[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1210-S1216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Order of Procedure
Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come
before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks
of Senators Schatz, Whitehouse, and Hirono, the Senate resume morning
business and then stand adjourned under the previous order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the Senate is preparing to vote on
Congressman Mick Mulvaney to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
This nomination may seem like it doesn't deserve a lot of attention
because we don't hear much outside of Washington about the OMB, the
Office of Management and Budget. It is kind of a wonky, obscure office,
with fewer than 500 staff members.
At a time when there are so many looming questions about this
Republic, about this administration, it is easy to overlook the
Congressman's nomination, but it actually matters very much,
particularly at this moment, and that is because the person who
controls the budget, the person who has the final say on fiscal and
financial priorities for the administration has immense power. This
position controls the President's budget, and that means that this
person can give the green light to programs and policies across the
Federal Government or stop them in their tracks. And because he has a
long track record as a legislator, Congressman Mulvaney has already
shown what kind of decisionmaker he will be if he is in charge of the
Office of Management and Budget, OMB.
I will be blunt. His record and his ideas are worrisome. It should
concern every Senator who is worried about some of the biggest issues
facing Americans, from Social Security, to public health, to the basic,
uninterrupted operations of the government itself. So this vote is a
moment of truth. It will determine where we really stand on the issues
that shape both individual lives and our country's future.
Let me highlight just four issues to show why this person is the
wrong person to run OMB.
The first is Social Security. More than 80 years ago, President
Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. In doing so, he
created a national plan to provide economic security for American
workers. Since then, Social Security has proven to be the most
successful anti-poverty program in our history. Each year, it lifts
more than 20 million Americans, including 1 million children, out of
poverty.
It is hard to imagine a world without Social Security, but I want
everybody to understand that pre-Social Security, we had tens of
millions of Americans--more than we do now--who would be in poverty
upon retirement. So this program has actually reduced poverty among the
elderly more than any other program could possibly have accomplished.
Nowhere is Social Security more important than in Hawaii. More than
200,000 people receive Social Security benefits. For more than one in
four Hawaii seniors, Social Security is their only source of income.
And the money just isn't enough; it is about $14,000 a year. Just to
give folks an understanding of Hawaii, we are considered the second or
third most expensive housing market in the United States. We are after
New York and sometimes in second place or third place, depending on
where San Francisco is, but we are one of the most expensive places to
live in the United States. For one in four Social Security recipients,
that is all they get--$1,200 a month. Usually that will cover your
apartment. That will not cover your electricity, it won't cover your
utilities, it won't cover your food or clothing, and it won't cover
your healthcare.
Today, most working households have little or no retirement assets at
all, and many rely entirely on Social Security. This is partly because
employer-provided pensions are becoming a thing of the past. So Social
Security is more important than ever. It has become a pillar of our
retirement system
[[Page S1211]]
that continues to work well. It is a universal guaranteed source of
income that workers earn and depend on when they retire, but it is just
not enough.
I will just add that it is only in Washington, DC, where entertaining
the idea of cutting Social Security is considered moderate or
mainstream or conservative, even, or adult. I mean, there is this sense
that the way we ought to fix the challenges we have fiscally as a
country is to take it out of the hides of people who get $1,200 a month
to live.
Instead of strengthening the program, Mr. Mulvaney's ideas are very
radical. He has said he wants to systematically alter Social Security
by raising the retirement age to 70 years old. He wants to raise the
retirement age to 70 years old. This is not an obscure person being
appointed to an obscure post; this is a Member of Congress being
appointed to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget. We are
going to vote on him tomorrow, and everybody who says they are for
Social Security is about to vote for a person who wants to raise the
Social Security retirement age to 70 years old.
He has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. When he worked in the
South Carolina State Senate, he voted to declare Social Security
unconstitutional. Again, he voted to declare Social Security
unconstitutional, and I predict he will get all of the Republican
votes. And all of these folks who say they wanted to protect your
Social Security, after they put Tom Price at the head of HHS, they are
about to put someone who is dedicated to undermining the most
successful anti-poverty program in American history.
When asked in his confirmation hearing--because, look, you are a
Member of Congress; you represent a certain constituency; you have
certain views. Some people are able to sort of pivot from their role as
a legislator, as a politician, and into a role as an appointee, a
Secretary, a nominee. So when he was asked in this confirmation hearing
if he would recommend that the President break a campaign promise to
leave Social Security alone, the Congressman said that he would
recommend that the President make cuts to the program. So this isn't
something he has recanted; this is something he stands by--up until and
including through his confirmation and his service at OMB.
