[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13343-13344]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, later today, the Senate will vote to 
extend Federal unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who are 
out of work and struggling to make ends meet in a terrible recession.
  Ordinarily, this is not a controversial piece of legislation. 
Everyone agrees we should help people who are struggling to get back on 
their feet and keep food on the table. Unfortunately, the President has 
decided to turn this debate into a political exercise.
  In his weekly radio address over the weekend and again yesterday at 
the White House, the President accused Republicans of doing something 
we have not done. In doing so, he cheapens political discourse and does 
a disservice to the people this bill is meant to help.
  As a former Senator, the President is well aware of how the Senate 
works. He knew today's vote to extend these benefits had already been 
scheduled days before he told the Nation, in two national broadcasts, 
that Republicans were holding it up. He also knew it would pass. But he 
intentionally implied otherwise, leaving the public without all the 
facts.
  So here are the facts: Republicans support extending benefits to the 
unemployed. As the President himself said yesterday, we have repeatedly 
voted for similar bills in the past, and we are ready to support one 
now. What we do not support--and we make no apologies for this--is 
borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when 
the national debt is spinning completely out of control.
  That is why Republicans have proposed an alternative bill five times 
that would enable us to extend these benefits without adding a nickel 
to the debt--a bill Democrats have repeatedly rejected.
  There should be no doubt as to what constitutes fiscal responsibility 
in this debate. Last November, the President himself described a bill 
to extend unemployment benefits as fiscally responsible because it did 
not add to the debt. So according to the President's own logic, 
Democrats who vote to pass this bill and add nearly $34 billion more to 
the national debt will be doing so in a fiscally irresponsible way, and 
Republicans who insist on passing it without adding to the debt are 
being responsible.
  The fact is, this debate is not about unemployment insurance. There 
is no debate in the Senate about whether we should pass a bill. 
Everyone agrees we should. This debate is about whether, in extending 
those benefits, we should add to the debt.
  If Democrats were as concerned about passing this bill as they say 
they

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are, they would find a way to do it without adding to the debt. After 
all, there is no law that says we are required to exacerbate one crisis 
in an effort to alleviate another. Most Americans I talk to think a $13 
trillion debt is one crisis we cannot afford to put off any longer.
  If Republicans have done anything wrong in this debate, it was to 
underestimate how committed Democrats are to spending money we do not 
have. Given the choice to extend these benefits without adding to the 
debt or allowing them to expire, Democrats chose the latter on five 
separate occasions. They do not seem to appreciate the fact that by 
adding to the national debt, they are increasing the long-term burden 
on everyone--the unemployed, the employed and our children and 
grandchildren who will have to pay for it.
  The President likes to point out that Congress has added to the debt 
in years past. What he does not mention is we were not in the middle of 
a debt crisis then. We were not being lectured by the French about the 
need to cut back on our spending. People were not rioting in Greece. We 
did not have a President who came into office with a list of 
legislative priorities that would double the national debt in 5 years 
and triple it in 10.
  The President also says Republicans are playing politics in this 
debate. But by pointing the finger at Republicans, he is attempting to 
deflect attention not only from his own party's unwillingness to take 
the debt seriously, he is attempting to deflect attention from 
Democrats' own fiscal recklessness and its potential consequences for 
our future.
  None of us likes to see good people struggling to find work. We all 
empathize with the people the President highlighted yesterday at the 
White House. But let's not forget the role this administration's own 
policies have played in all this.
  If ever there was an indictment of this administration's economic 
agenda, it was yesterday's press conference. The administration asked 
taxpayers to foot the bill on a $1 trillion stimulus that he claimed 
would create 4 million jobs. A year and a half later, the President is 
standing with three chronically unemployed Americans, some of the 
victims of a 9.5-percent unemployment rate, asking taxpayers for 
another $34 billion in deficit spending to continue paying their 
unemployment benefits. I think most Americans see the connection here.
  The President also tried to score political points yesterday by 
mischaracterizing the debate over the small business bill. Here is 
another bill that both parties support. Yet the President would have 
the American people believe that somehow we are trying to hold it up 
just because the majority leader would rather move on to some of his 
other legislative priorities than have a vote on a couple of amendments 
to this bill that would help to create more jobs.
  So either the President is misinformed about what has been going on 
over here or he is deliberately mischaracterizing the situation. The 
fact is, the Senate is already on this bill and both sides have offered 
improvements. If the President wants to criticize someone for slowing 
it down, he should point the finger at his own party for repeatedly 
taking it off the floor, which brings me to the supplemental war 
spending bill.
  I will remind my colleagues the Secretary of Defense has indicated 
that failure to pass this bill before the August recess could actually 
keep our soldiers and marines from getting paid, a point he reiterated 
in a letter to the majority leader, sent yesterday.
  So what is the holdup?
  Some Democrats in the House do not want to pass this funding for our 
troops unless the Senate agrees to tack on billions in unrelated 
domestic spending. It is time for House Democrats to get serious and 
stop holding our troops hostage. Let's strip this unrelated funding and 
pass this war funding bill.
  Yesterday, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services 
Committee made it clear that he recognizes the need for the Senate to 
pass the troop funding bill quickly and get it to the President's desk.
  Every Member of this Chamber should unite behind this goal. The 
Defense Department finds itself in the last weeks of the fiscal year 
with little flexibility to meeting funding shortfalls of the operations 
and pay for our forces in the field. That leaves it to us to act, and I 
suggest we do so this week.
  I yield the floor.

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