[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 15, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2193-S2199]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2016

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate the 
message from the House requesting a conference on S. Con. Res. 11, the 
budget resolution.
  The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message 
from the House of Representatives:

       Resolved, That the House insist upon its amendment to the 
     resolution (S. Con. Res. 11) entitled ``Concurrent resolution 
     setting forth the congressional budget for the United States 
     Government for fiscal year 2016 and setting forth the 
     appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2017 through 
     2025.'', and ask a conference with the Senate on the 
     disagreeing votes of the two Houses thereon.
       Ordered, That Mr. Tom Price of Georgia, Mr. Rokita, Mr. 
     Diaz-Balart, Mrs. Black, Mr. Moolenaar, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. 
     Yarmuth, and Ms. Moore be the managers of the conference on 
     the part of the House.

  Mr. ENZI. I move to disagree in the House amendment, agree to the 
request by the House for a conference, and authorize the Presiding 
Officer to appoint conferees.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is pending.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to make some comments about the 
budget and the process.
  Last month, the Senate Budget Committee took an important first step 
in helping to change the way we do business in Washington by reporting 
out a balanced budget. This is crucial as we begin to restore the trust 
of the American people.
  This week, we will take the next step and start to work on a joint 
balanced budget resolution with our colleagues in the House that will 
expand America's economy and increase opportunities for hard-working 
families. A balanced budget approved by Congress will help make the 
government live within its means and set spending limits for our 
Nation. A balanced budget will also boost the Nation's economic output 
by more than $500 billion over the next 10 years. That is according to 
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
  Why the urgency? Hard-working families are fed up with the 
President's spend-now-pay-later policy and are closely following our 
efforts to produce a balanced budget. Senate Democrats could only 
muster two budgets in 8 years, and we will soon have one after only 4 
months. It is time to show taxpayers that Congress is committed to a 
balanced budget to make our government more effective and accountable, 
but we are running out of time.
  Recent media reports note that the lawmakers in 27 States have passed 
applications for a constitutional convention to approve a balanced 
budget amendment. I have to add that there are new applications to do 
that same amendment in nine other States, and they are close behind.
  Now, if just seven of those nine States approve moving forward on the 
balanced budget issue, it would bring the number of applications to 34 
States. This would mean the two-thirds requirement under Article V of 
the Constitution would force Congress to take action. It is no wonder 
hard-working taxpayers across the country are feeling anxious.
  Federal revenues have hit record highs. Yet we are on track to 
overspend by nearly $1 trillion a year. I think we are at the $560 
billion level of overspending this year.
  How much does Congress get to make decisions on? Congress spends 
about $4 trillion a year, but only gets to make decisions on $1\1/10\ 
trillion. Now, if we overspend by over $500 billion, we are spending 
half more than what we take in. No family can exist very long by 
spending half more than they take in year after year after year.
  We looked at the President's budget and the President increases taxes 
by $2\1/10\ trillion and still gets a wider and wider and wider gap of 
overspending as time goes by to that trillion-dollar mark out there in 
10 years.
  Just this week, headlines around the country reported: ``Budget 
Deficit in U.S. Widens as Spending Exceeds Record Revenue.''
  On Monday, the Treasury Department reported that spending by the 
Federal Government exceeded its revenue by more than $439 billion from 
October through March, which is $26 billion more compared to the same 
period last year. In fact, CBO is forecasting that for March our Nation 
spent more than $44 billion, up 19 percent from last year. We are 
getting more money, and we are spending more money.
  American taxpayers understand we overspend. The more we overspend, 
the more debt we owe, and the more debt our children and grandchildren 
will owe. In fact, we have done this so consistently that it is not 
just our grandchildren and our children who are faced with the crisis, 
it is us as well--everybody in America.
  I mentioned that we get to make decisions on $1\1/10\ trillion 
dollars a year, which is $1,100 billion. If anybody knows how big $1 
billion is, they know

