May 18, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S6849

to me that would assure local control

over the river. I look forward to reviewing the language and if appropriate will push for its immediate approval by the Congress.

Mr. President, I will continue to

work with Georgia and Larry Talsma

and other South Dakota landowners to

see that their property and their rights

are fully protected, and are not overrun by the Federal Government.

Federal policy is moving ever closer

toward infringement of individual private property rights. One of America’s

founding principles is the right of citizens to own private property. These

rights must be closely guarded.

Mr. President, I am proud South Dakota has citizens such as Georgia and

Larry Talsma. Their determination,

and hard work actually moved Washington to action. They had to take

time off their ranching chores and

drive all the way to Washington to

move a bureaucratic mountain. I am

please they achieved progress.

I am proud of the Talsmas and what

they have accomplished. They are to be

commended. Their battle is not over

yet, but Mr. President, their action is

proof that this is a government of and

for the people.

Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, what is

the status at the present time? Are we

under a time limitation?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. We remain in morning business until 12

o’clock. Statements, unless under a

previous order, are limited to 5 minutes each.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent to proceed in morning business for

not to exceed 10 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

A HISTORIC DEBATE ON THE

BUDGET RESOLUTION

fMr. GORTON. Mr. President, in less

than an hour, the Senate will begin a

truly historic debate on a budget resolution reported by the Senate Budget

Committee. It is a budget resolution

which, for the first time, perhaps, since

the Budget Act was passed a quarter of

a century ago, seriously proposes to

put this Nation on the road to a balanced Federal budget.

Mr. President, lip service has been

promised to that goal by many of those

who voted against a constitutional

amendment to require a balanced budget, as well as by those who voted for

that budget. Most of the former group,

however, now find something wrong

with this proposal, just as they have

with any preceding attempts to balance the budget. In theory, they are in

favor of reaching that goal, but in

practice they have never actually seen

the way in which it ought to be

reached.

Perhaps the best evidence of this

proposition, Mr. President, is that

while the minority party in this body

is almost—I say almost, not quite—

without exception opposed to the budget resolution that is before us, that

same minority party in the House of

Representatives is putting up as an alternative essentially the Senate budget

resolution and praising it as much superior to the one that will actually

pass the House of Representatives. I

think they do that with full confidence

that the proposal will not pass, that

the alternative will not pass in the

House, and it is therefore safe for them

to praise it and, in some cases, to vote

in favor of it.

This balanced budget here in the Senate, together with the one in the

House, will have tremendous positive

impacts on the American people. It will

result in a significantly greater increase in family income all across this

country because of lower interest rates

and greater job opportunities. And

those positive impacts will vastly overshadow any temporary negative impacts of the loss of various Federal subsidies.

Before we begin that formal debate, I

want to make a few remarks about the

downpayment on a balanced budget,

the rescissions bill, which is about to

go to the President of the United

States and which the President announced yesterday that he intended to

veto.

This rescissions bill—this cancellation of some of the spending proposed

by the last Congress—amounts to

about 1 percent of the current year’s

budget. Yet, to reduce spending this

year by 1 percent seems much too drastic a step for this administration to be

willing to take. This bill started as a

request by the President to spend more

money, some for the Department of Defense, essentially to cover the costs of

various, dubious peacekeeping missions

around the world which was passed as

part of a separate bill, and others to

spend money on various natural disasters which the President improvidently

had refused to include in the budget

passed less than a year ago, in spite of

the fact that these disasters are always

with us, together with a few modest reductions in a handful of programs.

The House of Representatives took

the bit in its teeth and came up with a

cancellation of something more than

$17 billion in current spending, about 1

percent of the total budget, as I have

already said. The President protested

that as being too much and in the

wrong places. This body, as the Presiding Officer knows, passed a somewhat

more modest rescissions bill, still close

to $15 billion or so, with a different mix

of canceled or reduced programs. And

about that Senate rescissions bill the

President said:

The bill passed 99 to 0 in the Senate and I

will sign the Senate bill if the House and

Senate will send it to me. That is how we

should be doing the business of America.

