Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Douglas Johnson and Mark Miller be given the privilege of the floor for the duration of this debate.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want to yield myself such time as I may consume but before doing so, I would like to defer for a moment to the Senator from Washington who I know has another engagement. The Senator wanted to speak, I think, in opposition to this amendment, but I would like to give him the opportunity to do so since he will not have any time later on. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading be dispensed.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Feingold, Senator Bradley and myself, I move to refer House Joint Resolution 1 to the Budget Committee with instructions to report back forthwith, House Joint Resolution 1 in status quo, and at the earliest date possible to issue a report. I send my motion to the desk.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my friend from Utah that I would assume that he and others might want to respond to our amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Madam President. First of all, let me thank the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Feingold], for his leadership on this issue. I think, Madam President, the thing that I appreciate the most about the Senator from Wisconsin is his insistence that we be very straightforward with people and that we treat the people that we represent with intelligence and that we lay out very honestly and truthfully what the options are. Now we can disagree in good faith about what those options are. And I understand that full well. But from my perspective, Madam President-- and I I really liken this, to use an old Jewish proverb, to trying to dance at two weddings at the same time. I just think you cannot talk about more deficit reduction and at the same time say you are going to have this broad-based tax cut--broad-based; we are not talking about one particular proposal, broad-based to the tune of $200 billion since we are talking about a balanced budget amendment between 1996 and 2002 and then another $500 billion between 1992 and 1997. That is $700 billion of tax cuts that is to be made that has to be made up somewhere even before we begin to then get back to deficit reduction. And so, Madam President, my concern about the direction of all this, as I have stated on the floor before, is that when I add up the baseline $1 trillion that we know we have to do by way of budget cuts to get to this balanced budget by 2002 and then the additional revenue that we lose by virtue of the tax cuts, which we have to make up, plus the increase in the military budget, we are talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.4 trillion. So, Madam President, it is interesting. My framework is not that deficit reduction is the only public policy goal. That is not what I believe. I have always believed there are two deficits. One of them is the budget deficit; the other is the investment deficit. I will have an amendment on the floor dealing with children and education, again, because I think we make a terrible mistake in the ways in which we have abandoned children and not invested in children in our country. So from the point of view of the Senator from Minnesota, who understands, on the one hand, there are certain decisive areas of life in our Nation where we need to make the investment and, on the other hand, understands that we have to continue on this path of deficit reduction, I do not see how in the world some of my colleagues can be talking about yet more tax cuts. This amendment, which asks the Budget Committee to look at this, which essentially challenges all of us to have, I think, some real intellectual rigor on this issue, is an extremely important contribution. Madam President, I have to say one other thing that actually the Senator from Wisconsin got me thinking about. The politics of this are nifty. It sort of reminds me of 1981 again, where basically what some of the leadership in the country said to the people and the Nation was, we are going to ask you Americans to make a huge sacrifice. And if you make that sacrifice, our country will be much better off--high levels of productivity, the deficit will go down, more jobs, all the rest. We ask you, will you let us cut your taxes? And people said, ``Great.'' Well, what happened? We cut taxes, dramatically increased the Pentagon budget and built up a huge deficit and a huge debt. We cannot repeat that mistake again. We have to get real with people. We have to make difficult choices. I have never been identified as a deficit hawk. I get criticized sometimes for not being hawkish enough on this issue, because I keep saying we have to invest in children, education, and we have to invest in health care as well. But I also understand that we cannot make these investments where we need to make the investments in our people and our communities and continue to reduce the deficit and eventually get to the point where we balance the budget--though I think 2002 is a political date--without getting real. And that is the importance of this amendment. I would think that this amendment would command broad-based support among all Senators who have said that they consider deficit reduction to be one of their top priorities. Broad-based tax cuts of this kind take us in precisely the opposite direction, and we know it. That is what the Senator from Wisconsin is trying to speak to. I yield the floor. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise to support the Reid amendment which would make crystal clear that if a constitutional amendment to balance the budget does pass the Senate--I know it is going to be a very, very close vote. So it is very difficult to tell whether that will happen--that there will be language that will ensure that be used for the purposes of deficit reduction as spelled out in the balanced budget amendment goal. Mr. President, let me make clear in the beginning that I believe the Social Security trust fund, as we look well into the next century and really not that far into the next century, just in terms of its own trend lines and making sure that it is self-supporting, that reforms will be necessary, that there are steps that we are going to have to take, and difficult decisions will have to be made. But, Mr. President, the reason I feel strongly about the Reid amendment is this is a separate trust fund, and indeed, as other Senators have said, if we are going to be talking about contracts, Social Security is a contract with many Americans. So, Mr. President, there is no question in my mind that this trust fund should be kept separate, that when we look at Social Security--and we do this as a Nation and we take steps that we need to take to make this trust fund work well into the next century--we should do so. But that money should be kept separate. That issue should be kept separate. That should not be part of the effort to balance the budget by the year 2002. I think the only way we live up to our commitment with older Americans and their children and their grandchildren is to make it crystal clear through this Reid amendment. The second point: There was a reason for passage of the Social Security bill in 1935. It used to be that in the United States of America, if you were to look to see where the vast majority of poor people lived and who they were, they were disproportionately the elderly. There is an obvious reason, which is after people became older and no longer were able to work, and employment earnings severely dropped and, therefore, many of our elderly citizens were destitute. The Social Security Program, because it is universal, because it is a sacred contract, has been, I think along with the GI bill of rights, one of our two or three most successful programs. And, as a matter of fact, poverty has dramatically declined among older Americans. It is no longer the case that we find the poverty disproportionate among the elderly within our country. The third point: I make the argument that it has been an extremely important program. As a matter of fact, Mr. President, this is truly a middle-class program. It is as if middle-class people and working families through their own sweat equity and their own work were able to in 1935 effect a huge accomplishment which changed our country forever, and for the better. That is Social Security. Mr. President, what I resent in some of the discussions about Social Security and Social Security recipients is this caricature that we have too many older Americans who are ``greedy geezers playing golf every day.'' That is simply not true. It is simply not true. Mr. President, as a matter of fact, there are many people--40 percent--for whom Social Security is really their sole source of retirement income. I will never forget in a cafe called Wimpy's Cafe in Faribault, MN, two elderly women, not that long ago, said to me: ``Senator, we receive, altogether, I do not know, like $440 a month. Do not cut our Social Security payment; it is what we depend on. Senator, we are terrified that is what you are going to do.'' My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we are not going to do that. If that is the case, then let us ensconce that as part of the constitutional amendment, make it a part of the constitutional amendment. That is what the Reid amendment says. Mr. President, the fourth point is that it bothers me no end that we continue to focus on--or at least some do--this kind of generational conflict. I have not been to one gathering of older Americans, of senior citizens in Minnesota, where people have not said to me that one of their top three issues are children, which in many cases are their grandchildren. It strikes me that this is a program that is sacred, this is a program that is a sacred trust, and this is a program that if we are going to make any changes, they ought to be made with the community and it ought to be made viewing Social Security as a separate trust fund and a separate program. We have to make sure that there is not a raid on the revenues of this program right now to be used for deficit reduction. Mr. President, let me make one or two final points. One has to do with what I said last week on the floor of the Senate. I just want to sound the alarm that each and every Senator, regardless of his or her party, is held accountable for the remarks we make on the floor of the Senate. I take any speech or remarks on the floor of the Senate very seriously, first of all, because of the honor of being here. Mr. President, when we look at this balanced budget amendment and we understand the projections on the amount of money that is to be saved by 2002, the amount of budget cuts that have to take place --and we are talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 trillion, and we are talking about cutting taxes. As I said the other day, there is an old Yiddish proverb that you cannot dance at two weddings at the same time. You cannot talk about cutting taxes and increasing the Pentagon's budget and paying interest on the debt and say Social Security is going to remain separate--what is left to cut? Medicare is much like Social Security. It is a sacred trust with the elderly in our country. Mr. President, in 1965, much like in 1935, our parents and our grandparents changed the United States of America