[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 179 (Tuesday, December 17, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8872-S8884]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAKING CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2014--Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair lays before the Senate a message
from the House which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Resolved, that the House recede from its amendment to the
amendment of the Senate to the resolution (H.J. Res. 59)
entitled, ``A joint resolution making continuing
appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other
purposes,'' and concur with a House amendment to the Senate
amendment.
Pending:
Reid motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the
amendment of the Senate to the joint resolution, with Reid
amendment No. 2547, to change the enactment date.
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Reid amendment No. 2548 (to amendment No. 2547), of a
perfecting nature.
Reid motion to refer the message of the House on the joint
resolution to Committee on the Budget, with instructions,
Reid amendment No. 2549, to change the enactment date.
Reid amendment No. 2550 (to (the instructions of the motion
to refer) amendment No. 2549), of a perfecting nature.
Reid amendment No. 2551 (to amendment No. 2550), of a
perfecting nature.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked on the motion to
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment, the motion to
refer falls as it is inconsistent with cloture.
The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, am I correct we are in postcloture time
now?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time to talk about the budget
agreement that was negotiated by Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan
and the work they did, but I first wish to relate to my colleagues
conversations I had with numerous Marylanders over this past weekend--
people I didn't know who came up to me and said how pleased they were
that Congress was on the verge of getting something done--something
that will make a difference in our budget over the next 2 years. They
were pleased that Democrats and Republicans were actually able to reach
a compromise and that we were actually able to get our business done in
some regular order. They were hopeful that it would not only make a
difference in the budget of our Nation this year and next, but that it
was a sign that Democrats and Republicans were prepared to work
together to do the people's business. They were pleased this was truly
bipartisan--a real compromise--something we haven't seen enough of in
this Congress.
The American people understand that the Congress is controlled--the
House by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats. They understand that.
What they do not understand is how we have not been able to get
together and compromise on our differences in order to move forward on
the important issues of our time. They are very encouraged by this
action.
So I intend to support the final vote on the budget agreement, and I
hope my colleagues will support this agreement. It provides the
framework for appropriations bills for the next 2 years without
sequestration. That is regular order. The appropriations committees can
now meet and decide the policy of our country through the
appropriations bills as to where we believe priorities should be on
Federal resources.
It allows us to operate, hopefully, without a continuing resolution.
The number of continuing resolutions that we have passed indicate a
failure because when we pass a continuing resolution, we do not adopt
the priorities for the current time. Instead, we just freeze in prior
years' priorities. We now have the opportunity to enact priorities that
are important today, recognizing that some of the past spending is not
necessary and there are other areas that we need now to adopt,
considering the changes in our own communities and considering the
international changes.
It allows us to operate without the fear of a government shutdown.
Before I said a fear of a government shutdown because we thought we
would not see a government shutdown, but as we know, in October we saw
a government shutdown, and we saw people who were hurt, and we saw our
economy that was hurt as a result of that shutdown. Now this budget
agreement gives us the opportunity to use regular order so we can pass
appropriations bills or an omnibus bill that sets current priorities.
It allows us to do that without the fear of closing government, which
is inefficient, costly, and harms our economy and people.
The framework that was adopted in this budget agreement allows us to
protect our Nation's seniors, disabled children, and the disadvantaged.
The resources can be made available to deal with our most vulnerable to
allow us to move forward as a nation, and it shows we can work
together.
So I strongly support this budget agreement. I do so but I want to
express my disappointments. I am sure that every Member of the Senate
will have disappointments. But I am concerned about what is included in
this budget agreement and what is not included, and I want to spend a
few minutes talking about it.
I am disappointed that this is a 2-year agreement, that it does not
completely remove sequestration. I think all of us would acknowledge
that sequestration is something we do not want to see in effect because
it is mindless across-the-board cuts. It does not set priorities. We
are responsible to set priorities. If you ran into a problem with your
own home budget in your family, if you lost some income, you would not
cut every expenditure item identically. You would make decisions. You
would make sure your family had a roof over them. You would make sure
they had food on the table. Maybe you would postpone a weekend trip.
You do not treat every expenditure the same. Sequestration treats every
expenditure the same.
The good news in this budget agreement--the good news--we do not
worry about that for the next 2 years. The bad news: It returns after 2
years. I know Senator Murray has worked very hard to get rid of
sequestration. I know she is going to continue to work on that as the
chair of the Budget Committee and, as I said earlier, I applaud her
greatly for being able to reach an agreement with the Republicans,
particularly in the House. But I would hope we could get rid of
sequestration once and for all. Unfortunately, this budget agreement
does not do it. It is for only 2 years. I would have liked to see a
long-term budget agreement.
On that, I would like to see us enact a long-term budget agreement.
We talk frequently about the fact that one of the most damaging parts
to our inaction is uncertainty. When businesses have to make decisions
and individuals have to make decisions, the uncertainty of our Federal
budget causes them harm, extra costs, anxiety. We need a long-term
budget agreement, the so-called grand bargain. Yes, we will get an
agreement for these 2 years, but it does not take us beyond that. We
all understand we need a responsible budget, one that deals with the
investments that are important for job growth, but also reduces the
budget deficit.
I know Chairman Murray has mentioned this frequently, but let me just
repeat this. During the past 2 years, we have reduced the deficit by
$2.8 trillion. We have done a good job in reining in the Federal
deficit. That is over the period of fiscal years 2014 to 2023, and that
is before sequestration.
So when you go back to Simpson-Bowles and the amount of deficit
reduction we were trying to get, we are about three-fourths of the way
there in reducing the deficit. Yes, we have to do more. We have to
continue to reduce the deficit. But let us acknowledge that we have
done a pretty good job in reining in the Federal deficit, and I applaud
the Chair of the Budget Committee for her leadership in that regard.
We also must allow for critical investment for job growth. We are in
a global economy today. We have to invest in modernization. We need new
investments in energy in this country. We need transportation
investments, not just in roads and bridges, but in transit systems. We
need to invest in education. Education is the great equalizer in
America. We are in a global competition. We know we are behind in the
STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. We have
passed legislation to try to catch up. We have to fund those
initiatives. The Federal Government has to be an active partner in
education.
I can mention many agencies, but I always like to mention the
National Institutes of Health, which happens to be headquartered in my
State of Maryland. It is very important to New Jersey, the Presiding
Officer's State, and very important to every part of our country. Why?
Because they do the basic research which is the building block for the
type of technology growth which is critically important in America.
We have the best trained people here in America. We need to invest in
the basic research so we can continue to lead the world. Yes, the
budget for NIH has not been as strong as it needs to be. We have to
invest more money in that.
There are many reasons we need a long-term budget agreement. We need
it for predictability, so we do not govern from one manufactured crisis
to another manufactured crisis. But we
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also need it so we can invest in critical investments for job growth in
America. That is another reason why I hope we are able to build on this
2-year agreement for a longer-term budget agreement.
We also need to protect the safety nets as we do that. We need a
balance here, and those who are most vulnerable need to be assured
their government is on their side to help them, whether they are our
seniors, whether they are people with disabilities, whether it is young
people who need an opportunity to be able to take advantage of the
opportunities in America.
We need to enhance the protection of our environment for future
generations and have an energy policy that makes sense not only for
America's security and environment but also for our economy.
So a balanced agreement for a long-term budget, which is not in this
agreement, would give us that predictability, would give us that
ability to move forward. To do that we need to deal with mandatory
spending. This budget agreement deals with discretionary spending. It
does not deal with mandatory spending.
We have taken steps to move in this direction. The passage of the
Affordable Care Act puts in place a manner in which we can deal with
health care costs, by reducing the growth rate of health care
expenditures, by dealing with the readmissions to hospitals, by
managing complicated illnesses, duplicative tests, getting people out
of the emergency room into our clinics and into preventive care, having
seniors take advantage of preventive health care because they do not
have to pay a copayment that they could not afford.
These are ways we improve what we call the delivery system of health
care in America, where you bring down the costs of health care. That is
the best way to bring down the mandatory spending accounts in Medicare
and Medicaid--reduce health care costs. We need to do more of that. We
need to reduce the cost of our mandatory spending in this country. We
could have done more, and this budget agreement did not deal with that.
Then there is the issue of revenue. I am going to talk about revenue
because I was proud to be part of the Congress that balanced the
Federal budget when Bill Clinton was President of the United States. Do
you know what we did back then? We brought in more revenue, we reduced
spending, and we balanced the budget. What happened? Our economy took
off. We were not only growing jobs, we were growing good-paying jobs,
and the standard of living for all Americans went up. We have to get
back to that.
We are spending too much today, and we do not have enough revenue.
Yes, this agreement takes care of reducing some spending, but not all,
and does virtually nothing about revenues. We have to get back to that.
