[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3129-3130]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I wish to use my time by following up on 
the comments our leader has made with regard to the budget. It is 
budget time in Washington right now. Although many people are focused 
very heavily on the President's budget submission, the reality is that 
the budget is a uniquely legislative responsibility. The President 
makes a recommendation, but it is this Congress, the Senate and the 
House of Representatives, that establishes the budget for our Nation.
  The budget that was announced yesterday and reviewed, which we will 
be evaluating in the Budget Committee today, in my opinion, is not 
responsible. In fact, it is an embarrassment.
  We often talk about the fact that we want to avoid tax-and-spend 
politics in Washington. But this budget plunges headlong back into the 
very tax-and-spend policies of the past that have put us in the dire 
fiscal position we are in today.
  The budget is a failure on the spending policy, it is a failure on 
the tax policy, and it is a failure on the additions to our national 
debt that are monumental, which it contemplates. It is a failure 
because it does not do a single thing about the most significant fiscal 
problems facing us, namely the entitlement problems and the entitlement 
portion of our budget.
  Let me go through all those briefly. To do so, I am going to 
explain--this may be a little bit basic to those in the middle of 
budgeting, but I am not sure the folks who pay attention to those 
understand exactly how the budgeting process works.
  This year we will have the first budget that exceeds $3 trillion in 
Federal spending. In rough approximation, that budget is approximately 
two-thirds entitlements and spending on the interest on the national 
debt. The other remaining third is made up of what we call 
discretionary spending.
  Again, approximately half of that is our national defense budget, and 
the remaining half is the rest of our nondefense discretionary 
spending; basically the rest of everything in Government more than our 
entitlement programs, interest on the national debt, and defense 
spending.
  The problem, the most significant problem we face in our budget 
today, is the fact that the two-thirds portion I talk about, the 
entitlements and the interest on the national debt, are out of control. 
I often say they are on auto pilot, this spending in that two-thirds of 
our budget. That is growing at a rate that has often doubled, sometimes 
more than doubled, even tripled or quadrupled the rate of the growth of 
our economy.
  It grows without a vote in Congress. Previous Congresses have passed 
legislation, and previous Presidents have signed the legislation into 
law that has established our entitlement programs.
  Entitlement programs grow regardless of what we do in Congress. We 
could never vote again here in Congress and this spending would 
continue at rates that have nothing to do with the health or strength 
of the economy and which, as I have said, far ourpaces our economy. 
What does the budget before us propose to do about this? Nothing. Yet 
again we have no opportunity proposed in the budget that we will be 
battling over to try to address this incredible fiscal problem our 
Nation faces.
  What does the budget do instead? It increases spending dramatically 
in the discretionary part of the budget as well

[[Page 3130]]

as allowing the entitlement section of the budget to rage uncontrolled. 
We are looking in this budget at a $350 billion deficit, and that 
doesn't count war spending except for a small portion. It doesn't take 
into account the fact that we just passed a stimulus package that put 
another $150 billion of debt on the backs of our children and 
grandchildren without paying for it under the pay-go rules we are 
required to live by in Congress--in other words, $150 billion of new 
spending with no offsets against any other spending immediately put on 
the backs of our children and grandchildren in the form of national 
debt which they will pay back at a much higher rate as interest 
compounds on it over the years.
  What does this budget do in order to try to deal with this increased 
rush for spending? It raises taxes. It raises taxes over $700 billion 
in the next 5 years. How does that happen? By the way, this tax 
increase America will face under the assumptions of this budget will 
occur with no vote in Congress. How does that happen? To explain that, 
I need to explain how the budget works.
  As most people in America are becoming aware, there is a filibuster 
in the Senate that requires, on major policies where there is 
disagreement, essentially that in order to move forward, 60 votes are 
needed to get past the filibuster, to get cloture. Because of that 60-
vote requirement on filibusters, it is difficult to either increase 
taxes or cut taxes because there is usually opposition to either move, 
and it requires 60 votes to move forward. But there is one bill each 
year on which we don't have to have 60 votes. It is called the 
reconciliation bill. It is a part of our budget process. Because of the 
way the law is set up, we can have a 50-percent-plus-one vote on that 
reconciliation bill each year. That is how the tax cuts of 2001 and 
2003 were put into place.
  Those tax cuts, as a reminder, were reductions in the income tax 
marginal rates for every American, with the largest percentage of those 
reductions in the lower and middle-income categories, reductions of the 
capital gains tax, reductions of the dividends tax, and a number of 
other very important tax policies that in 2001 and 2003 reduced taxes 
because we were able to use the reconciliation bill to do so. The 
problem is that the reconciliation process requires a sunset.
  People around the country must wonder why we are facing a sunset of 
these tax cuts. It is because in order to avoid the filibuster and get 
the tax cuts put into place, the reconciliation process was used, which 
itself carries a sunset. So over the next 3 or 4 years, the tax cuts of 
2001 and 2003 will expire. Once they expire, taxes will go back up in 
nominal amounts on every American.
  All we have to do is to extend those tax cuts to keep tax rates at 
their current levels, to be responsible about tax policy. But what does 
this budget do? In order to facilitate the explosion of new spending 
this budget contemplates, it assumes there will be no vote in Congress 
to extend those tax rates cuts. What does that mean?
  Let's look at the first chart. Over the next 5 years, that means 
taxes are going to go up by $1.3 trillion. The lower income tax rates 
people are paying today are going to go back up. The child tax credit, 
the marriage penalty elimination, the estate tax reductions, and the 
small business tax relief all go back up. One year of AMT fix is 
contemplated, but the alternative minimum tax which is now slamming the 
middle class will not be accommodated in any year of this budget except 
for the first year. There are other extensions of other types of R&D 
tax credits and other things that are important for our economy that 
will go up. When you have totaled it all up, this budget contemplates 
and provides for $1.3 trillion of new taxes.
  Over a 10-year period, the number is even more phenomenal: $3.9 
trillion of new taxes. That is how we are facilitating the increased 
spending contemplated in this budget.
  As I indicated, we are now facing a situation where Washington has 
returned to the tax-and-spend policies of the past. If we do nothing, 
which is what this budget contemplates, entitlement spending will 
continue to rage, driving up our debt. Discretionary spending will be 
accelerated, driving up the debt. Taxes will explode. When those tax 
rates go up, remember, it is going to happen with no vote in Congress. 
We are simply going to sit back and let America have the hugest tax 
increase it has ever had by taking no action to protect the American 
taxpayer.
  I was elected to the House of Representatives back in 1992 or 1993. 
Ever since that time, we have tried to reduce taxes to accommodate a 
better tax policy and tax structure in this policy. Every time we have 
proposed a tax cut, that tax cut was attacked as a tax cut for the 
wealthy. That simply is not true. As our leader said, whether you look 
at the alternative minimum tax, the marriage tax penalty, the small 
businesses, the child tax credit, or the reductions of income tax rates 
across the board for every taxpayer in America, these taxes squarely 
hit the middle class and every income category across the board. We 
often talk about that typical family of four and the several thousand 
dollars of taxes they are going to be asked to pitch in for this. But 
it really is not just that typical family of four; it is a single 
mother, a single man, a family with children, a family without 
children, a married couple. Everybody who pays taxes is going to see 
their taxes go up dramatically.
  This budget is not responsible. It is not responsible on spending 
policy. It is not responsible on taxing policy. It is not responsible 
because it provides for no action to deal with the entitlement reform 
so pressing in our Nation.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota.

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