Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. All I would say is that is a very good question. I would like to get the answer. I do not have the answer.

Mr. SANTORUM. All I know is the Congressional Budget Office scores this document as a balanced budget. I would defer to the Senator from New Mexico as to the specifics of that particular page. This is the first time I have seen it. But from all the scoring that we have had, this was scored by the Congressional Budget Office as a balanced budget according to the Senator from New Mexico. So the Senator's question is with him as to what this document says versus what he has represented to the Congressional Budget Office has told him. That is all I can respond to. But I will say that, if, in fact, this budget is not balanced, we should go about the process of getting one that does come into balance. So I guess I do not know the answer to the question.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield in a minute. So I have to continue to count the days before the President has come up with a balanced budget proposal. He has still not come to the table scoring to the Congressional Budget Office numbers we have to use here in this place, and that the President agreed in his first State of the Union Address he would use. He has not come to the table with a balanced budget that is credible. And, as a result, we have to continue to do the counting. I think that is unfortunate but I am hopeful that the President will come forward. I am happy to yield.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank my friend, the Senator from Wyoming, for yielding, and I thank him for his steadfast effort to come to the floor on a regular basis and organize the 11 freshman Republican Members of the Senate to come and talk about the important issues facing this country today. Obviously, the one on all of our minds is the issue of the budget. I think the comments of the Senator from Wyoming were right on point. We have a great opportunity today to make history, and I believe we will do so. It is just the beginning of the process. We have a long way to go from passing this budget resolution, which is simply a blueprint. This budget resolution does not get signed by the President. It is a working document, in a sense, for the Congress to follow, laying forth the blueprint as to how we should get to a balanced budget over the next 7 years. Then it is our job, over the next several months, before the end of the fiscal year, by the end of September, to craft a reconciliation package that brings in line the spending with the projections made in the budget resolution. So we have the actual reductions in the programs over the next several months--not just the blueprint as to how you get to a balanced budget. That is the tough one. That is where we have the disagreement, as the Senator from Wyoming stated, between those of us in the Congress and the President, on the ``right way'' to go about balancing the budget. I will say, I am at least heartened by the fact that the President now accepts the premise of a balanced budget. When he submitted this budget--this is the President's fiscal year 1996 budget--when he submitted this budget back in February, he did not accept the premise that the Congress and the President should work together to balance the Federal budget, because this budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office and his own budgeteers, had perpetual deficits of over $200 billion a year for as far as the eye could see, in fact, increasing 5 or 6 years out. So his first submission did not accept that premise. [[Page S 9327]] He, also, when he submitted this--and this was during the balanced budget debate--suggested that a balanced budget was harmful; a time certain set for a balanced budget was a harmful thing for the economy, was bad for this country, was bad for people. Now he, surprisingly, has flip-flopped and suggested that a balanced budget is a good idea for a time certain; that we can do it in 7 years--or he suggests 10 years-- but a date certain to arrive at a balanced budget is not a catastrophic event as his advisers and many of the President's close advisers suggested during the last several months. So we have now seen that he first said a balanced budget was not necessary, and now he says it is. He first said we did not need a date certain, now he says we can set one. Then we find out the President says we should not be attacking Medicare. And now, in the most recent budget submission--and by the way, this is it. This is the President's new budget. Just to give a comparison, this is the original President's budget. This is the new President's budget. You might wonder how you condense all of this into this. It is very simple. There is not much here, relative to what is here. There just is not the specificity, if you look at these pages. It is 20-some pages. You have an executive summary in the first four pages or so. Then you have six pages, double sided--I will admit that, it is double sided, which we save paper on; double sided--of the specifics of the President's budget. This is it. This is the entire new President's budget. All you have heard about is, ``The President submitted and comes to the table with this great new budget he talked about.'' It is six double-sided pages. Understand this, this is six double-sided pages to describe how we are going to spend, over the next 10 years, somewhere in the area of $16 trillion; six double-sided pages, $16 trillion. Just to put it in perspective a little bit. But this is it. The other part here are charts. We always have to have charts. So we have charts here at the back that show how he is going to get his numbers down. He was very critical of the Republicans in their budget that came out of the House and Senate, of cuts in Medicare. He was to draw a line in the sand. Now with this new budget, in fact, the first thing he talks about is reducing the growth in Medicare and contrasts his cuts--which he says are modest, necessary and modest--to ours. His reductions are around the area of $120 billion over 10--7 years. Ours are a little more than double that, $270 billion over 7 years. The interesting thing is, Budget Director Alice Rivlin testified before the Joint Economic Committee last week, and she went on and just excoriated the Republicans for their horrible reductions in Medicare. I asked her a very simple question. I said, I look at your budget and the budget numbers. I look at the Republican budget numbers on Medicare. The Republican's budget asks for more money to be spent on Medicare than you do every year. We actually spend more money on Medicare every year. She said we spend less. Their cuts are draconian and terrible, and ours are not. How does that figure? You say most people say how can you spend more money every year on a program and cut less? This is how. Here is the rub. The rub is that the President in all of his projections projects a slower rate of growth in all of these programs. So he assumes that Medicare is not going to grow that much and then only cuts from a lower rate of growth. So he cuts less but he assumes less growth in the first place, which nobody else by the way assumes; just him. As a result, we have less cuts but lower numbers which is sort of a strange thing. You can argue both sides as to who is being cruel to Medicare. Are you being cruel because you have cut more money, or are you being cruel because you are spending actually less money per year? I would think the people in Medicare would be more concerned about how much money you spend as opposed to what you are required to cut. We are suggesting more spending on Medicare. But at least the President has suggested that Medicare needs to be fixed and that we have to do something to reduce the rate of growth of spending in Medicare. So he has at least come to the table on that issue. Again, that is not where he was a few months ago in railing against the Republicans. Finally, I will be willing to say that the President still has a tax cut in his proposal. So he is in agreement with us that we do need some tax relief for middle-income families in America. So there are bases for us to be encouraged about some sort of commonalty, even though the President has come up woefully inadequate and short in his budget, his new budget does not balance even though he says it does. