Fred Thompson

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I am pleased to support this bill which will designate the new United States Federal Courthouse in Knoxville, TN as the Howard H. Baker, Jr. United States Courthouse. I think it is fitting that this newly purchased courthouse be named for one of the most distinguished members ever to grace this body, a true gentleman who served his Nation for nearly 20 years as Senator from Tennessee, Senate Majority Leader, and, finally, White House Chief of Staff. Senator Howard Baker begin his career as an attorney in Huntsville and nearby Knoxville, TN, after his graduation from the University of Tennessee School of Law. In 1966, he was elected to the United States Senate. Here, he established a lasting reputation as an outstanding lawmaker. Because of his broad appeal in our home state, the people of Tennessee chose to reelect him in 1972 and again in 1978. In 1973, I had the opportunity to work under Senator Baker as he served as Vice Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee. His leadership on this investigatory committee proved to be an asset as he helped this investigation during one of the most difficult time in our Nation's history. From 1977 to 1981, Senator Baker served as Republican Leader of the Senate. In 1981, he became first Republican in more than 25 years to be elected Senate Majority Leader, a post he held until his retirement in January of 1985. During all of his Senate service, Senator Baker was known for his fair and impartial treatment of members from both sides of the aisle. He was also known in the Senate as someone who could bring both sides of an issue together, especially when political partisanship was intense. In 1987, Senator Baker again answered his country's call, returning to public service as Chief of Staff to President Reagan. His tenure came at a difficult time for the Reagan Administration, during the Iran-Contra controversy. Senator Baker helped to steer the Administration through this trying situation, uncovering the relevant details of the controversy and helping to convey them to the public. My friend, Howard Baker, who recently celebrated his 70th birthday, has retired from public service but continues to work on the behalf of many worthwhile causes. Over the years, he has received a number of awards and honors including The Presidential Medal or Freedom and the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Performed by an Elected or Appointed Official. In addition, he has been presented a number of honorary degrees from several institutions of higher education, including: Bradley, Centre College, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Pepperdine, and Yale. As Senator Baker has served his country and Tennessee admirably and well for nearly two decades, and it is my hope that the U.S. Senate will see fit to observe this service by naming the U.S. Courthouse in Knoxville in his honor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, thank you. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Hutchison-Inhofe amendment in opposition to the President's decision to send troops to Bosnia. I, like the Senator from Alaska, would like to be able to support the President in regard to this matter. I think the politics should end at the water's edge whenever possible. I regret that I am not able to do so. But after extensive hearings in the Foreign Relations Committee and others, and after carefully examining all of the arguments and all of the information that is available, I have concluded that there are several reasons for being opposed to the President's action. I do not believe that they have made a convincing case that it is in our national interest to take this action. I think that policy rewards the aggression that has taken place over the last 4 years in that country. But I think probably the most definitive problem, as presented by the President's action, is that there is no indication--not only have they not carried the burden of proof, in my opinion, but there is simply no indication--that this action will meet with any success. I think the first thing we have to do with regard to that point is define success. It was pointed out a little earlier this evening that we would be successful even if hostilities broke out before the 12-month period and we left. I respectfully disagree with that assertion. Once you think about it, it is certainly not that simple. If we were there for 2 months, 3 months, or 4 months and hostilities broke out, and we simply took the position that, well, we tried and the people who we are here to help do not want to be helped so we will leave, we would be accused of cutting and running as we have been accused of before. That would be disastrous, Mr. President, for the United States of America. If, on the other hand, hostilities broke out, we were involved in hostilities before the expiration of the 12-month period, and we stayed, and we were in the middle of those hostilities and engaged in those hostilities, we would be in danger of being in a quagmire, and Vietnam would be talked about a whole lot more than it has been here tonight. So it is not a simple proposition. If this breaks down before the 12-month period, it is not a simple proposition for us to just turn around and leave. It would be a very big black mark as far as the credibility of the United States of America is concerned. I tend to believe that with the forces that we are putting in there and with the forces that NATO and other countries are putting in there, we can probably keep the lid on it for 12 months. I think there is a much greater likelihood that the day we leave hostilities will resume. They say, well, again, we have tried our best. We will come out all right if that is the case. I respectfully disagree with that argument. That is not a definition of success either. We will have expended lives, Mr. President. They talk about the estimate of 6 million mines being scattered around in terrain like most of us have never experienced. Our colleagues come back and say you cannot even get a truck, much less a tank, in most of these places. The terrain is vertical. It is not horizontal. We would expend, some people say, upward of $5 to $6 billion, not counting what some people believe will be an extensive foreign aid package as we leave. Now, I think we would have spent something that is equally important, certainly more important than the money part, and that is our credibility. It would have been in vain. We would have paid a price. We would have had another failed mission, Mr. President, at a time when the U.S. military does not need another failed mission because of the leadership that has been provided to them. So with that definition of success, what is the likelihood of success? I think that if you look to the past or you look to the present or you look to the future, there is very little, if any, likelihood of success. These people have been warring with each other for hundreds of years. We have had 34 cease-fires before this one. No one has made a credible case yet that they are not just taking another pause in the hostilities to reinforce themselves during the time of a bitter winter when they could not do much anyway. Also, apparently, none of the parties engaged in this process believe that the other side wants peace. We can never create a peace, Mr. President, until the parties themselves want peace, regardless of the actions that we take. Historically, they have not wanted peace for a long time. With the mass murders that have taken place just within the last few months, apparently, over there and the continued atrocities and ethnic cleansing that continue to go on, those feelings are not going to subside overnight, regardless of what has been put on a piece of paper in Dayton, OH. They are still there. They are going to linger there. Evidently the Croatians and the Bosnians did not think that the Serbs wanted peace. They would not even sit down to the table unless the United States was there. Evidently we do not think the Serbs want peace because one of the conditions that is being talked about so much is that we must equalize the forces. We would not need to be so concerned about that if we did not think the Serbs still had aggressive tendencies and would exercise those tendencies the moment that we left. What about present circumstances? Are there any indications of success from this policy under present circumstances? You can just look and see what has happened since Dayton and come to the conclusion the answer is no to that particular question. We have the leaders over here, some of whom probably are trying desperately to keep from being branded war criminals, making policies and putting things in an extensive document that their very people back in Sarajevo and other places in the area are denouncing and saying they will never live under--certainly not encouraging conditions. We are debating whether or not we are nation building, and everyone seems to agree that we certainly do not want to get into nation building. I would suggest it is more than that. It is apparently nation creating. Apparently the document calls for the creation of a new nation, basically divided in half, populated by three ethnic groups which have been warring with each other for centuries. What is the likelihood that we can go in there and create that kind of new government--or not create it. In all fairness, I must say, it is not our job to create it, but it is our job to monitor and enforce the agreement, whatever that means. Monitor and enforce the agreement. As I understand it, one of the goals is to build down, as they say, the arms on one side of this conflict and build up the arms on the other; presumably those folks who are losing the arms are going to sit back and allow that to happen. Apparently we are to monitor and enforce the understanding with regard to the refugees. As we know, some of these areas and some of these very homes have changed hands. We are going to have people in one group being pushed out by people of another group, going to courts that are being run totally by one group. That is not going to be a very satisfactory resolution to the people who are kicked out. And then we are supposed to leave a balance of power. If there has ever been an indication where the United States or another country has gone into another area and figured this out from a piece of paper, got the top help involved and figured out how to create and enforce and leave a balance of power, I would like to know what it is. Nobody seems to ask the other question, too: What does a balance of power do? Does that cause people to lay down those arms? Does it cause them to say we cannot fight now because we have a balance of power? I would not think so. Some points that really must cause one to think have been made because we are told that this is significant as far as supporting the President's concern but also supporting NATO. I think the Senator from Alaska makes a very good point when he raises the question whether or not this is something that is in our national interest or is it something that is in NATO's interest and we have an interest in NATO, and therefore it is in our national interest. If that is the logic, it is very questionable. For some time now NATO has acted as if this particular conflict and the resolution of it was not even in the national interest of the countries involved, much less NATO. For some time now they have resisted our attempts to lift the arms embargo, to try to reach some kind of resolution along the lines, as I read it, of what the Dayton accord seeks to do with regard to the arms portion of the agreement. I think it is important that we have a strong NATO. I think it is important that we cooperate with NATO. But I think it is also important that NATO cooperate with us. And they failed to cooperate with us. The Secretary of State went around to the NATO countries hat in hand and asked for support and help to get this policy through that the U.S. Congress, I believe, was very firmly in support of, the President said he was in support of, and I think the American people were in support of. They turned a deaf ear to us. Now they have taken the position where apparently they have not seen their own national interest and vital interest of these countries very directly involved and convinced us in one fell swoop that it is in our national interest to send ground troops over there. Not that we do not have any interest at all, but is our national interest sufficient for us to send ground troops? I think probably what this conflict did was catch us in mid-redefinition of the role of NATO and our role in NATO. We have built down from over 300,000 troops in the NATO countries to around 100,000 or so now. Obviously, we see a different situation now that the cold war is over. We do not have that big threat of aggression to the NATO countries from the one superpower. It is a different world that we live in, no less dangerous world but a different world that we live in. And the question here is a new one for us. That is, what happens, first, when you are engaging in not an aggression situation but a so- called peacekeeping situation and, second, it does not involve a NATO country? It does not involve a NATO country. I certainly believe a case can be made that we can become involved and we could supply logistics, intelligence, and other areas that we obviously have capabilities that some of these other countries do not have, without supplying ground troops. Should we be the one to initially step forward with a commitment to supply ground troops simply because we want to have some involvement or support in NATO? I do not think so. So it is too late now with regard to this particular venture. But I think we are going to have to step back and redefine our role there because we cannot afford to let NATO pull us into any kind of conflict over there in another part of the world, that if they had done the right thing in this particular instance we would probably be in much better shape than we are in right now. Another argument that has been made, that is pause for concern to those of us who are opposed to the President's policy here, is the charge of isolationism. And the charge is made that those who do not support the President are isolationists and do not see our country's interests go past our own borders. That is not the case. That is not the case at all. I certainly believe that we must exercise a strong role. One of the things that can be said positively about what the President has done is that he has taken a strong stand. Unfortunately, I think that it is an incorrect stand. But I kind of admire the fact that he has taken a strong stand. If we had taken a strong stand somewhat earlier in this country with regard to this particular area, and others I might add, we would be in a whole lot better shape. We would have a whole lot more credibility, and so would NATO right now. So I think many of us see that we have to exercise a leadership role. We do live in one world. We say that we do not want CNN running our Nation's policy, and it should not. But CNN is there. It has arrived. When we watch atrocities in parts of the world, it affects us. It does not mean that we have to be involved in each and every one, but it affects us as a nation. And when we see in an area where we can take some action, such as lifting an arms embargo, for example, and we sit back year after year and do nothing, I do not think that helps us. I do not think that helps the United States of America and what we are supposed to stand for and what we are as a people. It does not do us any good, I do not think. So all of that is true. But I feel like the policy here at hand is not only misguided, but will wind up fueling the very isolationist tendencies that the supporters of this policy decry. Because if, in fact, it is isolationism that got us here, because we did not have the strong effort by NATO--and we as a country perhaps made some mistakes in not having a firmer hand in many different respects with regard to this part of the world some time ago. But now if, as all indications would point toward, this turns out to be a failed policy, if hostilities resume, if we have to leave prematurely or hostilities resume after we have left, having spent billions of dollars and many lives of our young people, that is going to cause people to be very, very reluctant, much more reluctant than otherwise to get into the next conflict where we might have some national interest. So we must husband our resources with a certain amount of wisdom, discretion. And the President should not come to the U.S. Congress and say that this is a fait accompli, and you should not look to the underlying policy. That is what we are faced with here. The role of Congress has been rendered essentially a nullity. As far as these resolutions are concerned, I feel like it is important that we express ourselves. But I think it is even more important for this reason. If we express ourselves here and the President knows that we do not take to the idea that we are not entitled to look at the underlying policy, if he knows that underlying policy will be debated--any President--and will have to see the light of day and the details will be examined and will not be rubberstamped, even if the troops are on the way, then perhaps it will change some Presidential actions in the future because those things are going to continue to occur throughout the rest of our history, I would assume. It is a much more dangerous world in many respects that we live in today than ever before. So we have been presented somewhat with two bad alternatives. One is to support a bad policy; and the other is to do something which the administration would urge might somehow undermine the effort. And none of us want to do that. And I do not like that policy. I mean I do not like that choice, that Hobson's choice. But on balance, I think it is much worse to establish a precedent that if a President can quietly enough and rapidly enough make commitments and come to the U.S. Congress and say it is a fait accompli, the Congress does not have the right or the obligation to look into the underlying action, that is a bad policy and I do not think we should subscribe to it, and therefore, I will support the resolution. I thank the Chair. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire, who makes some very valid points. One of them, essentially, is that it focuses on the crucial issue here, and that is whether or not law enforcement is a State and local function still, as it has always been in this country, or whether or not, basically, it is a matter for the Federal Government to attend to, given the Federal Government's wonderful track record in solving these problems historically. I think people realize, ultimately, that this money that flows down from on high to the State and local communities comes from their own pockets. It is not free money. I have often wondered how we got into a situation in this country where folks down where I grew up, in Lawrenceburg, TN, will get in their car and drive by the courthouse, to Nashville, past the State capital, and go out to the airport to get on a plane to fly to Washington, DC, and talk to me about how many cops they ought to have in Lawrenceburg. That is the situation we have gotten to in this country. While I do not think the conference report is the ultimate solution to this, I think more and more money ought to be left in the pockets of the people on the local level and let them solve the problems. It is certainly better than any alternative we have. The conference reports reflects what those of us who are new to this body were elected to do. Its provisions reflect the reality that there is not always a Washington-based solution to every problem. The Constitution limits the power of the Federal Government. Crimes, traditionally, in this country are not a national problem, with exceptions, but it is primarily a State and local problem. By eliminating the COPS Program, the conference report respects the proper role of the States and the people under our constitutional system. The COPS Program shows insufficient respect for our system of federalism. With the COPS Program, citizens of States and localities are taxed by the Federal Government. The tax money is returned to the States, minus the cost of a Federal bureaucracy, and with the addition of many strings on their own money. The formula for allocating the money is peculiar. COPS funds go to communities without regard to their crime rate. The COPS office knowingly gave $75,000 to one town for the police chief to leave the office for the street, supposedly. He wound up reading stories to second graders. How does that serve any Federal purpose? Two officers were sent to a low-crime Chicago suburb, whereas a poor Chicago suburb, whose crime rate tripled, received only one simply because it had fewer officers than the wealthier suburb. The strings on localities make even less sense, Mr. President. The money can be spent only on putting police on the street. Rural areas may not find community policing appropriate to their sparse population, but with the COPS Program, that is the only option. It is said on the floor of this Chamber that, my goodness, they might spend it on police cars, equipment, or do something else with the money. My question to that is: What is the problem? Have we in this body achieved such expertise on the details of law enforcement in the small communities across the Nation that we are in a position of supplanting our judgment for the people whose responsibility it is? The President complains that police are outgunned by criminals, but under the COPS Program, localities are prohibited from spending grants on guns and ammunition, equipment, technology, training, or other purposes that actually correspond to the needs of the citizens where the police will actually serve. The District of Columbia, with an enormous crime problem, refused to apply for a COPS grant because the police chief says that the District has all the police it needs. What it lacks is appropriate technology and equipment. If the Federal Government does not even know what is best for Washington, DC, how can it know what is best for communities around the rest of the country? Of course, the monetary rules are the COPS Program's worst infringement on State's rights. COPS funds officers at $25,000, but the Justice Department's own figures show that the average police officer costs $50,000. When a locality receives a COPS grant, it is also receiving a Federal order to spend another $25,000 that the community might wish to spend on other law enforcement functions, or even other desirable local functions, or even tax relief. Sunnyvale, CA, which the Clinton administration hailed in its Reinventing Government campaign, returned its COPS grant because it was required to spend an enormous amount of its own money and to comply with numerous Federal strings as a condition of Federal funding. Moreover, the COPS Program is political. Applicants are required to indicate the locality's congressional district. The COPS office is duplicative. The Justice Departments's Bureau of Justice Assistance career civil servants already dispensed law enforcement grants to State and localities. By contrast, COPS funds are allocated by political appointees in a separate office. That office has a budget of $28 million, much more than the $16.3 million of COPS grants that Tennessee has received, for example. By contrast, the conference report replaces the COPS Program with block grants. Local officials will best determine how to meet local needs, without the interference, or even the existence of a Federal bureaucracy. It would have been better if the conference report had gone further, in my opinion--eliminating block grants and simply letting localities make their own law enforcement decisions, and leaving the money there for them to do it with. Then, municipalities would be responsible for decisions made, and we would have a little bit more accountability in our governing process. When multiple layers of Government are involved with street crime, each level can pass the buck to another, and the citizenry will not know who to hold accountable. The differences between Congress and President Clinton are clear. President Clinton may well veto the conference report over the COPS Program. He may [[Page S 18157]] feel he wants to take a stand on something. If he wants to take a stand for a Federal, bureaucratic, inefficient, and inflexible program, so be it. The conference report's approach is local, flexible, and efficient. In fact, it is so efficient, Tennessee will not only receive more than twice as much money under this approach than under the COPS Program, but it will not have to comply with the whims that come from out-of- touch bureaucrats. I am sure many other States will find themselves in the same position. Therefore, I rise in support of the conference report. I yield back any time I may have remaining.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, first of all I, too, want to commend the Senator from Nebraska. I am sure he will not get used to it, but, for today, I do. Because I think the work he and Senator Danforth and Senator Simpson and others have done regarding the Entitlement Commission is probably the single most important effort that has gone on in this town for a long, long time. They probably feel like voices crying in the wilderness right now. But it will not always be that way. It is something that will grow. People pay more and more attention, because it is the fundamental truth and the most important truth that is in existence with regard to this entire effort. I think the Senator from Washington, a few minutes ago, was absolutely correct in terms of his assessment of the current situation. We are talking about a short-term consideration and we are talking about a long-term one. The current situation is we have struggled mightily this year, with great difficulty, and we have produced a balanced budget. The President, while giving lip service to that proposition, is apparently going to do everything he can to avoid a balanced budget because it means giving up power, it means giving up spending authority, it means giving up prestige with regard to certain interest groups that elect people in this country. But, hopefully, we will resolve those differences and we will wind up with a balanced budget. I know we are committed to it. The Senator from Washington is committed to it. That is what we promised we would do. That is what the American people said they wanted. We are going to take them at their word. It is just that simple. We can negotiate around the edges, but, as far as a commitment to a balanced budget, a real balanced budget, we are there. The Senator from Nebraska makes a very fundamental point. In the middle of all this, it is very important that we keep in mind what we are doing now is just child's play with regard to the important issues facing this country. He is absolutely right that we are doing the more easy part of it now and putting off the more difficult parts for later on. The thing that has been disturbing, I think, to many of us throughout this entire debate who are somewhat new to this process and just having come to the Senate is, as we take a broad view of it, it becomes so difficult even to get to the first step. We are just really nibbling around the edges. The Government is still going to be growing at a tremendous rate. All these programs are going to be going at very substantial rates. Yet it is so difficult. We are going to have to do more next year, as the Senator from Nebraska says. We are going to have to do more the year after that. We are going to have to behave and perform so well for so many years that, when you look at the current state of events, it is very depressing. Frankly, that is one of the arguments I use for term limits. I am not at all sure we have what it takes as an institution to bite the bullet and do what we know has to be done, because we are bankrupting the next generation. These figures are not sustainable. The figures the Entitlement Commission has put out are not refuted. A handful of programs are going to take our entire gross national product in about 17 years in this country. The question becomes, fundamentally, in a democracy can a democracy, once people have discovered that they can pay money to themselves, can they ever stop or can they ever restrain themselves or can they ever restrain the rate at which they are paying themselves from their own treasury? Europe is going through the same kinds of problems that we are right now, and we do not have an answer to that question yet. So, either by getting people to come to this body and getting people in the White House with a different view, with a longer term view, or by having us have a change of heart in this body--these are the only ways that we going to solve these longer term problems that are lying out there, that are down the road. I have always thought, and am more convinced every day, that in order to solve this problem, ultimately it is going to have to be both parties pulling in the same direction. It is going to have to be the White House and the Congress pulling in the same direction. As long as you have somebody in the White House who is going to demagog and scare old people and take millions of dollars worth of television time misrepresenting what the other side is trying to do, and as long as you have people in both parties who are timid about facing up to these problems that the Senator from Nebraska has been talking about and really just want to push them over and make the real tough cuts and heavy lifting 7 years down the road when they may or may not even be here, we are never going to get the job done. I think it just points up, when we look down the road, the fundamental truths that the Entitlement Commission laid out before us, the disastrous consequences of even moving along the road we are on if we do not do even better. It sheds, really, I think, new light on what we are doing here. If we cannot do this, if we cannot make these incremental adjustments now without really hurting anybody--when we are talking about the difference of $4 a month in part B, the difference between what we are saying and what the President is saying--if we cannot get past that, if we cannot reduce the rate of spending by 3 or 3.5 percent a year in these programs that are eating us alive, if we cannot do that now, we do not have any hope as a nation. Again, hopefully, the President will see fit to look past next year's election, on into the future and the kind of world our kids and grandkids will be growing up in, and try to do what is necessary to preserve these programs we say we all want, and we will get together and we will have a balanced budget for ourselves and for the benefit of our kids and the future and strength of this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I would like to engage the majority managers of the bill in a brief colloquy concerning the regulation of zinc--an essential trace element--under the Safe Drinking Water Act. As they are undoubtedly aware, there are a number of studies showing that children, particularly poor children, are seriously deficient in their intake of zinc. Drinking water is one important source of zinc for those children. The managers are surely also aware that the Environmental Protection Agency has established at least one reference dose--or safe exposure level--that allows for less than the recommended dietary allowance for zinc for infants, children and possibly pregnant and nursing mothers, despite the needs of these particularly sensitive groups. In light of the essential nature of, and the recommended dietary allowances established for, zinc, is it the manager's view that EPA should consider these factors when regulating additional trace elements such as zinc?

