[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 103 (Tuesday, July 13, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5766-S5768]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to continue the discussion which was 
raised by the Senator from Tennessee relative to the letter which has 
been signed by all the Republican members of the Appropriations 
Committee. This is a unique event, in my experience. I have had the 
great honor and privilege of serving on this committee now for 14 
years, and I have never participated in this type of an undertaking, 
which is basically the Appropriations Committee Republicans, at least, 
stepping up and doing the responsible thing in the area of trying to 
control the fiscal policy of this country when the Budget Committee has 
left the field.
  The Budget Committee didn't leave the field arbitrarily; it is just 
that the other side of the aisle decided they did not want to do a 
budget for some reason. Actually, I know the reason. The reason we are 
not doing a budget of the country as we are supposed to do is that the 
budget shows we are in dire straits. We are going to have a $1.4 to 
$1.6 trillion deficit this year. It looks as if next year we are going 
to have a deficit in the range of $1.4 trillion. And for the next 10 
years, every year under the Obama budget and under the spending plans 
of the Democratic leadership of this Congress, we are talking an 
average of $1 trillion a year of deficits. That adds up to a doubling 
of the debt in 5 years and a tripling of the debt in 10 years. The 
American people understand that we cannot do this, we cannot continue 
that type of profligate spending, that type of out-of-control spending.
  But, unfortunately, the other party, which now controls with 
significant majorities both the House and the Senate, is unwilling to 
step up and produce a budget which brings those numbers down, which 
makes us more responsible in the area of spending and reduces the debt 
burden on our children. So the Republican members of the Appropriations 
Committee have said: Enough. We want to stop this out-of-control 
spending. We want to have a spending proposal in place that makes 
sense. And we picked a number that is very reasonable. It is 
essentially a freeze at last year's levels. It is a number which has 
been supported, interestingly enough, on this floor when it was offered 
as the Senator Sessions-Senator McCaskill amendment on four different 
occasions, by a majority of the Senate, with all of the Republican 
Members of the Senate voting for this type of essential freeze and with 
a number--I think between 16 and 18--of Democratic Senators voting for 
this. That is because there is a full understanding, at least on our 
side of the aisle and by some Members on the other side of the aisle 
who did vote for this, that we have to do something about controlling 
spending around here.
  This letter essentially says that before we start marking up any 
bills in the Appropriations Committee, we have to have an understanding 
as to how much we are going to spend. Is that an unusual idea? Is it a 
terribly radical idea, that we should reach a number, an overall 
agreement on an overall number as to what we are going to spend around 
here before we start producing spending bills? No, it is not. It is 
exactly what the budget is supposed to do. But we do not have a budget 
for the reason I mentioned earlier--people do not want to talk about 
how big the deficit is around here because they are afraid the American 
people have already figured this out and will just get more outraged 
about it.
  What we are doing and what we are suggesting in this letter and what 
we are saying in this letter is that we as Republican members of the 
Appropriations Committee expect there to be a budget for the 
Appropriations Committee even though there was not one passed here, 
with the top-line number being essentially the number in the Sessions-
McCaskill, what amounts to a freeze proposal--freezing at 2010 levels, 
essentially--and that we will test every committee appropriations bill 
that comes forward on the basis of that number, and we hope our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, those on the Appropriations 
Committee and those who are not on the Appropriations Committee, will 
join us in this effort because it is a sincere effort and a reasonable 
effort since it was already voted on here with all of our side voting 
for it and a majority of the Senate voting for it. It is a reasonable 
number to set forward as the goal.
  Yes, it does mean a significant reduction. We have to be forthright 
about this, and this is what we need to do, quite honestly. It does 
mean a significant reduction from what the President requested. It 
means a significant reduction from what the Senate Budget

[[Page S5767]]

