Paul Simon

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. I thank my colleague. Just to buttress what he has said, Data Resources, Inc., said this, and I will read the full paragraph: The positive elements of balancing the budget become clear in the longer run. The elimination of the deficit would relieve strain on financial markets, allowing lower interest rates and bond yields. The lower interest rates and reduced borrowing would cut interest costs for the federal government; in fact, by 2002 half the savings [that we are talking about we need] in our budget simulations come from lower interest costs. And in addition, you would have, according to their projections, 2\1/ 2\ million more people working. You are going to have more housing starts, more industrial investment, and everything else. Alan Greenspan, again, testifying the other day, said: But the influence of a fiscal imbalance of the federal government on capital formation is broader than inflation. The federal deficit drains off a large share of a regrettably small pool of domestic private saving, thus contributing further to the elevation of real rates of interest in this economy. It is very clear. I have to acknowledge that Dr. Reischauer has testified against the balanced budget amendment. But in his testimony of June 17 of last year, I will quote a few things: clearly that national saving is too low, no matter how it is measured, and that federal deficits contribute significantly to low saving. It is equally clear to us that reducing federal deficits offers the most reliable way to remove the threat that low national saving poses to the growth of living standards. * * * history has shown repeatedly that sustained growth in living standards is achieved most reliably through national saving. And then they have a chart on what is happening in national savings, our savings rate. From 1960 to 1969 we average an 8-percent savings rate; from 1970 to 1979, 7.1 percent; from 1980 to 1989, 3.8 percent, and going down. No other industrial country has anything like that in the way of savings rates that bad. The main cause of the decline in the national savings rate is rampant Federal deficits after the 1970's * * * federal deficits could be responsible for between one-half and two- thirds of the decline in the national savings rate, depending on how they are measured, with a reduction of private saving accounting for the rest of the decline. And so it goes on. Here is one other quote in here I wanted to give you: * * * deficits will soon rise again and keep national saving too low to prevent further slowdown in the growth of living standards. I will show you one other chart. This is what happened in the deficit over the years. We are down here, and you will see 2 years in a row where it is being reduced, and it comes back up here a little bit, and then it goes down off the chart. It is going to go beyond the floor. We are not going to put that one on the chart. That is what is happening in our country. Some of us had the chance to work with Roger Porter when he worked in the White House. He is now is a professor of government at Harvard. He says: The second reason for passing the balanced-budget amendment is moral. Persistent public borrowing, largely for the purpose of current consumption, is analogous to one generation throwing a party and saddling the next generation with the bill. We view such behavior on the part of individuals with disdain and contempt. One is hard-pressed to find moral justification for such behavior, whether individual or collective. Roger Porter is correct. I heard about the Louisiana Purchase, that we cannot pass this because we could not have had the Louisiana Purchase. First of all, it is interesting that in Jefferson's first term, he cut the Federal debt in half. But the Louisiana Purchase was signed May 13, 1803, in Paris--and, frankly, they did not have any authorization to do anything like that-- and 2 months later, in July, we learned about it here in Washington, DC. It was for $15 million at 5 percent. Do you know what the main complaint of Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin was at that point? He complained because the bonds were such that they could not start paying them back for 15 years. That was the big complaint. We say, you can have a deficit if you have a 60-percent vote. What was the vote in the Senate and in the House on the Louisiana Purchase? There were two votes in the Senate, 24 to 7 and 26 to 6, far more than the 60 percent. In the House, it was 90 to 25, far more than the 60 percent. There is simply no justification for saying we could not have done something like the Louisiana Purchase. And then, my friends--and I feel strongly about this--we are having a squeeze on social programs. This fiscal year, we will spend $339 billion on interest; next year, $372 billion. I might add--and I give credit to my colleague, Senator Fritz Hollings, for teaching me this--in only one area do we subtract the earnings of the Government. Administrations like to come up with net interest. It does not look so bad. The real figure is gross interest. It is like the Department of Justice