[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 126 (Thursday, July 25, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5086-S5089]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Budget Agreement

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I have one message for my colleagues 
in the Senate and those who might be watching. It is about this chart, 
which is very simple. This is the line of what we call discretionary 
spending. This is about 31 percent of the budget. That is the budget 
agreement you have read about in the newspapers the last couple of 
days. That is what we are talking about.
  It is a blue line. It has to do with paying for our national defense, 
so it is about half of the dollars; then for our national parks, 
America's best idea; then for the National Institutes of Health, the 
source of medical miracles ranging from restoring your heart to curing 
Zika to the National Laboratories, which are the sources of our 
competition with the rest of the world. That is what this money is for.
  What the blue line recognizes is that for the last 10 years, the 
growth in spending for national defense, national parks, the National 
Institutes of Health, and National Labs has gone up at about the rate 
of inflation, and for the next 10 years, including the budget agreement 
that the President and the congressional leaders recommended this week, 
it will go at about the rate of inflation.
  The point is, for 20 years--2008 to 2029--the increase in spending 
for the amount of money we are talking about and for the type of 
spending in the budget agreement is not the source of the Federal 
deficit. What is? Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest--
that is the red line that 10 years ago was $1.8 trillion. At the rate 
we are going, it will be $5.4 trillion in 10 years. That is not the 
type of spending we are talking about in the budget agreement.
  My message today is in support of properly funding national defense, 
national parks, National Institutes of Health, and National Labs and 
not beating our chest and pretending that we are balancing the budget 
on the backs of our soldiers, our medical miracles, and our national 
parks when, in fact, it is the entitlements that the President and the 
Democrats and the Republicans in Congress need to address.
  I will talk about the blue line today. I have talked about the red 
line plenty before. Former Senator Corker and I introduced legislation 
a few years ago that would have reduced the growth of this red line by 
$1 trillion over 10 years. The only problem was, we were the only two 
cosponsors of the legislation.
  The budget deficit is vitally damaging to our country, but the budget 
agreement that President Trump recommended is not the source of the 
budget deficit. That part of the budget is under control. That is 31 
percent of all the dollars we spend in the United States. Just add to 
that, if this continues for another 10 years, this blue line--national 
defense, national parks, National Institutes of Health, National 
Laboratories--is going to go from 31 percent of the budget to 22 
percent of the budget, and mandatory spending is going up to 78 
percent. This is the budget deficit. This is the budget agreement we 
are going to be voting on next week. That part of the budget is under 
control.
  Here is what the budget agreement, which the President recommended 
and our Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate have 
recommended and which I strongly support, does. The first thing it does 
is suspend the debt limit--the amount we can borrow. If we don't do 
that, we have a global fiscal crisis. We all know that, so we need to 
do it.
  Second, it raises the defense and nondefense discretionary budget 
caps. That is this blue line down here. That is the amount of money we 
can spend, as I said, on national defense. That is about half of the 
spending--and then our veterans, National Labs, biomedical research, 
and national parks.
  Let's talk about the military for just a minute. Former Secretary of 
Defense James Mattis, who had enormous respect here in Congress, said 
that ``no enemy in the field has done as much harm to the readiness of 
the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act's 
defense spending caps, worsened by operating for 10 of the last 11 
years under continuing resolutions of varied and unpredictable 
duration.''
  In plain English, what that means is that because of the President's 
leadership and the recommendations of our bipartisan leaders, we will 
avoid what Secretary Mattis said has been so damaging to our military.
  Here is what happened. Back in 2011, we passed the Budget Control Act 
to try to limit this part of the budget. That came after a special 
committee was appointed, which everyone hoped would deal with this part 
of the budget--the problem part, the part that is causing the deficit.
  The Budget Control Act came up with a formula that everybody thought 
would work. They said: Well, if we put in there that we will have 
dramatic reductions in military spending, Congress will never do that, 
so they will be forced to finally do something we all should have had 
the courage to do a long time ago, and that is deal with entitlements.

