Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for 1 minute?

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Well, only a portion of it is by law. As the Senator knows, 2.5 cents----

Mr. SANTORUM. It is too small.

Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator will continue to yield.

Mr. SANTORUM. There is 2.5 cents----

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator. When the gas tax was enacted, did not the Congress and President, when they signed that, say that that money would be dedicated, every penny you pay at the pump for gas taxes is dedicated to the highway trust fund, to be used only for construction of highways and other purposes within that act? Is that not what the law says?

Mr. SANTORUM. I happen to believe, as I think most Americans do, that the Social Security program is a Federal program. Maybe some people do not think it is. It is a Federal program, and it should be counted as a Federal program. We have the luxury--it is a luxury--over the next several years of having a surplus in the Social Security trust fund. But, as the Senator from North Dakota knows, that luxury is a short- lived luxury. Those of us who are going to be working to balance the budget, over the next several years and beyond, are going to have to start working with a Social Security fund deficit shortly, in the not too distant future, in about 15 years. So we are going to have the luxury now. But we are going to have to face the music. I think the important thing is to begin that over a long period of time so that we can start dealing with those deficits. And I think it is important to look at the Government as a whole--look at all of the Federal Government programs. The Senator from Nebraska just a few minutes ago was saying you should do what he wants to do on Social Security, which is eventually privatize Social Security and change it. So there are a lot of things out there. We may have to deal with the Social Security issue. But all I am suggesting is that I think it is absolutely appropriate to use all Federal accounts, to look at it as a unified budget as it has been done in the past to see whether we balance the budget. Remember, it is a surplus now, but it will not always be a surplus. We will have to deal with this problem over the long term.

Mr. SANTORUM. The point I am trying to make is the President in his first State of the Union Address to the Congress said that he would use the Congressional Budget Office numbers because they were the most reliable numbers. Now, he said he was going to do it. He is not doing it, and if he did use it, those numbers would not balance. We have an obligation to the American public to play straight with them. The President is not playing straight. We are going to offer an amendment that is going to show the President that nobody here believes his numbers. Quit going around the country saying you have a balanced budget when you do not. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I had a question for the Senator from North Dakota. Does the Senator from North Dakota believe that the President's revised budget balances the budget in 10 years? Does the Senator believe that? He is running around the country saying he has a balanced budget that balances in 10 years. Does the Senator agree with that?

Mr. SANTORUM. If I may reclaim my time. As the Senator from North Dakota knows, Social Security issues the notes, and the notes are paid interest. And we are going to have to pay the interest back as we continually do now. We will have to continue to pay that back. If you want to make the Social Security trust fund argument, you have to make the highway trust fund argument, you have to make the aviation trust fund argument, and you have to make the unemployment trust fund argument. The Government is made up of a bunch of trust funds in many, many respects. If you want to take them all out and say just because it is a trust fund it is not a Federal program, that just does not mesh with how we run our Government. The Government is segregated in the trust funds because we have certain taxes dedicated to those funds. That does not mean they are not part of the Government. Of course, these are part of the Government. If they were not, people would not pay the Social Security taxes because they would not have to because there would not be anybody there to enforce it. We are there to enforce it, to make sure that the IRS enforces the payment of those taxes. We can talk to a lot of businesses who have not paid their taxes. They will tell you that the IRS is in their pocket in 2 minutes making them pay that. If you want to say that somehow is not a Federal program, or the unemployment program is not a Federal program, or the highway trust fund or aviation trust fund is not a Federal program, that all of those should be removed and we should balance the rest of the budget, that to me is a gimmick where you are trying to get around the whole issue. The real issue is are we going to make the changes in law to get this budget in the balance, not just for the next 7 years but into long-term when a lot of these funds are going to be running deficits? My feeling is that we have to make the tough decisions. I am going to be proposing an amendment I think eventually, to offer it as the President's budget because the President does not make the tough choices. He does not even come close with surpluses, and all of these are fudged. Without them you cannot achieve a balanced budget. Yet, he runs around this country talking about his balanced budget. He has this budget that is going to balance over 15 years. There is not anybody in the Congress, there is not anyone who has studied this issue in the country, who has looked at these numbers who believes they balance. They do not. The only person that believes they balance is the President, and the only reason he believes it is because he wants to fool the American public into believing that he has some balanced budget, that he is accomplishing the same thing we are when the fact is he is not. And you have the Congressional Budget Office, which said back in June, after he introduced this second budget of his that came into balance, that his budget will produce in the next 7 years the following deficits: 196 in 1996, 212 in 1997, 199 billion--these are all billion-dollar deficits--a $199 billion deficit in 1998, $213 billion in 1999, $220 billion in 2000, $215 billion in 2001, and $210 billion in the year 2002. That is the Congressional Budget Office. They are the folks we have to deal with in trying to get a certification of whether we balance the budget or not. Unfortunately, the President is running around using--I ask unanimous consent for 30 additional seconds.

