[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 84 (Tuesday, May 22, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6463-S6464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. GREGG (for himself, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Domenici, 
        Mr. Allard, Mr. Enzi, Mr. Bunning, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Ensign, Mr. 
        Cornyn, Mr. Graham, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Brownback, 
        Mr. Craig, Mr. Sununu, Mr. Martinez, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Vitter, 
        Mr. Chambliss, Mr. Isakson, Mrs. Dole, Mr. DeMint, Mr. 
        Voinovich, Mr. Thune, and Mr. Lott):
  S. 15. A bill to establish a new budget process to create a 
comprehensive plan to rein in spending, reduce the deficit, and regain 
control of the Federal budget process; to the Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I rise today to talk specifically about 
how we get our fiscal house in order as a nation and especially as a 
government. Just last week, the Congress passed--or at least the Senate 
passed and the House passed--a proposal for a budget which, 
unfortunately, fails the American people dramatically in the area of 
controlling spending and in the area of good tax policy. It creates a 
cascade. It is a Democratic budget that creates a cascade of new 
spending, hundreds of billions of dollars of new spending which will 
grow the size of the Government dramatically and which is, therefore, 
undisciplined in its approach.
  It also proposes tax policy which will radically increase taxes on 
working Americans and have the effect of stifling what has been an 
extraordinary economic expansion, which in part has been a function of 
having a tax policy which understands that if you let people keep their 
money, they tend to be more productive with those dollars, they tend to 
go out and take risks, be entrepreneurs, create jobs, and as a result, 
the Federal Government gets more revenue because people creating these 
jobs pay taxes and we end up with more economic activity. We have had 
72 months of growth, and we have created 7.4 million new jobs in this 
country, and that is a significant step in the right direction toward 
economic expansion.
  But all that is at risk because we, as a government, tend to spend 
more than we take in, and we do not have in place a discipline 
necessary as a government to effectively manage our own house. This was 
reflected in the budget that was just passed, regrettably. Therefore, 
as we also look to the future, we are confronting a cost to the 
Government which is going to radically increase the expenditures of the 
Federal Government to a point where our children and our children's 
children will not be able to afford them.
  In fact, just the cost of three programs alone--Medicare, Social 
Security, and Medicaid--by the year 2025, because of the retirement of 
the baby boom generation, will actually exceed the amount of money 
which the Federal Government has historically spent as a percentage of 
gross national product. So by about the year 2025, because of the 
retirement of the baby boom generation, three programs--Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--will absorb all the money that 
historically the Federal Government has spent, which means there will 
be no money left over for education, laying out roads, or environmental 
protection.
  We will be in a position where our children, in order to bear the 
burden of those three programs, will have to pay a tax rate which will 
make it impossible for them to afford their own Government and will 
make their lifestyle significantly constrained. The pressure on them 
will be dramatic because the burden of taxes will exceed their ability 
to pay them and still maintain a quality lifestyle. Their ability to 
send their children to college, to buy a house, to have a good 
lifestyle, to have the luxuries which our generation has had will be 
constrained by the fact that the size of the Federal Government is 
growing out of control as a function of the retirement of the baby boom 
generation.
  So these two events combined--the dramatic expansion in entitlement 
spending and the Democratic budget which was essentially grossly 
irresponsible in the area of spending on the discretionary side of the 
account and in the area of creating debt; it will add $2.5 trillion of 
new debt to the Federal Government over the 5 years of this budget--
these two events combined are going to put a lot of pressure on our 
economy and on the well-being of our Nation.
  A group of us believe very strongly that we need to put in place 
mechanisms in this Government which more effectively discipline the 
spending of the Government. So I am introducing today, along with 27 
colleagues--and that is a fair number of cosponsors--the Stop Over-
Spending Act, SOS. This bill has eight basic elements. I am not going 
to go through them all, but I

[[Page S6464]]

wish to highlight the ones that are significant.
  Basically, what this bill does is it puts in place disciplines which 
allow this Congress, if it desires to do so--all of these disciplines 
can be waived by 60-vote points of order, basically--if Congress 
desires to do so, it can limit the growth of the Federal Government to 
something that is affordable to the American people.
  The most important discipline this bill puts in place is one over 
entitlement spending. Right now, we have nothing that controls 
entitlement spending. This bill says that if entitlement spending 
reaches a certain level of use of general funds of the Treasury--and 
most of these entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid--are not supposed to be overwhelming burdens on the general 
fund, the general fund being basic income taxes, not retirement taxes 
and health insurance taxes--if the burden of these programs exceeds a 
certain level, then there are mechanisms which allow us to take a 
second look at these programs to improve them, to make them cost-
effective while delivering quality services.