  What happened? We didn't deal with the red line, and we cut the 
military. We cut the military badly over the last 10 years, and we are 
just now beginning to catch up. Last year, Congress avoided 
sequestration and increased discretionary spending for fiscal years 
2018 and 2019.
  Let me say it again, because I am going to repeat it over and over 
and over: We increased spending last year at about the rate of 
inflation. That is not the cause of the Federal deficit. Reaching that 
agreement, though, meant that for the first time in nearly a decade the 
Department of Defense received its budget on time, and it received a 
record funding level for research and development.
  This new 2-year budget agreement that the President has recommended 
will rebuild our military by providing $738 billion for defense 
discretionary spending for 2020 and $740 billion for 2021.
  It will also allow us to fulfill the commitment we made as a part of 
the New START Treaty in 2010 in December. I voted for that, and part of 
the deal with President Obama was that if we passed the treaty limiting 
nuclear weapons, we would make sure that ours worked. President Trump 
said the other day that Russia has 1,111 nuclear weapons, and they all 
work. We don't want them to use them, and the best way to keep them 
from using them is to make sure ours work.
  We have reached a budget agreement so that we can get to work on the 
appropriations bills and hopefully get many of them done before the end 
of the fiscal year, which is the 30th of September. That is important 
to the military especially.
  When I met with Secretary of the Army Mark Esper, who was approved by 
a big vote yesterday as Secretary of Defense, we talked about what it 
meant to have an appropriations bill passed into law on time, instead 
of a so-called continuing resolution, which is just a lazy way to go. 
It just says to spend next year what you spent last year, which means 
we don't spend for the things we need to spend, and we don't stop 
spending on the things we shouldn't spend.
  Here are some of the benefits of passing the appropriations bill on 
time,

[[Page S5087]]

which would mean October 1. It keeps large projects on time and on 
budget. That is true in the Defense Department, and it is also true 
other places. We have a big project called the Uranium Processing 
Facility at Oak Ridge, TN, which comes through the Energy and Water 
Appropriations Committee, which I chair, and Senator Feinstein is the 
ranking member. We made sure that is on time and on budget--$6.5 
billion by 2025. But if we don't appropriate the money on time and on 
budget, we can't finish the project on time and on budget, and who is 
hurt by that? Our national defense and our taxpayers or the Chickamauga 
Lock in Tennessee.
  All of the Army Corps of Engineers leaders have told me: Don't start 
these projects and then stop them. Don't stop and start and stop and 
start. That wastes money and slows things down.
  So, for the last several years, we have continued steady 
reconstruction. We need to pass these on time and on budget.
  Also, it keeps equipment maintenance at the Department of Defense on 
schedule. That saves money. There is more research and development for 
new technologies. It speeds up modernization of current equipment and 
keeps military training on schedule. That means soldiers, sailors, 
airmen, and marines are properly prepared for prompt combat, and it 
prevents accidents.
  This new 2-year agreement also helps our veterans. In 2018, President 
Trump signed the VA MISSION Act, which the Senate passed by a vote of 
92 to 5. The MISSION Act gave veterans the ability to seek medical care 
outside the Department of Veterans Affairs and see a private doctor 
closer to home. So if you are 60 miles away in the State of Nebraska or 
Kansas or Tennessee and you need medical care and you can't be seen at 
a VA facility, you can see a private doctor close to home. This budget 
agreement makes sure we have enough money to support that, and I will 
ask the staff here how much that is.
  Senator Perdue said yesterday that 40 percent of the increase in the 
spending in this budget agreement, on the discretionary side, is to 
help veterans with the Choice Program. So it is not even in the 
national defense part of the budget; it is in the nondefense part of 
the budget. It helps veterans. So 40 percent of this increase is 
helping veterans on top of what we spend for defense, and we still keep 
the spending at about the rate of inflation. That is not the source of 
our budget deficit.
  It is important for the American people to know that the Republican 
majority in Congress has worked together with Democrats to provide 
record levels of funding for science, research, and technology. In the 
Senate, Senator Blunt from Missouri and Senator Murray from Washington 
State have provided the leadership for that in the Appropriations 
Committee.
  In April 2016, Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes 
of Health, told our Appropriations Committee--I am a member of that, as 
are Senator Durbin and others; we worked on this together--that with 
adequate and consistent funding, he can make 10 bold predictions about 
some of the medical miracles he expects over the next several years. He 
talked about regenerative medicine that would replace heart transplants 
by restoring your heart from your own cells. He talked about vaccines 
for Zika, for HIV/AIDS, and for the universal flu, which kills tens of 
thousands. He talked about an artificial pancreas. He talked about 
cures for Alzheimer's or at least medicines that would identify the 
symptoms--that would identify Alzheimer's before the symptoms and do 
something about it.
  Since fiscal year 2015, the Appropriations Committee has increased 
funding for the National Institutes of Health by $9 billion, or 30 
percent. From $30.3 billion in 2015 to $39.34 billion in fiscal year 
2019, Senator Blunt and Senator Murray did that by cutting some 
programs and increasing the National Institutes of Health. They did it 
all down here in the blue line that stays within the rate of 
inflation--not up here in the red line. That is called good government.
  I can't tell you the number of leaders of academic and research 
institutions I meet who say that the young investigators in our country 
are so encouraged by this new funding for biomedical research, and they 
are busy working on the next miracles. That is what consistent funding 
will do.