Mr. SANTORUM. Is dedicated to deficit reduction. The vast majority of that fund is dedicated for the purposes only of improving our highways and other things related to transportation. Yet, we use that surplus to offset the deficit.

Mr. SANTORUM. Is that surplus being used to offset the deficit?

Mr. SANTORUM. Just like, as the Senator suggested, we use the surplus in Social Security to offset the deficit. My question is, why are you not here with a resolution that also deals with it, and why did not the other side when they debated the Social Security issue take all the trust funds that were running surpluses? But why just pick out Social Security, if you are really serious and you want to have fairness, not say----

Mr. SANTORUM. Is there not a surplus in the highway trust fund?

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for the transaction of morning business be extended until noon, under the terms of the previous agreement.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for the transaction of morning business be extended to the hour of 11 o'clock.

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to join today with my freshman and sophomore colleagues to talk about the mission before us here in the next several weeks. We here in the Senate, and in the House, and the American public are now focused on the mission at hand, which is to try to balance [[Page S 15192]] this budget over the next 7 years and come up with a plan for reforming a number of areas of Government. It is, I think, one of the most important times in our country's history, certainly from a financial standpoint and a long-term economic security standpoint. I think this debate is as important as the debate that occurred during the Great Depression when we were trying to right the ship of state and preserve a long-term future during that crisis. We are at a similar crisis, I believe, in our country's time, with the mountains of debt that we continue to pile up, and, really, no end is in sight. The fact is that we have over half of our Government on automatic pilot, spending money without any idea of how much it is going to go up. We have projections that Medicare is going to go up 10 percent a year, Medicare 8 percent a year, whatever the case may be. But we do not know what it is. We add up the bills at the end of the year and that is what we pay out. Can you imagine a family or a business saying, well, half of the money we spend, we have absolutely no idea what it is going to be at the end of the year because we promised people we were going to pay these things, and whether we have enough money or not, it does not matter because we promised we were going to pay it. That is the insanity we are in that causes the deficits to be at this level--now almost $5 trillion in the national debt. We have an opportunity to do something about that now. It is really the first time since I have been in the Congress--I was in the House 4 years prior to coming to the Senate. This is the first chance I have had to seriously address the issue which, when I first got elected to the House of Representatives, I promised I would come down here and do--to do things differently, to put our fiscal house in order, to establish America--as many speakers here talked about the moral authority of a Government that lived within its means and understands that we cannot continue to tax and penalize and put through very difficult times, because of the excesses of today. I think we have that moral obligation to act from that perspective. We also have an obligation, I think, a moral obligation, to act from the perspective that we promised. We promised back in 1994--and many of us who ran for office promised many times throughout our careers--we promised to come to Washington and seek to balance the budget. It is not an easy thing to do. I think if it was easy, it would have been done a long time ago. It is difficult. I think the American public understands it is difficult. But we promised. We have a Contract With America that says we will balance the budget. I think almost every Member on this side, and I know many Members on the other side when they ran for election talked about how crucial it was for the long-term future of this country to get our fiscal house in order and to balance the budget. We promised. You can put up all the arguments, charts, and graphs and say we should do this because it will help future generations, we are going to do this because it will lower interest rates or it will create more economic growth, or we will get rid of wasteful programs or create more freedom and opportunity, we will reform the welfare system, we will save Medicare. Those are all very good reasons to balance the budget. All very good reasons why we should act on the reconciliation package that will be coming up in the next several weeks. I have listed only a few. There are innumerable reasons why we should balance this budget. Possibly paramount among all of those is the fact that we promised. One thing I have heard from people, whether it is Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, the reason they are so disgruntled with government, whether it is at the State or national level, is there is a lack of trust that people who get elected actually follow through with what they promised when they run their campaigns. There is a dislink. There is the politician the candidate, and then the politician the elected official. What one says during the campaign does not jive with what one does when they are elected to office. We elect leaders of this country who promise all sorts of things and come down and do exactly the opposite. Then you ask people, how can you support someone who does that? Well, they all do it. It does not make any difference. They all say what they need to say to get elected. But they all do it. Why is he or she any worse than the rest? We can forgive that, I guess. I think those days are gone. I do not think the public will forgive that any more. I do not think they should forgive it in the first place, and I hope they do not. I think the least people should expect out of their elected representatives