We can bring in the revenue necessary to balance the Federal budget by
reforming our Tax Code. There has been some great work done in the
Senate Finance Committee I am privileged to serve on--Democrats and
Republicans taking a look at our Code to see ways we can make more
sense out of our Tax Code. We can do things about it.
Let me just remind my colleagues that we spend more money in the Tax
Code than we do through all the appropriations bills. We spend more in
our Tax Code. Over $1 trillion a year is spent in our Tax Code. These
are tax breaks that go to some but not all taxpayers.
So there is no need to raise rates. All we need to do is close
loopholes and be more critical of how we spend our money in the Tax
Code, as we do on the appropriations side. Every dollar we spend on the
appropriations side is scrutinized all the time. We need to do the same
on the tax side. Quite frankly, Senator Baucus and Senator Hatch have
worked out a way that the members of the Finance Committee can take a
look at some of those. I think we can reach some agreements on areas of
the Tax Code that are not high priorities that can reduce the revenue
hemorrhaging we have. Put another way, if we eliminated all the tax
breaks that are in the Tax Code, our rates could be one-half of what
they are today--one-half of what they are today.
So we not only can bring in the revenue necessary to balance our
Federal budget and allow for the types of investments that are
important for job growth, we can actually reduce the rates for a large
number of Americans. Unfortunately, that is not in this budget
agreement. To me, that is a disappointment, that we are not dealing
with the balance that is necessary for a long-term budget agreement.
Then there is one other area I want to talk about, and it is not
going to be a surprise to my colleagues--a couple of areas I want to
talk about, one of which is the Federal workforce.
This agreement provides for a 1.3-percent increase in retirement
contributions for new hires under Federal service. That is on top of an
increase that was just done a year ago on the extension of the payroll
tax, where we increased the retirement contributions for new hires. We
also, in this budget agreement, have a reduction in the COLA increases
for military retirees.
I think that is regrettable. I do not believe that should have been
in this budget agreement. Our civilian workforce has already
contributed. When you add up what will be done by retirement
contributions, that is going to be over $20 billion. We have had 3
years of a pay freeze. We have a way in our law where we make
adjustments to our civilian workforce pay each year that reflects not
the cost of living, something less than the cost of living. Our Federal
workforce has seen a freeze. They have not gotten that for the last 3
years. That is close to $100 billion in contribution to the deficit.
They have already done that. So they have contributed already about
$120 billion-plus, and that does not include--does not include--the
fact that many of our Federal workforce have had to endure furloughs as
a result of sequestration and government shutdowns.
So our Federal workforce has contributed. These are predominantly
middle class families, a large number of veterans, a large number of
women, a large number of minorities. They have contributed more than
any other group of working Americans already in dealing with this
deficit reduction, and I find it very regrettable that this retirement
contribution provision was included in the budget agreement.
Let me just quote, if I might, from the nonprofit Partnership for
Public Service that commented to Senator Murray and Representative Ryan
during the budget negotiations. I quote this for what they say because
I think it expresses my view and I hope the view of all the Members of
the Senate:
As you work to put our federal government on a sustainable
fiscal path, we encourage you in the strongest possible terms
to treat the federal workforce as the considerable asset that
it is, and ensure it is appropriately trained, compensated
and resourced to serve the American people with excellence
for the long term.
The federal civilian service is smaller today on a per
capita basis than at almost any time since the Kennedy
Administration--yet its responsibilities are greater than
ever. Rather than asking how to make the federal workforce
smaller or less expensive, Congress should be asking what we
need the Federal Government to do, and what it will take to
ensure that we have a workforce with the necessary skills in
appropriate quantities to execute those responsibilities with
maximum effect at a reasonable expense.
Proposals to freeze federal pay, change retirement
contributions or reduce the workforce through attrition do
nothing to improve the capacity and performance of the
federal government and those who serve in its civilian
workforce. These proposals are easy and expedient, but they
miss the opportunity to make real and sustained improvements
in how the Federal Government manages its people.
I could not agree more with those comments. We have a smaller
workforce today, asked to do more extremely important work. These are
people who are protecting our food supply. These are the great
scientists who are doing the research to give us what we need, new
technologies in health care. These are people making sure our seniors
get the services they so richly need and deserve. These are people who
are on the frontline in so many different ways.
Our responsibility is to make sure they have the resources to carry
out their mission. Yes, we make value judgments as to what are the
priorities, but to put our class of Federal workers through additional
cuts, to me, is wrong. I regret that was included in the budget
agreement.
I also wish to mention I was disappointed that we were not able to
use
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this last train that will reach the finish line before we recess to
extend unemployment insurance. Some 1.3 million workers are in danger
of losing benefits come January 1. In 2014, as many as 4.7 million
workers will not be getting the extended benefit, 83,000 of whom are
located in my State of Maryland.
Let my point out, I know the unemployment rates are getting lower. We
are all working to make sure to get them as low as we can. But they are
still substantially higher than they were when we first recognized that
we needed to have extended Federal unemployment benefits because of the
softness in our economy. Particularly for those who are long-term
unemployed, it is extremely difficult to find a job. If you are
unemployed and you are looking for work, it is tough out there.
So the right thing for us to do is to continue these benefits for
people who are actively looking for work and cannot find jobs. This is
an insurance program. The moneys have been collected during good times
so that we pay during these times. The money is there. We need to make
sure those benefits are continued. I was disappointed it was not
included in the legislation. It will help our economy grow.
There are more and more economic studies that show every dollar we
make available in unemployment compensation returns much more to our
economy in job growth. So this is hurting ourselves by not extending
it, plus we are hurting millions of Americans who are going to be more
vulnerable in trying to keep their families together during these very
challenging times.
Let me conclude by saying that as I said in the beginning, this is an
important budget agreement to get approved. I strongly support it. I
applaud the leadership of Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan in
bringing us to this moment. My constituents believe this is a very
important step forward, showing that we can compromise and work
together and get our work done.
In a few days we will bring the first session of the 113th Congress
to a close and leave Washington to spend the holidays with our families
and friends. I hope each one of us will use that time to reflect on the
extraordinary privilege of being a Member of Congress. I hope each one
of us will reflect on the extraordinary challenges our Nation faces. I
hope each one of us will come to the conclusion that we can do
extraordinary things if we work together. The American people demand
and deserve no less.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to express my disappointment that the
budget deal we will soon be voting on reflects just that, a deal--not
legislation, a deal. It raises spending above the cap. That is the
spending limit we put in place just 2 years ago.
It raises revenue from hard-working Americans to pay for this new
spending and promises to cut some spending in the future. We have seen
before how that story ends. We have already read that book. We will
spend more now, we will grow the government more now, and ultimately
the spending cuts will never materialize.
I have a favorite retired truckdriver in Pinedale, WY, who has
suggested that we need to quit putting people in the wagon and get more
people pulling the wagon. What he, of course, is referring to is the
way we are growing government. Every time we grow government we put
some more people in this wagon that the private sector has to pull.
Yes, everybody in government pays taxes. But not one person in the
government pays as much in taxes as they earn, so they become a part of
the burden in the wagon.
Yes, even Senators are part of that burden in the wagon. But we are
getting less and less people pulling the wagon. They are getting a
little tired of pulling the wagon. I am going to show some things that
are happening in this budget that are making it even tougher for them
to pull the wagon.
So this is not the right path forward. My constituents back home in
Wyoming and Americans across this country deserve better. We talk about
how we have reduced the deficit. Reduced the deficit? Yes, that means
we used to be overspending $1 trillion a year, and now we are only
overspending $500 billion, which is one-half trillion. That is still
overspending.
Families across America know you cannot keep spending more than you
take in. Is there any indication that this causes a problem? We have
been experiencing some of the lowest interest rates in the history of
the country, which means the Federal Government has been able to borrow
its money for less than it ever has before.
A few months ago I went to one of these bond sales. It was $40
billion worth of bond sales, sold in 30 minutes. People in other
countries had so much confidence in the United States that they were
willing to pay us to take their money. They put in bids of negative
interest rates. They paid us to take their money, to keep it, to make
sure it was secure. They believed it would be secure. So they paid us a
negative interest rate.
At that particular bond sale, the interest rate was .86 percent to
borrow $40 billion. That is what it averaged out at. Last week we did
bond sales. Last week we sold $30 billion worth of bonds. I do not know
how many minutes it took to do that, but it was a relatively short
period of time, probably less than 30 minutes as well.
Do you know what the interest rate was? It was 3.90 percent. In just
a few months it has gone from .86 to 3.90. Is that factored into this
budget? I bet you it is not. If that interest rate keeps going up, if
it hits 5 percent, we are not going to be able to do nearly as much as
we are now. We have to pay our interest first, otherwise we have
bankrupted the United States and proven it.
