Mr. President, we are approaching perhaps one of the most historic moments in the history of the Congress, when tomorrow this Senate will vote on the balanced budget amendment. We have not had an opportunity to pass a balanced budget amendment of this magnitude since my tenure in the Congress, and I doubt this century. We are very, very close--perhaps only one vote away. I think it is important for the Senate to understand, and for Senators to consider, just how critical it is that we bring to a final resolution this now 4-week-long debate on the necessity of a balanced budget.<p>
I went back and grabbed a copy of the General Accounting Office report to the Congress, written in 1992, to review what their conclusions in a study entitled `Prompt Action Necessary to Avert Long-Term Damage to the Economy.'<p>
I will just cite a couple of items from their conclusion. They said, `Failure to reverse the trends and fiscal policy,' current fiscal policy, `and the composition of Federal spending will doom future generations to a stagnating standard of living, will damage the United States competitiveness and influence in the world and hamper our ability to address pressing national needs.'<p>
In 1992, the General Accounting Office warned the Congress, as it has repeatedly--and as many others have warned--that failure to reverse the current trends in how we spend money and the composition of that spending will doom future generations. It will doom future generations. They go on to say, `If not nothing is done to reverse current trends, deficits will explode over the longer term.'<p>
Finally, they conclude, `The economic and political reality is that the Nation cannot continue on the current path.'<p>
The discussion over the past 4 weeks in this Senate Chamber has been on whether or not we continue on the current path, or whether we put in place a device which will cause us to change direction, which will fundamentally alter the way in which this Congress addresses the spending of taxpayers' dollars, through a constitutional mandate, constitutional direction to balance the Federal budget. That is the question that is before us.<p>
We have heard speeches and we have had many, many amendments saying we need to exempt certain programs from the balanced budget amendment. Primarily, the emphasis, as we have just heard, is: let us not follow the mandates of the contract because it will doom our children. It will adversely impact those children. We have had a number of amendments saying let us exempt programs for children from the effect of the balanced budget amendment. But it seems to me that if we are really, truly interested in our children, we will face up to the responsibility that is ours to address this deficit and this national debt--a debt which has run beyond our control and, as the General Accounting Office reports, `will doom future generations of these children.'<p>
The contract was put before the American people, and it outlined a new direction for this Congress and a new direction for this Nation that was overwhelmingly endorsed in the last election. We are going forward in an attempt to take a look at the Federal programs as they currently exist, including those that address children, and ask ourselves the fundamental questions: Is this the best expenditure of taxpayers dollars? Can we maximize that expenditure with fewer dollars? Is this the most efficient way of getting support to the very children that our colleagues were talking about here this morning? When we delve into the record, we find that it is not efficient. There is duplication and overlap, waste and mismanagement, and administrative costs that deny benefits to the very people that we are trying to help. Many of these programs were well-intended when they were started.<p>
But because the Congress failed to adequately oversee the implementation of these programs, and because we have been in literally a feeding frenzy over the past couple of decades of adding more and more programs, we end up with an inefficiency in Government that is staggering. This Government spending is driving our deficit and driving our national debt to the point where we will have very little, if anything, to offer to those children in the future.<p>
The Labor and Human Resources Committee on which I serve looked at job training and found that there were 163 separate Federal job training programs. Is job training a worthy goal? Of course, it is. Can it be done more efficiently? I think we instinctively understand that if there are 163 programs administered by 14 agencies of the Federal Government that perhaps we can consolidate those and run those programs more efficiently.<p>
In child care, a component of the children's programs, there are 93 separate programs of child care administered by 11 different Federal agencies, disbursing $11.5 billion a year in targeted programs. Many of those programs overlap. In fact, a child in poverty could theoretically qualify for 13 separate child care programs, all providing the same benefit.<p>
So the charge to this Congress is: Can you do it better? Can you do it more efficiently? Can you do it more effectively? And time after time, year after year, Congress has failed in that responsibility.<p>