is they keep their promises. We made 10 promises in a Contract With America. I think probably paramount of all those promises was to balance the budget. Promises are important. If people do not have faith in their elected officials and institutions, that erosion of faith in support of our Government has very long-term consequences to the future and safety and freedom of this country. This is a big one. This is not a little white promise, a little white lie that we will tell. This is a big one. This is a major promise that we made to the American public. I heard a preacher the other day tell the story about this subject-- not the balanced budget--but about the importance of that trust. He talked of a man who headed up a college, I believe it was in South Carolina, a Bible college. His father had started this school, and all throughout his life growing up his dream was to succeed his father and run this school where people would have their avocation to become preachers and ministers. This was very important for him. He felt it was a calling from God to do this. He did. He succeeded his father in that position and ran that college very, very well. Unfortunately, his wife of many years contracted Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is a devastating disease that eventually deteriorates the mind to the point where a person is no longer able to take care of themselves and needs full-time care. This happened to this woman at a very young age, unfortunately. She did deteriorate to the point where she was simply not able to take care of herself and needed full-time care. This husband, the man who had been called to run this college, this passion of his, decided to resign as president of the college, to take the time and spend the time to take care of his wife, who was a victim of Alzheimer's. His friends and people on the board of the college came up to him and said: Why are you doing this? She has Alzheimer's. She has no idea who you are. She has no idea who is taking care of her. Anyone can take care of her. Anyone can take care of her. You have a calling. You are serving the Lord. You are doing what you are good at. You may be the only one who can do this. How can you leave that to do something that anyone can do? He said two things. First, he said: ``She may not know who I am, but I know who she is and I promised her when we got married to be there until death do us part. I promised.'' Promises mean something. Promises are important for relationships, for the future of this country, between its elected representatives and the people. We promised. Now it is time to deliver. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank the Senator from Oklahoma. I rise, and I hesitate to come to the floor to talk about this issue although I have talked about it in the past. I wanted to make a statement because the former Senator from Pennsylvania, [[Page S 14268]] Senator Wofford, is in line to be the next head of the AmeriCorps Program. I stand as someone who has been a critic of the program. I wanted to make it clear that I am critical of the program--not of Senator Wofford. In fact, I have said to the Senator that I will support him for that position and wish him well. He has a big job ahead of him because I believe this program is a misguided program, is a program that is on a values level--the Senator from Delaware talked about values. I think it teaches the wrong values. I think it teaches the value of not voluntarism. My definition from looking in the dictionary, voluntarism is unpaid labor. This is paid labor. That is not voluntarism. You can call it a lot of things, but not voluntarism, any more than me deciding to run for the U.S. Senate and therefore being elected, being a volunteer because that is what I decided I wanted to do. You are compensated for your work and therefore you are not a volunteer. Call it what it is. It is a Federal paid taxpayers' position that you have, working many places in a government job, or through some government-sanctioned organization, or approved organization. I do not see anything particularly noble about a job paid for by taxpayers' dollars, that is any more noble than someone who goes out and sells insurance or someone who works on Wall Street or someone who grows cotton. Those are all noble jobs. They are providing valuable services to this country. To suggest that somehow we instill the value in people, working for the Federal Government for taxpayers' dollars is somehow noble, and that going out and trying to start a business or raise a crop is not noble, that those values are not important. I think that is really what is fundamental. I think we are missing the point. Yes, there is a lot of good work being done by people, but they are being paid to do it by the Federal Government, and it is the Federal Government's design as to what role they should be filling. I think that is a very dangerous value to somehow elevate Government service above all other aspects of our lives in our society. I think that is why you see so many people on our side of the aisle come up who feel this is a real hot button issue, because I think it is a distortion of the American value. I would also add, having just been very actively involved in the welfare debate over the past few weeks, that there are a lot of people who are very strong supporters of AmeriCorps who are not supporters of requiring people on welfare to work. I find that incredible. Here we have people who desperately need work. You talk to employers. What do employers tell you they are looking for an employee? Are they looking for someone who has a lot of skills, someone who is exceptional in a particular area? No. What most employers look for in employees is someone with a good attitude and good work ethic. What people on welfare in most cases do not have as a result of having grown up on welfare--I am talking about the chronic welfare recipient--is instilled a good work ethic. What we could provide instead of paying volunteers in AmeriCorps is we could be putting the people who are on welfare who need jobs the same things AmeriCorps people are doing. Remember, people