[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 23, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S195-S197]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUDGET
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I was pleased to hear a few days ago
that Senator Schumer said we would have a budget in the Senate. It has
been now, I think, about 1,370 days, give or take, since we have had a
budget in the Senate, even though plain statutory law requires the
Congress to have a budget. Now Senator Murray has followed up today, I
believe, with a quote saying: ``. . . the Senate will once again return
to regular order and move a budget resolution through the Budget
Committee and to the Senate floor.''
So the Budget Committee has not been meeting. It has not been doing
its duty. As the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, I have
been aghast at the process and have talked about it for now for over
1,000 days. So this will be a good step.
My colleagues would like to suggest somehow that they decided to do
this out of the goodness of their hearts because it is the right thing
to do. But I think the American people have had a belly full of this.
The U.S. House of Representatives has repeatedly passed budgets, but
the Senate has refused to even bring one up in committee or on the
floor for over 2 years now. They have said they are raising the debt
limit for about 3 months, but they have declared that the Senate does
not get paid until we have a budget. Right now there is no punishment
for not passing a budget. I was a Federal prosecutor for over 15 years
and know how to read a code. It has no penalty for failing to pass a
budget. It says the Senate should bring up a budget. It should complete
the budget process in committee by April 1 and then the full Senate
should take it up and it should be completed by April 15. The Senate is
given priority: 50 hours of debate, virtually unlimited amendments--an
opportunity to debate the financial condition of America.
That is why it has not happened. Senator Reid, the Democratic leader
for the last several years, has said it would be foolish to have a
budget. What he meant was that it would be foolish politically. Because
when you bring up a budget, this is a tough thing. The House did that.
Paul Ryan offered a historic budget that would change the debt course
of America and put us on a sound path. They had to make some tough
choices. So they were, of course, attacked in the election--Oh, these
are horrible people; they want to throw old people off the cliff and
that kind of thing and it was irresponsible--while during this entire
process, the Senate was in direct violation of Federal law that
required us to bring up a budget. We did not bring it up because it
would be foolish, foolish politically, because we have to take tough
votes. We have to stand and be counted. Numbers have to be analyzed:
How much are you truly going to raise taxes? Oh, well, is that going to
change the debt course?
Is this latest $600 billion tax increase going to change the debt
course of America? No; it is not. Our deficit last year was about
$1,080 billion. How much would this tax increase, this $600 billion,
have changed that? That is $60 billion a year. Instead of $1,080
billion or so in deficit, our deficit would have been $1,020 billion.
Is that going to fix our problem? No, it will not.
These are difficult problems. These are very difficult problems, and
it is not going to be easy. But it was easy to attack the House while
not producing a budget. It is a pretty flabbergasting thing to me. So I
am glad we are now going to have this process. It will not be easy for
Republicans. It will not be easy for Democrats. But what are we paid to
do? What responsibility do we have as the Congress--that has the power
of the purse--if not discussing the great issues of our time?
We are on an unsustainable debt path. Last year there was another
trillion-dollar deficit, and they are projecting we will have a
trillion-dollar deficit this year. That is 5 consecutive years of
trillion-dollar deficits. I know President Bush was criticized, and
correctly sometimes, for spending too much. The highest deficit he ever
had in 8 years was $470 billion. The year before he left it was $160
billion. President Obama has averaged well over $1,000 billion a year
in an annual deficit ever since.
This is not sustainable, as every expert has told us time and time
again. So I am worried about it. Maybe we can move out of these secret
meetings where the Senate just sits around and we wait for the people
to appear, write us a bill at midnight on December 31--actually 1 a.m.
on January 1--that is supposed to handle it and nobody has even read
it.
That is what we have been doing for the last 4 years. It has worked
out good politically because it has kept an honest discussion of the
dangerous path we are on from being part of the public debate. We have
to have it part of the
[[Page S196]]
public debate. I am not saying this budget, if it moves through the
Senate, is going to solve our problems and that it will be adopted. I
am not saying that. But I do believe the American people will
understand better the challenges we face and Senators will understand
better the challenges we face, how deep they are, how systemic they
are.
