[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 23 (Monday, February 13, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S546-S549]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, President Obama released a budget today 
that isn't really a budget at all. It is a campaign document. The 
President's goal isn't to solve our problems but to ignore them for 
another year, which will only ensure they get even worse. Once again, 
the President is shirking his responsibility to lead by using this 
budget to divide us.
  The game plan is perfectly clear. Rather than reach out to Congress 
to craft a consensus budget, the President will take this budget on the 
road, as he did today, and talk about the parts he thinks audiences 
will like. What he will not say is that it is bad for job creation, bad 
for seniors, and it will make the economy worse.
  The President's budget is bad for jobs because it includes the 
biggest tax hike in history and continues policies such as the 
Democrats' health care law that is making it harder for small 
businesses to hire.
  A little more than a year ago, the President extended current tax 
rates because he thought raising them would be bad for jobs. Today he 
will call for raising them anyway because he thinks it is good for him.
  The President's budget is bad for our seniors because it doesn't 
protect the security of Medicare and Social Security and assures those 
programs keep careening toward insolvency.
  The President's budget is bad for our country's economic security 
because yet again the President failed to take the prime opportunity 
this budget provides to address the Nation's $15 trillion debt.
  Contrary to the President's claims out on the road, this budget is 
literally loaded with deficit reduction gimmicks that would trigger an 
IRS audit for anybody else and make our current economic situation even 
worse.
  Now, the President isn't going to mention any of those things, but 
Americans deserve to know the whole truth about this budget. They 
deserve to know why the President's own party doesn't want to vote on 
it and why his own top advisers are trying to deflect serious questions 
about what is really going on here.
  Yesterday, the President's Chief of Staff said the reason this budget 
will not get anywhere in the Senate is because it would take 60 votes 
to pass--60 votes to pass--and the Democrats don't have that many votes 
on their own.
  Well, I would suggest Mr. Lew review his Sunday briefing materials a 
little more closely next time. As someone who has run the Office of 
Management and Budget for two different Presidents, he knows as well as 
anybody in Washington a simple majority is all it takes to pass a 
budget resolution in the Senate, a simple majority. In other words, 
Democrats could pass this President's budget without a single 
Republican vote--not one.
  The inconvenient truth that President Obama and his own top advisers 
don't want to admit is that this budget isn't going anywhere because 
the President's own party doesn't want to have anything whatsoever to 
do with it. Indeed, the majority leader in the Senate has already 
declared it ``dead on arrival.''
  Now, Jack Lew knows this as well as I do, and the fact that he does 
proves beyond any doubt the President has no intention of this budget 
ever actually being implemented. If he can't even count on members of 
his own party to support it, who does he expect is going to support it?
  The truth is, Democrats want to have it both ways. The President 
wants to be able to take his budget around the country to talk about 
the parts of it he thinks people will like, and Democrats in Congress 
want to be able to avoid a vote on it because it is so damaging for job 
creation and seniors and the economy.
  Well, if anybody wants to know what a failure of leadership looks 
like, this is it. This is it. Three years ago, President Obama promised 
to cut the Federal deficit in half by the end of his first term. He 
hasn't even come close. Here he is once again proposing the same failed 
policies that have prolonged this economic crisis well into the 
President's fourth year in office. After the national debt increased 
under his watch by more than 40 percent, he is still throwing good 
money after bad. He is still spending money we don't have on things we 
don't need. He still refuses to lead.
  Democrats in Congress have been more than happy to enable him. They 
haven't passed a budget of their own in 3 years, and all indications 
are they will not pass one this year either--a failure of congressional 
leadership that will surely go down in history. At this point, nothing 
seems capable of rousing this President to action. Every day we hear 
the alarm bells sounding from across the Atlantic. It doesn't seem to 
phase him. Every day we hear the warnings from experts and economists 
that our fiscal situation is unsustainable.
  Just a few months ago, the unthinkable happened when America's credit 
rating was actually lowered for the first time in history.
