saved. We have the only proposal that is going to be put forward that saves Medicare, not just for this generation but future generations. And I would also remind you from the resolution's reading that the President's balanced budget, which does not balance, reduces the growth in Medicare more than his tax cut that is in his own bill. The same thing he, by the way, claims we are doing in our bill. So it is just a matter of degree, not a matter of direction. We believe that Medicare needs to be saved, not just for a year or two but for the long-term. ``A tax cut for working families is right,'' they say in the ad. Well, we have a tax cut for working families. Over 90 percent--listen to this--over 90 percent of the tax reductions in the Senate Finance Committee bill, the bill that is going to be in the Chamber, over 90 percent of the benefits go to families under $100,000 in income. Over 70 percent of the benefits go to families under $75,000 in income. That is our proposal. It is a very much middle-income, pro-family tax cut. And anyone who would like to claim otherwise is demagoging, not reading the specifics of the bill. Read the bill. Read the bill. It is pro family, pro growth, pro jobs, and pro balancing the budget. Then it continues on. ``There are values behind the President's balanced budget plan.'' A TV ad that calls the President's plan, that the Congressional Budget Office says is out of balance forever, they have a TV ad running now that says the President has a balanced budget plan. On national TV. Just out and out lying to the American public. Now, you would say, well, maybe the Congressional Budget Office numbers are not the numbers we are going use, are not the numbers we should use. I would just remind you that the President was the one who said we should use the Congressional Budget Office. In his first State of the Union Address he came to the Congress, right in a joint session over on the House side and he stood up and said the Office of Management and Budget numbers have been wrong; they have been rosy; they have been exaggerating growth, underestimating inflation and they cannot be trusted. The only numbers we should use, so we can all talk about the same set of numbers, is the Congressional Budget Office numbers. That is what he said. He promised. Now, I know it is going to probably strike people as absolutely incredible that the President would actually go back on one of his promises, but here [[Page S 15541]] we have it again. The President promised to use the Congressional Budget Office, promised to use the same set of numbers, promised that he would shoot straight with the American public, promised. And then he comes forward with a phony balanced budget using trumped-up numbers, and the Congressional Budget Office, the one he promised to use, says you will have $200 billion-plus deficits for as far as the eye can see. And then comes on the air with a TV ad saying that he has a balanced budget, lying--the Democratic National Committee lying--to the American public that the President has a balanced budget. And you want to know who is telling the truth around here. I hear so much of the American public saying, well, who do we believe? I can understand why they say that. You had so much misinformation out here, so many deliberate distortions of what is going on in this Chamber that it is no wonder the American public just throws up their hands and says who do we believe? That is the strategy: Confuse, obfuscate, muddy the waters, do not let anybody know who is really right and who is really wrong. Do not tell the truth about what is going on here. And here we have this Democratic National Committee television spot saying that there are values behind the President's balanced budget, values Republicans ignore; Congress should join the President and back these values so, instead of a tug of war, we can come together and do what is right for our families. We are ready to come together. We are here with a balanced budget over 7 years. We are here with real changes. We are here with real solutions. We are here ready to engage with the President on a real budget, not run around and campaign on a phony budget that does not balance. I can tell you for those of us who were in the trenches making these tough decisions which we know affect millions of peoples' lives, it does not help the air of cooperation to have a President demagoging this issue so he can get elected in the next election and not be here in Washington to solve the problem. Someone should inform the President that he was elected to serve as President, not elected so he could run for reelection as President, but that his job is here to solve problems. That is why I offer this amendment. I offer it to bring to light and to have a vote on the phony budget, and to see who supports phony budgeting around here, who supports trumped up, rosy scenarios, exaggerated growth, underestimated interest rates as a way to solve the budget. We have had that for years around here, frankly, from both administrations, Republican and Democrat, and I think everyone should be tired of it. We should deal with the real numbers, conservative estimates, that get us to a balanced budget in a reasonable set of time, and that is 7 years. And I am hopeful we can reject this amendment. I will just remind everybody that I came up here on the floor Friday, Friday morning, and said I would have sitting at the desk, which it has been all week long, a copy of this resolution, and encouraged someone from the other side to offer it, to stand up and defend the President's budget. I said, ``Come to the floor, pick it up, debate it. I will be here to debate the President's budget with you if you want to defend the President's budget. There is the resolution.'' It is now the day before reconciliation, the day before the rubber hits the road, and no one did. So I decided to pick it up and offer it on behalf of the body. I cannot support the President's budget. It is a phony budget, but I think we should have a debate about it. I think those who want to defend what the President is doing, the posturing that he is taking, the politicization of this debate, the demagoging that has gone on, should feel free to defend it and show the American public what you are really for. Let us find out what people in this Chamber are really for. Are we for a balanced budget or not? Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

