[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 130 (Friday, September 27, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7002-S7005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE DEBT CEILING
Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I thank the Chair for recognizing me and
allowing me to follow the Senator from Alabama whose remarks I agree
with.
I am disappointed in what happened this week. Those of us in the
minority learned another lesson for the minority, is to get to a bill
we wanted to get to, the majority then has the votes to amend that bill
unless some of the majority would happen to side with us. And they did
amend the bill in ways that I didn't agree with, taking the provisions
out that would have defunded the move toward the health care plan that
I think we are going to see more and more of the country isn't ready
for. But the bill did go back to the House. The bill was changed from
the bill the House sent over.
So the bill went back to the House, and they have a chance to see
what else they might be able to do--hopefully, in the next few days.
But between now and the end of the fiscal year--which is Monday, by the
way--
[[Page S7003]]
hopefully, we will find a way to make the system work better, will do
what we should have done in the budget debate process.
As I said here on the floor just a day or 2 ago, the great
disappointment is that over and over we have failed to let the process
work. Over and over we have failed to bring the bills to the floor,
offer amendments, and set the priorities for the country.
So here it is, the last Friday of the spending year, the last Friday
of our budget year, the last Friday of the fiscal year, and the Senate
has not passed one single appropriations bill--except the 6-week CR
that says we cannot decide how to do anything new, so let's just do for
another 6 weeks what we did last year. Surely that is not good enough,
and we need to get beyond that.
The vote today, taken on the Senate floor, did not send a bill to the
President to be signed. It sent the bill back across the Capitol
Building to see what the House of Representatives may want to do next,
and I look forward to working with them and with my colleagues here in
the Senate to see what that might be.
I want to talk for a few minutes about the debt ceiling itself. The
White House announced just in the last few days that we reach that debt
ceiling in about 3 weeks. That number always seems to me to be pretty
much a number that can be worked with. It is not like the end of the
fiscal year. But it is a date that the Secretary of the Treasury has
said we need to look at.
The President said he would not negotiate on the debt ceiling. That
is a very interesting position to take, and it is what is wrong with
the government right now. I suppose the Congress could now say: And we
will not negotiate on the debt ceiling either. So maybe that just means
we do not have a debt ceiling increase because nobody wants to
negotiate.
Then the President said to a group in Washington this week that--I
think he said that nonbudget items have never been attached to the debt
ceiling before. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
at the conclusion of my remarks an article from the Washington Post of
just a few days ago by Glenn Kessler who actually looked at that. Is
that really accurate? Is what the President said accurate--that we have
never done this before? This is totally new? This is a new demand that
no Congress has ever made before--except, by the way, the Budget
Control Act 2\1/2\ years ago that the President signed and a few other
things that have happened?
It has happened before, and I want to talk about that a little bit.
This is not new moment for us. When Members of the Congress have been
concerned about spending--certainly since the 1970s Budget Act, but
even before that--when the debt ceiling had to be increased, Members of
Congress wanted to talk about spending and other things that they could
not get attention to any other way.
In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, fiscal conservatives
in the Congress--at that time led by a Democrat from Virginia, Harry
Byrd--did not believe we would be able to fund the Interstate Highway
System. So they used the debt limit vote, the debt limit debate as a
place to try to find out what they could do about the Interstate
Highway System and how it was going to be funded. In 1953--that was a
long time ago; almost longer ago now than the lifetime of most Members
of the Senate--that is how it was used then.
In 1973, when Richard Nixon was President, Democrats in the Senate
sought to attach a campaign finance bill to the debt ceiling. This was
during Watergate and, of course, I guess that would certainly meet the
definition of a ``nonbudget item''--a campaign finance bill that there
was a great effort to do in 1973 and to add to the debt ceiling
legislation.
In 1993, a study of the politics of the debt limit, for Public
Administration Review, said that ``during this period, the genesis of a
pattern developed that would eventually become full blown in the mid-
1970s and 1980s: the use of the debt ceiling vote as a vehicle for
other legislative matters.''
