[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 154 (Tuesday, September 24, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5643-S5646]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Budget Deficit

  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I rise to call attention to our Federal 
Government's unsustainable fiscal path.
  Earlier this month the Congressional Budget Office reported that 
Federal

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revenues are up 3 percent, or $102 billion, compared to the same time 
period last year. The problem is that Federal spending grew by 7 
percent, or $271 billion, over that same period. CBO projects the 
deficit for this year to reach $960 billion, which means that 22 cents 
of every dollar the government spends is borrowed.
  All of that borrowing doesn't come cheap. In the first 11 months of 
the year, net interest payments on the public debt totaled $391 
billion. That is up $48 billion, or 14 percent, over the previous year.
  To put that in context, $391 billion is roughly 2\1/2\ times what we 
spend each year on the U.S. Air Force. It is more than 12 times the 
size of the budget of the entire U.S. Department of Justice and more 
than 5 times the size of the budget for the U.S. Department of 
Education. That is $391 billion spent with nothing to show for it. It 
is just like running up credit card debt and owing a whole bunch of 
interest without getting anything for it. That is what our future 
generation is really going to have to worry about.
  What is worse, unless something is done to change our current 
trajectory, annual net interest costs are projected to more than double 
in the next 10 years. CBO projects that over the next decade we will 
spend more than $5.8 trillion on net interest costs. All the while, our 
debt will continue to mount. That doesn't pay down anything; that just 
pays the interest, and that is calculated at a pretty low interest 
rate. We could be faced with higher interest rates, which could easily 
double what we are paying right now.
  We have been fortunate that despite Congress's spendthrift ways, the 
U.S. dollar remains the dominant global reserve currency, which allows 
our government to borrow more cheaply than anybody else. But what if 
that changes? What if foreign interests decide that our fiscal 
dysfunction is simply too great and the dollar is no longer a safe bet?
  The threat of a fiscal crisis is not something anyone should take 
lightly. Last month, the CBO--that is the Congressional Budget Office, 
which does all the calculations--warned: ``If Federal debt as a 
percentage of [gross domestic product] continued to rise at the pace 
the Congressional Budget Office projects that it would under current 
law . . . [t]hat debt path would [ultimately] pose significant risks to 
the fiscal and economic outlook.''
  While the Congressional Budget Office notes that those risks are not 
currently apparent in financial markets, it goes on to warn that the 
projected path of rising debt would increase ``the risk of a fiscal 
crisis . . . in which the interest rate on federal debt rises abruptly 
because investors have lost confidence in the U.S. government's fiscal 
position.''
  As a father and a grandfather, this is a concern that keeps me up at 
night. What kind of burden are we placing on our children and on our 
grandchildren? They could face a future of less growth and economic 
opportunity as a result of our refusal to make difficult fiscal 
decisions.
  What if we actually had to make massive cuts? We don't make cuts at 
all. What if we had to do massive cuts? Of course, we could raise 
revenue, but there is always the side effect of raising revenue, which 
costs jobs and then reduces revenue. There are a lot of tricky balances 
that have to be done.
  This problem didn't arise overnight, and it will not be fixed 
overnight either. Congress should be working together with the 
administration now to begin the long process of fiscal course 
correction. Unfortunately, we are not off to a great start.
  Prior to the August State work period, Congress passed the Bipartisan 
Budget Act of 2019, which increased discretionary spending caps for 
fiscal years 2020 and 2021 by a combined $322 billion. That is the 
increase. This essentially marks the end of the Budget Control Act 
period of federal budgeting. In a form that was all too common, a tool 
that was meant to bring fiscal constraint met its end with a whimper, 
when it probably should have been a scream.
  The last cap deal--which CBO tells us will cost nearly $2 trillion 
over the next 10 years if we continue spending at those levels over 
that time period--featured $77 billion in offsets.
