Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Five minutes.

Mr. SANTORUM. Can I have an additional 2 minutes?

Mr. SANTORUM. If we look at the amendment on the floor to eliminate section 936, the Senator from New Jersey voted against it. He voted to keep section 936 for drug companies, many of whom are based in New Jersey. So we can look through the entire Tax Code. There are lots of provisions in there that benefit specific industries, some of them for very good reasons, others not so good. To suggest that the entire Tax Code is one big loophole for corporate America belies the numbers. No. 1, where most of the tax expenditures are, in fact, for the earned income tax credit, health insurance, property taxes, local income taxes, and the home interest deduction. I would just suggest, as the Senator from Oklahoma will talk about, this program has problems with fraud, is a very harsh program as far as work disincentive, and there is a lot of information out there how the folks in this program are, in fact, not full-time workers who are just above the poverty level, but in fact only part-time workers who get a subsidy. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, 30 seconds, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SANTORUM. Let me finish my point. I do not know how you can say that it is a tax increase if 90 percent of the people receiving this money do not pay taxes. To me, when you are giving money back, in fact you are giving a negative income tax to a group of people and you are saying you are not going to let that increase so they can get more negative income tax. I do not know how you consider that a tax increase, an increase in taxes. What we are saying is we are not going to give you more money that you have not paid already.

