[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 105 (Thursday, July 14, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4569-S4574]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I realize a scheme has been concocted on 
the debt ceiling that allows Democrats to go into this next election 
continuing to ensure that spending to many of their constituents is at 
levels that please them; therefore, allowing them to run successfully 
in 2012, and that scheme also allows Republicans to run in 2012 with 
spending being the issue.
  I think we all understand that, look, the debt ceiling is going to be 
increased, and it is going to be increased in such a way that both 
sides of the aisle have the ability to campaign against the other 
respective to their bases.
  But the fact is, our great Nation is in decline because of the 
elected leaders in Washington. Our great Nation is in decline because 
of this body and the way it is acting, the House of Representatives and 
the way it is acting, and the White House and the way it is acting.
  This body, as we meet and go on to a spending bill, is helping our 
great Nation go into decline. Let me explain why.
  Maybe the debt ceiling was the wrong place to pick a fight as it 
relates to trying to get our country's house in order. Maybe that was 
the wrong place to do it. The reason it was chosen is because this body 
has not passed a budget in 806 or 807 days, and I credit both sides for 
that. But the fact is the Senate has not passed a budget in over 806 
days.
  I had a dinner this week, Monday night, with six Democrats and five 
Republicans. I will not mention their names to impugn them in any way. 
But all of them expressed tremendous frustration with the way this body 
is being run. Basically, most Senators in this body are nothing but 
two-bit pawns--two-bit pawns--as a political fight is under way 
basically to lay out the groundwork, if you will, for the 2012 
election. That is what is happening right now in this body, and I think 
we all know that.
  Yet yesterday we voted to move to a spending bill where we, in 
essence, are acting as accomplices. We are accomplices to this--the 
Presiding Officer and myself. I voted against it. But anybody who votes 
to go to a spending bill without forcing the Senate to come to terms 
with a budget is, in essence, an accomplice to allowing the shenanigans 
that are taking place right now to continue. We are allowing this great 
Nation to go into decline by not forcing us to make those tough 
decisions.
  The reason the debt ceiling was chosen is because there has not been 
any other mechanism to cause us to sit down and make those tough 
choices as it relates to spending in our country. Because we were 
unwilling to do that, many people lined up, as a matter of fact, 
Democrats and Republicans--there is a Gang of 6 that had been working, 
with three Republicans and three Democrats. It is my sense that they 
too had planned to use the debt ceiling vote as a place to try to cause 
us to come together around something that might be sensible for our 
country. We have not seen the details of that. I hope we will see that 
soon.
  But my point is, both sides of the aisle actually had focused on this 
debt ceiling vote--or many people on both sides of the aisle--to try to 
cause us to have the fiscal discipline we need. Obviously, with this 
new scheme, that is not going to happen.
  I think we all know the debt ceiling is going to be raised. Blame 
will be assessed to either side. Both sides will use that in the 2012 
election, and then we will move on to another cycle where probably we 
will continue to be irresponsible.
  But the fact is, by moving to a spending bill without a budget--
everyone who agrees to do that, every single person in this body who 
agrees to move to a spending bill, no matter what it is funding or no 
matter at what level it is funding the things it is funding, every one 
of us is an accomplice in causing this great Nation to decline, every 
single one of us.
  I would urge people in this body who would like to see us actually do 
our work, cause us to function the way the Founding Fathers had created 
this body, cause us to function in a way that no longer allows our 
country to be in decline, I would urge everybody in this body to not 
agree to go to this spending bill and to say we will not spend any more 
of the U.S. resources--taxpayers' resources--without first agreeing to 
those tough decisions.

  I love seeing some of the masters of the universe on some of these 
financial programs in the morning. I heard one of them this morning on 
a particular program I sometimes turn on to see what the markets are 
doing in reaction to the ridiculous, undisciplined nature of this body, 
I heard one of them say the debt ceiling is no place--most

[[Page S4570]]

countries do not even vote on a debt ceiling. What they do is they vote 
on budgets. In this country, we do not even vote on budgets. Of course, 
we have figured out a way to not make any tough decision on the debt 
ceiling vote either, and I understand what is getting ready to happen.