subtracting all the money collected from their total bill, or the IRS doing that. That is just not the way we do it. But what does $339 billion mean? It means that this year we are spending 11 times as much on interest as education. Oh, we make great speeches about education, but we are not funding it like we should. In fiscal year 1949, we spent 9 percent of the Federal budget on education. This year, we will spend 2 percent of the Federal budget on education. Interest is squeezing out our response. I heard Senator Bennett Johnston yesterday say that in an exit poll, when people were asked what the Federal Government spends money on, 27 percent thought the big item was foreign economic assistance. We will spend this year 22 times as much on interest as on foreign economic assistance. We will spend almost twice as much on interest as on all the poverty programs combined. Listen to what my House colleague, Congressman Joe Kennedy, who is one of the cosponsors of this legislation, said in the House. This is on January 25. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the balanced budget amendment. I have been for the balanced budget amendment for the last several years, because I do not believe that we can find the will to make the necessary cuts to save the future generations of this country without the support of the American people through a balanced budget. And then, he says, people come up to him and say: Listen, Joe, you are a liberal Democrat, how can you possibly be for a balanced budget amendment? It is going to cut the very programs that much of your family and others have stood for generations. And here is Congressman Kennedy's response: I say to them that those very programs that stand up for the working people and the poor and the senior citizens of this country have suffered the worst cuts over the course of the last 15 or 20 years in this country as a result of budget deficits. Look at the housing budget. Cut by 77 percent over the course of the last 15 years. Look at those who have press conferences that say they want to protect fuel assistance for the poor. Look at what has happened to the fuel assistance program. Cut by 30 percent. And then he goes to some other things. This is his final line, and I hope we remember it: Do we see the bellies of our poorest children filled as a result of interest payments on the national debt? Let me repeat that: Do we see the bellies of our poorest children filled as a result of interest payments on the national debt? Well, the answer is obvious. Oh, we are talking about welfare reform, and I am not optimistic we are going to get genuine welfare reform. I hope I am wrong. But it is interesting, welfare payments from 1970 to 1993, when you take in the inflation factor, have been reduced about 40 percent. That is because of the squeeze of interest. Or take a look at New York City. New York City went bankrupt, or for all practical purposes bankrupt. They had to cut programs for poor people by as much as 47 percent. But New York City had the advantage of having an umbrella called the United States of America and we rescued New York City. There is no umbrella big enough to rescue the United States of America. If we go down the tube, the programs for poor people and the programs that we need in education and other things are just going to be devastated. It is also interesting that in New York City, they still have a mayor and city council, but for any significant expenditure they make, do you know who has to approve it? They have a little group of bankers and bond holders that has to approve anything like that. New York City has, to a great extent, lost its independence. We may be able to put something together if and when the time arrives that we have difficulties, but it is going to be at the cost of losing a great deal of our independence. Back maybe 2 years or so ago, I had an illustration of why it is important not only for the poor in our country but for the poor in other countries. The IMF had asked for a $12 billion guarantee from the United States. I received an invitation to have breakfast with the Director of the International Monetary Fund. I thought, well, he is reaching down pretty far on the Foreign Relations Committee to talk to someone, because I am about halfway down there. I went over and he did not want to talk about the guarantee. He wanted to talk about what we are doing fiscally. He said--and I do not know if he was speaking in a slight exaggeration or not, but Alan Greenspan tells me he was not--``If you had a choice of getting hold of your deficit or cutting out the entire foreign aid program''--and I certainly do not favor that--``If you the world, get rid of your deficit. What you are doing is borrowing and sending up the costs of borrowing for the poor nations of the world.'' In terms of social programs, it is very clear what we are doing. When we talk about spending $339 billion this year, we are talking about a massive redistribution of wealth. Who pays the $339 billion? By and large, Americans of limited means. Who collects the $339 billion? By and large, those who are more fortunate, who hold the T-bills, and increasingly