But why make cuts to the most successful anti-poverty program in
American history? Why would we make cuts to a program that is financed
by its own revenue stream and by law does not add $1 to the deficit?
Why would we cut benefits now just because we may have to cut them in
20 years? If we are going to change Social Security, let's do it in a
way that expands benefits for generations to come. Let's lift the cap
on taxable earnings. Let's remove the wage cap that unfairly shelters
the highest earning Americans from paying into the Social Security
trust fund that the majority of hard-working Americans do.
Here is how it works. The cap is roughly $120,000. So you pay Social
Security--almost everybody pays Social Security tax, up to $120,000 in
income. That is mostly everybody, right. But if you make $120,000, all
of that is taxed up to $120,000. If you make $70,000, it is taxed up to
$70,000. If you make $120 million in income, your first $120,000 is
taxed for Social Security purposes; everything else is taxed at zero
for Social Security purposes.
My view is that every dollar of income should be taxed for Social
Security purposes, and that does two things: First, we are going to be
in a position to increase benefits--not massively, but every little bit
counts. Second, we will be able to increase the solvency of the Social
Security trust fund to the year 2049.
Most every family has a Social Security story, whether it is a
grandmother who relies on the program's benefits to pay for groceries,
a father who suffered a debilitating injury after decades of hard work
and receives much needed Social Security disability benefits, or a
widowed mother who relies on Social Security survivors benefits to
bring up her children.
In my own home, we have three generations living together--my wife
Linda and me; our kids, Tyler and Mia; and Linda's parents, George and
Ping Kwok. George Kwok lived the American dream. He ran a chop suey
house, a Chinese restaurant in Honolulu, Kwok's Chop Suey, and worked
hard all his life to give opportunities to his kids, until his eyes
gave out. Like 200,000 seniors across Hawaii, he now relies on Social
Security--SSDI--Social Security disability.
I tell you about my family not because we are unique but because we
are not, because we are like so many families in Hawaii and across the
country. And with the number of retirees growing, we need to do
everything we can to strengthen this program, not to weaken it.
After a lifetime of hard work, seniors deserve to retire with the
dignity and the benefits they have earned. This is a promise from the
Federal Government. The current generation of Americans must keep our
promises to seniors, but given his record, I am convinced that
Congressman Mulvaney will try to do the opposite.
The second issue I am concerned about is the basic operations of
government. Whether you are a member of the military, a visitor to a
national park, or a worker looking to retire in the near future, we all
need for the government to fulfill its basic obligations. But
Congressman Mulvaney voted to default on the U.S. debt several times,
and he did it in the face of warnings from the U.S. Treasury that this
would be unprecedented and catastrophic for our economy and that it
could drive the world deep into another recession just as we were
finally recovering from the last one.
Think about how markets would react if the U.S. Government declared
that it would not make good on its financial obligations. The stock
markets would go crazy, and not in a good way. That would be terrible
for the millions of people who invest their savings in the market for
their retirement.
The Congressman has also voted several times to shut down the Federal
Government, all in the name of getting his way. I cannot emphasize
enough how dangerous his approach to government is. It is one thing as
a Member of the House Freedom Caucus, as a Member of the U.S. House of
Representatives--there are 435; you can take positions--but it doesn't
have quite the direct impact that the Office of Management and Budget
does. He has put party and partisan views over some of the most
fundamental and basic principles of our government. To close the
government, to stop paying our bills, to make people across the planet
question the full faith and credit of the United States is beyond
comprehension.
It should take a real crisis to pull Congress away from the
negotiating table and all the challenges in front of us. But it
actually wasn't a crisis that led the Congressman to vote to close our
government; it was Planned Parenthood and the ACA. While we may
disagree about the best approach on healthcare and even on reproductive
choice and women's health, those disagreements should never get in the
way of the U.S. Government going about its business. Yet Congressman
Mulvaney's actions went against that basic principle.
With respect to our Democratic institutions, the procedural violence
that was done to the U.S. Congress is hard to overstate in this case.
The idea that a faction of a party would demand concessions--and I
think we remember this--would demand concessions in exchange for
satisfying their infliction of pain on the United States is
unbelievable. And why? Because we are all Americans here. We all want
to do right by our country. So the idea that one party would be willing
to inflict terrible pain on the country, or else, was so beyond the
pale that there is no rule against it, there is no law against it. And
do you know why there is no rule and no law against it? It is because
nobody contemplated that a major political party would behave in such a
way. The assumption has always been that elected leaders would find a
better way to stand up for their strongly held beliefs than by
threatening to bring the American economy to its knees. Up until the
shutdown led by the Congressman, that had been a safe assumption.
