[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 8913-8917]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, there are good examples, as Senator Enzi 
declared, of bipartisan work in this Senate. We have a lot of those 
examples. I would point out, however, that a budget is a document that 
tends to favor an individual party's belief. It tends to point out 
where they want to take the country. It is a roadmap for the country, 
and that budget is a vehicle to achieve the goals that party has.
  I want to say this about the budget: A budget is not just something 
an individual has to submit. The President submits one, but the numbers 
contained in it, the directions contained in it, are the choices made. 
You can choose to spend less, you can choose to spend more, you can 
choose to reduce debt, you can choose to increase debt. It might be 
more popular to spend more and run up more debt today, but it may not 
be good for the long-term interest of America.
  We just left the budget markup, and the Democratic majority passed 
out of the committee on a straight party-line vote--with no Republicans 
supporting it--what I believe is the most irresponsible budget in the 
history of our Nation. It takes our spending, as a percentage of the 
gross domestic product, to the highest level we have had since World 
War II, when we were fighting for our very existence. We had been 
attacked at Pearl Harbor. We were facing the Nazis and Hitler. The 
problems we face now are not like that, but that is the level of 
spending we have now, and it is a very dangerous thing.
  Does anybody doubt the conventional wisdom that nothing comes from 
nothing; that there is no free lunch; that somebody had to produce it; 
that debts must be paid when incurred; and that if you borrow money, 
you have to pay interest on it? Does anybody doubt that?
  From the beginning of the founding of our Republic until this year, 
we, the public, have accumulated $5 trillion in debt. That is the whole 
founding of our country. That is what we have accumulated. Under the 
budget that the President has submitted to Congress--in a bound volume, 
carefully put together--in 5 years alone that $5 trillion debt will 
double, and in the following 5 years it will triple. So in 5 years, we 
would add twice as much debt--according to the President's own numbers 
he submitted to us--as we have today and three times as much in 10 
years. I am not making this up. These numbers are in the book. And it 
is pretty disturbing to me.
  The chairman offered an alternative budget. He got clever. He said: 
We will do a 5-year budget. We won't do a 10-year budget. We will move 
some things around and make things look better, and then we can all 
vote for it. That is basically what happened today. But when you look 
at it carefully, it is no big change. And the chairman's mark that was 
passed out of committee today, that mark is disturbing because it was 
less honest and it was more gimmicked up than the President's budget.
  President Obama's budget was pretty honest about two or three big 
issues. One of them is the alternative minimum tax fix. It costs quite 
a bit to fix that. We only fix it 1 year at a time, but we fix it every 
year. President Obama assumed we would fix it. I think he 
underestimated the cost of a 10-year fix, but he had it in there. It 
cost hundreds of billions of dollars to do that--$500 billion. I think 
it is probably closer to $700 billion or $800 billion, but that was in 
there. That was omitted from the chairman's mark that was voted out. 
But that is going to be fixed, and when you fix it, you reduce the 
alternative minimum tax's impact in the country, you lose revenue, and 
that makes your debt look worse.
  Also, every year we have been fixing the doctors' reimbursement rate 
under the Balanced Budget Act. A decade ago, we required those payments 
to be cut, and we required them to be cut too much. They can't be cut 
that much, but that is the current law. They are dropped about 20 
percent today. So every year, we come back and we put the money in. We 
spend the money necessary to keep the doctors with a modest increase in 
their reimbursement