those beyond our borders. We hear a lot about the trade deficit. This is very interesting. I asked the Congressional Research Service, what does a budget deficit have to do with the trade deficit? They came in, 37 to 55 percent of the trade deficit is caused by our budget deficit. What it does is escalates the value of the dollar. It makes it more profitable for industries to put their investment in other countries, and makes it more costly for them to put their investments here. It is very interesting that as our deficit has gone up and our interest payments have gone up, we have been losing relative to other countries. As late as 1986, the average American working in a manufacturing location was being paid more money than in any other country. Now there are 13 nations on the face of the Earth where the average manufacturing wage is greater than ours. That is, in large part, because of the budget deficit. We have a political problem, too. I hear the speeches on the floor, ``We can do it without a balanced budget amendment. All it takes is political will.'' We heard those same speeches in 1986 when this failed by one vote to pass the U.S. Senate. In 1986, the deficit was $2 trillion. Now, 9 years later, that deficit is $4.7 trillion. And we hear the same speeches. If we should show the poor judgment not to pass this, then 5 years from now, 10 years from now, we will hear the same speeches. What would have happened to our country if, in 1986, that had passed? We would have millions more people working; we would have lower interest rates; we would have more housing in our country; we would have more revenue for the Federal Government; we would have a higher standard of living for our people; and we would have a lower trade deficit. If we pass this, we will move in that direction. Then the argument is made, and I have heard it several times already, but what if there is a recession? Listening to what the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge had to say, in a report made by two professors in the department of economics at the University of California: Discretionary fiscal policy does not appear to have had an important role in generating recoveries. Fiscal responses to economic downturns have generally not occurred until real activity was approximately at its trough. Or listen to an article written by Bruce Bartlett in the Public Interest, and I ask unanimous consent that this full article be placed in the Record.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. Bartlett writes: Without exception, stimulus programs have failed to moderate the recessions at which they were aimed, and have often sowed the seeds of the next recession. These programs have not been simply worthless, but harmful. It would have been better to do nothing. Then he writes: President Carter's Office of Management and Budget presented a study that reviewed the postwar experience with such programs. And they reached the same conclusion. Then, listen to this: Later, [Senator Lloyd] Bentsen issued a unanimous report from the Joint Economic Committee which concluded that by the time a recession is recognized, it is too late to be treated. Efforts to do so are destabilizing. The committee recommended avoiding short-term countercyclical actions, and instead focusing on factors that contribute to long-run growth. ``This was good advice then,'' the author writes, ``and good advice now.'' Even Lord Keynes, the father of countercyclical policy, eventually recognized its limitations. Toward the end of his life, he wrote: ``Organized public works . . . may be the right cure for a chronic tendency to a deficiency of effective demand. But they are not capable of sufficiently rapid organization (and above all cannot be reversed or undone at a later date), to be the most serviceable instrument for the prevention of the trade cycle.'' ``The U.S. economic experience provides ample confirmation,'' the author of the article says. Fred Bergsten, who serves as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and one of our Nation's really fine economists, recommends that we build in a small surplus. He is suggesting a 2-percent surplus, and then authorizing the President to move quickly with programs when we have unemployment above a certain level in any area, whether it is Missouri or Illinois or Michigan or Ohio, or wherever it might be. Alan Greenspan has said much the same thing. Interest reduction is a far greater stimulus than any kind of stimulus that we might provide. But we have extended unemployment compensation and people say, well, we could not even do that. We will take a look at the record. The only time I can find where we have not had 60 votes for that was in 1982. But let me start with 1991. Passed extension of unemployment compensation; passed the Senate 91-2, far more than the 60 percent required. Later that year, by voice vote, another voice vote. In 1992, 94-2; 1992, another voice vote; later in 1992, 93-3. In 1993, 66-33; also, in 1993, 76-20. Clearly, we can get the 60 votes to do that. I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, Mr. President, an article from Investors Business Daily.

