Lincoln Chafee: “I appreciate the suggestions that the Senator from Massachusetts made. Tax expenditures--I suppose he is talking about…”

“I appreciate the suggestions that the Senator from Massachusetts made. Tax expenditures--I suppose he is talking about, first of all, a whole series of things. Whether we should be providing pensions, deductible pensions, or whether we are talking about in the tax expenditures, whether he is talking about depreciation. I do not find those objectionable. But never mind. It seems to me it would behoove everyone to come up with plans. That is, if the Senator and the administration do not like the Republican proposal for doing something about this balanced budget by the year 2002, which is a very reasonable goal to reach. We have no wars, times are relatively good, inflation is low, unemployment is low, relatively low, and this is the time to gun for this balanced budget amendment, balanced budget situation. But the administration has not done that. It has chosen not to do that. All right, how about the Democratic Senators doing it themselves? I would be interested to see what they come up with, because this is very, very difficult. And every step that we take, we being the Republicans who have come up with this balanced budget, we are going to be attacked. And there are going to be wonderful things to attack us on. But at least we are trying to get there. I think as a part of a sense of responsibility, if you want to call it that, that it would be wise, it would be helpful if others came up with their approach. Maybe you can do it better than we can do it.”