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the numbers that we use, the minority leader, the Senator from South Dakota, just last week said, you know, the President cannot be fooling around with these funny numbers. He has to use Congressional Budget Office numbers. This is the minority leader, the Democratic leader of the Senate, who says the President has to come with a serious proposal that uses the Congressional Budget Office numbers, what his trumped-up, optimistic assessment that the world, the United States is going to continue to grow and inflation is going to be down, all these rosy scenarios so we get to balance by not having to cut as much. We have to use the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO says this budget, this detailed summary here, does not bring us to balance in 10 years like the President said. It does not bring us to balance. In fact, by the year 10 of this budget the deficit is over $200 billion. In fact, the deficit stays about $200 billion over the next 10 years. So it does not work. This is not a real budget. You hear so much about the argument saying your way or my way, and my way is the right way. His way is no way. No way does this thing get us to a balanced budget. This does not work. So while I sincerely give the President credit for coming to the table and saying we have to address this issue, we agree on a date certain, we agree that we have to balance the budget, we agree we have to do something with Medicare, we agree we need to do something with tax cuts, you know I appreciate that. It does form a working basis for relationship to try to move forward and not end up at a horrible confrontation come the end of this fiscal year. I think the President has to go back and get real and get real with the numbers, get real with what every business person would use, which is, you know, the most likely or conservative estimates of growth and things like that. The President has not done that.

Mr. SANTORUM. I know where the Senator is coming from.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today I am introducing the 1995 Community Protection Initiative Act, a bill to aid in the fight against crime in America. This bill exempts qualified current and former law enforcement officers from state laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons. The effect is to increase law enforcement potential by making thousands of highly trained law enforcement personnel available to deter crime in emergency situations, all at no additional cost to the taxpayer. We will strike a strong blow for crime prevention without further burdening the Federal budget. Further, this bill eliminates jurisdictional limitations and provides a clear and uniform rule to replace a complex variety of State and local laws. In an increasingly mobile society, it is important to eliminate confusion and provide these public servants the opportunity to react in a way that protects potential victims of crime throughout the country. This is a commonsense and cost-effective step in the direction of crime control. To do otherwise would be similar to preventing someone trained in CPR from assisting a dying person merely because he or she was licensed in another jurisdiction. Law enforcement personnel are trained to think in a manner that protects lives. We need to allow them to act in the same manner by lifting current regulatory burdens. This bill takes the precautions necessary to ensure that former and retired law enforcement officers have been properly trained in the use of firearms, have proper identification, and were in good standing during their prior employment. Moreover, the bill allows them to protect themselves, their families, and other citizens in need of assistance. I look forward to enactment of this legislation. I also look forward to working with Representative Cunningham from California, who has introduced a similar measure in the House of Representatives. Together we can bring about a much needed reform and strengthen the crime fighting capabilities of our Nation's law enforcement community. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, today I am introducing the 1995 Community Protection Initiative Act, a bill to aid in the fight against crime in America. This bill exempts qualified current and former law enforcement officers from state laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons. The effect is to increase law enforcement potential by making thousands of highly trained law enforcement personnel available to deter crime in emergency situations, all at no additional cost to the taxpayer. We will strike a strong blow for crime prevention without further burdening the Federal budget. Further, this bill eliminates jurisdictional limitations and provides a clear and uniform rule to replace a complex variety of State and local laws. In an increasingly mobile society, it is important to eliminate confusion and provide these public servants the opportunity to react in a way that protects potential victims of crime throughout the country. This is a commonsense and cost-effective step in the direction of crime control. To do otherwise would be similar to preventing someone trained in CPR from assisting a dying person merely because he or she was licensed in another jurisdiction. Law enforcement personnel are trained to think in a manner that protects lives. We need to allow them to act in the same manner by lifting current regulatory burdens. This bill takes the precautions necessary to ensure that former and retired law enforcement officers have been properly trained in the use of firearms, have proper identification, and were in good standing during their prior employment. Moreover, the bill allows them to protect themselves, their families, and other citizens in need of assistance. I look forward to enactment of this legislation. I also look forward to working with Representative Cunningham from California, who has introduced a similar measure in the House of Representatives. Together we can bring about a much needed reform and strengthen the crime fighting capabilities of our Nation's law enforcement community. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator will suspend for 1 second. I want to make sure that we end with day 34 of the President's unwillingness to come to the American people with a serious budget proposal to balance the budget. We are now in day 34, as I said before. We only have 101 days to go before the next fiscal year. As I said before, I will probably put a little thing over here for the ``1.'' Hopefully I will not have to. Hopefully I will not have to come back. But until the President gets serious about this and is honest with the American public about how they are going to balance the budget, I am going to be back. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. SANTORUM. As a matter of fact, if you look at the percentage of the cuts the President makes in discretionary and mandatory programs, all the cuts he has to make, 20 percent of them--we have 10 years in the President's budget. You would think that the responsible thing to do would be to cut the budget--if you are going to do 100 percent of his cuts, if you take all the cuts he is going to make, you do it equally over the period of years, a straight line, 10 percent a year; 10 years, 100 percent of the cuts. What the President does is cut very little the first year, cuts virtually nothing. In fact, of all the cuts he suggests, only 2 percent occur in the first year. If you look at the second year, only 3 percent occur in the second year. After the first 2 years, when you should have cut 20 percent to get on your line of 100 percent, he has cut 5 percent. You go to the third year, he cuts 5 percent. So over the first 3 years he has cut 10 percent of the amount needed to cut over the 10 years. Where are the big cuts? Where is the big lifting, the heavy burden the last 2 years, the last 3 years? Twenty percent in the last year; 18 percent the year before that; 15 percent the year before that. I mean, well over--well, about 50 percent of the cuts occur in the last 3 years. So he back-end loads this thing. He does not do heavy lifting early on. It is left to the next generation, not surprisingly, and next Presidents to deal with this. Again, that is another form of wishing it away. I am sure every President has presented budgets at one point in [[Page S 8843]] time that suggest they will balance the budget, but they never suggest we do it starting now, they always suggest we do it down the road sometime. That is not the responsible way to do it. Mr. ASHCROFT assumed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is always the way it is with taxes. For example, you can look at the Clinton budget in 1993. We had tax increases and spending cuts. Tax increases went into effect right away. We felt all those tax increases immediately. What we have not felt yet from the first budget in 1993 of the President is the spending cuts. They do not come around. They have not occurred. So now we are back and having to make the tough decisions on actually reducing spending. Again, the Senator is right with the tax cuts. The President wants to get the tax cuts in now because it is election time; you want to help people out, give back a little of their taxes. Now he wants to cut them right before the election. It is clear, the spending cuts do not come.

