[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 23, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S191-S195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, President Obama may have been vague 
on details in his inaugural speech on Monday, but I will give him this, 
he couldn't have been clearer about the tone and the direction he has 
in mind for the second term. Gone is the postpartisan rhetoric that 
propelled him onto the national stage and into the White House. In its 
place is an unabashedly leftwing appeal for more bureaucratic control 
and centralized power here in Washington.
  On Monday, we saw a President and a party that appeared to have 
shifted into reverse and jammed on the gas. For Democrats in the Obama 
age, the era of big government being over is officially over. And 
anybody who disagrees with their approach isn't just wrong, they are 
not just standing in the way of progress, they are malevolent, they are 
the bad guys, they are the ones who want to take food away from 
children, they want the old and the infirm to suffer, they want to 
choose between caring for the people who built this country, as the 
President put it on Monday, and investing in those who will build our 
future.
  I don't know if the President buys all this stuff; I don't know if he 
believes his own caricature--I certainly hope not--but one thing I do 
know is that questioning the intentions of one's political opponents 
makes it awfully hard to get anything done in a representative 
democracy. As the President himself said, without so much as a hint of 
irony, we cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute 
spectacle for politics or treat name calling as reasoned debate.
  The President won the election. I congratulate him on his victory. It 
is his prerogative to lay out an agenda and to make an argument--
against all evidence--for the efficacy of big government, more 
Washington spending, and centralization. It is even his prerogative to 
argue--mistakenly, in my view--that America's greatness somehow rests 
not on its communities and voluntary associations, its churches and 
charities, on civil society, but instead on the dictates of Washington. 
But to suggest that those of us and our constituents who believe 
otherwise don't want the best interest of our parents or our children 
or our country's future is, at best, needlessly provocative; at worst, 
it suggests a troubling inability to view those who don't happen to 
share your opinions as beneath you.
  To suggest, as one of the President's spokesmen did earlier this 
week, that both the American political system and those who belong to 
the party of Lincoln aren't worthy of this White House or its agenda 
isn't the way to get things done. It makes it impossible to tend to 
problems we simply have to face up to and that we will only solve 
together. Frankly, it calls into question the President's own belief in 
the wisdom and the efficacy of the constitutional system of checks and 
balances that the Founders so wisely put in place.
  The postinaugural period is usually a chance to pivot to governing 
after a long campaign. It is an opportunity for Presidents to reach out 
to the minority and to forge compromises. But that is not what we are 
seeing this time around. Even before Monday we all noted the harsh 
change in tone, the reboot of the campaign machine, and how, instead of 
offering an olive branch to those who disagree with him, the President 
had already decided to transform his campaign operation into a weapon 
to bulldoze anyone who doesn't share his vision. Well, I would suggest 
that one thing the American people don't want is a permanent campaign. 
That is the last thing the American people are looking for--a permanent 
campaign. They want us to work together on solutions to our problems. 
And deficits and debt are right at the top of the list.
  I wish to suggest this morning the President rethink the adversarial 
tone he has adopted in recent weeks. Our problems are simply too urgent 
and too big for the President to give up on working with us. I appeal 
to him once again to work with us on the things we can achieve 
together, and let us start with the deficit and the debt. Because the 
only way we will be able to tackle these problems is by doing it 
together.

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If he refuses, if he insists on spending the next 4 years pushing a 
polarizing hard-left agenda instead, I assure him he will meet a 
determined opposition not only from Republicans in Washington but from 
the very people he seems to believe are squarely on his side in the 
push to remake government in his image.
  The irony in the President's attacks, of course, is that the kind of 
reforms Republicans are calling for are the only conceivable route to 
saving the programs the President claims he wants to protect. Failing 
to reform the entitlement programs of the last century now--right now--
is the best way to guarantee they no longer exist in their current 
form. I mean, one could practically hear the ring of the cash register 
with every new promise the President made. At a time when we can all 
see the failure of such policies by simply turning on the news, he 
seems blissfully--blissfully--unaware of the fact that from Athens to 
Madrid the sad, slow death of the left's big government dream is on 
display for all to see. If we want a less prosperous, less dynamic, 
less mobile society, that is the way to go--just ``Europeanize'' 
America.
  The President's vision of an all-powerful government that rights 
every wrong and heals every wound may warm the liberal heart, but it is 
completely divorced from experience and from reality. So today I wish 
to do my part to bring the President and his allies in Congress a 
little closer down to Earth. I know it may be hard for them to accept, 
but the reality is this: We have a spending problem--not a taxing 
problem, a spending problem.
