[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 19155-19158]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I hope the American people are watching 
Washington right now. We are at a defining moment in our country. There 
is not anybody in this body who does not recognize that our country is 
on an unsustainable course. They know it. It is well known. The world 
knows it. We can argue about how close we are to the debt crisis and 
the liquidity crisis, but no one disputes that one is coming. We just 
don't know when. Yet in the next 2 weeks Congress is going to make that 
problem $1 trillion worse.
  We can say that a lot of what we are doing is the right thing to do, 
but what we are not doing is addressing the real issues that need to be 
accompanied by grownups as we look at this. What should the American 
people make of this? It is kind of like we are on the Titanic here in 
America and everybody is saying: The bar is open, we will just have a 
party the next 2 weeks. We are going to spend another $900 billion or 
we are going to set it up so that it can be spent.
  I do not often agree with a columnist by the name of Thomas Friedman, 
but he has a column today that I think everyone in our collective body 
should read. It is aptly titled ``Still Digging.'' Here, he writes: 
Given where we need to go, this tax deal--this tax deal, opportunity 
scholarship deal, unemployment deal, tax holiday deal--is just another 
shot of morphine to a country that needs to do things that are big and 
hard and still only wants to do things that are easy and small. He 
concludes: Economics is not war. It can be win- win. So it can be good 
for the world if China is doing better, but it can't be good for 
America if, every time we come to a hard choice, we borrow more money 
from a country that is not just outsaving and outhustling us but is 
also starting to outeducate us. We need a plan.
  I couldn't agree with him more. I was part of the deficit commission, 
taken a lot of criticism for saying we needed to have that debate on 
the Senate floor. I still think we need to have that debate on the 
Senate floor. But this body will not even agree about having a debate 
about having a plan.
  Last week, the members of the debt commission refused to even debate 
the plan--the Members refused to even debate the plan in Congress. We 
didn't get 14 out of 18 votes; we only got 11.
  I wish to congratulate Senator Durbin, Senator Conrad, Senator Crapo, 
and Senator Gregg for their efforts on that commission. You see, they 
think we need a plan. Senator Conrad had a wonderful statement about 
it. He said this: The only thing that is worse than being for this plan 
is being against it. What he was really addressing is the fact that we 
are not willing to make the hard choices. We will not come together and 
do what is best for America. What we will do is just take another shot 
of morphine, drink another drink on the Titanic, and hope that somehow 
it gets better.
  The fact is, we already have a debt commission. It is called the U.S. 
Congress. That is why I voted initially against the debt commission. I 
spent 8 months, had a full-time staffer working on that commission for 
the last 8 months. We are the debt commission. We have to have a plan 
to avert the catastrophe that is in front of us.
  America needs to know it is urgent. It is not something that can wait 
a year. We are going to have a major liquidity crisis, and we are also 
going to have a major interest rate crisis. Nobody knows when it comes. 
But the one thing we do know is that if we don't have a plan, we will 
no longer control our ability to get out of our problem; the people who 
own our debt will control how we get out of our problem.
  So if, in fact, we want to hand over our responsibility in the Senate 
to the bondholders of the world, then we should continue to not have a 
plan. But if, in fact, we want to embrace the oath we were given, then 
we should have a plan.
  As we debate over the next 2 weeks coming up to Christmas, part of 
that debate has to be whether we are grown up enough to recognize that 
the party is over and that we better start bailing water, we better 
form the line, the bucket brigade; otherwise, we are going to go down 
with the ship.
  Now, people can say: You are scaring people.
  That is realism. That is what is getting ready to happen to us. Mr. 
Bernanke cannot solve our problems in this regard. Only we can solve 
these problems for the American people.
  Cutting spending should be the easy part of our solution. We can 
document hundreds of billions of dollars a year that are either wasted, 
defrauded, or duplicative in the Federal Government. I have given 
hundreds of speeches over the last 6 years outlining those things, 
whether it be the $5 billion the Pentagon pays to contractors for 
performance bonuses when those contractors do not meet the performance 
requirements to get the bonus or the $80 to $100 billion a year in 
fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Those are facts--the fact that we pay 
three times as much for a motorized wheelchair as it costs. We have not 
done anything to address any