In 2011, Congress's delay in raising the debt limit forced the
Department of Treasury to take what they call extraordinary measures to
ensure that our government could pay its bills.
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GAO estimates that this raised Treasury's borrowing costs by about $1.3
billion in fiscal year 2011. That is $1.3 billion in added government
costs just for coming close to defaulting. The Bipartisan Policy Center
projects that the full cost of that crisis to the Federal Government
alone--not to the private sector economy, just the Federal Government--
was around $20 billion over the maturity of that debt.
There is nothing conservative about defaulting on what we owe. It
cripples free markets. It is Russian roulette playing, with a bullet in
every chamber. There is nothing conservative about that.
When the government closed in 2013, we paid Federal workers to stay
home. I want everybody to understand what we ended up doing. Listen, it
wasn't their fault. These government employees are not the ones who
screwed up; it was the Congress that screwed up. We paid dedicated
Federal workers who want to do their jobs, not to do their jobs. We
forced them to stay home and paid them anyway. I defy you to find a
conservative outside of the Halls of Congress who finds that to be a
conservative proposition. It is one thing to shut down the government
for a couple of weeks and accrue the savings. I think that is inhumane,
I think that is bananas, but at least you would save the money. These
folks ended up paying all the money out and just forcing government
workers to not do their jobs. This is not the left or right; this is
upside down. We prevented Federal workers from doing their important
work, like assisting small businesses and combating terrorism.
Ultimately, the 2013 shutdown was a bad move for our economy and for
our budget. It cost us money instead of saving us money. In just the
first week, it cost the economy $1.6 billion in lost economic output,
and it cost about $160 million a day on the private sector side.
Worst of all, the Congressman has not seen the error of this. There
were a lot of Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who--in
the heat of the battle, you sort of think the other side is going to
back off and listen. We all learn lessons. We all make mistakes. There
are a lot of Republicans who went through that shutdown and said: We
never want to do that to the country again. But Congressman Mulvaney
has not seen the error of his ways. He still believes the government
shutdown was a good idea, and he said so at the confirmation hearing.
Senator McCaskill asked if he still thought the shutdown was the
right way to go about things, and he answered yes. He answered yes.
This kind of budget brinkmanship is not good for our government, to say
the least, but it is certainly a bad fit for the person running the
OMB.
The third issue I want to talk about is the Congressman's rejection
of the role of public health and science. If we look at some of the
biggest issues our country faces, it is clear that we need an OMB
Director who understands the value of science, research, and public
health. But the Congressman has said that climate change is based on
``questionable science'' and ``baseless claims.'' He has asked if we
need government-funded research at all. These are not the views we
should see from the person who directs the budget of the executive
branch.
In September of last year, Congressman Mulvaney posted a statement
about Zika on Facebook. He said:
I have received all sorts of email and Facebook comments
this week on Zika. Some people want me to pass a ``clean''
bill (which I suppose means not paying for it with spending
reductions elsewhere.) Other folks want us to fund more
research if we can find a way to pay for it.
No one has written me yet, though, to ask what might be the
best question: Do we really need government research at all?
Do we really need government funded research at all?
In his statement, he goes on to ask questions that many have asked
about what we are seeing in Brazil, as opposed to other countries
affected by Zika. But that is exactly why you do the research. It is
not for a Member of Congress to referee how much money should go to CDC
and play amateur scientist. We have expert agencies. The CDC did an
extraordinary job, not just on Zika but on Ebola. They have done
extraordinary work over the decades in keeping people safe. If he is
saying there are some scientific mysteries remaining around Zika, that
is absolutely true. That is why we need to give the CDC and the
National Institutes of Health money to try to figure this out. Those
questions are the very reasons we need government-funded research, not
an excuse to get rid of it.
I want to be clear as to why this matters so much. I am not trying to
catch him saying something that is a little off. There is a
foundational, bipartisan consensus around public health research, and
the person who has been nominated to run the Federal budget doesn't
appear to believe in that research. This isn't just out of the
political mainstream. People will die if he implements his point of
view.
Look at some of the diseases where government-funded research has had
a significant impact on saving lives: Ebola, HIV/AIDS, malaria, polio,
to name a few. We have made the advances we see today because the
government stepped in and invested in the research, and that has to
continue.