[[Page 8914]]

rate. We don't let them take a 20-percent cut. The chairman's mark 
assumes we don't fix the doctors' bills. That is not going to happen. 
That makes his numbers look somewhat better.
  But when charted out carefully, the Budget Committee, on the 
Republican side, put the numbers together and found discretionary 
spending over 5 years under the chairman's mark was 98.8 percent--the 
same as President Obama's budget. Total outlays over 5 years was 96.6 
percent--the same as the President's budget. And revenue was 99.8 
percent--the same. So it is basically the President's budget. But since 
it was getting so much flak and that budget was so irresponsible, 
people wanted to pretend that the budget they voted out of the 
committee was more responsible and deserved more support. But it is 
just not so, really. There is nothing in it that suggests a confronting 
of the serious financial situation we are in.
  It has an incredible increase in spending, and that is why the debts 
are so large. It creates these deficits. As I indicated, we go from $5 
trillion to $10 trillion in debt held by the public in 5 years. Where 
does that $5 trillion come from? Where does it come from? It comes from 
borrowing. And you borrow by going out and offering Treasury bills on 
the U.S. Treasury. You offer people an opportunity to buy them, and you 
pay them interest to loan you the money. So they loan you the money, 
and you pay them interest.
  We have been in a time in which the interest rates have been 
unusually low because people were so scared around the world and other 
countries were shakier than we were, and so they wanted to buy Treasury 
bills--because we always pay them, basically. We have historically been 
a very safe investment. So that is how we get there. We borrow the 
money.
  Now, I want to suggest that costs money. I am not making these 
numbers up. These are the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office 
calculated. The Congressional Budget Office is hired by the Congress--
both Houses of Congress--though it is controlled by the Democratic 
majority. They essentially have the final choice on who becomes the 
head of that office and who can control that office. But CBO takes 
pride in being nonpartisan and doing the right numbers. We use them a 
lot. They are the best numbers we can get. This is what they have 
calculated that interest payments on the debt will be.
  People can understand interest. How much are you paying on your 
credit card in interest? How much are you paying on your house note in 
interest? When you borrow money, you pay interest. When the United 
States borrows another $5 trillion, we pay interest on that 5, plus the 
5 we have already borrowed. And when it goes to $17 trillion, as CBO 
expects this budget deficit to do based on the budget the President 
sent us, you would see these kinds of numbers. And these are the 
President's numbers, but on these numbers, I think he is low. I trust 
CBO. But we will look at both of them.
  According to CBO's estimates, we will spend $170 billion for interest 
this year. It goes up slowly. In 2011, $216 billion; then $282 billion, 
$460 billion, $601 billion, $734 billion; and in the 10th year, $806 
billion in interest. One year's interest. How much of that is for 
foreign countries--China and Saudi Arabia and other countries who 
bought our Treasury bills? That is $806 billion.
  How much is $806 billion? My State of Alabama is an average-size 
State--maybe a little smaller, not much--and we are about one-fiftieth 
the population of the country. Our entire general fund budget, 
including our State school spending and teachers, is less than $10 
billion a year. The Government will be paying $806 billion in interest 
in 1 year.
  The Federal highway program today is $40 billion. We send that out to 
the States, where they get an 80-20 or a 90-10 split, and they use it 
to repair interstates and highways, and they do a lot with that. It is 
$40 billion. We're talking about 20 times as much as the highway money.
  I am very concerned about that interest number. Can we not understand 
why this is important? And we are not sure what this number will be 
because we are not perfectly sure what the interest rates will be.
  There are some developments today in the world that cause us quite a 
bit of concern. In the Washington Post today, there is a report that 
the President of the European Union blasted U.S. spending. Subheadline: 
``Czech Premier Calls Obama Administration's Economic Policies `a Road 
to Hell.' '' The article is talking about the United States urging 
other countries to borrow more money and spend more money, as we have 
done. Let me quote from the article:

       Some countries, led by Germany, have strongly resisted, 
     predicting that such a path could lead to unsustainable debts 
     and runaway inflation. Luxembourg's prime minister . . . who 
     heads a coordinating body . . . said European countries had 
     already spent enough to jumpstart their economies.

  They haven't spent as much as we have, yet we are urging them to 
spend more.
  To further quote from the article:

       The European stimulus plans are muscular. They are 
     demanding, they are important in volume and in quality. . . . 
     There was ``no question'' that the European Union would 
     reject requests from Obama to spend more.

