[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 171 (Monday, December 31, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8570-S8572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE FISCAL CLIFF

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday--after days of inaction--I 
came to the floor and noted the obvious: we need to act but I need a 
dance partner. So I reached out to the Vice President in an effort to 
get things done. I am happy to report that the effort has been a 
successful one, and as the President just said in his television 
appearance, we are very close to an agreement.
  We need to protect American families and job creators from this 
looming tax hike. Everyone agrees that action is necessary, and I can 
report that we have reached an agreement on all of the tax issues. We 
are very close.
  As the President just said, the most important piece--the piece that 
has to be done now--is preventing the tax hikes. The President said, 
``For now our most immediate priority is to stop taxes going up for 
middle-class families starting tomorrow.'' I agree. He suggested that 
action on the sequester is something we can continue to work on in the 
coming months.
  So I agree, let's pass the tax relief portion now. Let's take what 
has been agreed to and get moving. This was not easy to get to. The 
Vice President and I spoke at 12:45 this morning, 6:30 this morning, 
and multiple times again during this morning. This has clearly been a 
good-faith negotiation. We all want to protect taxpayers, and we could 
get it done right now.
  So let me be clear: We will continue to work on finding smarter ways 
to cut spending, but let's not let that hold up protecting Americans 
from the tax hike that will take place in about 10 hours from now. We 
can do this; we must do this.
  I want my colleagues to know that we will keep everybody updated as 
we continue to try to wrap this up.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, it is appropriate that the Senator just 
said what I have said, and I thank him for his comments. This, again, 
leads me to what I see is the rub. In his comments a minute ago, the 
President alluded that the tax arrangements have all been agreed to and 
the things Americans most care about have been agreed to.
  In a late request this morning, the President wanted to do away with 
the sequester--the $1.2 trillion in cuts--by paying for them with 
revenues instead of trading out other cuts, which is unbelievable to me 
with the amount of debt we have in this Nation. The fact is we have 
agreed to additional revenue. Now, at the last minute, what has 
happened is the sequester is getting ready to kick in because we could 
not agree to other revenue cuts. By the way, it was not part of this 
deal but to supplant what we did back in August 2011.
  We all know the sequester is going to kick in. For some reason people 
think it is being done the wrong way and should be done in a different 
way, which I actually agree and hope we will do. Instead of reducing 
that spending, the President wants to add revenues to that to keep that 
from happening.
  Now, let me explain what that means. We have this tax increase that 
is getting ready to happen--by the way, I would support that--and 
instead of reducing the deficit like the President campaigned on, what 
he wants to do is use those revenues to supplant spending reductions we 
have already agreed to, so we are not reducing the deficit. We are 
using this revenue, which has been campaigned on for a year, not to 
reduce deficits but to keep spending cuts that have already been agreed 
to from happening. I don't think there are many people on either side 
of the aisle who would think that is a very good idea.

  Now, what the President is doing is holding this agreement on taxes 
for all Americans hostage to keep from doing the spending reductions we 
have already agreed to. I don't know if most Americans who listen to us 
quite understand what is happening.
  I listened to the President yesterday speaking with David Gregory, 
``Meet the Press,'' and I know he talked about the $1 trillion in 
spending reductions he has offered up, which by the way I applaud. The 
problem is I have never seen them. I don't think the Presiding Officer 
has ever seen them. As a matter of fact, there is not a soul in this 
body who has ever seen the spending reductions that the President has 
offered up because they don't exist.
  I know there were broad contours that were talked about; I know that. 
The people in this body know that last week Lamar Alexander and I 
offered a bill on the floor to raise the debt ceiling by having $1 
trillion in entitlement reforms so we don't end up in a situation where 
the credit of our country is in jeopardy. Today people are paying one-
third of the cost of Medicare. There will be 20 million more Americans 
on Medicare over the next 10 years, and we are paying for one-third of 
that. It is a time bomb.
  We have offered reforms to cause Medicare to be here for future 
generations. We have done that in advance so the debt ceiling is raised 
in a way that does not jeopardize the country's credit. At the same 
time, we reformed these programs so they will be here for the future.
  Yesterday the President said on television that he has offered $1 
trillion in cuts. I have never seen them. What I would say to the 
Presiding Officer is, if they exist it would be helpful if we could see 
those because that would help us with this debt ceiling debate. It may 
be that some of those are similar to the reforms and reductions that 
Senator Alexander from Tennessee offered with me. That would be highly 
helpful. Once the pep rallies are over maybe the President could send a 
list of those reductions and reforms that he says he has offered that 
no one I know of has ever seen. I think it would be helpful to us in 
the debt ceiling debate.
  As a matter of fact, my guess is we might agree with a lot of those. 
What we could do is maybe take the President's reductions that he says 
he has offered, which he has never offered, and