When we talk about raising the debt ceiling, it is a minor issue
compared to being able to pay the interest on the debt. If it keeps
going up significantly, we and our kids and our grandkids are not going
to be able to pay the debt. That is what I hear across Wyoming. That is
what I hear across America. So what are we trying to do? We are trying
to come up with a reasonable amount of spending for the United States.
This budget does not do it.
Because Members are going to be voting on a deal rather than a bill
that had the opportunity to be improved through the committee process
with feedback from other Members, we will not have the opportunity to
discuss the potential unintended consequences and address them before
they become law. I just heard 15 minutes of that discussion from the
Senator from Maryland who knows a whole bunch of items that are in this
bill that he is upset with, and I, quite frankly, think he ought to be
upset with.
But I am on that conference committee. When the deal was made, we
read about it in the papers just like everybody else. We did not get
any special notice that there had been a deal made. On conference
committees, I have seen the deals made before. I have never seen one
made by so few people before. In this one there was a Democrat from the
Senate and a Republican from the House. The two of them came up with a
conclusion that this is what we should have.
That is not too bad, provided it goes through a normal process, which
means we get to make some amendments. When we make amendments, some
pass, some fail. But at least we get to bring up the unintended
consequences that we see. That is why we have so many people in
Congress: 100 here and 435 on the other side. That is why we have a
whole lot of backgrounds looking at everything that happens around here
from a whole lot of perspectives so maybe we can stop the unintended
consequences.
But that is only if it goes through a normal process. So far the tree
is filled on this bill. What does that mean? That means no amendments
allowed. Take it or leave it. No matter what you think of it, forget
it. We are going to have some unintended consequences that are going to
come out of this and they are going to become law.
For example, I applaud the proposal that would limit access to Social
Security's Death Master File to prevent identity theft, and individuals
from fraudulently claiming government benefits and tax refunds
associated with those who have passed away. That is a good idea.
However, I am concerned that certain organizations that use that same
Death Master File for legitimate business purposes that benefit
consumers may have their access restricted.
If we discussed these issues in committee, we might have been able to
address them, perhaps with a sensible solution, perhaps in a way that
would
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have protected the identity and still protected the benefits to the
consumer.
The budget deal makes a permanent provision that would require States
to pay a 2-percent administrative fee to the Federal Government for the
collection of mineral royalties. This only affects a few States,
particularly Wyoming. The negotiators and the administration see this
as an easy pot of money. We saw the same situation play out last year
when the Federal Government saw a pot of money associated with the
abandoned mine lands, that primarily go to Wyoming, and spent it on an
unrelated highway bill.
When the Federal Government first started to withhold the mineral
royalty money owed to States, I introduced legislation with Senator
Barrasso and Representative Lummis and a bipartisan group of
legislators from affected States to stop it. Each of those States is
fully capable of collecting its own share of the mineral revenues
without help from the Federal Government. We should not have to pay for
that. We will continue to reverse this unjust practice.
Another fascinating little item was when we did the sequester, the
money that comes in from Federal mineral royalties to the Federal
Government was considered to be revenue. The money that went out, which
is by law to the States, was considered to be revenue to the States
that passed through the Federal Government. The Federal Government took
5.3 percent out of it until, of course, we started having a lot of
success at reversing both this 2 percent that I just talked about and
the stealing of the Federal mineral royalties. Suddenly the Federal
Government said: Oh, that was a mistake. You are going to get your full
half of the Federal mineral royalties less, of course, the 2 percent.
Another little problem is the deal raises premiums private companies
pay the Federal Government to guarantee their pension benefits. That is
something we have also insisted on. We have said companies need to pay
a fee so if they go out of business, the people they promised a pension
to will get at least 60 percent of what they were promised. That is
supposed to be a trust fund, a trust fund to be able to pay those
people if the company goes out of business.
We have addressed that a number of times. We have held that
sacrosanct until a couple of years ago. This raises the premium. That
is gentle for a new tax. A premium is a tax. If every company has to
pay another $200 per employee who receives a pension, that is a tax.
If it goes into the trust fund, maybe it is a fee. But here is the
real kicker: This money we raise does not go to the Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corporation, so it is a tax increase. It does not shore up
this trust fund. It will be spent on discretionary programs, and it
will be spent this year. But it will be collected for 10 years. How
many people in America get to take 10 years of revenue, spend it this
year, and then not worry about it? Nobody that I know of.
Employers are still in the process of implementing and paying for a
$9 billion tax increase called for in the highway bill last year. That,
again, is a 10-year tax to build highways for 2 years. When that
highway bill comes up, where are we going to steal the money next time?
There is always the Social Security trust fund and a whole bunch of
other trust funds. I can hear the yelling about that, and I will join
the yelling about that if it is even considered. If we can tap it in
the private sector, undoubtedly we can tap it in the government sector
as well.
A $9 billion increase, that was for the highway bill. We have another
$200 per employee, so we have another $900 billion increase that is put
on the backs of private industry, the ones pulling the wagon that I
talked about. To put it simply, over 2 years the flat-rate premium will
have increased 40 percent, and over 3 years the variable-rate premium--
which is a tax if it doesn't go where it is supposed to--will have
increased over 100 percent. That is a huge tax.
I guarantee that will end the willingness of some companies to
continue pensions. Pensions are voluntary.
If the cost to continue them goes up, the companies will reevaluate.
In fact, I can state that they are reevaluating right now. When we
are looking at $200 per year per employee, we have to take a look at
how that affects this. Pensions will change drastically because of this
agreement.
A few of the concerns I have just raised could be addressed, if not
in committee, then on the Senate floor. Once again, the majority leader
has decided that no amendments will be allowed. They won't be allowed
to be offered, and they won't be allowed to be voted on.
I filed two amendments to the budget deal that are relevant to this
discussion. One was with Senator Murphy regarding the need to follow
congressional intent and to clarify that the funding of the accounting
standards-setting bodies is not subject to sequestration.
We have a system where there are rules set up to have generally
accepted accounting principles, and we have a body that is supposed to
be very independent that is supposed to come up with those rules.
We do force the companies that are in the accounting business to pay
for that body, to standardize the accounting process. It comes directly
from the accountants, and it is supposed to go directly to this
accounting board. We have decided that sequestration should take a
little chunk out of that. That should not happen. That is stealing
money again. That is one of the amendments.
Another one was to strike the language making it permanent for the
Federal Government to withhold 2 percent of mineral royalty owed to the
States for administrative expenses. We should have the opportunity to
discuss, debate, and vote on them on the Senate floor.
There are a lot of others, but those are the two primary ones. We
have to stop dealmaking and we have to start legislating.
Our constituents sent us here to legislate. They deserve better than
a deal agreed to behind closed doors without input and improvements
from the rest of the legislators, not even the committee to which it
was assigned. Even though I am disappointed in the process that has led
to this point today, I am even more disappointed in the product that
resulted from the dealmaking.
This budget deal breaks the promise we made to our constituents in
2011--as part of the Budget Control Act--that we would reduce spending.
It has worked. It hasn't worked the way a lot of people would like for
it to work because it has been across-the-board. But for the first time
since the Korean War, it has reduced spending 2 consecutive years.
We were close. After 2014, overall discretionary spending would have
increased even with the sequester. Yes, we were almost at the end of
the part of taking down the spending, but we couldn't find the will to
prioritize spending this year under the current spending levels and,
instead, decided to ask Americans to send in more of their hard-earned
money to Washington so the Federal Government could spend it the same
way we always have--promise the cuts in the end and take more money in
the beginning.
I think my constituents in Wyoming know best how to spend their
money. Of course, this penalizes them for their principled budgeting
which they have been doing and makes it look as if they have money.
Every State could have money if they were as careful as Wyoming has
been.
Washington, DC, has a spending problem. We don't have a revenue
problem. We can think of all kinds of things we would like to spend
money on, things that we think would be a good deal and probably that
would buy some votes out there. That is wrong. We need to get things
under control before that 3.9 percent interest rate goes to 5 percent,
10 percent--or it has been as high as, I think, 18 percent before.
The budget deal increases spending and shows the one thing that some
Democrats and Republicans can agree on, and that is putting off our
decisions. This plan spends more than the current law. It charges
people and States for more and uses the money to increase spending in
nonrelated areas.
Spending cuts are scheduled for outlying years, and so the so-called
savings are used right away. Yes, just shift that money from out there
and put it into the current spending. That isn't real. Nobody else gets
to do it. It is only a government trick.