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how big $1,100 billion is. But that is all we get to make decisions on.
  The amount of interest we paid last year was $235 billion. Interest 
doesn't buy you a thing, but we spent $235 billion on interest. Now, 
that is pretty close to 1 percent for the fee for that borrowing. So if 
$235 billion is 1 percent interest, what would the normal 5 percent 
cost? Every single dime we get to make a decision on. That means no 
defense, no education, no HELP. Everything will be by the wayside just 
so we can pay the interest on our debt. That is why we have to be 
concerned about the overspending that is happening.
  American taxpayers understand that the more we overspend, the more 
debt we owe and the more debt our children and grandchildren owe. If 
that tax rate goes up, we will soon be responsible for paying off that 
debt at the expense of everything else America expects. This is why 
Republicans in Congress are focused on passing a balanced budget that 
will ensure that Washington will once again live within its means, just 
like hard-working families do every day.
  Now, we don't get that balance for 10 years, but it moves toward that 
goal every year. Ten years is too long. For next year's budget, we are 
going to have to figure out better things to do to get it back into a 
framework where our interest will not exceed our expenditures. That is 
the interest exceeding the expenditures, not the revenue, and again we 
had a record revenue. That is why we are focused on passing a balanced 
budget, just like hard-working families do every day.
  What does the Senate-passed budget do? Well, here is what it does: It 
balances the budget in 10 years with no tax hikes. It protects our most 
vulnerable citizens. It strengthens the national defense. It improves 
job growth and opportunity for hard-working families. It slows the rate 
of spending growth.
  Now, it doesn't recede the spending growth, it slows the spending 
growth. That is the best we have ever been able to do in Washington. 
When we talk about a cut in Washington, what we are talking about is 
giving them less than what they asked for, not less than what they 
have.
  It preserves Social Security by reducing spending in other areas to 
fully offset Social Security's rising deficit and encourages our 
Nation's leaders to begin a bipartisan, bicameral discussion on how to 
protect Social Security and avoid the across-the-board Social Security 
benefit cuts that will occur later under the law unless we take action, 
but that is something that has to be done jointly. There would be too 
much blame otherwise, and as far as the budget, the reason we have to 
preserve Social Security by reducing spending in other areas to offset 
Social Security is because we are not allowed to do anything with 
Social Security in the budget.
  This budget will also protect our seniors by safeguarding Medicare 
from insolvency and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund by 5 
years. It ensures Medicare savings in the President's health care law 
and makes sure those savings are dedicated to Medicare. If it comes 
from Medicare, it ought to go back to Medicare instead of seeing it go 
to more overspending on new programs that are outside of Medicare.
  Our balanced budget continues funding for the Children's Health 
Insurance Program and creates a new program based on CHIP to serve low-
income, working-age, able-bodied adults and children who are eligible 
for Medicaid.
  It increases State flexibility in designing benefits and 
administering Medicaid Programs to encourage efficiency and reduce 
wasteful spending, and it provides stable and predictable funding so 
long-term services and support are sustainable both for the Federal 
Government and the States.
  As the Senate and House begin budget negotiations next week, it is 
worth noting that the strong economic growth a balanced budget can 
provide will serve as the foundation for helping all Americans grow and 
prosper.
  One of the goals of a Republican balanced budget is to make our 
government more efficient, more effective, and more accountable. If 
Congress does its job, we can have some flexibility and eliminate what 
is not working, starting with the worst first, and then we can 
eliminate and streamline what is left.