on welfare are receiving the money. They are already getting the benefits. It does not cost any addition and gives the people who really need the work, not someone whose daddy is a CEO of some company who signed up for AmeriCorps because he wants to do the good thing and be a volunteer and get $27,000 a year, but someone who actually needs the work experience, needs to learn the skills. Let us talk about what we can do to take this program and apply it in a sense in the welfare context. That makes a lot of sense. That is really a direction that I think the American public could support. Mr. President, I want to read a quote from Father Robert A. Sirico, who is president of Action Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, who wrote an article on AmeriCorps and how it falsely teaches people what service is all about. His concluding paragraph is: Idealism led me to the priesthood. Another sort of idealism leads people to the business world. Here's some advice for young idealists. If you want to serve others, don't be bought off by a Government program. Try something voluntary that is personally challenging, socially beneficial, and doesn't cost the taxpayers one dime. I think that sums up the mood of most of us on this side of the aisle. We want people to be challenged. We want young people to be involved in voluntarism. We want people to care about their community. But we want them to do it because they care about their community, not because they are getting paid $30,000 a year by Federal taxpayers.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator. I thank him for his original amendment, which I think is in the right direction, I think, reducing this cost to the Government. He recognizes this as someone who sees this program as really a flawed, but futilely flawed program--not fatally, but futilely, as in ``futilism.'' He recognizes this is a much bigger issue than just the administrative costs. We are talking about literally millions or more dollars to the consumers of America in paying more for peanuts. I think the key point, I think that Members who may not be familiar with the peanut program, the key point that the Senator from Colorado pointed out is that this system is doomed to fail. It cannot be sustained because of what is going to happen with NAFTA and with other trade agreements. Mexico is in the process right now of planting more peanuts. They come into this country without the restrictions in place. They are going to replace growers here in this country, which means of course that we will be paying more money here at the Federal level to maintain that target price. I think it is a system that if you talk to peanut growers and people who hold the quotas, as the Senator from Colorado pointed out, 70 percent of the quotas are held by people who do not grow peanuts. It is a feudal system. You do not have to grow peanuts to own these quotas. To allow you to grow peanuts you basically have this passed down from your grandfather or great-grandfather. You hold and you collect all this money for someone else to grow peanuts on their land. As I said, feudal system best describes it. Seventy percent are owned by people who do not farm the land. They are the ones getting rich on this program. They are the ones making all the money on this program. They are the ones running the ads that say, boy, you cannot touch the peanut program. I would not either. I have a lot of peanut quota holders in Pennsylvania who do not like what I am doing, but I have a lot of jobs leaving the State of Pennsylvania from Hershey's, which just moved a plant to Mexico because of the sugar problem, which is another thing we need to talk about. Peanuts is another problem. We lost jobs to Canada and other places in the confection industry, and by the hundreds. If we were benefiting small farmers who are trying to grow their patch, that is one thing, but these are large quota interest holders who simply are making money because their granddaddy was around at the time they were passing them out. I think that is not what our tax dollars should be used for. It is destroying the market. It is costing consumers literally billions of dollars a year. The Senator had a very modest amendment. I agree with his modification in the sense that this should be worked out by the Agriculture Committee. It should be worked out in the reconciliation bill and in the farm bill. We had meetings, as I am sure the Senator from Colorado did, today we had meetings in the Agriculture Committee on the Republican side and we will continue to meet to see if we can work out something to address this program, save the taxpayers' dollars and save the consumer money in peanut butter costs downstream. I appreciate the Senator from Colorado who has really been a stalwart on this issue, who has been out here fighting this battle. I am a recent joiner of his forces. I want to congratulate him for coming to the floor, offering this amendment, keeping the pressure on the committee, keeping us moving forward so we can get rid of this system which is simply indefensible under any kind of budget restrictions. I yield back the time of the Senator from Colorado.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. My colleague raises an excellent point. Many States at present are struggling to take advantage of the benefits which information technology can provide. Twenty-two States are currently under court order to improve their child welfare programs. One of the saddest examples is right here in the District of Columbia, where the foster care system was placed in receivership by the courts. According to the court-appointed receivers, the system of foster care placement was failing some of the city's most needy children. One of the major problems was a lack of information available to the field, largely due to the lack of even basic computer support in the District's foster care system. This is symptomatic of problems across our Nation, problems which can be overcome through effective use of information technology. Yet the States and the District face compelling alternative uses for the funds as caseloads increase.

