[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 29, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1910-S1912]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SPENDING

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, government funding is set to expire 
next week on April 8. We are in the midst of the 2011 fiscal year that 
ends September 30, and the Congress has only appropriated money through 
April 8. If Congress does not act by that time, the government would 
shut down.
  Congress needs to act, but Congress needs to listen to the American 
people and listen to the financial experts whom we have dealt with and 
reduce spending and reduce the surging deficit we face this year, last 
predicted to be $1.4 trillion. Nothing has ever been seen like it 
before, and it has to be addressed. There is no way around it.
  So we have this deadline hanging over our heads, and the reason is, 
my colleagues in the Democratic leadership in the Senate will not agree 
to the kind of substantial but realistic spending reductions the House 
of Representatives has sent to us. The House has sent us a budget plan 
that I think will work. But what we hear is, the sky will fall if we 
trim the $61 billion from a $3.7 trillion budget--$3,700 billion that 
we spend--if we reduce that spending by $61 billion, somehow this will 
cause the country to sink into oblivion.
  The American people know better than that. That is not realistic. Of 
course, we can cut those kinds of numbers out of this huge budget we 
have, and the American people will be better off for it.
  As ranking member on the Budget Committee, I have looked at the 
numbers, and that $61 billion reduces the baseline of Federal spending 
by $61 billion this year, but over 10 years--because it is a baseline 
reduction--it would save $860 billion. This is the kind of small but 
significant step that does make a difference.
  People say: It does not make any difference. Why don't we just 
increase spending? Why do we cut spending at all? Of course, we have to 
reduce spending. The American people know the borrowed money and 
overspending of the past 2 years have failed to produce what it 
promised. Instead, all that has been achieved through this massive 
surge in Federal spending, through the stimulus package and other 
programs, is a crushing debt burden that weakens our economy and is a 
drag on our economy, as expert witnesses have told us. It threatens our 
economic future. Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator, and Erskine 
Bowles, formerly the Chief of Staff to President Clinton, were 
appointed by President Obama to cochair the debt commission. The fiscal 
commission reported to us, and jointly they submitted a written 
statement that said if the United States fails to act, it faces ``the 
most predictable economic crisis in its history.'' This is a real 
warning. They said such a crisis could arrive in as soon as 1 or 2 
years.
  People have been saying: Oh, we are on the wrong track. If we do not 
get off it, in 3 or 4 or 5 years, we are going to have a crisis. More 
and more people are warning us that crisis is sooner. Mr. Bowles said: 
In 1 year, give or take a little bit, we will have a crisis. Mr. 
Simpson said: I think within 1 year.
  The American people rightly expect their elected leaders to confront 
this threat with seriousness and candor. But the President has never 
once looked the American people in the eyes and told them the truth 
about the financial crisis we face. Has he ever discussed those kinds 
of words with the American people, that we face an actual crisis? We 
could have a debt problem that hits us very quickly, just like the one 
in 2008 that put us in a deep recession. We are in a fragile recovery 
now, and we need to keep that recovery going. The last thing we need to 
do is have another recession, or some sort of other financial collapse 
that puts more people out of work and weakens an already struggling 
economy. It is not necessary this occur.
  The President and his Budget Director have, instead of being truthful 
with us, falsely boasted to the American people that under their budget 
we will ``live within our means'' and ``not add more to the debt'' and 
that ``we're not going to spend any more money than we're taking in.'' 
He submitted his 10-year budget to the Congress, and that is what he 
says his budget will do. But not one of those statements is true--not 
one.
  When the budget was announced, Mr. Bowles, whom the President 
appointed to head the debt commission, said it is nowhere close to what 
we need to be doing to get our house in order. In fact, the 
Congressional Budget Office finds this: that our annual deficits never 
once fall below $748 billion. I was saying $600 billion before based on 
the President's estimates of his budget. Now the Congressional Budget 
Office has done an independent analysis of the President's budget, and 
they say the lowest single annual deficit, in 10 years, would be $748 
billion.

[[Page S1911]]

  Is it going down, you ask? Is this budget going to put us living 
within our means and live on what we take in? In the outyears, the 
deficits out 7, 8, 9, 10 years of the President's budget, they are 
going up. In the 10th year, the budget deficit is $1.2 trillion--a 
$1,200 billion deficit that year.
  You might ask: What do those numbers mean? We spend, this year, about 
$3.7 trillion through September 30. We take in $2.2 trillion. This is 
why we are on an unsustainable path and we have to get off of it. It is 
not a partisan matter; it is a matter of facing reality. We still have 
Members of the Senate in denial. We have the majority leader down here 
complaining that he might not get money for his cowboy poetry festival 
in Nevada. Give me a break. This country is headed on the path of great 
danger and we need to turn around.