  What is this President's response? A budget he knows even his own 
party will not support. That is his response to this $15 trillion debt. 
So this is a charade--a charade. The only question is when this 
President's own refusal to lead will catch up to all the rest of us.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to continue the comments along the 
line of our distinguished Republican leader and talk about the 
President's proposed budget that was released today.
  Unfortunately, the President's budget proposes more debt, more 
spending, and higher taxes. It is bad news for job creation and for 
America's job creators and portends nothing good; indeed, only does it 
portend ominously for our country getting back on the right economic 
track and creating the kind of growth that will generate jobs and 
prosperity.
  The President's proposed budget again ignores his own bipartisan 
fiscal

[[Page S547]]

commission, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which concluded in December 
of 2010 that America faced ``a moment of truth'' because we simply had 
spent more money than we were taking in for too long and had 
accumulated too much debt, which was killing economic growth and 
threatening to turn us into a Western European country, which we see 
today that the eurozone is in jeopardy.
  One week from today, millions of Americans will celebrate President's 
Day, our national holiday that honors all our Commanders in Chief. But 
this year, President Obama will share a distinction that no other 
President has ever had: He has proposed a budget that dwarfs all the 
debt accumulated over more than 22 decades by all his predecessors.
  When President Obama took office in January 2009, the national debt 
was about $10 trillion or, broken down for every man, woman, and child 
in America, about $33,000, something that neither political party could 
be particularly proud of.
  Today it is far worse: more than $15 trillion, an increase of more 
than 50 percent in 3 years. Under this budget proposal that the 
President released today, Federal borrowing will never stop. The 
national debt will more than double to $26 trillion or $75,000 for 
every man, woman, and child in America. Simply put, the President's 
proposed budget makes it worse, not better.
  We all know we can't keep this up. The sad part is the President 
understands this too but simply refuses to provide the leadership 
necessary to put us on the right path.
  We have heard it before, but I will repeat it. Former Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, said the debt is the biggest 
threat to our national security. How could that be? It is because, as 
Admiral Mullen knows and we are now learning, when we live in fiscally 
constrained times, some of the first cuts that occur are to the Defense 
Department. In fact, while the Defense Department incurs roughly 20 
percent of discretionary spending, it has so far been planned for 50 
percent of the cuts, increasing the national security risk to every 
American.
  After promising the American people he would cut the deficit in half 
by the end of his first term, the President's most recent plan means 
America will have an annual deficit of more than $1 trillion for every 
year of his Presidency. That is right, $1 trillion of deficit for each 
of the 4 years of his first term in office. This is unprecedented and 
dangerous. It is dangerous to our prosperity and to our Nation's 
future.
  While the President seems to be unwilling to come to grips with the 
nature of our debt crisis, my constituents in Texas understand that the 
national debt poses very real security risks because they are already 
beginning to see the cuts that are occurring or are planned in our 
national security spending. My constituents in Texas are also 
concerned, in a State that happens to be growing faster than almost any 
other part of the country, that the threat of higher taxes discourages 
the people to whom we look to create jobs, to start new businesses.
  Rather than have a comprehensive review of our Tax Code, as the 
Simpson-Bowles Commission proposed, this budget proposes to target 
certain industries, such as the domestic oil and gas industry, despite 
rising prices at the pump. The White House seems oblivious to what 
would happen to the jobs that are generated by this industry and all 
the revenue the government would lose if we outsource even more of our 
energy production to foreign Nations.
  The President appears to feel like small businesses are undertaxed 
because the so-called millionaire's tax he has proposed will hit many 
small businesses that we depend upon to create jobs. Indeed, as Senator 
McConnell just acknowledged, it was only December of 2010 when the 
President himself agreed to extend expiring tax provisions because, as 
he stated, higher taxes would be the last thing we would want to do 
during a fragile economic recovery because we know it will serve as a 
wet blanket; it will be a disincentive on job creation.