Right around the time we debated funding for Zika, I visited the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, in Atlanta to learn
more about their efforts to combat Zika, dengue, and other diseases. I
left Atlanta feeling totally confident that the CDC will help our
country with challenges like Zika. Millions of Americans are counting
on the government to maintain that confidence. But that can happen only
if CDC has the strongest funding possible so they can continue to do
their good work.
Taking money away from the Prevention and Public Health Fund would
strip the CDC and other important agencies of the funds they need to
protect our country from within and from without. That is what happened
in Congress. The legislative branch did not fully step up to the plate
and do its job in addressing Zika. Because of that, we forced the Obama
administration to pull money from the CDC to address Ebola or from
States to address other public health risks. Doing so disrupted public
health infrastructure planning across the world that we still need to
make sure that Ebola never ravages communities again.
Regardless of your side of the aisle, we can all agree this is the
one thing that government has to do; that is, to keep us physically
safe. Investing in CDC and other agencies that protect our citizens
from diseases shouldn't depend on your philosophy of government. Unless
you believe in, literally, no government, this is money well spent.
This is the kind of thing the government does. We cannot walk away from
our country's legacy of funding good research that saves lives, but
that is exactly what Congressman Mulvaney suggests we do.
He has also made deeply disturbing comments about the science behind
climate change. There can be no doubt that climate change is real, that
it is caused by humans, and that we have a responsibility to take
action. We ignore the science that shows us this at our own risk, and
it is a risk our country cannot take.
The fourth and final issue I want to touch upon is healthcare--
specifically, Medicare and Medicaid. I am a little worried that people
feel reassured because of the rhetoric they heard last year from the
President. He did reassure his voters that he was going to save
Medicare and Medicaid and protect it from cuts. He promised several
times that he wouldn't make any cuts whatsoever to Medicare and
Medicaid. But when a Senator reminded Congressman Mulvaney about this
during his confirmation hearing, he did not say he would support the
administration's promises to the American people. He said that he would
advise the President to break that promise. He said that he would
advise President Trump to break his campaign promise and change
Medicare and Medicaid. Why are we voting for this person? He said that
he would advise the President to break the promise and change Medicare,
Medicaid, and Social Security.
He wants to cut Medicaid--a program that millions of people rely
upon. More than 50 years ago, when Medicaid was created, Congress made
a really smart decision and designed the program so that if and when
healthcare costs rise or the economy starts to struggle, Medicaid would
be there for the American people, no matter what. Now the counselor to
the President says that as part of the ACA replacement plan, Medicaid
will be converted to block grants.
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I worry a little bit about the phrasing ``block grants'' because that
doesn't sound that bad. I used to work in the not-for-profit sector. I
like grants, and I used to pursue Community Development Block Grants,
Community Services Block Grants. I like grants; I like Medicaid. I am
not sure whether ``block'' means anything positively or negatively, but
I want everybody to understand what block-granting Medicaid means: It
means cutting Medicaid. That is exactly what it means. It is a
euphemism. People in this administration and people nominated to be
part of this administration share that view, and they have a long
history to back it up.
The term ``block grants'' is a euphemism. It is not quite a lie, but
it is a way to describe something so that you don't know what it is.
They are calling it a block grant because they don't want to say they
are cutting Medicaid. That is what they are doing; they are going to
cut Medicaid, and these cuts will hurt millions of people. They will
hurt working families.
Everybody understands Medicaid is there for the economically
indigent, in the case of an emergency. But the thing that people also
don't realize--and that is a really important aspect of that program--
but it is also really important for nursing home care. That is not just
an issue for people who are down on their luck financially or while
they are young or while they are parents. When people get older, it is
really difficult to afford nursing home care. For most people who are
not extraordinarily wealthy, Medicaid is the way to handle nursing home
care. It is reimbursable.
I know that nursing home care in Hawaii costs $8,000, $9,000 a month.
I don't know anybody who can run through $8,000, $9,000 a month for
very long. I know a couple of people, but most people I know can't do
that without Medicaid. Certainly, Medicaid is an issue that affects the
very poor, but it also affects the rest of us. It affects people who
aren't just lying on a pile of cash to take care of their grandmother
or their mother or their father or their spouse when they are in their
golden years.
These cuts will hurt women who need Medicaid for maternal health
services, as well as seniors and people with disabilities. These people
have nowhere else to turn. Medicaid is their only option.