Mr. SANTORUM. This is hard. It is very hard for Members of the Senate and I know the general public to look and say, How does this all work, because you are looking 10 years down the road, in the case of the Republican budget 7 years down the road. How do they know what they are going to do is actually going to accomplish a balanced budget? Like anybody else who has to deal with projections in the future, whether you are a businessman making projections or a family trying to save for a college education, whatever the case may be, if you are looking into the future and trying to plan things, everyone will tell you, every financial adviser, everybody else will say, Be conservative in your projection; don't assume that things are going to be great, and everything. Let's try to take a realistic, not worst case--because you don't want to always assume worst case--but take a realistic underestimation of what you think will happen and plan on that. That is sort of a good conservative way to look at it. Don't give it up, don't give the store all away by wishing rosy projections. That is what the Congressional Budget Office has done. What the President has done has really not been the prudent thing to do. What he has done is just assume everything is going to be great, that we will not have a recession. Think about this, that we will not have a recession in the next 10 years; that we will not have high interest rates over the next 10 years, that everything is going to continue to grow at a very steady and healthy pace over 10 years. Never has that occurred in a post-World War II economy. Never has that occurred. But yet the President estimates that to be able to achieve his goals. So as a result, I think most economists who have looked at this have said this is unrealistic, this is not going to happen and what the President has done is simply not belly up to the bar and tell us how he is going to really do this. As a result, we are going to see deficits. If we go the Clinton route, we are going to see deficits well into triple figures, well into the billions.

Mr. SANTORUM. I say to the Senator that the view he just expressed is a view that is shared by folks across the political spectrum. The Washington Post yesterday, or the day before, I do not remember which, editorialized--one of the great staunch defenders of this President-- editorialized against the President and his budget and his assumptions and how he went about coming to his balanced budget and said that the President hurt himself and his credibility, which is difficult to do, but it hurt his credibility by proposing a budget that simply is a smoke-and-mirrors, wishing-the-problem-away kind of budget. So I think objective sources have looked at what the President has done and rejected it out of hand as a political document, going up on national television, with a 5-minute address trying to, again, through speeches, convince the American public he is on their side. But when you see the actions, the actions do not match the words. Whether it was on his health care speeches or whether it is on his welfare reform speeches or whether it is on the budget deficit, the President will give a great speech. He will give a great speech. He always does. He is a good communicator, and he will get up and give a great speech about what he believes in. But do not listen to the speech, watch what he does. Look at the documents. Look at the plans. Look at what he actually is proposing. Ignore the speech and watch the actions, and you will find that the speech does not match the actions and the actions come well short of what is needed to solve these problems.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes, I yield.

Mr. SANTORUM. I want to say that the Joint Economic Committee is going to have a hearing on the President's budget. I am a member of that committee. I am looking forward to hearing the President's people on his budget and these economic assumptions. It is, in my opinion, a very cruel hoax on future generations, and on the current electorate, to suggest that we can balance the budget without doing the things that are necessary in reducing spending and changing Government, and that are required by any sound economic view of the future. We are going to talk about that today. Senator Mack has stepped up and said we are going to look at the Clinton budget, examine it and give him an opportunity to convince us that he is right. I am looking forward to that. I am willing to give the President and his people their day, but I am very distressed at this continuing pattern of this President, just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public. The fact of the matter is that the folks, like my son, Daniel, who was born on Father's Day, are the people that are going to have to pay the price and consequences of the actions we have today. Somebody has to come to the floor of the Senate and defend those children's future. The Senator from Oklahoma is right. They do not have a chance to talk for themselves, so someone has to stand up and do it for them. My father is an immigrant to this country, and I remember talking to my grandfather on many occasions about why he came to this country and brought my father over as a relatively young person. He said, ``Well, the biggest reason he came to America is because he wanted a better life for his children.'' Now, have we gone so far in this country, where this generation of Americans cares more about themselves than about their families and their futures? If we have, what does that say about the likely prospects for the future of this country? What we have is a bunch of people, including the President, who come before the American people and try to scare them into believing that somehow we are going to hurt them and that we, the Republicans, do not care about them, and scare them into keeping the status quo in place, which they know hurts future generations, but, frankly, future generations do not vote now.