We cannot spend our way to prosperity. We need to prioritize spending
[[Page S8877]]
cuts. We need to find the spending cuts that will do the least harm,
start there, and go through an appropriations process that works. We
have been doing omnibus bills around here for a long time. I have
constituents who will start coming in January, and they will want me to
take a look at their program and add only a few dollars there. I have
to tell them the last time I had a look at a line on appropriations was
about 5 years ago. We just take one whole lump of $1 trillion and vote
it up or down one time. That is not doing our job. Our main job is
spending the money. We need to prioritize those cuts.
I will tell us how Wyoming did it. Wyoming was facing an 8-percent
cut, they thought. We are talking about 2.03 percent for the Federal
Government. If we compress it down to only a few months, we are talking
about 5.3 percent. But the true amount of that sequestration was 2.3
percent.
Wyoming thought they were going to get hit for 8 percent, mostly
because of some of the regulations on energy that reduced some of the
energy production in Wyoming.
How did they go about doing this? The Governor said to every single
agency: I wish to see from you how you would spend it if you have to
cut 2 percent, if you have to cut 4 percent, if you have to cut 6
percent, and if you have to cut 8 percent.
Do you know what he did when he got those four lists from all of the
agencies? He looked to see if the items at 2 percent, 4 percent, 6
percent, and 8 percent were the same.
That is the way we find out what the agency thinks they can get rid
of. That is a simple way of prioritizing spending. Did we ever do that
around here? No. We do have a process by which the President can have
his agencies say what they intend to get done and then tell what they
got done and how well they were doing.
We never pay attention to that. So the ones that come out rated very
badly on this continue spending money as they always did. We need to
have a prioritization process. We need to have a way that we can look
at some of the details of the spending bills. Putting off spending
forever and forever, and then coming in after the fact and saying: OK,
this is how much we spent, how much we are going to spend, then we get
to vote yes or no, is wrong. That again is dealmaking, not legislating,
and it won't rein in the out-of-control spending.
I have talked a little bit about the prioritization we have to start
doing around here. When we do the sequestration, the complaints are the
agencies will always make it hurt. I watched this when I was in the
Wyoming legislature. If we only told them how much of a cut to make and
didn't tell them specifically where to take it, they always did
something that was very visual that their constituents would notice.
Their constituents would complain about, and their constituents would
make us put it back into the spending.
They didn't have to do that. There isn't any business, there isn't
government agency that doesn't have some waste. That is what ought to
go first.
Then the duplication ought to go--and there is about $900 billion a
year in duplication around here, but we ought to take a look at that.
Another thing we can do is the government shutdown legislation. That
is the one that needs to tell those spending committees they need to
get the leader to bring up their bill and get it finished with the
amendments in the appropriate time. If they don't, then they will have
to cut another 1 percent off their spending every quarter until they
get their work done. Then we don't have a shutdown, but we have a
reduction in spending; there is some incentive for them to do that.
We need to do tax reform. I agree with Senator Cardin. I think that
could make a huge difference in how we are doing our revenue.
I also have a penny plan. The penny plan just takes 1 cent off of
every Federal dollar the Federal Government spends. When I first
started looking at this, the Congressional Budget Office said that it
would balance the budget in 7 years. If we did that for 7 consecutive
years with 1 percent off every year, it would balance it in 7 years.
The newer valuation is that with the sequestration it balances the
budget in 2 years--only 2 years. When I talk to my constituents about
it, that it would be 3.3 percent over 2 years, and it comes to almost 7
percent over 3 years--I think that we could do that, and we could do it
with so little pain--people would say: Please continue that another
couple of years and pay down some of the debt.
Just getting rid of part of the deficit means we are still
overspending, but we ought to at some point start paying down that debt
so we don't have to pay the interest on the debt.
When we pay down a little bit of the debt so we don't have to pay as
much interest, we ought to use that interest that we saved to pay down
the debt some more. That is how we pay off things. People who have
credit card problems know that is the way to go about it.
I would also like to go to biennial budgeting. We supposedly spend $1
trillion in discretionary spending and the military every year--$1
trillion. That is so much money that nobody can look at it, and we
don't.
If we divided those 12 spending bills up into two packages of six,
and we allowed them to have spending worth 2 years each time, they
could plan ahead much better. We would do the six toughest bills right
after the election, the year right after the election and we would do
the six easy bills just before election. We could get through those.
Then we could do what my constituents think that we are doing, which
is to look at every one of those expenditures and decide whether they
ought to go up or down--allowing amendments on bills, allowing the
spending bills to go through one at a time, maybe a week at a time. We
could have them all done before October, and then there wouldn't be any
government shutdown anyway.
There are a lot of ideas out there on what we could do. I sit up
nights worrying about the Nation's debt and how it will affect the
children of Wyoming, how it will affect my children, and how it will
affect my grandchildren. This budget conference was an opportunity to
apply reasonable constraints to impossibly high future spending, but
instead we got more spending and no real plan to solve the problem.
Yes, we said, we got some savings from out there in the future. We will
spend that now, and we will make those cuts later. It never happens.
For all of those reasons, I cannot support the budget deal. I hope
our next fiscal deadline dealing with the debt limit early next year
will provide an opportunity for my colleagues and me to have a real
conversation about the spending problems our country faces. The
spending issue isn't going away. The longer we put it off, the worse it
will become. That is the reality our country faces.
I hope that we continue on the bill that says, no budget, no pay, and
actually get that done so that we have the emphasis to actually finish
a budget much earlier. Yes, there is blame, blame enough to go around
on the budget process. We are actually too late for the budget process
to have an impact. We are at the spending part. We are not getting to
address that with amendments, and I am deeply disappointed we are not
legislating.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Enzi for his leadership on the Budget
Committee. He is a long-time member, a senior member, and he has worked
hard on these issues for years.
He is an accountant. He is able to add and subtract. He can see a
debt crisis when one is there, and I appreciate the comments he has
made. I believe he is exactly correct on so many of those points.
The Senator suggested that something is awry on the pension benefit
commission in which we, in effect, tax employers more supposedly to
help the guarantee fund be able to honor people's pensions if a company
goes bankrupt. But it seems to me in simple dollars and cents if we do
that we can't then spend it on other items unrelated to pension
guarantees.
Is that the concern the Senator has raised, essentially?
Mr. ENZI. Yes, that is exactly the issue I was raising. We keep
promising people that money is going to go to certain places and then
we divert it to other places.
[[Page S8878]]
I think that under the system of accounting we use, we probably could
get it to show up in two places and get to spend it twice. That is
double the problem. So we have to start being honest with the public
about where we are taking the money and where we are actually putting
the money, and that was my purpose in making that comment.
I thank my colleague for his comments and for his dedication on the
budget. I don't think anybody spends as much time looking at those
numbers as the Senator from Alabama does, and commenting here on the
floor. It is an effort to educate America on what is really going on,
and my colleague is very good at it. I thank him for his leadership.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank my colleague. And I was referring to the fact
that Senator Enzi is the one who has explained to us in a very clear
way, from his accounting background, the problems we have had with the
pension guarantee fund, and it is a very real situation. It is
actuarially unsound in the long run. It needs to be put on a better
basis, but we can't put it on a better basis if we tax the employers.
That may even reduce, as the Senator from Wyoming says, the number of
employers who provide a pension. That would be a terrible policy error,
if we keep driving up the cost to supposedly fix the fund but then
spend the money on something else and we therefore disincentivize the
businesses from even having retirement plans for their employees. So I
thank my colleague for raising that very important issue.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Order of Procedure
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
recess from 12:30 until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus
meetings and that the time during the recess count postcloture on the
motion to concur in the House message to accompany H.J. Res. 59.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the bipartisan
budget deal that is currently before the Senate.
Chairman Ryan and Chairman Murray have shown us true leadership on
divisive and complex budget issues. The legislation we have before us
today is the embodiment of compromise--something that has,
unfortunately, been absent in Washington as of late. They have crafted
a bill that sets forth the guidelines for spending for the remainder of
this fiscal year and the platform for the next fiscal year.
This deal will set overall discretionary spending for the current
fiscal year at $1.012 trillion--an amount that is approximately halfway
between the Senate budget number and the House budget number. This
number is also less than the 2014 spending level set forth in Chairman
Ryan's 2011 budget. While the overall spending number is higher than
what I would have wanted, the House and Senate Budget Committee
chairmen were able to craft a budget deal that produces $23 billion in
net deficit reduction. Very honestly, with the deficit we have been
running, $23 billion is a mere pittance, and I think all of us who are
concerned about the debt and the deficit of this country would like to
see that number higher. But more importantly, they have produced a
budget that will set in place some fiscally responsible spending
policies and give us a way forward. Regardless of how each Member of
this Chamber feels about the resulting policy, we should all recognize
the importance of this agreement and thank the chairmen for their
tireless work to end this chapter of political disagreement.