Some people point to expanded local control as a reason to move
forward with block grants. That is just nonsense. They are basically
going to flatten out or cut the amount a State gets, and then they can
sit there and divide up an increasingly smaller pie. I am not sure if
that is even a euphemism. That is just nonsense. That will not help any
State to meet their needs. That is why Republican Governors--anybody
with responsibility for actually governing, delivering services to
their constituents--don't want to cut Medicaid. They don't want to
reduce Medicaid expansion under ACA, and they certainly don't want a
block grant because they know what that will mean. Even if you are a
fiscal conservative, if you are in charge of a State, you understand
exactly what is going to happen to your constituents if Medicaid is
cut.
This is another instance of a party that promised not to touch
Medicaid. But here we are, debating a nominee to lead the OMB who wants
to make cuts to this program. This is a deal breaker for me and for
many others, and it will be a disaster for millions of Americans. That
is why today we have to stand up for seniors, for women, for children
and fight any cuts to Medicaid. That starts with voting no on this
nomination.
I have heard about Congressman Mulvaney from hundreds of people from
the State of Hawaii. I want to share a few of the messages that I have
received from people in Hawaii.
Here is what one man from Oahu wrote:
As a researching scientist, I recognize the very
significant damage these appointees will have on US health
and competitiveness in the world.
A break in research funding, or politically-directed and
censored research, impacts long term research. A brief hiatus
can result in many years set-back of programs and resulting
societal benefits.
A woman from Volcano Village on the Big Island sent me this message:
[This administration's] agenda lies in [the] nominees for
the department of Health and Human Services and the Office of
Management and Budget who have spent their congressional
careers trying to destroy [Social Security, Medicare, and
Medicaid].
Another woman wrote me with this:
[The] nominees for HHS and OMB are walking disasters for
the department they'd lead.
Both have spent their congressional careers trying to
destroy [Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid]. Oh, yes,
and the ACA/Obamacare, which has proven to be resoundingly
popular.
We are hearing from so many people on these issues because they
understand how this works. They understand that personnel is policy.
You don't get to say you are for protecting Social Security, and then
vote for someone who wants to eliminate Social Security as we know it.
You don't get to say you are for protecting Medicare and Medicaid, and
then vote for someone who has dedicated their career to eliminating or
at least seriously undermining this program.
If you want to increase the Social Security retirement age, then this
is your nominee. If you aren't opposed to seeing our country go through
a series of precipices with the shutdown of the Federal Government--
from the huge drops in the market to the closing of our National
Parks--then this is your nominee. If you think Federal investments in
public health, disease control, and prevention should be eliminated,
then this is your nominee. If you want to see cuts to Medicare and
Medicaid by 25 percent or more, then vote yes.
But if, like me, you know that this is not the right approach to
governing, that this is not how we should go about caring for our
people and preparing for the future, then you need to vote no.
At the end of the day, the leader of the Office of Management and
Budget will need to understand how to build a budget for our country
and make sure U.S. Government agencies have the resources they need to
pursue the mission. This person will need to understand why diplomacy
matters, why Medicare and Medicaid matter, why job training and
education programs matter, and why financial and fiscal stability
matters. Ultimately, he needs to know that government matters and that
it can make a difference in people's lives. It determines how bright
tomorrow can be for our kids and grandkids and how safe of a world we
can create for them.
Congressman Mulvaney does not have that record or a confirmation
hearing record that can convince any of us that he understands the
potential we all have--the obligation we have--to make the right
investments that reflect who we are and the future that we want as a
country. That is why I will be voting no on this confirmation, and I
urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, the Director of the Office of Management
and Budget, or OMB, is probably the most powerful Federal job that most
Americans have never heard of. If you were to ask five out of five
regular people whether they have even heard of the Office of Management
and Budget, or its importance, I would say that probably five of them
would say: I have never heard of it; what do they do?
The Director of OMB has broad discretion to develop Federal
regulations and to set spending priorities across the government--
spending priorities across the government. I think we should make sure
that this person actually cares about service to the people of America.
For example, if the Defense Department needs more resources for our
troops, OMB has to sign off. If the Environmental Protection Agency
wants to protect our communities from air and water pollution, OMB has
to sign off. If the President wants to cut Social Security, Medicare,
and Medicaid under the guise of ``saving money,'' the OMB Director is
responsible for implementing the policy.
Given the tremendous power invested in this position, the next OMB
Director should, at a minimum, believe in the
[[Page S1214]]
central government functions he or she will be tasked to carry out.
That is why I strongly oppose the nomination of Congressman Mike
Mulvaney to serve as the next Director of the Office of Management and
Budget.
Congressman Mulvaney came to Washington at the very right fringe of
the tea party wave in 2010. Since then, he has consistently pursued
policies that would be disastrous for our economy, for the most
vulnerable members of our society, and for America's seniors--our
kupuna.