Mr. SANTORUM. Increased automation will bring many efficiencies to human services programs. In numerous cases, State workers enter essentially the same information as many as 200 times in required paperwork. This wasteful duplication can be eliminated through automation. Further, investments in information technology yield substantial savings in welfare programs through elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse. In Rhode Island, for example, a $10 million investment in technology saved over $7.7 million in erroneous welfare benefit payments in the first year of operation. By now this investment has paid for itself many times over. The system allowed the State to handle a 40-percent increase in welfare cases, while reducing its program work force by 15 percent over a 4-year period.

Mr. SANTORUM. I join my colleague in making this request. I think some further consideration of the information technology needs of the States is vital for welfare reform to succeed. Amendment No. 2683

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the leader for yielding. Mr. President, I want to say, we have come a long way. Having worked on the House task force, 2 years ago, on welfare reform, and having introduced a bill and worked on it diligently since then, I do not think anyone, in as short a time as 2 years ago, would have expected us to pass a bill as dramatic, as progressive, and as focused in trying to create a dynamic system to try to help people out of poverty as we created in the Senate today, and I am proud of the accomplishment. I want to recognize several people who turned this ship around when it did not look like it was going to sail. First, I thank Senator Packwood from the Finance Committee. He put together the shell of this bill and really did work diligently with Senator Ashcroft and Senator Gregg, two former Governors, in putting together this shell that we then filled in as the process of negotiations off the floor and on the floor continued. I also thank Senator Hutchison. I think, if we had not figured out the financing mechanism, the formulas, this bill would just simply not have been able to sail. She just did yeoman's work in putting that together, and really deserves a lot of credit for moving this bill forward. For what happened all throughout the process, but particularly at the end, I thank the leader. He really had faith in the process to continue to move it forward, to bring it up when many thought it could not be done. He continued to push forward, finding common ground between the moderates and conservatives, bringing people together, constantly bringing people together to keep moving. Because I think he recognizes, as all of us do, the importance of solving this serious problem for millions of Americans. He deserves a lot of credit for this bill. This bill is dramatic. You are going to hear reported it does not go as far as the House bill, and this is a minor reform, and they are going to downplay this. All they are going to talk about in the press is how we differ from the House. But I tell you, this bill goes so much father than anyone could have anticipated just a short time ago. It ends the entitlement to welfare. It requires work. It puts a time limit on welfare benefits, which again is a dramatic change in the current system. I have heard people say we have eliminated the safety net. I do not know what safety net they are looking at, but I tell you, when you see millions of people trapped in poverty for their whole lives, generation after generation, that is not a safety net, it is a fisherman's net. You are trapping people in a fisherman's net, and what we are trying to do is cut back the net so people can climb out, not so people fall through. That is the difference between what has been proposed in the past and what we are proposing today, and it is dramatic. It is significant. And I can tell you, the difference between the House and the Senate, while it will be played up in the press, is not that significant. What we have are the frameworks of two bills that are very similar. We are going to move in the same direction. I believe, when we get to conference, we will be able to get a bill and I do not think it is going to take as long as people think. We have a lot of common ground here. We understand it is important to get this bill in for reconciliation and I believe we will do it. I, again, just want to tip my hat to the leader for his tremendous work on this bill. If it was not for him, we would not be here today.