[[Page 19156]]

of those issues. It is not hard to cut spending. It is hard to get the 
will to have a plan that recognizes that we have to keep on keeping on 
until we get America out of this very dangerous time period we are 
experiencing.
  We just learned that we rank 25th in the world in math, 17th in 
science. Yet we have 105 different, separate government programs to 
incentivize excellence in science, technology, engineering, and math. 
This is just a tiny little example of the work we need to do. We need 
to have one plan. It needs to have measurements on it. We need to 
oversight it. Then we need to look at it the next year. Is it working? 
Is it effective? We have 105 sets of bureaucrats, and we have not made 
the headway we all know is required for us to be competitive in a 
global economy. Yet not once this year, not once last year, not when 
Republicans were in control, not when Democrats were in control, did we 
do the effective oversight that is necessary to get us out of the jam 
we are in.
  Oversight is hard work. It is not easy. It requires that we actually 
know what is going on in the government, which is part of our oath to 
begin with. We have to do the work, we have to read it, we have to go 
to the hearings, we have to interview the people, and we have to have 
investigators so we know what is going on. Yet we do not do that.
  I often hear from my colleagues on the other side that we need to pay 
for the so-called Bush tax cuts, which are really your tax cuts. The 
assumption is that once the money comes to the government at a certain 
rate, it is always going to come, and it is not yours, it is the 
government's.
  Let's grant that premise for a minute. Let's grant the premise that 
it is the government's money and not the individual's. I would issue 
this challenge: Anyone who thinks we ought to pay for tax cuts ought to 
have to put up a list of programs that we ought to eliminate to pay for 
them. I put up, every time, when people are wanting to spend money, a 
list of options we can do to make it to where we do not increase the 
very problem holes we keep digging in.
  The fact is, the body is not interested in cutting spending, and the 
proof is what we did last year. The very same people who claim we need 
to pay for the tax cuts uniformly voted to override pay-go to the tune 
of $266 billion last year, just in this last year--not this whole 
Congress, just this last year.
  So what we need to do is move away from that rhetoric. The problem is 
too big for us to take pot shots at each other on what we think is a 
political point. And we need to get down to the real business of having 
a plan that gets this country out of the very real difficulties we 
face. The very fact that we do not know when the problem is coming, the 
very fact that we cannot control our own destiny unless we start taking 
action now should give us all chills, that we are about to be the 
Senate, the Congress of the United States that allowed this to happen.
  We cannot let that happen, no matter what our positions are. The only 
way we get out of the hole we are in is if we make shared sacrifices. 
That means political sacrifices. That means position sacrifices. That 
means monetary sacrifices. That means sacrifices against our wish list. 
It means we all have to sacrifice.
  Some people say it is suicide to tell the American people they have 
to sacrifice. I adamantly disagree with that. They are grown up. They 
get it way ahead of us. They have already seen what is happening to us. 
They are feeling it now. They have this innate sense that we are 
disconnected from the very real problems they are seeing. They are 
ready to do their part.
  I will borrow a line from someone far more eloquent, J.F.K. I 
remember; I was in high school.

       Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you 
     can do for your country.

  It was a great statement then. It is more appropriate now than ever.
  What does a shared sacrifice mean? It means that if you live in this 
country and make a decent income, you need to be more responsible with 
your health care and retirement than you are today. If you have gamed 
the system to get disability benefits or workmen's compensation, sorry, 
your free ride is over. If you are receiving a special tax break 
because you have a good lobbyist, you are going to have to give that 
up. If you are a defense contractor, you might only get a bonus for 
doing exceptional work, not standard work, not for just showing up to 
work. And if you are a politician, it might mean you have to lose an 
election to do what is best for this country.
  If we think about what is required and how we would achieve real 
change, we have two truths in tension: One, we have a government we 
tolerate; two, the American people have the power to change that 
government.
  We can solve all of the difficult challenges before us, but we can't 
solve them if Washington will not even debate the problem. And if we 
can't overcome our courage deficit, the American people have a 
responsibility to replace us all--to replace every one of us.
  Courage is having the fortitude to do the right thing for the right 
moral reason at the right time regardless of the consequences to you. 
And we lack that in our body politic today.
  I know a lot of people see this tax deal as a big political victory. 
I do not see it as a victory at all for the country or for our side.
  Actually, a former Bush staffer, Don Bartlett, is quoted as saying:

       We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it 
     becomes almost impossible to remove it. That's not a bad 
     legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel 
     pretty good, to tell you the truth.

  This gentleman just ignored the magnitude, severity, and urgency of 
the problems that face America.
  The political cynicism that accompanies this should give us all pause 
to think for a minute on the games that are being played in Washington. 
Congratulations. Somebody embarrassed somebody else.
  How does making our entitlement dilemma worse by passing Medicare 
Part D feel? It is now up to $13 trillion in unfunded liability, and 
the rich get the same benefit as the poor; does that feel good? How 
about doubling the size of the government since 1999; does that feel 
good, especially at a time when fraud, waste, and abuse has doubled? 
Does it feel good that we have done nothing to reform Social Security 
in the years since people applauded in the middle of the State of the 
Union address because of President Bush's failed effort to fix Social 
Security? Does that feel good? Did that solve something or was that 
political showmanship? That belies the history of this body of coming 
together.
  Our Founders created the Senate to try to force consensus. That is 
what the rules were all about. What we need to do, Democrats and 
Republicans and our Independent colleagues, is recognize the depth and 
magnitude of our problem right now. There needs to be a great big time 
out. Who cares who is in charge if there is no country to run that can 
be salvaged? It doesn't matter.
  Economists worldwide and some of the brightest people at Harvard and 
MIT, the University of Texas, Pennsylvania, they don't sleep at night 
right now. They know we are on the razor-thin edge of falling over a 
cliff.
  The fact is, both parties have laid a trap for future generations by 
our inaction, our laziness, our arrogance, and a crass desire for 
power. We are waterboarding the next generation with debt. We are 
drowning them in obligations because we don't have the courage to come 
together and address or even debate a real solution.
  The reason I voted for the deficit commission report? It had a lot of 
stuff in it I absolutely hated. It had one thing in it Oklahoma can't 
tolerate that will have to be changed. But the fact is, I believed the 
problem was so big and so urgent and so necessary that we ought to have 
that debate. We ought to make sure the American people know the 
significance of the problems facing us. Both Senator Conrad and Senator 
Durbin have taken heat. Guys on our side of the aisle have taken heat 
because we dared to say we should have a debate about the real problems 
that face this country. The special interests immediately started 
attacking from both sides.

[[Page 19157]]