  Imagine the fate a CEO would face if, in the process of asking for 
shareholders to buy company stock, he declared, ``We are not adding to 
the debt,'' while his accountants were telling him the company's debt 
was on a path to double, as our debt is. The President even nominated a 
deputy director for OMB, Heather Higginbottom, who has no budget 
experience and who attempted to defend these claims before the Budget 
Committee last week. I don't know, maybe they couldn't find anybody 
with experience who would take the job. The best I can tell, she has 
never had a single business course or an economics course, never 
managed any kind of organization on budget, ever. She majored, I think, 
in political science and campaigned for President Obama and Senator 
John Kerry.
  We need some seriousness here. We in Congress are not stepping up to 
the plate, frankly. We are not taking the kind of decisive action 
needed to curb our rising debt. And the majority leader, my good 
friend, Senator Reid--which is a tough job, I have to tell my 
colleagues; it is a tough job--but now he is saying the problem is 
there is a division within the Republican Party. You see, we have these 
extremists over here, the new Republicans who got elected the last 
election promising to do something about spending and they are out of 
touch. They are extremists. There are some good Republicans over here. 
They have been here a long time, and we know how to get along and cut 
deals and we are going to take care of this thing. You just have to 
keep these people under control.
  I might remind the leader that every single Republican either voted 
for the $61 billion in cuts or called for more cuts. There is no 
division in the Republican Party about the need to have reasonable and 
significant reductions in the expenditures. There is essentially 
unanimous Republican agreement that we ought to cut $61 billion or more 
from this year's discretionary budget. By contrast, the majority leader 
lost nearly one-fifth of his caucus on his proposal, which was 
basically to do nothing--reduce spending by $4 billion. Ten Members or 
more defected. They knew that wasn't enough, even under pressure from 
the President and from the majority leader. So it is clear where the 
momentum lies.
  I wish to repeat again, though: This is not and cannot be seen as a 
partisan squabble. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve talked to us a 
few weeks ago, and he submitted a written statement to the Budget 
Committee. This is what Mr. Bernanke said. He talked about the 
Congressional Budget Office debt projections. I have made some 
reference to those and how dangerous they show our path to be.
  This is what Chairman Bernanke said:

       The CBO projections, by design, ignore the adverse effects 
     that such high debt and deficits would likely have on our 
     economy. But if government debt and deficits were actually to 
     grow at the pace envisioned in this scenario, the economic 
     and financial effects would be severe. Diminishing confidence 
     on the part of investors that deficits will be brought under 
     control would likely lead to sharply rising interest rates on 
     government debt and potentially to broader financial turmoil. 
     Moreover, high rates of government borrowing would both drain 
     funds away from private capital formation and increase our 
     foreign indebtedness, with adverse long-run effects on U.S. 
     output, incomes, and standard of living.

  He goes on to say:

       It is widely understood that the federal Government is on 
     an unsustainable fiscal path. Yet, as a nation, we have done 
     little to address this critical threat to our economy. Doing 
     nothing will not be an option indefinitely; the longer we 
     wait to act, the greater the risks and the more wrenching the 
     inevitable changes to the budget will be. By contrast, the 
     prompt adoption of a credible program to reduce future 
     deficits would not only enhance the economic growth and 
     stability in the long run, but could also yield substantial 
     near-term benefits in terms of lower long-term interest rates 
     and increased consumer and business confidence.