  Let's take a look at the chart to my right. The green represents 
historic and projected tax revenue. And we can see it goes right 
straight across here out to 2040. The tax increases of 3 weeks ago were 
delivered by operation of law. In other words, the law expired and all 
of the Bush tax cuts were over. The Congress, 2 hours after everybody's 
taxes went up--in other words, after all the Bush tax cuts expired--
restored tax relief for 99 percent of the American people, and they did 
it on a permanent basis to guarantee we wouldn't have another cliff, as 
we inevitably have. When a law sunsets, we have a cliff.
  So the President was able to get some new revenue by operation of 
law, and that represents this dark blue line right across here. You can 
see that is pretty steady out to 2040.
  The President, of course, said that wasn't nearly enough. He said: We 
need more taxes, and we will be back asking for more taxes later. So as 
nearly as we can tell, based on what he has said, the taxes he would 
like to add to the ones he got by operation of law 2\1/2\ weeks ago is 
this light blue line right across here.
  If the President were given all the tax increases he says at the 
moment he wants, that would provide this amount of revenue going out to 
2040. As you can see, that doesn't do anything to solve the problem 
because the red represents spending in the past and the spending 
escalation that will occur if we don't do anything to solve the 
spending problem.
  Look at this line dramatically going up to 2040. So as you can see, 
there is not enough revenue we can raise without completely shutting 
down the economy to solve the problem. In fact, it produces a rather 
static and totally insignificant amount of revenue in order to deal 
with the massive spending problem.
  So this constant demand for more and more tax increases on, I guess, 
whom people assume is the more successful guy down the street may be a 
great campaign tactic, but it doesn't do anything to solve the problem. 
Even if the President were able to get every bit of taxes he wants, we 
still have an enormous gap in spending if we don't deal with the real 
problem, which is spending. We have a spending addiction. I didn't make 
this up. This is a fact. This is reality.
  So the tax issue is over. Congress has restored permanent tax relief 
for 99 percent of the American people. Even if the President were to 
get--and he will not--any more tax revenue, it is perfectly obvious 
that doesn't do anything to solve the problem.
  So the challenge for us--and looking at the chart we can see--is 
revenue today is just about where it has been for the past 30 years or 
so. The President spent nearly his entire first term arguing that we 
needed to tax the so-called rich to solve our fiscal woes. He harangued 
Congress about it. He argued for it in rallies and debates. He 
threatened to push us over the cliff if he didn't get his way.
  In the end, by operation of law he got part of what he asked for. And 
the reason he got it, as I said earlier, is because the tax relief we 
passed in 2001 and 2003 carried an expiration date. President Obama got 
some of the tax increases he wanted because the law expired. Then 
Congress, led by Republicans, voted to make Bush-era tax rates 
permanent for 99 percent of all Americans. Now, permanency is 
important. It has been kind of lost on the general public, but the 
importance is we don't have another cliff, another expiration date 
where all of a sudden everything changes.
  Given how much time he devoted to that one topic, one would think his 
tax hike would have closed the deficit, eliminated the entire national 
debt, and left us with extra cash to spare. But do you see that tiny 
little blue line I pointed to right here? That is how much additional 
revenue he got. This blue area is the revenue he says he wants. He will 
not get it; but if he did, it is pretty apparent it has nothing 
whatsoever to do with solving the spending addiction.
  So if this revenue doesn't come anywhere close to solving the 
problem, the real challenge, obviously, is how we are going to control 
all of this red. What do we do about this? Well, we are clearly 
spending way more than we take in. The real uptick, interestingly 
enough, occurs about the time the President took office. It has been 
hard enough to find ways to close the President's trillion-dollar 
deficits. But as I just pointed out, they are nothing next to what is 
going to hit us when tens of millions of baby boomers reach retirement 
age--nothing compared to what is heading our way.
  I pointed out the massive slope. That is what is headed our way. 
Nothing short of a bipartisan effort is going to fix this problem, and 
there is only one way we can do it. We can't tax our way out of this 
problem. The revenue question is behind us. The law we voted for, as I 
said, made current tax rates permanent. I am pretty confident not a 
single Republican in the House or Senate will vote to raise any more 
taxes. But even if we were to do that, all the taxes the President 
asked for would only put us here in 2040. And look at what would be 
spent.
