[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 35 (Monday, March 3, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1459-S1460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, next week we will be marking up and 
working on the budget for the Federal Government for fiscal year 2009. 
I wish to take a few minutes to talk a little bit about the budget we 
passed last year and to highlight a few areas of caution where I hope 
we will not repeat the mistakes this year in the budget we pass like we 
did in the budget we passed last year.
  First of all, in the fiscal year 2008 budget, the budget anticipated 
an increase in revenue--which is Washington speak for a tax increase--
of $736 billion that would be needed in order to meet the demands of 
that budget. Of course, we all know whom those tax hikes fall on. It is 
the middle-class families, the farmers, the entrepreneurs, the people 
we need in this country to remain productive and remain incentivized to 
keep our economy and job creation humming.
  Considering the economic situation we are in today, the last thing 
the Federal Government should do is increase taxes and create a wet 
blanket of deterrence on those very entrepreneurs and people who create 
the jobs.
  One example is, last year you will recall that Congress waited until 
the last possible moment to pass temporary tax relief, relieving the 
middle class from the alternative minimum tax--a tax that more and more 
middle-class families will soon pay. As a matter of fact, I think this 
is a perfect paradigm for what I have heard here as ``tax schemes 
designed to tax only the wealthy.''
  You will recall that the alternative minimum tax, as originally 
conceived,

[[Page S1460]]

was designed to tax only 155 taxpayers who were not otherwise paying 
Federal tax. But true to form for Washington, DC, and for, 
unfortunately, the Federal Government, this tax-the-wealthy scheme this 
last year affected 6 million taxpayers, and because it is not indexed 
for inflation, would have affected, if Congress had not acted, 23 
million taxpayers--from 155 to 6 million to 23 million. But because 
Congress waited until the last possible moment to pass a 1-year patch 
or relief from the alternative minimum tax for the middle class, 
millions of taxpayers will see a delay in getting their refunds--money 
that belongs to them, after all, and not to Uncle Sam.
  We also saw, unfortunately, in last year's budget an attempt 
rebuffed; a bipartisan vote that would make it more difficult to pass 
tax increases. Last year, I offered an amendment that received a strong 
bipartisan vote that created a 60-vote budget point of order against 
any legislation that raised income taxes. Even though this amendment 
found broad bipartisan support here in the light of day, behind closed 
doors in the conference, this amendment was stripped out of the 
conference report and summarily buried.
  This amendment could have sent a strong message to the taxpayers that 
their Federal Government was more interested in ending wasteful 
spending than it was in picking their pockets. Unfortunately, as a 
result of the summary execution and burial of this amendment behind 
closed doors in the conference committee, the opposite message was 
sent: that Congress is more interested in getting their hands on the 
hard-earned money taxpayers earn and spending it on bigger and bigger 
Government--obviously, the wrong message and one that a bipartisan 
group of Senators was unwilling to support in the light of day but, 
unfortunately, the conference, behind closed doors, was willing to 
embrace.
  American taxpayers got a budget that would have spent $23 billion 
above the President's request last year. Now, a friend of mine in Texas 
likes to remind me from time to time how much a billion is because we 
throw numbers around up here--a million here, a billion there. A 
billion seconds ago it was 1976. A billion seconds ago it was 1976. We 
do not even seem to flinch at a budget that Congress passed that 
exceeded the President's request by $23 billion.
  In fact, over the next 5 years, the majority budgeted $205 billion 
over the President's request. Whatever happened to being good stewards 
of the taxpayers' money and trying to control Government spending so it 
does not run amok? Thankfully, we were able to stop this unwarranted 
expansion, and we were able to remain within the President's top line 
number for the current fiscal year. At the last minute, we were able to 
do that in December.
  When it comes to entitlement reform--something the majority promised 
to make a top priority when they took power--they did absolutely 
nothing to rein in the $66 trillion long-term entitlement crisis we are 
facing. It is no secret to anybody in this institution that 
entitlements are quickly eating more and more of the budget and will 
continue to gobble up more and more of our economic resources.
  As a matter of fact, I have in my hand a PowerPoint by the U.S. 
Government Accountability Office called ``Saving Our Future Requires 
Tough Choices Today,'' pointing out that in 1966, for example, 67 
percent of the budget was discretionary spending. Today, it is 38 
percent. That is because of the growth of entitlement spending from 26 
percent in 1966 to 53 percent of the budget today. Mandatory spending, 
together with interest on the debt, amounts to 62 percent of the 
Federal budget today.

