Pete Domenici: “We are struggling today to see if we can make a deal with the President of the United States. We are trying to get a…”

“We are struggling today to see if we can make a deal with the President of the United States. We are trying to get a balanced budget by the year 2002. It is hard to do. The President struggled, he said, with putting one together and said how hard it was. We are now looking at how we would do it and we say the President's is not a very good budget, but still we have to get there. If, in fact, we got a constitutional amendment like the one my friend from Nevada offers, it says you will be balanced in 2002 without Social Security surpluses being counted. I will just tell you what the President would have to add to his budget in order to be in balance under that definition by 2002: $75 billion more in Medicare cuts. We are having trouble, arguing between $120 billion in savings and $160 billion in savings. But you would have to add $75 billion to the President's. Mr. President, $35 billion more in Medicaid; $28 billion more in civil service, military retirement, and other mandatories, and $158 billion more in education, environment, law enforcement and discretionary spending. Mr. President and fellow Senators, we all know that cannot happen. I mean, we cannot even settle on a balanced budget using the unified budget. It is difficult to get done. So I must submit, in all deference and with as much respect as possible, that the Reid amendment is not intended to become the law of the land.”