  What is an offset? That is finding some money to cover the amount of 
spending. I think you heard correctly there. The cap deal put us on a 
path to spend nearly $2 trillion over the next 10 years with $77 
billion--billion with a ``b''--in offsets, which is money to cover the 
debt. To make matters worse, those offsets will not even begin to kick 
in until the latter part of the next decade. In other words, we are 
saying there is a little patch of money out there that we haven't spent 
in the future yet, and it isn't going to come in for 10 years, but 
let's go ahead and spend it right now, and we will call that an offset 
to reduce the amount of debt we are creating. Boy, everybody wishes 
they could do that with their own spending, I am sure.
  The offsets--the money to cover the debt, which is the mere $77 
billion on $2 trillion--will not come in until the latter part of the 
next decade. In other words, we are spending money from 10 years down 
the road right now and calling it payment on the money we are spending.
  Even with this turn of events, everyone seems to agree that 
discretionary spending is not the main source of our budget challenge. 
The Congressional Budget Office projects America's debt will continue 
to increase rapidly over the next several decades because of mandatory 
spending.
  What is mandatory spending? That is spending we don't make a decision 
on at all. Those payments go on no matter what, and they are pretty 
important ones because they include things like Social Security and the 
major health programs and interest on the debt. That is mandatory. We 
can't bankrupt on paying the interest, so Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid, and interest on the debt are some of the main expenditures we 
make, and we never make any decisions on them. We do not change them. 
We don't improve them.
  For decades, nonpartisan experts warned of budget pressures we would 
face as baby boomers aged and began to retire. That is already 
happening, but that crisis is always tomorrow. We only handle today's 
crises. I can't imagine how tomorrow's people are going to handle the 
crisis that is being created at the present time. The combination of 
aging population, longer lifespans, and rising per beneficiary 
healthcare costs put enormous pressure on our budget.
  These warnings from the Congressional Budget Office, the actuaries, 
and many other people, you name it, continue to be ignored. We are now 
in a world where these pressures are very real and something we will 
need to face before we go off the cliff in a few short years.
  We know the Social Security trust fund and Medicare's Hospital 
Insurance Trust Fund are now paying out more than they are taking in. 
We also know Social Security's combined trust funds will be exhausted 
in 2032. ``That is way down the road.'' No, it is not. The Medicare 
Hospital Insurance Trust Fund--which covers inpatient hospital 
services, hospice care, skilled nursing facilities, and home health 
services--is projected to be depleted in 2026. That is not very far. If 
we continue to do nothing once their respective trust funds are 
exhausted, these programs will still be able to pay out some money, but 
they will only be able to pay out as much in benefits as they have 
coming in. I mentioned that we have a lot less coming in than we are 
paying out. For Medicare, that means we will only be able to pay 86 
percent of hospital-related Medicare spending. For Social Security, 
revenue is projected to cover only 76 percent of scheduled benefits. I 
don't know many seniors who can afford a 24-percent cut.
  I want to make sure Social Security and Medicare are able to provide 
benefits to current beneficiaries, as well as those who need them in 
the future. That will require being clear-eyed about the problem and 
working together in a bipartisan manner to ensure that these programs 
are solvent. The normal technique on trying to solve any of these 
problems is to point the finger at the other side and say it is their 
fault and they are not doing anything about it. Well, we are all going 
to have to do something about it. We are talking about a 24-percent cut 
in Social Security.
  The longer we wait to address the imbalance, the more severe the 
changes will be and the fewer options we will have. I remember looking 
at these

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problems in the year 2000, and at that time there were quite a few 
options, but all were rejected. Today there are a lot less options and 
a bigger cliff. We need to change the way we do things in Washington. 
We simply cannot afford to continue ignoring the challenges our country 
faces.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I rise to talk about a topic that is 
boring at times but is absolutely critical, as you just heard in the 
last few minutes. My good friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, is a 
certified public account. He lived in the real world before he came 
here, like I did. He is chairman of the Budget Committee. When he 
speaks about this, he speaks with the level of experience and current 
information that we all should listen to.
