[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 9, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1313-S1315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. INHOFE (for himself, Mr. Barrasso, and Mr. Burr):
  S. 3095. A bill to reduce the deficit by establishing discretionary 
caps for non-security spending; to the Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to 
announce the introduction of a bill, S. 3095. It is called the Honest 
Expenditure Limitation Act of 2010. It spells HELP. It is the HELP Act 
of 2010.
  On February 1 of 2010, President Obama released his fiscal year 2011 
budget with a funding request of $3.8 trillion. In it he announced a 3-
year freeze on discretionary spending for all nonsecurity-related 
agencies at the fiscal year 2010 levels, which amounts to a total 
spending level of $460 billion each year for those agencies. 
Nonsecurity spending is defined as all agencies except the Department 
of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of 
Veterans Affairs, the Department of State, and one of the national 
security-related agencies in the Department of Energy. The 
administration's Office of Management and Budget estimates this 
initiative will save $250 billion over the coming decade. Keep in mind, 
that is $250 billion from where it started, which I will address in a 
minute.
  On the surface, this proposal gives the President the appearance of 
being fiscally prudent--something the American people have been 
demanding of their government, especially in recent months. But when 
you look closely at the numbers he has presented, it is clear as day 
why he is able to offer this spending freeze without batting an eye. 
For one, discretionary spending has increased by 20 percent in 2 years. 
Secondly, the massive $787 billion stimulus package provided a 
substantial spending cushion for nearly every agency, making a spending 
freeze such as the President's inconsequential.
  Let's stop and look at that. We are talking about $787 billion in a 
stimulus bill, but we are also talking about having increased from 
fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010 by 20 percent. So what he is doing 
here is raising it 20 percent and then freezing it. What he ought to 
do, if he had to raise it 20 percent, is start bringing it down.
  Additionally, this spending freeze proposal does too little to 
improve the long-term fiscal aspects of our Nation. We all know we 
stand at the edge of disaster. Doug Elmendorf, who is the Director of 
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, recently testified about 
our Nation's fiscal outlook before Congress and he didn't deliver very 
good news. I will tell my colleagues what he said. He said that last 
year our budget deficit was a staggering $1.4 trillion. Remember, just 
a minute ago I said if you add up all of the--well, let's say that is 
actually more than all of the last 6 years of the Bush administration 
deficits. That amounts to less than the $1.4 trillion. So he said last 
year our budget deficit was a staggering $1.4 trillion, which 
represented

[[Page S1314]]