Committee passed in committee, which budget was never brought to the 
floor of the Senate because they did not want to shine lights even on 
that budget. There is no question it is a reduction and a fairly 
significant reduction from those numbers. But it is a reasonable number 
and it is an important number because it says we are willing to be 
disciplined about our spending around here and that is what we are 
going to have to do. We are going to have to make these types of tough 
choices. This is an effort by the Republican members of the 
Appropriations Committee to make clear that we are willing to make 
those types of difficult choices.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from New 
Hampshire would accept a question?
  Mr. GREGG. Yes, I would accept a question from the Senator from 
Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask the Senator from New Hampshire, who served as 
chairman of the Budget Committee of the Senate and is now its ranking 
member--and there is no one in the Senate more familiar with the 
numbers in the Senate budget--is it not true that this request by 
Republican members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, since it 
comes at a time when many Americans and most Senators believe the level 
of the Federal debt is at crisis levels and threatens the security of 
our country and since it comes at a time when the Congress has not 
produced a budget and it comes at a time when there have been 
substantial increases over the last year and a half in the 38 percent 
of the budget that is discretionary spending, would the Senator from 
New Hampshire, who has long served on the Budget and Appropriations 
Committees, not agree that the first job of Senate appropriators is not 
to decide where to spend the money but to decide how much money there 
is to spend, especially this year when there is no budget?
  Mr. GREGG. I think the Senator from Tennessee is absolutely right. 
How can we run a country and a government of a country if we are not 
willing to decide on how much we are going to spend and then stick to 
it? The reason we are so out of control around here in spending is 
because every week for the last 8 to 10 weeks we have seen a new bill 
brought to the floor of the Senate which has added to the debt and the 
deficit of this country.
  Interestingly enough, 8 weeks ago we passed a bill on this floor, 
with great fanfare from the other side of the aisle, called pay-go.
  That bill said all the bills that came to the floor of the Senate 
were going to be subject to a test, which essentially said that before 
you spent any money, you paid for what you are spending.
  Since we passed that bill, over $200 billion--billion--has been 
proposed or passed by the Senate which violated the very rule we 
allegedly passed to try to discipline the Senate. So it is very clear 
that unless you set out some hard parameters, unless you set out some 
very specific spending limits--and that is what the letter from the 
Appropriations Republicans does--you are not going to get any 
discipline around here. We will just bring bill after bill out of 
committee and we will spend money we do not have.
  Where does it all go? Well, it all goes to our children as debt, and 
we have to borrow it from the Chinese or we have to borrow it from 
somebody else. Then we have to pay the interest on that. That interest 
does not do us any good as a nation.
  In fact, under the President's own projections, his own budget, the 
interest on the Federal debt will exceed any other item of spending in 
the Federal budget on the discretionary side within 7 years. We will 
spend more on interest, because we are adding all of this deficit and 
debt, than we spend on national defense. What a waste of money that is. 
So unless we get some discipline around here on the spending side, this 
deficit is going to grow, the debt is going to grow.
  I saw a most interesting figure. I think the Senator from Tennessee 
has seen it too. Since President Obama has been President, for every 
second since he has become President, $56,000 has been added to the 
debt of the United States--$56,000. That is the mean income of 
Americans today. So every second he has been in office he has wiped out 
the income of some American who is working, because that income is all 
going to have to be spent to pay off that debt.
  Granted, not all that debt was his fault. But interestingly enough, 
as we go further into his administration, a large amount of it is his 
decisions and the decisions of this Congress, such as the $200 billion 
in debt that we have been adding or about to add that violates pay-go.
  This week we are going to take up another supplemental bill. Does the 
Senator know how much deficit and debt that bill will add if it is 
passed in the form the administration and the Democratic leadership 
have asked, just this week? I think it is somewhere in the vicinity of 
$20 billion to $30 billion of new deficit and debt.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wonder if I could ask the Senator 
another question. The Senator was talking about the increasing debt. Am 
I correct that it took the first 43 Presidents of the United States and 
the Congresses they served with about 230 years to run up $5.8 trillion 
in debt, but President Obama's 10-year proposal, through 2018, would 
add another $11.8 trillion?
  In other words, am I right that the first 43 Presidents piled up $5.8 
trillion in debt, and this President's 10-year budget, through 2018, 
would double that?
  Mr. GREGG. Triple it. The Senator was off by 100 percent but close. 
In the next 5 years, the President will double the national debt under 
the deficits which he is projecting under his budget. And in the next 
10 years he will triple the national debt. As you say, if you take all 
of the Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush, put 
all of the debt they have added on the books of the United States 
through all of those administrations, cumulatively, add every one 
together, President Obama will have added more debt than all of the 
prior Presidents added, the first 43 Presidents of this country, in the 
first 4\1/2\ years of his administration.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have one other question, if I may, 
for the Senator from New Hampshire. I know we sometimes hear the 
American people say, or commentators say: Well, why don't those 
Senators work across party lines and get a result?
  My question to the Senator from New Hampshire, who has years of 
experience on Appropriations and Budget, is, in the present 
circumstances where we have a debt crisis, and where we have no budget, 
no budget for next year, and we will not have, would he not agree that 
at the beginning of the process, taking a number that has been voted on 
by a majority of the Senate and has widespread bipartisan support, is a 
constructive bipartisan approach that ought to be able to gain the 
respect of Democratic appropriators and Democratic Senators, and that 
we could work together this year to essentially freeze discretionary 
spending as a first step toward reining in Federal spending?
  In other words, sometimes we see amendments around here that are 
called message amendments, each side trying to score a point. Is this 
not a proposal that deserves respect as a serious attempt to restrain 
the debt and that should earn bipartisan support?
  Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his point. That is 
absolutely valid. This is a bipartisan proposal for all intents and 
purposes. It has been voted on. I think it got 57 votes once. I think 
that was the most it got; maybe it got 58. There are only 41 
Republicans, so clearly it had a large number of Democratic votes from 
the other side of the aisle, because the number is reasonable.
  ``Freeze'' is a reasonable number on the nondefense discretionary 
side, at a time when we are running deficits that are over $1.4 
trillion. You have got to start somewhere. You know, all great journeys 
begin with a step. So this is the place we should start, right here, by 
freezing nondefense discretionary spending. We, as Republican 
appropriators, have said we are willing to do it. I certainly think the 
Senator from Tennessee is absolutely right; this is an attempt to reach 
across the aisle and bring in a bipartisan coalition to accomplish 
this, using a number which has already received significant bipartisan 
support.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator.

[[Page S5768]]

  Mr. GREGG. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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