George Voinovich: “before I address the merits of this amendment, I commend the chairman of the Budget Committee for his successful efforts…”

“before I address the merits of this amendment, I commend the chairman of the Budget Committee for his successful efforts to bring a budget resolution to the floor. I would like to particularly commend the chairman for including several important budget reform initiatives that will control spending and impact the soaring deficit: Extension of supermajority enforcement, reestablishment of discretionary spending limits in the Senate, reestablishment of restrictions on advance appropriations in the Senate, providing a clear definition of emergency legislation, reestablishment of the pay-as-you-go point of order in the Senate. Those are good things, but I must say I take issue with the reconciliation instructions contained in the budget resolution. As much as I oppose deficit spending, I also oppose deficit tax reduction, and these reconciliation instructions have the opposite effect of the budget reforms in the resolution. I say to my colleagues this evening that we are on the edge of a serious crisis in terms of our Federal budget. In the past decade, conservatives worked hard to return the Federal Government to a balanced budget. For a short time after hand-to-hand combat, we met our goal for 2 years in 1999 and 2000. We balanced the budget without raiding the Social Security surplus. We had an on-budget surplus. That means we did not use Social Security in 1999. In 2000, again we did not use Social Security and we had a true on-budget surplus of $87 billion.…”