Mr. SANTORUM. No, I do not, but I do have an editorial from one of my papers, in the Lancaster Intelligencer, which said that the difference between the Republican budget and the President's budget, and they were very supportive of the President's budget, is that the President's budget is compassionate. The President's budget is compassionate because it does not tear apart all these programs that are here in place in Washington. I would suggest to them that compassion--if compassion is measured by a group of people in Washington willing to take people's hard-earned money and give it to people that they see fit to give it to, if that is the measure of compassion I can tell you it is very easy for me. It is no skin off my back to vote money from somebody else and give it to somebody else. Some people say that is compassion. If I go to someone who is working 16-hour days, 6 days a week, and I tax him more money and give it to somebody else who may not be working as hard or may have a problem, whatever the case may be--I am sort of removed from this. It is not hurting me. I am not taking any money from me here. I am taking it from somebody else and giving it to somebody else. Where is that compassion? The word compassion, if you look at the derivation of the word compassion, it means ``with suffering.'' I am not suffering with anybody. I am not suffering with anybody. I am telling you to give money. And I am taking it from you and giving it to him. Where am I involved in the suffering here? There is no suffering. It makes you look nice. It is great to be able to go into a community where you are handing out money. Look, I love to present checks. Oh, it is great to take other people's money, who worked hard for it, and have me give it to people. It is a wonderful feeling. You feel great. But are you really compassionate? Is that action truly compassionate? Is there any ``suffering with,'' that is going on here? No, no, it is not compassion at all. It is politics. And it is easy and it is fun. Oh, I know it is fun to just take that money away from those people who are making too much money and give it to folks who are not making enough. It is sort of the modern day Robin Hood. But there is no suffering here. What the Senator from Wyoming said is absolutely right. This country is a great country because we have people who cared about people, who did ``suffer with,'' who did care about their neighbor, who did know who their neighbors were and went out and did something about it. And because Government has gotten so big and is starting to do so much for people, we stop doing so much for each other because it is not our job anymore. It is not our job to help take care of our fellow neighbor. There is a Government program that does that and just call this office, toll free. That is not what made America great. Toll-free numbers for calling a Government bureaucrat is not what made America great. What made America great, what the Senator from Oklahoma said, is the goodness of America. I can tell you there is nothing good about taking money away from people who work hard for it and giving it to people who we want to for whatever reason we want to. That is not good. That may be necessary in some cases. There are people in this country who do need help and there are Government programs that do it. But do not come here and say that is good, or that is compassionate. It may be necessary sometimes. What is good is if you participate individually, if you get out there and help your neighbor and become part of the fabric of community, which is what de Tocqueville wrote about over 100 years ago. That is what makes America great. That is what we are trying to get back to-- understanding that families and communities and neighborhoods are important to the fabric of our society. And if we continue to lose them we will lose America. So, the Lancaster Intelligencer is dead wrong. There is nothing compassionate about keeping the Federal Government in control of people's lives. It is anything but compassionate because there is no suffering here. There is only more suffering out there.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise this morning to begin the freshman focus. The freshman class, all 11 of us of the 104th Congress, have taken about the role of coming to the floor on a regular basis to focus the Senate on issues of importance really to the next generation of Americans. We believe that as freshmen we have a special role to play in looking toward the future and seeing how we can focus the attention of the Senate on solving the long-term problems that face this country. Today, under the able leadership of Senator Thomas from Wyoming, who has been a real champion in organizing this effort and bringing the freshman class in the Chamber on a very regular basis, we are going to talk about the Clinton ``budget.'' When I say Clinton ``budget,'' I use the term ``budget'' in quotes because we do not really have what I think anyone would seriously consider a detailed budget of how the President is going to solve the deficit problem that faces this country. In fact, we have 6 pages--photocopied on both sides, that is 12 pages total--of budget specifics as to how he is going to reduce the budget deficit to zero over the next 10 years. Now, it is interesting; if you look at what is going to be required to balance the budget over the next 10 years, it requires about $1.6 trillion in spending cuts. That is according to the Congressional Budget Office. Now, you say: How do they figure that out? How does the Congressional Budget Office come up with the assumption that we need to cut spending an aggregate amount of $1.6 trillion? They make certain basic assumptions, economic assumptions. The economic assumptions that the Congressional Budget Office makes is a percentage growth in the economy. They say, well, we estimate over the next 10 years that the economy will grow on average a certain percentage per year. The estimates, frankly, if you look at them, are pretty flat. I think about 2.3 percent growth per year over the next 7 years because they were doing a 7-year budget. Now the President has come up with 10. They extended it up to 10 years. It does not take into account recessions. And most economists will tell you, over the next 10 years we are scheduled to have at least one recession, probably two recessions. Now, they may not be deep recessions, but they will talk about much lower rates of growth and maybe even some negative growth during that period of time. Now, what happens when we have recessions? Well, when we have recessions, tax revenues go down, expenditures to