[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 60 (Thursday, May 5, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2709-S2712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, at some time in the not too distant 
future--there is some speculation about exactly when--our country will 
be dealing with the issue of exceeding our borrowing authority. In 
other words, we have maxed out our credit card. That would be the 
equivalent for the average family when they can't borrow any more 
money.
  So what happens in that event is that Congress has to take action. 
Congress essentially has to raise the country's borrowing authority. It 
is called raising the debt limit. We are coming up on that point in 
time. It could happen sometime in the July-August timeframe. There is 
some uncertainty as to exactly when that happens, but the point is it 
will happen.
  The reason it will happen is because we have now accumulated $14.3 
trillion in debt, and we have hit the limit, the cap, that exists today 
on our borrowing authority.
  Now, $14.3 trillion in the abstract is hard for most people to wrap 
their heads around because it is such a massive number. If we translate 
it into individual terms, it amounts to about $46,000 for every single 
person in the United States, which in and of itself is an astonishing 
amount.
  Our projected deficit this year is $1.425 trillion, which is the 
largest ever, in nominal terms. According to CBO, it is the second 
largest as a share of the economy, literally, since World War II. That 
is as much debt as we ran up from our Nation's founding, going back to 
the origin of this country up until 1984 or the equivalent, just in 
this one single year that we are going to rack up in terms of the 
deficit. The interest on that amounts to about $213 billion every 
single year or nearly $700 for every person in the United States. That 
is assuming interest rates stay at these historically low levels.
  While the deficit spending is, in fact, something that will merely 
delay taxes in the future that somebody is going to have to pay, at 
some point this is going to have to be paid off, and that burden, in 
all likelihood, is going to fall on our children and grandchildren. But 
it is not just something we will have to deal with down the road 
because the implications today, the real-time implications of this 
level of spending and debt, are very real for the economy.

  There is a great body of research that has been done. A study done by 
economists Reinhart and Rogoff found that countries with a debt-to-GDP 
ratio of more than 90 percent grew at 1 percentage point less than they 
would have otherwise. That is a body of research that looks at nations 
over the last half century. It even goes back further than that but 
particularly in the last half century and particularly developed 
nations that have gotten up to that level of debt that exceeds 90 
percent of GDP. That is where we are today, 93 percent government debt-
to-GDP ratio here in the United States.
  If you take that assumption that anytime you reach that debt level 
and you sustain it over a long period of time, it costs you a single 
percentage point of economic growth every single year, according to the 
President's own economic team, that results in the loss of about 1 
million jobs. If you think about the real-time implications of this 
level of spending and debt, it means we are losing about 1 million jobs 
every single year in the economy.
  You cannot say this is something down the road, that we can continue 
to kick the can down the road. The fact is we are running out of road. 
We keep kicking the can, but we are at the end of the road. If we do 
not take steps now, not only is it going to put a crushing burden of 
debt on future generations and jeopardize the very foundation of our 
economy, it is going to have real-time implications today, not just in 
the future.
  I suggest that as we look at this issue of the debt limit coming up, 
it presents a unique opportunity. I hope my colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, can come together. If we do not 
bring this debt-to-GDP ratio back down, we are going to continue to 
suffer from these job losses, and the impact of that is really very 
clear.
  When the government is out there borrowing more money, it crowds out 
private investment, so there is less money for private companies and 
individuals to invest in companies, equipment, plants, housing, 
training, all those sorts of things, and it spends money on government, 
on things that are probably less efficient, less necessary, more 
duplicative, oftentimes downright wasteful when it comes to the 
programs and the projects that end up being funded. It means instead of 
investing, having funding for new factories for people to work in, we 
have more bureaucrats in places such as the EPA or the National Labor 
Relations Board who are coming up with all kinds of new regulations 
that are making it more difficult for our small businesses to create 
jobs. We have more unnecessary Federal property being underutilized 
that the private sector could use more efficiently.
