Space

Imagine Senators telling old people we are cutting Medicare by $270 billion and telling poor people we are cutting Medicaid by $180 billion. What do we say to the Defense Department? Have it all; just have what you want. Do you want to kill the ABM treaty so the Russians have no choice but to start rearming? Do you want to build all the weapons systems that really have no meaning in today's world? Here is the proof of the pudding.

The United States is spending $280 billion this year, counting the Energy Department's budget, on defense; the eight biggest military nations on Earth outside NATO--Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Cuba, our most likely adversaries--t he combined total budgets of all eight nations is $121 billion.

We are spending twice as much in the United States alone as our eight most likely adversaries combined. When we add NATO spending of $250 billion, the United States and NATO are spending four times more than all these nations combined. Mr. President, this sounds like sheer lunacy, because it is.

In a few days, the Budget Committee will send over all their mandatory spending instructions to the committees to report back to them by September 22. Then CBO will certify that the budget really will be in balance in the year 2002. Then the Budget Commit tee will tell the Finance Committee, `Come up with a big tax cut of $245 billion over the next 7 years,' and then the Budget Committee will combine all of this mandatory savings legislation with a tax cut bill, and it is all going to be passed in one fell swoop.

What does that mean? That means that we will pass a tax cut this fall. We will pass this budget, and all the appropriations bills that go with it, and then we will be free to have an immediate tax cut.

Then next year, it will require only 51 votes to undo every bit of our balanced budget. If we have a recession, a war, if we have a trade war, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, every Senator in this body will fall all over himself to vote to pay for every bit of it, and there goes our balanced budget because we will have already passed a $245 billion tax cut.