  So the reality the President needs to face--and quickly--is that 
there is no realistic way to raise taxes high enough to even begin to 
address this problem. That is why Republicans are saying we need to 
start controlling spending, and we need to do it now. That is why if 
the President wants to do something good right now, he should put us 
out of the liberal wish list and put us out of the character attacks 
and join us in this great task. It is the transcendent issue of our 
time.
  If we don't fix this problem, we don't leave behind for our children 
and grandchildren the kind of America our parents left behind for us. 
There is no bigger issue, even though it got scant mention in the State 
of the Union.
  Now, I have no animus toward the President. I just want to see him do 
something about the problem because the longer we wait, the worse the 
problem becomes. The more we delay the inevitable, the less time 
younger Americans will have to plan for the reforms we make today. That 
is simply not right.
  So the President has a choice. He can paint himself as a warrior of 
the left and charge into battle with failed ideas we have already tried 
before; he can demean and blame the opposition for his own failure to 
lead; he can indulge his supporters in a bitter, never-ending campaign 
that will only divide our country further; or he could take the 
responsible road. He can help his own base come to terms with the 
mathematical reality.
  Some people over there are living in a fantasy world--a world that 
doesn't exist. He could reach out to leaders in both parties--and all 
of the members in both parties--and negotiate in good faith. We would 
be happy to give him credit. That is fine by me. If boosting his legacy 
is what it takes and it helps the country, that is all the better.
  If my constituents believe they are working to help make their future 
a

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little better and a little brighter, great. But we can't waste any more 
time denying the reality that is staring each of us in the face. There 
is only one way to solve this problem, and that is to do something 
about this spending addiction that is going to sink this country and 
turn us into Greece.
  Senate Republicans are ready to help the President solve this 
problem. I hope we have an opportunity to do so.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wonder if I might pose a question 
to the Republican leader, if he would retake the floor.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I would be happy to respond.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I want to congratulate the Republican leader for his 
remarks.
  Here is my question. We have arrived at a time when we have a newly 
elected President who has had a fine inaugural day. He has an agenda 
that he wants to follow which he announced in his inaugural address. It 
is not an agenda that most of us on this side agree with, but he has an 
agenda that he wants to follow in his second term, all of which would 
ensure--in his eyes--his legacy as a President.
  But isn't there one thing that in order to get to that agenda--or any 
other thing--he and we have to do, and that is to address the debt? 
Isn't the very best time--isn't the very best time to do something 
difficult, something nobody wants to talk about, something that is 
hard--the best time to do that is at a time when we have a divided 
government, a Democratic President, a Republican House, and 30 or 40 or 
50 of us Senators on both sides of the aisle who have been saying for 2 
years that we are ready to fix the debt?
  Isn't this an opportunity now? Not just because it is a divided 
government, but because the House of Representatives today may very 
well create a 2-month or 3-month window during which we can address all 
of these issues if we had Presidential leadership?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I say to my friend from Tennessee, it is 
counterintuitive. But one could argue that a divided government--which 
we have had more often than not since World War II--has produced four 
of the most significant accomplishments for our country in modern 
times.
  In the Reagan administration, President Reagan and Tip O'Neill, the 
Democratic Speaker of the House, agreed to raise the age for Social 
Security to save Social Security for another generation. Reagan and Tip 
O'Neill did the last comprehensive tax reform.
  Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress did welfare reform, arguably 
the most important piece of social legislation in recent times. And 
Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress actually balanced the budgets in 
the late 1990s.
  My friend from Tennessee is correct. Divided government actually is 
the perfect time--some would argue even the only time--we can do tough 
things, hard-to-explain things that need to be done to save the 
country. So I hate to miss the opportunity presented by a divided 
government to tackle the transcendent issue of our times.
  The President talked about a lot of things, and that is all 
interesting, but it had nothing to do with fixing the country. Until we 
fix this problem, we will not have the kind of country for our children 
and our grandchildren that our parents left behind for us.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wonder if I might pose one more 
question to the Republican leader after making a short statement.
  I came to this body as a young lawyer-legislative aide to Senator 
Howard Baker a long time ago, in 1967. I remember very well Senator 
Baker's story about how the civil rights bill of 1968 was passed. I 
have discussed this with the Republican leader before. He knows that 
era as well or better than I do.