  Unfortunately, the risk to our economy that comes from this out-of-
control spending is more than just that, it is more than just the 
crowding out of private sector investment and the stifling effects of 
government regulation. We are beginning to face the very real 
possibility that our country could face a fiscal crisis. Former 
Chairman Greenspan has suggested that the risk of this occurring in the 
next few years is nearly 50-50--an alarming thought. Likewise, Standard 
& Poor's recently warned of a possible downgrade to the U.S. credit 
rating in the next 2 to 3 years, when they came out with their 
assessment of U.S. credit, and said they have attached a negative 
assessment to it. In most cases--at least in a majority of the cases--
within a year's time, that leads to a downgrade of credit rating. That 
would be disastrous for a country such as ours which has always taken 
great pride and has been the rock out there when it comes to an AAA 
credit rating.
  It is notoriously difficult to predict ultimately when a debt crisis 
might occur, but it would be inexcusable for us to continue to spend at 
these elevated levels without assuming there is even the slightest hint 
of a risk that this could be very devastating to our country, let alone 
that risk could be very high. But if it were to occur, we would need 
drastic spending cuts to drag ourselves out of this fiscal crisis, 
spending cuts that by today's standards would probably be unimaginable.
  But the worst effect of this would be the deep recession it would 
throw our economy into. Think about that. If we did have a debt crisis 
in this country, what would that mean? For most people, it is going to 
mean higher interest rates, it is going to lead to countless job 
losses, pay cuts for a lot of people if you have job losses, and 
probably significant loss of savings, which would take a terrible toll 
on the American people. Those are many of the implications of a debt 
crisis and the implications it would have on the economy--starting, as 
I said earlier, with higher interest rates. It would make it more 
difficult for people to borrow money for a home, for a car, for their 
business. All those sorts of things would be impacted.
  But that does not have to be the case. The reason it does not is 
because most experts have suggested--and it is really true--that this 
is the most predictable economic crisis we have ever had. It is not as 
though we don't see it coming. You see all the warning signs out there. 
You see all the red flags out

[[Page S2710]]

there. It is looking us right in the face. We have an opportunity to do 
something about it, but it will require that we have the political 
courage to take on this issue of Federal spending.
  Next week, we are going to have an opportunity in the Budget 
Committee to mark up the 2012 budget, which, incidentally--the budget 
year starts in a mere 5 months from now. I hope this budget will focus 
primarily on cutting spending because I think that is the primary 
driver of our deficits. I am concerned that, instead, it will merely 
continue to spend too much, borrow too much, and tax too much.
  Of course, last year, even though there was a markup in the Budget 
Committee, there was never a budget brought to the floor of the Senate. 
The Congress never passed a budget. Nor was there one brought to the 
floor of the House of Representatives. There was not even a vote on a 
budget in the House or the Senate last year. We have a $3.8 trillion 
enterprise called the Federal Government that did not even pass a 
budget.
  I believe the most fundamental responsibility we have to the 
taxpayers of this country is to come up with a plan about how we are 
going to responsibly use their tax dollars, to indicate to them that 
they can expect a good return from those tax dollars by the way we do 
our budget. Frankly, that did not happen last year. I certainly hope it 
does this year, but it is going to take some leadership here in the 
Congress. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans have the 
majority. They did pass a budget out of the House. I hope the Senate 
Democrats here will also put a budget on the floor that we will be able 
to vote on and amend and have a meaningful discussion about spending 
and debt and what we are going to do to get this country back on a path 
of fiscal sustainability.
  The President, I think you could argue, punted when it comes to the 
issue of spending and debt, first by saying: I am going to appoint a 
commission to look at this issue. The economists studied it for several 
months and came out with some findings and ultimately a report in which 
they put forward a series of recommendations for dealing with the 
fiscal crisis. The President sort of distanced himself from those 
recommendations, chose not to take those or to really engage with that 
commission and its recommendations, and then subsequent to that 
submitted a budget this year which, ironically, did not do anything to 
address the long-term issues of spending and debt but, rather, 
increased spending over the next decade, massively increased the debt, 
and increased a lot of taxes on small businesses in this country that 
are job creators. So you did have this issue: borrowing, spending, and 
debt continually being advanced and put forward by this President and 
by many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle here in the 
Congress.
