Sen. Bob Graham: “I will quote one paragraph from this article. The headline-grabbing news in the CBO report was that the Clinton plan…”

“I will quote one paragraph from this article. The headline-grabbing news in the CBO report was that the Clinton plan would not reduce the budget deficit by $59 billion over the next five years, as the administration had estimated, but increase it by $74 billion. That $133 billion difference of opinion may have more political than economic significance: Both predict that the Clinton plan would begin saving money for the government, business and consumers by the year 2000. One effect of the economic significance of that is that we cannot depend on health care to keep this trend line going down. To the contrary, according to the CBO report, health care is going to contribute to an escalation of the deficit by the end of this decade. That, Mr. President, underscores the importance of the amendment that we offer today, and that is that this amendment gives us some hope of keeping that trend line aimed in a downward direction for the balance of this decade toward the goal of a balanced Federal budget. Our amendment is not an easy one. It asks for considerable sacrifice. It begins with the premise that Congress should first cut its own spending before cutting that of others. In that spirit, we have proposed reducing the legislative branch appropriations by 7.5 percent and the congressional franking budget by 30 percent.”