[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 126 (Thursday, July 25, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5091-S5093]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Economic Growth

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise after 10 years of being in the 
Senate and after having endured speech after speech after speech on 
this floor that has claimed the Republican Party is the party of fiscal 
discipline. It was politics that created something during the depths of 
the worst recession, called the tea party, which rallied all over 
America to stop what it said was runaway spending.
  When I arrived here, I actually believed that the Republican Party 
was a fiscally responsible party, that there was some principle behind 
it. I know better today. I was naive. It is all about politics.
  There have been five budget deals since 2013 between Majority Leader 
Mitch McConnell and whoever has happened to be in the White House. 
These deals were meant to overcome the idiocy of the across-the-board 
cuts that were created by the sequestration--which nobody in America 
understands but which are basically across-the-board cuts on spending--
that otherwise would have been investments in your family, maybe, or 
investments in our military. They were agreed to as part of a fiscal 
cliff deal in the dark of night, at 2 o'clock in the morning, by 
nobody--literally nobody--who had actually read the bill. Ever since 
then, politicians in Washington have been making deals to try to 
overcome it.
  When President Obama was President, this is how much money he was 
allowed to spend. Since Donald Trump has been President, this is the 
money that the Republicans have spent. This red is defense, and the 
blue is nondefense.
  Under President Obama the deals increased by an average of $33 
billion above the sequester. The two deals under Donald Trump increased 
spending by $154 billion, four times as much--four times as much--at a 
moment when the President is saying our economy is the best it has ever 
been in American history.
  The result of this is that under Donald Trump the deficit has 
increased by 15 percent each year. The deficit just between last year 
and this year is up by 23 percent as a result of the Republican 
majority in the Senate and Donald Trump.
  We are on track to run $1 trillion deficits every year as far as the 
eye can see. That is after 10 years of economic growth and unemployment 
below 4 percent.
  At no time in our history have deficits been this large outside of a 
major war or a recession, which brings me to my second slide.
  This is the annual spending growth around here. This is the annual 
spending growth around here of defense and nondefense. They are both in 
here.
  Under President Obama, in his first term, the spending went up by 3 
percent. We were in the worst recession since the Great Depression. He 
had to pass the Recovery Act. That is in this number. That is in this 
number. It was at the depths of the worst recession since the Great 
Depression. Three million Americans lost their homes, and 9 million 
Americans lost their jobs. We had a 10-percent unemployment rate--

[[Page S5092]]

not a 4-percent rate, not a 3 and change, but a 10-percent rate. In the 
name of fiscal responsibility, Republicans did nothing except berate 
the President for trying to save the economy and for what he was trying 
to do.
  I will come to that in a moment.
  This includes the Recovery Act. Overall growth--annual spending 
growth--grew by 3 percent during President Obama's first term. It fell 
by 2 percent during President Obama's second term.
  It has gone up by 4 percent during Trump's first term. It has 
increased more under this Republican President. Admittedly, he is not a 
conservative. It has grown more under this Republican President than it 
did when President Obama was trying to save the economy during the 
worst recession since the Great Depression. This 3 percent number 
includes the Recovery Act. The Republicans are now growing government 
spending by more than that--by more than that.
  Here is what they said when they wouldn't lift a finger during the 
depths of the worst recession. Congressman Mike Pence, before he was 
Vice President, said:

       We the people do not consent to runaway Federal spending. 
     We the people do not consent to the notion that we can borrow 
     and spend and bail our way back to a growing America.