  But, again, I say to all those folks who are not head of this body, 
who are not in leadership, who in the bathrooms or in the halls or at 
dinner or at lunch complain about the fact that this place is 
dysfunctional, complain about the fact that they do not have the 
ability to be involved in causing us to function in the way we should, 
every single one of you, in my opinion, who votes to go to a spending 
bill today or end debate on a spending bill--in essence, allow us to 
pass a spending bill--is an accomplice, is an accomplice in allowing 
this great Nation to go into decline. That is pretty strong, but I 
believe it.
  The fact is we make a big deal out of some items around here, but we 
do not make a big deal when it comes to something we can actually 
affect and cause us as a body to do the things we need to do.
  I say to the Presiding Officer, look, I am very disappointed in the 
Senate. I am very disappointed in the White House. I am very 
disappointed in all of us. I am very disappointed in the childish 
behavior this body has continued to exude over the course of this 
entire year. I am very disappointed we would even consider going on 
with spending taxpayer resources and not sitting down and making tough 
decisions. I am very disappointed, candidly, that both sides of the 
aisle only want it their way.
  I do not think this great country was created the way it was so one 
side of the aisle got it exactly the way they wanted it. I think this 
body was created to be ``the greatest deliberative body in the 
country.'' Yet we do not do that. We do not act that way. We do not 
debate tough issues. We hide--all of us--we hide and we let our 
leadership concoct ways to keep us from doing the tough things we need 
to do.
  The fact that we cannot even have a budget on this floor to come out 
of a committee, when, obviously, there is a majority--and I am not even 
pointing fingers at the other side; I think both sides are equally 
problematic in this because both sides, it is evident to me, are going 
to allow us to go to a spending bill today without a budget, but the 
fact that we cannot even bring a budget to the floor, when committees 
are stacked in such a manner that one side does have the majority, to 
me, is incredible.
  If we move to a spending bill today without a budget, if we continue 
to do the things we do here, just without worrying about the 
fundamentals of what it takes for this country to be great, this body 
today will move one step further down the path of causing this great 
Nation to go into decline, to keep us from making tough decisions, to 
allow committee heads or subcommittee heads in Appropriations to be 
able to bring forth their fruit, if you will, the things they would 
like to spend money on.
  By the way, I support much--I probably support everything that is in 
this bill. I am not sure. It supports veterans. It supports military 
construction. But the fact is, actually, the very people this benefits, 
the people who are veterans, the people who have given their limbs--
some have given loved ones--probably are embarrassed by the Senate too. 
Even though they would like to receive the benefits at some point in 
time down the road--when these benefits come to fruition in this next 
fiscal year, they would like to receive those--they probably would 
prefer, first, that all of us in this body do our job, that we quit 
acting like the children we have been acting like this entire year; 
that we quit calculating what we are going to do around the 2012 
elections; that we quit hiding behind our leadership and allowing them 
to go down and negotiate grand bargains in private; that we quit, 
again, hiding from tough decisions.
  I hope others will join with me and that we will not end debate on 
this bill. Let me put it this way: If we do not do that--in other 
words, if we proceed with spending in this bill--I sure hope all those 
who vote to do so will stop talking in private about how embarrassed 
they are about this Senate, will stop talking in private about how they 
feel like little pawns in a political game, will stop talking in 
private about how they would like to see this body start acting in the 
fashion it should act.
  We have not done any real business this year. We all know it. We have 
not done any real business this year because we have not wanted to take 
on those tough issues. I am embarrassed by that, personally. I am 
embarrassed about the way this Senate has been conducting its business 
this year.
  I am not going to vote for a spending bill until we pass a budget. If 
we had passed a budget and had the tough debates about revenues and 
expenditures, we would not be in this no-win situation right now as it 
relates to the debt ceiling, and we all know that. But we want to hide 
behind that.
  With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as we all know, in the next few weeks we 
are going to have to be faced with a decision about what to do with the 
debt limit, and of course there has been a lot of discussion around 
here as well as between the White House and the congressional 
leadership about how best to resolve this issue.