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON. I object.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I think the Senator from Oklahoma has hit upon the real issue. I think it is important that we get back to the real issue, focus on the real issue, what all this complex debate is about. It simply boils down to whether or not we want a balanced budget--whether or not we want a balanced budget. All the discussion, all the debate, all of the figures, all of the back and forth--do we want a balanced budget, and what are we willing to do to achieve it? Everybody says they want a balanced budget. Everybody gives lip service to a balanced budget. We came close to passing a constitutional amendment, lacking one vote, to balance the budget, and everybody said we do not need a constitutional amendment. All we have to do is balance the budget and do the right thing. The day of reckoning now has come, and we are challenged to do the right thing. Why does everybody admit that we have to have a balanced budget? It is because of the simple fact we are in the process of bankrupting the next generation. The fact we say it over and over again, like water rolling off a duck's back, does not make it any less true. That is what is happening. That is why many of us ran for office. That is why many of us came here--not because we want to say no to anybody; not because it will not be more comfortable to have business as usual, continue the same programs, the same levels of spending, and making everybody happy; not because of that but because we realize that there was going to be some heavy lifting to do. That is a challenge for a serious person. I like to think there are a lot of serious people addressing this. Now the very people who are crying the loudest over students--who are the purported defenders of the elderly and all of the other people who these large deficits are hurting and creating a Nation and an economy that will hurt them because of the deficit presided over this last 30 years with the lack of a balanced budget--perhaps can tell those of us who have not been here that long why, if they are concerned about all of these little people, they allowed this country to get into the shape of a $5 trillion debt. They say, ``Well, the Republicans were in the White House part of that time.'' That is true. The Democrats controlled the Congress almost all of that time. And that is true. And half the time that I listen to the debate here it is ``who shot John?'' Who is the bigger person that is the most blameworthy in all of this debate? We have to get past that. We have to get past this idea that one side is for the average person and the other side is not. The real issue here is whether or not we want to balance the budget. The President says now that he wants a balanced budget. But the American people are gradually going to focus in on the fact that the President, and those that are supporting the President in this deadlock that we are in right now, are twisting and squirming and maneuvering all the time they say they want a balanced budget to do everything in the world to avoid a balanced budget. Why would they want to do that? Because, if we have a balanced budget, we cannot continue to spend the way that we have been spending for the last 30 or 40 years in this country. And everybody likes to spend. In all of the congressional hearings we have up here nobody comes up here and testifies, ``Please cut out our grant.'' Nobody comes up here and testifies that ``we get too much money.'' Everybody loves spending. Everybody wants a little more. Everybody wants their nose in the trough, and everybody has been there for the last several decades in this country. Now we have to decide not who is going to give lip service to a balanced budget but who is willing to do what is necessary. The fact of the matter is that the irony is if we act now, if we do a responsible thing now in order to get a balanced budget, a major step toward a balanced budget, we do not have to engage in draconian measures. We can make some incremental adjustments. We will be spending more money. The Senator from Oklahoma pointed out that over a 7-year period we will be spending more money--$1.9 trillion in this country. We do not have to hurt anybody. But we have to get to our job. We have to start down that road toward what everybody says they want. Everybody wants to go to Heaven. Nobody wants to do what is necessary to get there. The President now has figured out, apparently, how we can balance the budget without really making any incremental adjustments. He decided to turn his back on his own figures that he said he wanted--the Congressional Budget Office figures over all these years to let his staff come up with new figures, and they produced about a half a trillion dollars out of thin air because they changed the estimates. They changed some estimates, projections, and figures and said, ``Well, we do not really have to do anything.'' Of course, that will get them past the next election, will it not? It will get them past the next election before that little house of cards comes tumbling down just like every other projection in this country over the last decade has come tumbling down. We are trying to use real figures over here. The President said during the campaign that he had a plan to balance the budget in 5 years. Then when he is submitting his budget, everybody kind of looked at it, and said, ``Well, that is $200 billion a year of deficits as far as the eye can see.'' They kind of acknowledge that was the case. Then the President said, ``Well, we need to balance it maybe in 10 years.'' Then, since that time, he has been at 7 years, 8 years, and 9 years, too, I think. I do not think he has gone back to 5 years, or anywhere along the line. Then he submitted another document purported, I guess, to be a budget document that has the new figures in it. Lo and behold, we really do not have to make many adjustments at all because we have this windfall over $400 billion because he is using the figures now that he derives from his own staff. Bobbing, weaving, turning, and twisting all the time saying he wants a balanced budget but every few days coming up, ``Well, we can do it in this number of years,'' changing to, ``No. We can do it in that number of years.'' One of his advisers, Ms. Tyson, who says somewhere along the line we do not really need to have a balanced budget. It would hurt us to have one. The next day, I guess we really do. But we should not have it before 10 years. Are these the comments, are these the actions, of a serious leader who really wants a balanced budget? Are these the actions of someone trying to get past the next election giving lip service to a balanced budget but not willing to do one thing--not willing to say to anybody that we cannot continue your program with a 10 percent increase a year, we can continue it maybe at 6.4 percent? I think the answer to that is clear. But the President bobs and weaves, twists and turns, and now his latest impasse when legislation was sent down with the Medicare provision is that he cannot go along with the submission because it is raping Medicare, and we are trying to do all of these terrible things. A person dealing with the complex issue who is willing to use scare tactics--and he has the most bully of all pulpits--is going to win that argument in the short run because you can scare people on these important matters and complex issues. It takes a while for it to set in. But the truth does set in, and it will set in just like on his health care plan. The President now says with regard to Medicare part B--and everybody acknowledges that Medicare is in terrible shape, and going bankrupt-- but he wants a temporary reduction in premiums until the next election, a temporary reduction in premiums when he and all of his advisors have acknowledged in times past that premiums are going to have to be increased. What is the difference between the increase that we are saying is going to be necessary to save it and the increase that the President says is necessary? Four dollars by the year 2002; a $4 difference. We are $4 higher than he is. If he can convince the senior citizens and get them so excited, and appeal to the worst instincts of the American people in terms of greed and selfishness, that they are not going to be willing to make any incremental adjustment, even to the extent of $4 for the benefit of the next generation, then I guess this is a hopeless cause. But I do not think we have come to that point yet. But this is what he is trying to sell. This is what he is trying to sell at a time when it is going bankrupt, at a time when everybody knows we have to make some incremental adjustments. Between now and next November he wants actually those premiums to be able to decrease at a time when everybody knows they have to go up a little bit, and even acknowledges it but he is waiting until after the election to do it. Why resist the balanced budget this strongly? Because spending is a hard habit to break. I guess there is nothing more attractive politically in this entire world than the proposition and the idea of being able to have your cake and eat it too. And if the American people can be convinced that the President really wants a balanced budget but that we really do not have to do anything in order to achieve it, and that anybody who suggests we have to make incremental adjustment is against students, or against his own parents, or against retirees--if a person is willing to play that game, he is going to make some points. But he is not going to win because I think people understand that is a short-term game, and that we have a long-term problem; and that, if we will face up to what we need to do, we will have to make some short- term adjustments but we will have some long-term benefits that will inure to the benefit of our children and our grandchildren that we will be extremely proud of. The Heritage Foundation just this month issued a report using a widely regarded model of the U.S. economy and found that balancing the Federal budget between 1996 and 2002, and cutting taxes, caused the economy generally to grow more than not balancing the budget and cutting taxes. According to this simulation that they used, the balanced budget plan with tax relief would mean that gross domestic product would grow by $10.8 billion more than under current law by the year 2002. If we balanced the budget, we would get an additional $32 billion in real disposable income over that period of time. If we balanced the budget, we would have an additional $66.2 billion in consumption expenditures over that period of time. If we balanced the budget, we would have an additional $88.2 billion in real nonresidential fixed investment over that period of time. If we balanced the budget, we would have a decrease of four-tenths of 1 percent in the conventional mortgage rate in this country. That means that a balanced budget with tax relief will save a home borrower of $100,000 about $10,000 over the life of a 30-year mortgage. If we are concerned about working people and middle-income people in this country, we need to balance the budget. People out here trying to buy a home, seeing their wages stagnated, young working people's wages actually going down, interest rates being what they are, trying to borrow, what are they going to be if we do not balance the budget? The tax rate, some say, will be 70, 80 percent if we do not balance the budget--astronomical interest rates. Here is the result if we do balance it: additional construction of over 104,000 new family homes over the next 7 years; the additional sales of 100,000 automobiles over the next 7 years worth $10 billion, and a decrease of 7 percent in the growth rate of the Consumer Price Index, a decrease in the Consumer Price Index for things that average people go to K-Mart, Wal-Mart, or whatever, and buy. It is not all gloom and doom. It is not all gloom and doom. We are going to have to reduce the rate of growth in some of these programs without question. But after that, we stand to see real long-term benefits in this country. So again, Mr. President, let us get back to the real issue. The real issue is whether or not we really want to balance the budget in this country and whether or not we really want to give any more than lip service to it. We are at a point now where we are either going to put up or shut up. The President of the United States needs to know that there are many of us here who would like to work with the President. We would like to do this thing together. I think ultimately we are going to have to do a lot over the next several years to get this job done. It is not a 1- year deal. Ultimately, it is going to have to be Democrats and Republicans together, it is going to have to be the Congress and the White House. I would like to get on about that. But if he is going to continue to stand in the way of what we all know has to be done, he ought to know there are some people in town who are just as stubborn as he is. And if we were not willing to finish the job we came here to do, we would not have taken the job in the first place.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. THOMPSON. As I listen to the debate, it appears that there are large organizations with millions of dollars of assets that make millions of dollars a year and they are receiving substantial amounts of money from the Federal Government, and you are seeking to place some requirements on them with regard to their lobbying activities. As I listen to this, there is a question that perhaps has been answered or addressed before, which I would think anybody listening to this would raise, and that is, Why is the Federal Government subsidizing these large organizations to start with?

