[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 91 (Wednesday, June 17, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6728-S6729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BROWNBACK (for himself, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Chambliss, Mr. 
        Coburn, Mr. Corker, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Ensign, Mr. 
        Enzi, Mr. Graham, Mrs. Hutchison, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Isakson, Mr. 
        Johanns, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Martinez, Mr. McCain, Mr. Risch, Mr. 
        Thune, Mr. Vitter, and Mr. Voinovich):
  S. 1282. A bill to establish a Commission on Congressional Budgetary 
Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies; to the Committee on 
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to follow up on what my 
colleague from North Dakota said regarding the financial regulatory 
issue. This is a huge problem.
  In my office, I have a debt clock running. I put it there purposely 
so people can see what it is, and it is running at $11.5 trillion. At 
this point in time, it has a dizzying amount of numbers that are 
running on it. Usually my constituents come in and say: Good, I wanted 
to get out of the waiting room. That clock is driving me crazy, the 
numbers are going so fast. It is so huge, the numbers and the rate we 
are going.
  What troubles me as well, as a member of the baby boomer generation, 
is that I look at this and I feel as though we are following on the 
heels of the ``greatest generation''--the World War II generation, with 
all the sacrifices and the things they did to make this country what it 
is. My predecessor in the seat I am in, Bob Dole, I think epitomizes 
the ``greatest generation''--the World War II generation--that 
sacrificed so much so the rest of us could live and do so well, and I 
am deeply appreciative of that. But I look at my generation, sometimes 
called the ``me generation.'' I don't know that that is particularly an 
applauding sort of title, saying it is more focused that way, but I 
think we need to, ourselves, step up a lot more for the country, for 
the people in this Nation, and deal with the problems we have.
  One of the biggest ones, as far as the legacy we leave, is the 
mortgage that is growing on this country, this $11.5 trillion I started 
off talking about. When I first started in Congress in 1994, it was 
roughly 50 percent mandatory spending and 50 percent discretionary 
spending. This year, we are looking at 70 percent mandatory spending--
between 60 and 70 percent mandatory spending, depending on what ends up 
in the final package--and 30 to 40 percent discretionary spending. And 
of that discretionary, half of that is military. So we have this huge 
growth in entitlement programs and spending programs that are on 
autopilot and that are setting that clock to going faster and faster, 
at $11.5 trillion and up.
  We are looking at a $1.8 trillion deficit this year alone. This is 
unsustainable and it is irresponsible. And it is irresponsible of the 
baby boomer generation, which has inherited and been given so much, not 
to step up and to start to deal with this. I feel very strongly about 
this, that it is something we need to start dealing with as a 
generation. I am not talking about from a party perspective, or even 
from a legislative perspective, but I am talking about it from a 
generational perspective. This is the sort of thing we need to start 
dealing with for our children's future and our grandchildren's future, 
so that when future generations come up and they look back and see the 
``greatest generation'' of World War II, they don't then look at the 
baby boomer generation and say: Well, that is the generation that used 
a lot of it up. Rather, they say: No, that was the generation that used 
a lot, but then got it together and started to address the problems of 
fiscal irresponsibility--the fiscal irresponsibility that is taking 
place in this country and in this government today.
  We have program spending that is out of control. Everybody is against 
waste, fraud, and abuse, but I have not found that line in the budget 
yet which allows us to X it out. What I am talking about here--and I 
will introduce at the end of my speech--is a bill that actually does 
start to get at that, and it does it via a mechanism that is a proven 
mechanism we have used before in this body which actually reduced 
government spending. It is called the Commission on Accountability and 
Review of Federal Agencies, CARFA. We have 20 original cosponsors, and 
it is a very simple concept that we have used before.
  It is based on the BRAC Commission--the Base Realignment and Closure 
Commission--only it applies to the rest of government, not just 
military bases. You create a commission, and the commission says 300 
bases should be closed. They send that to the administration to check 
off on that, and then it sends it to the Congress, requiring an up-or-
down vote within a limited timeframe, no amendments and a set amount of 
time to debate. Yes or no, deal or no deal: Are we going to keep the 
bases or close the bases, which way is it?
  That is the only mechanism I have ever seen us come up with in this 
body to actually cut Federal spending and to do the things we talk 
about all the time but in the trading nature of the legislative body 
never gets done. This one has actually done it, the BRAC Commission, on 
military bases, which is a substantial but certainly not all of our 
budget. So I am saying, let's take that mechanism and apply it to the 
rest of the budget, mandatory and discretionary spending, both pockets 
of this.
  I am fully open to suggestions and ideas for amendment on this bill, 
but I would break the Federal Government into four different 
categories, to where every fourth year there is a CARFA commission 
which reviews one-fourth of the budget, and then that recommendation is 
sent to the Congress to either eliminate these pieces or to keep them.
  I have a scorecard up here. It turns out that the OMB does a regular 
scoring of the effectiveness of Federal Government programs and then 
they assign a percentage out of 100 to each. I put the grade equivalent 
on it, and you can see the programs that were reviewed here: State 
Department has the highest score that I have up here, of C+ for 
effectiveness, at which the OMB scored it. The Education Department--
and I don't know what that says here--has scored below 50 percent and 
gets an F--the Education Department--on its scorecard. You can look 
through and these are the programs that are reviewed: 51 for the State 
Department; 93 for the Education Department.
  So I am saying you would have this CARFA commission go through to do 
a similar type of review for effectiveness. Those programs that would 
fail would be put in an overall bill which would say: Okay, Congress, 
keep this entire package or eliminate this entire package.
  If you eliminate them, the same year you can come back and 
reauthorize that bill and reappropriate the program if you believe it 
is effective. But this gives you an automatic culling process. It is a 
culling process that takes place on programs that have been put in the 
budget year after year and have somehow been sustained or have gotten 
supporters around them. Most programs have a number of different 
supporters around them, so they keep going on and on. Even though they 
are not particularly effective, the supporters like them, so they keep 
getting in the budget, even when we do an objective review of them and 
find out these are failed programs by our own standards.
  This is something we need to do. It is something I would hope that 
the baby boomer generation could stand up and

[[Page S6729]]

start to say it is time for us to take fiscal responsibility for the 
situation that is being created and that is unsustainable in this 
country. We are already starting to see interest rates move up. That is 
likely to continue. We are seeing people beside themselves when looking 
at the level of Federal spending, and the waste in it, and saying: What 
is going on? Can't you guys get ahold of it?
  Here is a way to actually get ahold of it and deal with it and be 
able to say to generations in future years that, yes, we stood up and 
took ownership and we dealt with the problem.
  There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a week ago where a 
gentleman was saying that the unfunded obligations of the Federal 
Government today--these are things such as the entitlement programs, 
whether it is Medicare, Social Security, veterans' benefits, and 
pension guarantees that we have--are getting close to $100 trillion. 
Those are unfunded obligations existing on the part of the Federal 
Government today. That number seems high to me, but I know if you look 
at Medicare and a couple of other ones, we are looking at nearly $60 
trillion in that category. To give some perspective, the total economy 
is $14 trillion, or thereabouts.
  This is irresponsible to the highest degree, and it is irresponsible 
to future generations, and it is time to put a mechanism in place for 
us to deal with it. I urge my colleagues to join us in cosponsoring 
this bill. I am submitting it now to the desk, with 20 cosponsors. This 
is an idea whose time has come.
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