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

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

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I came to the floor this morning to offer a resolution concerning the President's budget, and I have been informed that my offering of this resolution and asking for its immediate consideration would be objected to by the other side. I will not offer the resolution. The resolution is actually very simple. It goes to a very important item that is being discussed in the general public and by the Members of Congress and the White House; that is, the President's budget and whether the President's budget comes into balance, and whether we as a Congress should be adopting what the President wants to do in the area of the budget. The President has been traveling around the country for several months now, talking about, waving around his balanced budget proposal, saying he has a budget that will balance over 10 years. Incredibly enough, the American public actually believes what the President is saying. I say ``incredibly enough,'' because the only person who has said that the budget balances is the Director of his own Office of Management and Budget, not any other independent agency, and certainly not the Congressional Budget Office. Nobody believes this budget is balanced. In fact, it does not come to balance in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. It never balances, except in his own interim shop. He has cooked the numbers, made all of these ridiculous assumptions about how fast the economy will go and how low interest rates will be and, all of a sudden wishes away all the budget problems. Yet he goes out there every day and talks about how he balances the budget: ``It is just a matter of whether you want my balanced budget or the Republicans' balanced budget,'' and the Republicans' balanced budget is cruel and draconian and mean-spirited and all these sorts of things, ``and mine is kinder and gentler and I really care about people,'' and we can accomplish the same things. The fact of the matter is he does not balance the budget. What I wanted to do was to present a resolution as a sense of the Senate that we should adopt the President's budget his second budget. You may recall his first budget was voted on here on the floor of the Senate. His first budget that he came out with back in February of last year, which did not produce a balanced budget, he did not claim it produced a balanced budget, and it was defeated 99 to 0 on the floor of the Senate. He then went back and revised his budget to present his new, improved, balanced budget over 10 years and has been running around since. I think it is time for some truth here. Let us have a debate. Let us have a debate on the President's budget. Let us examine what the President has done and whether he really does make the decisions that are necessary to bring this budget into balance over 10 years. Now we say he was willing, yesterday, to accept 9, or 8, or even 7. We do not know where he is at this time, but his budget says it balances in 10, so let us talk about it. Unfortunately, there are Members on the other side who do not want to talk about it, they do not want to debate the resolution, do not want to vote on the resolution, refused to give us an opportunity to bring it to a vote. I do not understand why. If they support their President and believe his budget is in balance, then why the fear of coming to the Senate floor and having a good and open debate about what the President's budget does? I am confident that there is someone on the other side of the aisle who believes enough in the President's budget that they will be willing to take up the mantle and run with it and offer the President's budget. So, what I will do is I will put this resolution over here on the desk. If there is someone on the other side of the aisle who would like to offer the President's budget and begin a debate, here is the resolution that will begin this debate. We can have a full and open debate on the President's budget. We can see whether it brings us into balance. We can see what cuts he wants to make. We can see how he is going to accomplish it. Then we can look at what he wants to do and what the Republicans are doing and see what the American public thinks. That is the kind of dialog I think the American public would like to see. They would like to see what the options are. And the Senator is right, you are hearing one side saying one thing, the other side saying the other. Let us put them out here on the table. Let us see what the specifics are with both. I will give someone on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to do that. If, for some reason, no one on the other side of the aisle picks up that resolution and decides to offer it, next week I will find an appropriate vehicle and offer it as an amendment to a bill that is coming through and have this discussion, because I think it is a discussion that needs to be opened up to the American public. There is a lot of tomfoolery going on in this debate. There is a lot of misinformation being spread around in this debate. And there is no better place to straighten it out and talk about the facts than right here on the Senate floor. What are the facts as we know them? We have a letter from the Congressional Budget Office that says the President's budget does not balance. It does not balance over 5 years, or 6 years, or 7 years, or 10 years, or 20 years, or 50 years. It never comes into balance. What we hope is the intent here, of this whole debate, is to balance the budget. The budget does not do that.