[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 11, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2858-S2859]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUDGET
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, a headline in the Hill today reads
``Budgets everywhere, but not [a single] one has votes to pass.'' Well,
that is not exactly correct. In reality, there is only one budget that
has been presented, publicly debated, worked on in committee, shared
with the American people, and passed on the floor in one house, and
that is the budget of the Republican House. Paul Ryan led the fight on
that, and it is a courageous, serious budget that would restore fiscal
sanity and prosperity to this Nation.
It deals with our short-term funding crisis and the long-term ability
of our financial system. We had another budget presented by President
Obama. It was an irresponsible budget. The budget presented by the
President to the Senate is about this thick. It is required by law that
the President submit one every year. He has around 500 people in the
budget office who help prepare that. That budget--analyzed by the CBO,
our independent group of analysts--was found to not reduce the debt
path we are on but to actually increase the debt over 10 years more
than would occur based on the Congressional Budget Office baseline we
are already on--substantially, $2 trillion more. It has tax increases
in it too. This is not a responsible budget. It was never received
responsibly in the Senate and not by the independent commentators. They
all said it fails to do the job we have to do.
I have to say, by contrast to the House, that there still is no
Senate Democratic budget--a budget set up to be passed by a majority.
The majority party always has the responsibility--and sometimes they
meet it and sometimes not--to present a budget. No action has even been
scheduled in the Budget Committee. No plan or resolution has been
brought up for a vote. In fact, it has been 742 days since the Senate
passed a budget--2 years. The Democratic-led Senate has missed the
statutory deadline of April 15 to produce a budget for the second year
in a row. In fact, as a statutory requirement, the committee is to
start work on it by April 1. We have not begun it yet and it is mid-
May. Is it any wonder that this country is in a financial crisis, that
we are not containing spending, when we don't even have a budget and we
didn't even bring one to the floor last year? Majority Leader Reid
chose not to bring a budget to the floor for debate or to even attempt
to pass a budget.
We are in the middle of a fiscal crisis. There is no doubt that the
single greatest threat to America at this point in time is the
financial situation in which we find ourselves. This year, we will
spend, by September 30--and we are moving on to that date--$3.7
trillion. We will bring in revenue of $2.2 trillion. Forty cents of
every dollar we are spending this year is borrowed. It is an
unsustainable path, as every expert has told us in the Budget
Committee, where I am ranking Republican.
We have heard witness after witness, Democratic and Republican, and
the President's own debt commission tell us we are on an unsustainable
path. Erskine Bowles, the man chosen by President Obama to head the
fiscal commission the President established, told us--along with Alan
Simpson, his cochairman--that this Nation has never faced a more
predictable financial crisis. We are heading right to it. It is going
to hammer us, our children, and our grandchildren. If we don't get off
this course, the bond markets are going to revolt, and we are going to
have a serious financial crisis of some kind that will not be good for
this economy.
When asked when such a crisis could occur, Mr. Bowles said 2 years,
maybe a little less or a little more, and Alan Simpson said he thought
it would be 1 year. These are independent people who love America. They
are warning us to take action now. The President's budget simply
doesn't get it.
The American people are not happy with us. They think we are not
meeting our responsibilities.
Are they right? They hammered a lot of big spenders in the last
election. Were they right? I totally believe they are right. I totally
believe that. I am of the view that there is no way this country should
be in the present debt situation. It should never, ever have happened.
I opposed a lot of the spending. I would like to think I was more
vigorous than most in warning against it. But I don't think I have done
enough. There is no reason to borrow 40 cents out of every dollar we
spend; it threatens our future.
We will double the entire debt of our country in 4 years under this
President's watch. When he leaves office, completes his 4-year term, he
will have doubled the entire debt of America, and we are on a course
that continues to be dangerous.
As we know, Budget Committee Chairman Conrad has been meeting
privately with his Democratic caucus--it has been in the press--to try
to finally bring some sort of budget forward. The Democrats apparently
have been unable to do so, from reports we see, because the big
spenders in their caucus cannot support a plan that would actually get
the job done and put us on a sound financial path, and they can't
produce a plan that will withstand public scrutiny, apparently, and
that the American people would support. So they have a difficult
problem.
[[Page S2859]]
This was shown, as reported in The Hill, because Chairman Conrad--who
served on the debt commission and I believe fully understands the
dangers this country faces--has repeatedly acknowledged that. I really
respect Senator Conrad's insights into the challenges this country
faces. Apparently, his proposal, which was going to be somewhat better
than President Obama's, I assume, failed to win the support of his
conference and of Senator Bernie Sanders, who is a gutsy Senator and is
open about what he believes. But he has described himself as a
Socialist and is the Senate's most powerful advocate for bigger
government. He is a member of the Budget Committee. The reason Senator
Sanders' vote became important is because the Democrats have apparently
been working to pass a budget through committee without a Republican
vote. They don't expect to get any Republican votes. The committee only
has one more Democrat than Republicans, so the chairman needs Senator
Sanders' vote if he wants to get the budget out of committee.