  Well, what happens when you do that? What happens when you borrow too 
much money?
  There was an article in today's Washington Times talking about Mr. 
Geithner's difficulties in misspeaking and causing the dollar to plunge 
and the market to plunge, and then rebalance after he corrected 
himself. The article said:

       By afternoon, a poor showing of buyers at a Treasury bond 
     auction sent interest rates sharply higher, raising fears 
     about the U.S. ability to sell a massive load of $2.5 
     trillion of debt this year.

  It goes on to say:

       Buyers may have been spooked by . . . the unveiling of 
     budget plans on Capitol Hill that would double the amount of 
     debt the Treasury has to sell in the next 5 years to nearly 
     $12 trillion.

  The markets are worried about this. So if you are going to buy a 
Treasury bill and you think the United States is selling too many of 
them, or there are too many on the market and not enough money out 
there to buy them, or the interest rates are low and you want higher 
interest rates, you just don't buy. And then what is going to happen? 
To sell our bonds, to get people to loan us money, we are going to have 
to promise to pay them higher interest rates. That is the deal.
  The New York Times had an article about this a month ago. Chairman 
Conrad, our very able chairman of the Budget Committee, passed it out 
to our committee members. This is a warning. When you get too much debt 
and you are demanding that too many people loan you money, countries 
such as China--which have a fraction of the surplus in their trade 
account today than they had a number of years ago--are not going to buy 
as much of our debt, even if they wanted to, because they do not have 
the money to buy it with. Who is going to buy this? To get enough 
people to send us their money to finance our spending spree, we are 
going to end up having to pay higher interest rates. That is a fact.
  The article goes on to say:

       The mounting worries about the debt also snuffed out a 
     rally in the stock market . . .

  He talked about China. You have heard a lot of people talk about 
China and buying our Treasury bills and our concern about being 
obligated to them. This is what the article said today:

       China and other investors recently have taken to worrying 
     about whether the United States may debase its currency in 
     its drive to address economic problems.

  I think the world is worrying about that. Are we going to debase our 
currency? Are we going to inflate our currency to bail ourselves out 
and pay back those who loaned us money with dollars worth less than the 
dollars they loaned to us? If they think that, what they will demand is 
even higher interest rates. Because then they have to have interest 
rates that will assure them that even if the money is inflated, they 
will be paid back in an amount similar to that which they loaned us.
  It goes on to say:


[[Page 8915]]

       But the investors worry about the lingering effects of the 
     legacy of debt and the inflationary impact of the Federal 
     Reserve's program to help finance that debt with $300 billion 
     of Treasury bond purchases.

  So the Federal Reserve is basically printing money and buying these 
Treasury bills themselves to try to help us out, and that is worrying 
people because nothing comes from nothing. Debts must be repaid. It 
goes on to say:

       Apprehension about these matters is apparently what led to 
     the Treasury's difficulty in selling $24 billion of the five-
     year notes Wednesday afternoon.

  That is yesterday afternoon.

       To attract buyers, the Treasury had to pay interest rates 
     that were significantly higher than its previous auction, 
     touching off fears about the nation's ability to finance ever 
     bigger loads of debt in the future. It didn't help that 
     Britain on Tuesday experienced its first failed bond auction 
     in nearly seven years--a bad portent since Britain, like the 
     United States, has gone deeply into debt to finance large 
     economic stimulus and bank bailout programs.