  The House Republicans put out a proposal that has been criticized by 
some, but at least they have put forward a plan. They have engaged the 
issue of what we are going to do to rein in out-of-control spending 
both in the near term but also in the longer term with the entitlement 
programs--Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid--which represent 60 
percent of all Federal spending. If we do not rein those programs in or 
come up with a way of reforming those programs so they are viable, when 
the 80 million baby boomers retire, we are headed for a train wreck. It 
is inevitable. You cannot, with the numbers facing us and the kinds of 
deficits we are already running, the amount of debt we have already 
accumulated, in any way assume we can get out of this crisis absent 
taking on these issues and coming up with meaningful reforms for Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Whether or not you subscribe to or 
like the proposals that were put forward by the House Republicans, at 
least there is a plan out there.
  There are a number of suggestions being bandied around here in the 
Senate. There is a gang of 6 that is looking at some recommendations. 
As I said, there is going to be a markup we think next week in the 
Senate Budget Committee. There is now this new commission the President 
has appointed to look at the issue of, as we approach the vote on the 
debt limit, what we can do to address spending and debt. But, frankly, 
we do not have at this point anything in front of us that does deal 
directly or meaningfully with this issue of out-of-control spending or 
debt. I hope some of these discussions are fruitful, that they lead to 
results, and that they at least put alternatives out there we can 
debate and discuss. But as of right now, the only proposal we have in 
front of us is the one put forward by the House Republicans. Again, 
whether or not you like it, it has created a discussion in this country 
about what we are going to do to fix our fiscal problems.
  I believe we ought to at a minimum go back to 2008 spending levels 
because if we did that, it would take us back to a time before we had 
these massive runups or increases in discretionary spending. In the 
last 2 years, we have seen discretionary spending increase by well over 
20 percent at a time when inflation in the overall economy was a mere 2 
percent. So Federal spending was increasing literally 10 times the rate 
of inflation over the last 2 years. It makes sense to me that in this 
fiscal environment where our deficits are literally about $1.5 trillion 
every single year as far as the eye can see, the least we can do is 
restrain spending and cut it back to that level we were at in 2008, 
before we had this massive runup in spending. I think that is a 
starting point.
  I believe we also ought to be looking at the entitlement programs, 
which, as I said, have trillions of dollars literally of unfunded 
liabilities. Medicare alone is a $38 trillion unfunded liability. We 
are currently on a path where that will bankrupt the Nation if we do 
not make changes.
  It strikes me, at least, that you have not only some issues that deal 
with the near-term spending issues but also those longer term spending 
issues. In the near term, as I said, if we went back to 2008 levels, we 
would at least tighten our belts a little bit in a way that I think 
most Americans would find to be responsible. But the longer term issue, 
these entitlement programs, have to be taken up.
  There are a series of proposals that would deal with that, one of 
which is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That, 
frankly, is something I support. I have supported it since I was in the 
House of Representatives; I have been a cosponsor of that. In fact, 
when I first got to Congress back in 1997, there was a vote here in the 
Senate on a balanced budget amendment which failed by one vote. It 
would take 67 votes in the Senate--two-thirds of the Senate--to approve 
a balanced budget amendment. It failed by one vote.
  I assume, had it passed at that time in the Senate, we would have 
been able to pass it in the House of Representatives because we did 
have large majorities and we could have sent it on to the States. It 
takes 38 States to ratify it, but since most States already have 
balanced budget amendments in their constitutions, I suspect they would 
like to see their Federal Government operate with the same sort of 
fiscal discipline. But it did not pass at that time. I cannot imagine 
how different our world would be today had it passed 15 years ago and 
how different this fiscal picture would have looked because it would 
have put a straitjacket on Washington, DC--something we desperately 
need. Congress needs discipline imposed upon it. It has not 
demonstrated historically the capability to deal with these fiscal 
issues absent some sort of mechanism that puts a straitjacket on the 
Congress so it cannot spend money.
  The balanced budget amendment is something I think we ought to have a 
debate about, and I hope we do. In the lead-up to the vote on this debt 
limit, this is one of the proposals we hope to have considered.
  As I said before, there are so many States around the country that 
have balanced budget amendments to their constitutions. Our State of 
South Dakota is a good example. In the State of South Dakota, the 
legislature cannot go home until the budget is balanced. That is a 
requirement. Many States across the country have that same sort of 
requirement. It is an imperative that requires these States every 
single year to put their books in order. That is something which is 
desperately lacking here in Washington, DC, and I hope, again, we could 
enact a balanced budget amendment.