the Federal Government go up because unemployment claims go up, welfare payments go up, other kinds of Government supports, safety net programs, are much more in use. The Congressional Budget Office, I think, was sort of averaging out the high and low periods of growth above 2 or 3 percent and periods of growth below and saying, on average, it is roughly 2.3 percent or maybe a little higher, 2.4 percent in the future. They also make an assumption on interest rates. Why are interest rates important? Well, when you have nearly $5 trillion of debt that you have to finance, interest rates are important. The higher the interest rates, the higher the interest costs, the higher the [[Page S 8842]] deficit. So interest rate projections also affect what the bottom line deficit will be. So they have projected out interest rates, again on a conservative basis, because again interest rates fluctuate. If you look at the last 10 years of the history of this country, the interest rates went from double digits to 3 to 4 percent. So you may see a wide variation in the next 10 years. In the next 10 years, you will see a wide variation. They try to work it out, act conservatively. You want to have realistic numbers here. And they came out with some interest rate projections. Now, they use the combination of growth projections and interest rate projections to determine their basic economic assumptions of what the deficit will be. And then they say, ``Now, to meet zero, you have to cut so much money out of Government programs or raise taxes to get to zero.'' How does the President accomplish his 10-year balanced budget? Well, he does not do it by looking at what the Congressional Budget Office has done and then making the spending cuts or tax increases necessary to get to a balanced budget. In fact, in his plan he has, instead of $1.6 trillion over 10 years which is needed to balance the budget according to the Congressional Budget Office, he has $1 trillion in cuts, substantially less than what is necessary. Yet he gets the balance. You say, How does he do that? How does he cut less money than is required to get the balance and still get there? Here is how he does it. He does it by changing the assumptions. He assumes a higher rate of growth in the economy. He assumes lower interest rates. Sort of wishes it away. Just decides, ``Well, we know we will have higher growth and lower interest rates, and as a result we will have less financing costs. Because interest rates are lower, we will have higher rates of growth, which means more tax revenues and less Government expenditures. So we will reduce the debt through economic assumptions.'' Well, that is nice. It is an easy way to do it. I guess if he wanted to, he could go back and just estimate even higher growth rates and lower interest rates and not have to do anything. But that is not real. What is the actual effect on the numbers? It is interesting. Look at Medicare. Under the President's budget, if you look at the President's Medicare number, not what he says he is going to have to reduce spending by in Medicare, but the actual amount of money he spends on Medicare every year over the next 10 years, in the first 3 years the President spends less on Medicare than we do, but it is not as big a cut as we have. Now, you say, ``Wait a minute. How can that be? If he spends less on Medicare next year than we do under the Republican budget, less on Medicare in year two than we do on Medicare and less on Medicare in year three, how can his cuts be less?'' Well, he assumes a lower rate of growth in Medicare and then cuts from that. So what he has done is--we have growth of 10 percent per year programmed in because that is what Medicare is doing. It is growing at about 10 percent a year. We have that programmed in for the next 10 years. What the President has done is he assumes, first, that Medicare growth is not going to continue at 10 percent, it will only continue at 7 percent and then cuts from that. So, as a result, the cut is not as much, but the number is actually lower than the number that we are using. So he sort of cuts in part by assuming it away and cuts the other part by actually doing it. So, to suggest that the President is going to cut Medicare less than we are or change Medicare less than we are is just ridiculous. His numbers actually are lower than our numbers. So, I would just suggest, if you look at the specifics of what the President has done, he has assumed away this budget deficit. He has suggested that we can get rid of the budget deficit by having rosy economic projections, rosy projections on growth and interest rates and not do the hard work of actually having to make decisions on how we are going to pare back the size of Government. As a result of that, as a result of his unwillingness to face the music, to use the Congressional Budget Office projections, which he said in the State of the Union, just down at the other end of this hallway, right down here. Walk out the middle door here and just keep walking and you will come to the House of Representatives. And you walk through that door and keep walking, you will walk right into the podium of the House of Representatives. Right there, right at the other end of the hall, the President got up and said, ``We will use the Congressional Budget Office scoring because they have been the best at doing it. We all have to use the same numbers.'' He said that. Now, I know it is going to come as a shock to many that he has not lived up to his promise, but he did not. He is not using their numbers anymore. Why? Well, the same reason every President has not used their numbers. Because their numbers are tougher. It is harder to balance the budget when you use real numbers. It is easier when you get your friends at the Department of the Treasury to sort of wish this stuff away. Well, unfortunately we cannot wish it away.

Mr. SANTORUM. Decried it, she was outraged that someone would do this. This was going to be the fatal blow to our economy. She went at great length to say that setting a time certain to bring the budget into balance would be disastrous for the economy, and now that the President has been convinced to do it, it is now a good idea. It amazes me, it absolutely amazes me how they just--as Representative Obey from Wisconsin said about the President of his party--President Clinton's decision is like the weather, if you do not like it, wait and it will change. I think that is pretty much the way his advisers see it, that he has no responsibility to tell the country what they believe; their responsibility is to tell the President a line on what they believe.

