April 3, 2001 The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota. Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I listened to my colleague. First of all, let me say that I have enormous respect for the chairman of the committee. He is a good chairman. He is a fair chairman. But we do have a significant difference of opinion with respect to the budget that is before the country. The chairman believes that the size of this tax cut is the appropriate way to go. He tries to poster it as a question of spending versus tax cuts. But that is the old debate. That is the tired debate. It doesn't relate to the facts of their budget. It is not the proposal that we have made. The fundamental difference is we have reserved 70 percent of the money for short-term and long-term debt reduction. They reserve, under the President's plan, about 35 percent of the money for debt reduction. The fundamental difference is not a difference between taxing and spending. The fundamental difference is a question of do we do more debt reduction as we advocate or more of a tax cut as they advocate? We have a substantial tax cut but one that is half as big as theirs because we reserve the difference for money to deal with our long-term debt that is primarily Social Security. We say: Look, we have had the Comptroller General of the United States come and tell us the situation we face. The Social Security and Medicare trust funds face cash deficits as the baby boomers retire. Yes, we are in surplus today, but we are headed for deficits tomorrow. We say in our plan that we ought to set aside some of their money they want to use for a tax cut to deal with the long-term debt crisis facing our country. That is the difference. That is the big difference between their plan and our plan. They want it all for a tax cut. We want half of it for a tax cut, and we want half of it to begin to deal with our long-term debt crisis that is facing this country. If we want to strengthen Social Security for the future, we have to have resources to do it, whether it is individual accounts as many on their side advocate, and some on our side, or whether it is the Social Security Plus plan advocated by Vice President Gore in the Presidential campaign or whether it is the privatization plan that their President advocates. From where is the money going to come? The chairman of the committee puts up a chart. You can't find a single dime set aside to strengthen Social Security for the long term--not one thin dime. You can't find a penny to deal with this long-term debt problem, not a penny. That is the difference between us. We reduce the size of the tax cut so that we have resources to strengthen Social Security for the long term to deal with this long-term debt crisis. Look at what we are told. The Social Security and Medicare trust funds start to run into massive deficits in this second 10-year period. Let me conclude. When they say this is a question of the Democrats just wanting to increase spending, no, this isn't a question of Democrats just wanting to increase spending. Let's go to the facts. The facts are under our plan the Federal role will continue to shrink. Last night the Senator from Texas said facts are stubborn things. Indeed they are. Here is our spending proposal. The role of the Federal Government would continue to decline. In fact, it would go to the lowest level since 1951 under our proposal. This is not increased spending. This is reducing the role of the Federal Government so more resources can be dedicated to debt reduction--both short-term and long-term under our plan. That is the fundamental difference between these plans. Our friends on the other side want to take all of the non-trust-fund money and put it out for a tax cut. We say, no, that is not wise. Yes, half of it could be used for a tax cut, but half of it ought to be used to deal with our long-term debt crisis; that we ought to strengthen Social Security for the long term. That is the fundamental difference between these plans. And it is a profound difference. It recognizes, No. 1, the uncertainty of the forecast. Any 10-year projection is uncertain. More than that, it recognizes that at the end of this 10-year period, the baby boomers start to retire. These surpluses turn to deficits, and we have an obligation to deal with that long-term debt. We have reserved $750 billion for that purpose. That money could go into individual accounts. When they talk about money going back to the people, you add up our tax cut and the money that is available to deal with long-term debt, which happens to be the people's debt--we talk a lot about the people's money; it is also the people's debt--you have the people's short-term debt and the people's long-term debt. We say let's reserve 70 percent of the money to deal with the people's short-term and long-term debt. Our friends on the other side want to take all the non-trust-fund money and use it for a tax cut. They don't want to reserve one single dime to deal with this long-term debt crisis facing the country, not a penny. There is no money reserved for the long-term debt situation of the country. They will say we reserve the Social Security trust fund money. Good. That is a good start. But what do you do next? What do you do after you reserve the money for the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund? Do you provide a single dime? Is there a single penny in there to deal with the long-term crunch that we all know is coming? No, not a penny. They are getting ready to take it out of the Social Security trust fund, which, of course, will just move up the date of insolvency for the Social Security trust fund. We say reserve every penny of the Social Security trust fund for Social Security, every penny of the Medicare trust fund for Medicare, and out of what is left take $750 billion to strengthen Social Security for the long-term to deal with the long-term debt that is facing this country. This isn't a question between taxes and spending. No. It is part of it because there are places where we think more resources could be reserved for a prescription drug benefit, to improve education, and to strengthen national defense. But we also believe most of this projected surplus ought to be dedicated to debt reduction, short term and long term. And we do twice as much as they do. That is a simple truth. That is the simple difference. It is a big difference for the future of this country.