  I believe what it really comes down to is a question about what is 
the best way to resolve a debt crisis. I think it creates a great 
debate, a philosophical debate about do we need to grow government or 
do we need to shrink government. I would argue that is kind of the 
defining line in this debate, whether you believe the best way out of a 
debt crisis is to expand and grow government or whether you think, as I 
do, that we ought to make government smaller, not larger, if we are 
trying to figure out how to get out of this particular circumstance we 
find ourselves in right now.
  We have a $14 trillion debt. We are going to have to increase the 
borrowing authority to get to the 2012 election by $2.4 trillion. That 
is the rate at which our debt is growing. I have said on the floor 
before that if you look at just the daily borrowing our Federal 
Government does, it exceeds the entire budget of my State of South 
Dakota for a whole year. So we will borrow more in the next 24 hours 
here in Washington, DC--about $4 billion--than the State of South 
Dakota spends in an entire year. That is the dimension of the problem 
we are facing.
  Many of us believe the best thing we could do in order to get 
ourselves on a better fiscal track is to pass a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution. Frankly, I hope we will have an 
opportunity to vote on just that sometime in this next week or the 
following week. Most States around the country, including my State of 
South Dakota, have a balanced budget amendment in their constitution. 
It requires them year-in and year-out to get their books balanced. They 
cannot continue to spend as if there is no tomorrow. They cannot spend 
money they do not have. They live within their means. That is what most 
Americans have to do, that is what American businesses and families 
have to do, and it certainly makes sense that we ought to be doing that 
at the Federal level.
  I would urge my colleagues, as we look at the short-term issue, which 
is the debt limit vote, we have to figure out how we are going to get 
the best deal we can get in the near term, but what are we going to do 
in the long term to put our country on a more sustainable fiscal 
footing? I would argue that putting an imposed discipline on Congress, 
such as an amendment to the Constitution that would require us year-in 
and year-out to balance our budget, just makes sense. It is practical, 
it makes economic sense, and it certainly is discipline that has been 
lacking here in Washington, DC, for some time.
  If you look at the States that have made hard decisions--mine is a 
good example of that--they had to cut spending this year significantly 
to balance their budgets, but at least they are doing that. They are 
making these

[[Page S4571]]

hard choices and hard decisions, and that is something we have been 
putting off here for way too long.
  I would point out to my colleagues here that as we talk about how to 
get the country back on the right fiscal track, we do have to start 
setting priorities.
  Well, we are not doing that. We haven't had a budget here now for 806 
days. It has been 806 days since the Democratic majority in the Senate 
has allowed us to have a vote on a budget.
  Many of us believe that in order to determine how you are going to 
spend $3.7 trillion of America's hard-earned money, you ought to have 
some priorities. You ought to at least put a pathway out there about 
how you are going to go about spending those dollars and setting 
priorities for the country.
  Well, we are not doing that because we have not passed a budget in 
806 days. That is the fundamental responsibility we have as leaders. 
The people of this country elected us to do that. We are not doing 
that. I think that is creating uncertainty. It is creating instability 
out there around the country.
  I met with some business owners this morning who say that in their 
particular industry, there are people who want to invest, they want to 
create jobs, and they want to make capital investments. But these are 
long-term investments, and they don't know what is happening, they 
don't know what the policies coming out of Washington are going to be 
with regard to taxes, spending, regulations, all of those sorts of 
things. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty.
  There was a survey done just recently by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 
in which they asked small businesses about their future hiring plans, 
and 64 percent of the small businesses that responded to that survey 
said they were not going to add to their payroll this year, they were 
not going to hire this year. Another 12 percent said they were actually 
going to cut jobs. Why? Half of the people who responded to the survey 
said: Economic uncertainty. They just flat do not know what Washington 
is going to do next. And you can't have that kind of uncertainty. What 
the markets want, what businesses want, what investors want is they 
want to know what the rules are going to be, and they want some 
certainty about what is going to happen next.
