[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 12 (Tuesday, January 29, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S339-S341]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE DEBT CRISIS
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I have been coming to the Senate floor just
about every day that we have been in session so far this year, and I am
going to continue to do so to talk about what I believe is our most
pressing crisis that this body faces and that our country faces; that
is, the uncontrolled runaway Federal spending and accumulated debt and
how it is dragging our economy down and how it threatens to provoke a
major economic disaster if it is not addressed.
In previous remarks I have made on this floor, I tried to make the
point that if we fail to get Federal spending under control in the
short term, our economy will continue to remain in the doldrums because
of this cloud of economic uncertainty that hangs over investors,
businesspeople, and consumers. But I don't want my colleagues to just
take my word for it. A host of experts, commentators, businesspeople,
and investors around the country--and, frankly, around the world--
people from both sides of the political spectrum have been and will
continue to make this same point.
The message is this: Unless Washington stops punting this problem and
begins to demonstrate the will to cut spending in serious ways to
reduce our long-term debt, the economy will continue to limp along;
investors will continue to remain on the sidelines; business owners
will continue not to hire new employees; and, we will hasten the day
when investors lose confidence in the United States as a worthy credit
risk.
I know the market has responded in a favorable way recently. I hope
that continues. But the fundamentals underlying our current economy
don't justify that continuing far into the future.
So today I would like to quote from what others are saying, not just
what a Senator from Indiana believes and has been saying on this floor.
I want to talk about what they are saying about our debt and spending
crisis.
First, I believe we can all--or most of us can--agree with this fact:
that the first and the most essential function of the U.S. Government
is to defend and protect its citizens from threats to their national
security. As our national debt continues to rise unrestrained, we are
putting our children's future and our country's future in a very
vulnerable state.
Perhaps the most dire and frightening warning has come from one of
our Nation's highest ranking officials, former Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who said:
The continually increasing debt is the biggest threat we
have to our national security.
Not al-Qaida, not suicide bombers, not Islamic fundamentalists.
According to the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, someone who has
made a career leading our country through tumultuous battles of war,
the largest threat to our national security is our very own red ink.
Erskine Bowles, former White House Chief of Staff to President Bill
Clinton, also recognizes the imperative need to address our spending
and debt crisis. As we all know, Bowles was tapped by President Obama
to lead a bipartisan deficit commission with former Republican Senator
Alan Simpson. The two
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men, along with the commission, proposed recommendations for a big and
bold plan to reduce our long-term debt. Rather than heed some of these
recommendations and build off of this bipartisan momentum several years
ago, the President ignored it completely and since has done nothing and
offered no plan of his own to fix our dire fiscal plight other than to
propose new taxes.
As I mentioned in previous remarks, the President got his tax
increases on millionaires and billionaires, but no one should be fooled
into thinking this solves our fiscal crisis. Recently, in an interview,
former Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles rightfully criticized the
administration and the Congress for not striking a significant budget
deal and called that failure, ``The most disappointing thing in my
life.'' He went on to say:
They're bouncing from one crisis to another. . . . It's
nuts. We have an enormous fiscal problem in this country. . .
. We've got to put our big boy and big girl pants on and go
to work.
He also added:
. . . the problems are real, the solutions painful, and
there's no easy way out.
Finally, he said:
We got to do stuff that's real. I mean there's no sense in,
you know, just working at the edges. . . . If we don't slow
the rate of growth in healthcare programs, it's going to eat
up the entire budget and virtually bankrupt the country.
The warning signs and the calls for action are coming from all
sectors.
From the business sector, Gary Loveman, chairman of the Business
Roundtable's Health and Retirement Committee, said the following:
Keeping the U.S. economy from careening over the fiscal
cliff was the first step, but our elected leaders must not
stop there. Although economic recovery has been stalled,
renewed expansion is possible if conditions are set in a
comprehensive budget agreement that includes entitlement
reform and long-term changes to reduce deficits. In this way
we will ensure the viability health and retirement safety net
for future generations of Americans.
John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors, an investment
advisory firm, publisher of Mauldin Economics, and author of ``End
Game,'' a book many of us have heard about and read, said this:
The real issue is the deficit. The leaders of both parties
recognize that the current path spelled out on our fiscal
balance sheet is unsustainable. The deficit must be brought
under control . . . or we will find ourselves all too soon in
the situation now facing much of Europe and Japan. The
options at that point become far more dire.
Business owners in my home State of Indiana also recognize these
dangers. Reflecting the sentiment of virtually every businessperson I
have talked to over the past 2 years, Rick Zehr, a business owner in
Fort Wayne, IN, said:
We all need to manage our income and not borrow beyond what
we can afford. I look at our country's deficit spending and
it's so far beyond what the rest of us have to live like
every day. As a business owner, it makes me nervous. Everyone
is paying for deficit spending.