  The reason I emphasized ``the worst first'' is because one of the 
things we talk about constantly is the need to prevent the sequester. 
In some cases, it is absolutely essential to prevent a sequester, but 
the sequester should have been done in the efficient way of eliminating 
the worst first. Instead, there was a memo that went out that said: 
Make it hurt. That should never happen in America. That is why we saw 
some of the decisions that came down that seemed pretty ridiculous.
  One of the decisions that affected Wyoming was--I hope everybody will 
come and see the Grand Tetons--marvelous mountains that look like part 
of the Alps were transplanted over there and made a little bit taller. 
A lot of people like to stop and take pictures there regardless of the 
season--whether it is snow covered or the aspens are golden in the 
foreground or whether everything is lush and green, and, of course, you 
see wildlife all through that valley. Naturally, people like to stop 
and take pictures.
  Well, a bunch of signs were printed up that said you cannot use the 
turnouts. A bunch of barricades were bought so you could not pull onto 
the turnout, and the sign said it would be illegal to park along the 
highway.
  Where did the money come from for the barricades? Where did the money 
come for the signs that said we could not use the parking lots to take 
pictures? Well, I called to find out whose brilliant idea that was and 
why parking lots would be closed, and I was told that there would not 
be any garbage pickup. I suggested they just remove the garbage cans.
  When people in Wyoming and across the Nation visit a national park, 
they can haul their garbage another 20 miles before they throw it out. 
That way the beautiful vista could still be photographed instead of 
people still parking along the highways to take those pictures and then 
getting ticketed. That is just one small example of cutting the most 
important first instead of the worst first. I am sure there are 
examples in every State.
  It didn't just happen with facilities like that. The people at Head 
Start came to see me and said they got a 7.5-percent cut in the 
sequester. It was supposed to be 2.3 percent.
  How did it get to 7.5 percent? After checking into it, it appears the 
Washington bureaucracy decided to keep more than their share of the 
money instead giving it to the kids across America who were supposed to 
have it. It did get restored, but the discouraging part was that when I 
asked the people who talked to me before how things were going, they 
said: Well, we got the extra money, but in order to meet the employer 
requirements in Wyoming for ObamaCare, we had to spend all of that 
money, so none of the kids happened to go back to Head Start. That was 
very disappointing. That is not the way to run a government and it is 
not the way to run a business. It should never have happened.
  We need a budget that can eliminate waste and streamline what is left 
and start with the worst first.
  Of course, another of my suggestions is that we have a biannual 
budget. Mr. President, $1,100 billion is too much money to look at in 1 
year. Twelve bills to allocate that money to the different agencies are 
too many bills for us to handle in 1 year, particularly if they are 
going to get scrutiny.
  I suggested we write the number of bills that we do and separate them 
into two packages of six and that we do the six tough ones right after 
the election, because we have a little more appetite for doing them 
then, and the six easy ones just before an election. Then we would be 
able to get all 12 of them and be able to scrutinize all 12 of them.
  Why is that important? Well, in going through this budget process--
and like I said, I only had about 8 weeks to start to put the budget 
together--one of the things I discovered was that we have a whole bunch 
of programs that are out of authorization. The ability to spend for 
them has expired, but that doesn't stop us from spending on them. It 
should at least constrain us a little bit.
  Some of those programs go back to 1983. They expired in 1983, 1987, 
and on up to the present day. How many of them? Two hundred and sixty 
programs. There were 260 programs that we haven't looked at to see if 
we ought to continue to spend money on them or

