[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 99 (Thursday, June 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3466-S3467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             National Debt

  Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, the national debt is what actually pulled 
me and you and others, to some degree, into this political process. I 
have come to this floor many times over the last 4\1/2\ years to talk 
about this. Today, again, it is very timely. It is why I ran for the 
U.S. Senate. Today, we have--I just checked--$22.3 trillion, and it is 
going up $100,000 a second, as we speak. I have a debt clock in the 
reception area of my office, in the Russell Senate Office Building, and 
that thing spins all day long, 24 hours a day.
  Even more concerning, we have more than $130 trillion of future 
unfunded liabilities coming at us like a freight train over the next 30 
years. That is $1 million for every household for every American.
  What we have learned is that we can't cut our way out of it, we can't 
tax our way out of it, and we can't grow our way out of it alone. Any 
one of these three will fall short. It has to be a combination. We have 
to have a balanced approach over the long haul to solve this $22 
trillion of debt problem.
  I believe we will not solve this debt crisis unless and until we fix 
the way Congress funds the Federal Government. The current funding 
process is designed to fail. It really is. It doesn't work. It hasn't 
worked. It will never work.
  Since the Budget Act of 1974 was put in place, Congress has only 
funded the Federal Government on time four times. That means that by 
the end of the fiscal year, Congress has only funded the Federal 
Government four times by the end of that fiscal year. Let me say that 
again. It has been four times in 45 years since the 1974 Budget Act was 
put in place. The last time it was actually done was in 1996, some 23 
years ago, under President Clinton.
  Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills to fund the 
government. Over the last 45 years, we have averaged just 2\1/2\ per 
year. Because of that, Congress has used a little known tool up here 
called a continuing resolution. In the last 45 years, Congress has used 
a continuing resolution 186 times. It is a release valve that lets the 
government continue to operate and on the surface doesn't really sound 
that onerous. You just keep spending at the same level you did last 
year. The problem with that is that it is devastating to some Agencies 
and, particularly, the Department of Defense, with regard to long-term 
contracts, long-term training, purchases, and maintenance over the end 
of the fiscal year, and so forth. They are devastating to our military. 
They create inefficiencies and uncertainty that hurt the bottom line 
and increase our procurement costs by dramatic amounts. The end result 
of that is that it lowers our readiness, and it causes the ability to 
fight to be reduced.
  In addition, Congress has shut down the government, over the last 45 
years, 21 times because they couldn't get together and agree on how to 
fund the government that year--21 times.
  This funding process, in my opinion, is an unmitigated disaster, 
based on the actual results that have led to $22 trillion of debt 
today, which, in my view, is indeed a crisis. Over the last 4\1/2\ 
years alone, we have looked at practices in States, other countries, 
and businesses to find best practices. No one else in the world funds 
their operation the way the U.S. Congress funds our government.
  The problem is, we have a three-step process. We do a budget, an 
authorization, and then an appropriation. There simply are not enough 
days in the year to get all of those done. It is a 14-week budget 
process. We have 16 authorizing committees. If you did one a week, that 
is 16 weeks. And then you have 12 appropriating bills. Even if you did 
one a week, which is very hard to do, that is not enough time in the 
calendar year to do that.
  Right now, Congress has yet to pass this year a single appropriations 
bill for the next year. This is not the appropriators' problem. They do 
their jobs. They proved that last year and the year before that. If 
given enough time and information, they can get their job done. The 
problem is that this year we have not even agreed with the House and 
with the White House on what the top-line spending should be.
  As I stand here today, there are 17 working days until 31 July, when 
Congress leaves for a State work period called the August recess. When 
we get back, there are only 10 working days until the end of the fiscal 
year. That means we have 27 working days to reach a budget deal, pass 
12 appropriations bills, and bring them to conference and get this 
government funded.
  If we started today, we would need to pass an appropriations bill 
about every 2 days in order to pass all 12 bills by the end of the 
fiscal year. We are already behind, and I am afraid we are staring down 
the barrel of another CR unless we start taking these bills up 
immediately.
  The minority leader and the majority leader in the Senate have been 
working diligently, along with the appropriations minority leader and 
chairman of the appropriations committee. They all have been working 
very well to get to a top-line number with the White House and the 
House of Representatives. I am told we are very close to a deal today. 
I hope we are.
  Last year, when we paid attention to it, we got to 75 percent 
funding. But by 31 July, we had only done 12.5 percent of total 
government funding. Again, this is just for the discretionary part of 
our spending, which is only about 25 percent of the total spending that 
we have in the Federal Government, which includes mandatory expenses.
  Last year, 16 of us wrote a letter to Leader McConnell, who agreed, 
and to his credit, kept us here in August, and we went from 12 percent 
to 75 percent funding by the end of August, including the Department of 
Defense and HHS, two of our biggest line items. By staying here in 
August, we did the people's work and did something that hadn't been 
done in 22 years.

