[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3227-3228]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, on June 27, 2010, President Obama made 
the following statement:

       I hope some of those folks who are hollering about deficits 
     and debt will step up, because I'm calling their bluff.

  I am stepping up. At the same time, I also want to call the 
President's bluff. I think we are at a serious point in time in our 
history, and we need to be realistic about what confronts us ahead of 
time.
  The biggest bluff this year in the Congress was the 2012 budget 
presented by the President which did not take any of the 
recommendations from his own deficit commission--by the way, I was one 
of the Republicans who supported that--and instead locked in a 25.4-
percent increase in spending over the last 2 years and made it 
permanent by calling it a freeze. It raises taxes in the outyears and 
dedicates a higher regulatory environment in the United States of 
America. None of that does anything to reduce the debt or the deficit. 
In fact, the President's budget actually makes it worse.
  But it is fair to ask people to step up. The American people are 
asking us to step up. They want us to do what they have been doing in 
the last 3 years: sit around their kitchen table, reorganize their 
priorities, spend within their means, and reduce their debt and the 
deficit. The very least they should ask of their country is their 
country to do the same thing they have had to do. In large measure, we 
have been the contributor to the protracted nature of the current 
recession.
  Now, everybody knows there are two ways to reduce the deficit in the 
short run and the debt in the long run. One way is to cut spending. But 
that is not the only way. Another way is to raise revenue and increase 
income. And that is not just by raising a tax, that is by improving 
business opportunity and the expansion of opportunity in America. There 
is a third way: by changing the processes by which we regulate and make 
decisions, by looking at reforms that in the outyears make a difference 
for all of us.
  On the spending side, the spending cuts are going to be difficult. 
They are going to be modest compared to what our deficit really is. But 
they are going to send a signal to the world that we are finally going 
to get serious about our spending level, and the majority of the rest 
of the world already has--whether it is Great Britain or many of the 
other countries in the European Union.
  So spending cuts are important. But spending cuts in and of 
themselves will not solve the entire problem. In fact, H.R. 1, in the 
House, which made reductions of $61 billion, was a modest start at a 
long-term process. But it sent us in the right direction, and it called 
the bluff the President was talking about by making real, significant 
proposals.
  Secondly, in terms of raising revenue, we raise revenue by expanding 
opportunity, not by raising the rate of tax, but, as his deficit 
commission said, by lowering the rate of tax, doing away with 
deductions that are specialized and targeted in nature and giving 
business the encouragement to expand.
  A funny thing happened to me on January 3 of this year in Atlanta, 
GA, right after the first of January. I went to the OK Cafe in downtown 
Buckhead, GA, for a breakfast. That is the gathering place for most 
Atlanta businesspeople on the north side of town. I was going to have a 
business meeting, and Steve Hennessy walked in, one of the largest 
automobile dealers in the United States. He happened to come up to me. 
He rushed toward me. He had his arms open. I thought I was going to get 
a good luck hug, a ``go to Washington and do a good job'' type speech. 
Instead, he put his finger right on my nose and said: Johnny, I just 
had to hire two compliance officers to comply with Dodd-Frank, and I 
lost a salesman. I am spending more money complying and less money 
producing.
  That is one of the things this administration has done in tremendous 
quantity to put us in a very difficult situation. Every agency is 
promulgating rules and regulations at a rapid rate--regulations that to 
comply with cost new employees, more expense in operating a business, 
and less capital investment in what that business does.
  It is very important that the President understand what happens; that 
is, regulation has consequences. Right now the regulatory volume of the 
United States being proposed by this administration is unsustainable. 
It is costly, and it increases the debt and the deficit of the United 
States of America. Quite frankly, it is a reach far beyond where 
government should go.
  I am the first person to support occupational safety, the first 
person to support financial security, the first person to support 
transparency. I will always fight to see that our government is 
transparent and our rules are fair and our occupational safety is good. 
But to overreach, to go beyond our reach, is just wrong.
  I will give you a couple of examples. Georgia is a large agricultural 
State. Yesterday I was with some cotton farmers who were bemoaning the 
fact of the most recent proposal to regulate agricultural dust. The EPA 
actually wants to regulate the dust created by a plow or a tractor or a 
truck on a dirt road on a farm, to say that the farmer must make sure 
that dust stays within the confines of his hedge row or his fence 
line--meaning we are going to try to control nature? Well, how is he 
going to do it? By hiring water trucks to follow behind his tractor to 
tamp down the dust? That is a reach too far.
  To categorize milk as oil and to say farmers who run dairies have to 
have storage tanks for milk that are equivalent to storage tanks for 
petroleum, that is just crazy. It is a reach too far, and it makes the 
ability to do business tougher, the ability to make a profit more 
impossible, the amount of revenue produced less because it is less 
profitable, and it protracts our debt and our deficit problem.
  So when the President talks about calling bluffs, I am willing to do 
it. I am willing to sit down and talk about the hard issues. In fact, I 
am willing to tell the story about how in certain measure myself and 
everybody else born after 1943 in America is an example of some of the 
things we need to do.
  In 1983, I was 39 years old. Social Security sent out their annual 
report on the stability of the Social Security fund and said it was 
going broke; that if we did not do something we were going to run out 
of Social Security benefits in the early 2000s.
  Well, that worried everybody. But Tip O'Neill, a great Speaker and a 
Democrat, and Ronald Reagan got together at the White House, and they 
said: We have a problem.
  Ronald Reagan said: Well, I don't want to raise the payroll tax.
  Tip O'Neill said: I don't want to lower the amount of the benefit.
  They looked at the actuary and said: What do we do? And he said: 
Recast the eligibility. Push it into the outyears, and that will get 
the system calibrated and back to actuarial soundness.
  So they sat down with the actuaries at the table and said: I tell you 
what we are going to do. We are going to preserve everybody's Social 
Security eligibility today. But for those people born after 1943 and 
before 1947, we are pushing them out from age 65 to age 66. I was born 
in 1944. With a stroke of a pen, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill changed 
my eligibility by 1 year. But they changed mine and millions of other 
Americans at the lead of the baby boomers, recalibrated the system, and 
put Social Security in actuarial soundness until 2050. Then they added 
2-month increments for eligibility beyond, where eventually the law now 
takes Social Security eligibility to 67.
  The President's commission recommended doing a similar thing over the 
next 50 to 75 years to push eligibility out so that benefits are not 
cut. Eligibility is changed but taxes do not go up. Eligibility is only 
changed, and when you become eligible to collect.
  We already know that when Social Security was formed originally, most 
people did not live to the eligibility age of 65, and today most 
everybody does. Our lifespans are a longer time, and that is what has 
gotten the system actuarially unsound.
  So I do not think it is right to say that nobody has answered the 
call on debt and deficit reduction. I do not