  The kind of uncertainty we are creating reaches beyond our shores 
because I think that if you look at what is happening in Europe today, 
they are facing a debt crisis in many of those countries. What are the 
economic impacts of that? Well, if you look at the interest rates in 
the Euro zone, the 3-year government interest rates are 19.4 percent 
for Portugal, 28.9 percent for Greece, and 12.9 percent for Ireland. 
That is our future if we don't get our fiscal house in order.
  What does that mean? That means that not just does the Federal 
Government have to pay more to borrow money, pay more in higher 
interest costs, it also means that those interest costs--all interest 
rates in this country, whether it is for an auto loan or a home loan or 
a student's college loan, they all track with the Treasury borrowing 
rates. If those rates go up, that has profound implications for our 
economy. That means people across this country are going to pay much 
higher interest rates. Small businesses are going to pay higher 
interest rates to borrow money.
  These are real-world impacts if we do not make the right kinds of 
decisions here to get this spending and this borrowing under control. 
So if you want to see our future, look at some of the European 
countries. Look at what impact this is having on interest rates and on 
their economies. That is something our economy could not withstand.
  We are already facing 9.2 percent unemployment. We have a need to get 
people back to work. And what we need now is not more expanded 
government and more uncertainty about what Washington, DC, is going to 
do; we need stability, we need certainty, and we need decisions here 
which have a favorable impact on the private marketplace and create an 
inducement to hire people as opposed to discouraging it, which is what 
we are seeing today.
  I have argued down here on many occasions that this debt is really 
strangling our economy because it is crowding out private investment. 
Anytime the government is out there borrowing money, it means there is 
less capital out there for private businesses to have access to. I 
think the more fundamental issue in this whole debate, however--and I 
mentioned this yesterday in some remarks on the floor--is really the 
size and scope of government and whether we want to see an expanded, 
bigger, larger government or whether we ought to try to work our way 
out of this debt crisis by actually reducing the size of our 
government.
  I pointed out that in the past couple of years alone, we have seen 
government expand dramatically. In fact, nondefense discretionary 
spending in the last 2 years has grown by 24 percent. The debt has 
grown by 35 percent in just the time this President has been in office. 
The amount we spend on our Federal Government as a percentage of our 
entire economy has grown dramatically as well. The 40-year historical 
average is 20.6 percent. That is what we historically, for the past 40 
years, have spent on the Federal Government as a percentage of our 
entire economic output. If you go back to the year 1800--hard to 
believe--it was 2 percent. That is what we spent on the Federal 
Government as a percentage of our entire economy. Of course, it has 
grown since that time, but it has really taken off here in just the 
last few years.
  I pointed out yesterday as well that of the five times the budget has 
actually been balanced in this country since 1969, in every 
circumstance it has been when government has spent less as a percentage 
of our entire economy than the average. So if the average is 20.6 for 
the past 40 years, the times when we have actually balanced the budget, 
we have averaged spending 18.7 percent of our GDP.
  The point simply is this: If you want to solve this problem, it gets 
solved on the spending side of the equation. The problem we have in 
this country is not that we tax too little or have too little revenue, 
it is that we spend too much because this year we will spend, as a 
percentage of our entire economy, 24.3 percent. There is almost a 
quarter of the entire economy of this country now being spent by the 
Federal Government, and that will only go up over time as we see these 
new entitlement programs, the new health care program that was created 
last year, continue to consume more and more of our resources in this 
country. That means there is less and less out there for the private 
economy where the real jobs are created.
  If you look at just what we pay in interest costs alone and how we 
would be influenced by a slight uptick in interest rates--there was a 
great op-ed written in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks back 
by Larry Lindsey, who is a former economic adviser to President Bush 
and also a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He pointed 
out that if interest rates return to their 20-year average, it would 
add $4.9 trillion in additional borrowing costs over the next decade. 
So everything we are talking about here in this debate about the debt 
limit in terms of reducing spending really pales in comparison to just 
a normalization of interest rates.
  If we saw interest rates go back to what is a 20-year average, we 
would see an additional $4.9 trillion that we would have to spend to 
finance our debt. That is a staggering statistic. Again, I think it 
speaks to the need for us to get our spending under control because the 
amount we borrow, as it continues to ratchet up, and we continue to get 
further in debt, the likelihood is that our interest rates are going to 
go up in a corresponding manner, and we will end up spending more and 
more on higher interest.
