Charles W. Stenholm: “many Members have called this a historic day. I slightly disagree. Today has the potential to be a historic day but only…”

“many Members have called this a historic day. I slightly disagree. Today has the potential to be a historic day but only if we are willing to do much more heavy lifting than we have been willing to do thus far. I am disappointed that the agreement missed the opportunity to make real reforms in long-term costs of entitlements. The failure of this budget to deal with the long-term problems with the growth of entitlement spending guarantees that this budget agreement will not end our budget problems. Sooner or later, we will have to come back and deal with entitlements. The gentleman from New Jersey was exactly right. Nothing in this budget agreement that I will support tonight deals with the CPI. That is a mistake. That is a weakness, not a strength. It is irresponsible for us to continue to place an unnecessary drain on the Social Security system by providing COLA's that virtually everyone acknowledges are inaccurate. A small adjustment to provide accurate COLA's would be a major step in strengthening the Social Security system. A 0.8-percent adjustment would extend the trust fund by 13 years and allow us to take it off budget honestly by 2005. I am disappointed that symbolic political arguments succeeded in blocking an agreement in the provision from the Coalition budget to require upper-income Medicare beneficiaries to contribute more for their Medicare coverage.”