Congressman Mulvaney has been one of the strongest proponents for
privatizing and voucherizing Medicare and dismantling Medicaid during
his time in Congress. In 2011, while explaining his support for the
draconian, really terrible Republican budget that would have destroyed
the social safety net and gutted funding for nearly every domestic
program--nearly every domestic program and you can imagine the
thousands and thousands of domestic programs people across the country
are relying upon--Congressman Mulvaney said:
Two nights ago, there was a group of Republicans in the
House of Representatives who voted to dramatically overhaul
Medicare and Medicaid and lightning did not strike us. If
that is not a sign that maybe things can be different around
here, I don't know what is. So I'm hoping that--I hope we
have that exact debate over the course of the next year.
Let me be clear. Congressman Mulvaney was gloating over a bill that
would be devastating to millions of seniors and Americans on Medicaid
and Medicare. If confirmed, Congressman Mulvaney would not just be one
extremist in the House of Representatives; he would be the person--the
one person--responsible for developing, rolling out, and implementing
the President's budget and his priorities.
With this power, he would be in a position to fulfill his heart's
desire--all of the things he worked on as a member of the tea party and
a Member of the House of Representatives. He could destroy programs
like Medicare and Social Security, which more than 200,000 seniors in
Hawaii and tens of millions across the United States depend on every
single day. There are things we can do to fight back.
Last month, I fought alongside my friend and colleague from Indiana,
Senator Joe Donnelly, to prevent Congressman Mulvaney and the Trump
administration from using budget gimmicks to privatize Medicare and cut
funding from Medicaid. While our amendment was defeated in a very close
vote, I was encouraged that two of our Republican colleagues--Senator
Dean Heller of Nevada and Senator Susan Collins of Maine--voted in
favor of my amendment.
This vote demonstrated that there is bipartisan opposition to
balancing the budget on the backs of our seniors. This is exactly what
Congressman Mulvaney wants to do. He has called Social Security a Ponzi
scheme. Ponzi schemes are illegal, but he calls Social Security--a
program that millions and millions of people throughout our country
rely upon--a Ponzi scheme and supports raising the eligibility for it
to 70 years old.
When he was in the South Carolina legislature, he even supported a
bill that said that Social Security was unconstitutional. I would say
even the most conservative person would not deem Social Security to be
unconstitutional, but that is the kind of position that Congressman
Mulvaney takes. His positions on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
Security are enough to disqualify him from serving as OMB Director.
We do not need an ideological flamethrower like Congressman Mulvaney
at the helm of OMB. Sadly, there is more. Congressman Mulvaney is a
debt limit denier. To demonstrate the point, I wish to read his
response to a question he received from the Budget Committee:
I do believe that defaulting on America's debts would have
grave worldwide economic consequences. I do not believe that
breaching the debt ceiling will automatically or inevitably
lead to that result.
Not only is this statement wrong, but it contradicts itself. I was in
the House in 2011 when Congressman Mulvaney and his colleagues played
political games with the debt limit. I can tell you that the stock
market did not agree with his assessment that there wouldn't be an
immediate negative impact.
Here is what happened over the course of a week. The stock market
lost $1 trillion in value--$1 trillion in value. Standard & Poor's
downgraded the U.S. credit for the first time in our country's history.
The Government Accountability Office later found that the standoff
increased our borrowing costs by $1.3 billion, which Congressman
Mulvaney and his Republican allies were all too happy to pass along to
the American taxpayers to pay.
Congressman Mulvaney's record clearly demonstrates why he is unfit to
serve as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He wants
to balance the budget on the backs of seniors and other vulnerable
communities. He believes in governing from fiscal crisis to fiscal
crisis. It isn't even clear if he supports the mission of the
department he has been nominated to lead.
Congressman Mulvaney joins a list of nominees--many of them confirmed
at this point, sadly--ranging from an Education Secretary who does not
believe in public education to a Secretary of Health and Human Services
who wants to basically dismantle Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
Security not far behind.
I ask my colleagues, when does this long list of nominees come to a
stop? I say, at the very least, someone with the power of the Director
of OMB is where we should be drawing the line, unless we want one who
thinks that defaulting on our national debt is not a problem, unless we
think that hurting millions and millions of seniors on Social Security
and Medicare is not a problem.
I feel as though Congressman Mulvaney perhaps has not encountered
enough people in his time in public service who have come to him to
share their stories of the devastation that would come into their lives
if these safety net programs were not there for them. I feel as though
maybe if they have come to talk to him, he hasn't listened very well.
