Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send another amendment to the desk.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator John Kerry be listed as a cosponsor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I now send an amendment to the desk. This amendment is to ensure that full funds are provided for the hiring of new police under the Community Oriented Policing Service (COPS) Program in fiscal year 1997. I see on the floor my colleague from Massachusetts, who has been a real leader on this issue. I can say, speaking just for the State of Minnesota, that police chiefs and sheriffs and the law enforcement community have done an extremely effective job in taking this program and dealing with issues of domestic violence. COPS has led to a lot of concentrated work with young people, a lot of concentrated work in neighborhoods that have high levels of violence. I cannot think of a more important program, and that is why this amendment makes certain that this budget resolution provides for COPS to be fully funded. I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, while I have the floor, in very short order, I want to also send a few other amendments to the desk. First of all, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the existing amendment for a moment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, what this amendment essentially says is that if there are to be any further tax cuts beyond tax credits for children and families, these cuts must take the form of a tax deduction of up to $10,000 per year for higher education tuition payments or student loan interest payments. The report of the Senate Budget Committee allows for additional tax cuts beyond tax credits for children and families. These additional tax cuts are bound to flow disproportionately to high-income wealthy people. I believe that we should, instead, focus our efforts where they ought to be--on tax relief to enable families to afford higher education. That is what this amendment that my colleagues and I are introducing on this side of the aisle would do. It is expected that this education tax cut would finance a $10,000-per-year tax deduction for higher education tuition and for student loan interest costs. Mr. President, on April 29, 1996, the front cover of Newsweek states in bold terms: $1,000 a Week--The Scary Cost of College This cover story addresses the fact that some colleges in this country cost their students $1,000 per week of school. That is what a family today in America is faced with. Mr. President, according to the College Board, tuition costs have gone up more than 40 percent since 1985. Expressed in constant 1994 dollars, in 1985, tuition at the average private college was $10,058. By 1994, it was $14,486--a 44-percent increase. The average public college tuition was $2,095 in 1985. By 1994, it was $2,948--a 41- percent increase. If you look at this next chart, what you can see is that over the years, since 1980, family income has risen only half as fast as skyrocketing medical costs; but even more than medical costs, what we see is a dramatic increase in private college tuition and public college tuition. There is an economic squeeze for working families in America. Affordable higher education is at the very top of the list of priorities for families in our country. The first thing we should do as public servants is respond to these families. Mr. President, as this next chart shows, in my State of Minnesota, from 1981 to 1992, the CPI has gone up 60 percent; the medical care subindex has gone up 133 percent; community college tuition has gone up 151 percent; the University of Minnesota tuition has gone up 153 percent; State university tuition has gone up 204 percent; and technical college tuition has gone up 316 percent. I spend a lot of time in schools in my State. I can tell you, Mr. President, it is not at all uncommon to meet students who are taking 6 or 7 years to graduate because they are working two and three minimum wage jobs to get through. It is not at all uncommon to meet many students who are in their thirties and forties, going back to school at community colleges, who are trying to get back on their own two feet and are having a very difficult time making ends meet. It is not uncommon to meet students who sell plasma at the beginning of the semester to buy textbooks. Mr. President, when we talk about higher education, we are talking about a major economic issue for families in Minnesota and all across the country. As we see in this next chart, if we look at the last 15 years, we see that median family income has gone up 5 percent. However, tuition at a public 4-year institution has gone up 98 percent, and tuition at a private 4-year institution has gone up 89 percent. If we want to respond to working families in our country, then we need to make sure that no additional tax cuts flow to wealthy or high-income people before we make higher education affordable for everyone. That is why this amendment says that it is the sense of the Senate that whatever is left over by way of tax cuts goes to education. Now I want to talk about student loans. Look at this chart. This is really rather amazing. What we see here is that, in the 1974-75 school year, grants made up 80 percent of an average student aid package. Twenty years later, in the 1994-5 school year, grants make up only 20 percent of student aid. In 1974-5, only 20 percent of a student's financial package was loans--and now loans are up to 80 percent. So tuition and costs have skyrocketed beyond the means of most families in Minnesota and in our country. And student aid has gone down in real terms, with loans replacing grants in greater proportion. In the meantime, real family income is not going up--in fact, many families over the last 20 years are just standing still, barely able to make ends meet. This is happening, even though we all know, and families know, that higher education is the most important factor in determining whether or not our sons and daughters and grandchildren will be able to make a good living in the future. It is not uncommon, I say to my colleagues, as someone who spent over 20 years in higher education, to find students graduating from school with debts ranging from $20,000-$30,000 to $60,000. This disproportionately affects those with lower and middle incomes. This next chart expresses what we mean when we talk about a ``declining standard of living'' for the bottom 60 percent of the population, or what we mean when we talk about the economic squeeze of the middle class, of working families in America. Here we see real family income from 1979 to 1993, looking at it by quintile: The top 20 percent of families saw their incomes go up 18 percent, the next 20 percent up 5 percent, the middle 20 percent down 3 percent, the next 20 percent down 7 percent, and the bottom 20 percent down 15 percent. This amendment is a reasonable proposition. I hope there are 100 votes for this amendment. This