[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 10, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2820-S2821]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to make a few remarks about the 
budget circumstances in which we find ourselves.
  Yesterday, we learned that the President has scheduled two summit 
meetings on the budget this week. The President will meet with Senate 
Democrats on Wednesday and Republicans on Thursday. By calling this 
summit, it would seem the President has effectively canceled this 
week's planned unveiling of a Democratic Senate budget in the Senate 
Budget Committee that was planned earlier. First it was going to be 
Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. It looks as if maybe it will not 
be held this week at all. It might be that Senator Conrad could do 
that, but somehow, with this event occurring, he may not.
  Regardless of this new discussion period, it is my expectation and 
belief that the American people should be given a Senate budget plan so 
it can be examined and we can know what is in it and see what it is 
about. The American public deserves to know where our elected leaders 
stand.
  I hate to say that we have gone 700-plus days without a budget for 
the United States of America during a time of the greatest debt 
increase we have ever faced. We will have doubled the debt of the 
United States, I believe, by next year in 4 years. We will add $13 
trillion to the debt over the 10 years presented by President Obama's 
budget that he sent to us in February.
  There have been all kinds of discussions and talks and a lot of 
speeches. The President created a fiscal commission. They came forward 
with a serious proposal that was worthy of real insight and study. They 
spent a lot of time on it. It did not go far enough, in my opinion, to 
reduce our surging growth in spending, but it was intellectually 
honest, and it offered us some very real suggestions about how we could 
do better.
  Then we started hearing that after the President's budget was 
submitted and it was received very badly--in fact, it was not helpful 
at all but actually made the debt trajectory we are on worse. We had a 
gang of six Senators who tried to work together to establish a budget 
plan that might work for us. They met in secret and had ideas. I was 
interested in what they had to say, but somehow that seems to have gone 
on the back burner.
  Then we had Vice President Biden. He is going to lead a discussion 
with House and Senate Republicans and Democrats, and he is going to 
work out something.
  Now, just yesterday, we heard that the President is going to have 
another meeting at the White House and talk to us. I hope it is not 
like the one to which he invited the House Budget Committee chairman, 
Paul Ryan, and criticized him, sitting right there in front of him, for 
producing what I think is a historic budget that would put us on a 
sound path if followed.
  Here we are. We have not gotten a plan or a commitment as to what 
this administration intends to advocate for. They submitted their 
budget. It was alleged to have reduced the deficit by $2 trillion, but 
when the Congressional Budget Office, our objective analyst, took the 
document they submitted and studied it in detail, they concluded it 
would add $2.7 trillion. In other words, it would create more debt over 
the next 10 years by $2.7 trillion than was projected to accrue without 
the budget. That is not what financial experts are telling us, that is 
not what economists and professors are telling us we need to do. It is 
unacceptable.

  That budget was criticized, and we hadn't heard much about it since. 
Well, the President, for a week or so, tried to propose that it would 
have us live within our means and help pay down the debt. According to 
the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest deficit in 10 years would 
be over $700 billion, and the President said this was going to have us 
living within our means? Apparently, desiring to back off that, the 
President made a speech and he said he is now going to save $4 
trillion.
  Well, the budget staff--I am ranking Republican on the Budget 
Committee--looked at what he said in the speech and noticed a couple of 
things. We noticed the President had moved the budget period from 10 
years to 12 years, and that made the numbers look a lot better compared 
to a 10-year savings plan. If we save a little each year and we go 12 
years, it looks better than 10, when everybody was talking about 10. It 
is kind of a little gimmick, you see, to make the numbers look better. 
Then they incorrectly took credit for every dollar that was saved when 
the Republicans in the House negotiated with the Senate on the CR and 
reduced spending about $75 billion a year below what the President had 
asked for. They took credit for that. That was about $800 billion of 
the savings.
  The net result is, it was not any different than the budget plan he 
had proposed, except it took credit for the House reduction in 
spending.
  I have to say, the House Republicans--Paul Ryan--stood and faced the 
American people and revealed in advance the core of their plan. I 
attended one press conference in which Paul Ryan announced the budget 
he was moving forward with. He had a series of press briefings. He 
basically said: This is my plan and I am ready to hear any exceptions 
you have to it, I am prepared to answer your questions, and I am 
prepared to defend what it is we have done. It was an honest, direct, 
and responsible approach.
  The Ryan budget dealt with the long-term financial threats to America 
as well as the immediate. The numbers he proposed get us to the point 
where we can certainly say we are not on the same debt trajectory that 
put us in such great risk. I believe it is probably the most serious 
effort I have seen, in the 14 years I have been in the Senate, to 
address the significant fiscal challenges we face.
  We face not only a short-term problem, but we face a long-term, 
systemic problem. We have an aging population--people drawing more 
Social Security for longer periods and Medicare for longer periods. We 
have other entitlement programs. We have been spending extraordinarily. 
So all that has to be a part of our discussion about how to put this 
country on a sound path. Senator Conrad, our Democratic chairman, has 
done a good job in calling good witnesses. Every expert who has 
testified before the Budget Committee has told us the truth about the 
grim circumstances we find ourselves in. They have told us: If you 
don't act, we could have a debt crisis. They have told us the debt we 
have already accrued, and which continues to increase, is right now 
pulling down our economy; that our growth is not what it would be had 
we not incurred this much debt.
  It is uncontroversial that this much debt slows down the economy. 
When I asked Treasury Secretary Geithner, he agreed with the Rogoff-
Reinhart study that says when debt reaches 90 percent of GDP it pulls 
down economic growth 1 percent. Secretary Geithner said: Yes, that is 
an excellent study, and I would add one more thing. He said: When we 
get that much debt, we run the risk of having a debt crisis that could 
throw us back into some sort of recession or financial problem such as 
we have had. That was President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury. We 
know we have a serious problem. We need to do something about it.
  The President submitted a budget that has basically been rejected. I 
can't imagine the Senate would bring it forward as the Senate 
Democratic budget. The House of Representatives, in accordance with the 
law and the timeframes of the Budget Act, has produced a budget, showed 
it publicly before they voted on it, and has defended it since. We 
haven't had one in the Senate. The Senate, by law, should have produced 
its budget and started its markup 6 weeks ago. The law says we

