Date: 1982-02-11
Speaker: ROBERT C. BYRD (democrat)
Chamber: S

Mr. President. yesterday I took the very serious step of writing the President to request that he withdraw the administrations 1983 budget proposal and resubmit one with lower deficits. more accurate forecastsI am talking about lower real deficitsfairer domestic spending cuts. and more temperate defense spending increases. This is not the first time I have taken such action. Once before. in 1980. I advised a President of my own party. at a time when I was the majority leader. that his budget had to be significantly revised. In both cases I acted because the budget as originally submitted was so unacceptable to Members of Congress of both parties and to the financial community that it had little chance of passage in its original form and. in fact. because of the lack of confidence it generated. it represented a serious threat to the economic wellbeing of our Nation. The budget is the economic blueprint or our Nation. If we are to have economic stability and confidence the budget must be a reasonable. responsible. fair and credible document. This administrations 1983 budget falls every single one of these tests. Many of my Republican colleagues are saying the same thing. So are Wall Street financial analysts. The financial analysts have told the Wall Street Journal that the deficit for 1983 Is likely to be $120 to $130 billion Instead of the $91 billion project. ed by the administration. Where do we go from here? We are presented with a budget that is not believable nor enactable. The administrations posture has been to resort to rhetoric and tell the Congress of the United States to "Put up or shut up." We must not draw lines in the dirt. Clearly. serious and responsible action is needed on the part of the Congress and the administration. Mr. President. I submit that two ac. tions must be taken if we are to avoid a dangerous impasse. First. as I requested yesterday. the President should rework and resubmit his 1983 budget. He should reconsider his total commitment to the unwise KempRoth plan. reduce the increase in Pentagon spendingit would seem to me that there is certainly appropriate reasons to believe that there can be found waste and mismanagement in the spending at the Pentagon. and so I think it is not an unreasonable request to suggest that the increase in Pentagon spending be carefully scrutinized futherreduce some of the more unfair and unwise domestic spending cuts. revise the unrealistic economic forecasts. and bring the deficit downbring the real deficit downto more acceptable levels. The deficit set forth in the budget is shockingly high. yet it is an understatement of what the real deficit is going to be In fiscal year 1983. I do not say this lightly nor in a partisan vein. It is the most appropriate and best way out of the difficult and dangerous situation in which we and our Nation now find ourselves. Second. whether or not the President is willing to rework his budget. we in the Congress. Democrats and Republicans. must begin to come forward with workable and sensible alternatives to this budget. Senator FaIz HOLLINGS proposal for example. is a very thoughtful and provocative one. and it has added to the serious dialog over the budget problem. Yesterday I revealed publicly for the first time that I have been working closely With 17 members of my party in a committee that will develop initiatives to spur economic recovery. These and other effortson both sides of the aislemust continue and be expedited. Perhaps most importantly. we must proceed in a bipartisan fashion. The economy is an American economynot a Democratic or Republican economy. The problems are American problems. The outofwork autoworker does not care if he get a job because of a Democratic plan or a Republican plan. He is not Interested in seeing his national leaders telling one another to "put up or shut up." He wants a job. Period. It Is time for the administration and the Congress to have a dialog. It is not a matter of put up or shut up. It is a matter of having a dialog about the problems. and it is time for us all to take action to see that the American worker who is out of a job gets one. and the economy gets moving again. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that my letter to the President. dated February 10. 1982. be printed at this point in the RECORD.