Mr. SANTORUM. This is a tax credit for Federal taxes. That is what this program is.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I was struck by the arguments presented by the Senator from New Jersey in favor of this amendment about this Republican budget being a tax increase. Let me just first state, again, this goes without saying, all of the amendments that are being offered by the other side of the aisle are, in a sense, bogus because they take us off the path to a balanced budget. As a result, this money that they draw from, this $170 billion that is being used to pay for this amendment, does not exist because once you put the tax credit back in, you then throw us off the line to get us to a balanced budget which then, according to the Congressional Budget Office, gets us the $170 billion. So by putting this amendment on, the budget is no longer balanced, there is no $170 billion and, guess what? We do not have a balanced budget, we have no $170 billion, and we are back to the same place as before, which is adding to the deficit, not getting to a balanced budget. Anyone who believes that there is money here for this program--there just is not money here for this program. This blows the whole deal. This is another attempt by the other side to say we do not want a balanced budget because if we pass this we do not have a balanced budget. So let us put all this tax cut or no tax cut--that is a red herring. This proposal destroys the balanced budget, period. It destroys it, No. 1. No. 2, I found it absolutely amazing that the Senator from New Jersey would talk about all these tax cuts or tax benefits or tax expenditures, $480 billion in tax expenditures and then, admission against interest, he admitted most of those tax expenditures he supports. Of course, the lion's share of them, the biggest is health insurance; second is home mortgage deduction; and third is property taxes and income tax deduction. I am sure he does not oppose any of those. That is, by far, the lion's share. What does he point out as the big one? Section 29. Section 29. This little provision in the Tax Code for tight sands drilling of oil and natural gas. Now, let us look at section 29, this big glaring one that makes everything else illegitimate. Section 29 applies only to wells drilled prior to 1993. This thing has been phased out. It is not even around anymore. It is only for old wealth. This was taken care of a few years ago. So he is arguing we should get rid of a provision we have already gotten rid of.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I want to pick up where the Senator from Iowa left off. I think he made some very good points with respect to where the President's budget is. I noted also the same Washington Post article today. It suggests ``President to Counter Hill Budgets. Plan Would End Deficits in 10 Years.'' This was not released by the White House. This was released from a private interview up in New Hampshire that was leaked out somewhere, that the President is coming up with this secret plan to balance the budget in 10 years. It struck me. It tickled my memory, that I heard this about this 10- year plan before. It was from my first year in the Congress. I remember, as a member of the Budget Committee, I was a freshman member of the Budget Committee and then chairman of the Budget Committee, Leon Panetta, now over at the White House, came up with a 10- year that I was there and I think released it in about October of the year. It was after the debate. This was for the next fiscal year. It was interesting. I do not know whether the budget the President is considering is going to look like the budget the Congressman--then Chairman of the Budget Committee--Panetta offered. But at the time, to get to a balanced budget--this was in October of 1991, I refer to the Congressional Quarterly article--at the time Chairman Panetta said that it would take $1.3 billion in cuts or tax increases to get to a balanced budget in 10 years. What we are doing here in the Senate today with Senator Domenici's budget, the Republican budget, is roughly a trillion dollars, not quite a trillion dollars in spending reductions to get to a balanced budget. Then we have obviously interest savings which get us the rest. I had the Budget Committee staff run the numbers. If the President is proposing to get to a balanced budget over 10 years, not 7 years, he will not be able to do so by cutting the trillion dollars over 10 years. That is the fallacy. You cannot just cut $1 trillion over 10 years, and balance the budget because you have to get on sort of a longer curve. Your spending cuts do not occur early enough. You build up more debt. It is a lot more costly to balance it over a longer period of time. The Budget Committee told us that it would require $1.6 trillion in spending cuts or tax increases to balance the budget in 10 years, $1.6 trillion. The $1.3 trillion in the Panetta proposal of 1991 included deeper cuts in defense, entitlement spending reductions--I remind people entitlements are things like Medicare, Medicaid, welfare spending, things that are now being lambasted by the other side of the aisle--a broad cut back in the size and cost of government, and $250 billion to $400 billion in new taxes; $400 billion in new taxes. Is this a harbinger of things to come? Have we fished out of the files from the old Budget Committee in 1991 the 10-year budget proposal for the Clinton administration to balance the budget with a third of the money coming from new taxes? But this is just all speculation because we have not seen the President's budget. So I have the unpleasant task of returning to the floor to add to the list of numbers on my chart of days with no proposal to balance the budget from President Clinton. Since I had objections from the other side of the aisle about using staff to actually put my numbers up, I will do the chore myself, and put ``day 6,'' potentially a significant date. We might have learned about the secret budget, the existence of this document. We may have learned just from some of the detective work I have done that there may be a plan out there that existed a few years ago that may be resurrected because under the democratic rule in the House of Representatives this balanced budget that the Budget Committee chairman put together never saw the light of day, never was voted on, never was debated in committee, never moved past the draft stage. Maybe we will get it past the draft stage this time. Maybe the former chairman of the Budget Committee will be able to resurrect this handiwork that he did some 4 years ago and bring it on the scene as the new budget for the President. I will tell you that it would be a long time coming, not just the 6 days, but to provide some leadership out of the White House on this very important issue to this country. I remember during the Republican administrations the then-chairman of the Budget Committee, Chairman Leon Panetta, coming to the floor time after time after time making statements about how it was the responsibility of the President to be relevant to the situation, to not put up these budgets that were dead, that had no chance, but to be bold and to move forward. I quote from March 13, 1986. This is Leon Panetta speaking: We begin a game of ``budget