  That tells me we were doing some good. I often hear my colleagues 
assert the power of the purse when it comes to earmarking, but I never 
hear the same thing when we talk about trying to cut spending. The bias 
is to spend, not to cut spending. We are either going to do it or 
outside financial forces are going to force us.
  Look what has happened so far this year with some other countries. In 
the first column of this chart, we see the debt in U.S. dollars in 
fixed terms. The second is what they have done in terms of government 
spending. In terms of debt, we, of course, lead the world, $13.8 
trillion. We have France at $2 trillion, Germany at $1.46 trillion, 
Spain $602 billion, United Kingdom $1.47 trillion, and Canada. Every 
one of them froze or reduced the pay of their Federal employees. Every 
one of them cut their Federal workforce. Every one of them cut Federal 
spending by significant amounts. What have we done? A big goose egg, 
zero. That is what we have done. So no wonder the world does not have 
confidence and no wonder our business investment isn't coming in. We 
haven't created an environment where they would have confidence.
  There is no question when the tax bill goes through we will see a 
bump up in confidence. When people get 2 percent more on their 
paycheck, we will see some bump up. But it will be short-lived.
  The problem is not the tax deal but the fact that we are not 
addressing our real problems. We are addressing the symptoms of the 
problem. Does a 2-year extension give businesses, small and large, the 
confidence they need to plan for the future? I certainly hope so. But 
tax reform that had a meaningful effect on future capital investment 
would do a whole lot more. The problem is, we are not even willing to 
consider the hard choices. We will not even have an honest debate about 
a debate about hard choices. We just want to take our shot of morphine 
and go on down the road, have another martini on the deck of the 
Titanic.
  The history of our country, at least what I saw growing up from the 
1940s to the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s, was that our Nation 
thrived because we always embraced the heritage of service and 
sacrifice when our future was at stake. We actually have seen some of 
that in the last 10 years. I challenge my colleagues to go to 
Gettysburg or Philadelphia or visit ground zero and ask: What went 
through the minds of the brave young Americans when the doors of their 
landing craft opened on Omaha Beach? What motivated the heroes on 
flight 93 on 9/11 when they stormed a cockpit occupied by terrorists? 
What did our Founders think when they signed the Declaration of 
Independence, knowing their lives and fortunes were on the line? They 
were thinking about the future. They were making that critical decision 
to have courage in the face of adversity and take with it what may 
come. But they knew doing the correct and honorable and right thing was 
more important than their reputation or any other thing they had.
  Here is what one of our Founders thought. Almost 234 years ago, on 
December 19, 1776, Thomas Paine was contemplating the great and 
uncertain struggle that lay ahead in our battle for independence and 
freedom. He said: ``If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that 
my child may have peace.''
  At the time of Christmas and Hanukkah, isn't that what we want for 
those who follow, peace of mind to not be threatened by what we have 
set up as an unsustainable debt dungeon?
  I think we ought to have it in our day. Let it be our day. Let it be 
today. Let it be started with this debate we will have on the tax bill 
that will come before us. Let's make the effort to come to a consensus 
that we have to have a plan. It doesn't have to be my plan or the plan 
of Senator Bennet, but we have to have a plan. We have to signal to the 
rest of the world that we are willing to start making some of the 
appropriate sacrifices and generate the austerity that will allow us to 
continue this wonderful experiment. We are now facing the most 
predictable crisis in our history. We are doing nothing to avert the 
catastrophe, nothing, zero. In fact, we are still digging. It is time 
we stopped digging.
  How will we be remembered? As a generation of politicians who saw a 
gathering storm and took action or a generation of politicians who put 
off the hard choices of honor and dishonored the sacrifices of our 
past?
  We do have a choice. We can choose to come together and work to solve 
this problem in the very short term that will have a tremendous impact 
in the long term. What we don't have is a lot of time. As I heard 
somebody say today: Time fritters away so fast in Washington. It goes 
by so fast. We are all so busy. There is no problem in front of us in 
any committee, on any issue that is greater than the problems facing 
this country. We need to come together across the aisle to put a plan 
together that will give security to not only the generations that come 
and are here already but the peace of mind to know we are listening, we 
understand, and we are willing to make and lead by example in the 
sacrifices that have to come for us to solve the problems.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado is recognized.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the proposed tax 
compromise. Before doing that, since the Senator from Oklahoma is on 
the floor, I wished to say how grateful I am for his courage in 
supporting the bipartisan commission's report on the deficit and the 
debt. His vote for that, as well as the votes of Senators Crapo, 
Durbin, and Conrad, in 22 months in this place, this is the first time 
I have felt any confidence that we may actually be moving in the right 
direction. I wish to thank him for casting that vote. No one who voted 
for that, Democratic Senator or Republican Senator, agrees with 
everything that is in the package. But what we do agree with is that we 
need a plan to get this right. That is what we need to do.
  There is a lot of talk in this town about whose side are you on. I 
hear that all the time. I will tell one quick story from the campaign 
trail. Every single townhall meeting I had, the issue of the deficit 
and the debt came up, profound anxiety among the people of my State 
that we are going to leave less opportunity, not more, to our kids and 
grandkids. I share the Senator's view that time is short. If we don't 
make these decisions, the capital markets are going to make them for 
us. It will not be like that frog in the boiling water. One morning, 
one day somebody in the capital markets is going to wake and say: I am 
not going to buy your paper anymore at that price. We are going to see 
our interest rates go through the roof, and we will see economic 
turmoil far worse than we have been going through now, the worst 
recession since the Great Depression.
  I would talk about this in these meetings, about how we need to come 
together, Republicans and Democrats, and actually start solving the 
problems. The frustration people had--Democrats and Republicans, Tea 
Party people, unaffiliated voters--at our inability to work together to 
create solutions. I would say we have a moral obligation to the next 
generation to get this straightened out so we don't constrain their 
choices. The problem is even more urgent for our kids and grandkids.
  I was lucky enough that my daughters came with me on a lot of these 
trips. They sat through a lot of these townhall meetings. I remember 
one morning my daughter Caroline followed me out. She is now 11 years 
old. She had heard about the constraints we were putting on the next 
generation. She tugged at my sleeve on the sidewalk and she said: 
Daddy, just to be clear--she was making fun of me because I overuse 
that expression--I am not paying that back.
  When people ask me the question, whose side am I on, I am on 
Caroline's side. I am on the side of the 850,000 children going to 
Denver's public schools who don't deserve to be left what we are at 
risk of leaving them.
  I want the Senator to know I will work with anybody, Republican or 
Democrat, in this Chamber in the time that I am here to make sure we 
are not that generation of Americans that leaves less, not more, 
behind.