  I think the real issue is whether we as a nation are going to make a 
conscious decision that the way we resolve this debt crisis is either 
on the spending side or on the revenue side. We heard our colleagues on 
the other side--and we heard the President--say we need more revenue. 
In fact, I have not been in on the discussions occurring at the White 
House, but it is my understanding that one of the latest proposals on 
the table was a $1.6 trillion increase in taxes. In other words, they 
want to add $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenues in order to get 
some amount of spending reduction.
  We have seen this picture before. We can go back to the 1990 budget 
deal that President Bush made with the

[[Page S4572]]

Congress at the time which was supposed to have 2-to-1 spending cuts to 
tax increases. The tax increases occurred; the spending cuts didn't. 
That is our history. That is why making a deal that involves massive 
increases in taxes on our economy, on our small businesses, when we 
have 9.2 percent unemployment is a bad idea when the problem we are 
trying to fix is fundamentally a spending problem. It would be one 
thing if we were spending at a historical rate. If we were spending at 
a rate that is 20 percent of our total economy, the 40-year average, 
that would be different. We are spending more than 24 percent. This is 
fundamentally a spending problem that cannot be solved on the revenue 
side.
  The only thing that increasing taxes would do is make it harder, more 
expensive, and more difficult for small businesses to create jobs. That 
is precisely what we want small businesses to think about doing. 
Instead, 64 percent of them are saying that this next year they are not 
going to add to the payroll, create jobs. Why? Because of economic 
uncertainty. We need to create some certainty out there. We need them 
to know that tax rates will stay at a low level--taxes on investments 
and income. We need them to know we are committed to cutting spending 
and getting the Federal debt under control. We need them to know we are 
not going to add massively to the cost of doing business in this 
country by dramatically increasing the number of Federal regulations 
with which they have to comply.
  I hear that everywhere I go, whether it is a farmer, rancher, or 
small business owner--everywhere. In a meeting I had with some small 
business owners, they said the regulations are making it increasingly 
costly and more difficult for them to create jobs. So if we get into 
the final days of this debate and these decisions have to be made, I 
would say that the President needs to recognize that this is not a 
revenue issue; this is a spending issue, and he needs to step up and 
provide leadership and a pathway for how we get our fiscal house in 
order--not by increasing taxes on the job creators in our economy, our 
small businesses but, rather, by getting Federal spending under 
control.
  I think we would have an incredibly warm and favorable reception from 
both the House and the Senate, who are prepared to do business when it 
comes to reducing spending and making government smaller, not bigger, 
dealing with this long-term structural problem that we have of a 
runaway debt that is growing literally by the year at the tune of about 
$1 trillion annually.
  If we don't do this, as I said before, we are looking at a future 
that will resemble many countries in Europe. We don't want to be a 
country that defaults on our debt. We obviously need to address this 
issue of the debt limit. We need to do it in a responsible way that 
holds us accountable to the American people who spoke loudly and 
clearly in the last election indicating that they believe government 
has gotten too big and is growing too fast. They want the government 
reined in.
  The way we do that is to rein in Federal spending. That involves not 
just the discretionary spending I mentioned earlier, which has grown at 
24 percent in the last 2 years, but the long-term structural challenges 
that we face in entitlement programs--Medicare and Social Security.
  Republicans in the Congress are willing to lead on those issues and 
are willing to step forward and put forward a plan. The only plan put 
forward so far has come from the House Republicans, and it has been 
criticized by a lot of Democrats in the House and Senate and also by 
the White House. We have yet to see a plan from the other side. It has 
been 806 days, and we haven't had a budget presented by the Democratic 
majority in the Senate, nor has the President come forward with a plan 
that actually does something to reduce spending and debt.
  The President did submit a budget proposal earlier this year which 
dramatically would have increased spending and doubled the debt over 
the next decade and dramatically increased taxes. That is the wrong 
message to have received.