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, the assassination Saturday of Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, was a tragic, cowardly act that must serve to strengthen the peace process in the Middle East, not slow it down or end it. Rabin was one of the toughest and most successful military leaders in his nation's history. He was a legendary warrior whose leadership helped establish Israel and preserve it through numerous trials, from the Six Day War to the freeing of hostages at Entebbe in 1976. Perhaps it was only a man like Rabin--a warrior forged in conflict and steeled in battle--who could have led his nation toward peace with their historic enemies. Perhaps it was only a man like Rabin who could have persuaded his embattled countrymen to give peace a chance. And that is what he did. And like other great martyrs before him-- individuals like Abraham Lincoln, Mohandras Gandhi, and Anwar Sadat--he gave his life for his people and for his nation, and for peace. The pursuit of peace is often more dangerous and difficult than the pursuit of war. Now, the heirs of Yitzhak Rabin must stand off the terrorists bent on hatred, destruction, and war, and continue with their agenda for peace in the Middle East. Israel is a democratic society, and democracies do not depend on a single, individual leader. While Israel and the world mourn for Yitzhak Rabin, and for the cause of peace, already his successors are picking up his mantle. I am certain that Israel can emerge from the circumstances of this heinous crime stronger and even more dedicated to a final and lasting peace. Only moments before he was gunned down at the peace rally in Tel Aviv, Rabin said: I believe there is now a chance for peace, a great chance, and we must take advantage of it. . . . Violence . . . should be condemned and wisely expunged and isolated. It is not the way of the state of Israel. There is democracy. Peace is not only in prayers . . . but it is the desire of the Jewish people.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from New Mexico who has been a leader with regard to responsible budgeting in this country. It is always easier to give somebody something. It is always easier to maintain the status quo and to tell people they can continue on indefinitely the way we have been going and hold yourself up to accusations of hurting those in need, of not caring for the elderly. Some Member on the other side of the aisle said, apparently, the only elderly that you know live in Beverly Hills. Those kinds of tactics are designed to scare people and appeal to the greedy side of people's nature, the implication being that as long as we can get ours today we do not care about our children, and we certainly do not care about our grandchildren. We heard the statement earlier, ``Social Security is not in trouble. Social Security is not going bankrupt. Of course, in about 30 years it is going to run out of money.'' But the implication is, we do not have to worry about that because most of us will have gotten ours by then. I am concerned, not only about today and my own mother who is dependent on it, I am concerned about my children and my grandchildren, as we all should be. That is what we are talking about here. That is the difference, I think, in the debate nowadays from what it has been in times past. That is the reason that many of us ran for political office for the first time in our lives, because people are sick and tired and fed up with business as usual. We see the results of it. We see in many respects our country is going downhill. So we passed a reconciliation package to do something about that. People said they wanted a balanced budget. We are on our way to a balanced budget, to save Medicare--not to destroy it, but to increase spending for Medicare, but at a reduced rate of growth; to change a failed welfare system from something that was supposed to do good for people that has changed into something that has done an immeasurable disservice to many, many people in this country; to give more back to people who are earning hard-earned dollars to keep in their pockets. The President, I thought, pretty much agreed with those concepts. We have come a long way, because some time ago the advisers to the President were saying we really did not need a balanced budget; and then, yes, maybe we need one but in 10 years; then, yes, maybe we need one and then OK, maybe 7 years. The President pledged to reform welfare as we knew it back during the campaign. He acknowledged that Medicare was going bankrupt, and that we had to do something about it. He has proposed increasing Medicare spending by 7.1 percent a year. We have proposed increasing spending by 6.4 percent a year. It seems pretty close to me. It looks to me like we are fairly close together, at least on some of these basic concepts. And, yet, what does the [[Page S 16463]] President do when we passed the reconciliation package? He says he will veto it, and basically he is not willing to negotiate--that we are destroying Medicare: that his 7.1 percent is a responsible percentage of growth but our 6.4 percent would destroy Medicare. These are scare tactics, even though we are spending twice the rate of inflation under our proposal; appeals to greed; appeals to grandparents. And there is the implication that, if you are making $100,000 a year, or if you are retired, you do not have to make any kind of incremental adjustment, we can continue on not only just increasing spending, which we are all saying that we will do, but increase spending at the rate that we are increasing now or closer to it. So people must be confused as to what the President's position is. Is he for a balanced budget? Is he for changing welfare as we know it? Is he for doing something about Medicare, or not? He says he is. Yet, he seems to not be willing to even sit down at the table to work out these differences that some might interpret as being not all that great, that we might be able to work out. I think the answer is clear that we are in the era now of political posturing, that the President feels he must come into this process feeling strong, feeling tough--and that is OK--delivering the message, and posturing himself. That is OK. A deal will be worked out of some kind, and, if it is not, that will be up to the President. But I think probably even more important than this particular resolution is that we will get by somehow. Even more important than that is the question of whether or not we have a commitment to these basic things. We can argue and fight over the details. That is why we have two branches of Government. That is why we have separation of powers, and checks and balances in this country. That is fine. But the real question we have to face up to is whether or not we as a people, as a Congress, and a President are committed to the underlying propositions, for example, of a balanced budget because, if we are not, we are going through all of this for nothing. We are going to have to do so much more for so long. If we cannot pass this first hurdle, we will never make it past the others because we are making the initial downpayment on the balanced budget. We are going to have to own up to our responsibilities year after year after year. If we cannot solve these problems that merely have to do with numbers, how are we going to address the other major problems that are facing our country--with the problems of the world economy where wages are stagnating, especially among our younger people; the problems of the inner city where we see youth violence skyrocketing, youth drug use skyrocketing, illegitimacy skyrocketing; all of these social problems. If we cannot solve these numbers problems, how in the world are we going to address those? How are we going to address the underlying problem, probably that overshadows the rest of them? And, that is the cynicism that some of the American people have in this country toward their own Government, toward their own Government's ability to get things done. Those are the underlying questions. Those are the more serious ones. I think that we can make a statement to the American people as we have tried to do in Congress by taking the tough votes, taking the tough measures, saying we cannot have everything exactly the way we have always had it, and we are going to speak the plain truth. We can tell the American people that we can do this, and because we did do this we can address these other problems that lie down the road before us. So I urge the President, if he is serious about balancing the budget, changing welfare as we know it, saving Medicare, if he is serious about the statement that he made that he raised taxes too much, if he is serious about the position that, yes, we should have a tax cut, then I would urge him to sit down at the table and let us talk about those details. Because I think the message that I would like to deliver--and there are a lot of the new Members here who would like to deliver it, along with some of the maybe not-so-new Members--is that regardless of what the policies that have been around here in times past, things are different now, and we are not going to continue to roll over these problems to the next generation. Thank you, Mr. President. Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, first of all I commend the Senator from Minnesota for his excellent presentation. After listening to those who are always for higher taxes and will use any means to fight any kind of tax cut on the basis that it is just a giveaway to the rich, it is refreshing to hear actually what this tax cut would do, the $500-per- child tax cut the Senator from Minnesota has fought so long and so hard for. The letters coming from people who work hard, pay their taxes, raise their kids and obey the law, and find it tougher and tougher to get by--that is obviously who this tax credit will go to benefit. It belies the accusations on the other side that, of course, this is just a tax cut for those who do not need it. Our friends on the other side of the aisle have made a profession of trying to decide who in America deserves to keep more of the money they are earning and who deserves to have it sent to Washington for those enlightened Members of this body to spend for them. So I think we are making substantial progress when we are obviously getting our message across to the American people as to exactly what this tax cut is all about. It goes to help those people who everybody in this body says they are concerned about. We are hearing all this rhetoric about the rich, the rich, the rich, and how everybody is for the working person and the working family. If everybody was for the working family and everybody is concentrating on doing something for the working family, why is it the working family feels they are getting worse and worse off every year? As I said, those people who work hard, raise their kids and pay their taxes--this, finally, will do something to reach the people that everybody says they are trying to reach in this country. This will actually serve that purpose.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, the Corporate Subsidy Termination Commission Act which my colleagues and I are introducing today will take us one step further on the road to fairness in Government. This Congress has done a thorough and, I believe, admirable job of examining thousands of items of Government spending. We have identified areas of spending which should be reformed because they don't work as they should. And we have identified those which should be terminated because their existence cannot be justified. Some areas, such as the Federal welfare program, have been completely transformed. In each case we have asked several questions: Does this spending promote a useful public purpose? if so, can Government afford it? Should the effort and the money for it be transferred to the State or local level, where it is closer to those it is supposed to benefit? As part of this process we have examined some programs whose primary beneficiaries are profitmaking enterprises--businesses of all sizes. In several such cases we have made progress on incremental reforms. For instance, the Senate passed an amendment to restrict the Marketing Promotion Program through which $110 million is spent annually to underwrite advertising by some of our largest corporations in foreign countries. In addition, the program under which the Government leases mineral rights on public lands to private companies is being reformed to [[Page S 16507]] allow the Government to charge fees more in line with real values. But these efforts and others that are ongoing are necessarily piecemeal. We can cut or restrict a corporate subsidy here, and leave another one untouched. Last week, as part of an effort to highlight the issue of Federal subsidies to profitmaking enterprises, a bipartisan group of colleagues and I proposed ending 12 specific items of corporate pork. These items were chosen from Federal spending programs which are characterized by some element of corporate subsidization. They affected areas including public resource management, energy development, export promotion, local construction, utility loans, sale of public airwaves, tourism