  But there was a time when Senator Baker said he was in Everett 
Dirksen's office--he is the man who had the job that Senator McConnell 
now has. He was the Republican leader then. He said he heard the 
telephone ring. He heard only one end of the conversation, but Senator 
Dirksen was saying: No, Mr. President, I cannot come down and have a 
drink with you tonight. I did that last night, and Luella is very 
unhappy with me. And that was the conversation.
  About 30 minutes later there was a rustle out in the outer office of 
the Republican leader's office--the very office that Senator McConnell 
now holds. Two beagles, followed by the President of the United States, 
came in. Lyndon Johnson, the President, said to the Republican leader: 
Everett, if you won't have a drink with me, I am down here to have one 
with you. And they disappeared in the back room for 45 minutes.
  The point of all that is not their socializing. The point was it was 
in that very office, the Republican leader's office, that in 1968, the 
next year, the civil rights bill was written and enacted. Lyndon 
Johnson got the credit for that in history but Everett Dirksen made it 
possible, and there were at that time many more Democrats in the Senate 
than Republicans.
  What I want to say to Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, the 
question I want to ask him, is this. He has seen the U.S. Senate and 
Presidency for the last number of years. He has seen many relationships 
between the President and leaders of the opposite party. He knows how 
this place works. My sense of the Republican leader and of the large 
majority of us is that we wish to see a result. We wish to see a result 
on this very tough issue of saving Social Security, saving Medicare, 
saving Medicaid, saving these programs on which seniors depend. I 
wonder if the Republican leader would agree with me that despite the 
fact that we engage every day in political matters, that we have big 
differences of opinion, that on this issue, without Presidential 
leadership, we cannot get a result and that there are a lot of us on 
both sides of the aisle who are ready to work with the President to fix 
the debt?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I say to my friend from Tennessee--in many ways it is 
a statement of the obvious but a lot of people forget it--there is only 
1 person in America out of 307 million Americans who can sign something 
into law and only 1 person in America who can deliver the members of 
his party to support an agreement that he makes. The only way to get an 
outcome on the biggest issue of our time is with Presidential 
leadership. So it was disappointing to see scant reference in the State 
of the Union. Of course that is just one speech and I have not given up 
hoping that this President can make solving the transcendent issue of 
our time one of his premier accomplishments.
  The point I think the Senator from Tennessee and I are making this 
morning is there are potential partners on this side of the aisle to 
make this happen. I hope we will not lose this opportunity once again 
to deal with the biggest issue in the country.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Kentucky for extending his 
time on the floor. On my own I wish to continue that line of thinking a 
little bit.
  It is traditional that when we have a new President, a newly 
inaugurated President, that he has a pretty good opportunity to get 
what he asks; that it is a time of maximum leverage, it is a time to do 
important things, it is a time to do difficult things, it is a time to 
do things that otherwise might not get done.
  Presidents are defined by their skills--their communication skills, 
their electoral ability--but they are also defined by their capacity 
over a period of years to identify the hard issues that are important 
to our country and cause people, as the President said in his address 
day before yesterday, to work together to solve those problems. Now the 
problem is whether you want to raise taxes on the guy down the street 
with the biggest house. That is not so hard to do. The problem is to 
spend money that you do not have--because you can do it; that is not so 
hard to do. If the problem is to address a disaster to help people who 
are in desperate shape, there might be some debate about whether it is 
really a disaster or not but it is not hard to do because in the end it 
is going to happen. What Presidents are remembered for is dealing with 
important, difficult crises.
  President Clinton is remembered for a number of things but one of the 
things he did was challenge the conventional thinking in his own party 
to

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deal with welfare reform. It would not have happened if he had not done 
it. It would not have happened if he had not done it because a 
Republican could not have made the argument. A President's job, 
according to George Reedy, the former press secretary to Lyndon 
Johnson, is three things: One is to see an urgent need, two is to 
develop a strategy to meet the need, and the third is to persuade at 
least half the people he is right.
  President Nixon in the early 1960s went to China. That seems like 
ancient history but that was straight against the core of the 
Republican Party at that time. That was something that was 
inconceivable for a Republican President to do, given the history of 
mainland China and Taiwan, as they were both called.
  There have been many times in our history when Presidents have had to 
do the hard work. President George H.W. Bush made a budget agreement 
which may have caused him to lose the election in 1992 because it 
angered a number of Republicans. But it also helped balance the budget 
and gave us a period of time in the 1990s when that budget agreement 
plus a good economy gave us an actual surplus of funding.
