[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5585-5597]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the American people have heard a lot of 
excuses over the past few days as to why it is that we are staring at a 
potential government shutdown here in Washington.
  Democrats are saying the holdup is over social issues. This plays 
nicely into the political strategy they have decided on to distract 
people from their own fiscal recklessness.
  Republicans say the holdup is over the need to reduce Washington 
spending--that Democrats, including the President, would rather see the 
government shut down than to allow a reduction in the size and scope of 
Washington that is perfectly reasonable by any objective standard.
  Those are the competing messages. And generally speaking, people will 
probably agree with the party they tend to vote for. But whichever side 
you come down on, two things are not in dispute in this debate: First, 
that the whole reason we are in this mess is that Democrats abdicated 
their responsibility to keep the government funded through this year. 
And second, that Democrats have rejected the only plan out there that 
keeps the government open--the bipartisan troop funding bill--for no 
apparent reason.
  The President says he will veto it, but does not say why. And 
Democrats in Congress would not vote for it, even though it funds the 
Defense Department and keeps the government operational and makes 
reasonable cuts in spending.
  In other words, what Democrats are saying at this point is that they 
had rather see the government shut down either because they would not 
accept a modest amount of spending cuts that fall well within the range 
of what Democrats previously described as reasonable, or because they 
would not reinstate a longstanding policy related to one American city 
that Members of both parties, including Presidents of both parties, 
have approved repeatedly in the past.
  The majority leader said yesterday that this particular provision 
relates to an issue that we have been unable to reach agreement on for 
40 years. My response is that this is actually one of the few areas of 
agreement both parties have agreed about on this issue for years.
  Let's be very clear about this: if the government shuts down, it is 
either because Democrats are pretending that a previously 
noncontroversial provision is suddenly out of bounds. Or they refuse to 
take another baby step in the direction of balancing the government 
checkbook, something we know the American people want. Neither reason 
is worth a shutdown especially when neither side actually wants one. 
And that is why I believe there will be an agreement here shortly. I 
have been in many negotiations over the years. I assure you, these are 
not unresolvable issues.
  So my suggestion this morning is that both sides sit back and give 
the negotiators a few more hours to work this out.
  Let Senator Reid talk with his conference. Let the Speaker talk to 
his. And let's just hold off on the speculation and the back and forth 
for a little while here. Both sides are working hard to reach the kind 
of resolution Americans want.
  A resolution is within reach. The contours of a final agreement are 
coming into focus. There is virtually nothing in the troop funding bill 
Republicans in the House passed yesterday that will not be included in 
a final package.
  Let's not disrupt and derail that agreement.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let's make it clear where we are at this 
moment in time. There is an agreement. There is agreement on the budget 
number. It was an agreement reached between the President with Speaker 
Boehner and with Senate Majority Leader Reid--an agreement on the 
spending cuts for the remainder of this year. It was reached last night 
at the White House.
  Then it fell apart, not because of a change of heart when it came to 
the number but, rather, because of the insistence of the House 
Republicans that they would not let us keep this government 
functioning, they would not let us pass a budget resolution for the 
reminder of this year, unless we were prepared to virtually devastate 
the title X family planning program.
  Let me ask you something: In the big national debate in the last 
election over the future of our country and what we would do with our 
deficit, how many times do you remember that issue coming up? Exactly. 
None. This issue over title X has been brought in by the House 
Republicans at the last moment. It has virtually no impact on 
government spending--virtually none.
  Yet they insist on it. Why? It is because of some problems within the 
House Republican caucus. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, whom I 
know and respect and like, is surrounded by lean and hungry colleagues 
challenging his value, his resolve, and his leadership.
  This House power struggle has now reached a point where we face a 
government shutdown and a slowdown on whether we are going to provide 
basic health care access for women across America. First, understand, 
not one penny, not a penny in title X funds can be spent on abortion, 
other than the strictly limited provisions of the Hyde amendment, which 
have been the law of the land for decades, agreed to by virtually all 
Republicans and Democrats.