  The Brits have followed us. The Central Europeans are saying no. The 
Brits are spending like we are and the other countries are rejecting 
that. They pushed back and we have urged them to spend like we do and 
they said: No, we are not going to do it.
  I think it is embarrassing. It is mortifying to me, as an American 
who believes in limited Government, lower taxes, and free enterprise, 
to be in a position where we are being lectured by the Europeans and 
told no, when we want to spend more, tax more, and create more debt and 
they are saying it is irresponsible. We have always believed we were 
more responsible and we had more honesty in our system and we were more 
frugal in what we spent and our economy has been more robust than the 
European economies over the last 15 or 20 years. But now it looks like 
the situation has shifted. CreditSights--an organization that deals 
with these kinds of interest issues--CreditSights' Ms. Purtle was 
quoted in the article. She said that:

       . . . the most serious problem the Treasury faces is a lack 
     of buyers worldwide for its growing mountain of debt. In 
     particular, countries like China and Japan that invested 
     their trillions of dollars in export earnings in the Treasury 
     market have been hit by plummeting exports--

  They are not selling as much as they used to.

     --which means they have less money to invest in Treasury 
     Bonds, she said.

  She concludes by saying:

       ``. . . funds simply aren't available to continue the 
     purchases.''

  That is something I have been talking about for some time. It is 
pretty obvious, unless you believe something can come from nothing.
  Julie Andrews had it right:

       Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.

  In the course of this debate, a lot of efforts were carried out to 
try to do something about the stark numbers that are revealed in the 
President's bound book he sent to us. This chart reflects what is in 
his book. I didn't make up the numbers. They came right out of the book 
he wrote, or his staff did, and it reflects the total of the debt held 
by the public which is the best hard number we have, I think, of what 
the debt of the country is.
  We start out in 2008 with $5.03 trillion. You can see the deficits, 
how they increase. By the first 5 years, debt held by the public is 
$11.55 trillion, virtually a doubling in 5 years of that debt. Then, in 
the 10th year, it is $15.370 trillion, more than three times the 
amount, about three times the point of the 2008 figure.
  The numbers don't lie. Nobody is disputing this. They are saying, you 
know what, as my colleague said on the floor in a very partisan speech: 
Well, we are investing. We admit we are in a changed environment. We 
are trying to do things in a different way, and get over it, you guys, 
you mossbacks, worrying about debt. Don't worry about debt. Don't worry 
about spending. We are investing. We are going to spend more in 
education--like we haven't done that year after year--and we are going 
to have such an improvement in the quality of our graduates it is going 
to make America better and we are going to pay all this back. I guess 
that is what the argument is. But at some point, you just don't have 
the money. We do not have the money.
  It would be nice if we could double every program in the world. Maybe 
we'll send more as foreign aid. Somebody offered that amendment in the 
Budget Committee today to spend more on foreign aid. Spend everything 
more and more and it will all work out.
  I do not think that is acceptable, and these numbers represent, I 
contend, the most irresponsible budget since World War II, and since we 
were in a life-or-death struggle in World War II, those deficits were 
necessary.
  Well, somebody might say: Sessions, we are in a recession. That is 
why the President's numbers look bad.
  But hold your hat: the President's budget says we will have, this 
year, a negative GDP of 1.2 percent. He projects in this budget, to 
make the numbers look better, actually--I think, that is the only thing 
I can say; I hope it would be right--he projects that unemployment 
would cap out, the highest we would ever have in this recession is 8.1 
percent. It is already at 8.1 percent. Wouldn't it be great if it 
doesn't get any higher? Maybe it won't. I surely hope not, but I 
suspect it will.
  Look at this. This is the projections through 5 years. He doesn't 
project--the reason we are having these deficits is not because of lack 
of economic growth. The reason we have these deficits is spending, 
unprecedented spending. Look, in 2009, this fiscal year ending 
September 30, they predict a GDP decline of 1.2 percent. The 
independent, Blue Chip consensus, which is the most respected group, 
they project it will be worse, at 2.6 percent.
  In 2010, that is next year--we are in 2009. In 2010, the President is 
projecting 3.2 percent growth. That is robust growth. That is not a 
little growth, that is robust growth. In 2011, it is 4.0; 2012, 4.6; 
2013, 4.2.
  The point I am trying to make is, the reason the deficits are here in 
the outyears is not because the President is saying we are going to be 
in a sustained economic slowdown. President Clinton in his best years 
in the 1990s, President Reagan in his best years, I think it very 
rarely broke 4 percent or 5 percent growth. Four percent growth is 
robust growth. Great Scott, it would be great to have that every year.
  We are not having these deficits because we are assuming we are going 
to be in an economic slowdown or a war. That is not assumed either 
because the defense budget is one thing that is getting reduced.
  Amendments were offered. Senator Gregg offered an amendment, the 
ranking Republican on the committee--and such a smart and experienced 
member of the committee. To get into the European Union, you have to 
commit that your annual deficit will not exceed 3 percent of your GDP 
and that your total debt will not exceed 60 percent of your gross 
domestic product, the GDP. This budget, I think, is taking us--this is 
where we are. In 2009, this year, we are at 55 percent of GDP is our 
debt. It goes up next year to 61, in 2010, because of the budget, with 
such huge deficits. That already takes us outside of being admitted in 
the European Union. The European Union says if you are going to be a 
member of our economic union, you have to show you have financial 
discipline in your country. Every new member has to go through this.
  But under the President's budget in 2011, it is 64 percent; in 2012, 
it is 65 percent; 2013, it is 66 percent; and 2014, it is 66 percent. I 
think it hits about 80 percent. It goes on up in the second 5 years.
  This is a troubling trend. So Senator Gregg said: Why don't we at 
least make it a situation in which at least to pass a budget such as 
this you have to have 60 votes if we violate the standards of the 
European Union? It was voted down. Every Democrat voted against that 
reform, that containment mechanism.
  Senator Gregg also offered an amendment dealing with the budget 
presented by the chairman. I think he had a little humor in him when he 
offered this. The budget presented by the chairman projected a 7-
percent increase in spending this year; 7 percent

