This will be a long process as we go through the summer and into the fall in deciding what those priorities should be in passing a budget. I rise today to emphasize the importance of fiscal discipline, fiscal responsibility, and paying down our debt as we move through that process. I feel that should be the number one priority of this body in the budget process and for the future, as it is what can best help the people of this country. 

We still have a significant financial problem. The news has gotten better in recent years. We have reduced the yearly size of the deficit, and we actually have the possibility of moving towards a surplus. All of that is good news, and many people on both sides of the aisle and many Congresses through the past 6 or 7 years can rightfully take credit for that, but the job is not done. I worry a great deal as I listen to the debate and listened to the debate this past week on the budget resolution that people have lost sight of that fact. We are talking about surplus politics, and I think we do so prematurely. 

To begin with, we still incorrectly, from an economic standpoint, count the surplus in the social security trust fund as income to the Treasury, and use that surplus to claim an overall surplus when in fact we have an overall deficit. 

Last year's numbers make this point clearly. We had a $100 billion surplus in the social security trust fund. The rest of the budget actually ran a $30 billion deficit, so presto, we have the $70 billion surplus that everybody has been talking about, it does not really exist, but that surplus in the social security trust fund is already obligated. We have to pay it back, plus interest to the Treasury, so that the trust fund can pay out the social security benefits that all of us, or all of us hopefully some day, that many of us, are due. So it is not money we can count as a surplus. To count it that way is to spend it twice. When we spend money twice, we wind up in debt as far as we are. 

The second critical point in this is we still have an overall debt. That $70 billion surplus, mythical though it may be, even within the grounds of that myth is only a 1-year surplus, with quotations around it. The overall debt continues to grow. It is approaching $6 trillion. 

On a yearly basis we pay $215 billion to service that debt. That is 15 percent of the budget, 15 percent of our budget, and $250 billion that basically goes simply to pay off past excess. It does nothing to meet our obligations at present or in the future, and it should be reduced. 

Now is the time to do it. We have a very strong economy. We have unemployment at 4.2 percent. We have virtually nonexistent inflation, a booming stock market, with growth to match. If we cannot begin to pay down that debt now, we never will. We will never get there if we do not take that step right now. We need to step up to that as a priority. 

I am concerned, as I look at the debate that we had on the budget resolution, that we are not heading in the right direction. I basically look at the budget resolution of this week that was passed in the House as a bad news-good news situation. 

The bad news is, it is not a particularly good budget resolution, and the debate was even worse, from a fiscally responsible and economically accurate standpoint. But the good news is it borders on meaningless. What really is going to matter is the 13 appropriation bills that both bodies have to pass between now and October. There is no way that those 13 appropriation bills are even going to come close to matching what was in that budget resolution. 

I say that is good news because the budget resolution overpromised in a number of different areas. Essentially by holding back key specifics, the budget resolution was able to promise in a number of interesting areas, promise more spending on defense, although they added another little trick in there that they promised budget authority but not necessarily outlays. 

What is the difference between budget authority and outlays, we ask? It is the difference between promising to spend money and actually spending it. There is a big difference between those two things. 

Beyond that, the pledges for increased spending in defense, in education, while at the same time including a massive back end tax cut, and by ``back end'' I mean it grows in the out years, in the first 5 years it is not too much, in the second 5 years it is more, in the third five years it is even more, all of that, for all of that to work within any sort of fiscally responsible framework requires cuts in the rest of the budget that nobody is prepared to make, and therefore were not spelled out in that budget resolution, for some very good reasons. If they had been spelled out nobody would have voted for it and it would not have passed. 

So the budget resolution was more or less a political document, an effort to try to gain favor in some areas by playing various tricks and smoke and mirrors games with the budget numbers. So it is not going to happen, but we are going to have a situation where we are going to have to pass a real budget. What is going to happen is all of those promises that were made during the budget resolution debate are going to be very tough to meet, in reality. 

What is going to happen? My fear is that what is going to happen is exactly what happened in the 1980s, long before I got to Congress, actually when I was in high school and college and watched with horror as my predecessors in this body spent all of our future money. 

Basically what happens is an agreement is reached that goes something like this: I will take your tax cut if you take my spending increase. That works out just fine for that Congress. They are able to pass out a lot of goodies and make every one happy, but it sets up a situation that I, among others, walked into in the mid 1990s. 

Basically it is like showing up at the time that the credit card bill comes due. It is not a lot of fun and it is not good for the country, because I understand the Federal Government has many positive things that it needs to do. It has spending programs in the areas of education, in the areas of defense, environmental protection, medical research. It has tax cuts it can do. 

All of those things are important, but they are not peculiar to this one moment in time. Ten years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, and beyond, residents of this country are going to have needs in all of those areas, needs that they will not be able to meet if we spend the money now irresponsibly. 

