[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 113 (Tuesday, July 26, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4889-S4892]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. THUNE. I am happy to cosponsor the legislation of the Senator 
from Texas. She is absolutely right, there is no more deserving group 
of people in this country than our military and we need to make sure 
under no circumstance they are not paid, and her legislation would do 
that. I hope we can get it to the floor and that it is acted upon very 
quickly.
  We are a week away now from the time in which we would have to 
request additional borrowing authority in order for our Federal 
Government to pay its bills. We have known it is coming for some time. 
We know generally at least when that date is. It strikes me as most 
Americans observe this debate, the thing they are probably most 
concerned about is how this is going to impact them and their economic 
circumstances. Frankly, I think all of us ought to be looking at this 
with an eye toward how is this going to impact the economy. What is 
this going to do to get people back to work and to grow the economy? 
There has been a lot of discussion about that. The President made yet 
another speech last night in which he tried to claim the high ground in 
this debate. Frankly, I think the President has relegated himself to 
the sidelines in this debate simply because many of the things he was 
proposing to do as a part of this debt limit increase would be very 
counterproductive when it comes to the economy. I would also add that 
the President continues to sort of assign blame and blame the previous 
administration for the circumstances in which we find ourselves and, 
clearly, he inherited a difficult set of economic circumstances. I 
think we would all concede that.
  What I would argue is the President has made that situation worse. He 
has made it much worse. If you look at since this President took 
office, we now have 2.1 million more people unemployed than there were 
when he took office. We have seen the Federal debt grow by 35 percent 
since this President took office. The number of people receiving food 
stamps today has gone up by 40 percent since this President took 
office. He has added $11,000 to the debt of each individual in this 
country since he took office. Gas prices are up. They increased almost 
100 percent since this President took office. The cost of health care 
has gone up 19 percent since this President took office despite 
assertions during the debate on the health care bill last year that it 
was actually going to reduce health care costs. We have seen all of 
these economic circumstances worsen on this President's watch.
  It strikes me as we look at this debt debate that we ought to be 
thinking about what can we do to get out of this economic downturn. We 
are growing at a very sluggish rate, a little under 2 percent. We have 
unemployment that is over 9 percent, 9.2 percent. As I said, there are 
2.1 million more people unemployed than when the President took office. 
Clearly the focus of our discussions as we lead up to this vote on the 
debt limit ought to be about the economy, getting people back to work, 
growing the economy.
  Frankly, I think there are a couple of things we have to do to get 
out of the debt situation. One is we have to cut government spending. 
Secondly, we have to get the economy growing and expanding again. So, 
clearly, that ought to be the focus.

  When I said the President, in his proposal--at least as it has been 
reported because we haven't seen any proposal from him, but in the 
reporting about his discussions with congressional leadership, it has 
been suggested that the President has consistently advocated for more 
revenues, more taxes, and, in fact, as recently as last Friday, when 
there was still ``a big deal'' on the table--we were still looking at a 
possibility of actually striking an agreement--the President upped the 
ante even further. He moved the goalpost yet again. He wanted $400 
billion more in higher taxes.
  It strikes me, and I think most Americans right now, that the worst 
thing we can do in an economic downturn and when we have 9.2 percent 
unemployment is raise taxes. There isn't a tax I can think of that will 
create a single job in this country. It would only make it more 
difficult and more expensive for our small businesses to create jobs. 
So that was a nonstarter. I think it became clear over time that it was 
going to be a nonstarter despite the President's insistence that tax 
increases be a part of whatever deal gets struck here.
  As we find ourselves where we are now, I think it is important to 
think about where we have come from and to look at the time that has 
now passed and where we stand today. I think it is important to point 
out, as we talk about budgets and we talk about spending and we talk 
about debt, our job is to pass a budget. That is where it all starts. 
We haven't passed a budget now in 818 days. In fact, the last time the 
Senate approved a budget was back on April 29, 2009. So it has now been 
818 days since the most recent budget was approved by the Senate.
  So we are operating without a budget. Imagine how complicated it 
would be for any State government, any business in this country, if 
they continued to operate without a budget. That is what we have been 
doing in Washington now for 818 days.
  So January 6 of this year came around and we knew this debt limit 
vote was coming and was out there. Secretary Geithner wrote to Congress 
asking that the debt limit be increased. That was back in January. At 
that time, the Obama administration was also pushing for a clean debt 
limit increase; in other words, a debt limit increase that did not 
include any kind of spending reductions or spending reform. He just 
wanted a $2.4 trillion blank check to raise the debt by that amount.
  Well, we came to February of this year--of 2011--when it came time 
for

