[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 24, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S63-S66]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today, state of the Union day, marks 
1,000 days since this Senate has fulfilled its statutory responsibility 
of passing a budget. This is not a little bitty matter, and it 
implicates the leadership of the Democratically controlled Senate and 
their willingness to address the American people honestly and 
effectively concerning the very significant financial threats this 
Nation faces.
  Indeed, President Obama, on April 29, 2009, when we last had a 
budget, said this:


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       A budget serves as an economic blueprint for the Nation's 
     future.

  That is true. It is not an insignificant document that just has a 
bunch of numbers; it is a blueprint for the Nation's future. We either 
have one or we don't. He went on to say a budget is necessary ``to lay 
a new foundation for growth and to strengthen our economy.''
  I believe that is certainly true because the whole world, our own 
economy, U.S. businesses and investment, and the American people are 
concerned that we don't have a plan for our future that gets us off of 
the debt path--some would say an economic growth death path--that we 
are on. They want to see that we have a plan to do better.
  We will have a speech tonight. I suspect it will be grand in sound 
and have some popular phrases. But the question is, when it is over 
will we have a plan that can be examined? Will we have a plan that will 
lead us on an improved--dramatically improved--debt path or will we 
remain in business-as-usual mode, in denial?
  A budget resolution is legally required by the Congressional Budget 
Act of 1974. It was passed because Congress hadn't been passing budgets 
effectively. So the Congress passed a law and said we must do it. We 
are going to require ourselves to do it.
  By law the President must submit a budget to the Congress by the 
first Monday in February. The President has submitted one for 2012. He 
submitted it to the Congress last year. It was not a good budget. It 
was what I have called the most irresponsible budget ever submitted to 
Congress. I chose those words carefully because we have never been, as 
a nation, in a more systemic danger from debt as we are today. Our 
population is aging. Our growth is not solid. The number of people on 
Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security has increased. We need growth 
and prosperity. We are in danger if we don't change it. That is why the 
world is worried about the United States. That is also why Europe is 
having such a serious problem. So it is important that we have a budget 
and we lay this out.
  So the law requires the President to submit the budget to the 
Congress by the first Monday in February. We did it last year. It was 
not a good budget because it increased spending, it increased taxes, 
and it increased spending more than taxes. Over the 10-year budgetary 
window or plan, it increased the debt more than if we had not had the 
budget, if we had just gone on automatic pilot for spending growth in 
our country. That is why it was a failed budget plan. When the Senate 
finally voted on it--I brought it up after the majority leader brought 
up the House budget to try to defeat it. I brought up the President's 
budget and asked my Democratic colleagues if they supported their 
President's budget. It failed 97 to 0. Not a single Senator voted for 
that plan because it was irresponsible. It put us on a worse course 
than we were already on, and nobody wanted to be on record as voting 
for it.
  Now, once the President's budget has come in, the Senate Budget 
Committee, by law, is required to report a budget resolution to the 
Senate by April 1. Congress is required to complete action on a 
concurrent resolution on the budget no later than April 15. It is a 
challenge. In the past it has been a real challenge. People have worked 
hard to meet that goal.
  Last year, while the Senate did not act, the Republican House met its 
requirements under the Budget Act to consider and pass a budget 
resolution in both their Budget Committee--Congressman Paul Ryan's 
committee--and in the full House of Representatives. The chairman of 
the Senate Budget Committee, however, did not even offer a budget for 
consideration in committee, which precluded its consideration before 
the full Senate.
  The budget process exists in one respect to compel the President and 
Congress to set forth a plan for the disposition of the taxpayers' 
money for the upcoming fiscal year and a minimum of 4 fiscal years. The 
budget has to be a 5-year budget. Often it is 10 years. The President 
submitted a 10-year budget which I think is preferable to a 5-year 
budget, and most people agree. Setting forth such a plan requires 
setting priorities; does it not? A household does a budget. A city, 
county, or State does a budget. They have to choose with their limited 
resources the priorities they can fund and determine how to use those 
scarce dollars, which in our case includes discretionary spending which 
is subject to the annual appropriation process, as well as the 
mandatory spending programs which are provided for under the rules set 
forth in permanent law. Those programs include food stamps, Medicaid, 
Medicare, Social Security, and a lot of other programs.
  So mandatory spending programs currently comprise almost 60 percent 
of our spending. They are on automatic pilot. If a person reaches a 
certain age or if a person loses their job or their income falls below 
a certain level, they are entitled to certain benefits. A person can 
walk into a government office and ask for food stamps or ask for 
governmental assistance, and if that person qualifies it must be given 
whether the government has any money or not. If those programs are out 
of control and are growing too fast and are not properly managed, 
Congress has to change laws, not just change the budget to deal with 
it. So this is almost 60 percent of our budget today, the mandatory 
part.
  So the budget process, through the use of reconciliation, is the only 
mechanism available to Congress to compel oversight and review of 
mandatory spending programs. Without the discipline provided by the 
budget process, these programs proceed on automatic pilot. So, 
importantly, the numbers that were deemed by the Budget Control Act, 
which was passed last summer in the wee hours of the morning just to 
avoid a governmental shutdown, that Budget Control Act, not subject to 
any amendments and not brought up for debate, set spending levels. But 
it could only set the number for discretionary spending.
  The Budget Control Act effectively told Chairman Conrad to provide 
discretionary spending at the levels of the Budget Control Act caps and 
for mandatory--the 60 percent--to stay the same, and revenue policies--
taxing policies--at levels estimated in the Congressional Budget Office 
March 2011 baseline. So mandatory spending and tax increases and tax 
policies would be controlled by the Congressional Budget Office 
baseline, business as usual--the definition of business as usual for 60 
percent of our budget.
  So the so-called deemed budget is not a real budget, and the process 
used to adopt it is not the kind of process that is legitimate. It is 
not the kind of process that is required. In the Budget Act, we must 
have a committee markup. We must have 50 hours of guaranteed debate on 
the floor of the Senate and an unlimited number of amendments can be 
offered--a public, open discussion about the dangers facing this 
country and how Senators are going to deal with them, and they have to 
vote and they have to vote multiple times. The Democratic leadership, 
supported by Democratic Members, did not want to go through that 
process. That is why the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, said it is 
foolish to have a budget. He did not mean it was foolish for America to 
have a budget. He meant it was foolish for them to have to vote 
publicly and be accountable for the serious challenges facing this 
country. I think that was a big reason for the shellacking a lot of 
Members of Congress took in the last election.