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. First, I would like to thank the Chair for his indulgence in spending the time that I am supposed to be in the chair presiding and doing that for me. As customary, the Senator from Virginia is always there to do the gentlemanly thing and fill in a need. I appreciate very, very much the indulgence of the Senator. I am back to continue my vigil in requesting the President put forward a balanced budget resolution. The last time I appeared here on the Senate floor was the night the President announced his balanced budget resolution. I had sketchy details at the time but did not have the full package that the President presented. We have gotten it. It is about 6 or 7 pages, double-sided, about that big, that thick. That is his budget proposal, compared to his first budget proposal which was about this thick, to give the comparison, the amount of detail. As Members have heard on the Senate floor today and in newspapers and other places, it just does not measure up. The President uses a whole lot of assumptions that are exaggerated and made to make the projections of the economic growth and interest rates and everything else look rosy, and as a result, gets to a balanced budget through his numbers with smoke and mirrors. The Congressional Budget Office, who, in a State of the Union Address in 1993, he stated would be the numbers that he would use--that everyone should use because they are the most accurate--that he would use in determining whether we get to a balanced budget, scores the Clinton budget as continuing deficits of $200 billion or more. It is a straight line. Deficits do not come down at all under this budget proposal as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. The people who scored his budget over 10 years as getting the deficit to zero were the Office of Management and Budget, which is over in the Department of Treasury, which is his own people scoring his own numbers, which are, as was said, rosy assumptions. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the one that the President says we have to use, says that we have $200 billion deficits into the future for the next 10 years. So, as a result, I have to come back and add another number to this chart, which says, ``Days with no proposal to balance the budget from President Clinton.'' I gave a period of time to give him the benefit of the doubt to get the numbers up here to let us see what the specifics were, whether this would be scored by a neutral party, the Congressional Budget Office, as a balanced budget resolution. In fact it has come back to be not balanced. It is disappointing. I just want to go over a couple of the details of the budget and then I want to address, finally, this chart which has gotten a little publicity here, of late. First, the details of the budget. The Republican budget gets to balance by the year 2002. What are the deficits that are estimated by the Congressional Budget Office under the Clinton budget: $196 billion in 1996, $221 billion in 1997, $199 billion in 1998, $213 billion in 1999, $220 billion again in the year 2000; $211 billion in 2001, $210 billion in 2002, $207 billion in 2003, $209 billion in 2004, and $209 billion again in the year 2005; over $2 trillion in additional debt over the next 10 years under his revised budget which he says gets us to zero, which the Congressional Budget Office says gets us to even worse shape than we are now, $209 billion as opposed to $175 billion projected this year. So we have made no progress even under Clinton II. Let us look at the specifics of Clinton II. If you compare the Clinton second budget to his first budget, the one he [[Page S 8720]] submitted to the Congress in February that nobody in this Chamber voted for--99 ``no'' votes, 1 ``absent''--under the Clinton first budget in discretionary spending, that is nonentitlement spending, he cuts over 5 years, $2 billion from his first budget. This new revised budget that is going to be tough, that is going to get us to zero, that is going to do all these things--make the tough decisions, face up to the music for the American public, that he went on national television to tell us how important it was, now to come to the table and make these tough choices--$2 billion over 5 years. Under his first budget he was to spend, just to give an idea of the magnitude of the numbers we are talking about, over the first 5 years in his first budget he submitted in February that did not come to balance--it did not even pretend to come to balance--total discretionary spending over that 5-year period, $2.730 trillion. That is the total discretionary spending accounted for in the Clinton first budget. The Clinton second budget--new, improved, I am going to get you to balance, make the tough decisions, tighten the belt some more, we have gotten the message from the American public, I know you want me to deliver--not $2.730 but $2.728 trillion. So over 5 years he reduced discretionary spending by $2 billion. That is not a Weight Watchers approach to the budget. You are not going to loosen any notches on $2 billion out of $2.7 trillion. So how does he do it, if he does not cut discretionary? He admits he does not cut discretionary. You cannot play around with those numbers. How does he do it? He looks at these cuts in the outyears. He does not do much in the first few years. He sort of back-end loads it. In fact, of the 10-year budget that he has proposed, you would think if we are going to cut money over 10 years you would do it on a straight line. You cut so much per year every year to get to balance. It does not take much of a mathematician, which I am not, to figure out if you were going to cut the same amount every year to get your balance, sort of a straight line down, you would have to get about 10 percent a year. That is what you would figure. In the first year the President cuts 2 percent; 2 percent of his cuts first year, 3 percent next, 4 percent next, 5 percent next, in years 9 and 10, 17--almost 18 percent of the cuts and almost 21 percent of the cuts; the last 2 years, long after--that is three Presidents from now-- he decides that is when we are going to do all the cutting. It is a lot easier if you are sitting in the White House and look two or three Presidents down the road and have them do all the tough work. He does not do any of the tough work under the rest of his administration or the potential next administration. So again, all the tough decisions are put off to future Congresses and future Presidents and none of the real tough decisions are made now. I say that in criticism of the President's budget. But I will say that I appreciate that he at least came to the table. He did not come to the table with much. He is not going to feed a lot of people with what he has at the table, but he at least came. He entered into the debate, he made some, I think, relevant comments when he came to some of the health care programs and how they had to be on the table. I know it upset folks on the other side of the aisle but at least he came and said we have an obligation to do this. I hope he comes back with some real budgets and with some real numbers that show that we will do this. So I unfortunately will have to come back and talk more about how the President has not come through with a budget. There are a couple of things I want to comment on in wrapping up, and again I appreciate the indulgence of the Senator from Virginia. There was an article in the Washington Post on Sunday about how some of my colleagues were upset with this chart I have on the floor because of its irreverence, some may suggest, in its title. I was criticized by Members that I should not, in a chart, refer to the President by his first name. I did a little looking back, as to how the other side treated Republican Presidents when they were in the majority--when they were here and the President was a Republican. I found just a few things. We did not do an extensive research--frankly, you did not have to do extensive research to quickly find references to Presidents which were