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if we ought to revise how we have been spending the money. If they have 
expired--most of them had been in existence for 6 years before they 
expired, and in those 6 years, we should have been able to find if 
there were any flaws or changes. Hopefully, there was somebody who was 
looking out for it and found some efficiencies that helped with the 
spending.

  So there were 260 programs. Do we know how much that amounts to that 
we are still spending and there is no authority to spend? It is $293 
billion a year. That is a year. Usually, when we talk about the budget 
we are talking about over 10 years. So that would only be $29 billion a 
year if it were over 10 years, but it is not. It is $293 billion a year 
of expired authorizations, expired permissions to spend money. We have 
to get that corrected as well.
  One of the ways we can do that is through a biennial budget, so that 
we are looking at half of them in a year instead of everything the 
government does every year. The dollars have gotten so big that we 
can't get through them efficiently, effectively, and scrutinizing them 
as good accounting in a year.
  There is one exception on that, which is that we look at defense 
every year. Defense is the most important constitutional requirement 
given to this body. So we would continue to do that each year. 
Incidentally, defense is the one authorization that is not out of 
authorization, and that is because we do it every year. I don't know 
how many decades we have done the authorization--the permission for 
spending--for defense.
  Another troubling situation I discovered through this process was 
that there are some items that are not authorized that were in defense 
that we are spending money on anyway. I get comments from the people on 
the committee that looks over defense saying: How can they spend that 
money when we just did an authorization that said no, that is not one 
of the authorized items? So there are some problems we need to 
definitely work on with budgets. That is what we have done while 
putting this budget together, in trying to eliminate some of the 
inconsistencies we have, but we have not touched that $293 billion in 
unauthorized spending.
  So when people say we need more money for the nondefense items, I 
want them to take a look at that $293 billion and see if they can't 
find $29 billion, $90 billion, whatever, out of $293 billion that they 
think might be more effectively spent in a different way.
  I know when I came to Congress there were 119 preschool children's 
programs. Everybody has ideas for preschool programs, and they are good 
ideas. We know that if we teach kids better before they go to school, 
they do better in school, there are fewer dropouts, there is less 
crime, and the whole world is better.
  There were 119 programs. Senator Kennedy and I worked on that, and we 
got it down to 69 programs. The ones we got rid of are the ones that 
were under our jurisdiction. So that left a whole bunch more. In the 
meantime, I have been able to work that down to 35 programs. And in the 
child care grant program last year, I got an amendment passed--it was 
one of 14 amendments that we considered--which required that those 35 
go down to just 5 and that all 5 be put under 1 department. I am hoping 
that is what the administration is doing. That would save enough money 
to fund the truly preschool education programs really well, and that is 
what we need to do. There is a lot of money right there.
  So if Congress does its job, we can have some flexibility and 
eliminate what isn't working, starting with the worst first, and then 
we can eliminate waste and streamline what is left. But to do this, 
first, Congress must do what it has not done in the past 8 years. It 
has to scrutinize every dollar for which they have a responsibility. If 
government programs are not delivering results, they should be 
improved, and if they are not needed, they should be eliminated. It is 
time to prioritize and demand results from our government programs. 
When these programs are reauthorized, I am hoping there is a matrix in 
there that says this is what we plan to do and this is how we will know 
if we got it done. Then we will have an easy evaluation of whether they 
are getting their job done. That is mostly what happens in the private 
sector, and it is an efficient way of doing it in the public sector as 
well.
  I have made enough speeches about efficiency in government that I had 
someone come up to me and say: I hate to say this, but the job I am 
doing isn't worth having anybody do. He said: I am reluctant to mention 
it because if they eliminate that job, I am probably fired. Well, I 
took his suggestion, and I spoke to the right people and that job got 
eliminated, and he got promoted. That is what has to happen. We have to 
take the people who are innovative in government, who are figuring out 
ways to do things better and more efficiently and more effectively and 
move them into the positions where they can really do the job.
  So that is what I am counting on. In the coming weeks, hard-working 
taxpayers will get to see something they have not had the chance to 
experience in the last 8 years, and that is an open and transparent 
legislative process. We are starting that process today with the 
appointment of the conferees for the conference committees, and we will 
have amendments this afternoon. Members of Congress from both the House 
and the Senate will come together as part of the Senate-House budget 
committee to create a balanced budget that will boost our Nation's 
economic output and help restore the promise of a government that is 
more effective and that will put more people to work.
  A balanced budget will allow Americans to spend more time working 
hard to grow their businesses or to advance their jobs, instead of 
worrying about taxes and inefficient and ineffective regulations. Most 
importantly, it means every American who wants to find a good-paying 
job and a fulfilling career has the opportunity to do just that.
  I look forward to joining my colleagues in both the Senate and the 
House--Republicans and Democrats--as we take this next step to deliver 
a government that is more accountable to each and every American.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me applaud Senator Enzi and his staff 
for their very hard work.
  I certainly agree with Senator Enzi that we need a government that is 
accountable, that we need to get rid of waste in government, and that 
we need to get rid of duplicative programs. I don't think there is any 
debate on that. I look forward to working with Senator Enzi and others 
to make that happen. However, the Republican budget is far, far more 
than that.
  Today, I rise in strong opposition to the motion to go to conference 
on the budget resolution.
  The budget resolution the Senate passed on March 27 moves this 
country in exactly the wrong direction, and the House budget 
resolution, in many respects, is even worse. The Federal budget is more 
than just a long list of numbers, although God knows there is a long 
list of numbers in the budget. The Federal budget is about our national 
priorities and about our values. It is about how we assess the problems 
facing our country, of which there are many--and I am not sure Senator 
Enzi would disagree with me if I laid it out--and how we go forward in 
addressing the problems on which there is a fundamental divide. That is 
what the Senate is now dealing with. What are the problems facing our 
country and how do we move forward?
  Let me begin by saying that despite the modest gains of the 
Affordable Care Act, there remain in this country 35 million Americans 
who have no health insurance. That means that when they get sick, they 
may not be able to go to the doctor or they may end up going to the 
emergency room at very high cost.
  I have spoken with doctors all over this country who tell me that 
when people don't have health insurance, because they delay going to 
the doctor, sometimes by the time they go into the doctor's office, it 
is too late. The doctor says: Why didn't you come in here 6 months ago 
when you noticed your symptoms? And they say: I don't have any health 
insurance; I couldn't afford it. So we are losing tens of thousands of 
people every single year who die--die--or become much sicker than they 
should be because they don't have health insurance.
  The United States remains the only major country on Earth that 
doesn't