chicken'' in which we wait for the other side to make the tough choices that have to be made to try to get our budget in line. It is a lousy way to do business; we all understand that. It is what gave birth to the Gramm-Rudman approach, and it is what creates the frustration that we now deal with here. The hope is that the President would exercise leadership in presenting a budget to the Congress that is realistic and that is serious. But instead of pulling together, he pulls apart. Instead of providing leadership, he plays games. The danger is that we too fall into the same trap. This budget is wrong; we know it is wrong, and it will fail for several reasons. Just as the President's budget came to the floor of the Senate. It was wrong, and it failed completely, and did not get one vote. I say that the former Congressman from California, Leon Panetta, made a good point about that back on May 1, 1990, talking about a Bush budget. He said: The fact is that the test of a budget is not what it says it does nor even its author. It is whether or not you get a majority of votes on the floor of the House and in the Congress. That is the ultimate test of the success or failure of any budget. The fact is that the test of a budget is not what it says or does or even its author. It is whether or not you get a majority of votes on the floor of the House and in the Congress. That is the ultimate test of the success or failure of any budget. That speaks volumes about the President's budget that he sent up here; speaks volumes about how serious the President was when he presented his budget to the U.S. Congress and in the U.S. Senate of which there are 54 Republicans and 46 Democrats. He got no votes. Then chairman Panetta went on to say: According to that test, the President's budget is a failure. The failure to offer the budget by the President also makes clear how tough it is to develop a budget that balances the priorities, that recognizes that we have to provide new directions for this country and that tries to achieve a majority vote on the floor of the House. How things can come back to haunt you. We had a chairman of the Budget Committee who was pleading for the President of the United States to provide leadership, to stand firm, and move our country forward in a bold, new way. Now that person sits as the right hand man of the White House, and from all the press reports is advising the President to do just the opposite. I guess it all depends on where you sit. I must read one more thing that Leon Panetta said during his time in Congress because my staff gave it to me. I actually thought it was something that I had just said the other day because I was talking about the fact that my father is an immigrant to this country and how important it was for us to leave the next generation better off than the generation that we now live in. Back on May 4, 1989, Congressional Record, Leon Panetta said: We have presented over the last 8 years a pleasant message that somehow everyone can have a free lunch in this country. That is not the case. That is not the message that my parents heard when they came to this country as immigrants with little education, little money, but a great deal of hope. They came for the opportunity that this country offered and the willingness to make a sacrifice for their children so their children could enjoy a better life. We now face a situation where our children may not enjoy a better standard of living than we had. That, I think, is the worst testament in terms of the future that we face in this Nation. He is right. That is the biggest question that faces us. What are we going do leave to the next generation? He was right in 1989. He was right in 1986. He was right in 1990, and hopefully he will convince the President to be right in 1995 to join the debate, to lead, to be relevant, to show this country, to show this Congress what direction he believes we should take to balance this budget. I hope this is the last day; I hope that day 6 was lucky, that this little inkling that we got about this secret budget might come out somewhere, that there is a plan, and that we will be able to know this plan. I do not want to be up here for the next 129 days between now and the end of the fiscal year talking about why the President has not come to the party and express his vision for the future of this country. I am confident tomorrow we will pass the balanced budget resolution. I hope it is bipartisan because I know there are many on the other side of the aisle who also would like to see this budget brought to balance. I wish to commend the Senator from New Mexico for his fine work on this budget. I wish to commend the Presiding Officer for the tremendous job she [[Page S7242]] has done every day of this debate in rallying the forces to come here to the floor to talk about the positive aspects and how meaningful it is to get to a balanced budget for this country and not just the next generation. A lot of the talk is just for the next generation. When we talk about Medicare, it is not the next generation. It is this generation of Medicare recipients. When we talk about economic growth, it is this generation that is going to benefit from lower interest rates and higher growth rates. This balanced budget is for everyone. As the Senator from New Mexico said in answering the question Senator Lautenberg posed: Whose side are you on? We are on America's side. We are on the side of all Americans. That is the beauty of a balanced budget. It is good for everyone. It is not about class warfare. It is not about picking winners and losers. It is about giving everyone opportunity. I yield the floor. Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from Delaware for the time yielded. I would like to first just respond to the comments made by the Senator from Maryland. I am the son of two [[Page S7105]] Federal employees. My parents worked for the Federal Government for their entire careers. I think the Senator is right. I think Federal employees do get beat up on a lot. A lot of them are doing the best they can in a system that is not working particularly well for them, a Government which was designed under the theory of bureaucracy, a theory created prior to the invention of the typewriter. That is how we wrote our Federal Government. So to saddle them with a bureaucratic organizational structure in an era where we are debating a telecommunications bill that is going to move us into the next millennium, which was unthinkable as much as 10 years ago, to saddle them with that and to suggest that they can perform their functions is almost asking too much of them. In addition, to suggest that the number of Federal employees in this information age cannot and should not be reduced, as it is in every private sector employment of any major corporation, is again not to face reality, that in fact structures must change, delivery systems must change, theories that ran our Government from the time of the revolution to now must change, and as a result the Federal compliment of employees must change, as it is in every major corporation in the country of any size. I would daresay that if the Senator from Maryland suggested we had a 10 percent cut in employment, we cannot afford another 10 percent, I would look to any major