Although I would still prefer a grand bargain to solve our fiscal
crisis, this deal marks the first step in that journey. Congress will
now be in a better position to tackle the issues of taxation and
entitlement reform in the short term, and I truly hope the committees
of jurisdictions will take this as a sign that that does need to be
what happens next if we are truly going to address our fiscal issues.
The budget deal before us is not perfect. There is a lot in this
proposal to like and there is a lot in this proposal to dislike. But
there is one provision related to military retirement pay that will
certainly have to be addressed after the passage of this bill, and it
is one of the provisions that, frankly, I don't like. I am told by
Pentagon officials that this provision basically came out of nowhere. I
think it is terribly unfair to our men and women in uniform. They
should not have a disproportionate share in our deficit reduction
measures.
However, I feel confident this issue will be resolved in the near
term. I have had a conversation with the chairman of the Committee on
Armed Services, as well as a number of other members of the Armed
Services Committee who are committed to making sure we address this,
and hopefully we will come up with some alternative before this
provision takes place, which doesn't happen, interestingly enough,
until December of 2015.
Many Georgians have served with honor in our military, and while the
changes to their annual cost-of-living increase may appear
insignificant on paper in this bill, this is real money promised to
those who put their lives in harm's way in defense of this Nation. I
want to assure our service men and women that there is ample time to
address this issue before it takes effect, and I am committed to
addressing it, and I will not turn my back on those who fight and have
fought for this country.
That said, this budget deal is a necessary and crucial step toward a
functioning Congress. With passage of this budget deal, we can close
the book on discretionary spending arguments for the next couple of
years. We can turn our full attention to entitlement reform and tax
reform as Congress debates raising the debt ceiling once again next
year.
Also, with this bill we will no longer need to provide additional
flexibility for defense spending. This bill will give the defense
community the resources they need, No. 1.
In conversations with top officials at the Pentagon and within the
intelligence community over the weekend, they have urged the support of
this bill as a way to address their current budget crisis, and I am
extremely sympathetic to both those communities and wanted to make sure
that whatever product came to the floor of the Senate did that. This
bill does address the shortfalls and the flexibility issue in the
defense community and in the intelligence community.
I was pleased at the approach the budget chairmen took will not turn
off sequester but will extend the mandatory cuts for an additional 2
years beyond what the Budget Control Act prescribed because, as I see
this, this has been an $85 billion fix on the sequester that keeps it
from going too deep into the defense budget, which had the potential
for causing real problems within the Pentagon as well as within the
intelligence community.
With this budget deal, we can also put in place a 302(a) budget
allocation--the top-line number Congress can spend on discretionary
spending. For the first time in several years, this will allow the
Appropriations Committee to do the job that it is actually intended to
do. Our appropriators have previously been forced to make spending
decisions without a top-line number and through continuing resolutions.
They had no information and no guidance from Congress. It is no wonder
our spending has caught up with us. The country benefits when Congress
approaches the appropriations process through regular order and not
through last-minute continuing resolutions. This agreement makes that
process more likely.
The Budget Committee chairmen have also made a good-faith effort to
attack the real problems in our budget by cutting money from mandatory
programs rather than searching for more discretionary cuts. In their
agreement, they took notice of how often the Federal Government has
given special treatment to certain groups and they have taken efforts
to curb that. While many outside groups may attack these reforms, they
are representative of the types of reforms that will have to be
included in any future agreement to achieve entitlement reform, which
at the end of the day is where the real problem in our Federal budget
lies.
This deal does little to address the $17 trillion debt, but it is a
start down that road, and I truly hope this will lead to more serious
discussions on the floor of the Senate about our debt and
[[Page S8879]]
a solution for how we are going to see that $17 trillion repaid.
In all, this budget deal represents a partial completion of the work
the American people expect from us. It is far from perfect and leaves
much to be desired. But the prospect of compromise on the single most
important issue of our time requires attention and serious looking at
by every Member of this body. I will vote for the passage of this bill
because it lays the groundwork for the next chapter in our pursuit of
fiscal sanity.
For 3\1/2\ years now, Senator Warner and I have been involved in
seeking out a much larger debt and deficit reduction deal than what is
currently before us. We know the American people are tired of out-of-
control spending and don't understand why Congress can't address our
$17 trillion debt. It is not rocket science. The Bowles-Simpson
Commission gave us a roadmap 3 years ago this month, and I regret that
the White House has not followed the leadership of its own Commission.
This bill represents a small step toward the type of cooperation that
will be necessary to comprehensively address our debt and deficit. It
is my hope that this agreement allows that effort to restart in a
meaningful way.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish we had an agreement that is grand
and great and would do what a lot of people have been dreaming of for
some time and would put us on a sound financial path for decades to
come. It is within our grasp. But it seems we are unable to make those
choices or bring that forward.
I believe if the President has led and given a commitment to fixing
our financial problems in America, we could have done it in the last
few years. But he has not. So it has put us in a bad position, and we
end up with the agreement we have today, which essentially would save
some of the risk of a government shutdown and reduce some of the
tension, which a lot of people think is great and I do too. It would be
good for the country to have more predictability. It would be good for
the Defense Department to have more predictability. It would be good
for the financial community to have more predictability about what is
happening in Washington. But what occurred is not sufficient in any
way, and it has been postured to look a good bit better than it is.
Essentially, we remain on an unsustainable financial path in America.
The numbers are real clear. We are seeing a reduction in our deficit in
the near term, but the Congressional Budget Office tells us in the next
several years we will begin to see the relentless increase in deficits
every year, reaching almost $1 trillion again by the end of this 10-
year window. That is not a good path to be on.
We pay interest on the debt which we accrue each and every year, plus
all the money we have borrowed previously. The amount is notable. We
have exceedingly low interest rates, so it is not impacting us as much
as it is likely to impact us in the future, as they will return to the
mean and we will see rates go up.
But just to point out that this agreement--the legislation before
us--spends $63 billion to $70 billion in the next 2 years. Where does
that money come from? Essentially, it adds to the debt. But we are told
not to worry because we have other cuts in spending, other fees that
will come in, which will eventually pay for it. But over half of the
pay-fors occur outside the 8 years left on the Budget Control Act
window and in the last 2 years of the 10-year budget window for this
legislation. But the Congressional Budget Office has scored that,
because we are spending more money sooner--money which has to be
borrowed--it would add $10.5 billion to the interest payment of the
United States over this 10 year period.
So the claim it is going to reduce the debt over time if every bit of
this is adhered to--which our pattern is not to adhere to what we
promise. But if we were to adhere to it over the 10 years, the savings
wouldn't be $23 billion as claimed, it would be $12.5 billion because
the legislation supporters haven't discussed the interest cost of this
gimmicked-up bill, where we spend more now and save later. It is a very
serious matter.
They say the sequester is hard. The sequester is so bad that it
cannot be sustained, America will collapse, and we will not be able to
act in a compassionate way and be supportive of people in need or meet
the basic needs of the government.
The former Speaker Pelosi, now leader of the Democrats in the House,
said the cupboard is bare. There are no more cuts to make. She said on
September 21 of this year: There are no more cuts to make.
There are plenty more cuts to make. There are ways to save money. For
example, the majority in the Senate changed the rules of the Senate
using the nuclear option to ram through the appointment of three new
Federal judges. Each one of those, with their staff, costs the
taxpayers $1 million a year, and it was for the DC Circuit, which
absolutely does not need these judges. They are not needed. The DC
Circuit has by far the lowest caseload per judge in America, even with
the vacancies on the court.
So what we should have done, and I worked toward previously, is not
filled those judges and move them to other circuits which need judges
that we are going to have to fill. That would have saved $3 million a
year. That is just one example of the waste of money. It is the
equivalent of burning $1 million to $3 million a year on the mall out
here because those judges were not needed.
So to say there are no cuts to make and we can't reduce spending any
more is not accurate. It is all through the system. As Senator Enzi
said, his State was prepared to take an 8-percent cut. But under the
Budget Control Act, which includes the sequester, we are not cutting
spending over 10 years; we are increasing spending over 10 years. We
are just increasing it $2 trillion less than before. We were on the
path to increase spending, at the time the Budget Control Act was
passed, by $10 trillion--from $37 trillion to $47 trillion over 10
years. We passed the Budget Control Act and said it would increase to
$45 trillion instead of $47 trillion.
So we go from $37 trillion to $45 trillion. That was essentially what
the agreement was. It passed both Houses of Congress. It had no tax
increases in it. It was simply a commitment to contain the growth of
spending, and it sharply reduced spending. It reduced spending in the
near term. But after this year, spending is allowed to continue for the
last 7 years or 8 years of the Budget Control Act agreement, a 2.5-
percent-a-year annual increase every year after this year.
So the cuts began to bite this year. They were being felt this year.