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guarantee health care to all people. Thirty-five million Americans have 
no health insurance. What is the Republican solution to this problem? 
Well, it is a brilliant idea. They are going to end the Affordable Care 
Act and make $440 billion worth of cuts to Medicaid, which will result 
in 27 million Americans losing their health insurance on top of the 35 
million we already have uninsured.
  I know the newspapers are not particularly interested in it. We won't 
see it on network TV. That is the reality. They don't deny it. There 
are 16 million people covered by the Affordable Care Act who would lose 
their health insurance because this bill ends it. Then, a $440 billion 
cut to Medicaid, and another 11 million gone. Sixteen plus 11 is 27 
million Americans. What is the idea? What happens to those people? How 
many of them die? How many of them suffer? It is not an issue for them. 
They are working on something. They have been working on something for 
about 15 years for health care. If it hasn't happened in 16 years, it 
isn't going to happen.
  That is what is in this budget.
  This budget denies over 2.3 million young adults the right to stay on 
their parents' health insurance plan until the age of 26. We used to 
have this absurd situation. My wife and I have health insurance to 
cover our kids, but when they turn 18, they are not on our plan. It is 
gone. Right now, young people are on the plan until they are 26. It is 
gone under this Republican budget.
  We finally overcame a situation that is so vulgar it is hard to 
imagine that it existed in America, and that is that people who have 
serious illnesses such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes would walk 
into an insurance office and say: I need insurance. The insurance 
company would say: Oh, we can't cover you for your diabetes, your heart 
disease, your cancer because it is a preexisting condition and we don't 
want to pay out all of that money if it recurs.
  Think about that, how crazy that is. What do people want insurance 
for? They want insurance to cover their needs. If I had breast cancer 
or colon cancer 5 years ago, sure, I want to make sure my insurance 
company covers that. It is a preexisting condition. Under the 
Affordable Care Act, we did away with that discrimination. That would 
come back. So all Americans who have serious health illnesses: Know 
that if what they put into this budget goes into effect, insurance 
companies can reject you.
  Not only has this Republican budget ended the Affordable Care Act and 
made $440 billion in cuts to Medicaid, it would also increase 
prescription drug prices for 4 million seniors and persons with 
disabilities who are on Medicare Part D by reopening the doughnut hole. 
That means that at a time when senior poverty is increasing and so many 
seniors in Vermont--I speak to them all the time and I suspect it is 
the same in Wyoming or maybe not--are saying: I am living on $13,000, 
$14,000 a year; I have to heat my home in the winter--if you live in 
Vermont, you do--I have to buy food; I have to pay for medicine; I 
can't do it all. So we closed the so-called doughnut hole, which means 
that seniors would not have to pay out-of-pocket for their prescription 
drugs. The Republican budget reopens the hole. All over this country, 
seniors will be paying more for their prescription drugs.
  The Republican budget not only undertakes a vast attack on health 
care in this country, which will decimate life for millions of people, 
but then on another issue of great consequence, education, it is 
equally bad.
  A couple of months ago in my State of Vermont I held three townhall 
meetings at colleges and universities in the State to talk to young 
people about the cost of college and about student debt. In Vermont--
and I suspect in the other 49 States as well--we have families who are 
struggling to afford to send their kids to college, and then we have 
others who are leaving college terribly deep in debt. Just yesterday, I 
was flying here from Burlington, VT, and I sat next to a woman who said 
her six kids went to college and graduate school, and all of them are 
deeply in debt.
  So clearly, what a sensible budget does is two things. It says, 
first, how do we make college affordable so that young people will be 