  It is about access to cancer screening, it is about pap smears, 
breast screening, it is about screening for infectious diseases. Here 
is what it means: If we cut off the funding, as the Republicans ask, 
for women to have access to affordable health care for their basic 
health, it is not, as the Senator from Arizona says, just a matter of 
whether they will knock on the next door down the street at a doctor's 
office, it is whether they will have any care at all.
  This is the lowest priced health care for people who struggle to 
survive day by day. If we fail to provide that health care, we endanger 
their health and we run the risk that without access to family 
planning, they will have unintended pregnancies and, sadly--sadly--even 
more abortions in this country.
  If you believe, as I do, personally, that we should try to reduce the 
number of abortions in America, how can you do what the House 
Republicans are asking us to do and close down access to family 
planning? In my State of Illinois, it is estimated that if title X were 
eliminated, we would have a 24-percent

[[Page 5586]]

increase in abortions in the State. I do not want to see that.
  I consider myself a person who is personally opposed to abortion but 
believes it is up to a woman and her doctor and her family and her 
conscience. But for goodness' sake, should not women, rich and poor 
alike, have access to family planning? That is part of what this debate 
comes down to.
  I would say to my colleague over here, Senator McConnell, the 
Republican leader, he blames us for not coming up with a spending bill 
for this year and putting us in this mess. My memory is a little better 
than his. I remember, in December, when we brought the spending bill to 
the floor, he objected to it. He objected to it, even though the 
spending targets in that bill were exactly what he had asked for before 
the Senate Appropriations Committee. That put us into this current 
showdown.
  Here is what I think we should do: Let's not close down this 
government. Let's face this decision responsibly. Let's say to the 
millions of committed Federal employees across America who are 
basically keeping America safe, making sure our planes are safe in the 
air, tending to the business of this great Nation, that they can come 
to work because the government will not close at midnight.
  Let's acknowledge that we have agreed on the amount of deficit 
reduction, the amount of spending cuts, and move forward. But let's 
also agree, let's agree to save for another day all those other debates 
about all those other issues, whether it is the EPA or title X.
  There is plenty of time and opportunity for Senators and House 
Members to give speeches until they are red in the face over these 
issues and to call for a vote. But let's not close down the government 
of the United States of America over the access to women's basic health 
care. That is what the House Republicans are insisting on. It is the 
wrong fight at the wrong time.
  It is important for us to step up and step forward and understand 
that if we do not invest a modest amount in preventative health care so 
women can learn their health status before small problems become large 
problems, so women can plan their family future, so people understand 
what their health status is, if we do not invest in that preventative 
care, we will pay dearly for that not only in terms of dollars spent 
but in terms of human suffering. That is something we should rise 
above.
  That is something we should care about enough to put aside and say 
keep the government open. My plea now to Speaker Boehner is: You have 
fought the good fight. We are at the 11th hour. Do not let us reach the 
depths of despair by closing down our government and sending a message 
across the world that there is something wrong with this American form 
of government.
  There is nothing wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with it that 
people of good faith, responsibly stepping forward and accepting their 
duty in the House and Senate, cannot cure by agreeing today. Let's do 
it. In this hour of decision, let's get it done.
  Senator Kerry spoke yesterday at our Senate Democratic caucus lunch. 
John, I still remember your words of what an embarrassment it will be 
to the United States if our government is shut down. In the eyes of the 
world, so many people respect this great Nation and I am glad they do 
and I do too. But to allow a government shutdown at this moment in our 
history is a sad commentary. Let us not shut down the Government of the 
United States of America over the question of whether women will have 
access to affordable health care and preventative health care across 
the United States.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I think that everyone--or virtually 
everyone in the Senate--does not believe we should shut down the 
government. The question is, What are the negotiations? I am not privy 
to them and neither is anyone on this floor about what are still the 
sticking points.
  We all believe it is our responsibility to assure that government 
does not shut down and to come to an agreement because this is a 6-
month bill--this is to the end of the fiscal year--that we are trying 
to negotiate. It is a very small part of the big picture, which is, we 
must get the deficit down, which is projected to be, under the current 
budget that has been put forward, $1.5 trillion.