In 2011, after Republicans won a victory in the midterm elections,
there was hope we would have a new budget from the President, that he
would reach out to the House that had gotten a Republican majority for
a change--they took back the majority, and there were more Republicans
in the Senate--and that the President was going to produce a budget
that would put us on the right path and maybe a historic path that
would help make Social Security and Medicare sustainable, preserve
those programs so people can go to bed at night and feel confident
these programs not going to go bankrupt and there are not going to be
dramatic cuts. We can do that. It would take some belt-tightening, but
we could do that. Yet the administration refused: You are just
partisan, Sessions.
I am saying, without fear of contradiction by anybody who knows what
has happened, that this administration basically has not wanted to talk
about those deep spending issues that amount to more than half the
money we spend.
That was a challenge. Maybe that logjam has broken and this budget
process will give us an opportunity to move forward.
I do not like to be critical of nominees or anyone. I try to be as
courteous and respectful as we can to people whom we deal with on a
regular basis in the Congress. But I have to share with my colleagues a
deep feeling that we have a serious credibility problem with
credibility on debt and financing. We have to end that credibility
problem. We have to be honest and deal with real numbers.
In January of 2011, Mr. Jack Lew, the then-Director of the Office of
Management and Budget, with a substantial staff--one of their primary
duties is to produce a budget every year--submitted the President's
Budget to Congress. The President always submits a budget--it has been
late, but they have always sent them over. The Senate has not moved
budgets like it is required to, but every President has always sent
over a budget. There was great hope that the budget would be the kind
of breakthrough--with a Republican House and a Democratic President and
a Democratic Senate--that somehow this would be an opportunity for
historic agreement to put America on a sound path and get us off these
trillion-dollar deficits, put us on a path to a balanced budget and do
the kind of things that are necessary for the welfare of our country.
Mr. Lew produced the budget, and he went on television immediately
and talked about it. On Wednesday of that week, he was going to be
before the Budget Committee, but this is what he said in his CNN Sunday
morning interview about his budget. I would ask you to listen to these
words, colleagues and friends, anybody who is watching, and see what
they mean to you. He said:
Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the
point where we can look the American people in the eye and
say we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending
money that we have each year--
Money that we have each year--
and then we can work on bringing down our national debt.
That was on CNN.
So he appeared before the Budget Committee and I asked him if that
was an accurate statement; did he stand by that. He said: Yes, sir, and
he never wavered from that.
I will just say that as part of the budget process we get a stack of
documents--this much--from Mr. Lew's office. The Office of Management
and Budget submits them--supporting documents--as part of their
process. They are easily ascertainable. The numbers are not in dispute.
The lowest single deficit over 10 years that Mr. Lew projected was
more than $600 billion. In other words, there was never a balanced
budget, never paying down the debt, never a single year we were not
borrowing at least $600 billion.
None of what he said is accurate. It is breathtaking. I called it the
greatest financial misrepresentation in history. It would have added
$13 trillion to the debt of the United States over 10 years, by his own
estimate, not stuff I made up. Yet he said we are not going to be
adding to the debt anymore.
So I thought, if a businessman reported to potential stock
purchasers, our company is on the right track, we are not adding to our
debt anymore--we are going to look the American people in the eye and
say we're not adding to the debt anymore, we are spending only money we
have--you are borrowing--the least amount of money you have borrowed in
a single year is $600 billion, larger than President Bush ever had in 8
years as President.
When I asked him about it, he insisted that it was true. So we have
got a problem here, and that is why I am not going to support Mr. Lew
for the Secretary of the Treasury. I am not going to vote for him. I
believe he knew exactly what he was saying. He produced a budget that
was panned by virtually every editorial board in America. They hammered
it as failing to meet the challenge of our time, and he knew it was
that way. He is not a person who doesn't understand these issues. He
knew what it was all about. But they decided they would go out and spin
it this way. They would say it did what the American people wanted.
I hate to be this harsh, but there is only one conclusion. They
decided to produce a budget that did not change the debt course of
America and left us on an unsustainable path. Even their own numbers
show that, but they would tell the American people this, say it was
fixed, and maybe lull them into a false sense of confidence.
Then they attacked Paul Ryan of the Republican House for producing a
realistic budget. It wasn't a dramatic budget, it didn't even balance
in 10 years, but it changed us and put us on a sound path. They would
attack him as not caring about people, and for 2 years that is what has
happened.
Once we bring a budget to the floor of this Senate, Republicans and
Democrats are going to find out this is a very difficult situation we
are in. The challenge is going to be very difficult, and we are going
to have a hard time dealing with it.
