[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 24 (Thursday, February 14, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S725-S728]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Mandatory Spending

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, earlier this week I outlined four main 
topics that I hoped to hear the President discuss in his State of the 
Union Address. Today, I would like to talk in more detail about one of 
those items and perhaps the most challenging--restructuring Medicare, 
Medicaid, and Social Security to preserve them for current and future 
generations.
  In Washington, these three programs fall into the category of 
mandatory spending, meaning they are not contingent on annual 
congressional review or funding. Instead, they are based on formulas 
that have already been written into law, and therefore this spending 
occurs automatically, as if it is on autopilot. So, anyone who becomes 
eligible for the program based on the requirements in the law 
automatically qualifies for the benefits. We do not have the ability on 
a year-to-year basis to review or change this. We can only make 
structural changes and reforms to the program as necessary.
  Today these items make up a majority of the government's annual 
budget. This is because when these programs were implemented they did 
not take into account the remarkable and wonderful increase in the 
lifespan of Americans, nor the impact of the post-World War II baby 
boom generation reaching the point of retirement age, which is now at 
the level of about 10,000 retirements each and every day of the year. 
That is putting an enormous strain on the overall budget and the amount 
in proportion to the budget that goes for funding these mandatory 
programs.
  After World War II and after a long decade of depression, Americans 
saw a bright new future. They came home from the war. They began to 
start families. Millions upon millions of children were born in the 
post-war period up until the earlier 1960s. This is the so-called baby 
boom generation.
  Initially, when they were born, certain industries came into play. If 
you were in the diaper business, suddenly you were in a boom business 
or cribs and strollers and then tricycles and bicycles. These children 
moved on to the age where they began to enter elementary school, and we 
built schools all over the country to accommodate this growth in our 
population working their way through the system. Then it was junior 
highs and then we needed to enlarge our high schools, and new colleges 
and universities sprung up across the land, too. Upon graduation, they 
found jobs, and it was time to start their own families--housing 
boomed.
  Throughout the whole lifespan of this baby boom generation, there 
have been enormous economic changes to adapt to this massive amount of 
people working their way through life and becoming such an integral 
part of the American dream and American history.
  We often talk now about this issue in cold hard facts because this 
generation

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is reaching retirement age, moving into retirement and qualification, 
for Social Security and Medicare coverage in massive numbers--10,000 or 
more a day. But when we are talking about it in just cold hard facts 
and numbers, we tend to ignore the impact of these programs in a much 
more personal way on our American public.
  Becoming eligible for the programs we are talking about means access 
to health care during a more difficult time of life. Perhaps you are no 
longer covered by your employer because you have made the decision to 
retire or reached retirement age. There are health care issues as we 
age that we wish did not happen, but they come on in ever-increasing 
intensity. It means grandparents having enough money to travel to see 
the kids and a new grandbaby. It means men and women who have worked 
hard all of their lives to provide for their families finally having 
the financial freedom to take some time off to retire.
  Hoosiers and Americans all across this land have paid into the system 
all through their working years. They rely on these health and 
retirement security programs and their benefits. These are honest, 
hard-working men and women who have been told that if they made 
contributions through their paychecks to these programs, they would 
become eligible at a certain age for a certain standard of coverage. 
They expect to receive that. So, the challenge before us today is to 
make sure these benefits continue to be available to both current and 
future recipients. But, as we examine our Nation's current fiscal 
state, we all need to come to terms with the fact that these programs 
will not be available in their current form if we do not make some 
necessary changes.
  The Heritage Foundation reports that mandatory spending has increased 
at almost six times faster than all other spending. In other words, 
spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is growing faster 
than all of our spending on defense, education, infrastructure, medical 
research, food and drug safety, homeland security, and I do not begin 
to have the time to list all of the various functions of spending that 
go toward reaching out and meeting the needs of this country.
  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported this month that 
spending on these programs and interest on the debt will consume 91 
percent of all Federal revenues 10 years from now. Imagine our budget 
as being a big pie. It is cut in certain slices in terms of how much 
money is spent on defense, how much money is spent on mandatory 
programs, and the amount of money that is spent on all of the other 
functions in which the Federal Government is engaged. That part of the 
pie which provides for the automatically entitled mandatory spending 
benefits is growing at a rate that is unsustainable.