What did Congress do? It folded up like a house of cards. Congress
couldn't sustain the heat and couldn't honor the promise we made in
August of 2011 to reduce the growth of spending just a little bit. That
was the promise. To raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion, we agreed to
reduce the growth of spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years.
Now we have already hit the debt ceiling. We have already borrowed
another $2.1 trillion. So now we hit the debt ceiling again, but we are
not honoring the promise to reduce spending.
What happened? The sequester said we had to have more cuts this year,
more reductions this year, and Congress couldn't sustain it--just
couldn't--would not take the heat, and we came up with this new plan
that is before us to avoid a shutdown. I guess we can say we avoided a
shutdown, but we can also say we did not do the right thing about
spending in America. We have not faced the challenge we have because we
remain on an unsustainable financial path. In a couple years we will be
back on a deficit growth pattern which is going to be very serious and
will threaten the financial future of America. As President Obama's
Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission has told us, nothing fundamentally has
changed in that.
So we have our colleagues who are anxious to have more taxes--more
revenue they call it. What they are talking about are more taxes.
House Minority Leader Pelosi says that there are no more cuts to
make,
[[Page S8880]]
American people. We have cut all we can cut. There is no more we can
cut. So now we have decided the problem is you, American people. You
haven't sent us enough money. We demand, we insist, we require you to
send us more money so we don't have to make any tough decisions
anymore. We don't have to make the financial choices they made in
Wisconsin or Alabama or Wyoming, that every State and city has had to
face during this financial crisis, and they are leaner and more
productive and more efficient as a result of having to make those
choices. But we don't have to because we want to have more revenue.
So after this August of 2011 Budget Control Act passed, which reduced
spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion, the President signed and
agreed to, had no tax increases in it, it was just a commitment that we
would contain spending--that is what the agreement was, a spending
containment bill. In January, President Obama submitted a budget that
wiped it out, busted it wide open. It would have added $1 trillion in
new taxes and $1 trillion in new spending.
Wow. What kind of commitment was that to the American people; you
sign a bill, you say you are going to do something, and before the ink
is dry you are proposing a different idea that goes back on the very
promise that was made.
Eventually, this year, the Senate Democrats passed a budget
increasing spending $1 trillion and increasing taxes $1 trillion. It is
a tax-and-spend budget, the same budget the President submitted each
year.
They said we are going to have a balanced approach. What they wanted
the American people to hear when they said a ``balanced approach'' is:
We have a plan to reduce the deficit, and the plan is we are going to
cut some spending and increase revenues. That is what they wanted the
American people to hear. It was a subtly and carefully crafted message,
but it was not the truth. The truth was that they wanted to spend more
and tax more. Taxes were not used in a balanced approach to bring down
the deficit from the unsustainable path on which we remain. The taxes
were used to fund additional spending above the amount we agreed to in
the Budget Control Act of August 2011, which is still in effect--unless
this legislation passes, and that is going to amend it.
The fundamental fact is that my colleagues want to tax and spend.
They say they have cut all they can cut and they want more revenue and
more money from the American people. Just send it to us, and we will
spread it around and we will do all the good things we can dream of
with your money. We don't have enough of it; we want more.
I don't think that is good for America. I don't think that is good
for the economy. We need a vibrant private sector with growth
possibilities and the opportunity to have innovation and creativity and
the efficiencies that occur in the private sector that are not present
in the government sector. We can't run this government. We have never
managed the government effectively. It is so massive. We spend so much
money. We need to be leaner and more productive. We need to decide
which areas in our country we don't need the government to undertake.
We need to let the private sector handle that wherever possible. If we
do that, we can manage a smaller and more efficient government. We need
to extract less money from the American people.
We have commitments. We are committed to Social Security, Medicare,
and other funding we need to make sure we are honoring. We can't take
money from Medicare, our seniors' health care program, and then spend
it and say we have strengthened Medicare and made it better because we
reduced its costs. The money that is saved in Medicare needs to be used
to strengthen the long-term viability of Medicare, which is in great
doubt. It is not on a sound path.
I know we can do better. We are going to have to face up to this. It
is not going to be easy. It has challenges for all of us. But
reductions in Federal spending can work.
For example, they say we need more revenue. Well, have we gotten more
revenue? Yes, we have already. This Budget Control Act did not include
more taxes. The Budget Control Act represented a $2.1 trillion
reduction in the growth of spending, but in January of this year we
passed a $650 billion tax on the rich, upper income people, and the
ObamaCare legislation included a $1 trillion tax increase on top of
that. This bill has $34 billion in fees and taxes. Is there not revenue
around here? Revenue is being increased, but the problem is that it is
not being used to reduce our deficits and it is not being used to put
us on a sound financial path. It is being used to advance more
spending, and that is the danger we are in, that is the danger we have
to watch, and that is the danger that threatens us all.
I know how seductive it is for us to think we just can't reduce
spending; the cupboard is bare. Minority Leader Pelosi says that we
can't cut any more. Well, we can. There is a lot we can do to make this
government leaner and more productive, and we are required to do so.
I yield the floor
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from South Dakota.
ObamaCare
Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I listened to the Senator from Alabama
talk about the current budget debate we are having on the floor, and I
couldn't help but think of the discussion we had when we were debating
the ObamaCare legislation a few years ago and how many of us at the
time were making the argument that this is the biggest expansion of
government in literally half a century. I think that it is becoming
increasingly clear that was, in fact, the case.
We are seeing dramatically more levels of spending. I think we are
going to see dramatically higher levels of debt over time. But you
would think that with $\1/2\ trillion in cuts to Medicare, $\1/2\
trillion in tax increases--and when it is fully implemented, it will be
much bigger than that. The overall cost of the bill, when it is fully
implemented, goes to about $2.5 trillion. The expansion of government
that occurred as a result of the passage of ObamaCare was, frankly,
stunning relative to anything we have seen in recent history. You would
think with that you would see some relief, if you will, in terms of the
burdens being placed upon middle-class Americans, but we are seeing the
opposite.
Many Americans are already feeling the effects of ObamaCare, whether
it is higher insurance premiums, canceled health plans, or the loss of
a doctor they like. Middle-class Americans are going to be hit the
hardest.
Lower income families will face steep premiums and deductibles under
ObamaCare, but they will get some help in the form of subsidies from
the government to pay for some of their health care costs.
Upper income families are also going to face higher health care
costs. In fact, the majority leader told a Nevada newspaper that his
premiums under ObamaCare will rise by $4,500 next year. Affluent
Americans will be able to absorb those increases. What about a middle-
class family facing a $4,500 increase in health care costs, a family
whose budget is already at its limit between housing costs, school
expenses, and grocery bills? That family won't be able to absorb those
costs. That family doesn't have a spare $4,500 anywhere in its budget.
For that family, the $4,500 will have to come from money that was
allocated for orthodontic payments or college tuition bills or money
for a new car.
Back when the President was trying to sell his health care proposal
to the American people, he promised that ObamaCare would ``cut costs
and make coverage more affordable for families and small businesses.''
Unfortunately, the last few months have made it abundantly clear that
this promise is not being kept.
Instead of seeing reduced costs and more affordable coverage, middle-
class Americans are seeing steep premium hikes and soaring out-of-
pocket costs. Those Americans who have been lucky enough not to have
their plans canceled have been receiving insurance plan renewal letters
with staggering premium increases. In some cases it has doubled or even
tripled what they have been paying before. One constituent emailed me
to tell me that thanks to ObamaCare her premiums will increase more
than 100 percent, which she goes on to say is equal to 45
[[Page S8881]]
percent of her monthly income--45 percent just for health care. That is
more than most Americans pay for their mortgage.
Americans whose health care plans have been canceled as a result of
ObamaCare and who are being forced to shop on the exchanges are
frequently facing higher premiums and drastically increased out-of-
pocket costs.
A couple of days ago an article in Chicago Business reported that an
average Chicago family with a midlevel health plan in the individual
market would go from a $3,500 deductible to a $10,000 deductible if
they obtained a similar plan in the exchange. That is $10,000 on top of
the $9,000 a year that family would already be paying in premiums.
In Federal exchanges, many families are facing deductibles as high as
$12,700. Barring catastrophic illness or injury, in many cases a family
with a deductible that high might as well not have insurance at all.
Of course, a family could buy a more expensive plan and greatly
reduce those out-of-pocket costs. Many of the platinum plans, which are
the high-end plans, have no deductible at all. As CBS News points out--
and this was for a Houston, TX, family--``that means shelling out
almost $12,400 per year in monthly premiums, or about the same as the
deductible for the bronze plans. Either way, families and individuals
who don't qualify for tax credits may find ObamaCare failing to deliver
on its promise of affordable health care.''
That is from CBS News when talking about a specific family in
Houston, TX.