  Dr. Collins came back to the committee this year, and I asked him if 
he was ready to update those bold predictions. He said: We are close to 
a cure for sickle cell anemia--sickle cell disease--and a new, 
nonaddictive painkiller which in my view would be the holy grail in our 
fight against opioids. With this new budget agreement, Congress could 
increase funding for the National Institutes of Health for the sixth 
consecutive year to continue this lifesaving research and do it all 
within the blue line, which is not the cause of the Federal budget 
deficit.
  Let's go to the Office of Science. Last year, the Energy and Water 
Development Appropriations Subcommittee that I chair with the Senator 
from California, Mrs. Feinstein, the ranking Democrat, agreed, along 
with Congress, for the fourth consecutive year--and President Trump 
signed it--to provide record funding for the Department of Energy's 
Office of Science. With this new budget, we can do it for 5 years. What 
does this mean? This means funding for the 17 National Laboratories, 
including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which are America's secret 
weapon. No other country has anything like our National Laboratories. 
Many Americans worry about competition from China and other parts of 
the world. How do we meet that competition? Through innovation.
  Where does that innovation come from? It is hard to think of a major 
initiative that has not come since World War II without some federally 
sponsored research funding. Funding our Labs is important and helps 
keep us first in the world in supercomputing. Why is supercomputing 
important? Because it keeps our standard of living high and keeps our 
national defense on its toes.
  China knows that. Two years ago, China had the two top 
supercomputers, but today the United States has the two fastest 
supercomputers in the world and the Exascale computing project will 
deliver the next generation system starting in 2021. This 
accomplishment is not the result of 1 year of funding or one political 
party but 10 years of bipartisan effort through the Bush, Obama, and 
Trump administrations, Democratic and Republican, to try to make sure 
America is first in the world of supercomputing. We did it all under 
the blue line over the last 10 years. The funding went up at the rate 
of inflation, not through the Moon like in entitlements which is the 
source of the Federal budget deficit, not the money we spend to keep 
ahead of China and Japan in supercomputing.
  On national parks, Ken Burns and others say America's national parks 
are our best idea. There are 417 of them. They have a badly deferred 
maintenance backlog. Senators Portman, Warner, King, myself, and others 
are working with President Trump, who supports our legislation, to try 
to cut half of the deferred maintenance in the national park backlogs 
in the next 5 years. We are going to use money from energy on Federal 
lands to do that.
  Americans are often shocked to find when they go to Federal parks 
that bathrooms don't work, roofs leak, and campgrounds are closed 
because there is not enough money for maintenance. This budget helps 
make sure our national parks are something Americans can continue to 
enjoy--all 418 of those parks--and we do that under the blue line that 
goes up at the rate of inflation, not at the budget-busting rate of the 
entitlements line.
  I have said this over and over, and it needs to be said over and 
over. The red line is mandatory spending. The blue line is 
discretionary spending. The blue line will be $1.6 trillion at the end 
of 10 more years. The red line will be $5.4 trillion at the end of 10 
more years. Ten years ago, the blue line was 1.1 and the red line was 
1.8. What do you think the problem is for the source of the Federal 
budget? You don't need a Ph.D. in mathematics to figure this out. It is 
not this line. It is not national defense; it is not biomedical 
research; it is not supercomputing; it is not the Army Corps of 
Engineers. It is this one line--entitlements. It is our fault for not 
having dealt with it, but we shouldn't beat our chest and pretend to 
balance the budget by decimating the work on that blue line. 
Discretionary spending is only 31 percent of the money. Mandatory 
spending is the rest of the funding. It will increase from 69 percent 
of