[[Page 3228]]

think it is right to say that our bluff--we have not been bluffing 
anybody, neither did the President's debt and deficit commission. They 
called our hand by giving us consequential recommendations that work 
and in the long term make the future of America bright.
  This problem is not a partisan problem; it is a bipartisan problem. 
The parties have contributed each to the other to cause the problem. We 
need to sit down together and begin solving it but not making it a 
political issue for the 2012 election with no solutions. Instead of 
bluffs, we ought to make constructive proposals. Instead of speeches on 
the floor that run time, we ought to be offering amendments on the 
floor that make a difference in terms of the debt and the deficit of 
the United States of America.
  This is the greatest country on the face of this Earth, and it is 
because people trust it. But if we continue to look the other way as 
our debt and our deficit increases, that trust will dissipate and our 
interest rates will go up, the cost of goods and services will be 
inflated, and America will be in trouble.
  I close by telling a brief story about a speech I made in Albany, GA, 
last year in November, when I was talking about the debt and the 
deficit, talking about some of the solutions we have talked about. I 
kept talking about a trillion this and trillion that, and saying one 
day soon we are going to owe $14 trillion.
  A farmer at the back of the room at the rotary club raised his hand 
and said: Senator, I only went to Dougherty County High School. I don't 
know how much $1 trillion is. How much is it?
  Well, I stumbled and I stammered, and finally, I said: Well, it is a 
lot. I could not think of how to quantify it.
  I got home that night, and my wife said: What is wrong? I said: Well, 
I got stumped today.
  She said: What was the question?
  I said: The question was, how much is a trillion?
  She said: What did you say?
  I said: Well, it is a lot.
  She said: Well, that was stupid.
  I said: Well, give me a suggestion.
  And she is always right.
  She said: Well, why don't you just figure out how many years have to 
go by for 1 trillion seconds to pass. Then people will understand how 
much $1 trillion is.
  So I did the math. I multiplied 60 seconds times 60 minutes times 24 
hours times 365 days. I got on the calculator, and the calculator only 
went to 12 digits. So I had to go to the computer to get something that 
would go to 13 digits, which is a trillion. I divided that product into 
1 trillion.
  Do you know how many years have to pass for 1 trillion seconds to go 
by? Madam President, 31,709. And we owe $14 trillion. At a dollar a 
second, for over 400,000 years, we could solve our problem. That is a 
huge problem. But we have the benefit of the time value of money and 
the hope and opportunity of the greatest country on the face of this 
Earth.
  So I call the President's bluff. Let's sit down together and talk 
about the tough things. Let's talk about the shared sacrifice. Let's 
talk about the benefit that comes from responsibility, frugality, and a 
commitment to the principles of our Founding Fathers and always 
remember the principle that less debt is better, and we should never be 
a country controlled by those we owe. Instead, we ought to be a country 
loved by those we protect.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam 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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