  It is ever shrinking the defense and nondiscretionary part--
everything else we spend money. We spend too much money on too many 
things so we are going to have to be very careful. I have talked about 
this many times of how we spend and allocate funds in the future.
  Unless we address this runaway mandatory spending issue, we are not 
going to be able to have the funds to do even essential 
constitutionally mandated things, such as providing for our national 
security and making funds available for paving roads, health care 
research, education, or whatever else we feel is appropriate for our 
Federal Government to engage.
  Furthermore, this mandatory spending has enormous impacts on our 
young people. In a recent New York Times column titled ``Carpe Diem 
Nation,'' David Brooks wrote about two ways spending on health and 
retirement programs not only threatens our economic growth but hurts 
young people. It squeezes government investment programs that boost 
future growth. Second, the young will have to pay the money back. To 
cover current obligations, according to the International Monetary 
Fund, young people will have to pay 35 percent more taxes and receive 
35 percent fewer benefits.
  This is the plight that exists. These are the cold hard facts. We 
have to deal with this math. Understanding how we deal with this 
directly affects people's lives, directly affects the benefits they 
rely on for their retirement and for their health care.
  The challenge before us is to understand, if we don't do something, 
this 35-percent higher taxes and 35-percent fewer benefits on our young 
is not only unacceptable, I think it is, in my opinion, immoral. 
Immoral for our generation, for this Congress, and our executive branch 
to leave our children and grandchildren in such a position without 
doing something about it. The challenge before us and the goal this 
body should be striving for is finding common ground--not how to 
eliminate these programs but about how to save these programs while 
ensuring we have adequate resources to finance the essential and 
necessary functions of the Federal Government. This starts with our 
constitutional obligation to provide for the Nation's security, the 
security of the American public, as well as providing for the general 
welfare.
  Republicans and Democrats and conservatives and liberals recognize we 
need to restructure Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security if we are 
serious about putting this country on a sounder fiscal footing and if 
we are going to be able to keep these programs from becoming insolvent. 
Hopefully, there are Members on both sides of the political spectrum 
who agree we need to make the changes now in order to avoid more 
painful changes later.
  We have been postponing this action and this needed legislative 
process for decades. It has always been too hot to handle. It is too 
politically damaging. It might put us in political jeopardy.
  The President, in his State of the Union Address, said it is time we 
put the interests of our Nation ahead of our own personal political 
interests. I couldn't agree more. That is what we should always be 
doing. We have not done that when it comes to this critical issue, 
which has such an enormous impact on everything we do. It has such an 
enormous impact on people who have saved all their lives for the 
benefits they were promised when they retire or became a certain age or 
the young people in this country who are coming out of school, starting 
a family, getting a job, hoping to also participate in the American 
dream, owning a home, and raising a family. We have the freedom our 
country provides us in ways no other country ever has or perhaps ever 
will. We are so blessed to have been born in this country, to live in 
this country, and to have the freedom and the possibility of achieving 
our dreams.
  All of those are in jeopardy if we don't address this situation. For 
decades now, we have known what is coming. We have seen a growth in our 
population of baby boomers moving through their entire lifecycle and 
are now reaching retirement age. We have postponed this over and over. 
We have come up with short-term solutions over and over and over and 
failed to come up with any long-term solutions over and over and over.
  The time is now. We are at the point where if we don't do something 
now, the prediction of David Brooks is going to take place. Our young 
people are going to be saddled with ever-higher taxes to hold up a 
system that is going to only be able to deliver ever-lower benefits.
  As we consider the right path to move forward, we need to acknowledge 
that any bipartisan congressional effort to reform and preserve these 
programs will be unsuccessful unless the President shows a willingness 
to get involved and engage fully in this effort. I believe he 
understands the magnitude of the issue because he has said: I refuse to 
leave our children with a debt they cannot repay.
  We all want a government that lives within its means. We need to get 
our fiscal house in order now. We cannot kick this can down the road. 
We are at the end of the road, said the President of the United States 
in comments made when he was a Senator, comments made when he was a 
candidate for President, comments made when he was President during his 
first 4 years, and comments made subsequent to that, in his inaugural 
address, and in his recent State of the Union Address.