  In addition, this proposal puts in place caps, serious caps on 
discretionary spending so that we know that when you hit a certain 
level of spending and you are trying to exceed the amount of money the 
Federal Government should spend, there will be a 60-vote point of order 
before that can occur. That is only reasonable, that is only good 
budgeting, and it is something we need to have in place.
  Unfortunately, the Democratic budget which was just passed 
essentially got rid of caps for the year 2009, 2010, and it puts them 
in place for 2008, but that is almost irrelevant because it raises them 
so high that there is no way anybody is going to hit those caps unless 
they are truly spendthrifts.
  They basically add $200 billion of new spending over the next 5 
years, and next year they dramatically increase spending, both through 
taking programs off the budget by declaring them emergencies, such as 
in the agricultural area, and putting them into the next year through 
advanced funding, which is a total gamesmanship, and then actually 
increasing the spending levels under the discretionary account. It is a 
grossly irresponsible cascade of new spending we see coming at us next 
year as a result of this Democratic budget. This Stop Over-Spending Act 
will try to discipline that in a more effective way, and it is time we 
did that.
  In addition, it puts in place two very aggressive proposals to try to 
take a look at how we are managing the bigger programs of the Federal 
Government. One is a proposal which came from Senator Brownback which 
is a bipartisan commission on accountability and Federal review. It is 
basically a BRAC commission for all the Federal Government. So if we 
find programs that are overlapping--and believe me, there are an awful 
lot of overlapping programs in the Federal Government--if we find 
programs that are just not producing the results they are supposed to 
produce or which have served their time, which were supposed to be 3-
year programs and they have been going on for 10, 15 years, we will 
have a mechanism where those programs can come back to the Congress and 
voted up or down, either they should be in place or not in place, the 
same way we approach managing the defense spending accounts through 
BRAC.
  There is a second commission put in place which, again, has an 
automatic vote by the Congress, which is an attempt to address the most 
significant issue we have, which is this entitlement spending issue 
which was reflected in the chart I held up earlier. This is a 
commission which would be set up, which would be bipartisan, which 
would be Members of the Congress, and which would essentially take a 
look at these programs--Social Security and Medicare specifically--and 
see how we can improve them, see how we can make them work more 
effectively but see how we can make them more affordable for our 
children, and then in a bipartisan way, with an overwhelming 
supermajority, so there is no question that anybody will be gamed, 
everybody will be at the table, and nobody will be gamed, bring those 
proposals back to Congress and vote them up or down without amendment 
so that we know this commission, when it makes a report, will actually 
get action from a report.
  The problem is that we get all these commissions and they produce 
wonderful reports and nothing happens. This commission will have 
something happening. It is a critical element. It is important.
  If we don't get on this issue of mandatory spending, we will be 
irresponsible as a generation. We are the generation that created this 
problem, the baby boom generation. We are the generation governing 
today. Probably 80 percent of the people in this body are of the baby 
boom generation. And what we are doing is burying our heads in the sand 
and passing what we know is a huge problem--which is going to occur 
because all the people who are going to create this problem exist and 
they are going to retire--we are going to pass that problem on to our 
children and say: You figure it out, even though it is a problem we 
created. That is irresponsible.
  As people who have obtained a position of governing in this country, 
we have an absolute responsibility to our children and our children's 
children and to this Nation's fiscal health to address this issue, and 
this commission is an attempt to do that. This Stop Over-Spending Act 
is an attempt to do just that.
  In addition, the proposal includes biannual budgeting, which is 
something many people around here think will help us be more efficient 
in the way we approach the accounts of the Federal Government. It 
changes and reforms a lot of what are institutional mechanisms for the 
purposes of managing the day-to-day business of the spending of the 
Federal Government by putting in place baselines which are appropriate 
and limitations on the ability to spend money around here under 
reconciliation and limitations on the ability to raise taxes 
arbitrarily on the American people.
  So it is a balanced approach. It has 27 cosponsors, and, quite 
honestly, if a percentage of these proposals were adopted, we would 
actually have some discipline around this place in the area of fiscal 
policy. We would be back on a path toward making sure we have a 
government that people can afford, while we still have a government 
that is delivering the services that people want. That should be our 
bottom-line goal.
  It is an honor for me to have a chance to introduce this today, to be 
the primary sponsor of it, but I especially appreciate the support of 
my colleagues in signing onto this bill, which I hope will be 
considered or at least elements of this bill will be considered because 
we are running out of time.
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