[[Page S8571]]

we could use those to help raise the debt ceiling and alleviate some of 
the issues that my friend from South Carolina was mentioning a minute 
ago.
  Mr. Presiding Officer, my friend, I will tell you that I am 
disappointed where we are today. I thought 2 years after we began this 
process we would end up with something that would cause us to have this 
viewed from the rearview mirror. In other words, this would be behind 
us, and we would begin 2013 in a situation where the economy was ready 
to take off and people in this country would know that we dealt with 
our issues, and, candidly, people around the world would know it as 
well. We have not done that. We are talking about the kick-the-can-
down-the-road deal. Everybody knows that.
  Everybody in this body knows that by the time this agreement takes 
place we have done nothing to reduce a penny of debt in this country. 
People know that, and that is a shame.
  The American people are watching us. We have turned ourselves into 
the laughing stock of the world because we cannot sit down and just 
solve these problems. Candidly, I don't know why we cannot do this on 
the Senate floor. It has been empty over the last week. I think we 
could have brought a bill to the floor to deal candidly with this. I 
think most people on both sides of the aisle think the same way. We 
have not done it. Surely, we should not let this happen again.
  I want to close by saying that I am disappointed with what I think is 
about to happen on the sequester. It looks like we are going to use 
revenues to substitute for spending reductions that have already been 
agreed to. What that means to the American people is that the tax on 
the wealthy, which I support in the form that I have understood it to 
be, is not going to be used to reduce our deficit but to keep from 
putting in place the spending reductions we have already agreed to.
  I don't know many Democrats or Republicans who would think that is a 
particularly good idea, especially with everything we went through and 
everything we put the world through in August 2011. Much of that will 
be dissipated and watered down today. Not only are we not making 
progress if that happens, we are actually going to be setting ourselves 
and our country back. I think this will make it even more difficult to 
overcome the debt ceiling that is coming up in 75 days.
  I am obviously making this speech to, hopefully, help influence the 
outcome over the next couple of hours. I hope that what the President 
said over in the Executive Office Building is not what he means. I 
doubt there are many people in this body who agree with the comments 
made by the President, and I hope the negotiators will take that into 
account.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. 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. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to express my 
own sense of encouragement about the statements made this afternoon by 
President Obama and Senator McConnell which indicate that the 
negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff are making progress. 
We are not there yet, but they are making progress. I am very 
encouraged by that.
  I have heard over the last couple days a familiar phrase invoked many 
times, and it is that no deal is better than a bad deal. I suppose it 
is often true that no deal is better than a bad deal. But in the case 
of the fiscal cliff, no deal is the worst deal because the government 
will go over the fiscal cliff and will take almost every American with 
us.
  Almost every family who pays taxes now will pay higher taxes. 
People's jobs will immediately be put in jeopardy, unemployment 
compensation will end for more than 2 million people. Our defenses will 
be decimated by cuts that will put us in a position of accepting 
unacceptable risks to our security. Title I programs of education for 
low-income children will be cut dramatically.
  Most people, including our own Congressional Budget Office, say the 
combination of tax increases along with the decreased spending required 
under the Budget Control Act will push our economy back into recession 