about 10 percent of the total economy. He expects 2010's deficit only 
slightly lower at $1.3 trillion or 9.2 percent of GDP.
  Looking further out, the average deficit between now and 2020 is 
forecast to be $600 billion per year. This is all coming from 
Elmendorf. This is the CBO we are talking about. Additionally, CBO 
estimates the amount of debt held by the public will skyrocket to $15 
trillion by 2020. If it sounds like a staggering number, that is 
because it is. When you consider the amount of interest we will be 
paying to China and Japan and others, it is embarrassing: $700 billion 
each and every year until 2020 and beyond if we do nothing about our 
rising deficit levels. In other words, if we keep on what we are doing 
right now with this administration, with the help of the Democratic 
legislators in both Houses, it is going to be $700 trillion.
  Let's do the math and put that in perspective. If $700 billion of 
interest were paid evenly by every household in the United States 
today, it would amount to more than $6,000 per household. That is kind 
of interesting. I always try to do my math. When I was fighting the 
effort by this administration to have a cap-and-trade bill which would 
have been somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion, whether you 
are talking about the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill of 2003 or 
the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2005 or the bills of 2008, or later on the 
Boxer-Sanders bill, or even going back to Kyoto, it is going to cost 
somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion. I understand when we 
talk about billions and trillions of dollars what we are really talking 
about. So I do my math all the time and say, How much is this going to 
cost my average taxpaying families in my State of Oklahoma? It amounted 
to $3,100 a year. This would have been, if they had been successful in 
passing a cap-and-trade bill--it is all dead now. They are not going to 
do it. I don't care what Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John Kerry 
say, it is history now. People are not going to pay that kind of thing 
to get nothing for it.
  Back when we were talking about the $700 billion interest that would 
be paid every year, that is what is going to happen by 2020 with this 
administration if we let it continue. That would cost each tax-paying 
family in the United States of America $6,000 per household each and 
every year after 2020.
  Put another way: The entire financial industry bailout--remember the 
famous bank bailout? I know Republicans were partially responsible for 
that too. That happened. That vote took place in this Senate on October 
1 of 2008. It was back during the Bush administration. It was back when 
Hank Paulson came in and told everybody that he was going to save our 
Nation and so Republicans bought into it and many of my good 
conservative Republican friends voted for a $700 billion bailout. I did 
not and a few others didn't, but a vast majority did. That is kind of 
interesting because that $700 billion is the same figure we are using 
right now that it will cost people by the year 2020--just the interest 
alone. But the $700 billion that we could spend on interest in 2020 
happens each and every year. We don't get anything for it. It is the 
cost of living having this much debt in the first place.
  At this rate, it will become more and more difficult for the 
government to fund priorities we truly think are important, such as 
national security and infrastructure spending. For some reason, nobody 
around here wants to spend money on infrastructure. I know I get 
criticized. I am considered to be a conservative. I have been rated the 
No. 1 most conservative Member of the Senate some time ago by the 
American Conservative Union and just last week by the National Journal. 
So you are looking at a conservative, but I am a big spender on some 
things. One is protecting America. That is what we are supposed to be 
doing around here. The other is infrastructure. We have a crumbling 
infrastructure system. Look what happened with some of the bridges 
crumbling down. I guess that was in Minnesota. People died up there. 
Our infrastructure is crumbling. It is aging. We need to do something 
about it, but I can't find anyone who wants to spend money on 
infrastructure. Instead we are spending money on social engineering.
  To combat this, several proposals have been recently introduced that 
I support. In the House, Congressman Pence and Congressmen Hensarling 
introduced a constitutional amendment that would cap the Federal 
spending at 20 percent of the economy--20 percent of GDP. It is one way 
of doing this. I think it is a good idea. I am all for it. 
Additionally, Senator DeMint introduced an amendment requiring a 
balanced budget. I am all for that. Some of my colleagues are 
supporting a year-long earmark moratorium. That is kind of phony. It 
was reported on Monday that Speaker Pelosi has suggested a year-long 
earmark moratorium as well. My colleagues need to consider a couple of 
issues in talking about earmarks.
  One, an earmark moratorium does nothing to combat the increasing 
government spending. In other words, if you have a moratorium on 
earmarks, it doesn't save a cent. Funding that would have been spent in 
earmarks will simply be spent by the Obama administration, by their 
bureaucrats. I suppose it should come as no surprise that Speaker 
Pelosi supports the Democratic administration fully funding its own 
priorities.
  Secondly, last year's earmarks accounted for only 1.5 percent of 
discretionary spending--1.5 percent. Where is the focus on the other 
98.5 percent? Where is the focus on what I call bureaucratic earmarks? 
Here is what happens. If you stop earmarks--if you read the 
Constitution, article I, section 9 of the Constitution, it says what we 
are supposed to be doing here in the House and in the Senate. We are 
supposed to be making priorities. We are supposed to be doing the 
spending, and our Founding Fathers recognize that we do a better job 
knowing what our needs are in the local communities than the central 
government does.
  If we let the President and the President's budget dictate everything 
and then we try to make changes within that, people will say, Oh, that 
is an earmark. Well, wait a minute. If you don't do that, then you are 
having the unelected bureaucrats in government in the Obama 
administration do the earmarking. So the President earmarks too. If you 
don't believe it, look at the Appropriations Conference Report, where 
the focus is on the vast majority of discretionary spending which is 
doled out every year by unelected bureaucrats.
  I wish more people would understand this, because I find that a lot 
of the people who hammer and demagog the earmark mantra are the ones 
who are the biggest spenders and it is a nice way of deviating from 
your behavior. I think something needs to be done immediately and 
seriously.
  So today I am introducing the HELP Act, as I mentioned. It is called 
the Honest Expenditure Limitation Program Act of 2010. The bill does 
three things. One, it places caps on nonsecurity discretionary spending 
which I define exactly as President Obama's budget does. I do this 
because I wish to show the similarities between what he said he wants 
to do and what I want to do. The second thing is it enforces the caps 
by sequestering any spending above the cap through across-the-board 
cuts, a process that currently applies to mandatory spending, but not 
to discretionary. Three, it disallows Congress from evading the 
sequestration cuts through a 67-vote point of order against any attempt 
to exempt new spending from this legislation. That is going to make it 
pretty tough to get through.
  Rather than simply freezing the spending as the President wants to do 
at the 2010 levels--let's keep in mind, first, he increased 
discretionary spending for a year by 20 percent, and then he wants to 
freeze it there.
  Instead of doing that for 3 years and then allowing spending to 
explode again, which is what his proposal does, my bill would actually 
cut discretionary spending for nonsecurity agencies, the same 
exemptions he has, back to fiscal year 2008 levels. It is cutting it 
back by 20 percent of what he tries to do, about $400 billion a year. 
Spending would be frozen for 5 years--not 3 years but 5 years, through 
2020. Rather than simply freezing spending levels for only 3 years and 
at an artificially high level, as the President's proposal does, my 
initiative would hold the Federal Government more accountable for the 
next