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to get back to some of the points that the Senator from North Dakota was making with respect to the President's budget. I think it is significant that the Senator from North Dakota said that the President's budget does not come into balance in 10 years, as he is claiming it does all over the country. We should use the congressional budget numbers. In fact, the Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, shortly after the President introduced his budget, said that the President should use Congressional Budget Office numbers. They have been the most reliable. The President addressed a joint session of Congress on February 17, 1993. This was shortly after he was sworn in, inaugurated as President of the United States. He said: The Congressional Budget Office was normally more conservative in what was going to happen and closer to right than previous Presidents have been. I did this---- In other words, he agreed to use Congressional Budget Office numbers. so that we can argue about priorities with the same set of numbers. I did this so no one could say I was estimating my way out of difficulty. In the last 12 years, because there were differences over the revenue estimates, you and I know that both parties were given greater elbow room for irresponsibility. This is a tightening of the rein on the Democrats as well as the Republicans. Let us argue about the same set of numbers so that the American public will think we are shooting straight with them. The President wanted to shoot straight back in 1993. In 1995, he wants to shoot any way he can to hit the target of getting reelected. He believes he needs to get reelected by campaigning that he has a balanced budget when he knows darn well he does not have one. He has done exactly what he said he would not do, which is ``estimating my way out of this difficulty.'' He has reestimated what the growth of this country will be over the next 7 to 10 years and reestimated what the interest rates will be. You have to understand that if you reestimate just a tenth or two-tenths of 1 percent more growth, what does that mean? If you say that instead of having 2.5 percent growth, actually, we are going to have 2.6 or 2.7 percent, you might say that is close. Yes, it may be close, but it means hundreds of billions of dollars in differences to the Federal budget deficit, because that additional growth means more people are going to be working and paying taxes, and less people are going to be receiving Government benefits. Therefore, the deficit would be lower. I think it would be easy for me to balance the budget in 1 year. All I have to do is say the economy is not going to grow at 2.5 percent, but at 5 percent, interest rates will be at 2 percent, and I will have balanced the budget. I would not have to cut a thing or raise taxes, and just by estimating things differently for the future, I could balance the budget. The economy is a lot bigger than the Federal budget. When this multitrillion-dollar economy grows by even a little bit more, it has a tremendous ripple effect on this little part of the economy, which is the Federal Government. So what we are seeing here is the President trying to involve himself in debate, to become relevant to this debate, and he is using numbers that just do not add up. Now we are coming down to crunch time when we are going to bring up the budget reconciliation bill. We have a letter from the CBO that says it balances the budget. I want to make this clear, because people are saying that we have had Gramm-Rudman and all these things that were going to balance the budget. We have never passed a piece of legislation that, within its confines, has changes in law that will result in a balanced budget, if we do nothing else. We have passed budget rules that say, well, we have to do certain things every year and cut programs in the future and reduce spending in the future. And if we do not, we will have this mechanism in place to make you do it. That is what we have passed in the past. We have had procedures by which we are forced to make decisions to balance the budget. That is not what we are doing here. We have those in place just in case the economy does not grow as fast or just in case interest rates are higher, but what we have in place, given the conservative assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office, is a plan that will, in fact, result in a balanced budget, if we do nothing else. We do not have to make any more changes in law or raise any taxes or cut any programs. We will have done it all in one bill. It is fundamentally different than anything we have done here since 1968, which I think was the last time we balanced the budget. We will have balanced this budget and put in place a law that does it--not a procedure that does it, but changes in programs in Washington that balance the budget. That is what the public has asked us to do. No more gimmicks, no more processes to do it. We have done it. We have made the tough decisions, and we have stepped up to the plate and taken a good swing at it. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Anyone who suggests that anything that comes out of the House and Senate is perfect does not understand the House and Senate. It is a compromise. It is putting things together to get the number of votes that are necessary to move the ball forward. Are there things I would like different? Absolutely. But we made the tough decisions. We brought a group of people, hopefully, I believe, the majority of people, together to pass a budget and send it to the President. What we want out of the President is simply honesty. If the President wants to claim he will be involved in this debate, then he better come up with a budget that is real and quit running around saying that the Republicans are mean and Draconian and all these things. ``I want to balance the budget.'' He cannot have it both--mean, Draconian, nasty cuts from the Republicans and say, ``I want to balance the budget, too,'' and not do it. If you want to balance the budget, balance the budget, put forth a plan that does it. He has not done that. I have in my desk, and some may remember these numbers, I had a chart here that had a question about where the President was in balancing the budget. The previous campaign, several on the other side of the aisle were asking the question, where is George? Why is he not involved in solving the problems of this country? So I asked the same question. I put up, day after day after day, and the President refused to come to the table and balance the budget. Those number are still adding up. He still has not done so. Well, he has a chance. He has a chance. We are willing to sit down with the President and work through what it will take to pass a balanced budget. We understand we cannot pass a balanced budget on our own. The President has to sign the budget. He has to sign the reconciliation package. We want him to do that. We