In the 4 weeks since then, Mr. President, the House and the Senate have

met together in a conference committee to settle the differences between

these two proposals, in the time-honored fashion under our rules. What was

unprecedented during the course of this

attempt to work out differences was

the almost total absence of people representing the White House or the administration.

Unlike the situation during the Bush

administration, the Reagan administration, and previous administrations

when I was not here, there was no guidance from the White House at all. No

statement that, ‘‘Here is our bottom

line.’’ No attempt to work out differences the way previous administrations did. Silence, except around the

margins, until the day after the conference committee finished its work

and submitted it to the two bodies.

Then the President decided that it

ended up reducing a handful of programs and job training and education

by so great an amount of money that

he had to veto it.

I totaled up all of the items that I

think could come under that veto

threat and they amount to less than $1

billion of the $17 billions.

Mr. President, I repeat, no statements of this sort, no bottom lines,

were sent to the members of the conference committee while it was working out this situation.

Yesterday, the President threatened

to veto the bill. He also said that he

still wanted to save money but too

much money was being spent in this

bill on courthouses and on highway

projects. Curiously enough, Mr. President, all of these projects which the

President now describes as pork were

included in last year’s appropriations

bill that he signed and praised last

year.

Of course, if his veto stands and no

other rescissions bill is passed, all will

be built. His veto does not cancel a single one of them. Not a single one of

them was criticized at the time which

they were originally appropriated for

and passed last year.

One other curiosity, Mr. President,

included in the Senate bill which the

White House said would be approved,

was certain timber language drafted by

this Senator for the relief of timber

communities not just in the Pacific

Northwest but all across the country.

That proposal simply authorized the

administration to do what it said it

wanted to do, to carry out the provisions of what is known as option 9, its

own option in the Pacific Northwest,

and to salvage burned and dead and

dying timber in national forests all

across the country, destroyed either by

insects or by forest fires and rapidly

becoming kindling for new forest fires.

Nothing in the Senate provisions required the administration to do more

than it wished to do, but it did enable

them to do what they claimed they

wanted to do without the interference

of outside lawsuits.

Not only was that apparently all

right, as a result of the Presidential

speech that I just read, it was expressly
S6850 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 18, 1995

approved just barely a week ago in a

letter from the Secretary of Agriculture, whom as we know, is the supervisor of the Forest Service, expressly wrote to Senator HATFIELD and

said that the Senate version was much

preferable than the House version.

Yesterday, the result of the conference committee was described by

the President of the United States in

these words:

There is another thing which is in this bill

which I really object to which would basically direct us to make timber sales to large

companies subsidized by the taxpayers,

mostly in the Pacific Northwest, and that

will essentially throw out all of our environmental laws and the protections that we

have that surround such timber sales. It

would also put us back into the courts.

Now, Mr. President, the language to

which the White House now objects,

says is subject to a veto, was first, the

language they approved when it passed

the Senate in the first place, which was

the subject of an explicit letter from

the Secretary of Agriculture—a letter

of approval, and which was changed

only in ways proposed by Members of

the President’s own party as a result of

suggestions from people in the administration themselves.

It does not direct timber sales to

large companies in any respect whatever. Most of the large companies in

the Pacific Northwest are ineligible to

bid on Forest Service timber. It is not

subsidized by the taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office told the Senate it will net the Treasury some $80

million.

It is not mostly in the Pacific Northwest but includes every national forest

around the country. It does not throw

out the environmental laws at all. It

allows the administration to continue

to follow every one of them as presumably it has, in connection with its own

plans. And it not only does not put

them back into the courts, it takes

them out.

So every single description of this

proposal by the President of the United

States is in error. Every single element. This proposal merely allows the

President to do what he has told the

people of the Pacific Northwest and the

country he intends to do anyway, and

freeze up the lawsuits over that subject.

I think the summary, Mr. President,

is just this: The administration, and

regrettably many of the Members on

the other side of the aisle, whether it is

in this rescissions bill or the budget

resolution, favor the status quo. And

$200 to $300 million deficits as far as

the eye can see are fine. They have no

other proposal, no other alternative.

Cutting 1 percent of this year’s budget is really too much, too drastic. Has

to be vetoed. Allowing the President to

keep his own promises to timber communities, too radical a proposal.