[[Page S4890]]

the President to submit his budget to Congress. That budget seemed to 
be in complete denial of the reality we find ourselves in today because 
that budget would spend $46 trillion and add almost $10 trillion to the 
publicly held debt over the next decade, as well as increase taxes by 
somewhere on the order of $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion. So it had more 
spending, more debt, and higher taxes at a time when we are in an 
economic downturn, when we have high unemployment, and we have year 
over year deficits that are adding massively to the debt in this 
country. So the President's budget was met with a thud, as one would 
expect, when it was presented to the Congress.
  As we went on in the year, in March of this year--March 31 to be 
exact--the Senate Republicans introduced a balanced budget amendment. 
We recognized that in order for us to get our fiscal house in order, to 
start living within our means, to quit spending money we don't have, we 
have to have some kind of a discipline imposed on the Congress, a 
requirement that we balance our budget every year, as do so many 
States. There are 49 States in this country that have some form of a 
balanced budget amendment in their constitution, some sort of 
requirement that forces them to make their books balance at the end of 
the year. So we introduced a balanced budget amendment, and we still 
hope at some point to get a vote on that. That hasn't happened yet, but 
that is certainly something we want to enter into this debate because 
we think it is important not only to deal with the spending in the near 
term, but also to come up with a solution in the long term, and a 
balanced budget amendment would certainly accomplish that.
  On April 11 of this year, Chairman Paul Ryan of the House Budget 
Committee introduced his budget in the House of Representatives. Of 
course, on April 13, right after the submission of that budget, the 
President then gave a ``revised budget'' speech. It was interesting 
because Congressional Budget Office Director Elmendorf later stated 
that the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--doesn't score speeches, 
so they really couldn't attach any sort of numbers to the President's 
speech because they don't score speeches. We have yet to see any kind 
of an actual submission of a plan from the President prior to his 
provisional budget submission, which, as I said, came in with higher 
taxes, higher spending, and higher debt.
  On April 15, in accordance with the schedule required under the 
Budget Act, the House passed their budget. So the Republicans on the 
Senate Budget Committee asked the President to submit a revised budget 
based upon his speech. That revised budget was never submitted. We had 
a House-passed budget. We had the President's sort of on the sidelines, 
out of the debate, and then in May of this year Republicans on the 
Senate Budget Committee--and I am on that Senate Budget Committee--were 
told to expect a budget markup which never materialized. So we still 
didn't have a budget in the Senate. The budget passed by the House of 
Representatives was roundly criticized by the Senate and by Democrats 
in Washington. But it is the only budget proposal--actual proposal--
that has been voted on and that we have literally seen in over 818 days 
now.
  We knew this vote on the debt limit was starting to get closer, so 
discussions picked up in terms of having some meetings to determine how 
we might proceed and what we might do to put a package in place that 
would allow us to raise the debt limit, but do it with significant 
spending reforms and spending reductions. Vice President Biden held his 
very first meeting on May 5 of this year--2011--and those discussions 
continued on for some time.
  We also had on the floor of the Senate on May 25 of this year the 
President's budget he submitted to Congress back in February. So we 
actually had a vote on that. That vote was 97 to 0 in opposition to the 
President's budget. There wasn't a single Republican or a single 
Democrat in the Senate who said the President's original budget 
submission was something they wanted to be associated with or wanted to 
support. So not a single vote in the Senate for the President's 
original budget submission.
  So we continued on into June, and I think there was hope there would 