  He said that to a tea party rally here in Washington, DC, that was 
here to stop runaway spending.
  Where are they today? It is worse today than it ever was under 
President Obama. It is far worse, not a little bit worse, because not 
included on this slide are the tax cuts that have never paid for 
themselves and are not paying for themselves here.
  Donald Trump and the Republicans have created $2 trillion of deficit 
spending because of the tax cuts and $2 trillion of deficit spending 
because of the spending.
  By the way, they are not actually spending this money, in a sense. 
They are borrowing all of it from our children. They have not paid for 
a dollar of it--not one dollar. They are borrowing it from the pages 
who are here. They are borrowing it from the children of cops, 
teachers, and firefighters--that is who they are borrowing it from--to 
give tax cuts to rich people, to make our economic inequality greater.
  Congressman Mick Mulvaney, now the President's Chief of Staff, 
talking about the Obama administration's budget at the time, said:

       It's hard to explain how detached from reality that is, to 
     think that the country can spend another $1.6 trillion when 
     it doesn't have the means. It means either you haven't been 
     paying attention or you don't care.

  He is the President's Chief of Staff. He is the President's Budget 
Director.
  If that was runaway spending, how is this not runaway spending?
  The junior Senator from Texas said:

       The debt is out of control. And, it is jeopardizing the 
     future for our kids. I have got two little kids who are 4 and 
     2.

  He lectured the President.

       And, the idea of handing them a $16 trillion debt, I think 
     is immoral.

  Really? What about $24 trillion? What about $30 trillion? Is that 
more moral than $16 trillion? Really?
  Now, former Speaker Paul Ryan said: ``We will end up with a Greece-
like situation on our hands.''
  ``A debt crisis is coming to the country.''
  That is what he said here.
  Admittedly, he left in the middle of a government shutdown, never to 
come back to Washington, DC--a fitting end to a decade of fiscal fights 
and shutdowns and government closures, all done in the name of fiscal 
responsibility, never actually achieving it and--never, ever actually 
achieving it--only for the opportunity to spend like this.
  I can't tell you the number of times I have heard about this on this 
floor:

       The debt and the deficit are just getting out of control, 
     and the administration is still pumping through billions and 
     trillions of new spending.

  Paul Ryan said:

       Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is 
     now a fiscal crisis. We cannot deny it; instead we must, as 
     Americans confront it responsibly. And that is exactly what 
     the Republicans pledged to do.

  That is exactly what the Republicans pledged to do. They immobilized 
our government. They shut it down over and over and over in the name of 
fiscal responsibility--no help to the economy or the next generation. 
That is the farthest thought from their mind.
  After years of obstruction in the name of fiscal responsibility, they 
nominated Donald Trump, who promised during the campaign to deliver a 
giant, beautiful, massive tax cut and borrowed all of the money for it 
from working people in this country.
  There was a mayor in Indiana who wrote a piece about that in the 
paper that I thought was so instructive.
  He said: That tax plan would be tantamount to my going to my city 
council and saying that I want to go borrow more money than we have 
ever borrowed before in the history of our town, and I am not going to 
use it to invest in roads or bridges or the sewers or anything else, 
and I am just going to take the money we borrowed that our kids are 
going to have to give back, and I am going to give it to the richest 
neighborhood in my town.
  He said they would have asked: What have you been smoking?
  He promised to pass ``one of the largest increases in national 
defense spending in American history'' and ``not touch Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid.''
  He said he would eliminate not only the deficit. This is Donald 
Trump, the candidate whom the Republicans voted for, whom FOX News, 
which is in theory the conservative channel, has supported like an 
organ of the State, with hosts who claim they are fiscally responsible. 
But he promised to eliminate not only the deficit but the entire 
national debt--that immoral debt of $16 trillion that is now climbing 
to $30 trillion.
  And the way he was going to do that was by ``vigorously eliminating 
waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, ending redundant 
government programs, and growing the economy,'' as well as by 
``renegotiating all of our [debt] deals.''
  He hasn't renegotiated one. He spent more time failing to get a deal 
with the leader of North Korea than trying to address this challenge.
  Donald Trump said:

       It can be done. . . . it will take place and it will go 
     relatively quickly. If you have the right people, like in the 
     agencies and the various people that do the balancing . . . 
     you can cut the numbers by two pennies and three pennies and 
     balance a budget quickly and have a stronger and better 
     country.