promotion, defense construction, and aircraft design. They were only a sampling of all such programs--the Cato Institute recently identified 129 items characterized as corporate pork. Senator McCain offered this package as an amendment to the reconciliation bill, where it received the support of only a fourth of this Body. Clearly this problem needs to be attacked in a different way. The bill we are introducing today also has bipartisan support. It establishes a Corporate Subsidy Termination Commission which is charged with identifying programs or tax policies which provide unnecessary benefits or inequitable tax advantages to profitmaking enterprises. The Commission is fashioned after the BRAC Commission, with expedited legislation procedures similar to those provided for the Congressional Budget Resolution. I ask unanimous consent that an overview of this Corporate Subsidy Termination Commission be printed in the Record. Why establish a Commission and a new process to do what we could conceivably do directly? First, and most important, this Commission will do what we cannot do well: make an overall assessment of all programs, on both the spending and revenue sides, at one time. Over the years we have created an intricate, interwoven system of subsidies, taxes and exemptions. As a rural Tennessee utility which would be affected by the spending cuts we proposed last week pointed out to me, they are competing against other energy providers who receive subsidies in the form of tax breaks. Second, our experience last week demonstrated that voting hit or miss on individual items is not going to be successful. One person's pork is another's prize. And no one wants to give up their prize program if there isn't shared sacrifice. With the commission approach, we will know that all programs have been examined and those which provide unjustified subsidies have been exposed. Third, the members of the Commission will be appointed specifically for this purpose by the President and the Congress. They will possess the expertise, authority and stature necessary to do the job. Fourth, the commission's recommendations will not be buried in the corner of a Federal agency or a congressional committee. While the President and Congress will be able to amend or reject the Commission's recommendations, they must address them. Mr. President, we should require no less of profitmaking enterprises than we ask of all Americans. It is a matter of fairness and shared sacrifice. At a time when the national debate is focused on getting control of the budget, now and in the future, we cannot afford to provide corporate subsidies which undermine our efforts and which send the wrong message to American taxpayers.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Michigan. I also am strongly in support of his amendment. I think, as he says, eliminating fraud and abuse from the Medicare system certainly is not, in and of itself, going to cure the problem we are faced with. But it has to be part of the package and it represents doing something. I applaud his efforts in that regard. I also applaud the comments just made by the distinguished Senator from Ohio and his comments about the welfare portion of the reconciliation package. Mr. President, I speak from a little bit different perspective than many of those who have spoken on the reconciliation package. I am a new Member to this body. I have not run for elected office before. I ran for the U.S. Senate. I decided to run for this body because I felt--as I think a lot of other people in this country feel today--that our country is at a crossroads, that our chickens have come home to roost, and it is time to make some strong decisions, and they are going to have to be made by people of courage and conviction. I felt that I could play a small part in making the difference, in helping make that happen. It is all coming down now to these last few days, and that opportunity is going to be given to me, and it is going to be given to everybody in this body. Everything we have done in the last 10 days has led up to this time, has led up to this day of judgment. This is a day of judgment for ourselves as individuals. Some would say it is for our party, but it is more importantly for us as a body and us as a nation. I think those difficult choices have to be made. We are talking essentially here about change, Mr. President--change from the way that we have done things in the past. Change is always somewhat painful. Change is never easy, but change we must have. There are legitimate issues to be debated and discussed, without question. I think it is quite clear that there are basically two different philosophies in this Chamber, as we approach these issues and problems. One believes that the Government, by growing larger and spending more money, can solve these problems, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. We, on the other hand, believe that Government ought to do those things that Government does best, that we should shrink the size of the influence of the Federal Government on people's lives, give more power back to the States, back to the localities, and leave more dollars in the pockets of people who earn those dollars. It is a pretty simple proposition. But there are legitimate issues. There is a legitimate issue as to how far we should go with regard to Medicare. Should we apply a Band- Aid? Sometimes a Band-Aid can work perfectly well for short periods of time. But the question is whether or not we should apply that Band-Aid or do something more serious for the future. Although, surely, we agree that something must be done. There is legitimate debate as to what extent we should keep centralized here, control of the welfare program, or to what extent we should give those responsibilities back, closer to where the problem is. Although, surely, there can be no debate that we indeed have a failed welfare system and that something must be done. There is even a legitimate debate with regard to a balanced budget. A while back, some were thinking maybe we did not really need one. Apparently, now we are all in agreement. We can debate those priorities, but, surely, we are all in agreement that we cannot continue down the road we are traveling on now, and that the next generation does not deserve it. We can debate tax cuts. We can debate the effects of those tax cuts. But, apparently, we even agree across party lines and with the White House with regard to the need for tax cuts--the President having acknowledged that tax cuts are indeed needed. So these are legitimate items of debate, and I have been looking forward to a discussion of those issues. We are in the midst of it now. I think the discussion tonight has been good. I must say that, throughout the day, it has not always reached a level that I would like to see reached in this Chamber. We have seen some mean-spiritedness, and we have seen some calls to fear. We have seen appeals to envy and appeals to greed. One Member, today, suggested that those who espouse our philosophy should be ashamed of ourselves. Another Member today, on the other side, said that apparently the only elderly people we know are those who live in Beverly Hills, which would come as a real shock to my mama in Franklin, TN. But that was said today. It has been implied that those on the other side of the aisle are the only ones who have any concern, any care, any compassion because, indeed, they are the ones who are willing to send out more dollars from Washington to solve those problems, as they have solved them in times past. Mr. President, it has come now to a time where we must put partisanship aside. We can have legitimate debate on legitimate issues. I think the time is well past when we should be attacking other people's motivations as we reach to solve these problems, because some of us must take note of the fact that some of the ones arguing and screaming so loudly about these changes being made have been here for some time and have witnessed this legislation that has come out of this body and the other body, which has contributed to the problem over the last 40 years--much more than it has contributed to the solution, it has contributed to the policy of neglect and one that has, in every respect, failed. It has operated under false assumptions and false policies that must now be corrected. It is on our watch now--those who are coming in and who have been here a while. It is on our watch now, and we have to do something about what has been going on here for the last 40 years. We have a lot of talk about the blame and partisanship on this side of the aisle and the other side of the aisle. I suggest that there is enough blame to go around, Mr. President. But we are now cleaning up after the act of the last few decades that was based on the proposition that we can eradicate welfare in this country, that we can eradicate poverty by spending more dollars on it. We spent $5 trillion and got about the same level of poverty, along with a lot of other socially undesirable results, which we surely must all agree on. In 1965, the Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance part A Medicare would cost $9 billion to finance by 1990. In 1990, hospital insurance actually cost $67 billion. That is quite a bit of disparity, even by congressional standards. Medicaid was intended to cost a billion dollars annually. Expenditures ballooned to $76 billion in 1992. In 1995, it went to $89 billion. That is just the Federal Government part alone. The States contributed $67 billion, in addition to that. False assumptions, which led to bad policies, which basically said, let us put this down and get to the next election and get an issue for the next election and on down as far as we can carry it, election after election, and let somebody else take care of the consequences. Well, we are now taking care of the consequences, we are taking care of those estimates that turned out to be so wrong. What has that wrought? It is certainly more than an academic exercise. It has wrought a Medicare trust fund that is virtually bankrupt, a welfare system that is morally bankrupt; it has wrought a fiscal situation that is going to bankrupt the next generation if we do not do something about it. It has led us to a point where we have the lowest savings rate in the industrialized world. We have one of the lowest investment rates. We have a growth rate now that is about half of what it should be, about half of what it normally is coming out of a recession. That has resulted in leaving a legacy to those who come after us in a few short years of even higher and higher payroll taxes, of even higher interest rates, of not being able to compete in the international marketplace, and depending more and more on foreign dollars to subsidize our debt. That is what these miscalculations have wrought. Yet, from everybody in this body, on both sides of the aisle, all you hear talk about is the ``working person,'' or the ``working family.'' Everybody is looking out for the working family. Everybody is taking care of those workers, and talking about the people in the upper income levels as if they were born that way and none of them ever worked. We know who we are talking about. What have we done for the working family? Those are the folks who put me where I am standing here today. Those are the folks that elected most of us in this body. We ought to be looking out for them. But have we been doing that? Do our actions belie the words ``looking out for the working family''? We have seen income levels stagnate, and in looking out for the working family we have seen among young working people actually income levels decline in this country. Among working people, we have seen greater and greater tax burdens laid upon them, up to 220 percent. The Senator from Ohio a minute ago was exactly right. The very people who benefit from this $500-per-child tax credit--that is what we have been doing for the working family. I can hear working folks all across America saying, ``Please don't help us out anymore. We can't stand it.'' What is the solution to all of this? We have seen the President's first budget which gave $200 billion deficits as far as the eye could see. Nobody took it seriously, and it did not get one vote in this Chamber. We saw the President's second so-called budget that created $245 billion out of thin air by changing some assumptions. Nobody is taking that seriously either. Apparently it did not get one vote in this Chamber. Apparently, the idea is not to come forth with any constructive idea at all, not to help contribute to the solution, but lay the wood on those who are trying to solve the problem, and to keep on taxing and keep on spending. With regard to the Medicare solution, my friends on the other side are correct in claiming that their $90 billion solution would keep the Medicare trust fund solvent until 2006, but in 2010, the last year the Republicans would keep the trust fund in the black, the Democrats would leave it in the red. That date is important, because 2010 is the year the human wave of baby boomers really hits--those baby boomer retirees. Everyone acknowledges that further changes in Medicare will undoubtedly need to be made at that time. It is a