[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 74 (Thursday, May 26, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3408-S3412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUDGET
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes this evening
talking about where we are as a nation.
I have to say I am discouraged at the work of the Senate. If we look
around and take in the whole picture here, there is nobody here,
essentially, and they are not going to be here for 9 or 10 more days.
The question I put forward is, If your own personal household was in
trouble, financially or otherwise; if you knew you weren't going to be
able to pay the bills; if you knew your credit cards were maxed out,
would you just sit on the couch and do nothing or would you work to
protect your family? Would you go out and do whatever you could? Would
you take advantage of every opportunity to secure the future for your
family?
Well, we have big problems in our country, and it doesn't matter how
we got here. The fact is, we are borrowing $4.3 billion a day. The
interest on our debt is $2.8 billion a day. We are at a point where if
we don't start making the very difficult decisions for our country
despite our fear of the political consequences, we will be like the
person who, when his family was in trouble, didn't try to solve the
problem.
Mr. President, we don't have a budget. Yesterday we had political
votes on budgets, but it was a game. For the last 2-plus years, no
budget has come through the Senate. There is a reason for that, and the
American people need to know it is not because of our great budget
chairman, whose name is Senator Kent Conrad. It is not his fault there
is not a budget. It is because of the leadership in the Senate. The
leadership does not want the votes that come along with a budget. You
see, the political thinking is, we don't want any of our members to
have to be recorded on things that might affect the next election. So
to hell with the country. What is more important is the next election.
What is happening in the Senate is a complete meltdown of the very
purpose the Senate was created. The fact is, we had votes on four
separate budgets, and let me tell you, what is most astounding is that
nobody voted for President Obama's budget. The President of the United
States submits a budget to the Congress, and nobody in the Senate
agrees to vote for it. How disconnected could that budget be from the
realities of what our country's needs are if even the people of his own
party won't vote for it? I was inclined to vote for it just so we could
have a debate on his budget. But the fact is, we didn't have a debate
on any budget.
So as we sit here, we are borrowing $4.3 billion a day and running a
$1.6 trillion deficit and mortgaging the very future of our children.
The very reason we work so hard and the reason we live is to nurture
and support those who come after us, and to ignore that responsibility
is absolutely uncalled for. Congress deserves every recognition from
the American people for being a farce. You can't have the kinds of
problems we have in front of us and not attempt to address them.
I want to spend a minute talking to every Medicare patient in the
country. I have practiced medicine for 25 years. I have cared for
thousands of Medicare patients. I understand, at 63 years of age, with
three pretty significant disease processes going on in my own body,
about worrying about one's health. I worry about the security around
that health. It is important enough to me to really take the medicines
and to follow the diet my doctor is offering me now that I am 63. I
probably wouldn't have paid attention 20 years ago, but today I am
doing that.
The health care that is available to me is important to me, as I know
it is to every Medicare recipient out there. But the facts are the
following: Politicians want to use Medicare as a tactic to scare people
into not doing what we as a nation are going to ultimately do anyway.
We will have to fix Medicare. And we can fix it in a way that assures
every senior who absolutely needs the help of Medicare and is dependent
on Medicare will have that health care. Anybody who says something
other than that either cares a whole lot more about themselves and
their political career or they are absolutely dishonest, because it is
absolutely impossible for us to raise the money to continue to run
Medicare the way it is
[[Page S3409]]
today. It will change in the next 4 or 5 years no matter what the
politicians say, no matter what the next election--it has to change.
The good news is we can give as good care or better with fewer dollars
if we will make the right changes in Medicare.
What most Medicare patients don't understand is that $1 out of every
$3 spent on Medicare is not going to help you get better and isn't
preventing you from getting sicker. Those are facts. They are backed up
by four studies now, four long-term studies. If $1 out of every $3 is
going into Medicare and it is not effective in actually helping you
with health care, and that $1 out of every $3 we are borrowing from the
Chinese this year to keep Medicare afloat--and that is just the
hospital system, that is Part A--why would we not want to make the hard
choices and fix it?
The reason you are not seeing that come forth is somebody sees an
advantage in an election to game Medicare. The fact is, it is not just
Medicare that is broken. The whole entire health care system is broken
because we do not allow markets to allocate it in an efficient way and
we do not hold physicians such as myself accountable to be very frugal
with the tests we order and the treatments we order.
As we continue to think about ourselves and say I do not want any
change--and that is the other point I want to make. As I get older, I
find I resist change more than anything. But the one absolute that is
going to happen is that Medicare is going to change and it does not
matter what any politician from Washington tells you, it has to change.