be some agreement between the President and congressional leadership on 
how to proceed with this debt limit vote that comes up ahead of us now 
sometime next week. Those discussions continued, as I said, as recently 
as last week and finally started to unravel and fell apart, at which 
point it became clear we were going to need a solution and an answer.
  So, again, the House Republicans put together and passed a proposal 
called cut, cap, and balance which would have cut spending now, 
immediately, capped spending in future years, and put in place a 
balanced budget amendment which would ensure that in later years we 
would have the kind of discipline that is so important and so lacking 
in Washington. That was on July 19, 2011, when the House passed that 
legislation.
  So it came over to the Senate. We had a vote on it in the Senate on 
July 22, last week, and the Senate Democrats voted to table the cut, 
cap, and balance approach and denounced it as not a serious effort to 
do anything about the fiscal circumstance in which we find ourselves.
  We didn't get a chance to debate it and get to an up-or-down vote. We 
had a tabling motion and a vote on a tabling motion by the Democratic 
leader and as a consequence it was defeated. So we don't have anything 
yet in place that would deal with the debt limit coming up ahead of us 
next week.
  So that is where we are today. As I said, the House Republicans have 
again taken the leadership and put forward yet another proposal, and I 
expect they are going to vote on it sometime later this week, perhaps 
as early as tomorrow. We evidently now have before us something the 
Senate leadership, Senator Reid, has put forward we may end up having a 
vote on this week. But somehow, some way, we have to get to where we 
solve this before next Tuesday.
  I am not among those who believe it is an option for us to get past 
next Tuesday and then try and figure out what happens next. I believe 
we need to act. We need to act in a way that is responsible, but we 
need to act in a way that addresses the real issue, which is not the 
debt limit but the debt.
  I wish to point out when the President originally requested--and I 
think he reiterated that request in April--a clean debt limit, there 
was an assumption that Congress would just give him a $2.4 trillion 
increase in the debt limit without any kind of attempt to rein in the 
real problem, which is the debt.
  So we have been consistently advocating to try to get spending 
reductions, spending reforms into this equation. The President has 
consistently advocated in favor of tax increases. To him, this is 
defined as a revenue problem, not a spending problem. Most of us see 
this as a spending problem. When we have spending as a percentage of 
the entire economy that is literally at the highest level since World 
War II, we have, fundamentally, a spending problem. It cannot be 
resolved by raising taxes on small businesses; it needs to be resolved 
by cutting spending.
  When we cut spending, I believe we will also put in place the 
confidence the economy needs to start picking up and growing again, and 
we will get the other component, the other element that is so important 
to getting out of this mess; that is, an expanding, growing, vital 
economy that is creating jobs and creating greater prosperity for the 
American people.
  So this is where we are. We are in the last week. I think the 
President is essentially missing in action. His proposal to raise taxes 
which he talked about again last night in his speech is old news. It is 
yesterday's news. We know that is not going to pass in the House of 
Representatives, and it probably wouldn't pass in the Senate. Right 
now, the simple math is we have to be able to pass something by next 
Tuesday. We have to put something forward that can secure 217 votes in 
the House of Representatives and 60 votes in the Senate.
  Some of us maybe aren't going to like certain elements of what is 
going to be put forward. But what I can tell my colleagues is, we have 
come a long way in terms of steering this debate away from the 
President's original budget proposal which, as I said, doubled the debt 
over 10 years, massively increased spending, massively increased taxes, 
and from the point where the President was asking for a