  This is the President of the United States of America.
  That is ridiculous. That is ridiculous, but it is no more ridiculous 
than the history of the Republican Party, the supposedly fiscally 
conservative party--what a joke.
  Going back to 2001, the last time we had a surplus in America, Bill 
Clinton was President. He was a Democrat. He had a $5 trillion 
projected surplus over the decade--unimaginable today. It is 
unimaginable today, but politicians like us were having discussions 
about what to do with the surplus, what to do with abundance, how to 
make Social Security solvent, how to give the middle class a real tax 
cut, not a fake tax cut that is masquerading and covering up the tax 
cut for rich people.
  But we did none of that, and, instead, George Bush, who followed Bill 
Clinton, cut taxes in 2001. Almost all of the benefit went to wealthy 
people. He cut taxes in 2003, and both times it was just like Donald 
Trump said and the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said both times. 
They said: Oh, don't worry about it. They will pay for themselves.
  A lie, a lie, and the number is in the math. It is not about 
philosophy. This isn't about ideology. This is about the math, and 
everybody in America could see it because that is what produced the $16 
trillion that Paul Ryan said was so immoral, $8 trillion ago and on the 
way to $30 trillion in debt.
  By the way, it is important to know that when this Congress voted for 
those tax cuts in 2003 that were not paid for, the money was all 
borrowed by the sons and daughters of working people in America. We had 
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we didn't even have the decency 
while we had people at war to pay for those wars or to say to the 
American people: We need to pay for those wars. No, we are not going to 
pay for those wars, and we are going to borrow the money from America 
to give tax cuts to rich people.
  Then, President Bush, on top of that, seeking reelection, passed 
Medicare Part D, the drug program for seniors, and paid for none of 
that either. All

[[Page S5093]]

that money is from our children--all of it--and there has never been an 
effort to pay for it since.
  Then, because of their lax regulatory oversight of the housing 
market, the economy collapsed. The economy collapsed, and Barack Obama 
was handed not a $5 trillion surplus but a $1.2 trillion deficit from 
the Republicans, from George Bush. During the course of his Presidency, 
we had to weather the worst recession since the Great Depression. The 
worst it ever got around here was $1.5 trillion on the deficit, and the 
other side called him a Bolshevik and a Socialist. Well-meaning people 
from all over Wall Street and other places came down here and said: Fix 
the debt. Fix the debt.
  Where are they today? Where are they today?
  By the time he left, President Obama had cut the deficit by more than 
half--by more than half.
  Every one of these deals has been cut by Mitch McConnell, every 
single one. So it didn't surprise me at all this week that he was 
reported in the Washington Post to have said to the President that no 
politician has ever lost an election spending more money. No politician 
has ever lost an election spending more money, said the Republican 
majority leader to the President. I can't think of a more Bolshevik 
statement than that, to use terms that the other side has been using 
for 10 years. I can't think of a more irresponsible position than that 
when we are not in the depths of a recession, when 10 million people 
haven't lost their jobs, when the economy, according to the President, 
is the best economy we have ever had.
  This is the moment we should be securing our future. This is the 
moment we should be preparing for another foreign engagement. Because 
of these deals that have been led by Mitch McConnell, the Republican 
leader from Kentucky, when you add it all up, not only do we have this 
extraordinary deficit that we have never seen in the country's 
history--
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BENNET. But since 2001, we have cut taxes by $5 trillion. We 
borrowed all of that money from our children, and almost all of the 
benefit went to the wealthiest people in America. We spent $5.6 
trillion on wars in the Middle East. We didn't pay for a single dollar 
of it. That is $11 trillion, $12 trillion that we could have spent to 
fix every road and bridge in America, that could have fixed every 
single airport in America that needs it, that could have made Social 
Security solvent for my children's generation and for the other 
children of the people who came out here and said: We are here to 
immobilize the Democratic President in the name of fiscal 
responsibility. But now we know the level of their fiscal hypocrisy. It 
knows no end.
  If there is one benefit of this--if there is one benefit of this, the 
American people are--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. BENNET. I yield the floor.

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