in the new year.
  So I do not agree that no deal is better than a bad deal. In this 
case, I repeat, no deal is the worst deal because it allows our country 
to go over the fiscal cliff and hurts almost every American family and 
our country and our economy as a whole. This should not be a surprise 
to us. It is not as if--if I can use the metaphor that Congress was 
going along in a bus on a ride through the country and suddenly came to 
the end of the road and there was a cliff. This should not be a 
surprise to us. We created this cliff ourselves a year and a half ago 
when we adopted the Budget Control Act. We created it for a very good 
reason: Because we knew we had proven ourselves incapable of making the 
compromises that were necessary to achieve the long-term bipartisan 
debt reduction program America desperately needs.
  We are over $16.4 trillion in debt. I am in my last days as a 
Senator. If you told me when I started that we would be $16 trillion in 
debt, I would not have believed it. Frankly, if you had told me just a 
dozen years ago, at the end of the Clinton administration when we were 
in surplus, that we could possibly be $16 trillion in debt, I would 
have thought you were not reality tested. But here we are.
  Most everybody knows the way we are going to get out of this is with 
a combination of tough medicine--I would call it tough love. We are 
going to have to reduce spending. We cannot do it all from 
discretionary spending. The Budget Control Act we adopted last summer; 
that is, the summer of 2011, does it all from discretionary spending. 
What is discretionary spending? It is different from entitlement 
spending: Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera. It is what most people think 
of as the government. It is education programs. It is environmental 
protection. It is social service programs. It is defense. It is 
homeland security. It is law enforcement. That is about one-third of 
our budget. It is not the part of spending that is driving the debt and 
deficit. That is being driven by the growth in entitlements, which are 
rising for a good reason, which is that the American people are living 
longer; therefore, taking much more money out of programs such as 
Medicare than they put in and, I suppose, for reasons that are not so 
good, which is the cost of health care continues to go up.
  We proved ourselves incapable of dealing with this crisis as part of 
the normal process of compromise. So we created the cliff, which was 
intentionally made so harmful that our assumption was that we would not 
allow ourselves to go over the cliff because it would be so hurtful. 
Again, that is why no deal in this case is not better than a bad deal. 
No deal is the worst deal because it means we go over the cliff.
  Why is all this happening? For a lot of reasons. But one is that 
there are groups within both great political parties who are defending 
the status quo, who do not want the situation as it exists now, which 
has created the $16\1/2\ trillion of debt, to change. But we cannot go 
on this way. Because if we do, we already are putting an enormous 
burden on generations of Americans to follow in paying off the debt we 
have incurred. But we are also coming to a point, if we do not do 
something soon, where the choices we are going to have to begin to pay 
off the debt are going to be hurtful to our great country, which is 
enormous tax increases, enormous spending cuts such as the one in the 
fiscal cliff proposal or, at worst, the monetizing of the debt, a drop 
in the value of the dollar, and all the harmful effects that will have 
on our economy and our country.
  Here we are, December 31, not only the eve of a new year--which we 
hope and pray will be a great one for our country and everyone who 
lives in it--but a few hours away from letting our country go over the 
cliff. We can't let it happen, and that is why I am so encouraged that 
these bipartisan negotiations are looking like they will produce a 
bipartisan agreement, which hopefully will come before the Senate 
sometime this evening.
  This is not, this will not be the comprehensive, bipartisan, long-
term debt