  There are several that have been proposed. I am a cosponsor of a 
couple of

[[Page S2711]]

different versions of that, but we have 47 Republicans who are on a 
balanced budget amendment, and I hope our colleagues on the other side 
will join us in at least bringing that to a vote, putting it before the 
American people, and engaging them in a debate about how best to solve 
our Nation's fiscal problems. I think they would agree that a balanced 
budget amendment is a very simple, straightforward way in which to do 
that.
  I also believe we ought to reform our budget process because it is 
clearly broken. We have a dysfunctional budget process when we cannot 
pass a budget, when we have a $3.8 trillion enterprise such as the 
Federal Government and we do not even pass a budget. In most years, 
typically, we have--if there is a budget that passes, the 
appropriations bills that follow it are supposed to be completed by the 
end of the fiscal year, on September 30. Those deadlines routinely are 
missed.
  Typically, what happens is we end up with a big so-called omnibus 
spending bill at the end of the year that wraps all the various 
appropriations bills into one massive spending bill, which I do not 
believe serves the taxpayers very well. It certainly does not allow us, 
as Members of Congress, to do the appropriate oversight that we should 
do on various individual agencies of government.
  When we throw it all into one big spending bill, as so often happens 
around here, we lose the transparency and the accountability that is 
necessary to an effective functioning government. So I believe we ought 
to reform the budget process.
  One of the ways I would do that is to go to a biennial budget. 
Instead of passing a budget every single year, we would do it every 
other year. We do it in the odd-numbered years, the years when people 
are not running for reelection. Because what happens in a year when 
people are running for reelection is they decide the best way to gain 
the favor of the voters is to provide more money for this particular 
program or this program or this constituency or that constituency. As a 
consequence, there is a momentum to spend more and more money. It 
strike me that one of the ways we could address that is to do a budget 
in the odd-numbered years when Members of Congress are not running for 
reelection. Then, in the even-numbered years, when they are, we look at 
ways of not how can we spend money but how can we save money. We do 
more oversight, which is something that is desperately lacking, because 
many of these Federal programs and agencies so often times sort of do 
their own thing, absent the appropriate level of oversight. I believe 
we have a responsibility, as Members of Congress, with whom the 
legislative responsibility, the power of the purse is entrusted by the 
Constitution, to do the right types of oversight.
  I came across recently a good example when the Government 
Accountability Office came out with a report. In that report they 
referenced several different programs. In fact, they dealt with about 
one-third of all Federal spending. But in examining that one-third of 
Federal spending, they concluded that there are all kinds of 
duplications and redundancies in Federal spending.
  I will just give a couple by way of example. They discovered that 
there are 82 programs, spread across 20 different Federal agencies, 
that deal with the issue of teacher training, that are designed to 
focus on the issue of teacher training.
  Well, I suspect it is arguable about whether that is something the 
Federal Government ought to be doing in the first place, but it is 
certainly--I think any American would agree--absolutely insane to have 
82 different programs in 20 different agencies doing the same thing.
  Something else they discovered was that there are 56 Federal programs 
that are focused on the issue of teaching financial literacy. I have 
said this before, and I mean it sincerely, of all places, Washington, 
DC, should not be leading or doing instructions on financial literacy. 
But that being said, it is 56 programs spread across 10 different 
agencies. Do we need that?
  That is the kind of thing that gets lost. That is the duplication and 
inefficiency and waste we all talk about. Yet, because we do not do the 
oversight we need to, many of these things just continue year after 
year.
  Going to a biennial budget, where every other year we do a budget and 
then in the even-numbered years, the election years, we are doing 
oversight, we might actually think of ways to save money for the 
taxpayers as opposed to spending it.
  So a biennial budget, to me, makes sense. I would make the budget 
resolution we pass binding because right now it is not. As a 
consequence, it often gets waived. I believe we need to have buy-in 
from the President. Right now, the budget resolution is passed by the 
House and the Senate, but the White House does not engage on that. So 
we do not have teeth in this thing that holds everybody accountable 
when it comes to spending. Too often that gets waived.
  We need to change the way we do things around here with regard to 
declaring emergencies. Right now, if we want to spend money outside the 
parameters of the budget, everybody says: Well, it is an emergency. So 
declaring an emergency has become the norm rather than the exception. 