company in the country that has not cut their work force by 5, 10, or 20 percent or more. We have to do the same thing here. We have to understand that we have to deliver services more efficiently using technology that is available for us to do it better, cheaper, more efficiently and with less people in many cases. So I do not think the argument--at least my argument is not to look at these Federal workers as terrible, these do not do a good job. I disagree with that. I think the Federal workers that I know--and I know lots of them--work very hard, are very concerned about their job and want to do the best they can, and in the most of the cases are hamstrung by their own internal operations from doing the job that they wanted to do. But to suggest that now as we move into this information age that we cannot modernize like everybody else and as a result of that modernization be able to downsize the work force I think just flies in the face of what is going on in the entire world around us. Government should reflect what the country is doing, and what the private sector is doing to be able to streamline and make more efficient. I would suggest that there is one Federal employee who is not doing a very good job, who does need to be scrutinized more in this debate in particular; that is, the President of the United States. If there is a Federal employee who is not facing up to the demands of his job and coming forward with solutions to solve problems that face this country, it is, in fact, the President. We have the President now standing tall and firm against deficit reduction by saying he is going to veto the rescissions bill which is trumpeted to be $16 billion but, as most of us in this Chamber know, as the Federal Government continues to spend money day after day after day, that rescission bill is not worth $16 billion any more. We might be able to get $9 billion in savings. But the President says, ``No, you have got a couple of million dollars or so that I don't like and so we are going to throw the whole thing out.'' Leadership. Leadership. In trying to solve the problem that is most pressing on the American public's mind and one that is front and center to this U.S. Senate these last 2 weeks when we are debating the budget resolution, where has the President been on the budget resolution? Well, he did present his budget earlier this year that called for $200 billion and $300 billion deficits for as far as the eye can see, which last week was voted down 99 to nothing, 99 to nothing. Hardly leadership, hardly visionary on the part of the President to put forward a budget that simply was a nonstarter on both sides of the aisle unanimously. So where has he been? Where has the leadership been from the one Federal employee that we demand the most from? Nowhere. And so I came to the floor last week and I said that I would be here every day between now and the 1st of October when the new fiscal year starts and remind Members of the Senate of the kind of leader we have in the White House when it comes to balancing our budget. On Saturday, the President did not present a budget that brought this country into balance over the next 7 years. That was the third day that before the Senate was the balanced budget resolution. On Sunday, day four, the President did not present a balanced budget resolution. And today, day five, the President did not present a balanced budget resolution. It is incredulous to me that the President of the United States, who said during the balanced budget amendment debate, the amendment to the Constitution, that the we did not need a balanced budget amendment to move forward and solve the deficit crisis that faces us; that all we needed was our own resolve, our own resolve. This same President 2 years ago during his budget debate, his first one, in 1993, when he passed a large tax increase and a few spending cuts along the way challenged Republicans and said, ``Where is your plan? Where is your plan? Why don't you come up with something? Show us your specifics?'' He said ``No hot air, show me where.'' Show me where. The minority leader, Senator Daschle, on March 3, 1995, during the balanced budget debate said, ``And for those who say we do not need a constitutional amendment to do the job''--that job being balancing the budget--``I think it is all the more important that we demonstrate that we can, that we are up to the task, that we can meet our responsibilities to make it happen correctly, to make it happen in a way that was foreseen when we passed the law setting up the budget process.'' And what amendments have we seen? Are they amendments that have been brought to the floor by the other side of the aisle the substitutes to show us what their plan is to get to a balanced budget? No. Are they rearranging spending priorities to say we should cut from this area of Government and add to another area of Government in setting priorities? No. What are they? They are amendments to spend more money, to take the reserve account, which is theoretical on the part of the Congressional Budget Office, that only occurs if we, in fact, have a budget that brings us to balance in 7 years. Then they give us a bonus of $170 billion because they figure lower interest rates, more economic growth, and lower inflation. So this bonus now, what do they want to do? Do they want to put it toward the deficit? Do they want to give it back to you, the taxpayers, who paid it in the first place? No. We want to spend it right away. We do not want to wait until it accrues in the future. We want to spend it now. This is responsibility? This is demonstrating that we can, that we have the resolve? I suspect the American public has a hard time buying all of this-- certainly, I have a hard time buying all of this--that the President and his party are serious about making tough decisions; about having ideas and vision as to where to take this country into a future that is a fiscally sound future; about having innovative approaches like the Senator from Delaware, who does not just and has not, as chairman of this committee, just proposed cuts in Federal employment. He proposes a performance-based budget which puts managerial goals for Federal employees to achieve, to give flexibility to managers, to make it more like a private sector employment place, to give the kind of flexibility that many Federal employees ask me, plead for me, to give. So the Senator from Delaware is not just out here willy-nilly throwing numbers around. He is putting forward responsible proposals that have a vision as to where to take this country in the future. And you will see, and have seen from this side of the aisle, such proposals, and you will see more. So I commend the Senator from Delaware for his amendment. I wish him success in that amendment. [[Page S7106]] I hope that I do not have to be here tomorrow. I hope that I do not have to be here with this chart. I hope the President has read the polls, seen the position he has taken is not one that is particularly popular with the American public and, more importantly, is not what is right for this country. For this system to work, we need a healthy dialog and we need leadership from both sides for us to come up with this compromise and the strategy to move us forward I yield the floor.