  The American people want Congress to be accountable. Congress works 
for them. We are not on our own up here to do whatever we want to. The 
American people are watching us. Forty cents of every $1 we spend is 
borrowed. Are the American people not legitimately unhappy with us? Why 
should they be satisfied with Congress? Why should we be looked up to 
as people who are leading the country effectively? We will not even 
bring up a budget.
  I just want to say, the Republicans fought for a budget. I am the 
ranking Republican member of the Budget Committee. We pleaded with the 
majority. We protested. But the leadership in the Senate has the power 
to set the agenda, and a minority cannot call a budget hearing in the 
Budget Committee, nor can they require a real budget to be brought 
forth for full debate on the floor of the Senate.
  So this is where we are, I just have to say, because our colleague, 
whom I truly respect and like, Senator Conrad, was saying we do not 
need a budget today. Apparently, they are not

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going to produce one again this year. That is not right. We do need a 
budget, and we need to go through the process because the American 
people need to know what the debt commission told us; which is, we do 
not have the money to keep spending as we are spending today.
  So a real budget would have required a weighing of the spending 
demands placed on the Federal Government and the available revenues and 
reached a consensus on what activities the government would pursue and 
how the government would pay for it, including the amount that would be 
added to the debt--how much are we going to increase the debt and how 
much will be left to future generations.
  So the failure of our Democratic leadership in the Senate is to not 
seriously and credibly address our mandatory spending programs, which 
all experts and observers tell us are on an unsustainable course. 
Everyone tells us that. What we are doing today is unsustainable. For 
example, the budget the President submitted calls for deficits every 
single year for the next decade. It goes from about $1.3 trillion now--
it was going to drop down, for the lowest single year, to a deficit of 
$740 billion, and in years 7, 8, 9, and 10, it would be going back 
again to almost $1 trillion.
  We spend this year $650 billion on Social Security. By the 10th year, 
according to the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the 
President's budget, the interest we would pay on the debt alone--just 
the interest--would be $940 billion. Today it is $240 billion. This is 
how we get into the European crisis. This is why experts and economists 
have told us our spending and debt situation is unsustainable. That is 
not a frivolous word. They mean it is unsustainable.
  Contending that the creation of the supercommittee absolved the 
Senate of that responsibility to produce a budget is laughable and it 
is not credible and I reject that. Instead, we are told that the 
deeming of a budget and spending caps--and only discretionary 
spending--determined in secret and brought out in the eleventh hour 
before the Senate for an up-or-down vote, without amendment, to avoid a 
government shutdown--to contend that meets the requirements placed on 
this Chamber for responsibility and fiscal rectitude just cannot be 
sustained. Nothing could be further from the truth. Passing a real 
budget is indeed not easy, particularly now because we have such a 
serious financial crisis. Tough decisions are going to have to be made. 
Perhaps our Democratic leadership does not want to show Americans how 
much their big spending agenda truly costs. That is what a budget shows 
over 10 years: how much we plan to spend, how much we are going to cut, 
how much we are going to tax. Maybe they do not want the people to know 
how much they intend to raise taxes and how much of that falls not just 
on the rich but on the middle class. I can show you the budget the 
President submitted. It goes beyond the rich. It was a big tax 
increase.
  The failure to propose and openly debate on the floor a detailed, 
long-term fiscal plan may be considered by some to be smart. But it is 
sending our country toward the fiscal cliff. Our Democratic colleagues 
wish to pretend for the Nation that they have an actual budget plan. If 
they want to do that, they must find in their files the secret document 
they produced last year and finally, once and for all, make it public.
  Senator Conrad said: I have a budget. He said: We are going to have a 
committee markup, and I am going to present to our conferences the 
majority's budget plan to the Budget Committee. He was prepared to do 
that. He was prepared to do that, I thought. I was ready to get 
prepared to have the hearing. So when we got ready, somehow it did not 
happen. It got put off. It got put off again. Then, in the days that 
followed and we made a fuss, Senator Reid eventually said, basically: I 
made that decision not to have a budget. It is foolish to have a 
budget.
  So we never saw this budget. He said publicly they had one. Are they 
ashamed of it? Were they afraid to bring it out? Did no one want to see 
it? We were prepared with our little calculators to see how much taxes 
were going to increase, how much spending was going to increase, how 
much debt was going to increase. When are we going to change our debt 
trajectory and make the country better, put us on a sounder path? That 
is what we wanted to know, and we were told we were going to get it. We 
did not.
  So instead of an open, accountable process, where the public votes 
are taken, where our constituents can hold us responsible for the 
leadership we provide, we got, at the eleventh hour, deals, a month of 
secret meetings, and political maneuvers. The primary aim of the 
process, it looks to me, was political advantage, not the advantage for 
the people of the United States.
  So I believe when the majority leader and his majority colleagues 
chose to block the lawfully mandated budget process and not bring up a 
budget--not have committee hearings and actual votes, not have 50 hours 
of floor debate, not being able to allow amendments that deal with the 
budget and spending--they put politics over the Nation's interest. They 
rejected a duty they have, by all just deserts in logic and also by 
law. They did so for their political convenience.
  I think if they continue to fail to produce a budget, to allow it to 
be discussed, to show what their plans are for the future, they have 
forfeited the leadership they have asked for in the Senate. If they 
cannot produce a budget and they do not have the gumption to lay out 
their plan for the future and have numbers that can be studied and 
examined, added and subtracted--if they cannot do that, if they are not 
willing to face up to that responsibility, they do not deserve to lead 
the Senate because, at this point in history, I think it is the most 
significant matter we face.