Otherwise we will be in an absolute depression. We will not be able to
accomplish any of the things we are accomplishing now under Medicare.
It will change.
If it is going to change, why don't we change it in a way that
continues to guarantee the promise of Medicare and puts more of a
burden on those who have more dollars with which to do that and takes
care of the sickest and poorest the best and puts a greater load on
those who have less of a need for Medicare?
Some would say that is not fair. Let me tell you what is not fair.
What is not fair is the average American puts $138,000 into Medicare
over their working career and takes $450,000 out. That is what is not
fair. What is not fair is for a 5-year-old to complain about something
not being fair. To quote P.J. O'Rourke: ``You were born in America.
That's not fair.'' Life is not fair.
The fact is, we have a system that is getting ready to crash and we
have a political dynamic that people are actually saying we do not care
because we want to win the next election more than we want to fix the
problem. That does not apply to everybody, but people who are gaming
this issue, people who are scaring people who are on Medicare, lack the
integrity and courage to talk about what the real problems are in this
country.
The real problems are we have made promises without creating the
revenues to pay for it. We can tax 100 percent of all the income of
everybody above $100,000 in income in this country and you will not fix
the deficit this year--if you took 100 percent of everything everybody
earned over $100,000--that is how great the problem is. We have a $14.3
trillion debt that, if in fact the debt limit is extended, will be past
$15 trillion by December. When is it going to stop? When are we going
to start thinking about the future of our country and the security of
our country instead of the next election and how we can look good as
the media plays the game on politics?
It is amazing; today most of the stories in the newspaper were about
Medicare and the effect of an election up in New York, a congressional
election. I don't think that matters a twit on what is going on in this
country. What was not said in the papers is that nobody voted for the
President's budget. That was not the headline anywhere. It was not the
headline that the Congress does not have a budget. The House has passed
a budget. You don't have to agree with it but at least they passed one.
But you have all this criticism of a proposed plan that came through
the House that actually will solve the problem, make sure everybody on
Medicare actually gets the care they want and actually will take $1 of
those $3 that we are wasting, one out of every three, and put it into
actually taking care of patients. But the people who are critical of
that plan have no plan themselves. And, if you have a plan, the plan is
the following--it is the plan that passed, what we know as ObamaCare,
but what is the health care bill that was passed in the last Congress.
Here is the plan, just so we understand.
According to the President's speech at Washington University, the
plan is that if we have to, we have two mechanisms. He mentioned one of
them. He didn't mention the other. We have the Independent Payment
Advisory Board. Under the Affordable Care Act, the Independent Payment
Advisory Board is mandated to control the growth of Medicare. Here is
how it does it. It makes a recommendation on the cutting of payments
for Medicare. That recommendation comes before Congress and we either
have to accept that or do something similar to that, in terms of the
total dollar amounts, to cut back on the payments for Medicare.
What is the No. 1 problem a new Medicare recipient has today? The No.
1 problem new Medicare recipients have today is finding a doctor who
will care for them, who will take their Medicare. That is their No. 1
problem. If you think we can take this tremendous unfunded liability
and continue to cut--I am not against, as a physician, physicians
taking a 5-percent or 6-percent pay cut under Medicare today. I am not
against that. But if you think we can continue to do the savings we are
going to have to get out of Medicare by doing that, you will not have
anybody taking care of Medicare patients because they will not be able
to afford to. Those payments to the physicians are less than 30 percent
of the total payments of Medicare.
Then they transfer over to the hospitals, so we are going to cut what
we pay to the hospitals. Some hospitals can afford that, some cannot.
What happens when the hospitals that cannot afford that close? Where do
you get your hospital care? Prescription drugs--we are going to cut the
price of prescription drugs. Consequently, no new drugs are coming on
line because of the rate of return for the billion dollar cost that it
is for any new drug just to get it through the FDA. All of a sudden the
things you count on are not there.
Let me mention the second way the President would have us control.
That is they have what is called an Innovation Council, under the
Affordable Care Act. What is that purpose? The purpose of the
Innovation Council is to decide whether Medicare can afford new
innovation in medicine to be offered to Medicare patients. That is the
same thing as saying: Here is a new drug, it will cure your breast
cancer, but we don't think we can afford it so therefore it is not
available under Medicare. One is direct rationing; the other is
indirect rationing. But the fact is we cannot fix Medicare by
rationing. You will not fix it that way. What you will do is limit care
and limit access--similar to what we have under Medicaid.