[[Page S8572]]

agreement we created the cliff to encourage. This will not be the 
bipartisan, long-term debt reduction agreement this country needs.
  So much is beginning to turn right in our economy. Housing prices are 
doing better, unemployment is down. We see manufacturing picking up 
again. The big problem the American economy has is right here in 
Washington, our inability to get together across party lines to bring 
our country back into fiscal balance and to show the country and the 
world we have a political system that is capable of fixing our 
problems.
  Earlier this year, Bob Carr, the Foreign Minister of Australia, one 
of our greatest allies in the world, said: ``The United States is one 
budget deal away from restoring its global preeminence.''
  ``The United States is one budget deal away from restoring its global 
preeminence.'' Perhaps because I am so proud of this country, I would 
say we are one budget deal away from restoring our global dominance for 
a considerable number of years.
  Unfortunately, after--I hope and I pray we adopt the result of 
negotiations going on now and avoid the fiscal cliff--we will still be 
one grand bargain budget deal away from restoring our global 
preeminence. That work has to be done, but at least we will have 
avoided the cliff.
  By a twist of fate, the occupant of the chair is my colleague and 
friend, the Senator from Connecticut. You have probably seen these 
numbers, but just to bring it home for one State, what will be the 
impact if we allow the country to go over the fiscal cliff in 
Connecticut: 1.4 million middle-class families will see their Federal 
income taxes increase, almost 1.5 million families.
  If the middle-class tax cuts are allowed to expire on January 1, a 
median-income Connecticut family--now I know the median in Connecticut 
is higher than it is in most other States, but this number is true for 
any family making this amount of money. It makes an important point.
  A family of four earning $86,000 a year happens to be the median 
family income in Connecticut. But that family, which I think would be 
considered median just about everywhere, middle income just about 
everywhere, would see its Federal income taxes rise by $2,200. That is 
a lot of money for a family of four paying a mortgage, paying for food, 
probably paying something for education for their children, maybe 
college--too much.
  Another Connecticut number is 680,000 additional Connecticut 
taxpayers will be hit by the alternative minimum tax. It is amazing 
when we think about that. Those are going to be middle-class families 
who will be hit by that. Also, 120,000 Connecticut taxpayers will no 
longer get a tuition tax credit to help pay for college because that 
too will expire if we don't do something about it. There are 340,000 
Connecticut families raising children who will see an average tax 
increase of $1,000 as they lose access to the child tax credit.
  The earned-income tax credit, which was something adopted during the 
1990s--which I was proud to be part of--is also set to expire on 
January 1. That is for--when I say lower working families, some might 
call them lower middle income, gives them a break that they need.
  In the most recent year for which we have numbers, almost 43,000 
Connecticut working families received important benefits from the 
earned-income tax credit, and they would lose it.
  The national numbers are 2.1 million people long-term unemployed who 
will see their unemployment checks end. We are setting them adrift. In 
Connecticut, that means 33,600 Connecticut individuals will lose 
unemployment benefits under the Emergency Unemployment Compensation 
Program.
  I met with a group of these folks recently, and I know a lot of these 
people are white-collar people. Some of them are in their middle years 
of life, and they lost their jobs in companies that were hit by the 
recession. They are having an impossible time finding new employment, 
and, believe me, they are working so hard to try to get it--33,600 of 
them would be set adrift without unemployment benefits if we go over 
the fiscal cliff.
  One estimate by the National Economic Council is that there would be 
$2.5 billion less in consumer spending in Connecticut, and that is 
basically because tax hikes will take a bite out of middle-class 
budgets and, frankly, some people will lose their jobs. I am afraid 
they will lose their jobs in many industries, including the defense 
industry, which remains a foundation, as the acting chair knows, of our 
State's economy. The NEC also estimates that we would have 1.1 percent 
slower growth in the Connecticut economy with the attendant harmful 
results of that.
  I could go on and on. Title I would be forced to serve about 9,300 
fewer Connecticut children. We would get $5.6 million less in funding 
low-income home energy assistance payments to people in our State who 
heat with oil, and on and on and on.
  This is all my way of coming back to the point I made at the 
beginning and why I am encouraged by the statements President Obama and 
Senator McConnell made this afternoon that we are close to an 
agreement, close to a deal.
  I don't agree, I say again, that no deal is better than a bad deal. 
In this case of the fiscal cliff, no deal is the worst deal possible 
for the American people.
  We passed the time when we are going to, before tonight, negotiate 
the comprehensive bipartisan debt reduction agreement our country 
desperately needs. The least we can do is protect the constituents who 
were good enough to send us here from the worst possible result, which 
is that we let the country go over the cliff. We have proved that to 
everybody, including people around the world who depend on American 
strength and watch us, that our political system has become absolutely 
dysfunctional.
  So I hope the negotiations going on now end with an agreement, and I 
hope we will pass it with a bipartisan majority, a strong bipartisan 
majority in the Senate and the House. I certainly will support it from 
all I hear about it myself.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Indiana.

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