[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 176 (Thursday, November 17, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7634-S7636]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE FINANCIAL FUTURE

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, once again we find ourselves in a too 
familiar position. Secret meetings over the financial future of our 
country are being held as we head toward the final hours--really final 
minutes as has been the pattern around here--of an agreement that will 
be produced for us and expected to be passed by a committee of 12. It 
is less than a week until the deadline and no language has been made 
public.
  The American people should be able to make their voice heard before 
the committee votes because the truth is, once that vote happens there 
will be no opportunity to change their product. It will be up or down, 
the train will have left the station. The bill will, hopefully, be a 
good bill that can pass but we will not have any opportunity to amend 
it.
  That is not the way Congress was set up to work. I happened to catch, 
this morning, a statement by former Secretary of Defense under 
President Bush and President Obama, Robert Gates. This is a statement 
he made in an interview:

       I think, frankly, the creation of this supercommittee was a 
     complete abdication of responsibility on the part of 
     Congress. It basically says, ``This is too hard for us. Give 
     us a BRAC. Give us a package where all I have to do is vote 
     it up or vote it down and I don't have to take any personal 
     responsibility for the tough decisions.'' So now we are left 
     with this Sword of Damocles hanging over the government, 
     hanging over defense, and if these cuts are automatically 
     made, I think the results for our national security will be a 
     catastrophe.

  That is what the former Secretary of Defense said recently.
  Admiral Mullen, when asked about this in response to a question I 
asked him at the Armed Services Committee--the then-Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs said, if this sequester takes place:

       It has a good chance of breaking us and putting us in a 
     position of not keeping faith with this all volunteer force 
     that has fought two wars. . . . It will impose a heavy 
     penalty on developing equipment for the future, and it will 
     hollow us out.

  One of the reasons I am here this morning is to issue a warning and 
call attention to some matters that I believe are important. People 
will make many promises about what this deal will be about if it passes 
and they reach an agreement. Hopefully they will reach an agreement 
that is one that can be honestly defended and we

[[Page S7635]]

will all be happy to vote for it. But what we have seen so far 
indicates that secret deals, while they remain secret, are promoted to 
be far better than they are when you begin to see what is in them. The 
devil will always be in the details.

