[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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