Mr. SIMON. I am pleased to yield to my colleague from Utah.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, Everett McKinley Dirksen of Pekin, IL, who served this body so well as the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, was one of the most capable political figures of his time and of the modern era. Historians generally acknowledge, for instance, that without Everett Dirksen's backing, such landmark legislation as the 1964 Civil Rights Act almost certainly would not have passed. Thomas McArdle, offers an insightful profile of Everett Dirksen in a recent article published by Investor's Business Daily. Mr. President, I call the attention of my colleagues to this article and ask that it be printed in the Record. The article follows: Sen. Everett Dirksen: He Epitomized the Notion of ``Pragmatic Conservatism'' (By Thomas McArdle) Today, the country's most influential Republican leader, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., proclaims that he will cooperate with President Clinton, but is unwilling to compromise. What a contrast to the late Senate Republican Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen, who was fond of replying to detractors who accused him of not standing for very much, ``If there were no compromise, there might not have been a Constitution of the United States.'' Dirksen is remembered as a honeytoned orator who could endear himself even to a hostile audience. His baggyclothes and unkept hair were legendary, but it was a rumpled, folksy image he deliberately cultivated. Moreover, he was far from being just the colorful, lovable clown political cartoonists loved to peg him as. He may have been the senator who delivered an annual speech in praise of the marigold, but there was substance underneath of idiosyncracies. Dirksen was both in 1896 in Pekin, Ill., part of Rep. Abraham Lincoln's congressional district in the 1840s. As a boy, Dirksen knew some old-timers in the town who actually knew Lincoln personally. His sentimentality towards Lincoln would pervade his speeches and statements all of Dirksen's career. His parents were immigrants from Ostfriesland in northern Germany. His father, like many of his fellow German-immigrant and native-born neighbors in Pekin, had an unquestioning loyalty to the Republican Party unheard of today. Dirksen's middle name came from then-Ohio Governor William McKinley, soon to become the next Republican president. His twin brother was named after the sitting GOP speaker of the House and his older brother after the last Republic president, Benjamin Harrison. When he was five, Dirksen's father suffered a debilitating stroke and the young sons were forced to work hard on the family's small farm. Rising before dawn each workday was a habit Dirksen would maintain all his life. He displayed extraordinary political acumen early on, gaining his first term in the House of Representatives by beating a multimillionaire, five-term GOP incumbent in the party primary. He then handily defeated the Democratic challenger--in 1932, the year voters were so mad at Republicans for the Great Depression that Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency in a landslide and a national realignment in favor of the Democratic Party began. Dirksen won the district by almost as great a margin as Roosevelt. this early. He had run a campaign aimed at garnering the votes of those who would be supporting FDR, and even praised Democratic candidates for other offices. It was a pragmatism that would characterize Dirksen throughout his career. On his death in 1969, conservative columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., then much more a firebrand than today, would assess the senator in an otherwise glowing obituary as ``so much the pragmatist that you couldn't really count on him in a pinch.'' The Chicago Sun-Times once estimated that in his 17 years in the House of Representatives, Dirksen changed his mind 62 times on foreign policy, 31 times on military affairs, and 70 times on agriculture issues. Then, in the Senate he outdid that record. His most famous about-faces were on the nuclear test-ban treaty and the Civil Rights Act. In the summer of 1963 he opposed the enactment of federal guarantees of the right of blacks to use any hotel, restaurant or other public accommodation on property rights grounds, the core of the proposal by President Kennedy, though he supported its other provisions. The next year, with Johnson having replaced the assassinated JFK, some savvy maneuvering by Democrats for Republican support in the House forced Dirksen in the Senate to soften. He ended up becoming instrumental in passage of the Civil Rights Act, using his party to provide the margin of victory. Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga., ``says the Attorney General (Bobby Kennedy) has nailed my skin to the barn door to dry,'' Dirksen told a reporter in typical Dirksenesque language. ``Well, nobody has hung up my conscience and my sense of history to dry. Pardon me for the sermon.'' Dirksen also immediately opposed upon hearing about it the administration's treaty with the Soviet Union to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere. But by September Dirksen realized that public support for the treaty was very strong. He ended up turning 180 degrees, supporting the test ban entirely, but only after he persuaded Kennedy to write a letter assuring that the U.S. nuclear weapons program would not be slowed down. ``They called him the Wizard of Ooze,'' recalled former National Review Publisher William A. Rusher, author of ``The Rise of the Right,'' a chronicle of conservatism's struggle to power in the GOP. But Dirksen's smoothness never seemed to leave him alienated from conservatives the way many of today's Republican ``pragmatists'' are. Much of that undoubtedly stemmed from his support of isolationist Sen. Robert Taft's R-Ohio, failed run for the party presidential nomination in 1952 and Dirksen's opposition to the Senate's censuring of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., in 1954 (though he severed relations with McCarthy very soon after that). ``Certainly, speaking as a conservative, I regarded Everett Dirksen as a friend and I think he would be delighted to see all that's happened,'' Rusher added. Lee Edwards, president of the Center for International Relations and author of a soon-to-be-released biography of Barry Goldwater, noted that Dirksen had a strong role early on the Goldwater's rise to power. On a trip to speak to the Arizona GOP, Dirksen personally took Goldwater aside and advised him to run for the U.S. Senate when the Arizonan was only a city councilman. ``Goldwater has admitted on more than one occasion that it did make a difference in his decision to run,'' according to Edwards. His heavy smoking and drinking eventually caught up with Dirksen and he died of complications from lung cancer surgery in 1969. One of the three Senate office buildings across the street from the U.S. Capitol bears his name, the two others named after Democratic senators. He lay in state under the dome of the Capitol on the same black catafalque as Lincoln, then only the third senator so honored.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Yes. And I will spell that out. But let me just say the Senator mentioned seniors are in the cross hairs on Social Security. Bob Myers, the chief actuary for the Social Security system for 21 years, said it is absolutely essential for the Social Security trust fund to pass this. Without this, we are headed toward monetizing the debt. And as you look at the history of nations, I think that is very, very clear. Then, finally, the Senator mentioned about responding on recessions. I would say there are two arguments here. One is used by Fred Bergsten, you probably remember, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who says we are really strapped; we cannot respond to recessions as we should now. What we ought to do is have a 1- or 2-percent surplus and then give the President the authority to initiate programs immediately in areas where you have unemployment above X percent. I think that is a very valid argument. But the National Bureau of Economic Research at Cambridge has issued a study by two University of California economists who come to this conclusion. Discretionary fiscal policy does not appear to have had an important role in generating recoveries. Fiscal responses to economic downturns have generally not occurred until real activity was approximately at its trough.