It has become the routine in the Congress. We have all these emergency 
designations which allow Congress to spend and spend. Again, there are 
not any constraints. It is high time we change that.
  So I would make a number of changes in our budget process, which I 
think would lead to more transparency, more accountability, a more 
efficient, better-run Federal Government.
  That being said, it is not the Federal Government that is going to 
lead us back to an economic recovery and getting people back to work. 
It is the hard-working entrepreneurs, it is the small businesses, it is 
the people in this country who roll up their sleeves every day and go 
to work trying to make this country stronger and more prosperous.
  We are blessed because we have a nation that was founded on some core 
principles, one of which is economic freedom. We believe in free 
enterprise and free markets. It is a system that has worked 
extraordinarily well for this country. Look anywhere else around the 
world to try and find a rival to what the hard-working entrepreneurs in 
this country and those basic core economic principles have been able to 
accomplish. We cannot find one.
  It is because of those four principles and the incredible ingenuity, 
innovation, creativity, and hard work of the American people that we 
have the greatest economy in the world. But that economy, as I said, is 
very much in jeopardy if Washington does not get its spending habits 
under control. Because we continue to crowd out private investment, we 
continue to make it harder for entrepreneurs to create jobs.
  As we talk about the whole issue of spending and debt, one final 
point I would like to make--because there is this discussion right now 
about whether there ought to be tax increases. Everybody says: Well, 
revenues are down relative to historical averages. That is true. But 
one of the reasons I believe revenues are down is because there are 
literally trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines in this country 
that are not invested because of the economic uncertainty based upon 
policies coming out of Washington--uncertainty about tax policy, 
uncertainty about regulations.
  We have this tax and regulatory environment that is paralyzing the 
American economy. So businesses out there that have funds they could 
deploy, capital they could put to work in this country, are not doing 
it because they are worried about what Washington might do next.
  We have tax policy that is going to expire at the end of 2012. It is 
very hard to make decisions when tax policies are temporary. It is very 
hard to make decisions when you do not know what that regulatory agency 
is going to do to you next. They have consistently--these regulatory 
agencies--come up with more and more ideas about how to make it more 
costly, more expensive, more difficult to do business in this country.
  I have alluded to a couple. The EPA is a good case in point. It is 
one that comes into play a lot in my State of South Dakota because we 
are primarily an ag economy and small businesses. Many of those 
policies are directed at production agriculture and energy development 
and all those sorts of things

[[Page S2712]]

that allow our economy in my State to grow and to prosper.
  So I think one of the reasons tax revenues are down, people are not 
investing. When they are not investing, they are not turning those 
resources over. They are not taking realizations, and they are not 
paying taxes. We need to get investment capital put to work. We need to 
get people put back to work. The best way to do that is to provide 
economic certainty: tax policies, regulatory policies that are 
reasonable and that provide incentives, not disincentives, for 
investment.
  Today, we have tax and regulatory policies that are doing absolutely 
the opposite. They are discouraging investment, and, as a consequence, 
I think we have a lower level of revenues. But the real problem, the 
real problem, is not revenues, it is spending. That is abundantly 
clear.
  If we look at where we have been for the last 40 years in terms of 
what we spend as a percentage of our overall economy, that average is 
about 20.6 percent. That is a 40-year average, historical average, we 
spend on our Federal Government as a percentage of our entire economy. 
This year we will spend 25.3 percent of our entire economy on just the 
Federal Government.
  That does not include spending on State and local governments. When 
we add that up, it is over 40 percent of every $1 we spend in this 
country is spent on government. So what we see is the government is 
growing relative to our total economy, and the private economy, those 
folks out there who are creating the jobs in our private economy, is 
shrinking relative to the size of the government. That is a trend we 
have to reverse. It starts with getting spending under control. This is 
not a revenue problem. This is not a tax problem. As much as many of my 
colleagues would like to make it that, we flatly cannot look the facts 
in the face and come to any other conclusion but that spending in 
Washington is out of control, it has to be reined in.
  We have to attack the issue, not only of discretionary spending--the 
part we annually appropriate for--but these entitlement programs which 
if not addressed are not only going to bankrupt the country but ensure 
that there is not a Medicare Program and a Social Security Program 
available to future generations of Americans.