[[Page 8916]]

over the baseline. But over 5 years, he claimed it only would increase 
spending by about 2.5 percent. That is pretty good, a 2.5-percent 
increase. It is not great. I offered an amendment lower than that but 
2.5 percent. OK? Then, Senator Crapo, a Republican member of the 
committee and a very experienced and knowledgeable person, he said one 
thing I have learned around here, the budget that counts is the one for 
this year. You can project anything in your next year's budget and the 
next year's budget and the fourth and fifth year's budget. You can 
project any spending level you want because we will be back here next 
year, sitting in this room, and we will be voting on what this year's 
increase will be.
  In other words, it appeared we were dealing with a gimmick. It 
appeared we were talking about spending a lot this year in the budget 
that counts--this fiscal year--and having reductions next year when we 
will have every opportunity to increase it.
  OK. So Senator Crapo says: OK, you said you are going to keep it at 2 
percent. That is what your budget says. I am going to offer an 
amendment that sets up a budget point of order that takes 60 votes if 
you go above that. Fair enough, right? So if next year--actually, I 
think next year they are proposing a 1-percent increase, which is not 
going to happen, I assure you.
  And he proposed we hold them to that 2.5, and we would have a 60-vote 
point of order if they went over 2.5. Every Democrat voted it down 
because they knew they were not going to stay at 2.5. Everybody knows 
it.
  I will just say this: No matter what is in the budget that comes out 
of this Senate, if it is any kind of real reduction from President 
Obama's budget, and I do not think it will be, but if it is, when it 
goes to conference and they meet with Speaker Pelosi, they are going to 
put the money back in. When the bill comes over here, it is going to 
essentially be the Obama budget. We have seen that is the tone of this 
discussion.
  So that is why he offered that amendment. That is why they voted it 
down, because they flatly intend not to stick to a 2.5-percent-per-year 
spending increase in nondefense discretionary spending.
  Senator Lindsey Graham offered an amendment--get this--that would 
limit each household's share of the debt in America to $80,000 per 
household. Our debt today is $60,000 per household. The Federal debt, 
if divided out per household, is $60,000. So Senator Graham said: Well, 
let's just put a mechanism in here, if you go over $60,000 and get up 
to $80,000, we have a budget point of order; at least it would take 
two-thirds to pass it.
  No. They voted that down because the budget clearly puts us on a 
track to go well above $80,000 per household. It would have the 
potential to bite and be a potential way to contain this growth of 
spending.
  Senator Alexander offered an amendment that said there would be a 
budget point of order if the amount of our total debt reached 90 
percent of the gross domestic product of our country. I just told you 
that you cannot get in the European Union if your debt exceeds 60 
percent of your GDP. But this budget puts us on track to going beyond 
90 percent of GDP, and Senator Alexander offered an amendment. How 
reasonable is that? And it was voted down, on a straight party-line 
vote.
  Senator Cornyn offered an amendment that would create a 60-vote point 
of order if we doubled the debt. If we double our debt, we ought to at 
least have 60 votes to do that. It was voted down, straight party-line 
vote.
  These are troubling instances. We are not making this up. The issue 
is critical for the future of our Nation. It also says something more 
than just debt; it says this President meant something when he said: We 
are going to remake the American economy.
  At a point in last year's campaign, many will remember this, when our 
President met Joe the Plumber, and he said: Well, we are going to take 
this money and spread it around a little bit, Joe.
  People said: Wait a minute. Was that revealing who he really was? Is 
not that the socialist impulse to take money from people who have it 