next chart is rather amazing, and gives you a sense of the prohibitive cost of higher education. If you were to send your son or daughter to a public college and you started saving 17 years in advance, you would have to put away $234 a month. $234 a month. If you planned 5 years in advance, it would be $765 a month. If you want to send your child to a private college, and you start saving 17 years in advance--and that is pretty good advance planning, starting at the time of birth of your son and daughter--you would have to put away $489 per month. If you waited until your child was in junior high, 5 years before starting college, which is still pretty impressive advanced planning, you would have to put away $1,599 per month to be able to afford private higher education. Almost $1,600. And this is after you pay your mortgage, after you buy your groceries, after you clothe your children, and after you save for your own retirement. I suggest to you, Mr. President, and I suggest to my colleagues, that the vast, vast, vast, vast--I said that four times--majority of families in our country, whether it be Minnesota or Wyoming or South Carolina, you name it, cannot afford to put this kind of money into savings, as much as all of us want our sons and daughters and grandchildren to do well. So, Mr. President, what this amendment says, in a nutshell, is that if we as Senators want to respond to the concerns of working families in our States, if we want to respond to the concern that parents have that their children be able to do well--and we know there is a huge gap between employment earnings of those who graduate from college versus those who are not able to do so--if we want to provide some relief to working families, to middle-income families, if we want to make sure that every woman and every man--some of them not so young, because we are talking about community colleges as well--has the opportunity for higher education, then what we have to make sure is that when we talk about tax cuts, anything beyond tax credits for children and families will go toward a $10,000 tax deduction that families can use to pay for tuition and to pay for the interest on their loans. This is what I would call an eminently reasonable amendment. I think, from the point of view of my State, from the point of view of the State of Massachusetts or Washington or other States represented here, there is probably no more important priority for families than to make sure that men and women, women and men, are able to afford higher education. I have spent a lot of time on campuses, and I can assure my colleagues--Democrats and Republicans alike--that this is a hugely important issue to the people we represent. I cannot think of an amendment I brought to the floor of the Senate that has more importance in terms of how it affects families all across our country, and I hope there will be very, very strong support for this amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, and Senator Biden of Delaware.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. About some of the work of the police chiefs and sheriffs in Minnesota and the men and women in law enforcement; very creative work to reduce violence in homes, very creative work with some of the kids, at risk kids, some of the kids that have the most trouble in schools, very creative work in some of the neighborhoods and some of the cities, but a program that has been extremely effective in metropolitan Minnesota and greater Minnesota. I think I may come out with an amendment that makes sure that we in fact have the funding this next year for that program and make a commitment over the 6-year period. Finally, Mr. President, let me just say that on the President's budget I do not find everything in there to be perfect. I think there is too much for the Pentagon. I think there is too much by way of tax cuts. If I had my way--but I could never get my colleagues to vote for this; in fact I could not get quite a few Democrats to vote for it; I hardly got any support among Republicans. I want one more time on the floor of the Senate, with 1 minute left, to shout it from the mountaintop. Why are you so anxious to cut educational opportunities for children, and job training, and not adequately fund community police, but you are more than willing to give away the wasteful subsidies to the pharmaceutical companies, to the oil companies, to the tobacco companies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Where is the Minnesota standard of fairness? What we have here, with the Republican proposal, is deficit reduction, a balanced budget, one more time, based on the path of least political resistance. You have your deepest cuts that affect those citizens who have the least amount of political clout. And when it comes to the big players, and the heavy hitters, and all the wasteful subsidies that go to so many of these large corporations, you hardly touch it. You hardly touch it. It is not credible. It is too extreme. And it should be defeated.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Nebraska. I want to respond to some of the comments of my colleagues on the other side, from Missouri and New Mexico, about the President's overall budget, what has been presented by my Republican colleagues. I will say that as I look at the Republican's plan, I really do not quite understand what I think is a real disconnect with the people we represent, because as I look at this plan over a 6-year period of time, I see the same too deep of reductions in both Medicare and medical assistance. Just to talk about this from a Minnesota perspective, I want to make it very clear that in my State, we are the skinny kids on the block. We have kept our costs down. We do not have the same fat in our system and, therefore, the effects of these cuts would, in fact, do harm to the quality of care for elderly people within our State. I am talking specifically about Medicare. Some of the changes that the Republicans have made in their plan now put even more of an emphasis on the reimbursement to the providers. But in greater Minnesota, Mr. President, as high as 60 percent of the patient payment mix for some of our rural hospitals is Medicare, already below the cost of delivering care. So I will say what I have said many times on the floor of the Senate in this debate, the numbers cannot drive the policy. The policy has to drive the numbers. This is a rush to recklessness. It will not work for Minnesota and, therefore, I hope that it will be rejected, and I know that people in Minnesota will reject it. Mr. President, on the medical assistance, I will just say, again, to my colleagues, you have chosen to target some of the citizens who are the most vulnerable in America. In the State of Minnesota, 60 percent of medical assistance, which is what we call it in Minnesota as opposed to Medicaid, goes to people in nursing homes. I ask my colleagues, why do we want to make cuts there? We have about 300,000 children