  We need more than talk. We need engagement. We need an engagement of 
the President if we are going to make these difficult decisions to put 
our country on a better fiscal path and to save these programs for 
those who have put their hard-earned money and work into them and then 
not qualify for those benefits.

[[Page S727]]

  I would like to take this opportunity to remind the President of his 
repeated commitment to reduce our debt and deficit. I want to remind 
him of the many times he has spoken about the need to fix Medicare, 
Medicaid, and Social Security.
  Now, Mr. President, what I would like to say is this: We need more 
than your soaring rhetoric. We need more than the promises you made. We 
need your direct engagement if we are going to address this fiscal 
crisis and essentially do what I think all of us know we need to do.
  We basically have two options: we may continue with the status quo 
and wait until the moment that a crisis hits and we may no longer send 
out the checks; we must raise taxes once again to cover a program that 
should have received needed reforms or at the point where the programs 
become solvent. Or, the alternative is that we can come together and 
commit to the American people that we will act and no longer avoid or 
delay the challenging and necessary task of fixing these programs to 
save them for future generations.
  I stand ready. I trust my colleagues stand ready to address this 
issue now, and we are asking you to stand with us. Let's do what we all 
know we need to do to restore our Nation's fiscal health, to save these 
programs from insolvency, to grow our economy, and get Americans back 
to work. The time is now.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am proud to stand here to support 
the nomination of Chuck Hagel as our next Secretary of Defense.
  I believe he will be confirmed by this Chamber, I hope, on a 
bipartisan basis. He is, in fact, extraordinarily qualified for this 
position of unique trust and responsibility. That is the criterion we 
must apply. Is he qualified? We may have, probably each of us does have 
among us 100 Senators, someone whom we would make our first choice or a 
better choice or is the right person, in our view. That is not the 
question before us. It is whether he is qualified to be part of the 
President's team and to be held accountable for the policies the 
President sets.
  Chuck Hagel is a decorated war veteran with two Purple Hearts. He is 
a highly successful businessman and entrepreneur and a real manager at 
a time when we need a manager in the Department of Defense.
  He is a former colleague as a Member of this body, but he is also a 
former deputy head of the Veterans' Administration. He has given his 
life to public service and, most especially, to helping men and women 
in uniform while they serve this country in the military, and then when 
they come back to civilian life, helping them contribute and continue 
to give back to this Nation.
  He is a Republican who has won the confidence of President Obama and 
whom President Obama has chosen to be a member of his team.
  We speak, as Members of the Senate, about giving the President a 
measure of deference, a prerogative in making the selection about who 
will serve on his team because it is the President who sets policy. The 
President will set our policy on the Middle East and on Israeli 
security. Chuck Hagel has said he is committed, unequivocally, clearly, 
unambiguously, to the security of Israel and to whatever weapons 
systems are necessary to provide Israel in maintaining and sustaining 
that security, the Iron Dome, David's Sling, and other measures this 
Nation has committed to its great ally in the Middle East. This is an 
ally that is necessary not only to stability there and hopefully to 
peace but also to our national interests. Chuck Hagel may have made 
comments in the past that seemed to vary somewhat from the President's 
policy, but it is the President who sets that policy and whom we will 
hold accountable for that policy.
  Likewise, on Iran, Chuck Hagel has said he is in favor of preventing 
a nuclear-armed Iran, not containing it but preventing it. Whatever his 
past says, it is the President who sets that policy. Chuck Hagel has 
indicated he is completely in accord with it, in support of it, and 
will implement it. Again, it is the policy of the President to prevent 
a nuclear-armed Iran, and we must in this body give support and 
encouragement to the President in being strong and tough, setting even 
stronger and tougher sanctions, and using the military option, if 
necessary, to stop a nuclear-armed Iran.
  Going from policy to what I think is perhaps the unique challenge of 
the next Secretary of Defense, which is to attract and retain the best 
and the brightest to our military--we talk all the time about people 
being our greatest asset in the military. We have weapons systems that 
defy the imagination, let alone comprehension.
  At the end of the day, the people who run those weapons systems, the 
people who staff and work every day to keep America safe, are the ones 
who are our greatest asset. At a time when we are bringing troops back 
from Afghanistan when Secretary-to-be, hopefully, Hagel, has indicated 
we ought to do it even more quickly, our greatest challenge will be to 
prevent the hollowing out of our military as has occurred in the wake 
of past conflict.