  If we do not do anything about it, by the year 2030, this Federal 
Government will be unable to fund anything else other than Medicaid, 
Medicare, Social Security, and interest on the debt.
  So I believe it is very important for us to avoid this fiscal 
meltdown--as entitlements kick in for the baby boom generation, and in 
a way that will make Government unaffordable for our children and our 
grandchildren.
  This story, as bad as it is, is even worse when you consider the fact 
that $185 billion in Social Security surpluses is spent for general 
Treasury items today. In other words, we are taking the money wage 
earners are paying into Social Security that is not currently needed to 
meet the obligations of Social Security and spending it for other 
purposes, making it even more likely that when our children and 
grandchildren come of age, they will not have any social safety net 
available to them through Social Security or Medicare.
  When you look further at this report of the Government Accountability 
Office, for fiscal year 2006 and 2007 deficits, you see that the 
deficit increases dramatically. If we do not begin to deal with reining 
in the entitlement spending crisis in this country, it will get nothing 
but worse.
  But while the news media tends to focus on deficits on an annual 
basis, the real crisis is the growing fiscal exposure due to long-term 
commitments, such as future Social Security benefits, future Medicare 
Part A benefits, future Medicare Part B benefits, future Medicare Part 
D benefits--our prescription drug provisions we passed a couple years 
ago. These lead to an ultimate liability for the American taxpayer of 
$52.7 trillion.
  So I talked about a million dollars. I talked about a billion 
dollars. Now we are talking about trillions of dollars--something that 
is nearly impossible for the human mind to conceive of, the number is 
so big.
  But let me give you a number you can understand, we can conceive of. 
Unless we deal with the growing entitlement crisis of Medicare and 
Social Security, not only will they run out of money, but the burden on 
each person in this country--the financial burden--will amount to 
$175,000 a person. So not only will we be unable to pay our young men 
and women who are working today the Social Security and Medicare 
benefits they should receive when they come of age, we will also burden 
them with a $175,000-per-person share of the Federal debt in the 
process. This is an IOU we will never repay.
  Of course, if the Federal budget continues to grow in terms of its 
requirement of paying entitlements--Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security 
and interest on the debt--as I said, by 2030 there will be no money for 
anything else. We would not have the resources for other important 
priorities, including national defense, securing our borders, 
immigration enforcement, veterans health care, or education.
  Unfortunately, the budget that passed last year allowed the debt to 
increase by $2.5 trillion over the next 5 years. In other words, the 
message is consistent: We spend now and the next generations pick up 
the tab later on. I can only beg my colleagues not to follow the 
example they set last year. We cannot afford to take more money out of 
the hands of hard-working Americans in order to grease the gears of 
bigger and bigger Government. I fear the next budget will only be more 
of the same. We should not raise taxes on working families and small 
businesses. We should not wash our hands, as we did last year, of the 
entitlement tsunami we all know is approaching and threatening to 
engulf us, and we should not allow the debt to continue to grow so that 
the $175,000 share per person of the debt will continue to get bigger 
and bigger.

  I know we can do better, and we must do better. As the Budget 
Committee takes up the 2009 budget tomorrow in the committee and on 
Thursday when we will actually mark up the budget, and when it comes to 
the floor next week, I hope all of us will work together to make sure 
we don't continue to increase taxes and further dampen and soften the 
economy in a way that hastens a recession rather than avoids it. I hope 
we will step up and accept the responsibility each of us has to make 
sure we don't spend money today to impose a financial burden on our 
children and grandchildren tomorrow. We can do better and we must do 
better.

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