[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 131 (Thursday, August 1, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5290-S5291]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     BIPARTISAN BUDGET ACT OF 2019

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, first, I want to compliment the 
leadership in being able to come together on a budget agreement. This 
was a good day for the Senate, a good day for Congress, and a good day 
for the American people.
  We now have predictable spending caps not only for the fiscal year 
that begins October 1 but for the following year. This is good news. It 
provides the predictability we need in order to have early process for 
the consideration of the appropriations bills. When we return in 
September, it is our anticipation that the House and Senate 
Appropriations Committees will be hard at work, and we will have an 
opportunity to get our work done prior to the beginning of the fiscal 
year on October 1.
  I want to explain why I think this was the right vote and why I 
proudly supported it. It provides a reasonable growth rate for 
discretionary spending. If you look at the trend line over several 
decades, you will find that discretionary spending has become a smaller 
and smaller part of the Federal budget. We held back on discretionary 
spending in this country, whether it is defense or nondefense needs, 
and those needs have grown.
  We have not kept up with the needs of funding these programs. This 
budget agreement will now give us the opportunity to set priorities and 
move forward with many important programs that are funded by 
discretionary spending. Once again, discretionary spending has grown 
much slower than the growth rate of our budget, generally.
  It is a reasonable expectation that we can meet the needs of the 
people of this country by allowing some growth. What does it mean? 
Well, this past week, the Environment and Public Works Committee has 
recommended a transportation reauthorization bill for service 
transportation that would grow by about 10 percent. I think everyone in 
this Chamber understands that we have tremendous unmet needs in 
transportation infrastructure in this country. These caps give us a 
better opportunity of meeting those types of needs.
  Tomorrow I will be in the city of Bowie--which is not far from here--
meeting with the mayor who has a simple request: His drinking water 
pipes need major maintenance or replacement. There is not enough 
capacity within the ratepayers in order to be able to do that work. He 
needs the Federal partnership, State-revolving funds, or other areas in 
order to help fund a modern water infrastructure so we have safe 
drinking water in our community.
  These budget caps, again, give us the opportunity to move forward on 
programs like that so the Federal Government can help us meet our 
needs.
  I am proud, in the State of Maryland, that we have the National 
Institutes of Health located and headquartered in our State. We are all 
very proud of the work they do. They are unlocking the mystery of 
diseases in this country. We need to fund them. At the present time, so 
many worthwhile grant applications go unmet and unfilled that could 
discover how we could deal with some of the most dreaded diseases in 
our country. Funding NIH is in our national interest, but we have been 
held back because of the budget caps that have been in place. This 
allows us now to move forward with that priority.
  This is the year we prepare for the census. We only do that every 10 
years. We take the census of our country. This budget will allow the 
Census Bureau to have the tools so we can accurately count the people 
in this country. Why is that important? The Constitution says it is 
important. It is important so we have proper legislative representation 
in the congressional districts as well as in the State legislatures. 
That gives us the numbers so the communities are properly represented 
and so their voices can be adequately heard. It is also used for 
distribution of Federal funds so proper distribution can be made to the 
people of this country. I can go on with a whole list of issues that 
are important. Each one is important.
  We will set the priorities, whether it is childcare or dealing with 
our veterans. We all talk about how we want to do what is right for our 
veterans. We know there are a lot of unmet needs. This budget will 
allow us to move forward in that area.
  I am proud to represent the State of Maryland that has major urban 
centers. This bill will allow us to deal with some of the challenges we 
have in our urban centers.
  I also represent rural Maryland. This bill will allow us to move 
forward with their needs. We will be able to move forward on education, 
which should be our top priority. It is a great equalizer in this 
country.

[[Page S5291]]