If you look at the trustees' report on Medicare, what they are saying
will have to happen is that the reimbursement rates under Medicare will
end up being lower than the reimbursement rates under Medicaid. That is
the answer they have right now.
That is not a good answer. No American thinks that is a good answer.
My colleagues on both sides of the aisle do not think that is a good
answer. But that is where we are sitting.
I make the point if we do not address Medicare and if we do not
address Medicaid and if we do not fix Social Security--and it is true,
if Congress had not stolen the $2.6 trillion from it and it was sitting
in an account, we would be in pretty good shape. We would make it
another 30 years. But there is a problem in terms of paying back that
money. Congress stole the money, spent it, and it is not there. So for
us to get the $2.6 trillion to keep it going until 2036 we have to
borrow more money. We have to borrow that $2.6 trillion. The problem is
we are at a debt limit now and we are getting very close to the time
when people are going to quit loaning us money.
We can fix Social Security where it is for sure as available as it is
today--actually we can make it better for the poorest Americans. We can
actually make it better and we can assure that it is going to be
working forever. But
[[Page S3410]]
that requires change. The political dynamic says don't, you can't touch
Social Security.
How fair is that? How fair is not fixing Medicare, not fixing
Medicaid, and not fixing Social Security to those who follow us? I am
the grandfather of five great-grandkids, wonderful kids; I love them to
death. I raised three daughters--actually my wife did most of that hard
work and that is why they turned out well. But the fact is, the
relationship with your children is a special relationship, but it does
not get close to comparing to the relationship to your grandkids. There
is not anything I wouldn't do for my grandkids and they kind of know
it. They have not taken advantage of it yet, but they know it.
What I would ask is, anybody who is on Medicare today who is
listening to this, here is what you need to know. No. 1 is there is
nobody in Washington who does not want you to have a secure medical
health care system. But the problems with it are so severe that it has
to be fixed and it cannot wait. And that requires change. The problems
of our country as a whole are so severe that we are not going to be
able to borrow the money to pay back what we owe Social Security if we
do not fix Medicare and Medicaid because nobody is going to loan it.
They are going to say you haven't done what you need to do.
What has to happen is we have to think about our grandkids. I don't
like going through change very much but I will tell you there is one
group of kids that I will go through change for, I will sacrifice for,
I will give something up for me. What we are asking you to give up is
the comfort of what you know now, and move to the comfort of something
that is going to supply the same thing to you, just in a different way.
Anybody who games that will not put forward a solution to the very
problems that are in front of us.
To the seniors out there who are on Medicare, nobody is proposing any
impact on you today for the next 10 years. Any proposal would be for
those people who are 55 and less and we are saying we have to change it
so we can keep it. If we do not change it, nobody is going to have it.
By the way, we are going to have trouble surviving if we don't change
it because we are not going to be able to manage this tremendous amount
of debt which is over $55,000 per man, woman, and child in this country
today.
We have to think about our grandkids. We have to quit listening to
the political shill who says somebody wants to hurt you. Everybody who
has put forward ideas on Medicare has a legitimate basis with which to
be critical of any other. But any politician in the Senate or the House
who has not put forth their solution to get us out of the problems you
should give no quarter to. You should not listen to the first word they
say because what they are thinking about is the next election. They are
thinking how do I take advantage, how do I scare you over the next
election? Nobody wants to take away health care for our seniors. What
we want to do is ensure it is there in the future, and to put forward
the idea that the motivation there is to scare you into thinking that
somebody wants to disrupt your care, that is just not true.
There could be a great debate, and I started this talk on the fact
that there has not been any debate on the problems that are in front of
us. There needs to be a great debate. People need to hear what the
options are. We need to put a budget on the floor and have the hard
debates on it, and take the hard votes, and then try to mix something
with the House; otherwise, here is what is going to happen come
September--which is not fair to any Federal employee. We are going to
have another continuing resolution. That is what is coming because we
refuse to have a budget that allows the people who work for you,
through the Federal Government, to plan and efficiently carry out what
the Congress directs. We are just going to do a continuing resolution.
It is a highly inefficient way to run the Government. As a matter of
fact, I will tell you that any family who does not run on a budget is
set up for getting in trouble.
We are not running on a budget now. The bills are coming in and we
have a continuing resolution until September 30. But we do not have a
budget, we have no plan, we don't know what we need to do, what are the
changes we need to make. We are not listening to the people running the
program. We are not listening to the American people as we do that.