for the better. And the Medicare program, imperfections and all, is a program that, for many elderly people, is the difference between being able to live the end of their lives with dignity as opposed to being destitute because of medical bills. Mr. President, we ought to be straightforward with people that there are going to be draconian cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Fifty percent of Medicaid goes for elderly and nursing home care. I can tell you that in my State of Minnesota, doctors, clinics, hospitals and the elderly are very worried; some of them are downright terrified. It is not because people are using scare tactics; they have reason to be scared because there will have to be, on present course if this balanced budget amendment is passed, deep cuts in those medical programs. Mr. President, if there are deep cuts--and there will be--then I wonder why, as I said last week, the very Senators who, when it came to health care reform last session and when we were talking about universal coverage, were yelling and screaming about rationing and lack of choice, now when we are about to pass a constitutional amendment-- maybe, maybe not--but we do not list where the cuts are going to take place, because we know we are going to have deep cuts in Medicare--and some want to cut Social Security, and we know they want deep cuts in Medicaid--the very Senators who know that and know this is going to lead to rationing among the elderly, the poor and the disabled, are silent. That is what I find to be so disingenuous about this amendment and the failure on our part, as Senators, to step up to the plate and be clear with people as to where we are going to make the cuts, as to what our priorities are, as to what kind of choices we are going to make. So I think the Reid amendment is an extremely important amendment. I think if Senators believe that the Social Security trust fund should be kept separate, then they should vote for the Reid amendment. It is simple. In a sense, it is sort of like not separating the votes you cast from the words you speak. And, by the way, I think it is not just Social Security. It is also the very question of Medicare. Finally, because I think this is what this debate is all about, it is interesting to me that now what I see happening in Minnesota is a lot of the education people, not just the teachers or college presidents, but, all of a sudden, students are saying, wait a minute, you say you are for the middle class, and our understanding is that there are going to have to be significant cuts in Pell grant and on campus need-based low interest loan programs? If you are for the middle class, Senators, then do not cut the very programs that enable our children to have a chance to be able to afford their education. Mr. President, I find it interesting that Senators do not want to vote to keep the Social Security trust fund willing to go on record saying we will do nothing that will create more hunger or homelessness among children. I lost twice on that amendment. They are silent as to all the rationing that is going to take place because of deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. They have not been forthright with the vast majority of Americans, who, all the time, wonder how they are going to be able to afford higher education for their children because we know we are going to be cutting some of those programs. But when it comes to subsidies for oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, all sorts of loopholes and deductions, adding up, I might add, to hundreds of billions of dollars, they are silent. I would think that would be part of the way in which we do deficit reduction. But none of us will know unless we are willing to lay out our budget plan before we vote for a balanced budget amendment. That is what is wrong about our approach. With those remarks, I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Pennsylvania be allowed to speak for several minutes--he has a plane to catch--after which I would go forward with my remarks.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me just associate myself with the very, very thoughtful and important remarks of the Senator from Pennsylvania. I thank my colleague for the timely and I think judicious and very important statement that he made on the floor. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Utah for his graciousness. I know he wanted to respond to some of the remarks of my colleague from West Virginia and the Senator from South Carolina. Mr. President, let me, first of all, present a little bit of context, which I think is important to this debate. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that to reach a balanced budget by 2002, subtracting interest that we would save from projected spending cuts, still we would have to cut a trillion dollars. The question is, where are we going to make the cuts? The question is, what kind of standard of fairness will be employed, and will this be some standard of fair sacrifice, shared sacrifice, if you will? I have a lot of passion about this issue because I think this is the central issue of this Congress in this decade. But I think objectivity serves my subjectivity. I believe I can marshal evidence that will support my point of view, evidence that I want the people in Minnesota, our State, and people around the country, to carefully consider. If you add to the equation the proposed $82 billion of defense increases over the next 5 years in the Contract With America, and in addition the $364 billion that would be required to pay for additional Republican tax cuts, Mr. President--by the way, tax cuts which I have not supported since I think it is difficult, to use the old Yiddish proverb, to dance at two weddings at the same time, and to be talking about deficit reduction while you are also in a bidding war to cut taxes yet further. I believe the Senator from South Carolina was trying to speak directly to that contradiction. Then we have $1.481 trillion of cuts before us. The question that the people in Minnesota and people around the country deserve an answer to is: Where are we going to be making the cuts? Who is going to be asked to sacrifice? Is it going to be by some standard of fairness? What is its impact going to be on people in Minnesota and around the Nation? So far, Mr. President--and I would say this to my colleague from Arkansas who has been really trying to push hard for defense and other cuts to be made according to some standard of fairness--so far, what the Senator from North Dakota has called the Republican credibility gap really sort of just stares you in the face, because all we have heard so far from Republican proposals is that there will be $277 billion of cuts. Not as in tax cuts, but budget cuts. So on the one hand we have $1.481 trillion of budget cuts that have to be made to have a balanced budget in the year 2002 and so far the only thing we have had listed is $277 billion. Mr. President, that is one huge credibility gap. That is $1.200 trillion to go. Mr. President, given this credibility gap, it is in this context and knowing that we would be involved in this historic debate that, from the very beginning of this 104th Congress, I have tried to push forward on the idea of accountability. Mr. President, what I worry about is simple. Given a bidding war to cut taxes, given a bidding war not to decrease the Pentagon's budget but to increase the budget, understanding full well that Social Security is not going to be a part of this plan and is taken off the table, understanding that interest that we have to pay on debts can't go unpaid, then it is crystal clear to me that there are only a relatively few other areas where cuts can take place. Mr. President, my concern is that the deficit reduction that will take place and the way in which we will meet a balanced budget deadline, if in fact we pass this balanced budget amendment, will be to make the cuts according to the path of least resistance; that is to say, ask some of the citizens in this country to tighten their belt who are least able to tighten their belt. Mr. President, I came to the floor early on in the session and I had an amendment on the unfunded mandates bill. It was a sense-of-the- Senate amendment that we in the U.S. Senate would go on record that we would not pass any legislation, make any cuts that would increase homelessness or hunger among children. I could not get a majority vote. It was defeated on essentially a party-line vote. I want people in the country to know that. I could not get a majority vote. Then I had another amendment that said if we are going to talk about accountability, we ought to have a child impact analysis. When we pass legislation out of committee, if there is a report that accompanies that legislation, there ought to be a child impact statement. Mr. President, I could not get a majority vote for that. Then I came to the floor several weeks ago and offered a motion very similar to the amendment that our leader, Senator Daschle, has presented, which is now before us. This amendment came straight from our State of Minnesota, where the Minnesota State Senate unanimously, and the House of Representatives, I think, three votes short of a unanimous vote, signed by the Governor January 20, sent a resolution here. I took the wording of that resolution and brought it to the floor of the Senate as an amendment which essentially said that if we pass a balanced budget amendment, before we send that amendment to the States, we should present to the States a detailed analysis of the impact of this amendment on our States. Where will the cuts take place? What is the budget over the next 7 years? How will it shape the lives of the people we represent? Will this become some shell game where a State like Minnesota sees cuts, and then is required to raise taxes to make up the difference? Under the balanced budget amendment, there will be cuts in higher education, in K-12 education, child nutrition programs, early childhood development programs, veterans programs, agriculture programs, health care programs, and others on which regular middle-class Minnesotans depend. No question about it. In fact, they would have to cut them 30 percent across the board to reach this target, given the parameters that have been set. By the way, Mr. President, nowhere in the Contract With America, and not once in the debate that has taken place in the Senate from those who have been pushing so far for a balanced budget amendment, have I heard any analysis of all of the benefits of the tax loopholes and deductions that go to large corporations and large financial institutions in America. We will cut child nutrition programs; school lunch and school breakfast; women, infants, and children's programs, but we will not cut subsidies for oil companies. Mr. President, this is the reason there is such resistance to this right-to-know amendment. I raise the question again on the floor of the Senate: What is it that we do not want the people in our States to know? Were the Minnesota Legislature, Democrats and Republicans alike, and the Governor correct in saying before they send the balanced budget amendment, please present an analysis of the cuts that will be ahead, and how it will affect our States so we know what we will have to pick up through an income tax or sales tax or property tax? And we are