T. Gorton

I will oppose this bill as one that I consider imposes not only an unfunded but an unwarranted mandate literally on every school district, every school director, every school administrator, every teacher in the public school systems of the…

Within the $20,566,000 provided for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an estimated $4,736,000 has been identified for emergency needs in South Dakota, including emergency assistance for the Crow Creek Sioux. In distributing these amounts, I…

I fully appreciate the sentiments of the Senator from South Dakota. The President's request for emergency funding for the Bureau of Indian Affairs is $10,800,000. The Appropriation Committee's recommendation, based on updated information…

I want to introduce my remarks by expressing my view that this has been a remarkably thoughtful and important debate in the finest traditions of the Senate... But as we vote tomorrow, Mr. President, I don't believe we are going to be…

There is a bill we will be discussing later this year called McCain-Feingold, which seeks, in this Senator's judgment, to essentially shut down legislative-advocacy-type independent expressions and to make almost impossible the ability of…

In summary, then, I ask my friend from New Mexico, that is just one of the reasons that this proposed change in the balanced budget constitutional amendment is a risky gimmick, and the risk is to Social Security and its beneficiaries…

And is it not also true that whether this constitutional amendment passed or not, there would be no impact on the actual total spending of the Government of the United States or the total receipts of the United States; we would simply…

And then in several years, in a few years when the Social Security trust fund is paying out more money than it is taking in, Congress would be able to pretend that the budget was balanced when, in fact, we were running a huge deficit in…

That $5 trillion figure, you did not pull that out of thin air, did you? That is what the indicators show we would have?

And did we not take them up on that proposal and did we not, in fact, pass through the Congress of the United States a budget that would have been balanced by the year specified in the constitutional amendment and would have postponed for…

And was that not opposed by all of the people who opposed the constitutional amendment with the single exception of the then Senator from Oregon and vetoed by the President of the United States?

Is it not also true that all of those, almost all of those who opposed the balanced budget constitutional amendment 2 years ago told us all that was required to balance the budget was courage and dedication on the part of the Congress…

So is it the net result of the defeat of the constitutional amendment 2 years ago that we are simply 2 years closer to the insolvency of the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund?

Now, perhaps my friend from New Mexico, who is the chairman of the Budget Committee, and who has totally immersed himself in these problems, has a better memory than I have, but does the Senator from New Mexico remember any proposal after…

Am I not correct in remembering that we went through exactly this same debate 2 years ago at the time at which the balanced budget constitutional amendment ultimately was defeated by one vote in the Chamber of the Senate?

And we heard all of the same alarms from those who ultimately opposed the balanced budget amendment about the future of Social Security at that point?

Is that not exactly one of the forms of risky gimmicks that the Senator spoke of should we adopt this amendment?

That $12 billion increase in defense as a whole is over how long a period of time?

The first is that it is a terrible idea to allow labor-management cooperation outside of a formal union-management negotiating session; that we are still, in America, in the position we were in the 1930's in which most people who work and…

Well, it does, but in that case, in that situation, it does not differ from the general philosophy of the present law either applied to races for Congress or to the Presidency. The thrust of my criticism was that 20 years ago, we went into…

The fact is that what this does is it bans political action committees. It does not ban individuals. We have already placed restrictions on free speech by limiting the amount that an individual can contribute. So I would say to the Senator…

No. The gist of my remarks was that newspapers would gain vis-a-vis television. It will be that both will gain vis-a-vis the ability of the candidate to project his or her own idea.

The heart of this bill--and of the other provisions that move in the same direction--is that no person, other than an individual or political candidate, may make a contribution to a candidate. That is the heart of this bill. You cannot…

That is the party to which the challenger belongs and which can certainly make the determination, which was so eloquently outlined by the Senator from Wisconsin, as to whether or not that challenger is a serious one and has a real…

If we wanted to have the right kind of campaign finance reform, one of the first things we ought to do--and I am sure my friend from Washington would agree--is take the shackles off, if the Court does not do it for us, take the shackles…