We can fix health care in this country. The problem is the cost of
health care. The reason it costs so much is that the vast majority of
Americans think somebody else is paying the bill.
I will end with this story. I see my colleague from Alabama is here.
I have delivered thousands of babies, but there is a particular group I
always enjoyed delivering for because they are unique. They were the
best purchasers of health care I have ever encountered. They are from a
little town called Inola and another called Chouteau, OK, and they are
Amish. When they come to buy health care--they don't have health
insurance, by the way. Very few of them have a college education. They
work with their hands. They are into dairy or carpentry or farming or
something, but they work with their hands. They have lots of good
common sense.
I can tell my colleagues without a doubt that of the 500 Amish babies
I delivered, they bought that service from the hospital, from me, from
the radiologist, and from the labs at 40 percent less than anybody else
bought it. Why is that? It is because they were great consumers of
health care and the money was coming out of their pockets. They didn't
think somebody else was paying for it. They knew they were paying for
it, so therefore they asked for a discount. They said: I will pay you
cash up front if you give me a discount. By the way, if you want to do
this other test, please explain in detail why I should fork out $100
for another ultrasound. And does my wife absolutely have to have this
ultrasound?
When you get questioned that way the doctor says: Well, if you
understand that we may miss something but basically everything looks
good, then I am fine with that as long as you are fine with that.
The average pregnancy today in the United States has four or five
ultrasounds. I was trained without doing any ultrasounds, and I had the
same outcomes.
So the point is that we can get better value if we reconnect the
purchase of health care with some individual responsibility. If we
disconnect that--and that is what we do through private insurance and
low deductibles, and that is what we do through Medicare and low
deductibles and supplemental policies. We do the opposite of that. Once
we have met our deductible, there is no cost. So we are not prudent
consumers. As we age, we worry a lot about new symptoms, so we access
the health care system. Once you access, the costs just start ticking
up.
So the point I make is there are a lot of things we can do better in
health care if, in fact, we have market forces and transparency helping
us do that. I would suggest we can have a Medicare Program that is
efficient, that works, and that doesn't have $70 billion worth of fraud
in it by the end of the year, by the way--$70 billion, well over 10
percent--and improper payments above 10 percent as well. So $70 billion
in fraud and $70 billion in improper payments in Medicare. We could
solve the problem right there if Congress would do it. But we don't
because we would rather have a political game and game people's fears
on health care and Medicare than fix the problem.
What I hope seniors will do over this next year, as they hear the
politicians make all these wild claims about people's motivations and
the damage to Medicare, is when you hear that, think about that in
light of your grandchildren. Think about yourself and what you want
versus what you want your grandchildren to have because there is no
question that the $14.2 trillion and under the President's budget the
$23 trillion we are going to have at least in 9 more years is going to
be paid back by them, not you. What that really means is they are going
to have a far lower standard of living than you do so you don't have to
get out of your comfort zone.
I trust America a whole lot more than I trust the U.S. Congress. We
have a $1 trillion deficit of common sense in Washington, and we have
an excess of common sense outside of Washington. If you will trust your
common sense and look at what we are doing, what you will find is we
can solve our problems, we can come together as a nation, we can fix
what ails us, and we
[[Page S3411]]
can do that without destroying the future of our children and
grandchildren.
I yield the floor to my colleague from Alabama.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with
Senator Coburn, if he has a moment to stay, for up to 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Coburn served on the debt
commission. Senator Coburn had no burden to run for reelection. I am so
glad he did. He is one of the most valuable Members of this Senate.
I have an understanding that the Senator from Oklahoma came here to
try to do something about the debt this country faces. Is that fair to
say?
Mr. COBURN. That is correct.
Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator believes this Congress has a responsibility
to confront what Admiral Mullen calls the greatest threat to our
national security, which is our debt.
The Senator also has tremendous experience as a practicing physician.
The Senator practiced up until the very day he was elected. How many
years ago was that?
Mr. COBURN. Seven years.
Mr. SESSIONS. Seven years ago. He continued to practice even while in
the Senate until the bureaucrats made it impossible, I guess, to do so.
So the Senator from Oklahoma comes here with practical experience, a
brilliant mind, and a committed vision for America.
I appreciate the Senator sharing his frustration about what has
occurred this week.