not willing to do that. That goes against the very essence of accountability. motion that I will make on the floor of the Senate at the appropriate time that would refer this House joint resolution to the Budget Committee with instructions to report it to the Senate with a report containing a detailed description of the 7-year budget plan. I say to my colleagues, here is the one irony to the debate. There are many ironies, but here is one central irony. If we believe, and many do, that State legislators and Governors ought to understand the impact of this balanced-budget amendment, if we agree that they have a right to know exactly what it is that they will be voting on for ratification, if we agree that decisionmakers ought to know what they are voting on, if we agree that the people back in our States ought to have an understanding of what exactly is going to happen, where will the cuts take place, and how will it affect them, then it seems to me that we as Senators ought to also know what the impact of this plan will be on the people we represent before we vote on it. That is why sometime during this very historic debate, I will move to refer this to committee so that the Budget Committee can present to Senators a detailed 7-year plan on how to get to balance by the year 2002, and then we will know what we are voting on. Mr. President, I am not in favor of constitutional amendment, for all the reasons that Senator Byrd and others have spelled out, I think in a more profound way than I can. But as far as deficit reduction and moving toward balancing the budget, of course we should do that. But how can anyone vote on it until we know what the choices are? If we were going to have cuts in the Pentagon budget, if we were going to look at tax expenditures, if we were going to look honestly at how we knew to raise revenue, or if we were going to do this by some standard of fairness, I might be all for it; that is to say, an effort to move toward balancing the budget. But there is no accountability here. Now, Mr. President, in the last part of my remarks today, I want to speak to one issue that I think tells the large story of what is going on. I also want to ask unanimous consent that the amendment that I will be filing today be printed in the Record. It would, at the appropriate place in section 1 of this balanced budget amendment, amend the section which reads ``total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for the fiscal year unless,'' to add ``unless a majority of the whole number of each House of Congress shall determine that compliance with this requirement would increase the number of hungry or homeless children.'' I believe we should all be held accountable on this issue. It seems to me a reasonable proposition that we do not want to do anything that would increase hunger or homelessness among America's children. Mr. President, I will file another amendment, and I am not sure I was clear in my unanimous consent. I would like to have both amendments printed in the Record.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will file another amendment that will say again, in the same place as the first, ``a balanced budget unless a majority of the whole number of each House of Congress shall determine that compliance with this requirement would not provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.'' Mr. President, that comes from the Preamble to the Constitution and from section 8. When we are talking about the general welfare, it strikes me that if it becomes clear that we are going to cut Medicare, cut Medicaid, slash and burn, make higher education not affordable for young people, cut into child nutrition programs for our children, we are moving away from investing in our people, in our communities. That has had a lot to do with the general welfare. Mr. President, there is one issue that I do not think has been discussed thoroughly on the floor that I want to talk about for a few moments, and then I want to yield because I know Senator Bumpers is anxious to speak. That issue is Medicare. Mr. President, let me be crystal clear with my colleagues: You cannot dance at two weddings at the same time. You cannot say you are for this balanced budget amendment but you are unwilling to lay out where you will make the cuts. But you already made it clear you want to increase the Pentagon budget, you already made it clear you want tax cuts, you already made it clear that Social Security is off the table, and then we look at the big expenditure items that are left, and Medicare is clearly one of them. Of course, Medicare will be cut deeply. Now, let me take Members back to last year's debate. We had some health care proposals, the single-payer plan being one of them, about which the Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office, depending on which estimate we want to look at, talked about projected savings of up to $100 billion a year. And Mr. President, we had other health care proposals--for example the President's plan--that talked about putting a limit on insurance company premiums. Some of us during that debate were talking about how we could contain costs. The single-payer plan contained health care system costs while also providing universal coverage with choice of doctor and a huge administrative savings. But, granted, the insurance companies would have to give something up. And that's why Mr. President, very early on in the health care debate, the whole issue of how we contain health care costs by putting some limit on insurance company premiums was taken off the table. Huge amounts of money were pouring into the Congress in the form of campaign contributions. We saw a huge amount of lobbying from powerful interests. No way were they going to see any of their profit hurt. So what happened was, the special interests made the argument that premium limits--the only way you can do cost containment--would lead to rationing. What they neglected to say was that rationing only happens when you limit spending on one population without limiting the spending on the whole system. Mr. President, I want to be clear on the floor of the Senate today that the very Senators who were most vociferous in their opposition to universal health care coverage--and we could not do universal coverage unless we could contain costs--the very Senators who blocked that legislation, the very Senators who yelled about rationing, right now when it comes to deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, which will lead to rationing among the elderly and the disabled and the poor, have nothing to say. Their silence is deafening. And Mr. President, here is why. Looking at some Treasury Department estimates, total Medicare cuts would total $404 billion between 1996 and 2002. Medicare cuts in 2002 alone would equal $106 billion. That translates into roughly $10,000 per senior citizen over a 7-year period. I hope that I was clear with these numbers. Let us not be fooling people in any State. I do not want to fool people in Minnesota. There are going to be deep cuts in Medicare. There have to be. There is no way you can get there any other way: $404 billion between 1996 and 2002; $106 billion in 2002. Now, there are a number of ways that you could make these cuts. And none of them makes any sense in a country where we are trying to improve coverage and contain total system costs. One of the ways you could do it would be to reduce provider payments. Most hospitals--and I know, Mr. President, that you know this, especially in rural Minnesota--are already reimbursed by Medicare at less than cost. Let me just say this as best I can. We should be trying to improve health care in this country, not ruin it. When you cut the Medicare reimbursement, either your hospitals close--especially your rural hospitals--or your providers have to make it up some way, and this leads to charge shifting. Those people who have private health insurance are charged more and then their premiums go up and then less people can afford it. That is where we are heading. Not only are we going to have this kind of vicious cost shifting, but in addition, those people who are going to be most severely hurt by these severe cuts in Medicare are going to be precisely the rural and public hospitals had the least care in this country and who have the most trouble accessing services. A few days ago, I met with John Stindt, the CEO of Swift County- Benson Hospital in Benson, MN. Swift County-Benson is a small rural hospital 30 miles from Willmar, MN. Seventy-five percent of Swift County's revenues come from Medicare and 11 percent from Medicaid. Last year they had a loss of $148,000 from operations. They have two family practice physicians and are desperately trying to hire more to handle their patient load. Mr. President, they do not have any room for any further cuts. Do not ask people who cannot tighten their belts to tighten their belts. Do not sacrifice the health care of citizens in this country who most need it. Cut the oil company subsidies, cut the insurance company subsidies, cut some of the large global corporation subsidies. I do not hear a word about cuts there. Deep cuts in Medicare, that is what is going to be. That is exactly the direction we are going in and that is why our colleagues do not want to spell out where they are going to make these cuts. Mr. President, I lived 20 years in Northfield, MN and I can just tell you that severe cuts in Medicare are going to have just a cruel impact on rural communities. Hospitals in communities like Rush City, Aitkin, Grand Marais, Comfrey, Karlstad, Virginia, and Bigfork are all struggling to make ends meet. Closing down local hospitals does not make a lot of sense, either from a health care or an economic development perspective. There was an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled ``When a Hospital Closes Its Doors.'' It talked about a hospital in Karlstad that closed last week because of financial difficulties--low Medicare reimbursements--and the inability to recruit doctors. It left a northwestern community in shock and limbo. Mr. President, in Minnesota, 10 percent of the population already lives 30 miles from their doctor. We are seeing an increased reliance on helicopters to move people from rural areas to our cities to get care. It is not cheaper to transport people by helicopter. And in Minnesota, helicopters cannot fly in the fog and in the snowstorms. We should be supporting community-based health care, not dismantling it. The reason that many of my colleagues do not want to vote for a right-to-know amendment and lay out where the cuts will take place and the impact these cuts will have on people that we represent is because they know we are going to have to make these cuts, they know it is wrong, they know what its impact will be and they are unwilling to step forward and be accountable. In Minnesota, there is a shortage of 300 physicians and 180 midlevel providers in the rural communities. Places like University of Minnesota Duluth do a phenomenal job of training and retaining family practitioners who practice in rural communities. But, they need more than a pat on their back and a cut in their training budget to continue this work. There are a number of other ways that these cuts will take place, but I just want to focus on one other. One option is to shift more of the cost back on the beneficiaries. Seniors