  I sense that there is at the White House a feeling, two things I wish 
to disabuse the White House of. The first is that the budget problem is 
not a real problem. I cannot believe people at the White House think 
that. Everybody knows it is. Senator McConnell gave a very good 
explanation of what was going on there. But let me say it this way: In 
2025, according to the Congressional Budget Office, every dollar of 
taxes we collect will go to pay for Medicare, Medicaid, Social 
Security, and interest on the debt, and there is nothing left for 
national defense, National Laboratories, Pell grants for education, 
highways, or the investments that we need to make in research to grow 
this country. It all goes for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and 
the interest on debt, every single penny we collect. And that is only 
12 years away. That is not me talking. That is the Congressional Budget 
Office saying that. The Medicare trustees have said that in 2024 the 
Medicare Program will not have enough money to pay all of its bills. 
Whose bills? Bills of seniors, bills of Tennesseans, many of whom are 
literally counting the days until they are old enough to be eligible 
for Medicare so they can pay their medical bills. It would be a tragedy 
if that day arrived and there were not enough money to pay the bills. 
But the Medicare trustees, who by law are supposed to tell us these 
things, say that day will come in 2024. It is just 11 years away and 
that is the day for people already on Medicare and people who are going 
to be on Medicare.
  Medicaid, which is a program for lower income Americans, is an 
important program. As Governor, I dealt with it in my State. But when I 
was Governor, it was 8 percent of the State budget. Today it is 26 
percent of the State budget. It is soaking up almost every dollar that 
would go to higher education. As a result, students around the country 
are wondering: Why are my tuition fees going up? It is because of 
Washington's Medicaid Program requiring States to make decisions that 
soak up money that otherwise would be used to fund education.
  In our State of Tennessee, 30 years ago the State paid 70 percent of 
the cost of going to the University of Tennessee. Today it pays 30. And 
Medicaid is the chief culprit.
  Everyone knows this. The President's own debt commission has told him 
this and suggested a way to deal with it. Forty or fifty of us on both 
sides of the aisle have been working together, meeting together, having 
dinner together, writing bills together, trying to come up with plans 
to do it. Senator Corker, my colleague from Tennessee, has developed a 
bill on which I am his prime cosponsor which says we have found a way 
to strengthen Medicare and other entitlements by reducing the growth in 
spending. We understand this.
  We passed a Budget Control Act a couple of years ago. People said 
they didn't like it. It was not so bad because it took 38 percent of 
the budget, which is all of our discretionary spending--including 
national defense, national parks, national labs--and said it will go up 
at about the rate of inflation. This is before we get to the so-called 
sequester. But what about the rest of the budget? That is the automatic 
stuff we do not even vote on: Medicare, entitlements, all this? It is 
going up at about three to four times the rate of inflation. It is 
going to bankrupt these programs. Seniors will not be able to have 
their medical bills paid and the country will be bankrupt. That is no 
overstatement. The former Comptroller of the Currency says that. 
President Clinton says this is an urgent problem. The former Chairman 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the national debt is the single 
biggest threat to our national security. Why are we not dealing with 
it? I think we are not dealing with it, A, because it is hard to do; B, 
because on both sides of the aisle we have not been effective in 
dealing with it before.
  I remember when we had an all-Republican cast of characters here in 
town--President Bush, a Republican majority--we tried to reduce the 
growth of Medicare and we could not get the votes to do that.
  This is not easy to do, but Robert Merry, who wrote a book about 
President Polk, had lunch with some of us yesterday, made this 
statement: ``In America's history every crisis has been solved by 
Presidential leadership or not at all.''
  Whether it was Lincoln in the Civil War or Reagan and Tip O'Neill or 
Nixon to China or Clinton on welfare reform--we can all identify the 
crises. But it takes Presidential leadership to do it. It takes that to 
do it.
  I was a Governor, which is much smaller potatoes. If I sat around 
waiting for the State legislature, with all respect, to come up with a 
road program we would still be driving on dirt roads. They were waiting 
for the Governor to do it. That is how our system works.