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask if the Senator from Delaware will yield time on the amendment.

Mr. SANTORUM. His wife and kids like to see him, too.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, the Senator from New Hampshire is here, and he is on the Budget Committee. My understanding was during the budget debates in committee that the Democratic Members had, most of the debate on the committee was how to spend this $170 billion, whether we should do tax cuts or whether we should go out and spend a lot more money on a lot more programs. I do not know if the Senator wanted to comment on that. It is my understanding that they were just anxious to get at this pot of money so they could create some more spending here at the Federal level. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. SANTORUM. I want to make it absolutely clear. Of all of the amendments in the Budget Committee offered by the other side----

Mr. SANTORUM. The vast majority of the amendments offered by the Democrats in the Budget Committee were not how to get to a balanced budget--were not.

Mr. SANTORUM. The reason for that is that is more debt we accumulate, more interest we have to pay on the debt; interest that will be paid by children being born today for the rest of their lives. So that is where we come up with this number, that is not a phony baloney number. This is actually numbers we add to the debt that we will have to borrow money for and children in the future will have to pay interest on for the rest of their lives, if we continue this.

Mr. SANTORUM. And going up.

Mr. SANTORUM. If we go back to the previous chart, the purple line is the line that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will be the annual deficit under this budget, the Clinton budget. It starts out at about--using rough numbers because I do not have them exactly--about $175 billion for this fiscal year, the one we are in right now, increasing to over $200 billion in 1996, about $230 billion in 1997, about the same amount in 1998, and then up around $290 billion for 1999 and 2000.