  I hope it doesn't come to that this year. It shouldn't. We have time 
to do what we need to do. I know the people in charge are doing 
everything they can to make that happen. That is not what this 
conversation is about today. I am hopeful that even this week we can 
get agreement on the topline number, move past the budget cap issue, 
and get to appropriating these bills so we can avoid any more CRs in 
our future this year.
  The unfortunate reality is we have reached this same predicament 
almost every year since 1974. Einstein once said that ``insanity is 
doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different 
results.'' That is what this Congress has done continually over the 
last 45 years, with different Members and different colleagues. We keep 
doing the same thing.
  I am convinced more than ever that we need a politically neutral 
platform to fund the government on time every year without all of this 
drama. It can be done. I think both sides want to do it. Both sides 
have talked about it when they were in the minority and majority at 
different times, but it is time to move on it.
  Today 25 percent of our budget is discretionary. That is all. That is 
defense, the Veterans' Administration, and all domestic discretionary 
spending. That is 25 percent. That is what this is all about. This 
debate and drama is about 25 percent of the Federal Government.
  What is the rest of it? We all know that is the mandatory expense 
side of our budget; 75 percent of what we spend in the Federal 
Government, over $3 trillion, is for things like Social Security, 
Medicare, Medicaid, pension and benefits for Federal employees, and the 
interest on the debt. The interest alone has gone up $450 billion over 
the last 2 years with nine Fed fund rate increases, and it is projected 
that by 2023 we will be spending more on the interest alone on this 
debt than we do on national defense.
  If we borrow about 30 percent of what we spend, that means, by 
definition, every dime we spend on discretionary spending is borrowed 
money. What is discretionary again? Our defense. So every time we are 
spending on defense, it is technically borrowed money.
  I believe it is time to fix this, and the way forward is pretty 
clear. The way I see it, there are three things we have to do to fix 
this funding process. No. 1,

[[Page S3467]]