  We need a serious discussion on tax reform. The Simpson-Bowles 
Commission made a responsible proposal--not perfect but a good start. 
But the President has simply ignored the recommendations of his own 
bipartisan commission since those recommendations were made in December 
of 2010.
  The President's budget also proposes about $1.9 trillion in new 
taxes, as I indicated. The good news, from my perspective, is that we 
already had a number of votes last year on these kinds of tax 
increases, and the Congress has rejected them. The bad news is these 
assumed tax increases help mask the true size of the deficits in the 
President's proposed budget and will do damage to any hope of sustained 
job creation.
  Then there is the phony accounting, the gimmicks. Unfortunately, all 
we have to do is look at the Gallup poll to see in what regard Congress 
is held; and it is the kind of gamesmanship and the gimmicks in this 
budget which contribute to people's cynicism about their elected 
officials and about their government.
  What does the President do? He says we are going to save money from 
future war spending, and we are going to use that as an offset for new 
spending and to reduce the deficit. But I have to observe, that is 
cynical at best. His budget is claiming artificial savings from money 
that never would be spent in the first place for wars that hopefully 
will never be fought. But he is saying, because we will not fight this 
unspecified war, then we are going to take that savings as if we would 
and save it and offset it to try to balance the budget.
  Even this gimmick cannot hide the fact the President wants to 
continue the record-level stimulus spending that began on his watch. 
You will recall Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of 
Economic Advisers, told us if we just pass this $787 billion stimulus 
bill, unemployment will never go above 8 percent.

  If we go back and look at those same charts and what they say about 
the first quarter of 2012, they project unemployment at 6 percent. 
Obviously, that stimulus failed to meet its own projections, and what 
President Obama wants us to do is more of the same and to spend more 
borrowed money.
  The vacuum of leadership that starts at the White House extends, 
unfortunately, to this Chamber, a Senate led by Majority Leader Reid, 
in which he has no plans to present a budget for the third year in a 
row. Even before the President released his budget, the Senate majority 
leader already told the American people the Senate will ignore it. He 
was quoted in the press saying it would be foolish for the majority to 
propose a budget.
  Why? Because he doesn't want to subject members of his own caucus to 
hard votes, to tough decisions. These are exactly the kinds of tough 
decisions the American people sent us to make, and these are exactly 
the kinds of tough decisions every household and every small business 
in America is expected to make in order to cope with this economic 
crisis we find ourselves in. But this is exactly what Majority Leader 
Reid has chosen to protect his members from making. Why? Because it 
will help solve the problem? No. Because he doesn't want them to be 
held accountable in the next election.
  We know it has been more than 1,000 days since the Senate passed a 
budget, and it is just unthinkable, to me, that we would fail to meet 
one of our most basic responsibilities. Can you imagine a family or a 
small business operating without a budget? We know why it is so 
important and why the absence of a budget has encouraged and 
facilitated runaway spending: Because when we budget, we figure out how 
much money we have and we figure out what we must have and what our 
priorities are. Then we figure out what we would like to have but maybe 
can't afford to have now so we need to put off. And then we figure out 
what we want but we can't afford that so we are going to have to do 
without.
  Congress has simply, under Senator Reid and the Democratic majority 
of the Senate, refused to meet its responsibilities for fiscal 
discipline. It is clear they are running out of excuses.
  Senator McConnell pointed out that Jack Lew, the President's new 
Chief of Staff, said: The reason why Democrats can't pass a budget, 
even though they hold the majority, even though they control the 
agenda, is because of those mean old Republicans, because it takes 60 
votes to pass a budget.
  Mr. Lew has been around a long time and he knows that is not true. I 
had

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hoped he would have corrected the record because he knows--and we all 
know--it takes a simple majority of the Senate to pass a budget. But 
before we can pass a budget, Majority Leader Reid has to call it up and 
bring it on the floor of the Senate and schedule a vote, which he has 
simply refused to do.
