[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
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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
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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.
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