[[Page S2821]]

are supposed to have passed a budget by April 15--tax day. We haven't 
even begun to mark it up.
  People are attempting, politically, to explain. The Democratic 
spinmasters are attempting to explain what it is all about. Why are we 
doing these things? Why hasn't a real budget been produced? They say 
Republicans are divided. They say: Oh, tea party people and Republicans 
are all divided. The Republican House has passed a budget. Where is the 
Democratic Senate? Who is divided? Why can't they produce a document? 
Why do we have to have the Vice President and the President having 
meetings and the President giving speeches? Why don't we see a real 
budget that the American people can see in advance and be able to 
evaluate and Senators standing, as we are paid to do, and casting votes 
for or against it? That is what we need to be doing.
  I don't agree with the fact that the President is leading. I wish I 
could say that. Maybe he will surprise us on Thursday with something. I 
hope so. But I don't sense any leadership at all, because the budget he 
produced will not do the job. That is the only one we have in the 
Senate at this point. Indeed, Mr. Erskine Bowles, the man the President 
chose to head his fiscal commission, said the President's budget came 
nowhere near doing what is necessary. Actually, what he said was the 
President's budget goes nowhere near where they will have to go to 
resolve our fiscal nightmare.
  I am wondering what is happening. The American people get it. They 
sent a message in the elections last November. They sent 64 new Members 
to the House of Representatives, and every single one of them promised 
to do something about reckless spending in Washington.
  What about this budget the President has submitted to us? It is the 
only one we have in the Senate. The Senate Democratic leadership hasn't 
presented one. The President's budget called for a 10.5-percent 
increase in education, a 9.5-percent increase in energy, a 10.5-percent 
in the State Department's budget, and a 62-percent increase in the 
transportation budget. Well, we don't have the money. Forty cents of 
every $1 we spend is borrowed. That cannot be continued. We are on an 
unsustainable path. The American people know it. Every expert has told 
us. We know it. Where are our leaders in the Senate?
  Senator Conrad, apparently, made a presentation of his budget, and 
the Republicans have asked Senator Conrad to present it to us 72 hours 
before the committee meets. He said he is not going to do that. He made 
a presentation to the Democratic conference and, apparently, it didn't 
go well. Senator Conrad apparently proposed reducing spending more than 
they liked to hear. The Democratic leader, Senator Reid, was sort of 
critical, actually. He said it was a nice bunch of charts. Obviously, 
he wasn't happy.
  When are we going to see a budget? Are we going to go another 700 
days? Are we not going to have a budget this year? The way things 
should work is like this: The Senate should come forward--the 
Democratic Senate, because they have the majority and we can pass a 
budget with a simple majority--and propose a budget that hopefully will 
get bipartisan support. If not, they stand and say what they believe in 
and how this budget reflects their vision for America. The House has 
done that. Then we go to conference committee. After it comes to the 
floor and is voted on, it goes to the conference committee and 
differences are worked out. Then it comes back and we have to vote on 
final passage of an agreed-upon budget.
  We have to have a budget. It is time for this country to begin to 
reverse the reckless trend we are on because we are placing our Nation 
at risk. Mr. Bowles and Senator Alan Simpson, when they testified 
before the Budget Committee, warned us we have to do something 
significant. In the written statement they both signed, they said we 
are facing the most predictable economic crisis in our history. When 
asked when that could occur, Mr. Bowles said 2 years, maybe. Alan 
Simpson said: I think maybe 1. We are not talking about our 
grandchildren. I am talking about now.
  What I would just say is, I think it is time for us to go back to 
regular order. We have tried a lot of different approaches to confront 
this crisis we face. It seems to me our leadership in the Senate is 
desperately seeking to avoid having to do what is responsible; that is, 
to stand and produce a budget. If they aren't prepared to stand before 
the American people and tell them how they think the country ought to 
be run and where the money ought to be spent and how much ought to be 
collected, then they are not leading, it seems to me.
  I am very disappointed in the President's leadership. He has been 
roundly criticized because the only proposal he has sent to us is 
irresponsible. It in no way comes close, as Mr. Bowles said, to doing 
what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare, and that is the path 
we are headed toward. It is not a matter of dispute. We will not reach 
10, 15 years down the road spending like we are because we will have a 
catastrophe before then.
  Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, said he 
thought maybe some sort of compromise would be reached that would be 
good for the country. The only question, he said, was whether it would 
be before or after a debt crisis occurs. This was a few weeks ago that 
Alan Greenspan was saying this.
  It is a challenge for us and a challenge for the leadership in this 
Senate to come before the American people and produce their plan and 
seek support on the floor of the Senate. Let's debate it. Let's have 
amendments offered. Let's go to conference, and somehow, some way 
hammer out a budget that will put this country on a better path. We 
have no other choice. It is the defining moment for this Congress. We 
have no higher duty than to confront the dangerous fiscal path we are 
on.

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