[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 77 (Tuesday, June 4, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3922-S3923]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE FISCAL CRISIS
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and couldn't agree
with him more on a number of the things he listed; in particular, the
so-called affordable care act, which is anything but affordable.
I found out, as I traveled across the State of Indiana and spoke with
Hoosiers, that this law is having an enormous negative impact on the
decisions of employers, on health care providers, and on average
citizens relative to what is coming down the line within the next
several months and into 2014.
This legislation is a colossal mistake. It is a mess. It is
distorting the economy, it is keeping people out of work, and it is
keeping employers from hiring new workers. People are trying to
manipulate the system now because what is being imposed on them is so
Draconian and unsustainable and unaffordable. That is why we need to
officially call this ``unaffordable comprehensive health care reform''
rather than the Affordable Care Act. It is unaffordable.
But that is not why I came here today. I came here today to talk
about our current fiscal crisis. That has sort of taken a back seat to
the debates we have been having on the Senate floor, even though they
are necessary--immigration, which is coming up, the farm bill that we
are currently dealing with, gun issues, and others. The looming dark
cloud, the big bear in the closet, is our fiscal crisis, and it is not
going away.
Last Friday, the Social Security and Medicare trustees issued their
annual report on the long-term financial status of the health and
retirement security programs, and there was a little bit of good news;
that is, the current numbers that exist out there and the rate of
spending down on these programs has slowed somewhat. But it is not the
kind of news we ought to celebrate.
Some are saying: Oh, well, this takes the pressure off. Now we don't
need to do anything about the structural reform of our mandatory
spending for our entitlement programs because, look, we just had a good
report. Let's just get back to regular business and we will worry about
this later.
Well, the fact remains our mandatory spending is not only
unsustainable, it is having an immediate impact and will continue to
have an even greater impact on other essential functions of government
as the cost of funding for the mandatory systems continues to
[[Page S3923]]
rise--and rise dramatically in future years with 10,000 baby boomers
retiring every day.
Let me repeat that: 10,000 baby boomers are reaching retirement age
each day, adding to the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
Security.
We have known this was coming for years. We have known it was coming
for decades; that an amazing number of people born post-World War II
now have worked their way to the point of retirement. This has had an
impact on our economy, whether they were babies needing more cribs and
diapers, whether they were young children going to elementary school
and we needed more schools, going to secondary colleges and
universities and we needed to expand those, working their way through
the economy, having children--a dramatic impact with this bulge of baby
boom babies growing up and working their way through the system. Yet
while we knew all this was coming, Congress and the administration
repeatedly said: We will deal with this later. It is a crisis, we know,
but it is just too tough to deal with now.
What I am afraid of is that this latest report which came out and
provided a little bit of relief, a little bit of wiggle room, but it
did nothing to solve the long-term problem. What I am concerned about
is that this report may be used to basically say we don't have to do
anything now.
What is the impact? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
reported earlier this year that spending on mandatory programs and
interest on the debt--because we have to borrow to cover this cost--
will consume 91 percent of all Federal revenues 10 years from now.
Already it is putting the squeeze on discretionary spending because
what this means is that all other spending priorities are being
squeezed out by spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and
some of the other mandatory programs.
If we are interested in a strong national defense, in a solid
education system, infrastructure and bridges and paving roads, medical
research, food and drug safety, homeland security, border security--and
other programs, these programs are getting squeezed every day in terms
of the amount of resources available.
Why these groups don't form a coalition and come marching through the
Halls of Congress and demand that we take action now on runaway
mandatory spending, because it is simply wiping out their programs, is
beyond me. But it is the nature of the political beast to postpone the
tough stuff, to not have to get to the point where they have to tell
anybody no because we want everybody to love us so they will vote for
us in the next election. It is incomprehensible that we continue to put
this off day after day, month after month, year after year, election
after election.
I have been around a while. How many times have we heard people say
we will do that after the next election? That was the mantra in the
2012 Presidential election. Well, no. You see, the President couldn't
step up and do this and the ruling party couldn't step up and do this
because we had a Presidential election. They said that as soon as the
election takes place, then we will have a period of time where we have
been reelected to office or we have new Members coming in and we will
not have the pressure of an election before us and we will address this
problem.
Here we are now into the sixth month of this year, when everyone
knows that the first 100 days of the new administration--or a second-
term in this case--is the best time to enact long-term good legislation
that addresses major problems--the days are slip-sliding away. The days
are counting, and we continue debate and talk about and interject
issues here that, yes, have importance but don't begin to rise to the
level of importance of the need to address our fiscal situation.
The other thing I don't understand is why the young people of this
country aren't standing up and demanding that we take action, because
we are taking money away from them. We are diminishing their future. We
are leaving them with a debt burden they may not be able to pay.
The International Monetary Fund put out a report recently that to
cover current obligations for young people, they--not us--will have to
pay either 35 percent more in taxes to keep these mandatory funds alive
and solvent or receive 35 percent fewer benefits. This is at a time
when our Nation's youth already face an unemployment crisis.
It is unconscionable. It is immoral for us to defer and to delay and
to simply say we can't take care of these issues now and then move on
through our lives, reap the benefits that come from some of these
programs, and then hand it over to our children and say: Good luck. You
are either going to pay one-third more in taxes or you are going to get
one-third less in benefits, lifetime savings, Social Security for your
retirement, health care coverage for your later years. Good luck with
that one. But we couldn't summon the will to do it. We couldn't bring
ourselves to make the hard choices.
Are we going to step up to the plate and be responsible? What is our
legacy going to be for those of us who are serving now? What are we
going to tell our children and grandchildren? Will we say sorry, we
just weren't able to do it? It was just too tough politically, we are
worried about the folks back home that they might not take it the right
way. It requires a little bit of sacrifice to reform these programs--
actually, to save the programs--before they go broke. But, no, we just
couldn't do it. The President? No; kind of AWOL on this, hasn't stepped
up. We thought for sure that after reelection, not being elected again,
we would get some kind of leadership.
I see it slip-sliding away, and now we are faced with that ultimate
day of crisis when it hits and we have to make painful choices because
we have no other choice.
So why don't we take the rational approach? Why don't we have
leadership that steps up and basically says this is what we need to do?
Why don't we put the future of America and the future of our children
and grandchildren and succeeding generations ahead of our own political
interests? It is selfish not to do so. I think it is unconscionable. I
think it is immoral for us to continue doing this.
So I am going to continue to come to the floor as much as I can--I
have been doing this all year--and I am going to continue to urge the
President to work with us. I am not making this a partisan issue. We
are working with people across the aisle who understand this and want
to do something about it. But we know we can't get it done without the
President taking leadership and standing up and working with us.
There is a little bit going on right now, but here we are, 6 months
later, and we are not making the progress we need to make.
In the end, maybe we will pass another patch of legislation--a little
patch here, a little patch there--and we will deal with the big thing
later. We just can't do it now.
For the sake of the future of this country, for the sake of the
future of our children and grandchildren, for living up to our sworn
oath to do what is necessary to continue the great story of democracy
in this Nation, we need to step up and do this. These reforms are
necessary. We all know it. We know the numbers. We know they are
unsustainable. We know we must address it.
I urge my colleagues to do whatever is necessary to make the tough
choices. Interestingly enough, that legacy, if we stand up to do it,
will be worth whatever results or consequences come from our making
these decisions.
I yield the floor.
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