I encourage my colleagues to hold the line at this point and to
oppose this nomination. Congressman Mulvaney is not the person for OMB.
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. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are considering the nomination of
Congressman Mulvaney to become the Director of the Office of Management
and Budget. In the context of the review of this nomination, there has
been a lot of talk about Congressman Mulvaney being a ``straight
shooter.'' I do appreciate his courtesy meeting with me and his
participation in our Budget Committee confirmation hearing last month,
but I have to say that his 6-year record in the House of
Representatives makes it completely impossible for me to vote for him
as our Nation's chief budget officer.
He may be a straight shooter, but he shoots straight at the wrong
targets. One of them is the credit of the United States of America. In
the House of Representatives, Congressman Mulvaney repeatedly put our
economy in jeopardy by voting to let the Federal Government default on
its obligations. He had an opportunity after his nomination, when he
came before the Budget Committee, to pivot to a more mainstream and
responsible position, but he refused. In an answer to a prehearing
question he said:
I do believe that defaulting on America's debts would have
great worldwide consequences. I do not believe that breaching
the debt ceiling will automatically or inevitably lead to
that result.
Well, if you breach the debt ceiling, and if you honor the debt
ceiling law, that means that our government would not have the money to
pay all of its bills. Something has to be defaulted on or the debt
ceiling is a complete chimera.
Mr. Mulvaney's completely unsupported faith that a default on some of
our Nation's obligations might not have grave consequences ignores
basic economics, and it ignores the guidance
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of liberal and conservative economists and experts alike, including
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Benjamin Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Janet Yellen,
Jack Lew, and many, many others.
In fact, many of my Republican colleagues in this room were gravely
concerned about what happened if we blew through the debt ceiling, and
that we perhaps had made a bet we would be unable to pay. To put it
simply, lenders tend to charge more for riskier loans, and a borrower
that won't pay all of its bills on time is riskier than one that does.
Tom Donahue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not someone that I
ordinarily cite favorably here in the Senate. He is an inveterate enemy
on doing anything on climate change. He and I disagree on a great
number of issues, but even Tom Donahue noted that a small increase in
treasury rates, which would happen as the result of a default, ``would
translate into hundreds of thousands of jobs lost every year.''
A member of the self-styled ``shutdown caucus,'' Mr. Mulvaney chooses
to ignore the fact that his fiscal brinkmanship has already cost the
American people. Playing around with the debt ceiling and shutting down
the government are not free exercises. According to the Wall Street
firm Standard and Poor's, the 16-day government shutdown that the
Congressman helped orchestrate in 2013 cost the American economy $24
billion. That is shooting straight at our economy just to prove a
political point. That is not the kind of straight shooter that we need.
Of course, that doesn't even mention the unnecessary stress that the
shutdown caused for millions of government contractors who weren't sure
they would be paid. There is pain and there is damage from the reckless
decisions that Congressman Mulvaney seems to make so easily.
Congressman Mulvaney's blind faith is not limited to economics. He
disregards science too. In response to questions I asked him at the
hearing, he said he is not convinced by the evidence presented that
climate change is at least partly driven by human activity. Well, he
ought to take a little look at what is going on at his home State
university, the University of South Carolina, which has the School of
the Earth, Ocean, and Environment. It actually teaches climate change.
The University of South Carolina doesn't just believe climate change;
it teaches it. It has a faculty who are involved in teaching the
students about what is happening in our atmosphere and in our oceans as
a result of climate change.
This is not all that complicated stuff. We have known since President
Lincoln was riding around Washington in his top hat that greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere would catch heat in the atmosphere and would
warm the Earth. That was a scientist named Tyndall. This is not news;
this is 150 years old. It is simple, elemental chemistry, what happens
when you ramp up the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and how
that works in the oceans. The CO2 gets absorbed by the
oceans. The oceans, as a result of absorbing CO2, become
more acidic. What we are seeing now is the acidification of the ocean
in the experience of humankind--indeed, in probably like 100 times the
experience of humankind. You have to go back 50 years to find a similar
rate of acidification of the ocean.
Well, Mr. Mulvaney represents South Carolina. South Carolina is a
coastal State. It is an ocean State. The University of South Carolina
studies its oceans. They know ocean acidification is happening. When
the Congressman says that he is not convinced by the evidence
presented, something other than being a straight shooter is going on.
