[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17593-17594]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             NATIONAL DEBT

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, yesterday was not a great day for our 
Nation. For the first time in our history, the deficit of this Nation 
passed $1 trillion--$1 trillion. That is a number I do not think 
anybody ever expected to see as a deficit for our country.
  To try to put it in perspective, as a percentage of our GDP, that is 
about 13 percent. We have not had that size deficit since we were in 
World War II. The implications of that deficit are staggering for us as 
a nation but, more importantly, it represents a clear and present 
danger to our children and our children's children and to this Nation's 
fiscal solvency.
  Remember, we are not through the fiscal year yet. It is estimated 
that this deficit will continue up for the rest of the year. It is 
estimated that $1.8 trillion will be the deficit we will be facing in 
2010, and over $1 trillion the next year. These are numbers which are 
so huge they are incomprehensible--incomprehensible to myself and to 
most Americans. But they translate into a very significant problem, 
which is that we will be passing on to our children, as a result of all 
this debt, a nation which they cannot afford.
  What is the cause of this debt? What is causing this massive 
expansion in deficits? Primarily it is spending. It is not that we are 
a nation that is undertaxed. It is that we are a nation that is simply 
spending too much.
  My colleague on the other side of the aisle, the chairman of the 
Budget Committee, Mr. Conrad, is fond of saying the debt is the threat. 
He is absolutely right because that is the threat to this Nation.
  It is important to put in context, though, that this is not a 
momentary event. We are not running up these deficits just today. But 
as we look into the outyears under the Obama budget, the deficits go up 
astronomically for as far as the eye can see, leading to debt which is 
unsustainable.
  Over the next 10 years, the average deficit of this Nation will be $1 
trillion. Again, let's try to put that in context. That is about 4 to 5 
percent of our gross national product every year.
  If you were in Europe and you wanted to get into the European Union, 
which is a legitimate group of industrialized nations, they have rules 
for how fiscally solvent you must be as a nation. One of their rules 
says your deficit cannot exceed 3 percent of your gross national 
product. Yet under President Obama and his proposed budget, our deficit 
will average 4.5 percent to 5 percent of our gross national product for 
the next 10 years, over $1 trillion a year.
  To what does this lead? It leads to massive expansion of debt, as 
this chart shows, a debt which will be 85 percent of our GDP. What does 
that mean, 85 percent of our GDP? The public debt of a nation is the 
debt held by other people, specifically Americans and other countries, 
primarily, in our case, China. They are the biggest holder of our debt. 
Historically, whether a country or individuals are willing to buy the 
debt of a nation depends on whether that nation is seen as being able 
to pay off that debt, that there is a reasonable likelihood of that, or 
whether the Nation has the strength to pay off that debt.
  There are rules of thumb here too. Again, in order to get into the 
European Union, you have to have a ratio of less than 60 percent public 
debt to your nation's debt, to your nation's GNP, gross national 
product.
  Yesterday, under this proposal, under this administration, as we are 
seeing in action as we passed the $1 trillion debt line yesterday, that 
public debt goes well past 65 percent very quickly within the next 2 
years, and then it continues to head up to 80 percent. In other words, 
our public debt will be so high we would be considered so irresponsible 
as a nation fiscally that the European nations, which are 
industrialized countries, under their rules would not be able to allow 
us into the European Union. Not that we wish to seek entry, but clearly 
that is a standard at which we should look.
  If you look at it historically, our public debt--and what most 
economists agree is reasonable--has been between 30 and 40 percent of 
gross national product. That is a manageable public debt. But when you 
double that debt as a percent of GDP, you are putting us on a path, a 
spiraling path downward into fiscal insolvency and a nation which 
cannot sustain its own debt.
  To try to address this in another way, President Obama's proposals 
for spending will more than double the debt in the next 5 years and 
triple it in the next 10 years. In fact, if you take all the debt that 
has been run up in our Nation from the beginning when George Washington 
was President through George W. Bush's term in office, take all that 
debt, President

[[Page 17594]]