So certainly that is something we could talk about. Some would have
economic consequences, others would not. I know one thought is, let's
not move forward with the individual mandate in health care. Now, if
you do not move forward with the mandate, there may be significant
advantages in the pressure that takes off the spending in the exchange.
But whether it is an economic issue or not, it is a fairness issue.
The President, who now has suspended the requirement that businesses
offer insurance in 2015--it seems to me the only fair thing to do, if
you take the obligation off businesses to offer insurance, is to take
the obligation off individuals who the law would require to have
insurance if they did not get it at work. You have just taken away the
requirement for businesses. Surely you cannot justify saying businesses
do not have to pay the penalty but individuals do.
I think that is a fair debate to have. It is a fair debate to have
either over the weekend as part of how we move forward with funding the
government or a fair debate to have if we are going to increase the
Federal Government's ability to borrow money. We ought to talk about
things that are going to result in spending lots of money.
Remember, the requirement for the individual mandate that the
President also waived was the requirement to prove income. Now, why
does that matter? On the exchange, depending on how high your income
is, you get a taxpayer subsidy for the insurance you buy. But the
President said the requirement to verify income will not be there in
the way the law envisioned for this first year.
So again, how is that fair to the taxpayers that the taxpayers are
subsidizing somebody's estimate of income? We just got through with the
taxpayers subsidizing a lot of mortgages that could not be paid because
that structure allowed people to estimate what their income would be on
their mortgage application without submitting anything but their
estimate of what their income could be. As it turned out, when people
were trying to buy a house and prove they could make a mortgage
payment, a significant number of people estimated they would make more
money than they made. I think it is going to be equally true when it
comes time to qualify for taxpayer assistance, a significant number of
people may estimate--maybe even on some level of good faith--it could
work out that way, that I am going to make less money than I made last
year or less money than I am likely to make this year, but I am going
to have a level of income that allows me to have a higher subsidy. I
think it is certainly a possibility.
One of these two things is happening right now. We need to look at
the equity and fairness of having an individual penalty and the
President saying we do not have a penalty for businesses that do not
provide insurance.
Let me get back to a few more examples.
In one of the debt limit debates, major changes in Social Security
were attached. An amendment in one of the debates was to end the
bombing in Cambodia. Twenty-five amendments that were nongermane to
spending were in this discussion between 1978 and 1987.
The President maybe is proving here more than anything else that you
better be very careful when you say something has never happened,
particularly if it has happened over and over, and particularly if you
think that somehow, as President, you can decide that the future of the
country is nondebatable, that you can decide that how high the debt
limit is is nondebatable. Whatever the Secretary of the Treasury says,
that is what we need. And what would the President say about that? He
would say, well, that is because we have already obligated this money.
The fact that this money may be already obligated does not mean we
should not look at every other way we are spending money or every way
we control spending and do what we need to do about that.
In 1982, the Senate majority leader at that time, Howard Baker, said
we will have a free-for-all on the debt ceiling legislation, and 1,400
nongermane amendments became part of that debate. They included
limiting Federal jurisdiction over school prayer and other things.
In 1980, the House and Senate rejected a central part of President
Carter's energy policy--an oil import
[[Page S7004]]
fee--as part of the debt ceiling discussion. No bigger stretch than not
going forward with the individual mandate as part of the debt ceiling
discussion.
Less than 10 percent of the debt limit bills passed between 1978 and
2002 contained amendments not related to the debt or budget. But many
of them contained an amendment that was related to how we spend our
money. When you are spending too much money, when you already owe $17
trillion, it is time to talk about: How are we spending this money and
what can we do to do something about it before we further extend the
line of credit?
If any of us went to a banker and said: We have spent all the money
we have already borrowed. We still have a lot of bills coming in, and
we need to borrow a lot more money, frankly, under any of the rules
that this Congress has passed in the last several years, the banker
could not loan you money, and if they could loan you money, they would
not loan you money without saying: Tell us again, what are you trying
to do to get your spending under control so you are not back here in a
few days or a few months asking for more credit.