Economists are sounding the alarm as well. Kenneth Rogoff, a
respected Harvard economist, said:
The idea that one should just ignore all these problems and
apply crude Keynesian stimulus is a dangerous one. It matters
a great deal how the government taxes and spends, not just
how much. The U.S. debt level is a constraint. A growing
number of empirical studies, including my own joint work with
Carmen Reinhart, suggests that the U.S. has already reached a
debt level that has been associated with slower growth in
advanced countries.
Our own Treasury Department and some credit rating agencies have also
weighed in. These warnings alone should be enough to urge Congress and
the administration to act.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Report of the
U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2012:
While these projections are subject to considerable
uncertainty, the debt-to-GDP ratio would continue to rise
unsustainably under current policy.
Can I state that again? Our own U.S. Treasury report said that while
these projections are subject to considerable uncertainty, the debt-to-
GDP ratio will continue to rise unsustainably under current policy.
Does that not suggest to us that current policy is not working when
the U.S. Treasury puts out a report saying: What the administration and
Congress are doing is unsustainable? Unless we grasp the reality of
what is happening with our spending and our debt, we are headed for a
crisis if we are not in one already.
When Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. Federal Government debt in
August 2011, they said:
Our lowering of the rating was prompted by our view on the
rising public debt and our perception of greater policymaking
uncertainty.
There is that word again, ``uncertainty.'' There is that implication
again: failure to take action. The time to act is now. We can no longer
sit back and hope this problem is going to go away. Too many people
want to just think, well, if we just sort of stumble along the way we
are stumbling along, it is all going to work itself out.
We can no longer, and should no longer, accept double-digit
unemployment. Yes, I said double-digit. While the official number is
hovering around 8 percent, we all know millions of Americans have given
up looking for work, and millions of others have dropped out of the
employment lines or settled for jobs below their qualifications. The
real numbers are far higher, and the distress is far greater than what
is admitted.
This is not a new problem. It has been long recognized even by the
President. In February 2009, 4 years ago, President Obama held a fiscal
responsibility summit, and here is what he said:
And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we
inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This
will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult
decisions and face challenges we've long neglected. But I
refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot
repay--and that means taking responsibility right now, in
this administration, for getting our spending under control.
Here we are, 4 years from those remarks where the President's own
budget and bipartisan deficit commission was dismissed, 4 years from
the time when he pledged to the American people that he would cut the
deficit in half, 4 years from the time when he said responsibility
needs to be taken now.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 more minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COATS. It has been 4 years since the President made those
statements, and here we are where we have added trillions of dollars of
new debt--the greatest increase in the history of America, and we have
ignored and pushed spending down the road without a real budget
proposal or a long-term deficit plan. Experts and economists from both
sides of the aisle agree that spending reductions must be a part of the
equation to address our dangerous debt. The President has called for a
balanced approach but is showing no signs of leadership on
restructuring mandatory runaway spending.
Even the Washington Post editorial board, which is not necessarily
conservative, acknowledged this in a piece just recently on November
27, and I quote:
Elections do have consequences, and Mr. Obama ran on a
clear platform of increasing taxes on the wealthy. But he was
clear on something else, too: Deficit reduction must be
``balanced,'' including spending cuts as well as tax
increases. Since 60 percent of the federal budget goes to
entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security, there's no way to achieve balance without slowing
the rate of growth in those programs.
In conclusion, let me say this: There is a widespread consensus about
the seriousness of this problem and the fact that we must take
significant measures to rein in our deficit spending and do it now. We
need a bold plan that will reduce spending, reform and simplify our tax
system, and, most of all, restructure Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
Security to preserve those benefits for future generations. In
subsequent remarks, I intend to address how Congress can get with it
and become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. We need
to create a long-term deficit reduction plan that begins by fulfilling
our constitutional obligation to pass a budget, which this body has not
done in more than 1,300 days. Let's be honest with ourselves--this will
only happen if we, the Senate, summon the political courage and the
will to engage in direct, good-faith, bipartisan efforts to deal with
our Nation's No. 1 challenge.
Perhaps Alice Rivlin, budget director under President Bill Clinton,
summed it up best:
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There's no mystery about what we ought to do, we just need
to get on with it.
Mr. President, Senate colleagues--Republicans and Democrats--let's
get on with it.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
(The remarks of Mr. Hatch, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Rubio, and Mr. Coons
pertaining to the introduction of S. 169 are printed in today's Record
under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Iowa.
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