different situation entirely. To meet it on an equilibrium is what we are trying to do, or not to meet it already $300 billion in arrears. My time is running out. I want to address the tax component that we have heard so much about. The claim, of course, that the problem here really is that we want tax cuts for those who do not need them, and, therefore, the Medicare problem would not be as big, I can only hope the Washington Post--every knowledgeable observer, Mr. President, and traditionally Democratic, have basically made the same statement. The Washington Post on September 25, 1995, said, ``The Democrats have fabricated the Medicare tax cut connection because it is useful politically.'' Mr. President, this business about tax cuts for those who do not really need them--I find it interesting, kind of parenthetically, and this is historically espoused by those who want higher and higher taxes. We just had the largest tax increase in the history of the country and now that is supposed to be locked in and not touched. We meet every year, practically, in this body, and decide who does need it, who deserves it. This group this year deserves a tax break. This group this other year does not deserve a tax break. So we have a tax bill. We had a tax bill in 1969, in 1971, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1993--major tax bills. That does not include the miscellaneous tax bills. And every time, we in this body decide who is deserving and who is not--passing judgment on our fellow citizens as to whose money we ought to take and who we ought to give a little back to, continuously focusing on the ``who,'' the ``who''--not the what. In other words, who is going to be hit? Continuing to focus on how to divide up the pie, not focusing on policies as to how to make the pie bigger. My time, I am sure, is close to being expired, so I will address this in a little bit more detail at a later time. In conclusion, I urge that we get down to serious business, that we put the details of this aside. It is painful. There are things in this bill of this magnitude that are going to pain us in various areas. The bottom-line question is whether or not we will get this fiscal house in order. We take the first step, which is only a first step. If we do everything we are talking about and go through all the pain, this is just the first step. We will have to continue to do it year after year after year. I suggest we get used to it and get on with it.

Mr. THOMPSON. Does the Senator from North Dakota wish to go next?

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I appreciate the recognition. First of all, I want to commend the distinguished Senator from South Carolina for his usual eloquence. I [[Page S 15511]] think if I ever had a case to litigate in court that I want him on my side. Apparently, a lot of people in South Carolina over the years have felt the same way. He brings to this discussion a unique perspective of someone who has been in this body for many years, having served as Governor before his service in this body. Great experience--he has been through the budget years, budget battles. It is always enlightening to hear an analysis of history--ancient history, recent history--as to how we got into the fix that we are in this country, whose fault it has been in the past, and what calculations that were made in the past that turned out not to be correct, and the political battles back and forth. It is also interesting to hear from someone with such vast knowledge and experience as to how these deficits are figured, whose figures are to be used, whose figures are to be trusted and all of that. However, Mr. President, I cannot bring to this discussion that kind of richness of historical perspective. I bring, as many of my colleagues here in the Senate, including my colleague from Tennessee who occupies the chair now, a different perspective. That is, one from someone who has not been in this body, has not been in politics as far as that is concerned, over the years, and perhaps who views this a bit differently, from a different perspective. That is, simply--regardless of all of that--we are simply spending more than we are taking in. We are simply bankrupting the next generation. We simply have to do some things differently in this country. I think probably the best service that analysis of the past can be is an example of what we should not do. Sometimes I wonder whether or not we should not, with regard to our fiscal policies in the past, with regard to so many of our social policies, we should not carefully analyze what we have done over the years and do the exact opposite. I think as far as these fiscal problems are concerned, all I know is that we have that problem; the American people know we have that problem. They sent some of us here to address that problem in a different way than has been addressed in times past. We stand here now on the brink of what I feel is a historic opportunity to address this for the first time in decades. Others would disagree and say we have tried various things before and they have failed. We tried some things and they worked for a while and we backed off again, which to me is a pretty good argument for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. That is a debate for a different time. The chairman of the Budget Committee, as I read in this morning's paper, called this reconciliation package the culmination of his life's work. He is not a person to use language loosely, and I am sure he feels that way, and I am sure it is the case. It has been a remarkable life's work and I think it points out the way in which serious people view this serious problem and where we are. That is, on the brink of perhaps a historic occasion for the first time, perhaps, in this generation, to really try to get a grip on a problem that is strangling our Nation, that will undoubtedly engulf the next generation if we do not face up to it and do something about it. Anyone who reads history will see that history is full of occasions of great powers having great economic viability and power and success and great military powers, and countries come to the top and they rule the world on occasion for periods of time, in ancient times, and they become the major economic powers of the world for periods of time. Invariably, as the Bard would say, they strut and fret their brief hour upon the stage and then they move on. They decline, through laziness, laxity, corruption, for whatever reason, they move on. And they fade into the sunset and they are no longer militarily or economically powerful. One looking at the United States of America by any measurable criteria--economic, socially, or perhaps any other criteria--could make a pretty good case that the United States of America is on the beginning stages of that kind of decline. I think just within the last few years that people have taken note and made a decision in this country that we are not going to let that happen to the United States of America, that we are going to do something really unprecedented in world history, and that is to stop ourselves in mid-decline and to correct that course. For years in this country we have somewhat recognized these problems, but basically roll them over for the next generation to deal with. We have thought that we could have our cake and eat it too. We have thought that we could socially engineer our ways out of almost any problem and do it from Washington, DC. These things have not worked. Now we are in a position of having to correct some false assumptions that we have made and some false basis for policies that we have had in this country for some time now. That should not be a remarkable occurrence and it should not be something that should be extremely disturbing to many of us. This must happen in an individual's life. In the life of a nation, Thomas Jefferson, as we heard so often quoted in the balanced budget debate back a few months ago, pointed out that we need to reexamine ourselves every once in a while. Even our form of government, in some basic ways, should be reexamined and challenged from time to time. Different way of doing business. Certainly these policies that are based on nothing more than a series of legislative enactments should undergo that kind of scrutiny. That is what we are doing now. That is what we are doing. We have operated under the assumption that we could cure poverty in this country by spending our way out of it, that as long as we were spending vast sums of money this was demonstrating our commitment to those less fortunate. It made us feel good. Basically, of course, we were spending other people's money, folks out there working for a living, paying taxes, and they were footing the bill as always. But we felt basically the end would justify that, because we could eradicate poverty in this country, basically. We, of course, gave no account, apparently, to basic tenets of human nature, that we could not spend $5 trillion on a problem such as this without creating dependency. We gave no accounting to the obvious fact that we cannot micromanage people's behavior from Washington, DC. But we spent $5 trillion and now we have, perhaps, basically the same rate of poverty that we had in this country when we started. We developed a program for health care coverage for the elderly back in 1965. A lot of Democrats and Republicans joined together at that time to institute Medicare and also Medicaid. At the time the Ways and Means Committee estimated the hospital insurance part A would cost $9 billion to finance in 1990. In 1990 hospital insurance actually cost $67 billion. Medicaid, a narrowly defined program buried in the 1965 bill that created Medicare, of course provides health care for low- income Americans. It was intended to cost about $1 billion annually. By 1992, expenditures had ballooned to $76 billion. In 1995 it was $89 billion. Of course that is the Federal Government's share alone, the States spent another $67 billion. So it is clear that we miscalculated, that we have operated under false assumptions, and that we must have some midcourse correction here in order to save the very thing we say we want, because the results of these policies, the results of this miscalculation, has left us in a sea of debt. It has slowed down the economy. We now have the lowest savings rate in the industrialized world. We have one of the lowest investment rates among our trading competitors, and it has left our growth rate at about half what it usually is coming out of a recession in this country. It is making it more difficult for us to compete in a global economy with nations that measure their wages in pennies instead of dollars, and our work force here is insufficiently trained to meet that. This is all in the context of an economy about which a good argument can be made, based upon our savings rate and our growth rate, that our investment rate is basically, long range, long term, slowing down--slowing down. We have seen the result of our social policies. Mr. President, it is not going to matter all that much whether we [[Page S 15512]] balance the budget or not if out-of-wedlock births become the norm in this country. It is not going to matter whether we have a tax cut or not if juvenile crime makes it so that nobody can even get out on the streets anymore in this country--and that is what it is coming to. At a time when many of our prime statistics are leveling off, juvenile crime is now skyrocketing. Drug use among the juvenile population is now skyrocketing. So we have a slowing economy and terrible social indicators, where out-of-wedlock births exceed 50 percent in most of the major cities now. Probably worst of all, I think, is a growing cynicism among the American people. The dissatisfaction you see, the third parties we hear being talked about, the aftermath of these activities of some of our law enforcement agencies, have people who are big, strong, conservative law enforcement people saying, ``Wait a minute, this is not the way it ought to be. This is not the Government I know. I feel disassociated from that kind of Government, that way of doing business.'' This is in a country where 75 percent of the people consistently say they want a particular policy--term limits is one example--and nothing ever happens. All of that, all of that is a result, a culmination of years and years and years of policies that may have worked for a while and that certainly were based on good intentions by those who instituted them. Certainly some remnants and some parts of some policies are worth saving, and then there are some that were outright wrong from their inception and were based on fraudulent premises. A combination of all of that has led us here with these problems. We talk about the last election. I do not think people got up on Election Day last time and started loving Republicans across the country. I think we benefited from the fact that we were not in, that we were out. I think, more than anything else, it had to do with people wanting some kind of fundamental change in the way we were doing business in this country on a fundamental basis, and they were willing to give us a narrow window of opportunity to see if we could do something about it. That is why so