The thing we know is, under almost any imaginable circumstance, this
is not the last debt ceiling increase we will ever make. So if we are
going to be back in a few weeks, a few months, a year--however long
this debt ceiling extends to--asking for more money, we ought to be
talking about how we are spending the money we have.
October 17 will not be as far away as it might seem. It is very close
to us now. The Secretary of the Treasury says that the country will
have only approximately $30 billion to meet our country's commitments.
But on October 17, money does not stop coming in. On October 18, you
might be able to arrange the books in a way where you do not have quite
enough money to pay all the bills coming in, but this is not a
government shutdown scenario.
We need to solve the problem of this weekend and early next week and
then get to the debt ceiling. Whether the President wants to debate it
or not, it is going to be debated. I think it is going to be
negotiated. The idea that this is going to be a so-called clean debt
limit increase that will not be negotiated because it impacts the full
faith and credit of the United States of America--we are going to pay
our bills. I think we all know that. We have paid our bills since the
founding of this government. But we are not going to pay our bills, we
are not going to get another advance on our allowance, without somebody
saying: Exactly how are you spending this money as fast as you are
spending it? And why are you back again saying you need more of it?
The American people have overwhelmingly rejected the idea that this
should not be negotiated. According to a new Bloomberg poll out this
week, Americans by a 2-to-1 ratio disagree with the President's
contention that the Congress should raise the debt ceiling without
conditions. Instead, 61 percent said that it is ``right to require
spending cuts when the debt ceiling is raised,'' and they said ``even
if it risks default.''
The American people want us to fight--as we have this week and we
will continue to--to try to defund a health care system that will not
work. But they also want us to fight, to be sure that the money we are
spending that we get from taxpayers--the money that we obligate future
generations to, the bills that we are building up for somebody else to
pay--to have the kind of debate, the kind of negotiation, the kind of
important view of the future that they deserve to have.
I would urge the President and the majority leader of the Senate to
sit down with leaders of the House and others and try to work this out
as soon as we can. Understand, frankly, that whether you want to
negotiate or not does not matter. There is nowhere in the Constitution
that says when we owe more money than we pay, the President can decide
whether there is going to be a discussion or not. That is not how this
system works. It is not how it is going to work over the next 2 weeks
or the next month or whatever it takes to resolve the debt limit.
Hopefully, we will all be working hard over the next 2 days to do
whatever it takes to keep the government of the United States working
on October 1. Just because we have failed for the entire year to do the
work the Senate is supposed to do does not mean we can continue to fail
in a way that punishes the American people by not having a government
that is functioning on the first day of the spending year.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2013]
Obama's Claim That Non-Budget Items Have ``Never'' Been Attached to the
Debt Ceiling
(By Glenn Kessler)
``You have never seen in the history of the United States
the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being
used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to
force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and
nothing to do with the debt.''
--President Obama, remarks to the Business Roundtable,
Sept. 18, 2013
When a president makes a lawyerly comment, it's time to
start looking for the trap door. At first President Obama
uses a sweeping ``never in the history of the United States''
but then he concludes with a caveat: ``nothing to do with the
budget and nothing to do with the debt.''
The issue at hand is the Affordable Care Act, aka
Obamacare, which many congressional Republicans would like to
repeal or delay as part of a vote to extend the debt
ceiling--even though establishment Republicans, such as
former Bush aide Karl Rove, regard the effort as a kamikaze
mission with little hope of success.
Generally, raising the debt ceiling has been routine and
not especially controversial. But, as we have noted before,
starting in 1953 during the Dwight Eisenhower administration,
fiscal conservatives in Congress at times have used the debt
limit as a way to force concessions by the executive branch
on spending. Eisenhower, a Republican, had particular trouble
with a Democrat, Sen. Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, over the
debt ceiling because Byrd was skeptical of Eisenhower's plans
to build the national highway system.