[[Page S5088]]

total spending to 78 percent in 2029. The spending on national parks, 
national defense, National Institutes of Health, and National Labs will 
be reduced to 22 percent. I don't believe we can properly defend our 
country, properly keep up our parks, stay first in the world in 
supercomputing, and expect to continue biomedical research that 
produces lifesaving miracles if we squeeze all the money out of the 
blue line and let it go up in the air on the red line.
  The United States is experiencing robust economic growth, and there 
is a lot of political talk in this Chamber but no one really disputes 
that. Our economy is growing and growing. We have not seen anything 
like it in a long time. There have been 6 million new jobs created just 
since President Trump was elected, with the lowest unemployment rate in 
50 years, at 3.7 percent.
  Before Congress passed the major tax reform in 31 years, our gross 
domestic product was projected to be a little less than 2 percent over 
the next 10 years. For the first quarter of 2019 this year, actual 
gross domestic product was a little over 3 percent. Higher GDP and 
lower unemployment leads to higher family incomes and more revenue for 
the Federal Government. More revenue for the Federal Government reduces 
the debt.
  I urge my colleagues to support this 2-year budget agreement. To 
those who are worried about the Federal debt, I am worried about it 
too. That is why Senator Corker and I put our bill in to reduce by a 
growth of $1 trillion over 10 years what is happening with this red 
line. If we want to talk about the Federal budget deficit, let's talk 
about where it really is. Let's talk about the red line, which has gone 
from $1.8 trillion 10 years ago and is projected by the Congressional 
Budget Office to go to $5.4 trillion 10 years from now.
  Let's not pretend we are balancing the Federal budget by focusing on 
the part of the Federal budget that is under control, the part that 
funds our military, national parks, biomedical research, and National 
Labs. For the last 10 years, it has gone up at about the rate of 
inflation, and for the next 10 years, according to the Congressional 
Budget Office--including this 2-year budget agreement which only 
affects the blue line, not the red line--it goes up at the rate of 
inflation. So I am proud to support it. I believe it is the right thing 
to do, and when the House sends us a chance to vote for it next week, I 
hope it gets a big vote from the U.S. Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me just take a few minutes here to 
share an idea that when we come back next week, we will be talking 
about the budget. We are going to be talking about making really 
difficult, very difficult decisions.
  I would state that we on the Senate Armed Services Committee have an 
advantage over some of the other people because one of the critical 
areas in the budget coming up is how we treat the military. I think it 
is important for people to understand that if you are a member of the 
Armed Services Committee, you are in a position to know something the 
other Members don't know. It may sound like someone is not doing their 
job, but that is not true at all.
  When you are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, there are 
hearings that take place. Starting in January, there are posture 
hearings. Posture hearings normally take about 6 hours a week. In 
posture hearings, we find out about matters that others just don't have 
time to find out about unless you are a member of the committee. If you 
are a member, you are sitting there for 3 hours a week.
  I don't say this critically of the previous administration because--I 
would say, in the Obama administration, the top priority was not 
defending America. In fact, he established something called parity. 
Parity meant that for every one dollar put into the military budget, we 
have to put one dollar into the nonmilitary budget. That had never 
happened before, at least it had not happened since World War II. At 
that time, it was established that national defense would be our 
priority. Every Democrat and every Republican President at that time 
all the way up until the Obama administration had defending America as 
the top priority.
  What happened during that administration was that we actually had a 
dramatic reduction. If you use constant dollars, that reduction took 
place between 2010 and 2015, using constant dollars. For this 
description, we used 2018 dollars. Going into 2010, it was about $794 
billion. Going into 2015, it was $586 billion or something like that. 
So there was about a 25-percent reduction in the defense budget in a 5-
year period. That had never happened before in the history of this 
country. Yet we suffered through, and we paid dearly for it.
  A lot of people are not aware of it, unless you are on the Armed 
Services Committee because we see it. When the current President came 
in, President Trump, his budget boosted that back up. Now we are 
talking about real dollars, and it was $700 billion in fiscal year 
2018. Then for fiscal year 2019 it was $716 billion.
  Now we are getting into where we are today in the current budget. We 
passed a defense authorization bill, and in it we actually came out 
agreeing that we had to get to $750 billion. Someone might ask why. We 
had something called the National Defense Commission report. It was a 
document that was a good document that talked about how we were going 
to need to appropriate because during the Obama administration we saw 
China and Russia become peer competitors in many areas. In fact, they 
ended up with some things better than ours. Let me give an example. 
Artillery during that period of time for both China and Russia had us 
outranged and outgunned. How many people know that? People assume 
America has the best of everything. Well, that was true up until this 
time.
  Air and defense, there were only two Active-Duty battalions with no 
new technological advancements. Nothing happened during that time. That 
allowed China and Russia to start creeping up and getting ahead of us.
  On nuclear triad modernization, we had no modernization increases at 
that time, but Russia and China did. In fact, China actually has today 
a nuclear triad, and Russia is actually building one. The U.S. defense 
against electronic warfare--we didn't have that kind of a defense. With 
Russia, you can remember what happened in Ukraine.
  Hypersonic weapons is the newest thing that people talk about. It is 
a type of weapon system that moves five times the speed of sound. It is 
the weapon system of the future. Prior to the past administration, 
prior to the Obama administration, we were ahead in our research on 
hypersonic weapons, but by the end of that time and up until this new 
administration came in, we were actually behind Russia and China. I 
only say that because we really took a hit.
  The only time--we have had three opportunities, one in fiscal year 
2018, one in fiscal year 2019, and then another on the budget we are 
going to be voting on this coming week. That was our opportunity to 
catch up.
  I would just say this: If you are on the Armed Services Committee, 
you have an obligation because you are in a unique position of knowing 
the efficiencies that we have. Others don't have that. Many of the 
Members take the time and they find out that they can get this done.
  But we are in a position where--General Dunford, as an example, said 
that we have lost our qualitative and our quantitative edge in 
artillery. We are actually outnumbered 5 to 1 by China and 10 to 1 by 
Russia. In air and missile defense, China and Russia have weapons that 
prevent access--we call them SAMs, surface-to-air missiles. Nuclear 
modernization--no real U.S. modernization took place during that time. 
We had some of our top people admitting that we had deficiencies, and 
we quickly tried to correct them.
  Along came fiscal year 2018. In fiscal year 2018, we got back up to a 
$700 billion budget, and we started working on things. We had the 
manual. It is a manual I normally bring down with me to the floor when 
we talk about this because this is something that everyone agreed on as 
the manual was put together. It was the NDS Commission report. It was 
put together by 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans--all experts in national 
defense--and everyone agreed that would be our blueprint to pull us out 
of where we were at that time, and it was working. We were on schedule 
to do it. We are currently on schedule with this budget.