This is a quote that was in the Wall Street Journal by Democratic
Senate strategists about this scheme and plan that was offered in four
votes yesterday--votes the majority had conceived in such a way that
they were guaranteed to fail and nothing was going to happen. It was a
guaranteed plan to ensure nothing would happen. This is what the
journal said about it:
As a political matter, Democratic strategists say there may
be little benefit in producing a budget that would inevitably
include unpopular items.
The Senator is famous for telling the truth. If he would, I would
like him to respond to that. What does that say about our Senate, that
the Democrats say there would be little political benefit in producing
a budget that might include unpopular items? Doesn't a tough budget
that gets us on the right path have to have some things in it that some
people might not like?
Mr. COBURN. Well, to my colleague, through the Chair, I would answer,
What is our obligation? Is our obligation to win the next election or
is our obligation to solve the problems in front of our country? It is
not even a matter of having votes. We can't even get bills on the floor
for the Members that actually would save some money right now.
Let me give an example. We had the small business bill up--the only
thing we have done of significance since we have been back in this
session. It took 2 weeks to get a bipartisan amendment that would save
$5 billion out of the duplication that was reported by the Government
Accountability Office--hundreds of billions of dollars. It took 2 weeks
to finally get a vote on that. My colleague from Virginia and I
cosponsored that. It won. That is one of the reasons we didn't finish
the bill, is because they don't want to do that. They don't want to
make the hard choices. So it is an abrogation of our responsibility to
not do the hard part that comes with the job.
The job comes with a whole lot of rasping on your skin. You are going
to get criticized. But the ultimate fatal criticism is to make a choice
not to get--put yourself in a position to be criticized. So what we are
saying is we are going to do nothing. We are not going to do what we
are constitutionally supposed to do by April 15 every year; that is,
have a budget. We are not going to debate the issues. We are not going
to cast our votes because somebody may affect somebody's election
outcome. How big of cowards are we that we can't defend the vote we
make? I don't have any problem. You throw the hardest vote from the
other side at me, and I will make a decision on it, whether I think it
is right or wrong, and then I will defend it. But to not vote at all is
an absolute abrogation of our oath, and that is the leadership we are
experiencing. It is not just Democratic leadership. We have some on our
side who don't want to cast hard votes either.
The point is, the American people need us to be casting hard votes
now. Our problems are greater than at any time since World War II. The
challenge to our country is greater than World War II. The outcome of
our Republic depends on us solving the very real and urgent and
difficult problems in front of us and doing so in a way that preserves
the future of this country and reestablishes and reforms us to where we
get our mojo back so we can start believing in ourselves again. To not
do it and to not have the courage to sacrifice your own position for
the betterment of this country--that is what we ought to be about, and
I don't see that.
Mr. SESSIONS. Let me ask the Senator. The Senator just won an
overwhelming reelection. There is not a Senator here, I don't think
anybody would dispute, who has been more frank in expressing the need
that all of us are going to have to rein in our spending and who shared
that directly with his constituents. When they have asked for things,
the Senator from Oklahoma has tried to help them, I know, but he is
frank with his constituents.
Would the Senator share with us what kind of percentage he got in the
last election?
Mr. COBURN. I got 71.8 percent.
Mr. SESSIONS. Seventy-one percent. Does my colleague think perhaps
that some of us here in Washington are overly afraid of being frank and
truthful with our constituents about the challenges America faces?
Mr. COBURN. Well, I would answer through the Chair that I think we
are perplexed. We know intellectually that there is a big problem, and
we have this challenge: Do I go down this path and do the best thing
for the country or do I go down this path to do the best thing for me?
I look at politics differently than most of our colleagues. To the
Senator from Alabama, I would say I don't really care whether I am
here; I care whether America is here. But the point ought to be, how do
we secure the vote and how do we establish trust with the American
people?
If my colleague will go with me--and I know he knows this--look at
the confidence in the Congress of the people in this country. Why is
there a lack of confidence? Why is it that 80 percent of the people of
the United States didn't have any confidence in Congress? I can tell my
colleague why. It is because we have milked trust and credibility from
those very people.
I get letters all the time from people who disagree with me. They
will write me, and I actually--I am involved in every answer to every
inquiry that comes into my office. I actually read them because I want
to know what the people from Oklahoma say. But even though they
disagree with me, they vote for me because they trust me because I am
not gaming them as they have seen with the gaming on Medicare.
Our problems are real. The solutions are difficult. But America can
overcome that if we come together. If we stay divided as we have seen
here with no budget votes, no hard votes, and we try to game it
politically, what we are doing is undermining our country's future. It
doesn't matter who wins the next election; what we need to do is save
America.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the Senator has served on the debt
commission. I know there has been a concerted effort to blame and
exaggerate and distort the House budget, particularly as it refers to
Medicare.
