Date: 1982-05-19
Speaker: ROBERT C. BYRD (democrat)
Chamber: S

Mr. President. we are faced here with a situation in which the majority party. all day yesterday. for the most partinsofar as action on this resolution is concernedmet in caucus and deliberated and brought forth a modification en bloc of the resolution that hasu been pending before the Senate for several days. I do not say what I am about to say with rancor. I simply state a fact. The Members on my side of the aisle have been given no opportunity to offer amendments. If I were still leader of the majority. I might proceed to act on some occasion as the majority has acted. because it is within the power of the majority to do so. They kept our Members from offering amendments because if this resolution had been amended. it would have been more difficult for the majority to present this modified version of the resolution which contains many amendments en bloc and on which otherwise the Senate would have been voting individually and separately. But as the situation is. this resolution is being amended in many places. There will be no votes on those amendments. as such. Individually. there will be no opportunities to table amendments. and so forth. So it is a move within the rules. But I think Senators on my side of the aisle should know what is happening. Second. I should point out that no Democrats in the Senate were involved in those meetings yesterday and no Democratic members of the Budget Committee were involved. And. of course. the Budget Committee is made up of a majority of Republicans. as it is expected to be. and if the Republican majority can get a ma. jority of the Budget Committee to approve of the modification of the resolution as the distinguished majority leader is about to send to the desk. they can do that. However. I must say that we Democrats. while we knew yesterday that something of this kind was going on. have had no opportunity to study the changes. We had no opS 5466 portunity to have any input into the changes and we have only now been provided with a copy of what amounts to a new resolution in many ways. I also take the floor to point out that the majority on the Budget Committee have removed from this particular package the $40 billion in cuts under social security which we on our side of the aisle have objected to strenuously and on which we have had two rollcall votes heretofore in recent days. We Democrats were defeated on both those rollcall votes. but nevertheless we sought to protect the elderly citizens of our country from having the budget balanced on their backs. So this is part of a pattern that we have seen emerge over the past year. Last year. as Senators will recall. the administration sent to the Congress a proposed $88 billion in cuts in social security. one of which was a reduction in the amount. by about 40 percent. which those individuals electing to retire at age 62. perhaps for health reasons. would otherwise receive if they worked until they were age 65. We on this side of the aisle offered an amendment to reject that social security cut. and our amendment was beaten down by 1 vote on a partyline vote. whereas. our good friends on the other side of the aisle then seized our language. after defeating us by 1 vote. and made a slight change so that parliamentarily their amendment would be in order. whereupon we joined with them and by a vote of 96 to 0 sent the White House the message that the Senate would not concur and would not go along with that social security cut. Also the minimum social security payments were eliminated last year. That fell through the Presidents safety net. and we Democrats tried five times to restore those minimum social security payments and five times we failed on partyline votes until the President in September went before a televised national audience and stated that he was asking Congress to restore tne minimum social security payments.. When he reversed his own position. of course. our Republican friends joined us. and again we Democrats were able to declare victory because when our Republican friends joined us at the behest of the Presidentwho had initially requested the cutwe were able to restore the minimum social security payment for 3 million Americans. Now. after two bites at the apple. and our efforts to assure the elderly community of this country that it would not suffer $40 billion in social security cuts in this budget process. and having lostagain on partyline votesour Republican friends have joined together on yesterday to remove the $40 billion cut in social security from this package for the time being at least. So I again say we Democrats can declare victory for our points of view once more because this is the third time that we have seen our efforts prevail in the long run although they lost in the earlier skirmishes. So I thank my distinguished friend the majority leader and others in the majority party for coming around to the Democratic point of view on saving social security from cuts in the budget process. I do not want to impose on the majority leader any longer. He has the floor. and. of course.-