already spend close to 25 percent of their household incomes on health costs, about $2,803 per person, and I am not including the health care costs of people that are in nursing homes. I have received more than 1,000 letters from elderly citizens in Minnesota who are concerned about Medicare costs. Let me just read a few of them. A couple from Detroit Lakes, MN, writes: Dear Senator Wellstone: My husband and I are concerned about Medicare cuts. When we reached 65, we were advised to sign up for Medicare, so we did, also taking out medigap insurance. We pay over $3,000 for medigap insurance plus the Medicare that is withheld from our Social Security. Medicare is a great help to decent taxpaying people. The GOP have a contract for the American people. We feel that Social Security and Medicare is also a contract with the American people. A woman from Coon Rapids writes: We paid into both Social Security and Medicare all the working years of our life. Reducing the deficit must be done in a fair and balanced way. They did not ask our wealthiest citizens and corporations to share the burden by giving up their tax loopholes. And she is absolutely right, absolutely right. Not one word, not one word in the Contract With America asking large corporations to share. And finally a woman from Watertown, MN: I am writing to you about the proposal to cut Social Security and Medicare. I hope you will say no to these unfair and irresponsible cuts. I am 86 years old. My husband and I worked hard all our lives. He died 8 years ago after being in a nursing home for 5 years. That took all of our savings. I receive $489 a month from Social Security and I think I have saved enough for my funeral. We never wanted to be a burden to our children or anyone else. I recently had to go on medical assistance. I have enjoyed good health, and I am a foster grandparent to a child center three mornings a week. We never missed voting and really worked hard for conservation and betterment of our country. I hope this has not inconvenienced your time. Perhaps you did not find time to read it, but I surely hope you will vote ``no'' on that proposal. Well, Mr. President, for me that letter pretty much says it all. And, of course, we hear discussions about also restructuring Medicare. I'm willing to hear some more details on this--none of which have been outlined for us--but it sounds to me like a poorly disguised way of forcing seniors into managed care and cutting their benefits. Managed care should be an option for seniors--not a mandate. I conclude this way with first, a policy discussion and second, a ringing denunciation and enunciation. Policy statement: We will have premium death spiral in health care if we go forward with this balanced budget amendment which will necessitate deep cuts in Medicare. What will happen is we will have to reduce the payments for our public programs--and many citizens are dependent on those programs--and providers will cost shift to those of us who have private insurance. The insurance premiums will go up, fewer people will be able to afford coverage and the base of payers becomes smaller and smaller. Then you get more cost shifting and premiums keep going up. Mr. President, last session we were talking about universal health care coverage. We were talking about decent health care for our citizens. And last session, when we tried to do that, my colleagues, too many of them, talked about rationing. They said cost containment would be rationing--a catastrophic end to quality health care. Now we really are about to ration because we are talking about cuts for only certain programs. Now we are about to ration care for the elderly, ration care for the poor, and ration care for the disabled. But do you hear any of those same voices yelling now? No. As I said before, their silence is deafening. I come from a State that had probably one of the greatest Senators ever to serve in the Senate, Hubert Humphrey. Hubert Humphrey said the test of a government and the test of a society is how we treat people in the dawn of their life, our children; in the twilight of their life, the elderly; and in the shadow of their life, people who are struggling with an illness or struggling with a disability or those who are needy and those who are poor. I did not come to the Senate to vote for a balanced budget amendment--which is essentially a pig in the poke--when I do not even know what it means, and when I have no idea as a decisionmaker where the cuts are going to take place. I know full well, given the parameters of what has been laid out, that some of the deepest cuts and some of the cruelest cuts will have to affect the very people that Senator Humphrey talked about. I am not going to be a Senator who is going to vote for cuts directly or indirectly in nutrition programs for children, and I am not going to be a Senator who is going to vote for cuts in a way that takes one of the most successful parts of health care in this country and begins to dismantle it. I am talking about Medicare. My mother and father both had Parkinson's disease, and every time I hear people criticize Medicare, I remember that for them Medicare was the difference between being able to make it and utter financial chaos and disaster. So, Mr. President, I just want to remind my colleagues that this amendment in the Chamber right now, the minority leader's amendment, which has been superseded by the majority It is irresponsible, it is not being accountable, it is not being straightforward to vote for a balanced budget amendment unless we have the courage to lay out specifically where those cuts are going to take place, what kinds of choices we are going to make, and how it affects the people we represent. For my own part, I think people have made a big mistake. I think this 2002 date makes very little sense, given the parameters that have been spelled out. For myself, we need to have deficit reduction, and we need to invest in our people. That is the challenge for us, and we should do it. But we ought to be straightforward and lay out for the people in this country what that means to them. That I think is the only responsible approach to take, and as a Senator from Minnesota that is the position I take in this debate. I yield the floor. Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Utah may want to speak.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I want to make it clear that I know everything the Senator says he says in good faith, and he is always rigorous in his analysis. When I hear the Senator talk about how there are all sorts of overly centralized programs and bureaucratized programs and there are cuts we can make, I say to the Senator: Fine, the only thing that I am going to do in this motion is to say to the Budget Committee, before we vote, let us be clear about where we are going to make the cuts. I do not necessarily disagree with what the Senator is saying. I have to see the numbers. But let us lay them out. If the Senator and other members of the Budget Committee can tell me how we get from $277 billion to over $1 trillion in cuts and where they are going to be, that is what we should do. want to make this point, and I am glad the Senator recognizes there may be some merit to this point. We, in the interest of controlling everybody--we liberals back here in Washington--and that is what you have to call us--we have built such a bureaucracy that we are robbing everybody, and very little of that money actually gets to the people that my friend is worried about. And I too worry about those less fortunate than most. I am the author of the child care bill, along with Senator Dodd. He and I were there at the last minute of that particular Congress making sure it went through. Nobody in America was more concerned about child care than I was, and I am a conservative. So I take second seat to no one on this problem. It is not an unknown fact that I was the person who helped to save the Job Corps Program, which is the only program for unemployed youth in our society. It is expensive. It costs over $20,000 per youth per year. On the other hand, if we just write them off, they are going to cost us better than a million dollars a person by the time they die. We will all have to pay for that. I can name a number of other programs I have helped to save and have passed here that are very important. I have just as much feeling about the poor and the sick and the needy and our senior citizens as any Senator in this body, including the Senator from Minnesota. But I know that this bureaucracy back here, that this liberal Federal Government which employs an awful lot of people here in Washington at pretty high rates of pay compared to the average citizen's salary, is eating us alive before the moneys get to those who really need it. And when the moneys finally get there, they are minuscule compared to what we taxpayers have paid. I hear the distinguished Senator talking about how we have to cut the military so that children can eat. No, we have to cut the bureaucracy so both the military can be strong and children can eat. And we will never do it without a balanced budget amendment. We get credit for these programs. We get a lot more credit for spending than we do for standing on the floor and conserving. Having said that, I have been very intrigued by colleagues on the other side, almost none of whom is for the balanced budget amendment. Why? Because they like to spend. They do not want any hampering restrictions on their ability to do good. And I am not questioning their sincerity, but I do question whether they are doing good all the time, laundering the moneys to an all voracious eating Federal bureaucracy. I would rather send those moneys to the States, where the States, who understand local problems, will do a far more efficient job than the Federal Government. Our Governors are begging us to send block grants for welfare to them. They do a better job. They will make it more efficient. They will get more help to people and in the end people will be better off. When Reagan became President, I became chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee. That committee overviews between 2,000 and 3,000 Federal programs. President Reagan came to me and said, ``Orrin, you have six of the seven block grants in your committee.'' Now, it was an interesting thing, because I had a heck of a time getting any block grants passed. It was still a pretty liberal Congress, even though the Republicans had taken over control of the Senate. But the House was still controlled by Democrats. I was having a rough time. One day President Reagan called me and said, ``Orrin, what is the matter with you up there? Why can't you do what I have asked you to do?'' And I have to say that I was not quite as respectful to the President as I should have been--and I have always been. I said, ``Wait a minute, Mr. President.'' I said, ``Have you looked at the makeup of our committee?'' There were seven total liberals on the Democrat side and two liberals on the Republican side. The committee was 9 to 7 in favor of what Senator Kennedy wanted. I said, ``How do I put through block grants with that kind of a lineup?'' I will be honest with you. We did. We fought for them and we were able to get some of them through. Some of them were pure block grants and they work magnificently. Some of them were hybrids. They were partly