we have to change the budget process and appropriations process to make 
it streamlined, as most States do.
  Yesterday I introduced a bill called the Fix Funding First Act, which 
I hope will start a dialogue. It is not the end result, but I am 
hopeful it will start a dialogue here and that we will be able to work 
through the details, take individual items one at a time, pass some 
bills, and start moving toward a solution.
  Second, we have to address mandatory spending. We need to save Social 
Security and Medicare.
  Third, we need to adjust the current committee structure so that the 
same committees on both sides can both authorize and appropriate.
  This is a chart of what we have today. This is reality. We have on 
the left 16 authorizing committees, and on the right we have 12 
appropriating committees. You can see for one appropriating committee 
you may have five or six different authorizing committees that have to 
provide input, in theory, to the appropriating committee.
  When I came to Congress I was asked to head the Subcommittee on State 
Department Oversight inside Foreign Relations. My responsibility was to 
provide oversight. Interacting with the person who was the chair of the 
subcommittee in appropriations--we never talked and there was very 
little input, but we found out that the State Department at that time 
had not been authorized in over 13 years. We changed that and got it 
authorized the very next year. But this is an archaic structure that 
will never work. It creates all of the confusion that we have right now 
and the time delays in trying to get this done.
  The Fix Funding First Act I introduced yesterday does five simple 
things.
  First, it changes the Federal Government fiscal year to match the 
calendar year. Why is that important? Well, in the first year of a new 
Congress we always start 3 months behind; we start in the fourth month.
  Second, this bill establishes biennial budgeting. A lot of States do 
that. It is not the end-all solution, but it is a great place to start 
and will make things a lot easier here.
  Third, this bill makes the budget a law. Simply put, today the budget 
is a resolution.
  Fourth, it creates milestones with consequences to hold us 
accountable as a body when we don't do our jobs. There are 44 States, 
including my State of Georgia, that have a balanced budget law, and if 
they don't pass a budget by the end of their 44- or 45-day session, 
they don't go home. In most States that is a law. What we are proposing 
here is essentially the same thing. We have broken the appropriations 
process into four tranches and set deadlines before Congress's 
scheduled work break. If we don't make the deadline, we don't go home 
until we get that part done. It is just that simple.
  Last, our proposal requires the Budget Committee to complete a 5-year 
strategic plan--something we have never done--just as people in the 
real world do. This gives us a chance to start talking about the long-
term debt-to-GDP ratio that my colleague Senator Whitehouse has been 
talking about for the last several years, and I fully subscribe to what 
he is trying to do.
  That is what the bill that was introduced this week will do, and I 
think it is the first step to fix the funding process.
  Once we complete the first phase, we need to tackle mandatory 
spending, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and pensions 
and benefits. Right now, mandatory spending makes up about 75 percent 
of what Congress spends every year, but costs are expected to explode 
over the next 20 years.
  The next chart shows the projection from the Congressional Budget 
Office, and these are generally agreed-upon numbers based upon the baby 
boomers maturing in age. What we have is the green line, total expenses 
of the Federal Government, going from just above $4 trillion today to 
almost $12 trillion in just 20 years. In 10 years, we are talking about 
it being over $8 trillion--almost double what it is today. These are in 
constant dollars, not inflated dollars. This is our crisis. What is 
causing that crisis in the green line are total expenses.
  The blue line is discretionary expenses, which are what we spend most 
of our time arguing about here on the floor of the Senate and the 
House. But look at this. This is the mandatory chart. We go from a 
moderate one until we see cataclysmic geometric growth. We know that 
the Social Security trust fund goes to zero in 12 years. The Medicare 
trust fund goes to zero in 7 years.
  We have to save these programs and turn these curves down. There is 
no way the world is going to allow us to borrow that much money. Until 
Congress works up the political courage to deal with the mandatory 
spending issue, we should make all expenditures discretionary, bring 
them under the budget process when they need to be subsidized, and that 
is going to happen within a few short years.
  I believe the answer is very simple. Even if we pass this bill and 
the Appropriations Committee still has to write down its own defense 
authorization, defense bills and so forth, we have to streamline this 
process. Last year we did, and it almost worked. What we have now is 
totally dysfunctional.
  I hope this proposal that we are putting on the board today will help 
start the dialogue about how we can fix this funding process.
  America always does well in a crisis, but we are not always the first 
to decide that we are in a crisis. I personally believe we have been in 
a crisis for the last 15 years. Either we can wake up and face it now 
or I think we will regret it later.
  There are Members on both sides of the aisle who recognize this 
crisis. I am encouraged by the conversations we are having together. 
This is not a partisan issue. This is one of those ways that people 
back home expect us to compromise and work together to solve this.
  I am encouraged today. It is time we did this, and this is the time, 
this year. In the next few weeks, hopefully we will get past this 
impasse and make it happen this year.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.

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