What makes it even worse--and this is what the Associated Press
reported--many families don't fully understand the expenses they are
taking on when they sign up for plans with high out-of-pocket costs.
The Associated Press notes that ``only 14 percent of American adults
with insurance understand deductibles and other key concepts of
insurance plans, according to a study published this year in the
Journal of Health Economics. If people with insurance don't understand
it, it's likely that uninsured Americans' grasp is even fuzzier.''
A family shopping on the exchanges may snap up plans with relatively
low premiums without realizing that they are, in effect, purchasing
nothing more than catastrophic coverage that may leave them on the hook
for thousands of dollars in medical costs each year.
So far, I have talked about the direct financial consequences of the
President's health care law, but its effects don't end with higher
premiums and skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs. Middle-class families
will also take a financial hit thanks to the damage ObamaCare does to
businesses.
ObamaCare puts in place a slew of new regulations, new taxes, and new
fees on businesses large and small. When faced with that, businesses
will have two choices: They can absorb the costs of new taxes and fees,
thereby reducing the amount of capital they have to expand their
businesses, hire new workers, or promote existing ones, or they can
pass on these costs directly to their workers, further burdening
families already facing steep health care costs. It is a lose-lose
situation.
Small businesses are being hit particularly hard. Susan Gabay,
cofounder and managing director of a small business investment banking
firm, published a column on Saturday in the Washington Times in which
she discussed the effect the President's health care law is having on
her business. Thanks to ObamaCare, the health plan she offered to her
employees was canceled. The new coverage she was offered contains a 48-
percent premium increase, which she says ``translates into
approximately $1,676 in added costs per year for every individual
covered on our plan.'' That is a $6,704 premium increase for a family
of four. She says that is approximately $44,000 in added annual costs
for her business that otherwise could be used to hire a college
graduate.
Maybe her employees are getting better coverage thanks to ObamaCare's
regulations, right? Well, actually, the answer is no. Let me read her
answer to that observation. She says:
The response to our plight is that we are getting much
better coverage. But that isn't true, either. We have
historically provided our employees with a generous plan with
100% coverage for in-network preventative care and low out of
pocket maximums. Conversely, our new ``great alternative''
plan offers comparable benefits with much higher out of
pocket maximums.
So thanks to ObamaCare, Ms. Gabay's business will pay more for health
care and so will her employees without receiving any meaningful
increase in benefits.
As every middle-class parent--wondering where money for the next
dentist bill or tuition payment will come from--knows, America's
economy is still struggling to recover from the last recession.
Burdening any business--particularly our Nation's small businesses,
which are responsible for a majority of the new job creation in this
country--is the worst possible thing we could do for our economic
recovery and for the millions of middle-class Americans searching for
better jobs and opportunities.
Democrats and the President made the American people a promise. They
said: We will make health care more affordable. As long as ObamaCare is
in place, that promise will continue to be broken, and middle-class
families will suffer as a result. In fact, just recently, when asked a
question in an interview about the health care plan, Secretary Sebelius
said:
There are some individuals who may be looking at increases.
I think you cannot make a statement based on cost unless you
compare what they had to what they are going into.
That was Secretary Sebelius saying there are some individuals who may
be looking at increases. I think that is the understatement of the year
based upon the experience of literally millions of Americans, some of
whom have lost coverage entirely, but millions of Americans who are
suffering with the sticker shock of dramatic increases in the premiums
they pay for their health insurance coverage, dramatic increases in the
deductibles now available under their policies, and dramatic decreases
in the take-home pay they have to meet the other obligations they have
for their families. This is a direct hit to the pocketbooks and the
future economic vitality of middle-class Americans.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, earlier this morning the Senate voted
to advance a budget agreement that passed the House last week. The
legislation has been a topic of much discussion over the past several
days, and there are sincere arguments on both sides.
While I appreciate the challenges House and Senate negotiators faced
in crafting these budgetary guidelines, I voted against this
legislation because in my view Congress should continue to adhere to
the fiscal restraints both parties agreed to under the Budget Control
Act.
I was the principal Republican negotiator of that agreement. I have
been particularly invested in its success, and I was very proud of it.
As a result of the Budget Control Act, government spending has declined
for 2 years--2 years in a row--for the first time since the Korean war.
This was hard-won progress on the road to getting our Nation's fiscal
house in order.
As I said, I fully appreciate the constraints Chairman Ryan and
Chairman Murray faced in their negotiations, and there is clearly some
good to be said about their agreement. But we should not go back on the
agreement we made under the BCA.
Nonetheless, this has been a very important public debate.
Unfortunately, our colleagues on the other side do not seem terribly
interested in substantial debate on this or any other substantive
issues this week, least of all ObamaCare, which has been wreaking havoc
on our constituents for months now but which Democrats seem entirely
uninterested in discussing. Instead, for much of this week the
Democrat-run Senate has decided to devote its attention to pushing
through nominations--nominations. They want to spend time seating
political appointees at places such as the Department of Interior--
positions that, while they may be important, are certainly not in any
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way emergencies that need to be attended to right this second.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, millions of Americans will continue
to suffer under a law they told Washington not to pass in the first
place, a law that Washington Democrats still stubbornly refuse to
change in any meaningful way. Our colleagues on the other side seem to
think they have no responsibility to do anything about the impact of
ObamaCare since the White House issued a press release declaring
partial victory--partial victory--in fixing the Web site. That is their
whole approach to this rolling disaster: Let the White House dodge and
deflect on any problem that arises until people forget about the last
one. Point the finger at some bureaucrat or some Web technician and
basically do nothing.
We are now nearly 3 months into this national calamity, and what have
Democrats done about this national calamity? Well, they have issued a
lot of talking points and some halfhearted apologies. They have mouthed
nostrums about ``private sector velocity.'' They have waived laws for
fear of the political impact of leaving them in place. And there has
hardly been any accountability for the massive consequences faced by
American consumers as a result of this failed law. In other words, they
haven't done much of anything. They have treated this whole thing like
a public relations problem to get past rather than a real-life problem
for middle-class Americans to be solved. They are engaged in daily
battle aimed at one overriding goal: Protect the law. Yet nearly every
day we hear more about its painful impact.
Since the October rollout, millions of Americans have lost their
insurance plans. More than 280,000 have lost coverage in Kentucky
alone, and so many are feeling the squeeze of this law, folks such as
Lana Lynch, a mom from Brandenburg, KY, who told me the annual out-of-
pocket expenses for her family rose from $1,500 to $7,000 under
ObamaCare, and folks such as Barrett Simpson from Sweden, KY.
Barrett had a health plan he liked and wanted to keep, a $540-a-month
policy that was, in his words, ``perfect'' for his family. The folks
responsible for ObamaCare apparently thought they knew better than he
did about the needs of his family, so he lost it. Here is what he had
to say about that:
[My] plan is being eliminated because of the ACA, and the
cheapest, closest plan will cost [u]s $1,400 next year. We
can keep the plan until the end of next year, but we will
have to pick a new one. We don't need the extra coverage for
maternity, for vision or dental, but yet we will be forced to
pay for it.
He continued:
These changes are absurd. Most people in this country who
are content with what they had are now paying for what Obama
is trying to do for a very few.
Barrett closed his letter by asking me to work to repeal ObamaCare.
Well, Barrett and Lana should know this--in fact, every Kentuckian
should know this, and every American should know this: Members on my
side of the aisle hear you loudly and clearly. We are not going to give
up this fight. No matter how much the other side tries to distract the
country's attention, we won't be fooled and we know you won't be
either.
Look. The folks each of us were sent here to represent--not the
government--should be the ones choosing plans that make more sense for
their families. And when our colleagues on the other side go around
referring to insurance being lost as ``junk,'' that is beyond offensive
to the people we represent.
There is a lot of ivory tower thinking that goes on in this city--way
too much of it. It is time for our Washington Democratic friends to
finally climb out of the ivory tower and see the reality of their ideas
in action, witness the failure of their policies firsthand. It is time
for Washington Democrats to drop their refusal to change anything of
substance in ObamaCare, and it is time for them to listen closely to
the people who sent us here in the first place.
Here is what so many Americans are saying. They want Democrats to
start working with Republicans to improve our Nation's health care
system in a positive way, to help us implement real, patient-centered,
commonsense reforms that can actually lower costs and improve the
quality of care because we were sent here to solve problems, not to
make them worse, as ObamaCare does.
Let's erase that mistake. Let's get rid of it and start over with
real reform. Working together, we can do it.
Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to continue to raise a
simple point but a point of profound financial significance to America.
One of the things that has happened in the bill that is before us is
there has been an extension in the 10-year BCA plan--which was enacted
2 years ago; there are only 8 years left--an extension of a 2-percent
reduction in payments to hospitals and doctors who provide services
through Medicare, treat patients, and get paid by the U.S. Government.