  These are very tumultuous times. There is a lot of uncertainty. I 
think the jobs numbers that came out this morning again point to how 
fragile this economic recovery is. It is so dependent upon good, sound 
policies coming out of Washington. For better or worse, small 
businesses, entrepreneurs now, unfortunately, tend to be partners with 
Washington, DC, because there is so much policy coming out of here, 
whether it is tax policy, regulatory policy, that impacts their bottom 
lines every single day.
  We need to get out of the way to keep those taxes low, to get Federal 
spending under control, to make sure the regulatory framework in which 
our businesses operate represents the minimum level and not the maximum 
level that we can do to make it more difficult for small businesses to 
grow and to create jobs. If we can do those types of things, address 
the issue of spending and debt, take it on in a meaningful way, deal 
with this issue of reforming our Tax Code and making sure our tax rates 
stay low on businesses in this country and make sure regulations and 
regulatory policies coming out of Washington, DC, are not the 
impediment they are today to investment and job creation, I think we 
can get this country back on track.
  But that is where it starts. If we want to create jobs, if we want to 
grow this economy, if we want to make it more prosperous and stronger 
for future generations, those are the steps, in my view, we have to 
take. I hope we get started soon. I do not think we can afford to wait.
  A lot of people around here think these are all political exercises 
that we will go through the hoops and the motions, and we will wait to 
solve this until after the next election. We cannot afford to wait. The 
time is now. If we do not do it, we are going to put in great peril 
future generations and their ability to enjoy the same standard of 
living, the same quality of life we have enjoyed.
  That is not fair to them. That is why I believe the time to start is 
now and the time to get this budget process--not only the reforms of 
the process but the spending restraints in place--is today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I was presiding, before the 
senior Senator from Missouri took my place, and was listening to two of 
the last three speakers talk about their budget religion, if you will. 
I think about this. I think we have to look at a little bit of his 
history.
  I do not think I need a lecture on balancing a budget. I was in the 
House of Representatives in the 1990s when, without one Republican 
vote, we passed President Clinton's budget. We had a huge budget 
deficit in those days. That budget began us on the path to a balanced 
budget.
  I supported a balanced budget amendment in the mid-1990s. By 2000, 
the year President Clinton left office, we had the biggest budget 
surplus in American history. Then, in 2001, at the push of President 
Bush and his Republican colleagues in both Houses, this Congress passed 
a major tax cut, mostly for the wealthy in 2001; another major tax cut, 
mostly for the wealthy in 2003, both of which I voted against.
  President Bush, with intelligence that was not especially sound--
being gentle about it--took us into a war with Iraq, did not pay for 
it; took us into a war with Afghanistan, did not pay for it. I voted 
against the war in Iraq.
  In 2003 or 2004, he pushed through Congress by one vote--I remember I 
was in the House of Representatives opposing that bill, when they kept 
the rollcall open for 2 hours or longer that night. President Bush was 
on the phone with recalcitrant members of his party in the House of 
Representatives--pushed through a Medicare bill that was a bailout to 
the drug and insurance companies in the name of Medicare privatization, 
without paying for it.
  President Bush leaves office then, leaving the largest budget deficit 
in our history--going from the largest budget surplus, written, by and 
large, by the Democrats, because Republicans did not play ball with us 
during most of the 1990s. Then, after President Bush and the Republican 
leadership in many of those years, House-Senate, President Bush left us 
with the biggest budget deficit in history.
  When I hear this revisionist history on the Senate floor--I was not 
even going to talk about this today. But I heard two colleagues, for 
whom I have respect, one from Alabama, one from South Dakota, talk 
about this budget deficit in a way that simply is historically 
inaccurate--in the name of this deficit, and we have to deal with this 
deficit.
  I know the Presiding Officer is focused on that. A lot of us are 
focused on that. We have to deal with this deficit. But you don't do 
the same thing over again where you give big tax cuts to the wealthiest 
Americans and then privatize Medicare. That is what they are doing. 
They are cutting health care, saying it is not sustainable, whatever 
that means, and giving major tax cuts to the rich, and we are saying 
that is not sustainable.

                          ____________________