We are here seeking a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution because Congress has failed in its responsibility to provide efficient, effective management of the programs that it enacts. It has failed to correctly oversee the spending of taxpayers' dollars to the point where, in just the last 14 years, we have driven the national debt from less than $1 to $4.8 trillion.<p>
We are saddling future generations with enormous debt. Each new child born in America bears a cost of nearly $20,000 which will have to be repaid. We are approaching an interest payment alone that exceeds virtually every other category of discretionary domestic spending for the Government. Interest does not go to children's lunches. It does not to go child care. It does not go to road investment. It does not go to community policing. It does not go to fight crime. It does not go to fight drugs and all the other numbers of programs the Federal Government has been involved in. It simply goes to pay interest, simply interest on the debt. And that interest is going to explode in the future.<p>
If we really care about our children, we will look at where we are today and say: `We must change course. We must do something differently than what we have done before.'<p>
We have had all kinds of so-called congressional solutions, legislative solutions, to deal with this deficit. And while we are touting the promise of the latest proposal by the Congress to deal with the deficit, the deficit keeps mounting at a staggering rate.<p>
The National Taxpayers Union has estimated that for a child born today, by the time that child is 18 years old, he or she will have accumulated $103,000 in extra taxes over his or her lifetime because of the debt. Today's debt burden is over 10 times more than the debt today's adults inherited from their parents. Let me repeat that. The debt that I inherited from my parents is one-tenth of what my children will inherit from me.<p>
The National Taxpayers Union goes on to say:<p>
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Our children and grandchildren will pay. In many ways--not just in extra taxes. But in higher interest rates. Less affordable homes. Fewer jobs. Lower wages. Decaying infrastructure. Meager retirement incomes. A debt-burdened Government unable to afford programs and benefits Americans now take for granted.<p>
The very programs that our colleagues were talking about--the School Lunch Programs, the Child Care Programs that go to benefit children and which we now take for granted--will become completely unaffordable by an increasing debt-burdened Government.<p>
Thomas Jefferson left us with words of wisdom that we have not followed, and that we need to ponder as we come to a decision about how we are going to vote on this balanced budget amendment. He said:<p>
The question of whether one generation has the right to bind another by the deficit it imposes is a question of such consequence as to place it among the fundamental principles of Government. We should consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and be morally bound to pay for them ourselves.<p>
We are entrusted with a unique privilege and responsibility as Members of the U.S. Senate. We should heed the words of Jefferson that say we should be morally bound to pay our own debts.<p>
What right do we have to enjoy a standard of living now and simply dump the payment for that standard of living on to our children and our grandchildren? What right do we have to do that? It is immoral to do that. We should, as Jefferson said, be morally bound to pay for what we spend. And we have not done that. We have not done that in small margins, we have not done that in massive margins.<p>
We have expanded our national debt from less than $1 trillion in 1980 to nearly $5 trillion in 1994. We have quintupled it in 15 years. We have quintupled the debt that took 200 years to accumulate prior to that.<p>
And so, as Members contemplate their vote, I hope they would see the extraordinary implications of this vote. If the balanced budget amendment fails, I fear we will not have another opportunity to address the primary and fundamental issue facing this Nation. If it passes, we will begin a process of doing what we were elected to do in the first place--of determining priorities, of establishing ways in which the taxpayers' dollar can be spent in effective, efficient ways. We will have to go into every program, every program of Government, to ask ourselves the fundamental question: Is this the best way we can spend this money? Is this the highest priority for this money? Is there a more efficient way to do it? It is a question, as Jefferson said, of such consequence to place it among the fundamental principles of Government.<p>
It is wrong. It is wrong for us to continue this course.<p>
We have a choice before us tomorrow evening that will fundamentally alter the way we do business. We have proven our incapacity to be careful stewards of the Nation's debt, careful stewards of the Nation's earnings, careful stewards of the future of this country for our children's sakes, for our grandchildren's sakes, for future generations' sakes.<p>
Let us do what we all know we need to do--save us from ourselves. Give us a tool which will allow us to balance that budget and once and for all end this practice of saddling posterity with our debts.</body>
