[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 820]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 CARFA

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, the CARFA bill that will be voted on 
shortly has passed this Senate every Congress since the 107th Congress. 
It has either passed by rollcall vote or unanimous consent. This is 
nothing new. It has passed this body multiple times. Now it counts. Now 
when people vote on it, this will count. The CARFA bill breaks the 
Federal Government into four pieces. A fourth of the Federal Government 
is looked at each year, and then recommendations are made in a 
privileged motion that must be voted on. It is a spending commission. 
It is targeted at reducing Federal spending, which is clearly where the 
American public wants us to go. They don't want to raise taxes; they 
want to focus on getting wasteful spending under control.
  This is a mechanism we have done before. It is a mechanism that has 
passed this Congress multiple times in the budget agreement. This time 
it counts. I ask my colleagues to look at this and say: If you voted 
for it in the past, do it now. We clearly need to do it.
  Last night, the President spoke about the need to track the deficit. 
He was clear that we need to get the deficit under control. The first 
step in getting the deficit under control is to reduce spending, get 
spending under control.
  Here is the latest chart on the gross Federal debt as a percentage of 
the GDP. This year, we passed the 90-percent threshold of debt to the 
economy. So of the total economy size, about $14 trillion, 90 percent 
of that is going to be gross debt. This is publicly and privately held 
debt combined. This is the level at which economists say this starts 
hurting the economy. It can drive down growth as much as 4 percent per 
year. We have had many years where we haven't even had 4 percent 
growth. We could put ourselves in negative growth by carrying this 
level of debt. And we blew through that number this year, headed toward 
100 percent of debt to GDP. That is this year's number. That is the one 
that is just out.
  Here is a breakdown of that. Some will say we are at 60 percent debt 
to economic activity. That is of the publicly held debt. That is the 
piece the Chinese own, and others. But if we look at total debt--this 
is what we owe to ourselves, the Social Security trust fund, other 
trust funds that I think we ought to pay back--we ought to be 
responsible with that. That is way up here, up over the 90-percent 
level. It is in the danger zone. It is time to get it under control.
  CARFA is the way to do it. CARFA is a simple mechanism. It is eight 
people appointed, four by this body, four by the House. It makes 
recommendations on elimination of programs. Those must pass by six of 
the eight members who vote on that. That then is reported to the 
committee structure that is in the applicable areas of the 
recommendations for elimination. The committee has 30 days to review 
the recommendations. They can't amend it, but they can review the 
recommendations, say to the public: Here is what this is going to do if 
we make these cuts. Then it is subject to a privileged motion. The 
actual report comes before the body as a privileged motion. There is 10 
hours of debate before we go to the bill. Then there is debate on the 
bill and a required vote with a 51-vote margin to pass it. That is all 
in the statute. This is the BRAC process, the Base Closure and 
Realignment Commission process used in the past to close military bases 
and to save us $60 billion annually in spending on military bases, 
closing down bases, putting them in more efficient alignment. This will 
do the same at the Federal level.
  It is not as if we don't have wasteful spending at the Federal level. 
This chart shows the scorecard the OMB does on Federal spending by 
agencies. We can see a bunch of agencies get Ds or Fs on program 
reviews. The Department of Labor, Department of Education get Fs on 
their spending as far as its utility and for what it was targeted to 
do. If we have entire agencies rated at F or D or D-minus, don't you 
think there are a few programs in there that ought to be eliminated and 
that probably we can do without, without hurting the overall government 
or people or the economy? Absolutely. That is what the American people 
are screaming for us to do. They don't want us to raise taxes; they 
want us to cut spending. That is what the public is doing in this 
process. This is very clearly the process we should follow.
  This is the time that this vote counts. My colleagues have been 
willing to support this concept in the budget resolution. Now is the 
time that it would have the force of law, if we are able to get it 
through. This is one the public is going to hear more and more about, 
as everybody gets focused on spending and what we need to do there. 
This will be the type of process that we need to do and that we need to 
use.
  I urge a ``yes'' vote on the CARFA amendment, and I would hope my 
colleagues would put that in the bill so we can get a process by which 
we could legitimately start cutting Federal spending in a responsible 
way.
  I yield the floor.

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