[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18284-18286]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, yesterday the CBO gave us their estimates 
of what the deficit is going to be and what the deficit for next year 
will be, and it is not good news. The deficit has more than doubled. It 
is projected now to be $407 billion. That is up from about $160 
billion. That has all occurred under the leadership of this Democratic 
Congress. Obviously, the administration takes significant 
responsibility, but the Congress, under the law, under the 
Constitution, controls the purse strings, and the Congress has the 
control over the check writing of the Government. As a result, the 
first responsibility for fiscal restraint and fiscal discipline is with 
the Congress, and it has failed that test.
  It is hard to imagine how the deficit could jump this much in this 
short period of time. Most people will say it is the result of the 
war--or people on the other side will say that. It is not. This jump in 
the deficit, to the extent it was controllable from the Federal 
Government's standpoint--in other words, it wasn't caused by the 
slowdown in the economy--was purely a function of increased spending on 
nondefense--not purely but was significantly increased by spending on 
nondefense activities and a dramatic increase in spending.
  The problem is that not only is this deficit now at $400 billion and 
going up under this Congress, but the outyears are even more severe 
that the risk for us as a nation is even more dramatic from the 
standpoint of fiscal policy because looming over the horizon is the 
problem with entitlement spending which will expand dramatically as the 
baby boom generation retires and where we already know there is more 
than $60 trillion of unfunded liability.
  What has this Congress's response been to this situation? It is the 
worst record in the last 20 years. One appropriations bill--one 
appropriations bill--freestanding, has been passed in the last 2 years, 
the Defense appropriations bill last year. There have been Omnibus 
appropriations bills passed. Then this year, we are going to pass, it