in my opinion a heck of a lot more pejorative in nature than mentioning the President's first name in a chart. In the 99th Congress, the next-to-the-last Congress, when President Reagan served as President, there were 77 references by Members to the term ``Reaganomics.'' That at the time was not a flattering term. ``Reaganomics,'' 77 times. In the 100th Congress 42 times. The term ``Reaganomics'' appeared in the journal here in the U.S. Senate, used by Members of the U.S. Senate to describe Ronald Reagan's fiscal policies. That is not a very nice thing to say. Yet I do not recall any of those comments being made and Members being attacked for that. I have, from the Congressional Record here, March 3, 1989, the Senator from South Carolina, the junior Senator from South Carolina referring to President Reagan as ``Ronnie,'' in his discussion. I do not assume to use any more familiar terms in referring to the current President. I have, from the Congressional Record of 1991, the Senator from Massachusetts who used the term, not only on November 15, but on November 7 and November 1, the phrase ``waiting for George,'' George Bush, the President of the United States. ``Waiting for George is more frustrating than waiting for Godot.'' He used that phrase several times during debate in 1991 with respect to the unemployment compensation extension. So, I mean, I also will refer back to the Senator from Massachusetts, September 20, 1988, during the campaign where he referred to the then- Vice President, candidate for President, as ``Where was George then?'' That was, as I mentioned before, the reason for this chart. The term ``Where's George'' was a popular saying back in 1988. And it was a popular saying, not as the Senator from North Dakota said to me while on debate the other day, at the Convention, the Democratic National Convention in 1988, but also on the floor of the U.S. Senate. So, I think before we get a little high and mighty about the reverence paid to people, I do say ``Days with no proposal to balance the budget from President Clinton.'' We try to be respectful and I am respectful of the office of the President and of President Clinton, but I think this chart is well within the bounds of decorum here in the U.S. Senate, and I do so with the greatest amount of respect and also with a very sincere effort to try to bring the President's attention back to this issue, to where he can become a relevant player in making budget policy for this country, which I think the country needs. Whether we like it or not, the President has to sign the budget reconciliation. So he needs to be relevant to this process. We need the President. We cannot do it alone. We would like to be able to do it alone but we cannot. That is not the way the Constitution set it up. He needs to be relevant and needs to be involved. And I appreciate the first step he took, and his advisers who encouraged him to come to the fore and make that suggestion. Now it is time to come and do a little harder work and get that-- sharpen that pencil a little bit and start working with real numbers to come up with real solutions to the problems that face this country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I rise to keep vigil with the President on his plans to introduce a balanced budget under the same circumstances that we had to in the Senate, with precise cuts, precise reductions in the rate of growth in some programs, changes in the tax law that would get us to a balanced budget. Just a few minutes ago, the President concluded what he termed --this is from the White House press release--The President's Economic Plan: A Balanced Budget That Puts People First. He just concluded a minute or two ago. Obviously, I was here on the Senate floor. I was not able to see the actual address, but I have before me--I feel like Johnny Carson--I have before me the actual press release that outlines how he is going to get to a balanced budget over 10 years. Now, it is interesting that he is going to take it over a 10- year period. You would think that balancing the budget over a 10- in the longer time to do it. That is not the case, however. Because of the demographic trends in our society and the entitlement nature of a lot of Government programs we have, spending actually kicks up higher and goes up faster in the years 2003, 2004, and 2005, those last 3 years of the 10-year budget, and therefore it is actually harder to get to a balanced budget over a 10-year period. In fact, while it takes under our proposal here that passed the Senate roughly $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and interest savings to get to a balanced budget in 7 years, it takes about $1.6 trillion in spending cuts and interest savings to get to a balanced budget over 10 years. So of this $1.6 trillion, what does the President come up with? Well, here are the specifics. And before I put this number up, we have had 25 days, counting yesterday, 25 days with no proposal to balance the budget from President Clinton. Now, we are waiting to see whether I have to put 26 up or whether the proposal put forward by the President tonight meets the straight-face test, whether the President actually has put forward a budget that accomplishes balance. This is the operative word--balance the budget, not plan for economic future, not Putting People First but balance the budget in 10 years. So we are going to withhold judgment for now as to whether the President with the specifics he has offered tonight balances the budget. That is not to say that once he releases his document, which I am sure they are working on feverishly over at the White House, once they release this document and have all the specifics down that we will not give the President credit, but all we have is the information presented to us at this time, and since the Senate is recessing we have to go only by the information that the President provided us. So we will hold 26 here for a minute. Here is what the President has provided in his plan. First steps toward health care reform while strengthening the Medicare trust fund-- strengthening, not solving the problems with the Medicare trust fund. The President's plan calls for half the Medicare savings of the Republican plans ($130 billion). For those of you who do not have calculators at home, do not worry. I will in fact be keeping track of the savings here, and I will make sure we add them up and we do get the numbers the President needs to balance the budget. So it is $130 billion in savings for the President for Medicare cuts, but there would be no beneficiary cuts. He does not explain how he does that, but he suggests that he can do it without cutting beneficiaries. Fine, $130 billion in deficit reduction. Second is $55 billion in Medicaid cuts. Again, that is a third of the level of what the Republicans proposed in our budgets. That is $55 billion plus $130 billion for the President. Then he goes on and talks about protecting investment in education and training. That is paragraph 2 here in his press release. And he says, ``The President's plan puts people first by preserving investments in education and training, with significant increases in Head Start, Goals 2000, AmeriCorps, student aid, a new GI bill of rights for workers that increases training through skill grants, and a $10,000 education tax deduction.'' Now, there is nothing in here that reduces the deficit. In fact, everything in here increases the deficit and increases spending. We do not know how much, though. He does not tell us exactly how much. All we know is that there are increases in spending in the President's budget that look to be, with a $10,000 education tax deduction, potentially a significant amount of money, but again we do not know, we do not know whether any of these are new entitlements and how they will grow in the next 10 years. But we do see, I suggest, significant increases here, but we cannot account for those. Next is a tax cut targeted only to working families. Again, no deficit reduction here. We are talking about the President's middle- income tax cut which he has