block grants and partly categorical programs. And some were called block grants but were not. I give a lot of credit to Senator Kennedy for working with me to do some of the things that we did. And they worked. In fact, one of the leading liberals in the Congress came to me--in fact, I would say one of the three or four leading liberals in the Congress--came to me and said, ``Now, don't ever quote me by name''--and I am not--``but those block grants work.'' They work. And the reason they work is because we do not go through this voracious grab by Federal bureaucracy for everything. When I see the little bit of money that gets back to the poor from the programs advocated by those who share the viewpoint of my friend from Minnesota, who has been making these wonderful arguments about how deeply he feels about the poor--nobody feels more deeply about them than I do--when I see the little amount of money that gets back to them once it is laundered through the Federal bureaucracy, where we see all these sociologists, all these Ph.D.'s, and all these people who are paid pretty high wages as they manipulate, manage, fuss, and bother, and work on programs and come up with new ideas every time you turn around, when I see how little money gets to those people, I just shudder. This balanced budget amendment will make the Federal Government more efficient. It help us help the poor more. It will make every dollar count. And I do not care how liberal you are; I do not care how conservative you are. You are going to have to work within a structure that requires us to live within our means, or at least go in that direction. This amendment does not always necessarily require a balanced budget. It just puts on a fiscal mechanism which forces us to at least move in that direction. Because if you want to increase the deficit, you are going to have to have a three-fifths vote to do it. That means 60 Senators in the Senate would have to vote for any increase in spending. If you want to increase taxes, you are going to have to have a constitutional majority, which means you cannot do that with less than 51 actual votes in the Senate and 218 actual votes in the House. Most importantly, you are going to have to vote, where now we just hide it by voice votes. We just go along with business as usual. We do not worry about these things. The fact is this amendment would make us worry about these things. It would make us a little more concerned about where all the moneys go. If there is waste in the military, and we all know there has been--I do not think there are any more $600 toilet seats and $500 hammers or screwdrivers--but the fact of the matter is, if there is waste, we as Members of Congress can no longer blithely ignore that. We are going to have to look for it and we are going to have to get rid of it, because we are going to have to live within certain economic constraints, which is where we ought to be and what we ought to do. (Mr. KYL assumed the chair.)

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a minute?

Mr. WELLSTONE. His piece begins with an interesting quote: We propose * * * to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives. That is why in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda * * *. This is a direct quote from the House Republicans' Contract With America. And the following comes from House Majority Leader Dick Armey, on Meet the Press: The fact of the matter is that once Members of Congress know exactly, chapter and verse, the pain that the Government must live with in order to get a balanced budget, their knees will buckle. Mr. President, yesterday, in Minnesota, I called on the legislative leadership in our State to put together a task force to assess the impact of a balanced budget amendment on the State of Minnesota. I did this, Mr. President--and this has been met with a positive response by legislative leadership--because last week I came to the floor with an amendment based upon a resolution from my State of Minnesota. This resolution was passed unanimously by the State Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, almost unanimously by the House of Representatives, and signed by our Republican Governor, Governor Carlson, on January 20. What this resolution said was, ``when''--I changed my amendment to ``if''--the constitutional amendment passes the Congress, Congress should send to the States, send to Minnesota, an analysis of the impact of this balanced budget amendment on State and local government and on the people in our State. That amendment was defeated by essentially a party-line vote. I think I received 45 votes for that amendment. Talk about the right-to-know: my amendment simply said that if we pass a balanced budget amendment, before we send the amendment to the States we should provide an analysis of its impact on the people of the different States. I think every single one of my Republican colleagues voted against it. Talk about the importance of being straightforward, stepping up to the plate, being direct with the people we represent. Talk about the importance of the right to know--people should have the right to know what the impact of this balanced budget amendment will be on their lives before we pass it. Talk about the sort of crazy proposition that before you buy a used car you shouldn't lift up the hood and look at the engine. I was really dismayed that this amendment was defeated. What I am now saying is very consistent with, I think, responsible public policy. My fundamental disagreement with some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that I think we owe it to people in this country to lay out a detailed 7-year plan as to where we are going to make these cuts before we pass this. I think the reason my colleagues do not want to do this is because they do not want to lay out their plans. Let me give some context, which I think really gets to the heart of this. Using conservative estimates, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the interest savings that would come from the cuts--let us factor that in, let us be fair--even taking that into account we are talking about a little over $1 trillion worth of cuts between now and 2002. To get to a balanced budget --$1 trillion worth of cuts. Where are we going to make the cuts? On the next graph, Mr. President, is illustrated some real numbers. People in the country have a right to know where we are heading. By the way, I think the analysis I am about to make is in many ways irrefutable, just in terms of the basic commitments that some of my colleagues have already made. If you add the defense increases, and you also add tax cuts--I think the defense increase was, roughly speaking, $80 billion over 5 years and I think the tax cut was, roughly speaking, $360 billion over 5 years--now we are not talking about $1 trillion, we are talking about $1.481 trillion. Now we are no longer talking about $1 trillion, we are talking about $1.481 trillion that we are going to have to cut between now and 2002. That is why I am going to move at the appropriate time that we refer this resolution to the Budget Committee with instructions to the Budget Committee that it bring to the Senate a report that contains a detailed description of a 7-year budget plan as to how we are going to cut $1.481 trillion. Do we not at least owe that to people in the country? Is that not called truth in budgeting? Is that not called being straightforward? Is that not called stepping up to the plate and being clear and being honest about what we intend to do? Mr. President, $1 trillion says CBO, and in addition we have a bidding war to raise military expenditures, and in addition we have a bidding war for more tax cuts. Now we are talking about $1.481 trillion. Let me turn to the next graph. Here is what I believe my colleague, Senator Conrad from North Dakota called--and I say this to you always in good grace, ``the Republican credibility gap.'' So far the spending cuts we have heard detailed in the Republican Contract is about $275 billion. We have seen specifics of $277 billion of budget cuts. Mr. President, $1,481 billion is what we have to cut to get to this balanced budget by 2002. So far my Republican colleagues have laid out budget cuts totaling $277 billion. There is a long ways from $277 billion here to $1,481 billion. That is truly the Republican credibility gap. And that is why at the appropriate time I will move to refer this resolution to the Budget Committee with instructions to the Budget Committee that it lay out a detailed plan as to exactly where we are going to make these cuts. We are not going to do well with people in this country once they realize we are quite unwilling to specify where we are going to make the cuts. People are going to begin to see this as a shell game, shifting burdens to the States, to personal income, property, and sales taxes of the states. When I was back in Minnesota yesterday I said one of the reasons why it was so important to have some truth in budgeting--so important that people have a right to know where we are heading--is because of the likely impact on my State. report yesterday, and I have some preliminary figures from that report. By 2002, in that 1 year alone where will we in Minnesota be? We will have $143 million less in Federal education. Where will we be: $1 billion, in 1 year, less in Medicaid; about $3 billion of cuts over the next 7 years. This is another part of what I consider to be, really, a shell game. The cuts accelerate. They are less over the first 2 years and then they get deeper and deeper. When I say in the State of Minnesota we could very well be faced with $1 billion of cuts in Medicaid in 1 year alone, I want my colleagues to understand that half of Medicaid expenditures go to older people for nursing home expenditures. These are our parents and our grandparents. I think the figures on Medicare go even higher. What do these figures mean? The Children's Defense Fund estimates that such cuts in 2002 would result in almost 30,000 Minnesota babies, preschoolers, and pregnant women losing WIC nutrition supplements; over 351,000 children losing food stamps; over 154,000 children losing free or subsidized lunches; over 2,004 blind or disabled Minnesota children losing SSI; and over 24,000 children losing access to remedial education. I have heard my colleagues talk about our children and our grandchildren and the debt. I have voted for deficit reduction. I have voted for several years in a row for the deepest cuts we have seen in deficit reduction in decades and I will continue to do so. But for many children, the future is now. We keep talking about our children and the future, and I bring an amendment to the floor of the Senate 2 weeks ago asking the U.S. Senate to go on record saying that nothing we shall do by way of spending cuts or legislation will increase the number of homeless or hungry children in America and I cannot get a majority vote for that. Let me repeat that. My colleagues talk about our children and our grandchildren. Maybe our children and our grandchildren are doing well now. We have fairly high salaries, and do well economically. But a lot of our children and grandchildren are not doing well now. For them the future is now. And I came to the floor 2 weeks ago with a reasonable sense-of-the-Senate amendment that we would go on record saying we are not going to do