Mr. SIMON. Sure. I yield time to my colleague from Utah also.

Mr. SIMON. I thank my colleague. First, her eloquent statement illustrates why I am proud to have her as a colleague in the U.S. Senate. I do not know if she is aware that Data Resources, Inc., one of the major econometric think tanks just a few days ago came out with a statement saying, and this is in line with her talking about jobs, that if we balance the budget by the year 2002, we will create 2.5 million more jobs in our country. And they also say here, by 2002, half the savings in our budget simulation come from lower interest costs. They project a 2.5-percent drop in interest rates. What that would do for our economy. Then if I may also, just while I have the floor, because she mentioned this, and knowing the concern that my colleague has for people in the Robert Taylor Homes--it is some massive housing project, I thought she might be interested. Congressman Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of the cosponsors in the House, said in a statement a few days ago on the floor of the House: People come up to him and say listen, Joe, you are a liberal Democrat. How can you possibly be for a balanced budget amendment? Is it not going to cut the very programs that much of your family and others have stood for for generations? And then Joe Kennedy replies: I say to them that those very programs that stand up for the working people, the poor and the senior citizens of this country, have suffered the worst cuts over the course of the last 15 or 20 years in this country as a result of budget deficits. Look at the housing budget, cut by 77 percent over the course of the last 15 years; look at those who have press conferences who say they want to protect fuel assistance for the poor. Look at what happened to the fuel assistance program--cut by 30 percent. Then he goes on to a number of others and then this final line that Congressman Joe Kennedy says: Do we see the bellies of our poorest children filled as a result of interest payments on the national debt? I think that is a powerful way to respond there. I really appreciate it. If my colleagues--I am not sure who I am getting yielded from----

Mr. SIMON. It was an excellent statement and if I could respond to the question my colleague from Louisiana asked earlier about implementation language, he mentioned the 14th amendment. This amendment has two other things I think are of interest. No. 1, section 6 says, ``Congress shall enforce--'' and, No. 2, ``The history of State governments.'' Mr. President, 48 of the 50 States have some similar provision--not identical but somewhat similar. There simply has not been a history of litigation in State courts. I was just looking at Colorado the other day. In the history of Colorado, there has not been a single court case on this. I yield the floor.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I think there are two differences. No 1, section 6, first of all, spells out ``Congress shall enforce.'' Congress shall enforce, not the courts shall enforce. Second, when we talk about equity----

Mr. SIMON. No. We say Congress shall enforce and Congress shall implement. But we have not in terms of equity. In terms of taxation, the courts may get into a school case. There is only one case where the courts have imposed taxes on people, as far as I know, in the history of our country and that is the Jenkins case. In the Jenkins case the law is silent. They moved into an area where there was no law. Here we are going to, I assume--and Senator Hatch and I certainly are in agreement on this, and I am sure Senator Johnston would be--make clear, very explicitly, this is our jurisdiction. And in terms of enforcement, because that is the problem, then, when we say we cannot increase the debt limit without a 60- percent vote, that is very tough enforcement, as Attorney General Barr testified.

Mr. SIMON. Yes. And we do not prohibit any kind of court involvement. But, the history of this in States that have these kind of provisions is that there have rarely been any court cases. That is the history of it. That is the history of it. The Senator and I took one oath when we stood down there, as the Presiding Officer did just a few weeks ago, to uphold and defend the Constitution. I do not think we are going to take that lightly.