  Now the appropriators have to make those judgments on the priorities, 
and we will have to reconcile between the House and Senate and get the 
President's signature.
  That is what we should be doing--setting the priorities for our 
country but having a reasonable pool of money to deal with 
discretionary spending. We have been denied that for many years. Now we 
have the opportunity to do what Congress should do and set the 
priorities for this country.
  In addition, we have the drug problems. I probably have more meetings 
in my State on dealing with the drug crisis. It is in every community 
in Maryland and this Nation. I hope we will see increased Federal 
participation in that area.
  Another part of the budget agreement was to extend the debt limit for 
2 years. This, to me, is one of the absurdities of what we do on debt 
limits. We incur money--we incur debt--and then we put a limit as to 
whether we will pay for the bills we incurred. You don't default on 
your debt. That is not what America is about. We have to control what 
we spend, but we have to pay for what we spend. We have to honor our 
debt. Our credit ratings were at risk. The Secretary of Treasury made 
this one of his top priorities. I agreed with him on this issue. Now we 
no longer have the fear that America will not honor its debt.
  The bill also gets rid of sequestration. Good riddance. This was put 
in as a placeholder for us to deal with the budget deficit. It didn't 
work in that way. All it did was cause uncertainty, and in many 
respects, it would have required across-the-board cuts. That is not the 
way we should do business. We have to make decisions. Sequestration 
could have been used for us to avoid making the tough decisions. We 
have to do that ourselves.
  The bottom line is the budget agreement gets rid of that and gives us 
a much better chance of avoiding a government shutdown, which makes 
absolutely no sense at all, and of, hopefully, not having to deal with 
continuing resolutions. Continuing resolutions put us on autopilot 
because we can't pass a budget. Now, I hope we will be able to pass 
budgets and avoid not only shutdowns but continuing resolutions.
  I want to emphasize this point. Discretionary spending has become a 
smaller part of the overall budget of this country. It has been a 
shrieking song. So why do we have growing deficits? By the way, 
discretionary spending is at historically low levels in this country. 
Revenues, unfortunately, are also at historically low levels. In other 
words, we are not raising the traditional amount of revenue that is 
necessary for us to pay our bills.
  I come from a family who believes you have to pay your bills. I think 
it is wrong for us to spend money today and ask our children and 
grandchildren to pay for our current spending. We should have the 
courage to provide the revenues that are necessary to pay our bills. 
Instead, what have we done? We have cut revenues again and again so our 
deficit today is not sustainable. We have to deal with it.
  The major culprit has been these irresponsible tax cuts, the last of 
which went primarily to the wealthiest people in the country. According 
to the Congressional Budget Office, it will add $1.9 trillion to the 
deficit over the next decade. That is the culprit of the deficits, and 
that is what we should be dealing with.
  I have heard a lot of my colleagues come in here and lament this 
agreement. They have said it is going to add to the deficit. Some of 
these people are the same people who voted for the tax cut. Let's be 
direct about this. We have to have the revenues that are necessary to 
pay for what we incur in spending.
  Yes, there is another area in which we can do better, and that is in 
healthcare spending, much of which is mandatory spending, not 
discretionary spending. These are the appropriations that have to be 
made. We can do a much better job of reining in the cost of healthcare. 
We had a chance to do that this week, but we didn't take full advantage 
of that.
  I am a member of the Senate Committee on Finance. We passed a bill to 
deal with the escalating costs of prescription drugs. Today, in 
Maryland, I have been told one out of every four healthcare dollars is 
spent on medicines. We pay so much more in America for medicines than 
do the other industrialized nations of the world.
  Yes, we have recommended to the Senate body a bill to deal with the 
cost of prescription medicines. It will deal with the issue of putting 
a cap on the escalation of the current drug prices. It will put a cap 
on the out-of-pocket costs that the people on Medicare Part D will have 
to pay. That is good. Those are two good things.
  We had a chance to really make a difference by eliminating the 
prohibition in the current law that prevents Medicare from negotiating 
the costs of medicines. Think about that for one moment. Where else do 
we do that? We tell businesses they can't leverage all of their buying 
to get the lowest possible prices, and we tell Medicare it can't 
leverage the total market it is paying in order to get the best price 
on prescription medicines.
  What does that mean? That means we are overpaying. Whether you are 
paying it in Part D premiums, whether you are paying it in private 
insurance premiums, or whether you are paying it as a taxpayer, we are 
paying too much for medicines. It is the primary reason the 
international price on medicines is so much lower than what we pay in 
America.
  We had a chance to deal with it this week, and we didn't. We will 
have another opportunity when the bill comes to the floor, and I hope 
we will do the right thing by removing the prohibition that is in the 
current law on negotiating price.
  I am very pleased we got this budget agreement done. No, I am not 
pleased about the deficit, but I recognize that we need to deal with 
revenues and that we need to deal with costs like prescription drugs, 
which were not part of today's vote. I hope, when we return in 
September, the good will we have used in order to get this budget 
agreement done will continue and that the appropriators will be able to 
reconcile their appropriations bills before October 1 so we will not 
need continuing resolutions and so there will be no threat of a 
government shutdown.
  I hope we will have the same type of bipartisan commitment by which 
people have expressed their outrage on the growth of the deficit in 
order to deal with the real causes of the deficit. We will have a 
chance on prescription medicines to deal with those costs. Let's have 
the courage to sit down and make sure we raise the revenues we need in 
order to pay for our expenses.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader.

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