[[Page S1315]]

10 years by creating real, meaningful spending cuts and then placing 
the cap at reduced levels.
  The difference in savings between my plan and President Obama's plan 
is clearly displayed on this chart.
  If we look at the chart, the blue bars represent how nonsecurity-
related discretionary spending levels will rise over the next 10 years 
if allowed to increase. This is according to OMB's numbers.
  The red line illustrates the impact of Obama's plan and what will 
happen if spending is allowed to increase following the 3-year freezing 
on the estimates of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. They are 
nonpartisan, by the way, and very accurate. Clearly, the $250 billion 
in savings is not substantial when spread over a 10-year period. It 
really does not tighten the belt at all.
  My proposal is represented in the green bars. These are the spending 
levels. Watch as they go down over the period of time from 2010 to 
2020. We phase down spending levels from the high point in 2010 to a 
more reasonable level between 2011 and 2015 and then stay flat 
thereafter.
  My plan, when compared to the blue bars of doing nothing, will save 
more than $880 billion over the next 10 years. Let me say that again. 
By reducing nonsecurity discretionary spending levels, using the same 
definition of ``nonsecurity'' as the President is using, to 2008 levels 
and then holding them there through 2020, our Nation can save nearly $1 
trillion. When I compare my plan directly with President Obama's, my 
plan saves $634 billion more than his.
  I have made my estimates using the methodologies of the Office of 
Management and Budget, and they are probably conservative. First off, 
if you look at the history of discretionary spending, annual increases 
are far greater than what they assume they are here. Second, we do not 
estimate how much we would be saving in interest by not having to 
borrow the spending we are cutting. Overall, this proposal will likely 
save much more than the nearly $1 trillion we estimate.
  If we do nothing to curtail skyrocketing government spending or 
merely freeze it at an artificially high, elevated level for a few 
years, as the Obama administration is trying to do, we will find 
ourselves in a tragic situation. The clock is ticking. Congress is 
going to have to act.
  Some of my colleagues will probably attack this proposal because the 
hardest thing to do around here is cut spending. Without cutting 
spending, we only leave one alternative, and that is massively raising 
taxes. That is not what the American people want, and it would harm our 
economic recovery.
  Around these halls, we seem to forget. Most of the Members of the 
Senate have forgotten the recess last August when they had all the tea 
parties out there and people were yelling and screaming and people 
wanted to get involved. People were getting involved in politics who 
never had been involved before. They were concerned primarily about two 
issues. At that time, it was government-run health care and cap-and-
trade, which would have been the largest tax increase in the history of 
this country.
  Right now, the Obama administration is saying: I don't care what 
anybody says, we are going to stay with it; we are going to be tough; 
we are going to have this government-run health care system and bring 
back cap-and-trade. They have just completely forgotten what happened.
  I have to agree with Senator McConnell. I hope people remember that 
all the way through the election because that is going to repeat what I 
remember in 1994.
  Others may charge this proposal will harm the government's ability to 
help citizens in their time of need. But what is important to realize 
about this spending reduction is that it will have no impact on 
mandatory spending programs such as unemployment benefits, Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those programs are in need of reform, 
but this bill does not do that. This bill only affects the agencies 
identified by President Obama as nonsecurity.
  My bill, the HELP Act of 2010, would take President Obama's proposed 
spending freeze and truly make an impact. Rather than merely freezing 
spending at the inflated 20-percent increase of the 2010 levels, this 
would bring it back down to 2008. I think this can be done.
  I really do believe the American people are going to start getting 
involved. They have not forgotten. I was giving a speech in Florida. 
This particular group was actually Club for Growth. Their group is 
concerned about spending. I told them some of the things we could be 
doing, some of the things to watch out for. Watch out for those who say 
you can have a moratorium on earmarks and somehow affect--if you 
affected all of that, it would be something like 1.5 percent. My bill 
affects the other 98.5 percent.
  We are going to have to do it right now. If we wait, each month that 
goes by--as I said, the budget he increased and his deficit was as much 
as the last 6 entire years of the Bush administration.
  This is the HELP Act. It is one that will work, and it is one that 
has come along at the right time. Now is the time to act.

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