  This is the head of the Federal Reserve, the man supposedly most 
knowledgeable about the economy of the United States of America. We are 
not making this up.
  We have a proposal from our Democratic majority in the Senate to do 
nothing, basically--to do zero, nada--despite this kind of warning.
  We are living in a fantasy world if we don't think we can cut $61 
billion from this budget. My friend John McMillan, just elected the 
director of Agriculture and Industries in Alabama, is facing a critical 
crisis in his department. I saw the headline in the paper. He has 200 
employees. He is going to have to lay off 60 of them. Cities and 
counties are doing this kind of thing all over the country. Do we think 
the State of Alabama will cease to exist if that happens? It is sad 
that they have that kind of challenge before them. We don't have to do 
that much right now, but if we took those kinds of steps--something 
significant--we could make a bigger difference than a lot of people 
realize in the debt we are facing.
  Governor Cuomo in New York and Governor Christie in New Jersey and 
Governor Brown in California and others all over the country are making 
real, significant alterations in the level of spending, while we worry 
about protecting the cowboy poetry festival in Nevada.
  Remember this--people have forgotten this. Since President Obama took 
office, Congress has increased discretionary spending on our non-
defense Federal programs by 24 percent. We didn't have the money for 
that. We never should have increased spending that much. It was a big 
error. But we know what they said: Don't worry, we are making 
investments in the future. But you have to have money to make 
investments. If you don't have money, how can you make investments? All 
of this increase was borrowed. We are in huge debt and when we increase 
spending, we have to borrow the money to increase spending. Every penny 
is borrowed. We did an $800 billion stimulus package. Every penny was 
borrowed. We pay $30 billion-plus a year interest on that borrowed 
money for as long as I am alive and longer, no doubt. There is no plan 
to pay off that debt. I know people are talking and they are working 
things out and they said they are going to try to reach a compromise so 
we don't have to shut down the government, and I certainly hope that is 
true. But I do not believe we need any tax-and-spend compromise. I will 
not support that. I don't think the American people will support it, 
either. They know we spend too much. They know we have ramped up 
spending $800 billion with the stimulus package, that nondefense 
discretionary spending has gone up 24 percent in 2 years, and they know 
we can reduce Federal spending without this country sinking into the 
ocean. That is what they expect us to do. That is what Governors and 
mayors are doing, county commissioners are doing, all over my State and 
all over America.

  We have to recognize that Washington is spending too much--not taxing 
too little. How can we ask Americans to pay more in taxes when 
Washington is not even willing to cut $61 billion?
  I have a proposition for my colleagues who wish to raise taxes before 
we consider asking the American people to pay another cent in taxes: 
Why don't we first drain every cent of waste from the Federal 
bureaucracy? We will never truly dig ourselves out of this crisis and 
put this Nation on a real path to prosperity unless we bring our 
spending under control. America's strength is measured not by the size 
of our government but by the scope of our freedoms and the vigor and 
vitality of the American people and their willingness to invest and 
work hard for the future. That is what makes us strong. Endless 
spending, taxing, and borrowing is a certain path to decline, and we 
are on that path today, and we must get out of it.
  We know the threat. We know what we need to do. The economy is trying

[[Page S1912]]

to rebound. So let's take some good steps today. Let's pass this $61 
billion reduction in spending this fiscal year. It will amount to about 
$860 billion over 10 years. It will be a very significant first step. 
That is what is before us today--not the other issues. We have to 
decide what we are going to do about funding the government between now 
and September 30. That is the rest of this fiscal year. Let's take a 
firm step on that. Let's begin to look at what we are going to do for 
next year's budget and what we are going to do about our surging 
entitlement programs that are on an unsustainable course. We can do all 
of those things and leave our country healthy and vigorous and 
prosperous for the future. I truly believe that is the kind of thing we 
need to be doing now.
  I am baffled that we don't know why the President is not leading 
more. He is not talking directly to the American people about why this 
is important. Is it just a political squabble to be ignored, with the 
President going to Rio and talking about Libya? Or is it true, as Mr. 
Bernanke says, we are on an unsustainable path? Or is it true that Mr. 
Erskine Bowles, the President's own director of the fiscal commission, 
says that we are facing the most predictable economic crisis in this 
country's history, and he said it could happen within 2 years? Are we 
making this up?
  The American people get it. They say, What is going on in Washington? 
You have to get your house in order. That is what this past election 
was about. People understand we need some action and some leadership, 
but we are not getting it. I truly believe if we could get together and 
if we could get a bipartisan effort to look at this $61 billion--we 
could disagree on how to reduce that spending; maybe the Republicans 
have this idea and the Democrats have this idea--let's work all of that 
out. But let's reach an agreement that actually reduces spending by 
enough to make a difference. Then the world would say, Wow, now the 
Congress is beginning to take some steps. That was a nice, good, strong 
first step. Now if they will stay on that path, maybe the United States 
is going to get on the road to prosperity again and stay out of this 
dangerous debt crisis area we are in today and get on the right path to 
prosperity. This country is ready to grow. It is ready to rebound. It 
just needs a clear signal from Washington, in my opinion.
  America's leaders, those of us in this Congress, have no higher duty, 
no greater moral responsibility, than to take all appropriate steps to 
protect the good people we serve from the clear and present danger we 
face.
  It is time to get busy about it, Madam President. I believe if we act 
strongly and with clarity the American people will not only support it 
but they will be happy with it, and it will make a positive difference 
for our country.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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