anything that would increase hunger or homelessness among children in America. Mr. President, did you see the report today that one out of every four children in the United States of America are poor? One out of every four children under the age of 6. What about those children now? I could not get my colleagues to vote for that amendment. I think I understand why. Let me go back to the chart on the credibility gap for a moment, if I could. Let me tell you why, Mr. President, the two amendments I have introduced in the last 2 weeks have failed with every single Republican voting against it. The first amendment, we will not do anything that will increase homelessness or hunger among children. The second amendment said we will at least provide States with financial analysis of the impact of the balanced budget on them before we send it to them for ratification. Why were those amendments voted down? What is it that my colleagues do not want people in Minnesota or Tennessee or Utah or anywhere else in the United States to know about the implications of this balanced budget amendment? It is the credibility gap. These are the parameters. We are talking about, roughly speaking, $1.481 trillion worth of cuts, and so far my colleagues have specified $277 billion. That is a big credibility gap. And after you raise the Pentagon budget, and after you do more by way of tax cuts--and then we are saying that we are not going to be cutting Social Security; there seems to be strong agreement on that--in addition you pay interest on the debt. Do we think people do not see through this charade? It is clear where we are going to be making the cuts. Mr. President, I do not know about other States, but I will tell you one thing. When we cut the WIC Program, the Food Stamp Program, subsidized lunches, remedial education, law enforcement, environmental protection, higher education, and any number of other key areas, either our States will walk away from the people or our States will end up having to assume the costs. These burdens are going to go back to the States. And I can predict what is going to happen. Just as we now, unfortunately, have moved to several tiers--people on the top and many people on the bottom--either we are going to have States that are going to pick up the costs--I can tell you, I will speak for Minnesotans. We are not going to let children go hungry. We are going to make sure that our young people can afford higher education. We are not going to break our contract with veterans. If there are going to be deep cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, we are going to make sure that people continue to have health care when they need it. So we are going to end up having to pay for it. That is the shell game to this. That is why my colleagues are unwilling to specify what we are going to do. My colleagues are unwilling to step forward and say what we are going to do. Mr. President, for myself I have never signed on to the notion of a balanced budget in the year 2002 because I think it is so political-- and because it would depend on the economic circumstances at the time. For example, we wouldn't want to do huge spending cuts if we were in a recession. Of course, we have to continue with deficit reduction. Of course, we have to balance the budget. But the question is, What gets taken off the table and what gets put on the table? I have not heard a word so far about cuts in the military budget. Mr. President, Senator Bumpers, Senator Bradley and I and several other Senators 2 or 3 weeks ago had a press conference looking at a lot of analysis that has been done on defense needs and potential defense and other related cuts. We essentially made the argument that here are some military expenditures that are just simply not necessary when we have to make these difficult choices, and we had cuts totaling $33 billion over the next 5 years; $114 million from 1996 to 2010. There are a lot of different programs listed. I will not itemize them today. I will later on in the debate. Some of these are worthy programs. For example, let me say the space station has many exciting possibilities. But I would far prefer to feed children on Earth in the United States of America than to send a station into space. We have to start making these difficult choices. But I do not hear people talking about any of these big military contractors having to sacrifice. Oh, no. Oh, no. It is the children, a quarter of whom are poor, who do not have lobbyists, who do not have political power. So what we are going to do--which is why we are unwilling to specify the cuts beforehand--is we are going to make cuts based upon the path of least political power. It is interesting. Again, I borrow from the fine work of Senator Bumpers. When I hear my colleagues say we have to raise the Pentagon budget. But we will cut the School Lunch Program, we are going to do it. The arithmetic is compelling. We are not coming anywhere close to telling people how we are going to cut $1.4 trillion. We know where we are going to cut. That is why we are unwilling to be clear about it. That is why we are unwilling to specify before we pass the balanced budget amendment. I have not heard any discussion about cutting military contracts. Just a couple of interesting figures on this chart. If we take the U.S. defense budget and you add NATO and other allies, altogether we are spending about $530 billion. Russia, China, and all the rest of our potential adversaries combined, total potential adversaries combined, only spent $121 billion. The United States alone has a larger defense budget--$280 billion--than all of our potential adversaries combined, which is $121 billion. Yet some are talking about raising the Pentagon budget. We are talking about a little more to cut taxes for people, and then we say we are going to have deficit reduction through a balanced budget amendment, but we are unwilling to specify where we are going to make the cuts. We are unwilling to tell people in Minnesota, Tennessee, and Utah, all across the country where they are going to be at 2002 and what they are going to be faced with. There are, of course, other choices to be made. I will be on the floor later on it does strike me as odd and politically troubling, if you look at the Republican contract, if you look at the Contract With America, there is no mention of anything that asks large corporations, or large financial institutions, or any other wealthy interests, to sacrifice at all. They say we are going to cut nutrition programs for children. There is no question about that. We are going to cut child care. We are going to cut higher education. We are going to cut Medicaid. We are going to cut Medicare--deep, deep cuts that will accelerate as we approach the year 2002. We will likely not do much the first year, before the elections. It is all carefully designed. It has to happen. The arithmetic is clear. But we are not going to touch oil company subsidies at all. We are not going to go after bloated military contracts. We are not going to deal with some of the other loopholes and deductions that a variety of different large, powerful financial institutions are able to take. We are not asking them to sacrifice at all. That is the reason, Mr. President, we do not want people to know where we are going to make the cuts. We are likely going to go forward and pass a balanced budget amendment without even being willing to be straightforward and clear with the citizens we represent as to what this means for their lives, as to what kinds of cuts we are going to make, in what kinds of programs and how it is going to affect them and their children. That is why I intend, at an appropriate time, to move to refer this resolution to the Budget Committee with instructions to report it to the Senate accompanied by a report from the Budget Committee containing a detailed description of a 7-year budget plan that would achieve a balanced budget by the year 2002. Should we not be honest with people and straightforward with people? Why do we not do that? The answer is, we do not want to tell people where we are going to make these cuts. We want to pass perhaps the most important piece of legislation that has been passed in decades, with far-reaching consequences for the people we represent, for the lives of people we represent, and we do not want to, before we pass the balanced budget amendment, lay out the plan as to where we are going to make the spending cuts and other policy changes required, and how they are going to affect our States and counties and our cities, how they are going to affect the people we represent. Mr. President, it is interesting, I want to make this clear that this is not just an urban issue. I was this past weekend in Jackson County in southern Minnesota meeting with corn and soybean growers. I say to my colleague from Utah that I will bet you the vast majority of the people there are for a balanced budget amendment; I think that is true. But what they are worried about is that they want to know where the cuts are going to take place. When we hear that subsidies are going to be eliminated, we are all for it if we know where they are and if you give us a fair price in the marketplace. For those of you who know this language--and if you come from Minnesota, you certainly do--they are talking about the loan rate and Commodity Credit Corporation. Give us a fair price, that is all we ask for. Then they say: We have not heard people talk about the fair price and about cutting back on the conservation program, not giving us a fair price. If you do that, you are taking a good percentage of farm income of people who are barely hanging on. Mr. President, under a balanced budget amendment there are going to be deep cuts and a lot of people are going to be hurt. My colleagues say, well, we have to do all this, it is in the national interest. It is in the national interest to continue to reduce the deficit. It is in the national interest to move toward a balanced budget. It is in the national interest to do it by the same standard that every single family in this country lives by when they balance their budget, which is a standard of fairness, not just targeting those with the least amount of political clout, or going after health care and education, or children and leaving all sorts of other subsidies untouched. That is the way we should do it. But, Mr. President, we are not going to do it that way. Let me be crystal clear. We are not going to do it that way. Instead, we are going to make deep cuts, we are likely going to pass a balanced budget amendment, and ultimately we may not, because I think the longer this debate goes on and the more people pay attention to this debate, they are going to say wait a minute. Back to the chart on the credibility gap one more time. They are going to say, wait a minute, Senators, we heard there was going to be a trillion dollars in spending cuts, and then we hear that there are those saying they want to increase the Pentagon budget by $80 billion over 5 years; then we hear everybody is in this bidding war to cut more taxes which means less revenue, which has to be offset somewhere. Now we hear that the estimate, conservatively speaking, is $1.481 trillion. So far, proponents of the amendment have only specified $277 billion worth of cuts they are willing to make. We would like to know, Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, where are you going to make the cuts? How is it going to affect us? Is it going to be according to some standard of fairness? Are we going to have to pick it up at the State level? Is it going to be the property tax or sales tax that now we are going to get hit with? Well, people have every right to ask those questions. In fact, there is overwhelming support in the United States of America for the right- to-know proposition: Recent polls show over 85 percent in favor. Last week, I came to the floor with an amendment that I thought would pass. It was so reasonable. It said if we pass a balanced budget amendment, let us send it to the States with a detailed analysis of how this will affect Minnesota or Tennessee, and the people who live in our States. It was voted down, essentially a straight party vote. Mr. President, over the weekend, I have been thinking long and hard about this. I have decided, before we get too far into this debate, I should come to the floor before we get too far into the amendments and move to refer this resolution to the Budget Committee, with instructions for the Budget Committee to come back with a report that contains a detailed description of the 7-year budget plan. That is reasonable. It is consistent with being accountable. It is consistent with being straightforward with people and with the people of the United States of America knowing exactly what we are going to do. I think that is exactly what people believe in strongly. So I have filed this motion, and a little later on I will go forward with this motion. I thank my colleague from Utah. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will in the course of my remarks respond to some of what my colleague from Utah had to say, but first, so that my other colleagues in the Senate are aware of what I intend to do on the floor of the Senate at the right time, let me summarize this motion. I intend at some time to move to refer this resolution, House Joint Resolution 1, to the Budget Committee with instructions to report it back to the Senate, accompanied by a report containing a detailed description of a 7-year budget plan that would achieve a balanced budget by the year 2002. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a piece by Al Hunt in the Wall Street Journal of Thursday, January 12, be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a motion printed in the Record which I intend to make at some time while House Joint Resolution 1 is pending.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my good friend and colleague from Utah for his graciousness, Mr. President. And he is, agree or disagree, a good friend. It feels good for me to say that. Motion Intended to be Submitted

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Domenici, to introduce legislation on an issue that I feel so strongly about--equitable health care coverage for mental illnesses. Let me say first that it has been a real honor to work with Senator Domenici as cochair of the Senate Working Group on Mental Health and I look forward to building on the tremendous progress we made last year. For far too long, mental health and substance abuse have been put in parentheses. We didn't want to talk about it and we didn't want to take it seriously. The stigma of mental illness and substance abuse has kept many in need from seeking help, and has prevented policymakers from providing it. While we failed to enact comprehensive health care reform during the last Congress, we did make great strides in terms of increasing awareness and understanding of the importance of parity, flexibility, and a full range of comprehensive mental health benefits. As cochair of the Senate Working Group on Mental Health I am proud of the work we did last year. But we must act this year on the issues that we were so successful at bringing to the forefront of the debate and at reaching bipartisan agreement on. We have a tremendous body of new evidence proving that without a doubt mental health and substance abuse disorders are diagnosable and treatable in a cost-effective manner. In fact, we can now show that within a very short period of time it costs less to treat these disorders directly and appropriately than not to treat them at all. We can say this is true based on studies of every sector of our population: Insured and employed, uninsured and unemployed, people who now use the private system and those who now use the public system. Mental illness and substance abuse have touched many of our families and friends. And for this reason and many others this is not a partisan issue. Americans do not see a distinction between mental and physical illnesses, and they do not want them treated differently. I am proud to cosponsor this legislation, which would make it the policy of the Federal Government to provide coverage for the treatment of severe mental illnesses that is commensurate with that provided for other major physical illnesses in any form of health care reform that is enacted by Congress and the President. And, most of all, I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Domenici to end discrimination against this very vulnerable population and their families. After all, it's only old data and old ideas that keep us from covering mental health and substance abuse the same way we cover any other real illness, whether acute or chronic.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, often called the motor-voter bill, was one of the most important pieces of bipartisan legislation approved by the 103d Congress. Recently, several Senators have suggested they intend to try to delay final implementation of motor-voter, or to repeal it outright. Today a hearing was to be held on these issues in the Rules Committee. That hearing has now been postponed indefinitely, I hope as an indication of waning enthusiasm for this proposal. We must resist any efforts to weaken or to delay final implementation of this landmark measure, which is providing access for so many Americans to one of their most fundamental rights: the right to vote. Most States have moved forward quickly, responsibly, and effectively to implement the motor-voter bill at very low cost, with only a few States resisting. States which have recently implemented the motor- voter provisions have seen tremendous increases in the number of people registering to vote. For example, since the first of the year Florida has been averaging over 3,000 new voter registrations per day from people getting driver's licenses. Approximately 3,700 voters were registered in Washington State in the first week of motor-voter operation through the combined use of motor-voter procedures, registration by mail, and agency-based registration. In Georgia, over 18,000 people have been registered since the new procedures went into effect on January 1, 1995. In Kentucky, in the first 10 days of implementation of the act, over 10,000 new voters were registered, and over 15,000 changes of address for voters were completed through the motor-voter procedures. Since Minnesota implemented its own motor-voter process in 1987, our Secretary of State estimates that we have registered over 700,000 voters using those procedures. We must not reverse this extraordinary progress, which is allowing many more people to participate in our political system. In order to protect the fundamental right to vote of all U.S. citizens regardless of their State of residence, the U.S. Justice Department has filed suit against three States--California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania--which have so far refused to implement the motor- voter procedures. As Attorney General Reno observed in the complaints against these three States, when Congress enacted the motor-voter bill we were exercising our constitutional right to regulate Federal elections under article I, section 4. States cannot simply ignore the direct statutory directives of Congress as the Attorney General said just after the law suits were filed: Congress has the authority to regulate Federal elections, and it used that authority when it passed the law. We now must use the authority that Congress gave us to enforce it. The motor-voter law enacted last year was designed to protect potential voters in all States, and not just in States where elected officials choose to obey properly enacted Federal laws. It is in our national interest to ensure access to the voting both for all, whether you live in Minnesota, California, or Alaska. In light of the importance of the Motor-Voter Act, and the support it is receiving from around the country, I ask unanimous consent that the following editorial appearing in the Washington Post on January 25, 1995 be reprinted in the Congressional Record, along with the full text of my statement. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act was passed with bipartisan support because many of our colleagues understood how important the right to vote is in our society. The motor-voter law is part of a long line of landmark protections for the right to vote, starting with the adoption of the 15th amendment to the Constitution, through the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and culminating with its passage. We must not return to the days when access to the voting booths in our country was limited by serious barriers to registration. We must stand up for the fundamental right to vote. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing any effort to undermine the motor- voter law, or to delay its full implementation.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator from North Carolina.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, based on the Minnesota resolution, I therefore have offered this amendment to the unfunded mandates bill, a sense-of-the-Congress resolution that if the balanced budget amendment is sent to the States, it should be accompanied by financial information on the impact it will have on each State's budget. This is a very simple and straightforward amendment. Mr. President, I cannot emphasize this enough. In my State of Minnesota, the thing that is being asked of Members, whether we are Democrats or Republicans, is: Please be clear and straightforward with the State and please spell out for the State the kind of cuts we will have to make within this balanced budget amendment mandate, and please spell out what the impact will be on our States. We want to know which people are going to be affected by this. We want to know how much of this we are going to have to pick up through our own State budgets. Are we going to have to raise taxes? What kind of communities are going to be hurt? Let us know what the impact will be on our States. That is, if you will, the mandate that I take from the State of Minnesota to the floor of the Senate today. Mr. President, obviously this balanced budget amendment--and I think this was the meaning of Mr. Armey's quotes, is going to necessitate some deep cuts. In the words of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Hyde, once Social Security is taken off the table the ``effect on other Federal programs will be Draconian.'' I did not say this, the Chair of the Judiciary Committee in the House, Representative Hyde, said this: The ``effect on other Federal programs will be Draconian.'' I think that statement is an understatement. The arithmetic of this