[[Page S4891]]

debt limit increase devoid of any spending cuts or spending reforms--
simply a $2.4 trillion blank check that would allow him to raise the 
debt limit--to a time where we are actually talking about significant 
reductions in spending both in the near term and in the long term. 
Whether the proposal that passes the House this week ends up being what 
we ultimately vote on in the Senate, it is the only viable option out 
there.
  The President doesn't have a plan. He never has had a plan. The 
Senate Democrats don't have a plan. They haven't had a budget in 818 
days and have yet to put forward anything until, as I said, this most 
recent idea Senator Reid came up with. But we are up against the clock. 
We need to get this done. The American people expect us to get it done. 
The market expects us to get it done. Not doing so would put at great 
risk our credit rating and our ability as a great nation to function 
and to attract the type of credit we need to keep our government going, 
unfortunately.
  I hope in the end what comes out of this is some reforms that will 
put us on a path where we are starting to take that debt down, where we 
are not literally borrowing over 40 cents out of every dollar this 
government spends. That is where we need to end up.
  But for now at least we have to get a measure in place by next week 
that doesn't raise taxes in a way that would hurt the economy; that 
gets discretionary, nondefense spending, and, for that matter, defense 
spending under control in the near term and puts in place a process by 
which we can get a result on reforming entitlement programs and dealing 
with what we call the mandatory part of our budget.
  So that is where we came from. It has been an interesting path to get 
here, but there is a lot of revisionist history that gets put forward, 
and I wish to remind my colleagues where we came from because I think 
it is important and informs the decisions we will make today.
  For the President to suggest for a minute that somehow the House 
Republicans are to blame for where we are today is not consistent--in 
fact, it is completely contradictory--with the facts. It is the House 
Republicans who passed a budget on time back in April. It is the House 
Republicans who passed a plan last week, a cut, cap, and balance plan 
to deal with this debt limit. It is the House Republicans who tomorrow 
who will vote on yet another proposal put forward after the President 
upped the ante last week and made it clear that the only way he would 
accept a deal would be with significant tax increases on the American 
people and the American economy at a time when we can ill-afford it.
  So I hope as we proceed into this week--and the days are numbered--we 
will get a piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate that can 
secure the 60 votes necessary for us to avoid having to meet that 
trigger next week and to do something that would address the long-term 
issue of spending and debt, get spending under control, and actually, 
in my view, put the conditions in place that would enable economic 
growth and job creation in this country; so we can cut spending and 
grow the economy, which, in my view, are the two elements we need to 
put the country back on a better path.
  So with that, I ask my colleagues to work with us this week against 
this deadline to get in place a solution to this problem that deals 
with the fundamental issue; that is, the issue of Washington's 
overspending, and start to rein that in.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I want to start out today by 
complimenting the Senator from South Dakota. He has gotten it 
absolutely exactly right. I wish to associate myself with the comments 
he has made.
  We are 7 days away from literally a crisis in our country. We are 
down to a point where it is getting even difficult to try to figure 
out, with the timelines naturally built into the process, how you get 
from here to there in 7 days, and yet that is what faces us.
  Last night, like many Americans, I watched and listened to the 
President and listened to Speaker Boehner. I must admit, when it comes 
to the comments made by the President, I do not understand where he is 
coming from. He talks about higher taxes and more revenue when the 
reality is, at this late date, he is the only one talking about that.
  I have been one of those people who has said for a long time we 
absolutely need to engage in a process of reforming our Tax Code. It is 
too complicated. It is almost an antigrowth piece of work. I am anxious 
to work with my colleagues. But with 7 days left to try to suggest 
there will be a massive amount of new taxes does not make any sense. 
That is not in the Reid plan. It is not in the Boehner plan. Yet there 
it is.
  Well, here we are. We are literally 7 days away. As I said, as I 
watched those comments last night, it looked to me like campaign 
rhetoric. It looked like positioning for the next election. It looked 
like class warfare. What it did not look like to me was Presidential 
leadership. Yet our creditors around the world are watching this debt 
limit debate unfold, and they are as shocked as all of us are by the 
lack of leadership coming out of the White House.
  This weekend, the President was presented a bipartisan approach. I 
found it reassuring over the weekend to know that our leaders in the 
Senate here were talking and trying to work their way through this 
terribly complicated issue, very difficult issue. I thought with that 
kind of effort, when an approach was presented to the President, he 
would naturally embrace the approach. With only 1 week left, that made 
the most sense to me. Yet, surprisingly, the President rejected the 
approach. The reason? Well, the reason is, as he has said so many 
times, the President does not want to have to deal with increasing the 
debt limit next year during his campaign for a second term.
  I find that shocking since last night, when he addressed the Nation, 
he expressed great concern about our debt limit negotiations being in a 
stalemate. Yet he could have used that opportunity by accepting the 
bipartisan proposal that had been presented to him a day or so earlier. 
He had the opportunity to show the type of leadership our country needs 
and is crying out for, but he decided to reject the plan and retreat to 
political talking points.
  The President also said he would veto Speaker Boehner's approach to 
raising the debt limit for 7 months, claiming it kicks the can down the 
road--claiming that is what it would be.
  Let's look at that. Let's examine what the President is trying to 
convince this Nation of. Over the last 25 years, Congress has increased 
the debt limit 31 times. Mr. President, 22 of those 31 times were for 
less than a year. Yet the President claims he will veto anything not 
extending into 2013? It defies logic to decry our debt and then veto 
anything unless it allows more record-setting debt. That is exactly 
what he is pledging he will do: veto anything less than the largest 
debt limit increase in the history of the United States of America--the 
largest.
  His last debt limit increase in January was the largest in history at 
that point--$1.9 trillion--yet instead of hitting the brakes and 
saying, ``Whoa, time out, this is getting us in trouble,'' the 
President is doubling down, demanding yet another record-setting budget 
buster.
  Who does the President think is going to pay off all this debt? It 
will be our children and our grandchildren. Passing multiple trillion-
dollar debt limit increases without addressing our addiction to 
spending does far more to kick the problems down the road. It sends the 
problems over the cliff, in fact. Yet, despite this reality, the 
President continues to accelerate, as we get closer and closer to the 
cliff. The President recently said this:

       The only bottom line I have is that we have to extend the 
     debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.