in my State who receive medical assistance. It is the best safety net program in our State to make sure that children receive health care. Why do we want to cut there? Then, Mr. President, I see another disconnect. I say to my colleagues here--I see the Senator from California--it was not more than about 2 months ago I had an amendment on the floor. We received 84 votes for it where we restored the funding that had been cut in title I, school to work, safe and drug-free schools, Head Start, and all the rest. Now I see similar kinds of cuts in education and job training. The cuts proposed in the Republican budget are too extreme, they are too harsh, they are shortsighted, they go beyond the goodness of Minnesotans, they go beyond the goodness of America, and they should be rejected. Mr. President, then I look to the higher education. I am going to have an amendment out on the floor. It is an amendment Democrats are going to offer, and we will have a vote on it. I will say to my colleagues, once you go beyond the tax credits that go to children and families, anything else you have left over in your budget should go to tax deductions to pay for higher education. Mr. President, I do not see tax cuts that flow disproportionately to higher income people. I think we ought to reinvest it in education. If you want to talk about a middle-class issue, talk about making sure higher educational is affordable. Mr. President, I have said it before, at least in committee--I will say it on the floor of the Senate today--I do not think some of my colleagues with their proposed cuts, again, in higher education, understand the squeeze that students and their families feel. We have students in Minnesota that sell plasma at the beginning of the semester to buy textbooks. We have students in Minnesota working at two or three minimum-wage jobs--it would help if we raised the minimum wage--while going to school. Therefore, it takes them 6 years. We have students in Minnesota no longer 19 living in the dorms. They are older. They have families. They are trying to afford the education to get back on their feet, to be able to obtain decent employment. I am going to have an amendment out on the floor that will hold all of us accountable and see who is committed to making sure there is affordable higher education. Mr. President, I want to mention two other amendments that I am going to introduce, one of them which speaks to the question I raised for my colleague from Missouri, by the way, who I think is a great chair of the Small Business Committee. I think we are good friends. We do not always agree on issues. But I am going to have this time a recorded vote, because I had an amendment at the beginning of this Congress. I could see it coming, that it was the sense of the Senate that we would not take any action that would create more hunger or homelessness for children. And I lost. People voted against that amendment. The third time around it was voice voted for approval. I wish I had not done that because I think it was dropped in the conference committee, as I remember. As I look at some of these proposed reductions, I see the same kind of action taken. So this time I am going to have a recorded vote where we go on record that we will not pass any legislation that could create more hunger or homelessness among children; and if in fact the result of some of these cuts is to do just that, then the next year we will revisit the action that we have taken. It is important that the Senate go on record this time with a recorded vote. Finally, Mr. President, I want to say to my colleagues, we went through the battle on the COPS Program, community policing, and we made sure that it was not block granted. We made sure that there was a focus on community police. I could brag for the next 24 hours, and I only have probably 2 minutes--I ask unanimous consent that I have 2 more minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. That will be fine.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague. Mr. President, I actually came out to talk about the President's budget versus the Republican budget, but I will say to my colleague from Nebraska I will do that later on. I did want to, in responding to this amendment, just say to my colleague from Missouri, I have not really sorted out the whole amendment, but I did want him and my good friend from New Mexico to know that, as a matter of fact, the Office of Management and Budget came out with a report saying that that welfare reform bill that passed would, in fact, lead to more poverty among well over 1 million children. So, before we start talking about all these cuts, it would be helpful to know exactly where you intend to make the cuts and what impact it is going to have on the most vulnerable citizens in this country. It is true they do not have lobbyists outside. It is true they are not the heavy hitters. It is true that they are not the big players. But I think we ought to be careful. Again, I have to look at the specifics. But I never did hear a response to my question as to what impact this would have on what has been a major food and nutrition program. My second point is it is my understanding from talking to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Jesse Brown, that the agreement with the President on the outyears is that each year this will, in fact, be negotiated. The interesting thing is that many of us fought against the last Republican budget which did have the reductions which we thought violated a contract with veterans. As a matter of fact, the President held very strong on that issue. What I find interesting when I hear my colleague from Missouri talking about veterans is I know what I have been trying to push, which is what I hear from the veterans community, which is health care eligibility reform, which would make a huge difference. So I wonder why it is that all of a sudden we have this amendment out here on the floor when in fact it is not clear exactly who is going to be cut. I cannot get an answer to my question how it is going to affect children in this country. In addition, what has been left out, from what I heard from my colleague from Missouri, is the very clear understanding between the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who has been a huge advocate for veterans, and the President, is that of course there will always be negotiation when it comes to the out years because we all know that we take a look at this year by year with a very strong commitment to veterans. So I take rather serious exception as to whether or not the President has been hanging in there strong for the veterans community versus the Republican budgets that we have had before us. I say to my good friend from Nebraska, I will not take any more time now. Later on I hope I will have a chance to talk about this budget in overall terms, but I gather we do not have time on this amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. All the time that is left.