  The message the people of this country are sending is that we want 
Washington to focus on the spending side. We want a smaller Federal 
Government, not a larger Federal Government. We want the Federal 
Government to do what we have to do--American families and small 
businesses--and that is to live within its means.
  I hope this debt debate, as it comes to a conclusion, will come to a 
good outcome and result for the people of this country. We don't want 
to have this country in a situation where we are not making payments, 
where we are defaulting on our debt. But we cannot just continue this 
pattern of raising the borrowing authority of this country, adding to 
the Federal debt, without doing something to get that debt under 
control, without doing something to reduce the amount this Federal 
Government spends every single year. Spending at 24 to 25 percent of 
our entire economy is a trend that cannot be continued and cannot be 
sustained. We need to get back to more of a historical average, where 
the American people want us to be.
  The reason the American people reacted the way they did in the last 
election is they saw this government growing at a rate that made them 
very uncomfortable and frightened. That continues to this day because 
there is uncertainty about the country's future and an instability that 
exists today.
  I heard from some business owners this morning. They want stability, 
some certainty about what the rules are going to be. More importantly, 
it starts by having a Federal Government that lives within its means 
and doesn't spend money that it doesn't have and that focuses intently 
on getting spending and debt under control and creating favorable 
conditions for economic growth and job creation.
  That doesn't happen by raising government revenues, raising taxes; 
that happens by the Federal Government exercising fiscal 
responsibility, reducing spending, reducing debt, and keeping taxes low 
on our job creators so that we can get people in this country back to 
work. That is the correct prescription for this country. It is a 
prescription I hope the President will embrace.
  I can say that the Republicans in the Senate--and I daresay the 
Republicans in the House of Representatives as well--are prepared to 
meet him in working together on that challenge of reducing spending and 
debt and creating conditions favorable to economic growth and job 
creation and getting American people back to work.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I stand here today having spent some time 
over the last few days thinking about this dispute regarding the debt 
limit, as we are hearing from our constituents across the country who 
are looking at Washington and asking: What is going on? What are you 
guys doing?
  It is a difficult process for people to understand. They elect us and 
send us here to serve our country and to solve problems. Yet they read 
in the newspapers all these startling statements--the President saying 
a few days ago he can't guarantee Social Security payments, others 
saying our bond rating might be at risk. And, of course, the reality of 
daily life is that, more than ever, Americans are finding it difficult 
to find a job, and the ones who do are working twice as hard and making 
less.
  So things have gotten tougher over the last couple of years, 
unfortunately, and people have a right to be upset with the direction 
we are heading. And that was one of the reasons I felt compelled to run 
for the Senate--to come up here and be part of trying to make a 
difference, be part of putting this country on a track that helps us to 
embrace all the things that make us exceptional and unique and continue 
to make us exceptional and unique.
  When I look at this dispute, I see two things that are very clear. 
No. 1, we can't continue to do what we are doing now, and anyone who 
argues we can is

[[Page S4573]]

not being realistic and is doing a great disservice to the future of 
our country. It is this simple: You can't have a government that spends 
$1.5 trillion more than it takes in every single year. You can't have a 
government that borrows 40 cents out of every dollar it spends.
  Look what happened yesterday. Greece was downgraded. They are on the 
verge of being in default. Not Greece--I apologize. It was Ireland. Why 
is that happening in Europe? Why are these countries in trouble? It is 
not because they refuse to raise their debt limit; it is because people 
don't think they can pay back the money anymore. The people who lend 
the money, the people who sell the debt, they are saying: We don't know 
how you are going to pay us back. Your economy doesn't produce enough 
money. You have no plan to bring spending under control. We have lost 
confidence in you.
  That is the message being sent to Europe today, and if we keep doing 
what we are doing now, that is the message that will be sent here to 
America very soon. The impact that will have not just on our country 
but on the world is, quite frankly, devastating. That is what we are 
facing.
  The fundamental problem is twofold: We have a government that spends 
too much money--more money than it takes in--and we have a government 
that doesn't take in enough money to pay its debts because its economy 
is not growing. That is why I have argued from the days on the campaign 
trail to when I got elected that the way out of this problem is a two-
pronged approach. You have to do them both.