are not going through this as a political exercise to get one-upmanship on the President. I can tell you, I am not anxious to vote for changes in a lot of laws, many of which I support and do not necessarily want to see reductions in, just to see the President veto it and nothing happen. It is not a particularly satisfying thing to have happen. If you are going to make the tough votes, at least you want to see it happen. You want to see the changes that you put forward go into law. No one over here wants to do this as a political exercise. We want to do it because we want to see this country be saved for future generations. We want to see that person who is sitting out there now listening, who is at home and does not have a job and cannot find a job, have a better chance to get a job because the economy will be better. Everyone--the President, Democrats, Republicans--knows if we balance the budget, the economy will be better. Interest rates will be lower. Growth will be higher. More jobs will be created. We all know that. The people listening who think, how am I going to get this employment opportunity? What will happen to turn this economy around? This is probably the most important thing we can do to turn that economy around. This is not an esoteric debate about balancing the budget, but about affecting people's lives. This is the young child who may be sick from high school and sitting at home at night and maybe just surfing around on the channels and happens to stop here--probably not long--stop here and listen for a few minutes. That is for that person who wonders whether they will have a job when they get out of high school or college, whether they will have the opportunity to be able to raise a family and buy a home at a reasonable interest rate. That is what this is all about. This is about real people and real lives. This is not just about balancing budgets and numbers and charts. It is about real people, and giving them the opportunity that this country was founded on. We have the chance to do that. That is what this is about. We need the President. We need the President. This should not be about politics. This should be about working together for the common good of this country. We want to do that. We have put forward planned specifics. Want to talk specifics? I remember listening early in the year when the budget resolution was out there and they said, ``You guys are throwing these numbers out. You do not have specifics.'' Folks, the Senator from New Mexico will come down next week with a whole bunch of specifics, tell you exactly how we get from A to Z, how we balance. The specifics are there. Here is how it happens. Want to make some changes? We can make some changes. We are not going to make a change on this. We are not going to make a change on balancing this budget in 7 years. That is something we will not change. We are committed to the American public to do that. I implore the President to stop waving this budget around. I know it may look good in the polls today. People may believe he has a balanced budget, and I know his polls are saying that people now believe he has a balanced budget. All he does is go around talking about it, and unfortunately, the American public sometimes believes the President even when he is not telling the truth. I think it undermines the credibility of the office. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Want to balance the budget in 7 years? The opportunity is here. You do not have to run around the country and campaign that you will balance the budget. Stay in Washington and you can sit down with the people who are working on this problem and you can balance the budget. You do not have to go around and raise money all over the country for your next campaign and talk about how you should not raise taxes and all these things. You can come here and solve the problem. This is the time for work. This is a time when this body, in a bipartisan fashion--I think the Senator from Nebraska talked earlier, Senator Kerrey. I do not question his sincerity at all about trying to balance this budget. I think he is one of the real statesmen when it comes to dealing with the problems of entitlement reform and changing the way the Government does business. We differ on priorities, but I think he is one who is sincere about the final objective. I think he knows the importance of that final objective. I think he is someone who we can negotiate with and sit down with. But we need the President. We do not need politics. We do not need waving around budgets that do not balance. It is not the time for politics. You have a whole year, Mr. President, where you can campaign for reelection. The time now is to get serious about doing the business of the country. You were elected President. It is time to serve the Presidency. It is time to serve your Presidency, not politics. Roll up your sleeves. Come on down here, send your people down and we can get going. Quit playing games with the American public and trying to manipulate the polls. You may win this November, but if you keep playing that game, you will not win next November. The country will not win, which is a heck of a lot more important than either of those things. We should get down to business. We are open. We are here. We are open for business. We are ready to go. All we need is someone who is willing to step to the plate and make it happen. Later today if we end up getting an agreement to have a bill before the Senate today, I will put forward the President's budget and we will have a debate. I want to make it very clear, as I think we are hearing from both sides, that this budget is not real. This budget does not do anything to balance the budget for the next 7, 10, 20, or 30 years. Get that out of the way. Get the politics and the charades and the broken promises out of the way. Deal with the facts. The fact is, Mr. President, if you want to balance the budget, get up here and do it. Quit running around the country campaigning on what you do not have, not telling the truth to the public about your budget, and get up here where the action is, where history is being made, and make a difference. Serve your Presidency, not your reelection. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent that the transaction of morning business be extended to 11:15 a.m., under the previous terms.