So they were reduced 2 percent.
This is scored as a savings for the country. In effect, it is
perceived as a savings that allows us to spend more money somewhere
else. That savings, as was done in this legislation, involved the last
2 years--years 9 and 10--of the 10-year window from today. It creates
some money, they say, because we reduced Medicare costs and we can
spend that money in this year and next year on nondefense and defense
discretionary spending, and we are going to promise to use the money we
save in Medicare in years 9 and 10, outside the promised BCA 10-year
window which is already moving along.
What I want to raise is a deep and fundamental point. Medicare is
already in deficit. Medicare is already spending more money to provide
care for seniors than is being taken in off people's paychecks every
week. But Medicare does have a trust fund. Medicare Part A does; it's
called the Hospital Insurance trust fund. Social Security also has a
trust fund. People have that money come off their paychecks every week
when they go to work, and they believe, correctly in my opinion, they
have a right to receive those benefits in the future.
They are not happy. They believe America is going on the wrong track
when we take that money and spend it, therefore, jeopardizing the
confidence they should have in retirement that their Medicare and
Social Security are going to be in place.
We know there are some deep problems with Medicare and Social
Security actuarially because people are living longer and there are
more people retiring and we have to deal with some problems there. But
what I want to say is, the worst thing you can do is to do the things
necessary to make Medicare sound--tighten up payments to providers,
perhaps; although there is a limit at some point as to how much you can
do there--and do other things that make Medicare more financially
stable, but you should not see that savings as something you can spend
on a new program. The entitlement programs that went into ObamaCare,
the Affordable Care Act, $500 billion of that money that supposedly was
used to fund it was from Medicare and some from Social Security too--
saving money in those accounts.
But those programs have trust funds. They have trustees. When they
ran a surplus, as they had done for many decades--but not now--when
they were running a surplus, the money was loaned to the Federal
Treasury and they spent it. But the Federal Treasury owes it back to
them. Now that both of those programs are heading into steep fiscal
decline, they are calling the notes, they are calling back the money
they loaned. The trustees of those programs know whom they represent.
They represent Social Security recipients. They represent Medicare
beneficiaries. They are demanding their money, they are going to get
it, and we are going to honor it.
So what I am saying is we cannot count that money twice. That is what
Mr. Elmendorf, the Director of the CBO, told us on December 23, the
night before the ObamaCare bill was passed on the floor of the Senate
in 2009. He said: You cannot count the money twice, and to suggest you
are strengthening Medicare and simultaneously
[[Page S8883]]
providing a source of money to spend on the new ObamaCare program is
double counting. He used the words ``double counting.''
How simple is this? My question to him, when he gave the letter--and
I asked him to put it in writing. I insisted he do that. He works for
us, and he did what he is supposed to do. He said: Even though the
conventions of accounting might suggest otherwise, you cannot
simultaneously use the same money to strengthen Medicare and fund
ObamaCare. That is what he said.
So under our conventions of accounting, we have what we call a
unified budget. The CBO does it both ways, but the one we talk mostly
about, the one everybody focuses on, is the unified budget. So if
Social Security is a little better off, it is assumed it is in the same
pot. Everything is in one pot. So anything that cuts the expenses of
Medicare and Social Security to make them strong is utilized and
considered to put more money in the pot to be spent somewhere else.
What is happening to us now is the unfunded liabilities in pension
funds, retirement funds, Medicare, Social Security, and other accounts
are reaching unprecedented levels, some say nearly $100 trillion, and
it is growing considerably. This is the long-term threat to America.
This is the thing that several attempts have been made in recent years
to fix, to confront, to put us on a sound path financially, but it has
always failed. People can blame everybody, and everybody is subject to
blame, I assure you. However, I do believe it is quite plain it will
not happen unless the President of the United States leads and
participates and says: I want to fix it. He is basically saying: We do
not have a problem. We are doing fine. He is not willing to call on the
American people and use his bully pulpit to lay out the challenges we
face in how we could put ourselves on a financially sound path without
destroying the country.
We can do that. We really can do that. But it will take belt-
tightening in every aspect of our government, and everybody should
share equally in the belt-tightening, not just a few, not just
veterans, military people who have served 20 years, and disabled
veterans having their retirement cut, as this legislation does. It
needs to be something where everybody participates in tightening the
belt. We could get the country on a sound path.
But I want to register again--and I am going to continue to talk
about this because I think it leads to a false impression. It leads to
the impression we have more money than we have. You cannot use Social
Security's money, Medicare's money to fund ObamaCare, the Defense
Department or nondefense discretionary spending. It is not possible to
use that money twice.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Remembering Erika Robinson
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, over the weekend, the State of
Connecticut and the country and the world commemorated with grief and
continued pain the first year anniversary of the tragic massacre in
Newtown.
On the morning of Saturday--1 year after the Newtown tragedy--I
attended a church service, a beautiful, moving, powerful celebration of
faith at the St. Rose of Lima Church, whose pastor, Monsignor Robert
Weiss, has been such a great friend to so many in the community and
such a source of strength and comfort.
Later in the weekend, I visited with the family of Erika Robinson of
West Haven, Connecticut, who was shot and killed at a nightclub in New
Haven on October 26. This seemingly random act of violence left Erika
dead and five other individuals injured by gunfire.
I have spent months and have been grateful for the experience with
the families of those victims in Newtown. I was equally grateful to
spend this time with Erika's family--Celeste and Greg Fulcher--at their
home, and I want to thank them for welcoming me to their home on that
day.
Erika Robinson was only 26 years old when she became a victim of gun
violence. She clearly was a person full of joy and life and goodness
for all of her 26 years and including the day she perished.
She was building a business, a clothing line. As her business grew, a
local store started selling that line of clothing. Those who knew her
described her as hard working and driven.
She was compassionate. Most recently, she released a special
collection in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
She had enormous potential. She did everything right. She played by
the rules. She stayed out of trouble, and she had the support of her
two loving parents.
She was on track to fulfill the American dream, and now her life,
tragically, has been reduced to a statistic, unless we make sure it is
more than a statistic and that we work and fight to make her legacy one
of helping to protect others, helping to prevent gun violence that
takes victims like her who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong
time, as she was that night in New Haven, when a shooter who was
illegally in possession of a firearm--in fact, apparently on bail--
turned to take as a victim someone else in the crowd that evening in
the nightclub, and she became a victim that night inadvertently,
unintentionally, and five others were wounded.
I have her picture here. Erika was more than a statistic. She was a
person. Part of her clothing line was this small card she fashioned
herself:
It's so regular for us to say ``You only live once'', but
do you deeply understand that it's real. What I'm trying to
say is be fearless. Do things you always wanted to do. Never
let anyone hold you back. Enjoy this thing we call life while
we can. People going to talk regardless, so be you!
Forever, Erika Robinson.
May that legacy be forever. May that legacy be with us forever and
inspire us to work as we have done on behalf of the families of Newtown
and as we should be doing on behalf of the 10,000 other victims of gun
violence since Newtown.
The victims are not only the victims who perished among those 10,000,
they are others who have been injured, such as the 5 who were injured
that night when the shooter at that nightclub in New Haven was aiming
for someone else and sprayed gunfire that killed Erika, took her as a
casualty but also injured others severely and traumatized countless
others who saw or watched or heard what went on in that nightclub that
night, an establishment that was legally licensed by the State of
Connecticut, legally licensed to entertain people and charge for them
being there, an establishment that was the last place Erika Robinson
knew.
Such a promising young woman at the wrong place at the wrong time, a
woman who could have contributed so much to New Haven, to Connecticut,
to our country. This was a tragic loss for her family that continues to
honor her life with courage and strength and a tragic loss for all of
us and for the thousands of people who came to her funeral because she
had already, in those young 26 years, touched so many lives.
We owe it to her and to her family that her legacy will be one of
protecting others such as she, protecting others across America
regardless of the neighborhood or the place in that neighborhood,
whether it is downtown New Haven, an urban area, or Newtown, a suburban
neighborhood. It should not matter where gun violence is a threat. We
should eradicate it everywhere. It should not matter who may be the
victim of gun violence, what her background may be, her race, religion,
anything about her.
Every human being, every person in the United States of America is
deserving of protection that our society failed to give this young
woman. We do a great disservice to our Nation when we fail to honor
those individuals who may not be in the headlines, who may not be from
neighborhoods that we know but others that are unfamiliar to us. We owe
it to ourselves, not just to Erika and her family but to ourselves as a
nation to do better and to make America safer. She deserved better from
the greatest country in the history of the world. We as citizens of
that country deserve better and have an obligation to do better. So we
will, I hope, leave a legacy for her in her name that speaks to a
safer, better America.
I yield the floor.
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