  So instead of acting responsibly and proposing a budget and voting on 
a budget and allowing it to be debated, the President has chosen to 
take the low road and, last year, simply to attack chairman of the 
House Budget Committee Paul Ryan and House Republicans for the budget 
they passed. It is not perfect, but it was trying to do their job and 
to make a responsible proposal. But rather than meet that responsible 
proposal with a counterproposal and try to work out the differences 
during the legislative process, the President, unfortunately, took the 
low road and attacked and attacked and attacked, rather than trying to 
offer a viable solution.
  It should come as no surprise that under the President's watch, the 
national debt has grown to more than $15 trillion and is now larger 
than the U.S. economy. That is right, our debt is 100 percent of our 
gross domestic product. Government spending is now 25 percent of our 
economy; unfortunately, revenue is about 15 percent. So we have a 10-
percent gap, which represents the annual deficit, and the cumulative 
deficits make up that $15 trillion debt.
  We know our Nation has lost its AAA credit rating from Standard & 
Poor's because they are becoming concerned about our willingness--
indeed, about our ability--to meet our most basic responsibilities. All 
three major rating agencies have assigned a negative outlook to our 
Nation's long-term rating. What that means is potentially the specter 
of higher interest rates that we have to pay when China and other 
countries buy our sovereign debt. A 1-percent increase, if they became 
worried about our ability to repay our debts and they simply charged us 
more, would wipe out any savings we might otherwise be able to make 
through cuts.
  The warning sound has been heard, and the fiscal tsunami that many 
budget experts have said in the past would not hit this Nation is fast 
approaching. It is a challenge that faces the country today, not just 
tomorrow, and we need solutions. The way the American people feel about 
this overhang of debt and the lack of clarity with regard to taxes and 
regulation in our future is shown in the stagnant job growth we have 
seen.
  No sensible job creator is going to start a new business or to expand 
an existing business with such huge debt and such great uncertainty 
about their taxes, the regulatory overreach, and the economic 
environment. They are simply not going to do it. All we have to do is 
look across the Atlantic Ocean and watch our European friends and what 
they are going through today and see what will happen when governments 
overspend and debt is allowed to run unchecked.
  What is so disappointing is that President Obama has had multiple 
opportunities to embrace a bipartisan fiscal overhaul plan. The one I 
keep mentioning is the Simpson-Bowles plan, and the reason I do is 
because it is his debt commission that he appointed. It was bipartisan. 
We had three Republican Senators who were on that commission who voted 
for it; $4 trillion worth of cuts, tax reform that would lower the 
marginal tax rates, eliminate $1 trillion-plus in expenditures, and 
would create economic growth and certainty for our economy and help put 
America back to work in the meantime. Unfortunately, the President, 
instead of embracing that bipartisan proposal, with the budget 
submission he makes today indicates he has chosen once again to remain 
on the sidelines and to campaign rather than try to come up with real 
solutions. The President's plan fails to right the ship and will 
continue to lead us down the path of more debt, higher taxes, and 
runaway spending--a path that has brought the economies of many 
European countries to the brink.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the 
President's budget, which he submitted today. In an era of trillion-
dollar deficits and historic debt and the greatest level of government 
spending since World War II, I believe the President's submission today 
was not a responsible budget. Instead of keeping his campaign promise 
to cut the deficit in half in his first term, this budget assumes 
continued deficits this year and next in the trillion-dollar range.
  Given the promises President Obama made when he came to the White 
House and how poorly the last budget was received by Republicans and 
Democrats alike in Congress--in fact, it was voted on here on the floor 
of the Senate, and it was defeated by a vote of 97 to 0--given those 
things, I hoped President Obama would step forward and turn the 
rhetoric into action and put forward a responsible budget to deal with 
the fiscal problems our government faces--no more punting, no more 
gimmicks, a real budget that honestly faces the fiscal crisis we have 
and helps put us back on track. Instead, we see a document today that 
is really more tailored toward campaign talking points than really 
addressing the long-term solvency of the Federal Government.