Again, quoting Democratic Senate strategists, this is what the Wall
Street Journal said:
Many Democrats believe a recent House GOP proposal to
overhaul Medicare is proving to be unpopular and has given
Democrats a political advantage. They are loath to give that
up by proposing higher taxes.
Which they would prefer as a solution.
Senate Democrats plan to hold a vote on the Ryan plan . . .
Which they did yesterday--
. . . hoping to force GOP Senators to cast a vote on the
Medicare overhaul that could prove politically difficult.
I say to Senator Coburn, you served on the debt commission. This is
what
[[Page S3412]]
your commission chairman said in a written statement after Paul Ryan
and the House Republicans produced their budget:
The budget released this morning by the House Budget
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is a serious, honest,
straightforward approach to addressing our nation's enormous
fiscal challenges. We applaud him for his work in putting
forward a proposal which will reduce the country's deficit by
approximately the same amount as the plan of the President's
Fiscal Commission.
They also went on to say that if you criticize it, you have a
responsibility to offer an alternative.
I say to the Senator, you served with Mr. Bowles. He was a Democratic
Chief of Staff to President Clinton and was appointed by President
Obama to chair this commission. That does not sound like the things we
heard yesterday, attacking the House Ryan budget, does it?
Mr. COBURN. It does not. But it is interesting to note that the
President's deficit commission was set up by the President and had six
of his nominees on it. It had six Republicans and six Democrats. Five
of the six Presidential nominees he nominated agreed with the deficit
commission, three of the six Republicans agreed, and three of the
Democrats--a pretty good meeting in the middle. Yet the President did
not embrace the results of his own commission, did not embrace the
results of the people he appointed. So what was the purpose of that
exercise? Was it to make political hay or was it to solve the problems?
The fact is, I have five colleagues in the Senate who have been
working hard on that over the past 5 months to try to build a
bipartisan agreement out of the basis of that. That is what has to
happen--except politics.
I go back and just refer to my colleague, if you look at the history
of republics, the track record is not very good. The average age of the
world's republics is 207 years. That is our average age. We are 27
years past the average. The question is, Can we cheat history? Can we
not fall like the rest of the republics over the very same things? They
all fell over fiscal issues. They let their spending get out of
control, they let their debt get out of control, and then they could
not afford the promises they made.
I will say to my colleague, this is not an issue of the budget
chairman. This is an issue of the leadership of the Senate that does
not want a budget. We ought to be very clear that the American people
know that Congress is not doing its job--this body, for sure--because
we are not making the hard choices we were sent up here to make. What
we are doing is punting. We are going to come to a crisis, and the
crisis is going to be painful, and it is going to be much more painful
than had we made the hard choices today.
So I want to thank the ranking member of the Budget Committee for his
leadership. We can solve any problem in front of us, Mr. Ranking
Member, but we have to do it together, and we cannot deny that the
problems exist.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Coburn for his leadership. I have
watched him with admiration over the years with consistency and
fidelity for the national interest to work to bring our spending under
control.
I see our colleague, Senator Alexander, in the Chamber, and I will
yield the floor. I will just follow up, before I do that, with a quote
from Erskine Bowles.
When the President announced his budget not long after the deficit
commission he called together had made some pretty good proposals about
how to improve fiscal matters in the United States, Mr. Bowles was,
obviously, deeply disappointed with what the President submitted and
said this plan goes ``nowhere near where they will have to go to
resolve our [country's] fiscal nightmare.''
I think there is a consensus that we are facing a fiscal nightmare.
We are going to have to take some serious steps in that regard.
Mr. President, I think there are some other Members who have reserved
time. If there are no other Members here who have reserved time after
Senator Alexander completes his remarks, I ask unanimous consent that I
be recognized at that time.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I will not object. I say to Senator
Sessions, I think Senator Hatch is expected to come down. That is the
only one I know of.
Mr. SESSIONS. As I said, my consent would be that if anyone has
reserved time, they would get it before I will speak.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate Senator Sessions and
Senator Coburn for their principled remarks about the phenomenon of
Washington spending. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we
spend. We cannot keep spending money we do not have. And we want to
save Medicare. So those two major difficult decisions are things that
we need to work on together--to stop spending money we do not have and
saving Medicare. We can do both if we put our minds to it.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if you would let me know when 1 minute
remains, I would appreciate it.
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