  You have to cut spending. We have to have spending cuts and spending 
discipline. It doesn't all have to happen overnight, but we have to 
stop spending $1.5 trillion a year of money we do not have. We cannot 
continue to do that.
  That is why I support the cut, cap, and balance plan, because it says 
we are going to begin to cut spending this year in a real way, we are 
going to cap the ability of government to continue to grow its spending 
in future years, and we are going to give the States the right to 
ratify a balanced budget amendment for our country that basically says: 
You cannot spend more money than you take in. States balance their 
budgets, businesses have to balance their budgets, families have to 
balance their budgets. If this Federal Government doesn't begin to 
balance its budget sometime in the near future, we may cross a line 
that is irreversible and puts us in a place similar to what we are 
seeing in Europe today.
  So on the spending side, it has to happen. Again, to people who 
pretend we can do it overnight, I say: Of course not. It took a long 
time to get into this predicament, and it will take a while to get out, 
but we have to start trending in the right direction. It is critically 
important that some sort of spending discipline plan be put in place.
  Look, I know this is a political place. The debate is always framed 
by politics. I, like everyone else here, fully participate in the 
political banter. But today, for a moment, I want to step back from 
that and just say this. Ultimately, I want to see a solution to the 
spending plan. I will welcome that solution whether it comes from the 
White House, from the minority leader, or from the majority leader. I 
just want someone to step up and offer a plan that begins to bring 
spending discipline under control. I know I have endorsed one. It is 
called the cut, cap, and balance plan. If there is a better way to do 
it, offer it now. What are you waiting for? Now is the time to offer 
it. If someone in this building has a better way to bring spending 
under control, now is the time to offer it. Don't negotiate in the 
shadows. All these negotiations going on we are hearing about in the 
press--where is the plan? Where is the document that tells us and shows 
us how we can bring spending under control? Now is the time to show it. 
Now is the time to do it. What are you waiting for?
  That is on the spending side. Spending cuts are important. They are 
essential. We cannot do it without fiscal spending discipline, but that 
is not enough. We also have to grow. We have to grow. That is where the 
crux of this debate has really gotten to. You hear in the press that 
this fight is because certain people don't want to raise taxes on 
certain people. That is really not what this issue is about. I think 
everyone agrees that we need growth, that government needs growth in 
its revenue so it has a way to pay down this debt. The debate is about 
from where this revenue comes.
  Some argue: Well, the way you get more money for government is to 
raise taxes on people--raise taxes on very rich people. I have two 
problems with that, and neither one is ideological.
  The first problem is it doesn't work. You can't possibly raise taxes 
high enough to collect enough money to make a difference on the debt. I 
looked at some of the tax increases the President and others have 
proposed. It adds up to less than 10 days of deficit spending. Even if 
you raise the taxes on what they define as rich to 100 percent next 
year, it is still not enough money to pay for just 1 year's deficit. So 
tax increases don't work because they don't work. They do not generate 
enough money to do anything.
  The second reason I can't support tax increases is because it will 
kill jobs. And while this debt is a huge issue--it is very important--
the jobs issue is even more important. The No. 1 issue in Washington is 
the debt--rightfully so because it is a huge, enormous, generational 
issue--but unemployment is the No. 1 issue in America. We are talking 
about people who have worked hard their entire lives, who went to 
school and did everything that was asked of them, and now they go out 
into the job market and they can't find a job. It is especially 
astonishing among young people--25, 30 years of age--who went to 
college and got their degrees and now they can't find a job, certainly 
not in the areas they studied.
  We have to get that turned around. Every other problem we face in our 
country--the housing crisis and all these other problems--becomes 
easier to deal with if you have more people working, people making 
money, paying taxes, and spending money in our economy. So unemployment 
is what we have to get at, and we are not going to create jobs by tax 
increases. If someone in this building, if someone in Washington has a 
tax increase that creates jobs, I invite them to offer it. We are all 
ears. If someone in Washington has a tax increase that helps create 
jobs, right now is the time to offer it. I would submit we will not 
find one because there are no tax increases that will create jobs. If 
you don't create jobs and you don't grow this economy, there is no way 
out of this debt. You can't cut your way out of it, and you certainly 
can't tax your way out of it.