Mr. SIMON. If the Senate should say the heck with the Constitution, we are not going to pay any attention to this--and I cannot conceive of our doing that--then it is possible in some way the courts will get involved. But it is interesting in that last time, if I may just finish here, we had one of our colleagues who attacked us on the same basis, and then very reluctantly--and I think I speak for Senator Hatch on this, too--we accepted the Danforth amendment which was more precise on this about the courts not being involved, and then the same Senator got up and said I have a constitutional amendment that is meaningless. If my colleague from Louisiana will assure me that he will vote for the amendment if he gets those words in there that he would like, I am willing to take a look at it.

Mr. SIMON. If I may respond, on the one man-one-vote case, which grew out of the State of Tennessee, there was no explicit jurisdiction claimed solely by the legislative bodies. And here we are going to claim that we have the jurisdiction. If I may respond just to a few other points that my friend from Louisiana made, he said--and a lot of my colleagues will disagree with what I have to say here, probably including my good friend from Utah. The Senator said, ``This is a good time to take good bites out of the deficit''--I wrote down the Senator's words--talking about the Federal Reserve Board. But the reality is we are competing with each other trying to get a tax cut right now.

Mr. SIMON. I could not agree more with my friend from Louisiana, and if we had a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, we would not be talking about it here. That is one of the realities.

Mr. SIMON. If the Senator is expecting me to defend the Contract With America, I am not about to do that.

Mr. SIMON. But my friend from Louisiana has just illustrated why we need the balanced budget amendment. It is absolutely ridiculous to be talking about a tax cut when we have these huge deficits. But we can do that because it is popular, and so we are going to go out and we will go back home and make speeches how we cut taxes--absolutely nutty to be doing that right now. And so I think the Senator has made the point. When the Senator said we can do it on our own, that is the same speech we heard here in 1986 when it lost by one vote in the Senate. The total Federal debt then was $2 trillion. Now it is $4.7 trillion. And if we make the mistake of turning it down again, if we have a chance before we have economic chaos, it will be $9 trillion and we will have hurt the economy much, much more. In terms of the Social Security trust fund, the Senator said the seniors are in the cross hairs--every group is being told. And those figures the Senator got from Treasury, they are about as inaccurate as any figures that I can imagine.

Mr. SIMON. All I know is the economists are from the University of California.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I yield.

Mr. SIMON. They are wrong. And I think, I might add, in the course of this debate the Senator will have plenty of examples of why they are wrong, and I am going to be one who will spell it out.

Mr. SIMON. I would add one other point, and I think most economists are in agreement on this point here that they make. At least I have had a lot of reading on that. But the other point is where we have extended unemployment compensation--and I have been looking at this--when we have had recessions, in every case but one, in 1982, we have had way more than the 60 votes that this constitutional amendment would require. Anyway, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for his discussion. Obviously, we do slightly disagree on this constitutional amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I believe my colleague has not yielded the floor. I think my colleague from Illinois still has the floor.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I just want to take 5 minutes to respond briefly to my colleague from Louisiana, for whom I have great respect. As a matter of fact, I have cited Senator Johnston as an example of why term limits are a mistake, even though he has decided that he is going to leave this body. Just very briefly. On the question of the courts imposing taxes, there has only been one example of that in our history and that is the Jenkins case in Kansas City. That was because Congress was silent. On this, we say Congress shall implement, and we will spell that out. We will make clear this is not the jurisdiction of the courts.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I certainly want to commend the Senator from Colorado for being solid on this issue. He mentioned the GAO report--which has been largely ignored around here--that says if by the year 2001 we balance the budget, by the year 2020 we will have an average increase, adjusted for inflation, in income of 36 percent per American. Our choices are very, very striking. I happen to have that report here. I would just like to read this: Eliminating the budget deficit, and, if possible, achieving a budget surplus, should be among the Nation's highest priorities. Because of the accumulating burden of interest on the mounting public debt, it is important to move rapidly in this regard. Postponing action only adds to the difficulty of the task. Again, I want to commend our colleague from Colorado for standing up so solidly on this. I really appreciate his leadership.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, will my colleague yield?

