Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. I will quickly wrap up my remarks, and, hopefully, we can move to the vote soon. In response to some of the comments, I know this amendment was made available last night, and it is really a minor, technical amendment. I hope that is something we can agree to down the road. I think it is important. I understand telecommunications is important, and if we can get agreements, we can move forward on it. But this is also important. The role of the President in this country over the next 18 months, and whether he is going to be a leader of this country in moving forward on the domestic agenda, whether it is telecommunications or balanced budget or welfare reform, or a whole host of other areas, is important. The Presidency--an office I respect--is important to this country. In fact, that is the reason I am here, because I think it is important. I think it is necessary for the President to step forward and offer suggestions, to lead the [[Page S8061]] country. If I did not think it was important, if I did not think the President had a role, if I did not think the President was in fact the leader of the free world, then I probably would not be here. He would be like any other American who did not have to participate in the process. Well, he was elected to participate in the process; he was elected to lead this country; he was elected to change this country. What he has done is elected not to participate. I think we need to point that out. We need to continue to point that out until he elects to participate. So I will be back and I will talk about the number of days with no proposal to balance the budget from President Clinton.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will not yield.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator.

Mr. SANTORUM. I do not know anything about that. I have some very pressing business of my own which, hopefully, can wait. My wife is expecting our third child, and we are hoping that will come tomorrow. We are very anxious about that. Things are looking good. I would like to be home tomorrow. But if Senate business calls, Senate business calls, and I will be here if I need be. I know what we would like to do is proceed on some of these amendments. I have these notes passed to me saying no one wants to agree to vote on anything; we want to stall and delay.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I reclaim the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. I expect I will be talking for a few more minutes. I know the leader would like to get a vote and is seeking a unanimous consent agreement to get a vote on a----