  The President begins by proposing a new $350 billion in stimulus 
bill. By the way, that is $350 billion with no offsets--in other words, 
no spending reductions to pay for it.
  The President's budget then claims $5.3 trillion in deficit reduction 
over the next decade. As I have looked at this budget today, it seems 
to me that only a minuscule amount of this is from new spending cuts. 
In fact, as I read this budget, 99.9 percent of the claimed deficit 
reduction consists of the following: No. 1, tax increases, about $1.9 
trillion; No. 2, Iraq, Afghanistan war savings, which is viewed by most 
here in Congress, both sides of the aisle, as a gimmick--in other 
words, spending money that was not going to be spent anyway--$848 
billion; No. 3, already enacted discretionary caps and entitlement 
changes, primarily from the Budget Control Act, these so-called 
sequesters or across-the-board spending cuts that Congress has already 
enacted, and that is $1.7 trillion; and then finally net interest 
savings from those policies, which the budget says is going to be $800 
billion.
  Out of the claimed $5.3 trillion in deficit reduction, that leaves 
about .1 percent--$4 billion--of the claimed savings over the decade. 
So 99.9 percent of the deficit reduction he claims is through tax 
increases or, again, changes in spending that either have already 
occurred or they are not going to occur. On top of that, the President 
hid in his baseline--in the baseline he assumes for his spending, he 
hides about $479 billion in new spending. Now, this is on Pell grants 
and on the Medicare doc fix. So the claimed savings--even the $4 
billion--vanish completely.
  Overall, when compared to the current policy baseline, the President 
would tax $4 trillion more and spend about $2 trillion more over the 
next 10 years of this budget. The yearly deficit would end the decade 
in the $600 billion range, even assuming peace, prosperity, and 
historically low interest rates. The national debt over the next 10 
years would rise by $11 trillion, for a total debt of over $25 trillion 
10 years from now.
  The main tax hike would end the 2001-2003 tax cuts for singles making 
over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000. There will be a lot of 
debate on the floor regarding this tax policy over the next year as we 
come to the end of the year when all of these tax cuts--$5 trillion of 
them--are scheduled to end, but just with regard to this tax hike, this 
will result in lower economic growth and more job losses according to 
the Congressional Budget Office. They have now testified before the 
Budget Committee as to the fact that this will result in higher 
unemployment next year. This is in large part because, according to 
Internal Revenue Service data, 48 percent of small business income 
would be subject to higher taxes under this budget proposal.
  I support tax reform. I think it is important. But simply taking the 
current

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code and adding higher tax rates is going to have an impact on small 
businesses and therefore on our economy and on jobs. This is ultimately 
about jobs. It is about everyday economic concerns people in Ohio and 
around the country have.
  In this budget document, we do see some honesty, but it does not make 
me optimistic at all. Acknowledging the impact this budget will have on 
the economy, the President's budget actually concedes unemployment 
rates next year higher than this year, and the year after higher than 
this year. His prediction is that unemployment rates will be 8.9 
percent in 2012 and 8.6 percent in 2013--totally unacceptable and a 
testament to the fact that Washington cannot continue to rely on short-
term sweeteners and budget spending gimmicks to grow our economy and 
get the country out of this fiscal mess.
  Again, I am disappointed in the budget we have seen today. I hope the 
Senate will work its will, put together its own budget, taking the 
President's budget and other ideas but then coming up with something 
that actually does address the very real fiscal problems we face, bring 
such a budget to the floor of the Senate, have it debated by both 
sides, and work out what we have not done in this Senate for over 1,000 
days, which is prepare a blueprint for the fiscal and economic future 
of our country. Until we get such a budget, I fear we will continue to 
see this lack of economic growth and job loss that all of us would like 
to see addressed.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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