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the issue of capital punishment is going to rear its head again in this session of Congress, and, once again, we will probably do what is politically expedient but is wrong. I will continue to vote against capital punishment. Recently, William H. Rentschler of my State, a member of the executive committee of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, had an op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune on the question of capital punishment. It contains so much common sense that I ask to insert it into the Record at this point. The article follows: [From the Chicago Tribune, Nov. 29, 1994] The Death Penalty--A Pivotal Issue (By William H. Rentschler) Autumn of 1994 was ``the killing season.'' The ancient art of state-sanctioned killing clearly was a dominant issue, largely ignored in most post-election analyses of the Nov. 8 balloting. The death penalty probably was as decisive a factor in the Republican sweep as the call for less government intrusion, even though the two are philosophical opposites. Virtually every major winner, in upsetting incumbents, promised, in effect, to kill more human beings for an ever wider assortment of crimes, and to kill them deader and quicker. Today, an overwhelming percentage of Americans tell pollsters they favor capital punishment, which seems to have become nearly as popular as tax cuts, Sunday afternoon football and strawberry yogurt. Which, of course, is why candidates seized on the issue with such self-righteous, drum-beating fervor. If indeed all those elected keep their promises to enforce the death penalty more vigorously and broadly, this nation, in the final years of the 20th Century, will be witness to the greatest killing spree on American soil since the Civil War. Never mind that: There is no valid evidence capital punishment deters homicides and other violent crimes. Quite the contrary, homicides typically increase in the proximity of where an execution is carried out. In our society, where the criminal justice system is erratic and uncertain, we inevitably will continue to execute some innocents. A grossly disproportionate percentage of those who die at the hands of the state or wait their fate on death row are poor, illiterate, African-American or Hispanic. The homicide rate is highest in those states where executions are most frequent. Texas is the prime example. The death penalty no longer exists in any Western nation except the United States. The public is angry and uptight. People are terrified and intolerant of escalating crime. Many want to rid society permanently of the slavering brutes they perceive as perpetrators of violence. A sizable majority of citizens would give the state virtual carte blanche to exterminate these beasts. But wait. The ``slavering brute'' image embraces only a fraction of those who murder, maim and commit hideous, heinous crimes. Chicago Police Commissioner Matt Rodriguez states that homicides are committed in great numbers by family members, including parents and children, friends, neighbors, and business associates, than by prowling, predatory strangers. And the increasing numbers of random murders by violent, out-of-control youths, especially gang members, occur mainly in their own urban neighborhoods, according to Rodriguez. Slight, bespectacled Susan Smith, the small-town South Carolina mother who rolled her two tiny sons to a watery grave in the family car, hardly fits the bestial profile society embraces so readily. Yet her apparent crime was monstrous and unfathomable. Many, I believe, wish somehow the murderer would have been the black male of her fictional alibi. Then the answer would have been neat and simple; it would have fed inherent prejudice. That the killer, by her own confession, turned out to be the pathetically confused and conscienceless young (white) mother, tortured by the demons of a failed marriage, mounting bills and doomed romance, is much more complicated and challenging to our emotions, attitudes and pat, built-in assumptions. The death penalty is so widely accepted largely because it provides a measure of seeming certainty to a society greatly frustrated by its inability to solve its most vexatious problems. But it is a simplistic answer, akin to the primitive law of the jungle. It is evidence of a society unwilling and incapable of coming to grips rationally with hard challenges. Capital punishment makes a mockery of such noble legal canons as equal justice under law and the bedrock right of all to simple fairness. No matter how atrocious Smith's crime, precedent tells us she almost certainly will not be executed; yet the make- believe black man of her grotesque fairy tale surely would have been found guilty and put to death if her charade had been accepted. Los Angeles prosecutor Gil Garcetti already has announced O.J. Simpson, a rich celebrity and one-time role model, will not be executed if convicted of two murders by a jury. Nor will any murderer of wealth, fame and community standing. This confirms an old Russian proverb: ``No one is hanged who has money in his pocket.'' The death penalty is reserved exclusively for society's little people, its powerless, its rabble, its dregs. This alone makes capital punishment wrong in a just society. Since we really execute very few, since the death penalty will never be a prime factor in curbing violent crime, since the nation is faced with many other nagging concerns begging for solutions, it is hardly unreasonable to say that those candidates who collectively spent countless hours and millions of TV dollars trumpeting their passionate support for capital punishment were behaving irresponsibly and short- changing voters.