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, so I will probably have to have another little doohickey over here so we can put the ``1'' here, because it will be 135 days where the President is not going to offer a bill. Again, he made comments on the Larry King show earlier this week that he was going to come up with a plan. He had talked about a plan that was going to balance the budget. This was, I think, day 6. He talked about a plan that was going to balance the budget over 10 years. That was his mission; that he was going to come up with that. I did a little homework and found out that the last plan that was around here to balance the budget in 10 years that was offered never actually came to the floor of the House, but it was put together. It was by the chairman of the Budget Committee at the time. The chairman of the Budget Committee at that time was Leon Panetta, now Chief of Staff at the White House. But at the time of putting this budget together in 1991, he was chairman of the Budget Committee. This was after the Bush budget battle of 1990, and he thought it would be responsible. I give him credit for this, because I was on the Budget Committee at the time and worked very closely with then Chairman Panetta. I had the utmost respect for him and his ardor in putting forward plans to put this country back on sound fiscal footing. I was not always in agreement with how he did it, but I know then Chairman Panetta really had a strong motivation to deal with these problems, face up and a legitimate attempt by then Chairman Panetta to deal with these issues. I found it ironic that when he actually put the document together--it was in late 1991--he not only did not even bring it up in the Budget Committee, but he was roundly criticized by those on his side of the aisle, so he pulled it down. I must tell you, it was a budget to balance the budget over 10 years. There were some interesting points in it. What you find is that, very much like the Republican budget that was put forward and passed by the Senate and the House, it called for reductions in growth in entitlement spending. It called for reductions in growth in Medicare. It called for reductions in growth in Medicaid. It called for reductions in growth in Federal retirement programs. If you go on down the list on what the Republicans are now being roundly criticized for, the Panetta budget in 1991 was very similar in respect, maybe not to degree, but certainly similar in the programs that it went after, the recognition of where the problem was, and focused on entitlements as the biggest area for resolution of that problem. The other interesting thing is that only two-thirds of the deficit reduction was achieved as a result of spending reductions. Two-thirds were achieved through spending reductions. The other one-third of deficit reduction was achieved through a tax increase. A little over $400 billion in new taxes, not specified, but new taxes that were going to be placed on the American public. Maybe it goes back to the reason why the President has been so shy about offering this or bringing to light this 10-year budget. I am of the opinion that maybe what the Chief of Staff of the White House did was rummage through some of his old budget files when he was Budget chairman or have someone dig up his 1991 proposed budget and offered that to the President: ``See, Mr. President, we can do it.'' I know again how concerned the Chief of Staff is about the budget deficit and how honest he was in dealing with that. I believe he has been a voice in the White House saying, ``Let's be responsible. Let's go out and show how we are going to do it, and let's bite the bullet like the Republicans have in the Congress, and lead this country into the future. Mr. President, here was my plan to get there. You should look at it.'' So what the President probably did was read it and probably voiced he has a plan he is looking at, a 10-year plan, to balance the budget. But it, unfortunately, contains another big tax increase. This tax increase would actually pale by comparison to what the President and the last Congress passed in 1993. This was, as I said before, close to $\1/2\ trillion dollars in new taxes on the American public to solve this problem. I think if you looked at the debate during consideration of the budget resolution, there certainly was not a fervor to go out and raise taxes. I know there were a couple of Members who voiced that concern, but frankly, that sentiment was roundly dismissed by both sides of the aisle as something that was not only not in the public's interest but certainly not in the interest of the economy. If we look now at what is going on with the economy and the effect of the 1993 tax increase on the economy and the fact that we had the largest ever payment of taxes in April, the largest amount of money ever written to the Internal Revenue Service at tax time was this last April where they sent an enormous amount of money--I think the number is around $20 billion in tax payments paid over what the previous record was--some economists are suggesting that is one of the reasons we may be seeing the slowdown now, because that tax time and that tax increase drew so much money out of the economy that it had the dampening effect of reducing the rate of growth and possibly even spinning us into a recession. So I think everyone realizes that tax increases are not the way to deal with the budget deficit. I think we saw from the debate just a few weeks ago--I do not remember an amendment that called for a tax increase--that in fact suggested we should solve the problem by instituting new taxes.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. He has done an effective job in moving this debate along to a vote at 10:30, and I appreciate the opportunity to have this discourse. I think it may indicate that there is a sensitivity of the members of the President's party about the President's lack of leadership. And I understand that sensitivity. I understand that there may be justifiably some embarrassment about the lack of leadership by this President and jumping into his defense on something other than the substance of what we are discussing here. We are not discussing substance in this little interplay. We sort of got off the track. Let us talk about the substance. The substance is that I have to put--I did not get a chance to get to the floor yesterday, but I have to put now ``22''--22 days with no proposal to balance the budget from the President. I will show you the chart I had the other day that was in the Washington Times. And again I understand the embarrassment of the other side on this issue. I understand they are a little sensitive about this because I am sure it is something I would not be proud of if it was my President on the Republican side. But here is what Michael McCurry in a dialog with the reporter from the Washington Times said about the balanced budget amendment and the President on Larry King earlier this week suggesting that he may have a balanced budget resolution. The question was: Where does President Clinton stand on writing his own budget now? The answer from the press secretary: As he indicated last night in his television interview, he's prepared to contribute his ideas to the budget at the appropriate time. Washington Times question: What does that mean? Michael McCurry, White House Press Secretary: It means we're ducking the question for now. ``We're ducking the question for now.'' The President of the United States, who has the responsibility to lead this Nation, is ducking the question for now. I understand the embarrassment. I understand the sensitivity that many Democrats in this Chamber have about a President who is ducking the question, who is ducking the issue, who is refusing to lead, who is taking a back seat to all domestic policy in this country as we work here in the Congress to get it done and work, as we see in this case, on a bipartisan basis to get it done, but again without the leadership of the White House. Here we are debating probably one of the most important pieces of legislation that we are going to get a chance to debate that is going to affect our economy for a long, long time. We have very important fiscal matters to be concerned with here in getting our budget in order and tax policy and other Government program policies like welfare. But when it comes to regulating the private sector, this bill is probably as important as ever and the President has not been offering his own telecommunications bill, not putting forward leadership on that area, basically standing back and sniping, saying, well, I do not like this or I do not like that. But where is the leadership? Where is the leadership on welfare reform as he goes around the country talking about how the Republican plan is mean spirited and terrible, and yet he has offered no plan this year. The plan he offered last year was cast aside by his own Congress, the Democratic Congress, as a joke, as irrelevant, as a nonstarter, as not even meeting the straight-faced test of incremental reform. And so we have a President on that major issue domestically, who has just taken a walk and now this week he trots out the veto pen, on what? On reducing the deficit. On reducing the deficit, on a bill that was bipartisan, that was signed. This bill was signed on by the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee on the Democratic side as well as on the Republican side and passed with over 60 votes in the Senate, and he vetoed it. I have to quote the Senator from Oregon, Senator Hatfield, who came to the floor during the debate and said in his tenure on the Appropriations Committee, which spans six Presidents--six Presidents-- he has never been in a conference committee where the President of the United States did not send a representative to negotiate the conference report. Every President has always sent a member of his staff to sit in the conference committee when they are drafting the report, to negotiate the final deal so we could settle it. The President did not send anybody. He said that is the first time in his history on the Appropriations Committee. Now, there is a complete abdication of leadership. And so after an honest bipartisan effort was put together in the conference report, voila, the President decides it is not good enough for him even though he had no input into the process. I think it just goes to show you that what we have is a President who has decided to start running for the 1996 election and forget about serving in the office of the President. The whole concept now is just simply to run for office, to run against the Congress, not to offer anything, because if you offer anything, then you can be held down to specifics and people can criticize you. If you just criticize the other side, well, then all you do is pander to the different groups that you have to get to get elected. And that is what is going on here. There is no substance coming out of that White House whether it is telecommunications, whether it is welfare, whether it is rescissions, whether it is balancing the budget. It is a continuation of, as the majority leader so eloquently said, the a.w.o.l. strategy of the President, absence without leadership. I think we should demand better. And so I have set myself on this mission of coming here. I try to get here every day, but sometimes because of the floor schedule and the business we have at hand, I have not had a chance to do it every day. But I get here just about every day and put up the chart and count. I have been informed by my staff that we have, I think it was, 135 days between the time----