and spend it on people you want to have it? Is not that the socialist 
impulse?
  People talked about President Obama--Senator Obama then--is that the 
way he really thinks? Is that what he is going to do if he gets 
elected?
  Oh no, they said, we are not socialists. We do not believe in those 
things. But budgets are not campaign rhetoric. The campaign is over. We 
are dealing with real books, a proposal to triple the debt in 10 years 
out of his budget office, with his name on it. I think the name of the 
budget document is ``A New Era of Responsibility.'' That is what is on 
it. That is what is right here. Here it is. ``A New Era of 
Responsibility.'' You tell me how tripling the debt is an era of 
responsibility. You tell me how raising the interest payment per year 
from $170 billion to $800 billion is responsible, in 10 years. It is 
not responsible.
  We will have this debate next week. The Members will have a chance to 
speak about it and talk about it. For some people listening out there 
in the great American countryside, you may think this is just another 
Republican-Democratic dust-up, just another flim-flam fight, a burning 
of political hot air about nothing. And why does everybody not get 
together and just agree and work in a bipartisan way and pass 
something?
  Well, what if they passed something that you think is bad for 
America, the legislation that has been offered. Every amendment that 
will make a difference gets voted down on a straight party-line vote, 
and it is going to be voted out of this Senate with an overwhelming 
partisan vote. I doubt a single Republican will vote for it.
  But because a budget is passed--unlike most legislation--with a 
simple majority, there are plenty of votes to pass this. So there have 
been a lot of votes in this Senate, and a lot of times Republicans, I 
have often thought, have saved our Democratic colleagues from 
themselves by taking the hard votes by asking: How much is it going to 
cost? Do we really have the money? And not vote for things that in the 
long run have not been wise for America.
  OK. It is not going to happen this time because the votes are here. 
Senator Reid, the majority leader, has the votes. This budget is going 
to pass. I suppose it is possible that the American people will have 
their voices heard and something could change and it could come out 
better. That would be my hope. But unless something changes in the 
dynamic, and the only thing that can change this dynamic is if the 
American people make their voices heard through their representatives 
and tell them that is not what we intended when we voted for President 
Obama. Or almost half the people voted for John McCain; that is not 
what we intended you guys to do. You did not tell us you were going to 
triple the debt. You did not tell us you were going to do these things.
  What about our Member who ran for reelection recently in the last 
several years? They have been attacking President Bush. They have been 
attacking President Bush as a profligate spender and saying they were 
going to do better. This is better? Give me a break.
  Let's talk about that. I think a relevant year is 2003, after 9/11, 
after that recession, the commencement of the war on terrorism, 
President Bush had a deficit of around $400 billion. He was savagely 
criticized for that, and some of that was justified. At the time that 
was the biggest deficit since World War II.
  It dropped for 3 consecutive years. In 2007, the year before last, 
the budget had dropped to $161 billion. We were on a good path, and 
then this recession hit. The President sent out $150 billion last year, 
unwisely. That did very little good. All of a sudden the deficit last 
year, September 30, was $459 billion.
  Well, that was the biggest since World War II. And I think he was 
rightly criticized for that. I did not vote to send out the checks. 
Sorry, constituents. I did not think it was going to work. I do not 
think it has. Most economists say it did not benefit us.
  But this year, hold your hats, with the $800 billion stimulus bill we 
passed