[[Page 19158]]

  I wish to talk briefly tonight about the discussions around taxes. I 
have been a strong supporter of a long-term extension of the middle-
class tax cuts, estate tax reform that supports our small businesses, 
farmers and ranchers and extension of unemployment insurance for 
Coloradans who are struggling to find their way during this difficult 
economy.
  Over the last year, in the very townhall meetings I was just talking 
about, Coloradans over and over have shared their frustration with me 
about Washington's complete failure to come to an agreement and by both 
parties' lack of willingness to even discuss a compromise. I could not 
agree with them more.
  The bottom line is simple and straightforward. These tax cuts will 
expire in less than 4 weeks if we do nothing. If we do nothing, 
hundreds of thousands of Coloradans will see a tax increase and 
thousands more will lose their unemployment benefits in the worst 
recession since the Great Depression. This is completely unacceptable 
to them and to me.
  If I were writing this bill, it would look different than the 
compromise. It would propose a 1-year extension of all tax cuts. I said 
that during the campaign because I felt it was important for us to have 
the time to figure out how we were actually going to pay for these tax 
cuts. So it would be for 1 year. It would be a longer term extension 
for the middle class. I would raise the exemption level for the estate 
tax but keep rates at the 2009 level.
  I wished to say that, at the end of the day, while I am going to look 
for opportunities to make improvements to this framework and listen to 
other people's ideas as well, I intend to support the compromise. I am 
not convinced delaying this legislation until next year will produce a 
better bill. I am convinced it will create huge uncertainty for people 
all over my State and around the country, at a time when the last thing 
we can afford is uncertainty. The reality is, the new Congress might 
likely produce something far worse than the agreement that has been 
reached.
  Whenever I cast a vote, I do so focused on the danger caused by our 
medium-term and long-term debt. That is why I have supported multiple 
measures to get spending under control. In this case, I think it would 
be far worse to weaken a fragile economic recovery by letting the 
middle-class tax cuts expire, throwing thousands of Coloradans off the 
unemployment rolls simultaneously.
  Moving forward, we desperately need a more constructive and honest 
conversation about how we are going to turn our economy around for the 
long term. I will work with anyone--Democrat or Republican--to develop 
a Tax Code that actually encourages innovation, lifts innovation in the 
United States, builds back our middle class, and brings jobs back to 
Colorado and the rest of the country.
  I will close by saying this: We face grave challenges, both economic 
and fiscal, at this moment in our country's history. The message I got 
loudly and clearly over the last 22 months is that people want to see 
us working together and solving problems. That is what I intend to do.

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