Chuck Grassley: “the Senator from Texas just gave a very good explanation of what was in the bill that the President vetoed. I think it…”

“the Senator from Texas just gave a very good explanation of what was in the bill that the President vetoed. I think it is a good exercise once in a while to remind ourselves and the public--because the public is cynical about whether or not we ever kept our commitments of the last 15 years to pass a balanced budget--that we passed a bill, a 1,800-page bill. This balanced budget legislation was the product of 8 months of work by 13 different committees in this body to balance the budget; not only balance the budget but to help lower mortgage interest rates down by $2,300 a year, student loan interest rates by $603 a year, and interest rates on a car loan by $150 a year. You can go on and on about the benefits of balancing the budget by reducing the interest rates by 2 percent, according to Greenspan, but Congress also offered all of the things that the Senator from Texas referred to--IRA's for homemakers, expanding IRA's for everybody, a $1,000 tax cut for a family of four, and estate tax reductions, and welfare reform that turns welfare over from the Federal bureaucracy to the States to administer because the States are doing a better job of it than we are in Washington, saving the taxpayers $58 billion, and saving Medicare from bankruptcy in 6 years. Medicare is going to be bankrupt in 6 years. We knew that a year ago. That is why we addressed the issue in this bill. This is the bill that President Clinton vetoed.”