  Our economy is not doing well. Our debt is surging. This year, the 
debt came in, as of September 30, another $1.3 trillion. Three 
consecutive years of deficits over $1 trillion, averaging $1.3 
trillion. Can you imagine that? The highest deficit President Bush ever 
had--and it was too high--was $450 billion. But for 3 years we have 
averaged $1.3 trillion.
  The debt is surging out of control, and the Budget Control Act that 
purports to change that trajectory only reduced the projected deficit 
over 10 years by $2.1 trillion, when every expert--Democrats, 
Republicans, liberals and conservatives--before our Budget Committee 
told us we need to have $4 trillion over 10 years in reduced deficits.
  Because under the projections we have from the Congressional Budget 
Office, we are on track to add $13 trillion more to the debt in 10 
years--$13 trillion more--doubling the now over $13 trillion in debt we 
have.
  That is why we cannot continue. We need a plan to change that. 
Instead, we got a minimum reduction, I guess, from approximately $13 
trillion to $11 trillion out of the Budget Committee. So we will add 
$11 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years rather than $13 
trillion. That is not enough change. Mr. President, $4 trillion, in my 
opinion, based on the studies and the hearings and the testimony of the 
witnesses I have heard, is not enough. We need to do a good bit more 
than that. The House proposed a better plan by far. It would have 
changed our debt course, but the Senate did not do its responsibility 
to meet that challenge or the position of the House.
  I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts. We look forward 
tonight to the President's State of the Union. I hope he will do more 
than do his normal eloquent processes and lay out a real plan, a plan 
that can be studied, a plan that can be evaluated, to put this Nation 
on a sound fiscal course. Because until we do that, jobs will not be 
created, and we will not see growth. There is a lack of confidence in 
our economy, and the greatest foundation of that lack of confidence is 
the debt.
  I will just add briefly, there are things we can do to create growth 
and jobs without an increase in spending and without increase in debt. 
How do we do it? We eliminate every single regulation that is unwise. 
We reform our Tax Code into a growth-oriented Tax Code as much as 
possible. We produce more American energy and stop making policies that 
prohibit the production of American energy, creating American jobs, 
creating wealth in the United States, stopping the export of that 
wealth to Venezuela or

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Saudi Arabia or other places such as that.
  We have to end this health care bill that was passed. Already, health 
care premiums for average Americans have gone up--for a family of four: 
$2,400. Already? It was supposed to bring those costs down. That is a 
hammer blow to the middle class.
  So we are talking about jobs, growth, progress. Those are the kinds 
of things we need. We can do it without more government debt and more 
government spending. That is what I will be looking for tonight.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
  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.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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