That dispute was about a budget issue, which the president
seemed to exclude in his comment. But unfortunately for the
president's claim, there are other, compelling examples that
contradict it.
The Facts
In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, Democrats in the
Senate, including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen.
Walter Mondale (D-Minn.), sought to attach a campaign finance
reform bill to the debt ceiling after the Watergate-era
revelations about Nixon's fundraising during the 1972
election. Their efforts were defeated by a filibuster, but it
took days of debate and the lawmakers were criticized by
commentators (and fellow lawmakers) for using ``shotgun''
tactics to try to hitch their pet cause to emergency must-
pass legislation.
President Obama said that GOP lawmakers now are trying to
``extort'' repeal of the health care law via the debt limit,
but that's also what Democrats wanted to do with President
Nixon, who opposed the campaign-finance reforms.
Indeed, Linda K. Kowalcky and Lance T. LeLoup wrote in a
comprehensive 1993 study of the politics of the debt limit,
for Public Administration Review, that ``during this period,
the genesis of a pattern developed that would eventually
become full blown in the mid-1970s and 1980s: the use of the
debt ceiling vote as a vehicle for other legislative
matters.''
Previously, they noted, the debt limit bill had been linked
to the mechanics of debt management, but now anything was
fair game. Major changes in Social Security were attached to
the debt bill; another controversial amendment sought to end
the bombing in Cambodia. Kowalcky and LeLoup list 25
nongermane amendments that were attached to debt-limit bills
between 1978 and 1987, including allowing voluntary school
prayer, banning busing to achieve integration and proposing a
nuclear freeze.
In 1982, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker unleashed a
free-for-all by allowing 1,400 nongermane amendments to the
debt ceiling legislation, which resulted in five weeks of
raucous debate that mostly focused on limiting federal court
jurisdiction over school prayer and busing. The debt limit
only passed after lawmakers decided to strip all of the
amendments from the bill.
One of the most striking examples of a president being
forced to accept unrelated legislation on a debt-ceiling bill
took place in 1980. The House and Senate repealed a central
part of President Jimmy Carter's energy policy--an oil import
fee that was expected to raise the cost of gasoline by 10
cents a gallon. Carter vetoed the bill, even though the
United States was close to default, and then the House and
Senate overrode his veto by overwhelming numbers (335-34 in
the House; 68-10 in the Senate).
``Foes of the fee succeeded in linking the two measures to
gain added leverage for killing the fee,'' The Washington
Post reported on Carter's stunning defeat. ``The Treasury
Department immediately announced it was resuming the sale of
bonds, which it suspended Thursday night when the debt
ceiling expired.''
To be sure, the success rate of attaching nongermane
amendments to a debt-limit bill is relatively low. Anita S.
Krishnakumar, in a 2007 paper for the Harvard Journal on
Legislation, said that less than 10 percent of the
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debt limit bills passed between 1978 and 2002 contained
amendments not related to the debt or budget. Only twice--in
1980 and in 1995--did Congress successfully pass amendments
opposed by the president. But as Carter's defeat shows,
Congress has used the debt limit to repeal a key legislative
priority of a president.
In response, the Obama White House provided us with
information on the negative impact on the economy during the
2011 debt-ceiling impasse, but did not comment on the
examples listed above.
The Pinocchio Test
Clealy, Obama's sweeping statement does not stand up to
scrutiny, even with his caveat. Time and again, lawmakers
have used the ``must-pass'' nature of the debt limit to force
changes in unrelated laws. Often, the effort fails--as the
GOP drive to repeal ObamaCare almost certainly will. But
Kowalcky and LeLoup speculate that one reason why Congress
has not eliminated the debt limit, despite the political
problems it poses, is because lawmakers enjoy the leverage it
provides against the executive branch.
There's an old reporter's rule that you want to avoid using
the word ``unprecedented.'' Otherwise, a professor might call
or e-mail the next day to dispute it.
Let's add this rule for politicians: Never say ``never.''
Mr. BLUNT. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________