I am afraid that we are headed in that direction by overpromising, by talking about the politics of a surplus and where can we spend the money, where should we spend the money, what tax cuts we should do, way beyond what we can actually afford to do, and not even taking into account the nearly $6 trillion debt that we have run up over the course of the last 30 years.  

Let us be fiscally responsible and start paying that down. 

Worse than that, the debate, as I watched it, degenerated into a criticism of the Clinton budget and a battle over who is, quote, setting aside more for Social Security. 

There are a couple of problems with this argument. First of all, it allowed many of the majority party who supported their budget to not even really talk about their budget, but rather try to focus their attention on proving that the President's budget that he introduced 3 months ago was bad. 

That may well be. In fact, an amendment was offered by a Member of the majority that was supposedly exactly the President's budget. It was defeated, I think, with only two votes voting in favor of it. 

From the time that budget was introduced, many things have changed, many other ideas have come up. The budget is a dead issue. Yet, that is what the majority party spent most of its time talking about. 

I would have much preferred them to have spelled out some of the specifics of their own resolution. I also would have much preferred them to be a little bit more honest in their analysis of that budget. 

I brought a chart with me which I saw frequently on the day that the budget resolution was debated being brought up and put forth by the majority party as evidence that their budget was better for Social Security than the President's was. 

I bring this chart up mainly for illustrative purposes to show how--well, dishonest might be too strong a word; we are supposed to not say things like that in this honest body--let us say how disingenuous the debate was. I will put that chart up now. 

This chart shows the commitment on Social Security. It is interesting. The Republicans' argument throughout the whole budget was that their budget sets aside 100 percent of the Social Security Trust Fund or, sorry, 100 percent of the surplus for Social Security, whereas the President only sets aside 62 percent. 

The interesting thing is, and they absolutely had to be aware of this fact, the 62 percent that they are talking about, or sorry, the 62 percent that the President was talking about was 62 percent of the entire surplus, whereas the number that the Republicans were referring to in their budget was 100 percent of the Social Security surplus. 

So basically the President was talking about 62 percent of a much larger number. In fact, a fascinating fact is this 62 percent of that much larger number is almost exactly the same as that 100 percent. In other words, there is no difference whatsoever. 

Yet, the majority got up here and argued repeatedly that their budget was better because it set aside 100 percent instead of 62 percent. It is just exactly that sort of disingenuous use of fact that colored the debate and got us way off the topic. That topic ought to be fiscal responsibility. 

If we want to do something about Social Security and Medicare, and that is really a third point in addition to the two prior points about how our budget situation is not as rosy as it is, those being, one, that we still count the money that we borrow from the Social Security trust fund; two, we have an existing debt; three is the coming bills on Social Security and Medicare once the baby boom retires, those exploding bills that are out there and what we are going to do about them. 

Nowhere in the budget resolution does it say anything about any sort of Medicare or Social Security reform to deal with those problems. If we do not, that is going to further exacerbate our financial situation. 

The level best thing that we can do for dealing with those programs, well, there is two things: one, we can reform the two programs, but two, is to not spend the money now. Because the interesting thing about this chart is both the President and the Republicans are being somewhat disingenuous in arguing about how much money they, quote, unquote, are setting aside for Social Security. 

We cannot bind future Congresses in that way. As future Congresses pass budgets, they will decide whether or not to spend this money on Social Security, Medicare, or someplace else. It will require a year-to-year decision to decide what to do with that. 

So to say that we are setting it aside now is somewhat empty rhetoric except for this point: It is arguable that the extent to which we are fiscally responsible now, in other words, the extent to which we do not spend money or do not give out tax cuts that further inhibit our ability to have revenues for Social Security and Medicare, to the extent we do that, we will be in a better position to deal with Social Security and Medicare in the future. 

So the number one biggest test, aside from all this baloney with the charts, this effort to confuse people by taking two separate numbers and treating them as the same when they are not, look at the budget and see if it is fiscally responsible. That is the test on whether or not we are preparing for dealing with the coming increases in cost and Social Security and Medicare. 

Again, when we look at the budget resolution we passed this week, it promised $800 billion in tax cuts over 10 years. Actually, that number balloons even further in the next 5 years, over a 15-year period. It also promised massive increases in a number of different areas of spending. All of that will jeopardize this chart considerably. 

That is what we need to look at as we debate the budget in the months ahead. Because, as I said, the hard work is yet to come. We have basically done the smoke and mirrors, twisted the numbers around to make them look as good as possible. Now we actually have to pass realistic appropriations bills. That is going to be far, far more difficult than simply passing a piece of rhetoric. 

I rise today to urge fiscal responsibility. Balance the budget and pay down the debt. That is the best thing we can do for society today and in the future.