able to get a higher education; and second of all, when they graduate, 
how do we lower student debt, which is today so oppressive?
  The Republican budget does exactly the opposite. What the Republican 
budget does is cut $90 billion over 10 years in Pell grants. Pell 
grants are the major Federal program making it possible for low-income 
and working-class families to get grants to go to college. This would 
increase the cost of college education to more than 8 million 
Americans. Think about it. Our job is to lower the cost of college; 
this budget increases it.
  At a time when working-class families in Vermont and all over this 
country are having a hard time finding good quality, affordable 
preschool childcare, the Republican budget makes significant cuts in 
Head Start which means that 110,000 fewer children would be able to 
enroll in that program. Under the Republican budget, 1.9 million fewer 
students would receive the academic health they need to succeed in 
school by cutting about $12 billion in cuts to the title I education 
program. Dropout rates in low-income communities all over this country 
for high school kids are atrocious. The Republican budget cuts 
significantly the funding that we put into public schools in low-income 
communities.
  At a time when the middle class is disappearing and we have more 
people living in poverty today than at almost any time in modern 
American history, today there are millions of families who are 
struggling to put food on the table. I know maybe on Capitol Hill 
people don't know that, but that is a reality. People are making 9 or 
10 bucks an hour. They have a few kids. They are having a very 
difficult time affording food--basic nutrition. We have an estimated 40 
million people that are what they call ``food insecure.'' That means 
people who on any given week, any given month, depending on what is 
happening, have a hard time feeding their families. The Republican 
budget would make massive cuts in nutrition programs in this country 
by, among other things, cutting $10 billion to the Women, Infants and 
Children Program over the next decade.
  I honestly have a hard time hearing people talk about family values 
and how much they love families and children, and you have a program 
which has done a really good job in terms of prenatal care for pregnant 
woman, making sure they get the health care and the nutrition they 
need, making sure their babies get the care they need. Who really 
thinks we should cut these programs? What kind of Nation are we or what 
kind of Senate are we that people would vote to cut these programs--not 
to mention massive cuts in the food stamp program.
  But in the midst of all of these devastating cuts in health care, 
education, and nutrition that impacts working families, the Republican 
budget does something else which is quite incredible. And I suspect 
that people who are listening are saying: Bernie Sanders is being 
partisan; he is not telling the truth; it really can't be this bad. One 
of the problems we have is convincing people this is reality. This is 
reality. This is the Republican budget. I know the media doesn't write 
about it much, but that is what it is. In addition to making cuts to 
health care, nutrition, education, other programs, what else do they 
do?
  At a time when the wealthiest 400 Americans--400 Americans--paid a 
tax rate of 16.7 percent in 2012, at a time when hedge fund managers 
pay a lower effective tax rate than working families, truckdrivers, and 
nurses, what the Republican budget does based on an amendment they did 
abolishes the estate tax. The estate tax provides a $269 billion tax 
break. For whom? For the middle class? Good. Low-income people? That is 
great. Not so. This repeal of the estate tax applies to the 
wealthiest--not 1 percent, but the top two-tenths of 1 percent. 
Republicans passed a tax proposal which impacts the top two-tenths of 1 
percent and leaves nothing for 99.8 percent of Americans. Cut 
education, cut health care, cut nutrition, and give the tax breaks to 
billionaires. By repealing the estate tax, the average tax breaks for 
multimillionaires and billionaires would be about $3 million.
  When you go around Vermont and you go around America, do people say: 
Hey, what we really need, what our