Mr. Lew didn't just make that comment to CNN, in case you think I am
exaggerating here. He also said this in an NPR, National Public Radio,
interview on February 15, 2011, the day, I believe, of a Budget
Committee hearing:
If we're able to reduce the deficit to the point where we
can pay for our spending and invest in the future, that is an
enormous accomplishment. This budget has specific proposals
that would do that.
He looked the American people in the eye, or, I guess, talked to
their ears on NPR, and said his ``budget has specific proposals'' that
would put us in a position to pay for our spending and invest in the
future and reduce our deficit.
He went on to say on February 15, 2011, at the Budget Committee
hearing--and I think this was my question, Was this an accurate
statement that you made, Mr. OMB Director?
He said:
It's an accurate statement that our current spending will
not be increasing the debt. We've stopped spending money that
we don't have.
I mean, I almost can't read those words without the hair standing up
on the back of my neck. The Director of the Office of Management and
Budget appeared before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and he said,
``it's an accurate statement,'' this baloney, ``it's an accurate
statement that our current spending will not be increasing the debt . .
. We've stopped spending money that we don't have.''
Nothing could be further from the truth--the lowest single deficit
was $600 billion.
What about on a different CNN interview on February 14, 2011:
It [the budget] takes real actions now so that between now
and 5 years from now we can get our deficit under control so
that we can stabilize things so that we're not adding to the
debt anymore.
He promised, and looked the American people in the eye and said, in 5
years, we are not going to be adding to the debt anymore. He knew
exactly what he was saying. He knew exactly what he wanted the American
people to hear. There is no ambiguity about it, and it was utterly
false.
February 13, 2011, on ABC, he said:
This budget has a lot of pain, [but] it does the job, it
cuts the deficit in half by the end
[[Page S197]]
of the President's first term . . . It's going to take us a
lot of hard work just to take us to the point where we're not
adding to the debt.
There is not one year that they are not adding to the debt.
In the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth years of the budget that Jack
Lew presented, when you look at his real numbers, the deficit was going
up each year. So it was not a fix to our debt problem.
Then he says this on the White House blog, February 13, 2011:
Like every family, we have to tighten our belts and live
within our means while we're investing in the things that we
need to have a strong and secure future . . . We know that
you have to stabilize where we're going before you can move
on and solve the rest of the problem. This budget does that.
So it is going to stabilize us and move us forward.
Well, as I say, that was not well received. The New York Times wrote
this on February 5, 2011. That was his op-ed. I won't go into the
editorials, but a whole list of those were critical of Mr. Lew.
I would just say this, we are in a difficult financial position. We
need honesty, we need a budget that is truthful, we need the regular
order so the Budget Committee does its work, and then it comes to the
floor of the U.S. Senate--this will be first time in over a thousand
days--it guarantees 50 hours of debate, it can't be filibustered, it
can be passed with a simple majority, we will know what is in it, and
people can offer amendments. That is what should have been happening
for a long time that has not been happening. That is what the law
requires, and that should be completed by April 15 of this year.
As we go forward, I am confident that we will be better served by
public discussion of our debt, not secret meetings. I have been
critical of them. I had hoped that some of them would ripen into some
good solutions, but all we have had is temporary ``kick the can down
the road'' maneuvers, and nothing substantial has been done to change
the debt course of America.
By the way, when Mr. Erskine Bowles, whom President Obama appointed
to head his fiscal commission, saw this budget in 2011, he said it goes
nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal
nightmare. Everybody knew this budget wouldn't do the job, and that is
why it was never brought through the process, and that is why it wasn't
brought to the floor for a full budget analysis in committee and in
debate on the floor.
So as we go forward, I will be meeting with our new chairman, Senator
Murray. She is a great, tough advocate for her values, but she is a
good person to work with. I have told her we will try to work with her,
but we are going to talk about the great issues of our time, the
difficulties we face, and see if we can't make this system work better
and try to put this country on a sound financial footing.
We can do it. We can get this country on a sound path. It is not
impossible, but anybody who thinks it will be easy is wrong. This is
going to take some hard work. As we do that in a bipartisan, open way
in the committee, on the floor of the Senate, the American people will
be able to digest the difficulty of some of our challenges, and so will
our Members in Congress. In the end, that, I think, leaves us in the
best position to reach the kind of agreement, compromise, solution,
that can put us on the right path, because everybody is going to have
to swallow a little bit.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
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