equation is harsh, as we know full well. That is why I believe too many of my colleagues are unwilling to be straightforward with the people we represent. We are going to raise the military budget, we are going to have more tax cuts, we clearly are not going to be cutting into Social Security. And we know what programs are left, we know the importance of those programs and we know the kind of cuts that are going to take place. We are talking about aid to States for State and local law enforcement agencies. We are talking about highway maintenance and construction. We are talking about education. We are talking about college and small business loans. And we are talking about hungry children and the elderly. Mr. President, let me just lay out some Treasury Department estimates have this data as it pertains to their States. The Treasury Department estimates that Minnesota will have to increase State taxes by 9.4 percent across the board to make up for the loss in grants. This is even before factoring in what would be the effect of additional offsets in cuts if we do a lot of tax cuts or we dramatically increase the Pentagon budget. The loss of this grant assistance to the State of Minnesota would mean that in the year 2002, the Treasury Department estimates, we would have a loss of $679 million in Medicaid. Mr. President, I remind my colleagues that half of Medicaid expenditures go into taking care of older people in nursing homes; $679 million less in Medicaid; $102 million less for highway trust fund grants; $83 million less in AFDC, and, by the way, Mr. President, because sometimes I think some of my colleagues do not understand it, aid to families with dependent children goes, by definition, mostly to children. We are talking about parents, often a single parent--almost always a woman--and children. And $314 million cuts in funding for education, job training, the environment, housing and other areas. The Department of Commerce estimates that Minnesota over 7 years, leading up to 2002 as potential impact: Education would lose $1.5 billion; environmental protection could lose $74.6 million; disease control and prevention would lose $9.8 million; Fish and Wildlife Service would lose $16.7 million, law enforcement would lose over $143 million. Mr. President, children's defense fund estimates that the cuts in Minnesota in 2002 would result in the following, just in Minnesota: Almost 30,000 babies, preschoolers and pregnant women would lose WIC nutrition supplements; Over 51,000 children would lose food stamps; over 154,000 children would lose free or subsidized lunches; over 93,000 children would lose Medicaid health coverage. Over 59,000 children would lose State child support agency help in establishing paternity or collecting child support; almost 38,000 children would lose welfare benefits; over 2,400 blind and disabled children would lose SSI, that is supplemental security income; 3,900 children would lose Federal child care subsidies; over 2,500 children would lose Head Start early childhood services; and 28,000 children would lose child and adult food care programs. Mr. President, this is the point: I will not even preach about what all these statistics mean in personal terms. I will not even argue with my colleagues, if they are so inclined, over these figures. We do not know the exact figures, and that is what Minnesota has said in this resolution, passed unanimously by the House, passed almost unanimously by the Senate, signed by the Governor. I bring it here to the floor of the Senate, and this amendment that I have offered, which is this resolution from Minnesota, says if we pass the balanced budget amendment, then at least we ought to include with that balanced budget amendment a financial analysis of its impact on our States. This is a reasonable amendment. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time waiting for other colleagues who may want to respond.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, today we are considering S. 1, the unfunded mandates bill, a bill designed, as my good friend from Idaho, the main sponsor of this bill, has said repeatedly, to ensure that information is available to Members of Congress before they vote to impose a mandate on a State or local government. As I understand the basic premise of this piece of legislation, which I will say to my colleague from Idaho I am very much in agreement with, it is really twofold. No. 1, we ought to be very clear about the kinds of mandates we are imposing on State and local governments and we ought to be accountable for our votes; No. 2, I think this piece of legislation is about the right to know. It is about the right to know both for Senators and Representatives and State and local government officials about a proposal's economic impact before we pass it. Mr. President, I think that is good government reform. I have said that to my colleague from Idaho several times. I think it is good instinct. I think this instinct by the Senator from Idaho is on the mark, but I think it might be missing for some of our colleagues. In particular, I want to talk a little bit about this balanced budget amendment, and in particular I want to give some context by talking about some of the comments of the House Republican Leader Armey. Mr. President, let me first of all be clear about the amendment that I have already sent to the desk that we are now considering. This is a sense of the Congress that the Congress should continue its progress at reducing the annual Federal deficit, and if the Congress proposes to the States a balanced budget amendment, it should accompany it with financial information on its impact on the budget of each of the States, so that States know what exactly the impact of this piece of legislation will be on them. Let me begin at the beginning. This unfunded mandates bill operates on the premise that information should be available to Senators and Representatives and to State and local government officials about the financial impact of legislation we are proposing and attempting to pass. Mr. President, I think that that is a very important standard for any piece of legislation. Mr. President, it is also true, operating on that premise, and that is what this amendment speaks to, that if we pass a balanced budget amendment we ought to be clear with States, and I want to talk about this really because it comes from Minnesota. In that sense, I have a mandate from Minnesota today regarding what the impact of a balanced budget amendment would be on Minnesota or any other State. If we are not clear about where these cuts are going to take place and what the impact is going to be on our States, then what has been called the Contract With America becomes not a contract but a con. I mean, if there is a mood piece in the country, it is that we should be honest, straightforward and direct with people, and not try to finesse people; tell them what we are doing and tell them what the impact of what we are doing will be on their lives. Now, in the House, House Republican Leader Armey has said about the balanced budget amendment, ``I am profoundly convinced that putting out the details would make passage virtually impossible. The details will not come out before passage. It's not possible.'' The Washington Post, January 7, 1995. Another quote: ``Because the fact of the matter is once Members of Congress know exactly, chapter and verse, the pain that the Government must live with in order to get a balanced budget, their knees will buckle,'' January 9, 1995, the Washington Post. Mr. President, people in Minnesota and people in Vermont and people around the country did not send us here to sign on to any piece of legislation without being clear with them as to what the impact of that legislation will be on their lives. Let me repeat that one more time, because that is the in Vermont, people in Ohio, did not send us here to pass legislation without understanding the implications of the legislation we pass on their lives. What will the impact be of a balanced budget amendment on Vermont, on Minnesota? Mr. President, people in Minnesota want to know what passage of this balanced budget amendment will mean to them in personal terms. In fact, there is a considerable amount of apprehension in my State, and I think in every State. I have met with not just statewide officials, but local--county and city--officials from small towns in Minnesota, and people are worried that if we pass a balanced budget amendment but do not spell out where we will make the cuts or what the impact will be, then later on they will find that they may have to assume the costs. For example, what would happen--and by the way, I will have figures that may spell out that this very well may happen--if we have cuts, the Senator from North Dakota spelled out the context, the $1.3 trillion cut. We are in a bidding war to raise the Pentagon budget; in another bidding war to cut taxes, taking some large programs off the table. We know where the cuts will be. So where will the additional funding be for our young people to go on to afford higher education? Who will assume the cost of nutrition programs for children? What about veterans programs? What about Medicaid-Medicare? And if a person lives in a State like Minnesota--I know the people in my State--we will not walk away from citizens who need some support so that they can become independent. Thus, we will end up having to pick up this cost. The Governor from Vermont, Governor Dean, has made this same point. This could become one big shell game, transferring the costs back to State and local units of government, I fear, relying on the property tax. Well, Mr. President, given this context, on January 12, about a week after I went home and met with legislative leadership and local officials, the Minnesota State Senate--and I would like for my colleagues to be very clear about this, because I think their State senate may well do the same thing--passed a resolution urging the U.S. Congress to provide these details before sending the balanced budget amendment to the States for ratification. This resolution reads, from Minnesota: Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Minnesota That it urges the Congress of the United States to continue its progress at reducing the annual Federal deficit and, when the Congress proposes to the States a balanced budget amendment, to accompany it with financial information on its impact on the budget of the State of Minnesota for budget planning purposes. This resolution was passed unanimously in the State senate by Democrats and Republicans alike. This really does not have anything to do, as a matter of fact, with the position we take on a balanced budget amendment. The resolution then went--this was January 12--it then went to the House of Delegates and on January 17, the Minnesota House of Delegates also passed this resolution, I think, with only three dissenting votes. Then it went to the Governor and last Friday, January 20, Minnesota's Republican Governor signed the resolution. Mr. President, from the State of Minnesota, I ask unanimous consent that this resolution be included as a part of the Record. And as the Senator from Minnesota, I am proud to send this resolution from the Minnesota State Legislature, signed by the Governor of Minnesota, to the U.S. Senate.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.