  I want to highlight some things he has already talked about but then 
talk about the potential we are looking at this week in terms of having 
our 187th continuing resolution since the 1974 Budget Act was put into 
law. Why is this important? As Senator Enzi just pointed out, our 
problem in America is twofold; one, we have a global security crisis, 
and we have a financial crisis. I use the word ``crisis'' in both 
because the world has never been more dangerous in my lifetime.
  Today we have $22 trillion in debt. Let me put a little history 
behind it. In the year 2000, we had $6 trillion on about a $12 trillion 
economy. At the end of President Bush's time, it went to $10 trillion 
of debt--again, on something like a $14 trillion or $15 trillion 
economy. At the end of President Obama's term, it went to $20 trillion. 
Under that administration, this government doubled America's debt to 
$20 trillion. After just a couple of years of President Trump, we are 
now at $22 trillion.
  The projection is very draconian over the next decade, even though, 
by growing the economy in the last couple of years, the Trump 
administration has actually lowered the debt curve by an estimate that 
CBO says is about $3 trillion over the next decade. That is not good 
enough. That is only a fraction of our problem.
  This chart on the right talks about the problem. I call it the Lamar 
Alexander chart because when we talked about it 2 years ago, we started 
bringing this chart up. Working on the budget process is one of the 
ways we deal with this. This burgeoning debt that we have to talk about 
is really made up of one major contributing factor; that is, mandatory 
expenses.

  This chart tries to explain that. It shows that the top line here is 
total U.S. spending. Today we spend about $4.5 trillion--a little bit 
more--but about $4.5 trillion funding the Federal Government. That 
includes everything: Military, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid--the 
whole bit. The Federal Government spends about $4.5 trillion on 
everything.
  The red line is today. Today, however, we only spend $1.3 trillion on 
discretionary spending. Yet in terms of the total, in 2000 we spent 
less than $2 trillion. Now we are spending more than $4 trillion. That 
has doubled in the last two decades. These are constant 2019 dollars.
  In the next 20 years, this is projected to go from $4 trillion to $12 
trillion per year, each year. In 1 year projected out here, we would 
almost double the amount of debt we have. This is untenable under 
anybody's estimate. It can't happen. It will not happen. Here is why. 
The world can't let it happen.
  Today we have about $200 trillion in total debt. Only $60 trillion of 
that is sovereign debt, which is government debt. We have one-third of 
that. This says that because of mandatory spending, primarily, we will 
go to almost half of the world's debt with 5 percent of the population. 
That is not going to happen.
  Yet what will happen to keep us from doing that or becoming that will 
be really draconian unless we act today. Senator Enzi is right. The 
sooner we act, the more alternatives and options we have. Let me try to 
explain the situation. We are actually spending less today in 
discretionary spending at $1.3 trillion as a percentage of our economy 
than we did in 2011. In 2011, we were spending 9 percent of our total 
GDP on discretionary spending.
  What is in discretionary spending? That is the military, most of the 
VA, and all discretionary spending, such as Health and Human Services, 
Labor, Agriculture, Justice Department, Treasury. All of the above are 
included in that. That is $1.3 trillion today, which is about 6 
percent. We have gone from 9 percent GDP to 6 percent GDP. 
Discretionary spending has actually been brought down.
  What is the problem? The problem is in mandatory. What is in 
mandatory? As Senator Enzi just said, mandatory is Social Security, 
Medicare, Medicaid, pension benefits on Federal employees, and the 
interest on the debt. Just in the next 2 years alone, mandatory 
spending goes up $420 billion. I can project that. That is within range 
of understanding. What I don't understand is how this really explodes 
out of control. This is because the baby boomers are maturing and going 
into the later years of their lives. As you just heard, both Social 
Security and Medicare--major trust funds--go to zero in a very short 
period of time. Medicare happens in 2026 and Social Security in 2032.