  Yesterday on the floor I spoke about the Budget Control Act disaster 
funding gimmick. Over 10 years, the cumulative cost of this gimmick 
will be about $140 billion to the Treasury, including interest. Done 
with just a few words tucked into the bill, people did not understand 
the effect of disaster provisions. It came out in the eleventh hour 
into the final agreement and people voted on it without fully 
understanding what it meant. So just a few words can dramatically alter 
the future fiscal situation of our country.
  The record of broken promises is long, improvident promises about 
what a bill would do. Many deals have been proposed that have promised 
serious spending cuts and minimal tax increases only for the reverse to 
be actually true.
  Let me run down a brief list: The President's budget, submitted 
earlier this year, was accompanied with the President's claim that it 
``does not add to our debt.'' Clearly, one of the most dramatic, 
erroneous, blatantly false statements ever issued by a President of the 
United States. The reality is, that budget would double the debt of the 
United States in 11 years. That budget would have as its lowest single 
annual deficit, according to CBO, an annual deficit of $724 billion 
with deficits in the years 8, 9, 10 up to $1 trillion again. It 
increased spending, it increased taxes, and it increased the debt more 
than if we had done nothing.
  Then the Senate Democrats talked about a budget I called a phantom 
budget. We have not had one in the Senate for 932 days. So they talked 
about a budget, and they made some claims, but we never saw it in 
detail--never saw the detail. But they claimed it had $2 trillion in 
spending cuts and $2 trillion in tax hikes, $1 of tax hikes for every 
$1 of spending cuts.
  The President, earlier this year, acknowledged that we should have $3 
of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. Of course, that has 
been abandoned now. But the reality was that the phantom budget was 
talked about but never produced--but an outline was produced--actually 
added, we think, $2 in tax hikes for every $1 in spending cuts.
  Then, Senator Reid, during the effort to raise the debt limit, his 
revised proposal claimed $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction. The 
reality was they were counting $1.1 trillion in savings from war costs 
because the CBO assumes that war costs would be the same for 10 years. 
It was never going to be the same for 10 years. We are always going to 
bring the war costs down as soon as possible. It is a phony claim that 
we should reduce spending by $1 trillion by claiming credit for war 
costs that we are on a steadfast path and have been to reduce.
  The President's supercommittee proposal that he submitted to this 
committee of 12 claims $2 in cuts for every $1 in taxes. But the 
reality, as we see it, there are no real cuts and 100 percent of the 
reduction will come from more taxes, more spending, more debt so far. 
So if this committee proposes a solution and asks us to vote for it, 
here are some things we should look for and not be happy with, if they 
are in the bill. The pattern has been--I would say for the promoters of 
these agreements--to spin them to sound better than they are.
  One of the things we should look out for are claims of spending 
reductions that occur by setting a cap on war spending, as I indicated. 
The money was never going to be spent. Some are claiming $1 trillion in 
savings from that and it should not be counted. Another thing we would 
look at are front-loaded promises, front-loaded revenue increases, tax 
increases that occur now along with back-loaded promises of spending 
cuts in the future--in the outyears then they claim these savings. But 
the pattern around here is that once a tax increase is passed, it is 
there, but a promise of a spending cut in the future very often does 
not become a reality. We know that. That is the pattern that has put us 
in such a desperate financial condition today, just that kind of 
activity. So whatever happens this time, this cannot be part of the 
process.
  We need to watch for a plan that would rely on directions to standing 
committees in the House and Senate to, at some point in the future, 
produce legislation that might reduce entitlement spending and/or would 
raise revenue.
  These committees have not followed through on that in the past, and 
the supercommittee's directions to them, we have to know, are not 
likely to occur based on history around here. That is the historic 
reality. Just directing a committee to raise taxes or cut spending does 
not at all mean they are going to do it.
  Another thing we need to watch out for is if the committee makes 
unrealistic cuts to programs without reforming those programs, such as 
the current assumed annual cuts that are in law today to health care 
providers, doctors, and hospitals to cut their reimbursement rates. 
Congress knows we cannot go forward with those cuts, and they have been 
avoided every year by borrowing money to pay to avoid very serious cuts 
to our providers that, if not paid, would quit doing Medicare and 
Medicaid work. Doctors don't have to do that. It is just at a point we 
cannot cut providers anymore.
  Another thing we need to watch out for is a plan that assumes 
unrealistic changes to the Congressional Budget Office baseline. One of 
the things is to assert overly optimistic economic growth projections 
for the next 10 years. More and more we are hearing that coming out of 
this recession is going to be a long, tough, slow slog. If we want to 
spend more money and claim to have a budget that improves our financial 
situation, one way to do it is to just assume more growth than is 
actually going to occur, that the experts don't believe will actually 
occur. If we do that, that is phony accounting. Our numbers may look 
better today but not as the years go by. That is the kind of thinking 
that has gotten us in the deep debt hole we are in today.
  Another thing to watch out for is the claim that interest savings 
derived from tax increases are spending cuts. Interest expense--and it 
is substantial for our country--is a byproduct of spending and taxes. 
If you drive up debt, our interest payment will go up. If we raise 
taxes and reduce the deficit, then interest rates drop. We can't count 
the interest reduction as a spending cut. That is not cutting any real 
spending. That is just avoiding a future interest growth that would 
have occurred if we haven't done it. I don't think we should count--and 
we must not count--interest reductions either from tax increases or 
spending cuts as a spending cut.
  I would also like to talk about the Defense cuts, briefly. Majority 
Leader Reid said this just yesterday, I believe:

       If the committee fails to act, sequestration

  That is, automatic cuts--

     is going to go forward. Democrats are not going to take an 
     unfair, unrealistic load directed toward domestic 
     discretionary spending . . . and take it away from the 
     military.

  In other words, take the cuts away from the military. The automatic 
cuts that would fall on the military, which are, as Admiral Mullen, the 
former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, will hollow us out.
  These automatic cuts are odd. Many programs with rising costs are 
protected from any cuts. Cuts are prohibited against the Medicaid 
Program and the surging Food Stamp program, but the Defense Department, 
which is already slated to take $450 billion in cuts, is facing another 
$600 billion in cuts, according to the Department of Defense. It would 
be a nearly 20-percent net reduction in Defense over the next 10 years. 
It would be the most severe hammering of the Defense Department, while 
protecting other programs from any cuts. It is not legitimate. Yet the 
majority leader is pushing back and saying this is perfectly 
legitimate. He is not going to have cuts in non-defense discretionary 
spending. He wants them to fall on the military.
  The majority leader's comments suggest that the Defense increases 
have increased faster than domestic discretionary spending, but nothing 
could be further from the truth. From fiscal year 2008 to 2011, the 
Defense budget increased--base budget--by just 10 percent. Meanwhile, 
education spending surged 67 percent over the 2009 through 2011 period, 
compared to the previous three year period.

[[Page S7636]]

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority time has expired.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have one 
additional moment.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we are at a historic point. I believe 
this Congress has taken a great risk in turning over to a committee of 
12 this responsibility. It is going to be difficult for them to reach 
an agreement. If they don't, damaging sequestration could occur. If 
they do reach an agreement, we have to be sure it is an honest 
agreement that actually achieves what they promised, which is--at a 
minimum--$1.2 trillion worth of deficit reductions. We need $4 
trillion--as every expert has said--over 10 years in savings to begin 
to put this country on the right path. We are nowhere close to that.
  I feel like the country is going to have to take some tough medicine. 
I hope the committee can help us get there. I do not approve of the 
process, but hopefully it will work and maybe we will not repeat it in 
the future.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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