Mr. WELLSTONE. How much time is left?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Could I ask one more question?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, on the question, could I ask----

Mr. WELLSTONE. I did not ask about WIC.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President----

Mr. WELLSTONE. If the Senator will yield, the Senator is saying now in the Chamber--just a couple of other questions--that, in fact, there would not be cuts in the Supplemental Security Income and Food Stamp Programs? Because the Senate has gone on record in voting on the proposition I introduced that we would not take any action which would create more hunger among children. The Food Stamp Program is a major safety net program. Is the Senator prepared to say that we are not going to be taking any action by this offset that would create more hunger among children?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Is the Senator prepared to say that there would not be reductions in, for example, the food stamps or the Supplemental Security Income Program, or does the Senator believe there will be deductions in order to make the target?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Is this in food stamps?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I came over to speak on the budget, and I just came out on the floor, and I apologize to my colleague. But if I understand the context, could I ask the Senator, first of all, exactly what cuts are being made in the welfare area? Is this food stamps? Is this the Supplemental Security Income Program? Where exactly are you proposing to make these cuts?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I'm pleased and honored to announce my intention to introduce legislation in the coming days which I believe will demonstrate the cost effectiveness and feasibility of Medicare reimbursement to the Department of Veterans Affairs [VA] for treatment of some medicare-eligible veterans at VA health care facilities. There are two very important reasons I intend to introduce and press for passage of this legislation which I would like to briefly outline. First, reforming veterans' health care is one of my top priorities. I strongly believe that if we don't reform the archaic and arcane rules governing veterans access to VA medical care, it will be impossible for the VA to provide America's veterans with 21st Century health care. To accomplish this, the VA must be authorized to receive Medicare reimbursements for treatment of some Medicare-eligible veterans. Two different proposals prepared by major veterans service organizations (VSO's) provide that the VA be authorized to receive Medicare reimbursement for treating Medicare-eligible veterans. The GAO, however, has questioned both the feasibility and cost of providing Medicare reimbursement to the VA. While I lean toward the VSOs' view that Medicare reimbursement would be both feasible and cost-effective, the only way to prove this is by means of a demonstration project that will determine both the feasibility and cost effectiveness of Medicare subvention. That is precisely what my legislation will authorize. Second, I believe that because the VA is facing and will likely continue to face severe funding constraints that will reduce its capabilities to provide access to quality health care, the VA will be under strong pressures to deny health care to Medicare-eligible veterans who are not in the mandatory category for outpatient or inpatient treatment. For many years VA medical costs have lagged behind medical cost inflation and under the budget resolution adopted by Congress last year the VA medical care budget would be frozen for 7 years, lagging behind overall inflation and probably even further behind medical cost inflation. As a consequence, the VA may be compelled to ration care, with veterans 65 and over one of the groups likely to be affected. Even before the VA was faced with a flat health care budget, many of its facilities were compelled to resort to rationing. Despite the bold and imaginative efforts of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown and his Under Secretary for Health Ken Kizer to modernize, streamline and decentralize VA health care, a flat VA health care budget for 7 years can only lead to more extensive rationing of health care for veterans. This will further fray our solemn contract with the men and women who selflessly defended our country. Mr. President, the bill I am planning to introduce is intended to ensure that our aging veterans population is not denied access to VA health care at a time when they need it most. Improving and safeguarding health care for our country's veterans should be a priority issue for my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I hope all of my colleagues will carefully review my bill after it is introduced and will carefully consider supporting it.