  I am here to tell you this is the crisis of our time, and we have to 
deal with it. Yet today we are about to go into our 187th continuing 
resolution. Why? Because we don't have an agreement to fund the 
government. We are at the end of our fiscal year, which is September 
30. We have 2 working days left, the way the Senate works, before that 
happens. It could still be fixed, but the reality of today is that we 
have not appropriated one dime for the Federal Government yet.
  Last year, going into August break on July 31, we had only funded 12 
percent of the Federal Government. Because we stayed here in August, we 
funded up to 75 percent of the government. That was the first time in 
22 years that we had gotten that far. As a matter of fact, in the last 
45 years, this Congress has only funded the Federal Government on time 
four times. We have actually shut the government down 21 times because 
of the lack of funding. That is almost once every 2 years. It is 
unbelievable.
  This year, in July, we had an agreement. We did a caps deal between 
the Democrats and Republicans. It was a bipartisan deal. Everybody went 
kumbaya and said: Yes, this is what we agreed to. We agree to this 
topline number. Appropriators had already been working all year. We had 
agreements in committee. All we had to do was come back in September 
and appropriate these bills, go to conference on the NDAA, and get the 
Defense Department funded along with the other major departments and go 
ahead down the road and get the government funded.
  Here we are at the end of September. That obviously did not happen. 
Why? Our good friends across the aisle violated what we thought was a 
good-faith agreement in July that there would be no poison pills when 
we started appropriating. We see clearly now that wasn't the case. They 
are holding this up over $5 billion that the President wants to move 
from military spending over to border security spending. It is almost 
like they want open borders. I just don't understand this.
  We know President Obama built 135 miles of wall, and we know one 
thing now. We know that where President Obama built a wall, where 
President Bush built a wall, where President Clinton built a wall, 
where President George H. W. Bush--in every single case, illegal 
crossings at the border went down 95 percent.
  By voting no on this spending bill, we are now getting into a 
situation where we have to go into a continuing resolution. Last week, 
we voted on the Defense bill, and Democrats voted it down. They voted 
against a 3.1-percent pay increase for our military brethren.
  What is even worse than that, by going into a continuing resolution 
and by voting no last week, the Democrats are encouraging the Defense 
Department to actually spend $4 billion. We did an audit last year. It 
was the first one in the history of the United States. President Trump 
ordered it. We had a law in 1991 that required it. Now we had that 
audit. This is the first pass. This is the tip of the iceberg. Because 
of that, we know that we found at least $4 billion that they don't want 
to continue spending, yet are going to be obliged to continue to spend 
against those obsolete programs under a continuing resolution, in 
addition to not

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getting a pay raise to our people in the military.
  We should not have been here in the first place. We had a joint 
select committee last year, and we have been working on this for 5 
years. It is time to fix this budget process once and for all. We have 
to hold Congress accountable, though. In most States, we don't have 
this problem. In 44 States, No. 1, you have a balanced budget law, but 
more importantly than that, in States like Georgia, if the legislature 
doesn't fund the government by the end of the legislative session, by 
law, the legislators don't go home.
  Senator Lankford and I and others have bills that would require the 
same thing here. As a matter of fact, some of us have actually put in 
bills that would stop the pay for staff and employees and would stop 
Members' compensation until we get this done. A requirement of our job 
here is to get the government funded.
  It is very simple. It is time for Congress to do its job. I am 
chagrined that we face another continuing resolution that we have 
educated people about and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars 
over a decade because of the damage it will do to the supply chain when 
we are trying to get readiness and recapitalization back in our U.S. 
military and talk about rationalization. It keeps us from doing each of 
those three things right now.
  Anybody in the military who is before us in committee tells us over 
and over and over of the damaging effects a continuing resolution has 
on our military at the very time when we are trying to stand up to peer 
pressures in a unique, new way. We have five threats across five 
domains. We have never faced that before. Yet here we are, hamstringing 
our military once again.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GARDNER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.