Everything is just fine with all the

laws and all the spending policies right

now. That is the message we get. Just

fine. We should not make any chains.

We will object to everything that is

proposed by the new majority party.

We will prevent them from keeping

their commitments, but we will not

offer any alternatives at all.

Mr. President, that is not a satisfactory way with which to conduct the

Nation’s business. It is not what the

people of this country want. We have

promised them change and a respect

for our commitments. And we will continue to struggle, I trust, ultimately

successfully, to just that end.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk proceeded to call the

roll.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the

quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Under the previous order, the Senator from Nevada [Mr. REID] is recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that be extended to

15 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, the issue

THE BUDGET

fbefore this body that will begin in approximately half an hour is not whether the Republicans are for a balanced

budget or the Democrats are for a balanced budget. The question is how

should we arrive at that balanced budget? All of us want to pass a resolution

getting our financial house in order.

The issue is one of priority. How are we

going to resolve difficult issues before

the American people in an effort to arrive at this balanced budget?

We have heard a great deal of talk

these past few months about the need

for deficit reduction. Many on the

other side of the aisle have talked

about a balanced budget, and rightfully

so. I say to my friends on the other side

of the aisle, and I say to the American

public, where were those same people

in the fall of 1993 when the Democrats

alone without a single Republican vote

in the House or the Senate passed the

largest deficit reduction package in the

history of this country? Where were

they? There was not a single Republican vote for the largest deficit reduction package in the history of this

country. I say that would have been

the time to start the debate regarding

a balanced budget.

Mr. President, the deficit reduction

package that was passed in 1993 is projected today by the CBO to reduce the

deficit by $600 billion. The deficit will

be exactly $16 billion less over 5 years

because of the deficit reduction plan

that was passed in 1993. Because of the

Democrat plan, the 1994 deficit as a

percentage of gross domestic product is

projected to be the lowest among the

G–7 countries. This year we are going

to again have a declining deficit. For

the first time in 50 years we will have

had 3 years in a row where we have had

declining deficits. Of course, it should

be declining more, but the first time in

50 years. That says a lot.

Because of the deficit plan, the unemployment rate is at 5.8 percent,

down from 7 percent in 1992. We have

had the lowest unemployment and the

lowest inflation combined in the last 2

years than it has been in the last 50

years. There are now about 1.5 million

fewer people unemployed than at the

start of this administration, a 15-percent drop.

So I think it is important to talk

about some of the good things that are

happening in our economy. Because of

that deficit reduction plan, over 6.3

million new jobs have been created.

Keep in mind these are not Government jobs because we reduced the Federal work force by hundreds of thousands of people. We have the lowest

Federal employment since the Kennedy

administration, right now; not in the

future but right now. Significantly, the

jobs that have been created as a result

of the deficit reduction are in the highwage industries. For example, managerial, professional jobs make up 58 percent of the new jobs created since 1994.

These jobs are good jobs.

What about taxes? According to CBO

the deficit reduction package resulted

in 98-plus percent approaching 99 percent of Americans paying the same or

less taxes as a result of that deficit reduction plan. CPI inflation over the

past 2 years averaged just 2.8 percent.

That is the lowest of any administration since President Kennedy was

President.

The existing home sales for 1994 total

almost 4 million. This is the largest

total since 1978 and the second-largest

total ever.

Since our deficit reduction plan was

passed, consumer confidence is up by

almost 80 percent. Business investment, investment in producers of durable equipment, which is shown to be

closely associated with productivity,

again has soared to a 18.6 annual

growth rate since 1992. This is a postwar high.

Mr. President, let us not talk about

the doom and gloom. Let us take a little bit of time to enjoy the goodness

that is in the economy. Since passage

of that deficit reduction plan the World

Economic Forum has declared that the

United States has the world’s most

competitive economy. Some may say,

‘‘So what?’’ Well, this is the first time

in 9 years that we have been selected

for that honor.

Again, I repeat, let us look at what is

good. Why do we have to dwell on the

doom and gloom? The economy is vibrant. It is strong.

There may be someone in this 100-

Member body that would argue against

a balanced budget. I do not know who

it would be. But there could be someone. I say that we should have a balanced budget. And we are going to have

that. A debate ensued here a while