Mr. SANTORUM. There was no substitute offered as to how they would get to a balanced budget. There were no amendments offered on how they would change spending priorities. But the amendments were focused on what? The $170 billion dividend that the CBO gives us by getting to a balanced budget, which assumes lower interest rates and more growth, how could they spend that money? How can you take seriously people coming to the floor during the balanced budget debate, saying that they have the courage to balance the budget; they are willing to make the tough cuts, and when the bill actually comes to the floor to do that, all they do is focus in on how they are going to spend more money? It is almost incredulous to me. You are going to hear speaker after speaker on the other side of the aisle talk about how terrible this is, and all their amendments will be on how to spend more money and how we have to get to balance. This just is not the right way. They do not have a way, but this is not the right one. All I suggest to the Senators in this Chamber--and you want to listen--is look at the big picture. Let us look at our responsibility to the future of this country, to the children of this country, to leave this country better off than it was left to us. We have a moral obligation to do just that, to balance this budget for future generations. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, it is amazing--if the Senator will yield--I remember we were in the House together and we had the peace dividend. Remember the peace dividend? That was the time the Soviet Union was crumbling and we could cut our defense budget a little bit, and it turned out to be a lot. Therefore, we would save money. So we had a peace dividend. So what did we do? We were running, by the way, over $200 billion in annual deficits. But we had a dividend. So what were we going to do? Spend it somewhere else. We were not going to put this toward the debt; oh, no. This was a peace dividend that was earned by the American public, and so we have a right, here in the Congress, to spend it. Here we are again. We get a dividend, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by balancing the budget, and it will come down to zero by the year 2002. The Congressional Budget Office says they will change their economic assumptions to assume lower interest rates, lower inflation, and greater growth in the economy, which will mean less of a debt. So there will be a dividend. So what do we hear? Are we hearing, ``Well, we should put that toward the deficit,'' or ``We should give people who worked hard for this money some of that money back''; in other words, let them keep the money they worked for? No, no, no. On the other side of the aisle, you will hear suggestion after suggestion after suggestion how we should spend this money because it is our dividend. It is not yours, American public; it is our dividend. We did this. So we should take your money and spend it on things that we think are best. This is kind of ridiculous, having this kind of talk about let us get serious. Let us get serious. This is not our money; this is your money. To suggest that we could finally do something that we were hired to do, which is to get our house in order; that if we do our job, somehow we should get the dividend, to go out and take more of your money and spend it somewhere else? It is absolutely absurd.

Mr. SANTORUM. I said you are a brave man.

Mr. SANTORUM. I imagine there will be several amendments. Of course, all of them will be deficit neutral. I am sure they will not offer any amendments to raise the deficit or get us off the glidepath here to zero. I am sure they are not going to be interested, since they have the courage over there to make sure we get to this balanced budget, they are not going to offer any amendment that is going to increase the deficit or throw us off this path. So I am sure they will have constructive suggestions about how we might tinker with this, and I look forward to debating those. But I do not think they are going to have any substitute proposal that is going to get them to a balanced budget on a completely different tack.

Mr. SANTORUM. I cannot imagine they would because they said during the balanced budget amendment debate that they have the courage to support a balanced budget and since the folks on the other side are so serious about getting to a balanced budget and see this as such an important thing, I cannot imagine then they would support this.

Mr. SANTORUM. No. I think the Senator is right. I have not seen any budget being put forward either by the President, obviously, or by any Member of the other side of the aisle that gets us anywhere near zero within the 7-year timeframe or, frankly, any time thereafter. I am actually pretty excited about this possibility, because having sat through the balanced budget debate and listened to the numbers of Senators getting up and saying, ``Look, we do not need the balanced budget amendment. We can do this on our own. We have the courage within us to make these decisions. We will stand up when the time comes to be counted,'' so I am guessing, but I suspect we will get all 54 Republican votes on this side for this budget, I am hopeful that we do that. If you add the 30, what, about 35 or so Democrats who voted against the balanced budget, who, of course, have the courage now to stand up and say we are going to be for a balanced budget, I think we will get 90 votes for this. I think we can get close to about 90 votes for this. We should. If everyone who is serious--if you are serious over there, if you really want a balanced budget, if you really think you can make those tough choices, if you really are willing to stand up to the American public and say we are willing, we can do it ourselves, we do not need any balanced budget amendment to force us to make tough decisions, we have the power within us to do that--then here it is. Let us do it.

Mr. SANTORUM. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Arizona.