  That hollowing out is not only about hardware and weapons; it is 
about the people who command and the people who run those weapons. We 
need to ensure we keep those midlevel officers and enlisted members who 
are so important to the leadership of our military. Chuck Hagel's 
leadership and commitment will be critical to that task.
  I have met with Chuck Hagel privately. I asked him tough questions 
about Iran and Israel. I am satisfied on those points that he will 
advise the President in accord with those policies.

  But even more important, I am struck by his passion and the intensity 
of his commitment to our men and women in uniform. His caring about 
them is indicated in so many ways--spontaneously and strongly in his 
testimony as well as in his private conversation. He will make sure 
that sexual assault in the military--the epidemic and scourge of rape 
and assault against men and women who serve and sacrifice for this 
country--will be stopped; that there will be, in fact, zero tolerance 
not only in word but in deed, and his viewing, for example, of the 
documentary ``Invisible War''--his understanding that this kind of 
misconduct is an outrage, never to be even complicitly condoned and to 
treat as a criminal offense the most extreme kind of predatory criminal 
activity is important to the future of our military and our men and 
women in uniform.
  He is committed to making sure that women in combat--a policy of the 
President--is implemented forcefully and faithfully. He is committed to 
making sure the policy of repealing don't ask, don't tell is 
implemented zealously and vigorously. He is committed to making sure 
that our veterans--not only for our returning Iraq and Afghanistan 
veterans but also for the veterans of his own generation--our Vietnam 
veterans who had Post-Traumatic Stress at a time when it was 
undiagnosed and, in fact, unknown as a condition resulting from 
combat--have the benefit of policies and practices we are now 
implementing to deal with Post-Traumatic Stress and traumatic brain 
injuries.
  He is also committed, equally importantly, to making sure the 
epidemic of suicide among our currently serving men and women in 
uniform and also our veterans is addressed forcefully. There are 
tragedies every day involving those suicides--families who lose loved 
ones and a country that loses a great public servant--and Chuck Hagel 
cares about those men and women. He will see a person in uniform not as 
simply an officer or an enlisted man but as someone who will soon be a 
veteran and become part of a continuum.
  Chuck Hagel has served the VA as well as now in the Defense 
Department, and he will make sure the transition from active service to 
reservist service is seamless; that veterans are provided with the 
transition assistance they need for employment, education, and health 
care, and that our National Guard receives the respect and service it 
deserves.
  I am convinced Senator Hagel's No. 1 priority will be taking care of 
our troops. He was a veteran's advocate with the USO, and he has won 
the respect and admiration of veterans groups. In addition, he has won 
the support of an extraordinary array of former Secretaries of Defense, 
ambassadors and diplomats, senior retired military leaders, and, in 
particular, two former Members of this body who appeared with him at 
his testimony, former Senators Warner and Nunn.

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  I believe Chuck Hagel is the right man for the fiscal challenges that 
will confront the Department of Defense. Putting aside sequester--which 
I dearly hope will not happen; Secretary Panetta has said it would be 
irresponsible for the Congress to allow it to happen, and many of us 
agree it must be avoided--and the challenges in the next month or 
series of months, the long-term outlook for the Department of Defense 
is that it must do more with less, and Secretary Hagel, if he is 
confirmed, will have that management task. He is one of the people in 
this country who is almost uniquely qualified to carry it out, and I 
believe he will, with great distinction. He will take care of our men 
and women in uniform and strengthen our national defense. He will do 
what he thinks is right, even if it is not popular.
  Finally, Chuck Hagel is, as everyone has said, a good and decent man. 
And I thank in particular Senator McCain for his very compelling and 
telling comments during our consideration before the vote in the Armed 
Services Committee. He said, and I agree, that no one should impugn 
Chuck Hagel's character. He is a person of integrity and character, and 
I believe he will have the respect at all levels of our defense--the 
men and women who serve and sacrifice every day, the men and women who 
are essential to our national security--and I recommend him and urge my 
colleagues to support him.
  I respectfully hope he will be confirmed quickly and that it will be 
done on a bipartisan basis so we will be united--as our Armed Services 
Committee in this body is almost always united--in favor of the 
President's choice for this uniquely important responsibility.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Republican whip.