[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Page 1755]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. REID. Madam President, when President Obama released his budget 
yesterday, he made one thing very clear: getting our economy back above 
water will require shared sacrifice.
  Few documents are more intricate and complex than our national 
budget. But beyond the numbers, what I found deep in this budget is an 
affirmation of our principles. Among those values is a commitment to 
recognize and adapt to reality--investing in what works and changing 
what does not.
  I appreciate the President's call for shared sacrifice and living 
within our means and, more than that, his willingness to do more than 
just talk but actually lead toward fiscal responsibility. He did not 
just talk about tough choices, he made them. I do not agree with all of 
his choices. I disagree with some of his cuts. But I cannot deny that 
by making the difficult decisions he showed leadership.
  I also found in the President's budget the recognition that we are 
not in a competition to determine who can cut the most; rather, we need 
to cooperate to discover where we can cut the smartest.
  This budget proposes a long-term plan to responsibly cut the deficit 
in half in President Obama's first term. It does not do that by blindly 
chopping zeros off bottom lines or eliminating programs wholesale. It 
invests in that which will grow our economy--such as education, such as 
innovation, and such as infrastructure.
  It does not buy into the partisan talking point that there is no 
difference between spending and investing, because there is. In other 
words, it recognizes we can lower the deficit not just by subtraction 
but also by addition. When we invest in education, we create a smarter 
and stronger workforce. When we invest in innovation, we create jobs 
before the rest of the world beats us to those jobs. When we invest in 
our infrastructure--from the interstates to the Internet--we lay the 
foundation for prosperity.
  I am disappointed the congressional Republicans seem to have learned 
nothing from recent history. They are again trying to slash the 
programs that keep us safe and eliminate the programs that keep us 
competitive. They are still fighting for billions in special breaks for 
oil and gas companies, the insurance industry, and billionaires.
  In the last few days, the former president of Chevron oil said: We 
don't need those subsidies. But yet Republicans are fighting for 
subsidies for oil companies when the oil company executives say they do 
not need them.
  We have already tried it their way. They are fighting and 
substantiating billions in special breaks for oil and gas companies, 
the insurance industry, and billionaires. We tried it. It does not 
work. That is why we are in the mess we are in. But the Republican 
reaction to the President's budget has been an attempt to go back in 
time.
  If they want to time travel in search of fiscal responsibility, they 
should not stop at President Bush's failed administration; they should 
keep going to his predecessor's, when we balanced the budget with 
President Clinton.
  We live in the present and we budget for the future. We have spending 
challenges before us. We cannot afford to forget those challenges will 
not be solved by extreme rhetoric or unrealistic idealism. They will be 
solved only when reasonable partners are willing to come to negotiate 
with responsible proposals that find a critically important balance: 
one that brings down our deficit while keeping our economy moving in 
the right direction.
  When we find that middle ground, we will leave the next generation 
with an economy they can count on, with the confidence we seek in our 
future, and with the knowledge that when difficult decisions need to be 
made, Americans do not shirk that responsibility; when presented with a 
tough choice, we make it.

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