Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 110 Part 6.djvu/653

 CONCURRENT RESOLUTIONS-JUNE 13, 1996 110 STAT. 4475 (9) the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution will assume a net tax cut totaling $122,000,000,000 over six years, which exceeds the revenue impact of a repeal of the OBRA 93 transportation fuels tax, and will establish a reserve fund which may be used to provide other forms of tax relief, including relief from the OBRA 93 transportation fuels tax, on a deficit neutral basis. (b) SENSE OF THE SENATE.— It is the sense of the Senate that the revenue levels and procedures in this resolution provide that— (1) Congress and the President should immediately approve legislation to repeal the 4.3 cents per gallon transportation fuels tax contained in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 through the end of 1996; (2) Congress and the President should approve, through the fiscal year 1997 budget process, legislation to permanently repeal the 4.3 cents per gallon transportation fuels tax contained in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993; and (3) the savings generated by the repeal of the 4.3 cents per gallon transportation fuels tax contained in OBRA 93 should be fully passed on to consumers. SEC. 426. SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING THE USE OF BUDGETARY SAVINGS. (a) FINDINGS. —The Senate finds that— (1) in August of 1994, the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform issued an Interim Report to the President, which found that, "To ensure that today's debt and spending commitments do not unfairly burden America's children, the Government must act now. A bipartisan coalition of Congress, led by the President, must resolve the long-term imbalance between the Government's entitlement promises and the funds it will have available to pay for them"; (2) unless Congress and the President act together in a bipartisan way, overall Federal spending is projected by the Commission to rise from the current level of slightly over 22 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States (hereafter in this section referred as "GDP") to over 37 percent of GDP by the year 2030; (3) the source of that growth is not domestic discretionary spending, which is approximately the same portion of GDP now as it was in 1969, the last time at which the Federal budget was in balance; (4) mandatory spending was only 29.6 percent of the Federal budget in 1963, but is estimated to account for 72 percent of the Federal budget in the year 2003; (5) Social Security, Medicare and medicaid, together with interest on the national debt, are the largest sources of the growth of mandatory spending; (6) ensuring the long-term future of the Social Security system is essential to protecting the retirement security of the American people; (7) the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to begin spending more than it takes in by approximately the year 2013, with Federal budget deficits rising rapidly thereafter unless appropriate policy changes are made;

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