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major priority is, is not to feed the hungry, not to make college 
affordable, not to create jobs, but to give a tax break to 
billionaires? That is in their budget.
  Not only do they give a huge tax break to the wealthy--what else do 
they do? They raise taxes on low-income and working families--folks who 
do not make a whole lot of campaign contributions. What the Republican 
budget does is increase taxes by not extending the benefits we put into 
the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. It allows those 
additional benefits to expire, which means that low-income and 
moderate-income families will pay more in taxes.
  In fact, we estimate that tax hike for low-income and middle-income 
families will be about $900 apiece for more than 13 million families. 
Raise taxes to low- and moderate-income families and lower taxes for 
billionaires. Anybody believe those are the priorities that should be 
in a budget for the American people?
  I will have more to say about this budget later. But the Republican 
budget does not address the significant problems facing America: how we 
create the millions of jobs we need, how we raise the minimum wage to a 
living wage, how we address pay equity so women workers don't make 78 
cents on the dollar compared to men, how we rebuild our crumbling 
infrastructure. It doesn't address any of those issues. But what it 
does is make a bad situation worse. I would hope that my colleagues 
would have the courage to stand up to Wall Street, to stand up to the 
big money interests, and start defending the working families of this 
country and vote no on this resolution.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, as part of this discussion, I want to 
mention something that was very significant that happened last night. 
It happened after the press went to bed, I think, but a very important 
thing, and that is a thing called the doc fix passed. The SGR passed 
this body last night in a very bipartisan way, after a series of 
amendments that were open floor amendments. That is what is supposed to 
happen around here.
  One of the reasons I mention that is, I have always said if you can't 
see a doctor, you don't have insurance at all. With the way we have 
been setting up Medicare payments for doctors, we have been driving 
them out of the profession. We have been eliminating doctors. We have 
been having doctors tell their kids don't become a doctor, because of 
what Congress is doing, holding them hostage every 6 months. That got 
taken care of last night.
  I don't know, we have been doing that for, I think, about 18 years, 
just 1 fix at a time. So it is nice that we are finally able to make 
that permanent.
  I mentioned that was Medicare. This is the first budget the 
Republicans have gotten to participate in in many years, but the 
Democrats got to work on the health care bill, and that was part of 
their budget. In fact, it was part of the reconciliation in the budget, 
which is a special way of passing something without 60 votes. In that 
budget they took $714 billion from Medicare, and they didn't put it 
into Medicare. There were just some comments about how the budget I 
worked on has a little over $400 million of Medicare savings. That 
Medicare savings is what the President suggested should be done in 
Medicare savings, and we put that Medicare savings back into Medicare. 
That is the only way you can save the fund.
  So we have taken into consideration a lot of these issues. The cost 
of college--I have been through numerous hearings in the Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I used to be chairman of the 
committee and I have been ranking member of the committee, and I 
expired my time as ranking member on that committee, but we did a lot 
of hearings on the cost of college. Probably the biggest suggestion I 
can have for people living in the East is send your kids West.
  I was checking to see why more people couldn't get into community 
college on the east coast. I am not talking about the big colleges, 
which also have a very big problem on the number of students they can 
take and are very selective in what they take, but I found out that 
most of the community colleges were filled out here. Consequently, some 
for-profit colleges were able to charge considerably more than 
community college and we looked into ways to eliminate that practice. 
Of course, the way it got eliminated, if you did that to the public 
colleges as well, we would put them out of business. But I would 
mention that it is less expensive for an out-of-State student to go to 
the University of Wyoming or one of our community colleges than it is 
to get in-State tuition in most of the places in the United States.
  There was a mention of estate tax. That is a recommendation that was 
put in as a deficit-neutral measure. I am not sure where the raising 
the taxes on the poor comes from, except for the comment that the 
extensions that we do annually on that weren't in there. There is a 
good reason why those aren't in there. We have provided a 
reconciliation instruction that would allow for tax reform, although 
the chairman of the committee said we are going to do that in a 
bipartisan way.
  We are going to have tax reform that will take care of fairness and 
simplicity and accountability in our tax system. This is a particularly 
important time to talk about that. Today is tax day, and I hope 
everybody in America has or will file their taxes today. I know there 
has been some difficulty getting through on the lines to be able to 
talk to the IRS about tax problems, and I want to chastise the IRS a 
little bit for that. They are trying to show they need more money, 
instead of allocating personnel to where they are really needed. If 
they answer more questions right now, they don't have as many things 
they have to do later, and they will collect more money than if they 
don't answer those questions. The proper committee needs to take a look 
at whether they have adequate revenue to do their job, but again, there 
are inefficiencies there. They are talking about needing more money 
because when they audit, they are able to get $4 to $6 for every dollar 
they spend. They should be embarrassed. Public auditors in a company 
expect to get $15 to $20 per dollar that they audit. They have got to 
come up with a better selection procedure for who needs to be audited, 
and go after the big bucks. There are a number of things the IRS ought 
to do.
  When I first came to Washington, I tried to talk to different 
agencies about inefficiencies they had. I was a freshman, so I had a 
lot of time to do some of those things. One of the agencies I wanted to 
look at as an accountant was the IRS. As a result of some of my 
meetings at the IRS, we had some hearings here about being taxpayer 
friendly. People might recall that the people who served as witnesses 
in the past had to be voice-modulated behind screens. That should not 
happen in America. We should have a tax system that people can comply 
with without the gestapo kinds of tactics that are sometimes used.
  So we need to do something to make our tax system more efficient, 
more accountable, and fairer. I am convinced that Senator Hatch and 
Senator Wyden, the chairman and the ranking member of the committee, 
are going to do some things on taxes, and I think the American people 
will like it. They are past due. They can end those complications and 
get more accountability, which will make the IRS's job a lot easier and 
also make it better for hard-working taxpayers in America.
  So there are a lot of things a budget can do. I am hoping we will do 
them.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me just pick up on a couple of the 
points my friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, made. The Republicans 
often say, and Senator Enzi said it now, that Democrats cut $714 
billion from Medicare. To the best of my knowledge, not one penny 
involved in those cuts cut any benefits to the American people.
  What the Affordable Care Act attempted to do--and maybe we made some 
progress, as Senator Enzi pointed out, last night with the so-called 
doc fix--is to make Medicare more efficient. What is wrong with that? 
What is wrong with saving money? What the American people want us to do 
is make