  Does that mean we don't do anything about taxes, as I hear some 
commentators in the press saying? Of course not. Our Tax Code is 
broken. There are a bunch of things in the Tax Code that do not belong 
there, and I think there is bipartisan support--whether the media tries 
to ignore it or not--in the Senate, in the House, in Washington for tax 
reform.
  Tax reform we can get done. Tax reform means we are going to look at 
the Tax Code, and if there are things in the Tax Code that are there 
because somebody hired a lobbyist and got it put in the Tax Code but it 
is not really good policy, it shouldn't be in there. And if we find 
enough of those unfair things in the Tax Code, then we can lower 
everybody's rates. We can make the rates flat, we can make the Tax Code 
simpler and easier to comply with, and that is what we should aim for 
because that is what job creators tell us.
  I swear to you, I have never met a job creator who told me they are 
looking for a State with high taxes and burdensome regulations. I have 
never met one. There may be one, but I invite anyone here in 
Washington, DC, to produce for us a job creator--a company or an 
individual--who says that what they are looking for is to open a 
business someplace where the taxes are high and difficult to understand 
and the regulations are expensive to comply with. And that is what we 
have in America. You want to know why jobs aren't being created. 
Because that is what we have in America. So if someone knows of a job 
creator anywhere in the world who is looking for a high, complex tax 
environment or looking for a high regulatory environment, I would like 
to meet them because I have yet to meet a job creator who is looking 
for that, and that is what we have.
  I will submit to you that there is bipartisan support for the idea of 
tax reform, of simplifying our Tax Code and

[[Page S4574]]

making it easier to comply with, of--if we do it the right way--
lowering everybody's tax rates so that people have more money in their 
pockets to spend into the economy and grow their business or to start a 
new business because that is how jobs are created.
  I know all of us would like to think that Senators and Presidents 
create jobs but not outside this building they do not. Jobs are created 
when everyday people from all walks of life decide, you know what, 
today I am going to open a business and operate from the spare bedroom 
of my home or out of the garage or when somebody has an existing 
business and decides: I want to grow this business, so I am going to 
hire a couple more people because I have a belief this business can do 
better.
  We need to get people excited about doing that again, and we are not 
going to get them excited about doing that again if our taxes and our 
regulations are out of control. So let's begin to focus with regard to 
this debt limit on some of the things that there has to be agreement 
on, and there are two things: We must control our spending, and we must 
put a plan in place that shows the world how America will bring its 
spending under control, and we have to do something to grow our 
economy.
  Ask any job creator in the real world, What are you looking for to 
grow and create jobs? They will tell you, We are looking for 
confidence. And we get confidence from knowing that regulations are 
predictable and easy to comply with, and the Tax Code is predictable, 
affordable, and easy to comply with.
  I submit that if we focused on that and not all the other noise that 
goes on in the back and forth of this place, we can actually start 
moving toward a solution.
  The last point I would make is the word ``compromise'' is a very 
popular word around here, and there is nothing wrong with compromise, 
so long as the compromise also happens to be a solution. Because if 
your compromise doesn't solve the problem, you have created a new 
problem.
  There is nothing wrong with compromise. Maybe your ideas of tax 
reform are different than my ideas of tax reform, but ultimately we 
have to solve the broken Tax Code. So compromise is not a dirty word, 
unless the compromise makes it worse, not better. Too often in politics 
compromise leads to things that make things worse, not better. If you 
raise taxes in this economy, with 9 percent unemployment, you are going 
to make things worse, not better.
  I hope we will rally in a bipartisan fashion around the concept of 
tax reform, of creating a Tax Code in America that encourages people to 
create jobs here once again, because if we can solve the jobs issue, if 
we can begin to solve the unemployment issue, all these other issues we 
face as a nation become easier to face.
  Mr. President, I thank you for your attention and I note the absence 
of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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