According to NASA, for instance, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration--which, by the way, right now is driving a rover around
on the surface of the planet Mars. So can we perhaps stipulate that the
scientists at NASA know what they are talking about? No other country
in the world, no other society in human history has had the capacity to
launch from Earth a rover, fly it through space to Mars, land it safely
on that other planet, and drive it around. We can do that. NASA
scientists did that. So when NASA scientists say that ``multiple
studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97
percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree
climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due
to human activity''--so essentially all the experts agree.
His home State university, the University of South Carolina, teaches
this. They don't just listen to it, they teach it. They understand what
is going on. But Mulvaney says he is not convinced. What is it going to
take to convince him? How can you be a straight shooter when you ignore
this kind of certainty in science, particularly when around this
building you see the circling menace of the fossil fuel industry always
with its guns out, always trying to shoot down anybody who will
disagree with them, always trying to pretend that climate change isn't
real, always trying to defend a $700 billion-a-year subsidy that they
get at the expense of the rest of America? And because, thanks to
Citizens United, they have the capacity to spend enormous, unlimited
amounts of money in politics, they can spend a great deal to protect
that $700 billion in subsidies, and they do.
So we do nothing about climate change here. You can't get a
Republican to talk seriously about climate change here. The oceans are
changing off of their States, and they won't talk about climate change
here. Their universities are saying that climate change is real. Their
universities are teaching that climate change is real. And they won't
say one thing about climate change here. And this so-called straight
shooter is going to go along with that racket rather than listen to his
home State universities and to the scientists at NASA, who have put the
rover on Mars? Give me a break.
While this man claims to be a deficit hawk, I asked him if he was
ready to take on the hundreds of billions of dollars that go out the
back door of our economy in tax breaks, in wasteful tax loopholes, in
tax benefits for special interests, and he wouldn't give me a straight
answer to the question.
From his record in the House, it appears pretty clear that Mr.
Mulvaney would rather balance the budget by going after seniors, by
going after Social Security, by going after Medicare, by going after
the families who have children on Medicaid because their children have
lifetime disabilities that require Medicaid support. Those are the
targets. That is who this so-called straight shooter wants to shoot at.
But as for, say, the tax benefit that lets billionaires depreciate
their private jets faster than the airline can, oh, no, can't touch
that. As for the tax loophole that lets carried interest Wall Street
billionaires pay lower tax rates than their doormen, than their
janitors, oh, no, can't possibly touch that. As for the subsidies we
give through the Tax Code to the fossil fuel industry every year when
they are the most lucrative corporations in the history of the planet,
oh, no, we can't possibly do that. Let's go after the old folks. That
is not being a straight shooter; that is shooting at the wrong people.
Someone who is a straight shooter when it happens to agree with the
politics that they like but is a flatout denier when it doesn't, that
is not my idea of a straight shooter.
Congressman Mulvaney is possessed by conservative ideology that I
strongly believe is going to prevent him ever from working across party
lines on the budget, on health care, or on other major issues that he
will have to face at OMB. His counsel is likely to pull President Trump
further out to the extremes, which already divide this country.
And by the way, to all of those voters who voted for President Trump
because he said that he was different from all the other Republican
candidates; that he was different from the other 15 candidates because
he wasn't going to hurt Social Security and he wasn't going to hurt
Medicare; that he was different from all the others because he was
going to protect Social Security and he was going to protect Medicare--
folks, I think you were sold a bill of goods because when you look at
Congressman Price and when you look at Congressman Mulvaney and when
you look at their records, you see the records of people who have
targeted Social Security and targeted Medicare for years. They may be
straight shooters, but they have Social Security and Medicare in the
crosshairs. Those are not the right targets for us to be shooting
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at in a tax system that is riddled with special interest loopholes and
in a country that is so divided and where the poor and the elderly are
struggling compared to the people who are at the very top, who have
basically gathered all of the economic benefit of our growth since the
great recession.
So, for all of those reasons, I will be completely unable to support
this person's confirmation. I am sorry because I would like to have
seen the President make the slightest gesture in the direction of
bipartisanship, the slightest gesture in the direction of compromise,
the slightest gesture in the direction of reasonableness, but out of
this White House, on the civilian Cabinet, we have seen nothing like
that.
It is a Cabinet that is completely controlled by rightwing ideology
and appalling special interests. Usually, the special interests are the
most dangerous and worst special interests that the agency has to
regulate. Instead of accepting that as the agency's responsibility, he
has brought that special interest in, brought the fox into the
henhouse. If there was ever a fox in the OMB henhouse to take our
Social Security folks and our Medicare folks and hurt them, it is this
Congressman.
I cannot accept his nomination. I will vote against it.
I yield the floor.
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