  I wonder if the President thinks that the debt is not a problem? I 
cannot imagine anybody at the White House thinks that. This is a 
problem. If the President does not address it during his two terms he 
will be remembered by history as failing to do that. His legacy may be 
a failure to address financial matters that put this country on a road 
to bankruptcy. Or, if he were to do it, if he were to provide the 
leadership, he would be--as the Australian Foreign Minister has said, 
``America is one budget agreement away from reasserting its global 
preeminence.'' Why wouldn't President Obama want to be known as the 
President who caused America to reassert its global preeminence by 
dealing with a budget agreement during the first 3 months of his term 
and then he can get on with his agenda, about which we can argue? That 
leaves me with only one thought: That the President thinks we don't 
want to do it. We do want to do it and it is a misunderstanding if he 
thinks that.
  I know the Republican leader would not mind me saying he is a wily, 
clever tactician who knows the Senate as well as anyone here. But if 
you look carefully, when we got down to the last few days of the year 
and needed an agreement on taxes, the Republican leader was in the 
middle of the agreement. When we needed an agreement to try to avoid 
default on the debt, the Republican leader was the one who was in the 
middle of doing that.
  I think if the White House thinks that the Republican leader or we on 
the Republican side do not want to fix the debt, they are badly 
misunderstanding where we are and who we are. I do not know how we can 
say it more clearly. We have written bills that do it. We have held 
dinners to talk about it. We have made public statements with 
Democrats, 30 or 40 of us at a time, saying we support Simpson-Bowles, 
we support Domenici-Rivlin, or we support this or we support that. What 
is missing? Two words: Presidential leadership. This is not a partisan 
comment. It just does not work unless the President lays out his plan.
  Some say the President does not want to lay out his plan. He has to 
lay out his plan. He is the President. We are just legislators. Senator 
Corker and I have put out our plan. Who pays attention to that? Madam 
President, $1 trillion in reductions and a $1 trillion increase in the 
debt ceiling--it is out there. That is not going to work. However, if 
President Obama, with his skills, calls together Simpson and Bowles or 
his advisers and says: Here is

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my plan to save Medicare, here is my plan to save Medicaid, here is my 
plan to fix the debt, and I want bipartisan support to do that, he will 
get it. At first, because it is a difficult issue, everybody will say: 
Oh, no, we can't do it that way. We need to sit down, talk, and come up 
with a result. I think the Republican leader has shown he is prepared 
and willing to do that. He has said it and done it on other issues. I 
don't know what else the rest of us can do to show that.

  What I am trying to respectfully say today, as much as anything, to 
the President of the United States is congratulations on your 
inauguration. I was there. I was proud to participate in it and have 
the opportunity to speak for a minute and a half about why we celebrate 
for the 57th time the inauguration of an American President. We 
celebrate it because our country is distinguished from most other 
countries in the world by the peaceful transition or reaffirmation of 
the largest amount of power in the world. We have our political 
contests, and then we have the restraint to respect the results.
  After winning the election, it is important, first, to get the fiscal 
house in order. The time to do it is while we have a divided 
government. The time to do it is while the President is at the peak of 
his popularity. The time to do it is while the House of 
Representatives--the Republican House--has created a window of 2 or 3 
months to deal with all the fiscal issues. The time to do it is after 2 
years of discussion with Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan way 
about the need to fix the debt and the importance of it for the 
country.
  My hope is that as the President and his advisers look at the Senate, 
they see a willingness to solve the problem of fixing the debt in a 
bipartisan way. I get the feeling they don't believe that about us. I 
don't know what else we can do to cause them to believe that. There is 
not the same kind of comfortable, back-and-forth relationship there 
should be. I have heard some people say: Well, the Johnson-Dirksen days 
are ancient history. That was a long time ago. However, human nature 
doesn't change. Human nature doesn't change in 50 years, 100 years, or 
500 years.
  There is plenty of good will across the aisle and on this side of the 
aisle, at the beginning of this term, to work with a newly inaugurated 
President and say: Mr. President, we are ready to fix the debt. Provide 
us the leadership. No great crisis is ever solved without Presidential 
leadership in the United States. You are the President; you are the 
only one who can lay out the plan. We will then consider it, amend it, 
argue about it, change it, and pass it. After that, we can get onto the 
President's agenda, about which we will have a difference of opinion, 
but he will go down in history as the man who was willing to do 
something hard within his own party, which was to fix the debt and save 
the programs seniors depend upon to pay their medical bills.
  I hope I can say that in the spirit of someone who participated in 
the inauguration and admires the President's considerable abilities. I 
hope he and his advisers stop, take a look, and say: Maybe we were 
wrong. Maybe this is the time to do it. Maybe we are the only ones who 
can do it, so let's make a proposal and get started.
  I thank the President. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam 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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