[[Page 8917]]

this year, the deficit for this 1 year will not be $455 billion, $600 
billion, $700 billion, $800 billion, $1,000 billion. No, it is $1.8 
trillion. It is $1.8 trillion this fiscal year, and they are scoring 
the Wall Street bailout all this year. They are scoring Freddie Mac and 
Fannie Mae this year. There are some one-time things in that score.
  But next year it is going to be $1.1 trillion, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office. If you look at Congressional Budget Office 
numbers--here are the President's numbers. He projects, with a robust 
growing economy, the debt will be $1.75 trillion in 2009; $1.1, almost 
$1.2 trillion in 2010; almost $900 billion in 2011; and he goes down. 
And it starts coming back up in the outyears when he has solid growth 
and no projections of an economic slowdown. He projects continued 
growing deficits to $712 billion. And that is that 1 year. OK. There is 
not a single year, not a single year in these 10 years of the 
President's budget that the deficit is as low as the highest deficit 
President Bush ever had. Not one.
  But my staff tells me, let's not forget, that is the President's 
score. It has been doctored too. It is really worse than that based on 
the money they plan to spend. Our own Congressional Budget Office, 
controlled by the majority Members of our body, this is what they have 
for the deficit. They have this year being $1.845 trillion, $1,845 
billion; 1.4 the next year; not at $712 billion but at $1.2 trillion in 
the tenth year.
  So that is why Senator Conrad, our Democratic chairman, has said it 
is unsustainable. You cannot sustain these kind of deficits, even with 
a healthy economy.
  USA Today, when this crisis began to hit us, they wrote an article 
that said simply this: An economy founded on excessive personal debt, 
excessive Government debt, and excessive trade deficits is not healthy.
  So what we have to do is get off debt and get back to an honest 
growth economy that we have always been able to have. We have had a 
clear housing bubble that has burst. It has impacted the financial 
community significantly.
  We have done a lot of things. Some of them are of dubious value. But 
we have done a lot of things to work our way through, and certainly 
President Obama projects the economy to bounce back strongly. But we 
cannot keep spending. We have to control that.
  So as we go forward next week, I hope the American people will be 
alert to the most important issues; that they will make their voices 
heard; that all of our colleagues will go home, and as they sit down in 
quiet time, ask themselves: Can I vote for this? Can I go on record as 
voting for a plan that will increase the annual interest payment of 
Americans from $170 billion to $800 billion? And I am going to triple 
the debt in our country in 10 years, put us on a plan that will do 
that? I think not. I hope not.
  I encourage my colleagues to study it carefully and vote no and let 
us see if we cannot come back with a much better budget. The only way 
to fix some of these issues is a bipartisan effort because some of 
those spending programs are tough. They have been growing out of 
control. It is going to take mature, tough decisionmaking to bring it 
under control.
  Some special interests are going to holler as soon as you try to do 
it, and you have to listen to them. But you cannot let them set the 
national policy.
  You can't let the person who is getting a benefit from a single 
program set a policy that adversely impacts everybody else in the 
country. That is what we are paid to do, to make the tough choices. We 
are not doing it now. The President's budget is not responsible. I hope 
we can confront it honestly and make some positive changes.
  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. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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