[[Page S5089]]

  It says that while we are rebuilding our military, we should be 
anticipating that we have to increase our military spending by between 
3 percent and 5 percent over this period of time. That is a net 
increase. Well, the budget we came out with in the defense 
authorization bill was $750 billion, and it was a budget that almost 
gets us there but not quite.
  The President's budget agreement that came out the other day has a 
figure of $738 billion. That is very close to where we are supposed to 
be. It is a 2-year budget, and that is a good thing for the military. 
Those of us on the Defense Committee understand that. So that brings 
that $738 up to $740.5 billion for 2021, so it is very close to the 
$750 billion defense authorization.
  I only say that because that makes it more important for anyone who 
is serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee to be in a position 
to know what I just said. And that is something that most people don't 
know, and I don't believe that most of the Members of this body know, 
but those who are on the committee do know it. We have to keep in mind 
that this budget is going to be the only way that we are going to be 
able to do what needs to be done.
  This is the short version. I will come back and talk more this coming 
Monday and give a lot more details than I gave now. I will say this: I 
would encourage any member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to 
understand that they are in a position to know what the problem is, and 
a lot of other people do not know this. I would anticipate that members 
of the committee would be in that unique position to know and would be 
supporting a budget that gives us enough room to get back into position 
to recover from the losses that we took from the previous 
administration. That is what is at stake. That is what we are 
anticipating. I would anticipate that our members from the committee 
should be doing that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Yount). The Senator from Ohio.