Date: 1982-06-23
Speaker: ROBERT C. BYRD (democrat)
Chamber: S

Mr. President. I thank the distinguished Senator from South Carolina. Only a few weeks ago I stated my reasons for voting against Senate Concurrent Resolution 92. the Senates first budget resolution for fiscal year I regret today that I have to say again that I will vote against this budget resolution. Mr. President. nothing has been done to alleviate the very serious concerns that I have about this budget resolution and its impact on the economy. The economy is still at rock bottom. Business failures are running at a weekly rate of 478. the highest rate of failures since the Great Depression. Longterm interest rates. mortgage rates. ".nd municipal bond rates are higher now than when the administration took office. Mortgage rates last week averaged 16.7 percent. Even shortterm Interest rates are beginning to rise. The most recent 3month Treasury bill rate was 12% percent. The conference agreement on the first budget resolution for fiscal year 1983 offers no aid to our Nations economic recovery. I will have to vote against the budget resolution that includes $95 billion in new taxe over the next few years to say nothing of the $3 billion in increased user fees that will affect barge traffic on the rivers in and outside West Virginia which. in turn. will affect the price of coal. oil. and other commodities and inasmuch as this measure does not tell anyone which taxes will be increased and by how much. I cannot vote for a budget resolution that makes deep cuts in necessary programs that have already been slashed. that will result in cuts aimed at our elderly. our veterans. our working people. cuts that will deprive deserving students of the chance to go to college. cuts that will translate into fewer jobs with 10.5 million people already out of work. I cannot vote for a budget resolution that is based on phony numbers .and economic assumptions that are jimmied to suit the scenario. This budget includes socalled management savings of $46.4 billion over 3 years. including $13.6 billion in fiscal year 1983 alone. This is a revival of the phony David Stockman "magic asterisk." the unspecified savings that I warned about last year when I repeatedly offered amendments in the effort to force the administration to disclose and to define the socalled unspecified savings. I am sorry to say that my warnings on phony budget estimates and radical untested economic theory went unheeded. and as a result the Presidents deficit for fiscal years 1982 through 1984 has ballooned since September of last year from $66 billion to $296 billion. That is what feeding phony numbers into computers and wildeyed theories will get usa fourfold increase in deficits in 6 short months. It is tragic that those charged with the nurturing of the new budget process are sewing the seeds of its destruction by abandoning a commitment to honest budgeting. Another example of the many questionable estimates included in this budget resolution is the increase in receipts from oil and gas leases. CBO estimates that the savings included from increased receipts from gas and oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf were overestimated by $10.2 billion. So what kind of confidence can anyone have in a budget resolution with such a shaky base? I cannot vote for a budget resolution that is flawed as this one is. that raises as much new taxes as this one does. and that still carries the highest deficits in our history. With all of the cuts. tax increases. and faulty assumptions. this budget still has a total $247.8 billion deficit over the next 3 years-$103.9 billion deficit in fiscal year 1983. $83.9 billion deficit in fiscal year 1984. and a $60billion deficit in fiscal year 1985. The most disturbing of all this potential disaster is that it was avoidable. if that KempRoth tax scheme. particularly the third year had been delayed or tied to economic performance. The Senate would not now be faced with the vote to make unspecified increases in taxes totaling $95 billion in a recession partly caused by the KempRoth scheme. I tried to delay the KempRoth tax scheme for the wealthy until the economy could afford it. The Democrats in the Senate tried repeatedly to tie the third year of KempRoth to economic conditions. We did not want to eliminate the tax cut but only to schedule it when we could best afford it if possible. We argued that there was no sense in adhering to a doctrinaire timetable established by rigid ideologies. I stated at the White House in a conference with the President that the KempRoth plan should be more moderate. that it should pay attention to the needs of our people. not to the needs of theory and that it should be tied to the performance of the economy. So I will vote against the budget resolution today. It leads not to recovery but to further burdens on our economy. This is not the commonsense approach needed to put the economy on the road to recovery. I hope at -some point we will have the opportunity to vote for a budget resolution that truly restores economle recovery through a policy of prudent tax cuts. prudent spending cuts. prudent defense spending. honest estimating. and a prudent monetary policy. Mr. President. I yield the floor.