many of us came together and decided we would take a handful of things, but a handful of the most important things facing this country, and try to do something about them that is different fundamentally--and they are come together in this reconciliation package. It had to do with the commitment to balance the budget of this country. It had to do with a Medicare system that everybody knows cannot continue the way it is. Changes have to be made or it will not be with us. It had to do with a failed welfare system where $5 trillion has created more social havoc than we would have believed imaginable. And it had to do with leaving a few more dollars in the pockets of those who earned the dollars in the form of a tax cut. They were laid out in the campaigns last time and people responded to them, and they are looking to see now whether or not we are going to keep that commitment. Everyone can be debated and will be debated, but I think it is good for the system and the American people to see it all debated out, because there are two sides to most of these issues. But after all is said and done, the time is running out for us to make fundamental change and it is going to have to be done and it is going to happen on our watch. I am proud to be here for that historic occasion, when I think that will happen. The easy thing to do, always, is to maintain the status quo, to nibble around the edges, to really do just enough to make people think you are doing something without doing enough to really have any effect on anybody's life so you will be subject to criticism. We can argue over whose figures to use and all that. But I think the President's so-called second budget is a good example of that. He apparently comes up with $245 billion simply by changing a few estimates. Again, I suppose folks that have been around here a long time are used to that. That is the way you make your money, mostly, is to change your estimates, change your growth estimates, change your inflation estimates and all that, and you can come up with $245 billion out of thin air without having to make any changes. Regarding the Congressional Budget Office, we do not have anyone who everyone can agree is omnipotent, who is all-knowing and can give us figures that everyone will agree on. I suppose the Congressional Budget Office is the nearest we have been able to come to that. The President always thought so until recently. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the President's so-called second budget does not balance. It gives us $200 billion deficits as far as the eye can see. So the status quo is always easier. The same thing as far as the Medicare situation is concerned. We take the position we have to have $270 billion in Medicare savings. Our colleagues on the other side, so many of them, say, ``Yes, we acknowledge first of all that we would have to have a balanced budget,'' which is progress right there. And second, ``Yes, we must do something about Medicare.'' But again, just as with the balanced budget, ``You are going too far, you are going too fast.'' Mr. David Broder wrote in the Washington Post earlier this month on this subject, and he pointed out the real problem, when you cut through all the rhetoric on both sides of the aisle as far as the health care problem is concerned, is that the growth in spending for health care is devouring the Federal budget. He pointed out the Presidential commission, headed by our colleagues Senator Kerrey of Nebraska and Senator Danforth, reported earlier this year that unless current trends are changed, by 2010 or 2012, 15 to 17 years from now, all Federal revenues will be consumed by entitlement programs and interest on the national debt. So we clearly cannot continue down that road. He further states that the Republican approach comes closer to the scale of changes that the country needs. He points out that in the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, they point to some estimates given to the committee by Guy King, former chief actuary for the Federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Mr. King says that the Democrats are correct in claiming that their $90 billion solution would keep the Medicare trust fund solvent until 2006, but in 2010--the last year that the Republican plan would keep the trust fund in the black--he said the Democrats would leave it with a $309 billion figure in the red. He says that date is terribly important because 2010 is the year the huge wave of baby-boomer retirees really hits. Everyone acknowledges further changes in Medicare will be needed by then. But, as Thomas points out, it is one thing to be dealing with the retiree wave from a position of fiscal parity--which is what our plan would do--but it is much harder to do it when you are already $300 billion in arrears. So all he is saying is that, sure, the plan that would say let us just have $90 billion in savings would get us over the hump. That is what we are used to doing in this country--getting over the hump usually until the next election, hopefully until the next generation, just pushing it on down the road just a little bit further, and do not let me have to deal with it because I do not want to have to go home and explain anything unpleasant to anybody. But if we do that when those retirees hit, when those baby boomers start retiring, we will be hopelessly insolvent. But we are not getting a reasoned debate in many instances on this. We are getting scare tactics. We are getting the 30-second sound bites which the American people have grown to love so much in our political races, 30-second television commercials that appeal to the most basic instincts and that are invariably flawed from the factor standpoint. Mr. President, has my time expired?

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, Mr. Tim Penny, former Democratic Representative from Minnesota, wrote earlier in the Washington Post, last month, and said that members of both parties should be working together on this important issue just as many Republicans joined Democrats in voting for Medicare in 1965. Unfortunately, [[Page S 15513]] Democratic leaders in Congress have decided otherwise, choosing to attack the Republican Medicare plan rather than offering an alternative. By politicizing the issues, Democrats are threatening the viability of the very program that they created. Mr. President, we are better than that. We can do better than that. Those on both sides of the aisle have pointed out that this is not an accurate representation of what we are doing, the rhetoric that we are hearing now. The Washington Post, on September 25, 1995, pointed out that as far as saying the tax cut proposal is simply a tax cut for the rich to finance the Medicare cuts, they said, ``The Democrats have fabricated a Medicare tax cut connection because it is useful politically''. Mr. President, the stakes are too high. The opportunities are too great. We must get down to what we all know is the task at hand; that is, saving this Nation from insolvency, saving the Medicare trust fund from insolvency, and putting some money back into the hands of working people. Mr. President, only in Washington, DC, do we still think that $1 of tax cuts of any kind, capital gains or otherwise, is $1 of revenue to the Federal Government. It simply does not work that way. In 1981, for example, when the rates were cut for capital gains, revenues went up. In 1996, when rates were increased, revenues went down. So I believe, as Senator Domenici has pointed out, the chairman of the Budget Committee, this is a culmination of not only his last work but a lot of people's last work. It is an historic occasion. We have an opportunity to do something that probably will not present itself again, certainly in our lifetime, as far as this reconciliation package is concerned. I urge its prompt consideration and its approval. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, there are defining moments in history, as there are in all our lives. World War II was one of those times. History stood still while men and women from nations around the world struggled mightily to determine which direction the future would take. Fifty years ago, when that war ended, America embarked on a journey toward freedom--not suppression; toward peace--not war; and toward progress for all peoples--not ignorance, fear and darkness. While we still are far from reaching the end of that journey, we know now, as we did then, that our path would have been quite different had not so many American men and women offered their country years of personal sacrifice. More than 400,000 Americans gave their lives, and their simple, dignified graves here and around the world mark their heritage far better than words. Among that number more than 6,000 Tennesseans died on foreign battlefields during that great conflict. Yet today 150,000 Tennessee men and women who served their country so well 50 years ago still are living. On October 11, 1995, the United States Congress held a rare joint Senate-House meeting in the chamber of the House of Representatives to honor our World War II veterans, and those who served on the home front. I was pleased to be able to invite a Tennessee war veteran to attend this ceremony, and was honored to welcome Brig. Gen. Enoch Stephenson of Columbia, TN. A combat pilot during the war, Stephenson flew 66 combat missions in a P-51 Mustang for the 8th Air Force, including missions over Berlin, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Stephenson, then a lieutenant based in Great Britain, normally ``flew escort for heavy bombers--B-24s and B-17s--on their daylight raids,'' as he recounted. ``* * * As the Army started working its way across Europe, we continued to escort the bombers. But after they had completed their bomb run and were headed back to England, we'd leave them and go look for targets of opportunity.'' After the war Stephenson returned to Tennessee and took a position with the Third National Bank in Nashville. He also served in the Tennessee National Guard until he retired 24 years later. He is currently chairman of the World War II Memorial Trust--an organization focused on creating a World War II memorial on the Tennessee Bicentennial walk planned for Nashville. During his career Stephenson received the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters and the European Battlefield Ribbon with four Battle Stars. But Stephenson represented more than one man when he traveled to Washington for the special ceremony and recognition. Sitting with him in that congressional Chamber were all of Tennessee's World War II veterans, living and dead. With him was Sgt. Charles H. Coolidge of Signal Mountain who served in the 36th Infantry Division in France. On October 24, 1944, Coolidge's company was under heavy enemy tank and machine gun fire delivered at close range. Coolidge picked up a bazooka and moved to within 25 yards of the tanks. When the bazooka failed to function he threw it aside, crawled even closer and armed only with hand grenades inflicted heavy casualties on the advancing enemy. With him was Sgt. Vernon McGarity of Memphis who served in the 99th Infantry Division. On December 16, 1944, near Krinkelt, Belgium, McGarity was wounded in an artillery barrage. After being treated at an aid station, he refused evacuation and returned to the men of his squad. Then, in the thick of battle and under heavy fire, he separately rescued two wounded American soldiers, immobilized the lead tank of the enemy with a rocket launcher, and ran through concerted enemy fire to recover ammunition critical to his unit's ability to continue the fight. When his squad was pinned down by a German machine gun, McGarity left cover, charged the machine gun, and single-handedly killed or wounded all the enemy gunners. Also with Stephenson in that stately congressional Chamber was 1st Lt. Hugh B. Mott of Nashville who served in the 9th Armored Engineer Battalion in Germany. On March 7, 1945, Mott arrived with his unit at Remagen Bridge which crossed the Rhine River. Although the bridge was protected by enemy demolition charges and intense sniper, machine gun and 20 mm fire, Mott ran along the entire length of the bridge cutting the wires leading to the demolitions. By doing this he prevented the immediate destruction of the bridge and enabled U.S. forces to establish a bridge head on the east bank of the Rhine River. Following the war Mott joined the Tennessee National Guard, from which he retired as a major general. He served in the State Legislature, and for several years was the chief of police in Nashville. Mott was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, among other honors. [[Page S 15259]] Both Coolidge and McGarity were recipients of the Nation's highest battlefield award, the Congressional Medal of Honor. It is sometimes hard to believe that a half-century has passed since heros like Enoch Stephenson, Charles Coolidge, Vernon McGarity, Hugh Mott--and so many others--left their homes and families to travel into hell. Time, however, will never diminish their sacrifices and service to our Nation. For, quite simply, their legacy is nothing less than the freedom we enjoy today. And that is the most important legacy anyone can leave.