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from South Dakota. Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from South Dakota.

Mr. SANTORUM. I am not equating the floor of the Senate with a political convention, no.

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

Mr. SANTORUM. Depends on whose ox is being gored as to who is offended by the remarks. I can appreciate the constructive dialog, but I think it is a suitable poster and will continue with it.

Mr. SANTORUM. I think you will find the dialog that has occurred in charting the number of days that the President has refused to offer a budget has been very respectful of the President in referring to him as the President. The point of the chart is apparent. I find it ironic that when this was going on by the Senator from Massachusetts, I do not remember anybody coming to the well, much less the Senator from Nebraska coming to the well, defending President Bush from those similar attacks. So I think it----

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I would like to reclaim the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I move to instruct the Sergeant at Arms to request the attendance of absent Senators, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANTORUM. Objection.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I will be happy to yield to the Senator from South Dakota.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I rise today to offer an amendment which clarifies the intent of the current language in the bill regarding inter-LATA commercial mobile services. This amendment makes only a minor change to the bill, and my understanding is that the amendment is noncontroversial with respect to the managers of the bill. Both Senators Pressler and Hollings see no problem with the amendment and we hope to get the support of the other Members of the Chamber. Mr. President, as you know, the consent decree that broke up AT&T in 1984 divided up the territory served by the old Bell system into 160 LATA's, which are local access transport areas. The LATA boundaries were drawn based on the then existing wire-based telephone network. Since that time, these wireline LATA's have been applied to new wireless services offered by the Bell companies, services such as cellular telephone systems. This was done in spite of the fact that there is no particular relationship between the LATA's and the wireless area served. As a result, the Bell operating companies have been placed at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis the other wireless communications services, because the other wireless providers are not required to adhere to these LATA boundary restrictions. The current piece of legislation addresses this inequity in section 255, and I wish to commend the committee for doing so. Section 255 addresses when a [[Page S8063]] Bell operating company may provide inter-LATA telecommunications services. Subsection (e) defines when a Bell operating company may provide inter-LATA services incidental to providing video and audio programming, storage and retrieval services, and commercial mobile services. The intent is to finally allow the Bell operating companies to provide these specific services free of inter- LATA restrictions. However, Mr. President, I believe that with respect to commercial mobile services, the term ``incidental'' creates an unintended ambiguity. The non-Bell wireless providers that currently have advantage, as I said before, will argue down the road that the inter- LATA Bell services in any given case are not incidental to the commercial mobile services in question. As a result, the Bell operating companies are not guaranteed the full entry into the inter-LATA commercial mobile services that this bill intends to provide. The problem is very simply in the processing of a cellular phone call, they use wire services, and so it is in fact integral to providing the wireless services that they use a wire communications network. So the term ``incidental'' can be used to say that they frankly cannot do it at all and then have to fall back into their LATA boundaries, which is not the intent of the bill. My amendment clarifies the intent by doing two things. First, the amendment carves out commercial mobile services from the incidental services section. Second, the amendment inserts this commercial mobile services paragraph into a new subsection, subsection (f), immediately following the incidental services section. By creating a new subsection, this amendment removes the ambiguity of the term ``incidental'' with respect to the commercial mobile services without affecting the other wireless service provisions in subsection (e). As a result, this amendment makes only a very slight change to current language, yet it guarantees a level playing field intended for the Bell operating companies' commercial mobile services and their competitors. Wireless services are competitive today. There are two cellular carriers in every locale. The FCC has allotted additional spectrum for service providers which will compete with cellular carriers. Only Bell- affiliated wireless carriers are subject to the LATA constraints while all others can offer services in whatever way and configuration their customers want. The Bell companies' lack of a comparable freedom of flexibility puts them at this competitive disadvantage. As I said before, the distinguished ranking member, the Senator from South Carolina, and the chairman of the Commerce Committee have agreed to this, and I commend their efforts in putting this provision in the bill in the first place. This is simply a technical correction to make the focus of the bill very clear and so it is not under litigation by competitors down the road. I seek the support of the Senate on this amendment. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

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.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from South Carolina.