[[Page S2198]]

programs more efficient. In fact, Senator Enzi was talking about that a 
moment ago. He is right. But the idea, the implication, that those cuts 
resulted in benefit cuts is not accurate.
  Furthermore, what some of that money--those savings--went to is 
filling, plugging the doughnut hole so that seniors would not have to 
pay money out of their own pockets for prescription drugs.
  So if you could save money in a bureaucracy--and God knows the U.S. 
health care system is the most wasteful and bureaucratic of any in the 
world--if we can make the system more efficient, save money, put that 
money into helping seniors afford prescription drugs, what is the 
problem with that? I do not think so.
  Senator Enzi talked about the IRS and people having difficulty making 
connections, which is clearly not right. He is right. He also 
mentioned, quite correctly, that for every dollar we invest in various 
parts of the IRS which do audits, we can make--what was that, $4 to $6? 
I think that is a pretty good investment. Most business people would 
say: All right, I can get $4 to $6 for every dollar that I invest. 
Let's do it.
  I look forward to working with Senator Enzi and other Republicans to, 
in fact, do just that. We can argue about the Tax Code, and we will. 
But I think we don't argue that when people owe it, they should pay it. 
Right. We should change it if we do not like it.
  So if we can invest a dollar into the IRS and get $6 to $4 back, I 
think that is a pretty good investment. Senator Enzi was right in 
saying that last night we passed a pretty good piece of legislation. 
Not perfect by any means. I had some serious concerns about it. I voted 
for it. One of the reasons I voted for it is it extended for another 2 
years a program that I worked very hard on--that is, the Federally 
Qualified Community Health Center Program which is playing a huge role 
in providing health care and dental care and low-cost prescriptions 
drugs and mental health counseling to many millions of Americans in all 
of our 50 States. We got a significant increase. I fought very hard for 
a significant increase in that program as part of the Affordable Care 
Act that was going to expire.
  As a result of yesterday's legislation, in addition to the doc fix, 
we have extended--and I see Senator Blunt here, who has been active in 
that as well--we were able to extend for another 2 years funding for 
the Community Health Center Program, something that I think was 
important.
  Senator Enzi was right. I think that is a step forward. But that 
should not be confused with the budget. The Republican budget is an 
unmitigated disaster--tax breaks for billionaires, cuts in programs 
that Americans desperately need, raising taxes for low-income working 
families.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator has 1 minute remaining.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield back all time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has been yielded back.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to disagree in the House 
amendment, agree to the request by the House for a conference, and 
authorize the Presiding Officer to appoint conferees.
  Mr. TESTER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby), 
and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 54, nays 43, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 145 Leg.]

                                YEAS--54

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Warner
     Wicker

                                NAYS--43

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Cruz
     Shelby
     Vitter
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


              150th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Death

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, today we honor the 150th anniversary of 
Abraham Lincoln's death. We all know the tragic story: On the evening 
of April 14, 1865, the 4-year anniversary of the beginning of the Civil 
War and just days after its end at Appomattox, President Lincoln was 
shot while attending the theater. The next morning, his last, labored 
breathing ceased.
  His fanatically unreconciled assassin was enraged by Lincoln's 
achievements: his saving of the Union; his emancipation of the slaves; 
his forecast that the freed slaves would soon be voting; his 
rededication of the Nation to the Declaration and to the Constitution 
in which it is embodied. Lincoln lived for these things, and he also 
died for them.
  Days earlier Lincoln's assassin, in attendance at the second 
inaugural, had ignored the reelected President's eloquent plea ``to 
finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds,'' doing so 
``with malice toward none, with charity for all.''
  A year-and-a-half earlier, dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg, 
Lincoln had said that ``history would little note nor long remember'' 
what he said. Here he was wrong--or at least falsely modest--for the 
Gettysburg Address is among the most beautiful and memorable speeches 
in history. He called upon us to ``be here dedicated to the great task 
remaining before us,'' and ``that government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.''
  His words call upon us still to take ``increased devotion'' from 
those at Gettysburg and every war since who gave ``the last full 
measure of devotion.'' Soon he would be among those honored dead, the 
final and most poignant casualty in the same war, and his death is 
another reason for us to renew our devotion to our great country.
  We should think, then, about Lincoln's message, which is like the 
message of our Nation. On the question of equality, Lincoln was as 
precise as a mathematician and as lyrical as a poet.
  Of equality and slavery, he said:

       As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This 
     expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, 
     to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

  Of equality and the Declaration, Lincoln said:

       I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to 
     include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men 
     equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that we are 
     all equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or 
     social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in 
     what respects they did consider all men created equal--equal 
     in ``certain inalienable rights, among which are life, 
     liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'' This they said, and 
     this they meant.

  Now put these propositions together. We are unequal in most respects, 
but

[[Page S2199]]

we are equal in our rights. We own ourselves, and no one else may own 
us. We own the government, and the government does not own us. We are 
entitled to our lives with the talents that God gave us. Any form of 
government that interferes with these rights is wrong.
  But in the world today are rogue nations that are growing in strength 
and violate these principles. They constitute a menace to our freedom 
and to civilization itself.
  At home, our government grows ever greater in its size, in its reach, 
and in its expense. The law is flouted increasingly by high authority. 
And our people say with increasing intensity that they mistrust and 
even fear their government. It may be for the people, but it is less 
and less ``of and by'' the people.
  On this 150th anniversary of Lincoln's death, let us be here reminded 
and dedicated to that cause for which Lincoln himself gave the last 
full measure of devotion. Let us dedicate ourselves, in Lincoln's 
words, ``to finish the work we are in,'' so that we ``may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all 
nations.''
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________