Obama has proposed and is spending--this government is spending--at a 
rate that will double that debt in just 5 years. It is an inexcusable 
action to pass this much debt on to our children.
  This chart, called the ``Wall of Debt,'' puts it in numerical terms. 
We can see how it goes up and up and up and up. By the end of this 
budget, the debt will have increased three times--three times from 
about $6 billion to $16 billion, about $5.5 to $16 trillion--excuse me, 
trillion dollars. It is hard to use the term ``trillion.''
  This is intolerable.
  How do we address this situation? We need to control spending, and we 
need, to the extent we raise taxes, to use those taxes to reduce our 
debt, not expand the size of government. Yet what are the proposals we 
are seeing coming from this administration and Members on the other 
side of the aisle?
  We have seen a House of Representatives proposal in the area of 
energy called the cap-and-trade bill, which should be more accurately 
described as the cap-and-tax bill because it creates a national sales 
tax of inordinate size. We have never seen anything of this size 
before. Every time you hit your light switch, you are going to end up 
paying a new tax under this bill for the purpose of addressing climate 
change and energy policy. Yet it does not really accomplish any of 
that.
  The primary polluter in America today is the automobile. All that the 
new tax that is being put in place from the House bill does is increase 
the cost or increase the tax on gasoline. It does not reduce the 
mileage. It does not reduce the pollution. It just increases the tax.
  As Senator Alexander spoke prior to my speaking, in the area of 
energy production, electrical production, cap and trade simply becomes 
a windfall, a pure and simple corporate welfare program for a lot of 
large, major electrical producers. They get this asset, a certificate 
to sell, which we have seen generate huge amounts of income to them, in 
exchange for theoretically reducing the amount of emissions that go 
into the atmosphere.
  If you wanted to address this issue, you don't do it with a massive 
new tax on American workers, which is then basically given back to the 
industry which uses it, which gets an advantage from it. Rather, you 
should use the ideas Senator Alexander has talked about and we have 
been talking about on this side. Build 100 nuclear powerplants in the 
next 20 years, move the automobile fleet to at least half electrical by 
the year 2020 so that you have actually brought online nonpolluting 
electrical power and you have put in place automobiles which do not 
pollute also.
  That is not the proposal. The proposal is this massive new tax, not 
used to reduce the debt or the deficit but basically used in many areas 
to expand the government with lots of new programs but also to 
underwrite a huge corporate welfare program.
  Then the other proposal we have from the administration that is major 
public policy is the issue of health care. Again, proposals are about 
expanding dramatically the size of government. In fact, the bill being 
worked on in the HELP Committee, by its own scoring, is at least $1 
trillion unfunded. That adds to the debt. That is going to go on top of 
this debt.
  To the extent there are new taxes being talked about--and there are a 
lot of them, especially in the House of Representatives--those taxes 
are not being used to reduce the debt. They are being used to grow the 
size of government, to increase the government. As a result, the debt 
does not go down; the government's size goes up when we should be 
focusing on this debt issue.
  It is unconscionable that we as one generation would be running up 
these types of deficits and passing this type of debt on to our 
children. There may be an excuse for it during a period of recession--
--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask for 1 additional minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, there may be an excuse for it during a 
recession--and we are in a recession, a severe one--but there is no 
excuse for it as we move out of this recession, and we are moving out 
of this recession. There is no excuse for having deficits that are $1 
trillion for the next 10 years. There is no excuse for running deficits 
of 4 to 5 percent of GDP for the next $1 trillion. There is absolutely 
no excuse for putting a debt on our children's backs that is 80 percent 
of the GDP of this country because what we are doing is passing on to 
our children a nation with fiscal policies that are unsustainable and 
which will basically give them less of a lifestyle than we received 
from our parents. No generation should do that to another generation. 
Yet there are no policy proposals coming forward from this 
administration which would turn this debt line down. None. Instead, 
their policy proposals increase the size of government and increase the 
tax burdens of Americans without reducing our debt by any significance. 
It is an unfortunate situation and a difficult situation and one which 
we better start addressing for the sake of this country and for our 
children's future.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, the pending business, I understand, is 
the DOD authorization bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is still in morning business, and 
the Democrats control the remaining time.
  Mr. McCAIN. And when does that time expire?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 7 minutes remaining.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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