  While numerous issues accompany this line of thinking, let's hit some 
high points.
  Our national debt is more than $14 trillion, and the President is 
requesting to increase it to $16 trillion--the largest in our Nation's 
history. So why is the bottom line only about the length of the 
extension, not about spending reductions that put our country back on 
track?

[[Page S4892]]

  Unfortunately, the President's only fundamental concern is how do we 
kick this past the next election. Above all else, not good policy, not 
what is best for our citizens, but the No. 1 goal is how to get past 
the next election. This is, unfortunately, his bottom line. Simply 
astounding that the campaign of hope and change has become such 
business as usual. Simply raising the debt ceiling absent any 
meaningful spending reforms will not work.
  Now we find ourselves in one heck of a mess. With about a week to go, 
the latest in the debt limit saga is a proposal that was introduced 
last night by Senator Reid. But here is why this latest plan has so 
many problems. Policywise, it does not hold together. The plan claims 
$1 trillion in savings from reductions in troop forces. These savings 
assume the troop surge extends into perpetuity, which never was the 
plan. So it assumes savings from stopping spending that was never 
scheduled or even requested. It is like reaching into the air and 
grabbing savings. Essentially, this plan counts savings that were 
scheduled to happen.
  Second, the plan counts $400 billion in interest savings on that 
savings relative to the troop money that was not going to be spent, was 
not asked for. In other words, not only does the plan count nonexistent 
savings, it then compounds the policy problem by counting nonexistent 
interest savings on that savings. You simply cannot count savings that 
were never intended to happen.
  We are dealing with a ticking timebomb here. We have rating agencies 
saying: My goodness, your debt is so out of control that unless we see 
a plan, we will not be fooled by the gimmicks. Yet this policy approach 
does not hold together. You see, the rating agencies, justifiably so, 
want to see real budget savings that actually help to improve our 
balance sheet.
  We are at a critical time in our Nation's history. With 1 week left, 
the American people are yearning for bold leadership, not another shell 
game. Heated rhetoric and charged accusations are not going to fix the 
fiscal situation.
  I stand ready to work with my colleagues on a solution, and I urge 
the President to do the same. Let's quit defending what is 
indefensible; that is, worrying about getting the can kicked down the 
road past the next election, and let's try to figure out how best to 
address this.
  There was a plan that came out recently. It was a plan dubbed from 
the Gang of 6, and the Presiding Officer and I have had some interest 
in that plan. But we all acknowledge it is going to take time to put 
that plan in place, to debate that plan, to bring it to the floor, to 
do the things that are necessary. We have to take action now. I am a 
part of a group that says: Look, let's take a long hard look at that 
plan. Let's see if that is the plan we can move down the field to 
success.
  But we have just 7 days left. We need to face the reality that 7 days 
from now we will be within hours of hitting our debt ceiling. 
Incidentally, to those who are arguing: No, it is not August 2, well, 
if it is not August 2, it is close to August 2. We are facing a real 
problem where there will not be enough money to pay the bills.
  Many say: Pay the interest on the debt. Make sure you get that done. 
I am not opposed to that. I do not want to default on our debt. But 
that means we have about 50 cents on the dollar in August, according to 
a cashflow statement done by the Bipartisan Policy Group, and that 
means that 50 percent of those out there who would otherwise receive 
some type of payment from the Federal Government will not get it 
because there simply is not enough money to pay the bills.
  So what does Speaker Boehner's plan do?
  Well, it is a plan that is realistic. It says, look, we have to come 
to grips with where we are in the next 7 days or we can simply suspend 
rational thought, believe that the record-breaking debt increases to 
accommodate record-setting debt are somehow a plausible course. It is 
not.
  I am more apt to believe the President's own words. When the debt 
limit increase was $781 billion to raise our borrowing authority to $9 
trillion, then Senator Obama was in the place where we are in today, 
deciding on whether he would vote for a debt ceiling increase, and he 
called the situation then a ``failure of leadership.'' He went on to 
say ``increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and 
internationally.''
  Well, we were at $9 trillion then, an unforgivable amount of money. 
Today we are at $14.5 trillion, and the steam engine is firing away, 
building up more and more debt.
  Senator Obama's words were as truthful then as they are today. Yet 
now he has done a 180. His Presidency has hit the turbo booster when it 
comes to record debt.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time reserved for the Republicans has 
expired.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

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