[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.