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looks like, not an Omnibus appropriations bill but simply a continuing 
resolution; a complete abdication, a complete abandonment of the budget 
process, of the responsibility--the first responsibility of the 
Congress, other than defending the country--of setting up a fiscal 
process for managing the taxpayers' dollars has occurred under the 
leadership of this Democratic Congress. It is truly the worst record in 
the last 20 years. Nothing like this has happened where so much that 
Congress is supposed to do has not been done. No appropriations bills 
have been brought to the floor of the Senate, and no appropriations 
bills have passed the Senate and the House. None. We are supposed to 
pass 12 bills. None have been passed.
  The debt has gone up over $1 trillion, $1 trillion added to the debt 
in the last 2 years. The deficit has doubled, and yet there has been no 
effort at all not only to do the day-to-day responsibility of managing 
the Government, which, after all, is the responsibility of the 
Congress, by passing appropriations bills, but to address the issue of 
the looming crisis in our entitlement accounts--no effort to address 
entitlement reform or even at the margin to try to control the rate of 
growth of entitlement programs. Even the most simple ideas which are 
reasonable and could have been accomplished have not been pursued, 
ideas such as making wealthy people pay for some portion of their Part 
D premium.
  Today, Warren Buffett, who qualifies for a drug benefit under 
Medicare, does not have to pay for any of that or pays only a marginal 
amount of that cost compared to what he should be paying as a high-
income individual. That adjustment has been ignored. Ideas such as that 
which make sense that would at least save us some money have not even 
been brought forward; zero effort in the area of Medicare reform, in 
the area of Medicaid reform, and in the area of entitlement reform by 
this Congress, zero effort in the area of controlling spending. Not one 
program has been reduced, not one program has been eliminated, not one 
program has been adjusted downward. Everything has gone up and up and 
up. Thousands of earmarks have been proposed, thousands--7,000 or 
11,000, I have forgotten the number. Senator Coburn knows it off the 
top of his head. But it is so many you can't even keep track of them.
  It is a true dereliction of duty by this Democratic Congress the way 
the fiscal house of this country has been managed. They do debt, they 
do deficits, and they do nothing, and they deserve a D minus when it 
comes to managing our fiscal house.
  It is unfortunate because all these costs which we are running up 
represent radical increases in borrowing which means dramatic burdens 
for our children and our grandchildren as they have to pay these bills 
when they come due in the outyears instead of paying as we go, which is 
the appropriate way to proceed with spending. We are simply borrowing 
from our children.
  In fact, the pay-go rules, which were supposed to discipline 
spending, have been waived, adjusted, and gamed time after time to the 
point where over $399 billion under this Congress has been spent or put 
on the books as an obligation which should have all been subject to a 
pay-go point of order. But those pay-go points of order have been 
adjusted, waived, or gamed so they did not even get raised or, if they 
did get raised, they got run over by the majority in this Congress.
  So the rules which this Congress put in place to try to discipline 
spending and which we so often hear chest beating about from the other 
side of the aisle--I am for pay-go--have been eviscerated. I call it 
``Swiss-cheese go.'' It has no relevance at all any longer because the 
spending around here occurs in a manner which is profligate and there 
is no attempt to adjust spending to reflect revenues, to attempt to 
bring down the deficit. In fact, the deficit is now double.
  It is not good news for the American taxpayer. Here we are in a 
situation where we are facing some very serious fiscal times, and we 
ought to at least be able to discipline our budgets in a more effective 
way. We ought to at least do the business of the Congress, which is to 
pass appropriations bills which are within the budget rather than pass 
supplemental emergencies which are outside the budget.
  This is a problem, and it is a significant problem. It is brought 
about in large part because this Congress has failed to do its job of 
managing the fiscal house or even taking up the bills which are 
supposed to manage the fiscal house.
  There is another subject I want to touch base on--I see the majority 
leader is here and as a courtesy, I will proceed to those comments so I 
don't take up too much of his time--and that is the issue of the 
highway trust fund needing to be replenished to meet obligations which 
it has incurred.
  A little bit of history is important, if the majority leader will 
allow me to proceed briefly to outline the history.
  We passed something called SAFETEA back in 1995. That bill set out 
highway spending which was supposed to be paid for from the highway 
fund, which the highway fund is paid for by gas taxes. But that bill 
was intentionally structured--intentionally structured--so that the 
spending would exceed the income. We knew one day during the term of 
that bill--people thought it would be later in the process--the highway 
trust fund would be spent out and there would be a problem.
  Why do we know that? Because that bill included 6,000 earmarks 
totaling $24 billion which we knew were not going to be able to be 
totally paid for by gas tax revenues even if the gas tax revenues had 
maintained themselves.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
  Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair.
  What happened was that the gas tax revenues have fallen because of 
the increase in gas prices and the American people's appropriate effort 
to try to conserve their use of gasoline. So the day of reckoning has 
come earlier, much earlier, than expected, but we knew there was going 
to be a day of reckoning because the bill was structured to fail. All 
these 6,000 projects that were put in there, $24 billion of spending we 
knew was not going to work or be paid for under the present bill. So 
now the suggestion is that rather than pay for them in a responsible 
way, we should raid the general fund, take that money and use it in the 
highway trust fund.
  The highway trust fund has always been a separate entity. The whole 
purpose of the highway trust fund was to fund highways and have them 
have their own stream of revenues to fund them and to not commingle 
those funds with the general fund.
  The argument has been made--and it is a straw dog argument of the 
most extraordinary level--that back in 1998, the highway trust fund 
lent $8 billion to the general fund, and they are just trying to 
recover that now as an accounting event. That puts a whole new spin on 
the concept of accounting. Even the people who did Enron's internal 
accounting would have found that one a hard sell. That was a movement 
in 1998 of nothing more than paper.
  This event is a real addition to the Federal debt of $8 billion. This 
is real money; that had no real money involved. This has a real effect; 
that had no real effect involved. So that argument is truly a straw dog 
argument put out there to try to legitimize a raid on the general fund 
in order to settle up the highway fund.
  Now, I know I am going to lose this fight, and I am not trying to 
stop the fight. I am not trying to stop the event. I haven't suggested 
we need 60 votes to go through this. What I have suggested--and I will 
ask unanimous consent to accomplish this--is that we simply have two 
amendments: One--mine--would put back in place pay-go rules and the 
Byrd rule prospectively--so it doesn't even affect this event--so this 
doesn't happen again. Both of those should be disciplining events on 
how we fund roads, and it is the right procedure. It is not an 
outrageous request to proceed that way. The other is the Coburn-DeMint 
amendment, which says that any money that is taken out of the highway 
fund will be used for building roads or bridges, as I understand it, 
and not be used for things

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such as bike paths and basketball arenas.
  So those are the two amendments; that those amendments be brought up, 
debated, and voted on in a very short and very constricted timeframe 
and then we have a final passage vote. The majority leader has asked 
for an amendment to his proposal, so if either one of these proposals 
were to pass, it is going to go back to the House.
  The argument that this is going to slow the process doesn't really 
have legs because, first off, we may lose both our amendments, but even 
if we don't lose them, the majority leader has proposed a unanimous-
consent request which has an amendment in it, and that amendment will 
pass because, in effect, it is an effective date amendment. But that 
will send it back to the House and it will have to be done again, 
anyway. So as a practical matter, these proposals aren't going to slow 
the process.
  It does seem to me it is reasonable to have two amendments and then 
final passage or three amendments and then final passage rather than 
just one amendment and have final passage, and do it all within a 
framework that has a reasonable timeframe.

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