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, there has been introduced by the Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution regarding the consideration of a constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms. His amendment would take the position that it is the sense of the Senate that the Senate should pass prior to the end of the first session of the 104th Congress a constitutional amendment limiting the number of terms Members of Congress can serve. I would like to address that sense-of-the-Senate resolution for a moment. In the first place, I want to commend Senator Ashcroft once again. He is one of the leaders. We are original cosponsors of the constitutional amendment provision that came out of the Judiciary Committee with regard to term limits. So he and I have joined hands together, along with so many the others, especially some of the newer Members of Congress, to fight strongly for term limits. It has been very high on our agenda for some time. I must respectfully disagree with him on this matter of tactics. It seems to me that we would be better served if we would wait until we are positioned to have a better chance of winning. It is just that simple. Good friends and good colleagues, even agreeing on the same issue, can disagree on tactics, and we do that. I would like to explain for a moment my reasoning. I suppose we are making progress because for about 200 years, the Congress, the U.S. Senate, went without even getting a vote on term limits for a constitutional amendment. Now we are debating among ourselves as to when the best time for the vote is. So I really think that is progress. Ten of the freshmen Members of the U.S. Senate, so many others who have been here for a longer period of time, decided early on in this session that it was going to be a top priority for us. We came into the U.S. Congress with a little different view. We thought that service in the U.S. Congress should not necessarily be a career, but that it should be an interruption to a career. We thought it was good for people coming to Congress to have done other things, and that they would do some other things in their life later on. This was based on the proposition, not that newer faces were necessarily better than faces that had been around for a while, but that in the long run we would have a better chance of doing the things we are going to have to do in this Nation. Members would make the tough decisions, if we had more citizen legislators who came in being able to take risks, and not having their entire livelihood and their entire fate wrapped up in the next election. Career politicians, in my opinion, are somewhat averse to taking risks. In order to provide the leadership, this country is going to need to get us over the hurdles we are now facing. Goodness knows we are right in the middle of taking those hurdles right now. We are going to have to have people who are not dependent on the last public opinion poll, but who seriously have talked to the people. And, after having talked with the people who sent them up here, they will have to decide they are going to do some things in different ways and exercise some leadership. That is the thinking we have and are firmly committed to. So I introduced a bill in the Judiciary Committee for a constitutional amendment. Other people have introduced other bills. It is pretty clear now, after the Supreme Court decision, that term limits will have to be voted on as a constitutional amendment. That is a rather high hurdle, but we are committed to that. I believe we will ultimately succeed in that. Senator Ashcroft joined with me, and for the first time, really, I think in the history of the Senate we passed such a bill out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the floor of the Senate. So we feel pretty good about that. But right now, as I say, we are in the position of taking different views as to where we go from here. I would feel much more comfortable, frankly, to take the floor of the Senate to debate the policy, and I cannot wait until we get into a situation where we can spend a few days debating that policy. There may be a few people in the Chamber who disagree with my position on this as we consider it. But right now we are talking about tactics. We are in the middle right now, as everyone in this Nation who pays any attention at all knows, of some of the toughest budget negotiations probably in the history of this body. People are talking about train wrecks. People are asking, who is going to blink first? The Government is going to shut down; we are going to exceed the debt limitation. All kinds of terrible things are going to happen. And reporters are rushing from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other end to get briefings almost hourly as to what the positions are going to be and who is going to relent and who is going to be willing to compromise and all of that. This is important stuff because it is the very crux of the agenda of most of those of us who support term limits so [[Page S 15090]] avidly. Many of us who support term limits also came to town with the commitment to balance the budget for the first time in decades in this country, to keep from bankrupting the next generation which we are surely on the road to, committed to saving Medicare, committed to major reform in welfare, committed to tax cuts for the American people. Those are the things on which the last election was run. Those are the things I think the American people are for. Reasonable people can disagree with all or part of that agenda, but that is the agenda, that is what is before us now. So, finally, after winning these elections and coming to town and getting our feet under us and having the budget process work its will down to this point, we are in the middle of it. And it is a great day for the Senate because I think those of us who are for those measures will prevail. But, regardless, they are on the table, they are being debated for the first time in a long time, and they are important to the future of this country. We have been talking about reforming welfare for years and years. We have not done anything. Everybody is for a balanced budget. This is the first time in decades we really have a chance to make the first downpayment toward that end. These are important matters. My feeling is that in the midst of that, it would be better to wait until we have a better opportunity to focus on the issue of term limits. I think too often we get spread too thin on so many of these issues. Some might say we are doing it for these last few days, maybe the next few days, because we all know what the real battles are going to be about here in the next couple weeks and they have nothing to do with what is being debated here today. So the question becomes, would it be better to rush to a vote now in the midst of all this and take a few hours and have a vote on term limits? And those of us who are for term limits would get as much time as we could and come in and make an argument and have a quick vote and we would lose, and then we would go on about our business, which is the primary business of this country right now. Or whether it would be better to wait until the first of the year when we will have more time, we will be able to generate more attention and give these groups and these citizens out in this country who are so interested in this issue an opportunity to do their work and focus their attention on these congressional districts and these States that are vitally important. I think the answer is the latter. Reasonable people can disagree. Some people can say, well, we ought to make folks vote on it now; we know we are going to lose; make folks vote on it so we can go to their States later on and say they voted against it and put the pressure on them to change their votes. Others say let us wait because if a person is not likely for the issue, it might be better for the person to vote with us later on. Reasonable people can disagree. I think it is the latter. I do not mind fighting a good cause and going down in flames if that is the way it has to be. But I prefer to fight a good cause and win. And if we will not shoot ourselves in the foot, as so many of us who have been pushing so strongly the last few months have the tendency to do in both Houses of Congress, we can ultimately have a victory in this area. On October 3, I wrote a letter to the majority leader, Senator Dole, briefly outlining this position and my feeling that it would be better to put the vote off until we could focus on it because we would have a better chance of winning. I was not alone. There were 10 freshman Senators. We did not solicit the signatures of anyone except in the freshman class, and not all were present when we passed the letter, as a matter of fact, but 10 of us signed the letter to the majority leader for this purpose. We may be right; we may be wrong tactically, but those who share our opinion that it would be better to wait until the first of the year include Americans Back in Charge, which is an avid pro term limits organization and doing a lot of good work, the Christian Coalition, the American Conservative Union, the Seniors Coalition, the Council for Government Reform, and Citizens Against Government Waste. Now, all of those groups which constitute the term limits coalition share our view, or we, the 10 freshman Members, and I would daresay others who are pro term limits in this body, share their view that it would be better to wait, instead of rushing to judgment on this thing, until we have an opportunity to have a real battle, a real debate, and enough time to generate the support necessary to get the job done. Unfortunately, now the issue has gotten into Presidential politics. As the majority leader knows, I have endorsed someone else in the Presidential race, but I must say this. It is unfair and unfortunate that the majority leader is being attacked as in some way being weak on term limits or deciding unilaterally that he does not want to have a vote on it. The majority leader committed early on to having a vote on this matter, and we went to him and asked him, based on our understanding of what would be the best tactics and our understanding of what would be the best strategy, to wait until we had a chance to have a real shot at victory. And the majority leader acceded to that. And we appreciate that. I am not running for President. I am trying to get term limits passed. I do not have any dogs in that particular fight in that regard. I am interested in the best approach to pass term limits. This is what I think ultimately will be the best strategy to get term limits passed. They can fight about the rest of it among themselves. But I think we ought to be fair and make sure we are not leaving the wrong impression with regard to who is doing what and what the motivations are and accusing people of dragging their feet on term limits when just the contrary is true. Therefore I respectfully oppose the sense-of-the- Senate resolution. Thank you. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, Jason Reese is a remarkable young man who is attending the University of Tennessee as a national merit scholar. He was named last week as the Boys and Girls Clubs of America ``Youth of the Year.'' I join all my fellow Tennesseans in saluting Jason, and wishing him well as he enters college. I ask that an article that appeared in the October 2, 1995, edition of U.S. News & World Report be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From the U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 2, 1995] Bootstraps--Trying in Tennessee (By Dorian Friedman) As an introverted child from a troubled family, Jason Reese never imagined himself as a role model. So when a young neighbor saw him recently on TV and told him ``he wanted to grow up to be like me, it just about made me cry.'' Jason wasn't alone: There were more than a few teary-eyed admirers in a Capitol Hill audience last week when the Boys & Girls Clubs of America named the 18-year-old its National Youth of the Year. Abandoned by his father as an infant and shuttled between grandparents and a struggling single mother, Jason was raised in ``the projects'' of Morristown, Tenn, a neighborhood where drug dealing and gunfire were not uncommon. A haven where Jason found surrogate fathers and friends was the local Boys & Girls Club. There, he tutored the younger school kids, helped run park cleanups and food drives and pitched in at a nursing home. He also worked at a local auto-parts company, tended to his two little brothers so there mother could finish college and maintained nearly perfect grades in school. He graduated from Morristown High West this year as a National Merit scholar and drew a full scholarship to the University of Tennessee, where he will study biology and chemistry in hopes of becoming a doctor. As Youth of the Year, he voiced a message to other teenagers: ``Stay determined, pursue your dreams and never let anybody tell you that you can't get there.'' That approach was taken long ago by another Boys Club product-- originally from a place called Hope--who told Jason and the other finalists how proud he was of them in the Oval Office.