Here is an excerpt from The Hill:
Reid said Senator Conrad presented to the [Democratic]
Caucus a 50/50 split when asked about the preferred ratio of
spending cuts to tax increases. . . . Conrad has moved his
budget proposal to the left in order to gain the support of
Senator Bernie Sanders, an outspoken progressive on the
budget panel.
You know, ``progressive'' is a word they are using now for big
government types. They want to take more money from the American people
because they believe they know better how to spend it than the American
people who earn it. They want to spread it around the way they want to
spend it.
This is a remarkable turn of events. It is particularly stunning
because the President's budget--repudiated for its dramatic levels of
spending and taxes--claimed there was a 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts
to tax hikes. ``We cut spending $3 for every $1 in tax hikes'' is what
the President said. Chairman Conrad has indicated that would have been
his choice. He praised that. He said he favored that same ratio. I
don't think that is necessarily a good ratio. We need to reduce
spending more than that.
Taken literally, what this means is that Senator Conrad has, in a
fundamental respect, moved his plan to the left of the President and
the fiscal commission, which also proposed a plan that actually did
reduce spending $3 for every $1 in tax increases or pretty close to
that, pretty fairly, without gimmicks, and came close to achieving
that. The President's budget was so gimmicked that it really didn't
achieve $3 in spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. It did not.
It wasn't correct for him to say that.
It is important to note that the President and the fiscal commission
use a baseline that assumes tax rates will go up. Fairly analyzed,
those plans rely much more heavily on taxing than those ratios
indicate, as I said, and I fear that the composition of this new
Democratic budget proposal may not even meet the 50-50 plan. The others
have it in terms of taxes and spending cuts.
The merits of this 50-50 split between savings and taxes are both a
question of philosophy and economics. Philosophically, the American
people don't want Washington to continue raising taxes to pay for
larger and larger spending. American families should not be punished
for the sins and excesses of Washington.
According to the CBO, we are going to spend $45 trillion over the
next 10 years. The Senate Democratic plan, which no one is likely to
see until after the committee meets--that is what we have been told,
that we won't see it until it is plopped down at the beginning of the
committee markup, where amendments are supposed to be offered soon
thereafter--their own plan, at least from what we read about it, says
it will cut or save just $2 trillion out of $45 trillion over the next
10 years.
The American people know there is much more we can and must do to
bring this government under control and to achieve real balance in this
country. What kind of balance? Between raising taxes and cutting
spending, 50-50? No. The balance we need is one that respects the
American people, that reduces the growth in spending and wealth taken
by Washington and allows it to be kept by the American people, who earn
it.
There is also a question of economics. Our committee has conducted an
exhaustive survey of available research which conclusively shows that
debt reduction plans that rely equally on saving money, reducing
spending, and raising taxes are far less successful and result in far
weaker economic growth than those plans that rely on cutting spending.
We will release a white paper very soon that will share these findings
with my colleagues and the country. It is very important that we
understand this. What history is showing us is that when you reduce
spending, you get more growth and prosperity than increasing spending
and taxes.
Here is one example of the many studies we analyzed. This is a
Goldman Sachs study by analysts Ben Broadbent and Kevin Daly. The
report resulted from a cross-national study of fiscal reform that:
In a review of every major fiscal correction in the OECD--
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the
world's major developed economies--
since 1975, we find that decisive budgetary adjustments that
have focused on reducing government expenditure have (i) been
successful in correcting fiscal imbalances; (ii) typically
boosted economic growth; and (iii) resulted in significant
bond and equity market outperformance.
In other words, the stock market and the bond market improved, and
both of those are a bit shaky now after some rebound.
Tax driven--
``Tax driven,'' that means tax increases--
fiscal adjustments, by contrast, typically fail to correct
fiscal imbalances and are damaging for growth.
That is the Goldman Sachs study. Half of our U.S. Treasury Department
has been manned by people who served at one time or another at Goldman
Sachs. They are not considered a rightwing group. That is what their
analysts have said to us.
The Democratic Senate, I believe, should heed the large body of
research showing that spending cuts on a basic economic level work
better than trying to drain more out of the economy by way of taxes. In
other words, the Senate should produce a budget based on facts. They
should produce a budget that grows the economy, that imposes real
spending discipline on Washington. They should produce a budget without
gimmicks and empty promises. They should produce this budget publicly,
openly, and allow the American people to review and consider it before
the committee meets in 72 hours, as my colleagues have pleaded with the
chairman twice to do but he will not do. They should produce a budget
the American people deserve--an honest budget that spares our children
from both the growing burden of debt and the growing burden of an
intrusive big government.
I hope we can continue to have the opportunity to talk about this
issue. It is right that the American people be engaged in it. I have to
say, I feel as though we failed in our responsibility to conduct open
hearings and markups on a budget.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from Iowa.
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