proposed, which is the education deduction, tax credit for children and expanded IRA's. Under the President's original proposal when he proposed his budget in February, that plan cost about $65 billion over 5 years. Over 10 years, that number, you would think, would be double that but, in fact, because of the way it is back-end loaded--he back-end loads that tax cut--it is actually dramatically more. We do not have a score in on that, but I suspect it is at least $150 billion, or more, in costs. So on the one side you have $130 billion--try to keep this in your mind--on Medicare, $55 billion on Medicaid, and on the other side you have a questionable amount of money on education and about $150 billion plus in tax cuts. OK? This is not exactly the straight road to a balanced budget, but we are not done yet. No. 3, components of savings for the balanced budget. Here is where we really get down to the brass tacks and get serious about balancing the budget. He restates his Medicare and Medicaid savings. I hope he does not count them twice because they appear twice in this document, but they are here for repetition sake. Welfare reform has savings of $35 billion--$35 billion. That now goes on the cut side, and we add that to the $130 billion and $55 billion. By the way, that is half of what the Republicans have proposed in the budget resolution that passed the Senate. Corporate contributions of $25 billion over 7 years through a bipartisan effort to close corporate loopholes, special interest tax breaks and unwarranted corporate subsidies. OK, that is another $25 billion on the tax-increase side, but deficit reduction side. Now we go to the last page of these three pages. Other than education, research and selected investments in the environment and other areas, domestic discretionary spending is cut by over 20 percent in real terms near the end of the plan--near the end of the plan. So what he is suggesting is that over 10 years, we will take the number of about, I think it is, $270 billion today is what we spend on discretionary spending overall. Obviously, a chunk of that is education and other things he says is taken off the sheet and says we are not going to cut that. I do not know how much that is. I am working off the back of an envelope here. You might not be able to tell that. We have a number less than $270 billion that he is going to reduce by 20 percent over 10 years. So we are going to get from $270 billion roughly down to $215 billion over 10 years. The Republicans, in their budget, I think, get down to over 7 years about $225 billion. So they only take it down a little more than where the Republicans already had it, which is not a substantial savings. I do not know how they do that. I would suspect you are going to see savings generally in the area of around $75 billion overall. So we will give him that amount of money roughly, although we do not know the specifics. I think that is a generous allocation. Finally, defense outlays in the President's plan are above both the House and Senate levels. Let me repeat that. Defense outlays in the President's plan are above both the House and Senate levels in fiscal year 2002. So he is talking about higher defense spending than what we passed here. Yet, savings are achieved by keeping budget authority constant from 2002 to 2005. In other words, we are going to spend more money the first 7 years but less money the last 3 years, and that will offset the spending here. What it sounds like is defense is a wash. In other words, we are not going to spend any more or less; there is no real reduction in spending in defense. So how do these numbers add up, because that is it, there are no more specifics on how the President gets to a balanced budget. I remind you, going back to the beginning of this talk, the President, in order to balance the budget, has to come up with spending cuts and interest savings that total $1.6 trillion over 10 years, and they have to be scored by someone other than someone who is working for the Democratic National Committee, someone who is independent, like the Congressional Budget Office, to look at this and score it as to whether these are real: $1.6 trillion, specified cuts in the Clinton bill-- specified--$245 billion out of $1.6 trillion, $245 billion are specified. Another $75 billion, I figured out, in discretionary spending could be cut. That is a rough estimate. So we will give the President the benefit of the doubt of $315 billion in spending cuts because of his tax cut, which gives you a net of about $165 billion. Tonight, the President of the United States went on national television for 5 minutes with a plan that he submitted--here--to all of us and gave us a little cheat sheet on what he was going to talk about that cuts 10 percent of what he needs to get to a balanced budget over 10 years--10 percent. He puts forward 10 percent of the cuts he needs to balance the budget over 10 years. I do not know if that meets the straight-face test. I do not think it does. I think when the President of the United States comes and says he is going to present an economic plan to balance the budget over 10 years, then comes before the American public on national TV, which the Vice President was able to ascertain for him, and then comes up with only 10 percent of the cuts necessary to get to a balanced budget, I am not too sure that this number ``6'' does not belong up on that board. I am not too sure that the President has come to the table yet with a serious plan that scores as a balanced budget. Certainly, the details that he has offered and the notes that have been haphazardly slipped to me by my staff as he listened to his speech certainly do not give me any further indication, any further specifics about how the President accomplishes this goal. But to come forward on national television--on national television--saying he is going to balance the budget and come forward with 10 percent, that is an insult. It is an insult. It is an insult to all of us who sit there and work hard to try to make this happen, and it does not do much to elevate the stature of the President's office. If you are going to come to the American public, if you are going to say you will play straight, if you are going to be specific on how to do it, do not try to finesse them again. Someone is watching. Someone is going to pay attention to the details, and you are not going to be able to keep fudging the fact that you are not coming forward with the tough decisions. And stretching it out over 10 years, you will find, does not make it any easier. So tonight I have to put up number ``6.'' Five-minute speeches on national television do not count. Facts, specifics, documents, vision, plans count. All of those were in the Senate-passed budget resolution, every one of them. They changed the dynamics of Government. They provided vision of how we are going to challenge the problems, to take those challenges on in the future. We solve the Medicare trust fund problem. The President does not do any of those things. He felt the pressure. I do not know whether he started off his speech saying, ``Here I am,'' in response to my talks on the Senate floor, but if he did, he came up short. He, in fact, is not found yet. We still do not know where the President is when it comes to putting forth measures to balance this budget. And so while there are many other things I would like to do at 9:20 in the evening than come and talk about the President and his inability to lead this country, I will continue to come back until I get the specifics of how the President is going to put forward a plan to lead this country into the future. And to date, day 26, the President is still absent without leadership, and has still refused to come to the table. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Pressler amendment numbered 1351 be in order.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. I appreciate the Senator from Mississippi providing this time for me.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we vitiate the previous order for the Senate to be in recess.