  That is wrong. That is what we ought to be addressing. We ought to be 
looking at the numbers we can bring down so we start getting this 
budget deficit down so our debt starts coming down and we can see an 
economy that is thriving through private sector job creation.
  That is what we ought to be doing. But because there is so much 
debate and because there is such disagreement about what is holding up 
the agreement for that 6-month plan, there is something that is gaining 
momentum in this country that I want to assure everyone knows about.
  I was notified of it this morning through an e-mail into my Web site. 
It was from a woman I do not know. She said: My husband is Active Duty 
in the Navy, and I just wanted to let you know there is a Facebook 
campaign supporting S. 724. Please click the link below because there 
are 437,000 people who have signed on that they agree with us. This is 
what Americans think about military pay being cut.
  Because S. 724, that was put forward by myself and Senator Casey who 
came on board, which now has 58 sponsors, is about making sure no 
matter what happens in the next 12 hours, no matter what happens with 
the government shutdown, is that there be no question in the minds of 
our military and their families that they will be paid on time because 
there is no question they are going to come to work. I do not want 1 
day or 1 hour of delay in the payment for our military. We have about 
100,000 people in Afghanistan today putting their lives on the line, 
wherever they are in that country, and we have 47,000 in Iraq.
  For the people back home--and I have already heard from one wife who 
has a 1-year-old child whose husband is in Afghanistan, who says: Thank 
you for remembering that we have mortgages to pay, and our husbands are 
not here to help us or do anything about it.
  So I wish to say we have now, in the hour since we got this note, we 
went on the Web site. The Web site is called Ensure Pay for Our 
Military Act of 2011, which is also the name of our bill. It now has 
639,212 people who have signed on in support of this Web site.
  The people of our country know there is one option we do not have; 
that is, to pass a freestanding bill that will assure whatever the 
other disagreements are, that our military pay will be on time for the 
work that is being performed. America understands that. I am asking the 
Senate to join.
  I ask unanimous consent for cosponsors to be added to my bill: 
Senator Pryor, Senator Boozman, Senator Bennet, Senator Baucus, Senator 
Isakson, Senator Kirk, and Senator Johnson.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. That brings the total to 58. Senator Casey has been a 
wonderful supporter in this. He is the lead cosponsor.
  Mr. President, 58 Senators have stepped to the plate and said: This 
is not an option, for us to equivocate for 1 minute.
  I am waiting to get two more cosponsors, which will show that we have 
60 and that we want to act as a Senate. I am hoping that Senator Casey 
and I can get the ability to bring up our bill and pass it. It is very 
simple, very clear. Military pay for those who are serving our military 
in civilian capacities will not be delayed. They are going to report to 
work, and they need to have peace of mind because the mortgages they 
have may be on direct lines to the mortgage companies, that they are 
going to be covered. That is the very least we can do as we are arguing 
about whose fault it is going to be if we have a shutdown. We need to 
say: It is our first priority not to have a shutdown, and we need to be 
able to come to agreement, and we need to take further action--I hope 
we can do it very quickly--of saying we are going

[[Page 5587]]

to assure, with this simple bill, that our military will be paid.
  If we send this to the House of Representatives, my guess is they, 
too, will pass it.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor of the 
legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, that makes 59.
  Mr. WARNER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield.
  Mr. WARNER. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor as 
well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, Senator Warner is 60. We now have the 
ability to pass this piece of legislation. Whatever happens on this 
floor, we have 60 votes that commit us to supporting our troops and 
assuring them that there is no equivocation in this Senate for having 
their pay on time. They will be doing their duty in Iraq, and they will 
be doing their duty in Afghanistan. It is my great hope that we also 
will have the ability to assure their families so there is not 1 minute 
of stress added to what they already have in their lives.
  I thank those who started this Facebook and the grassroots movement 
that has brought us to over a half million people in a few hours. This 
is a true grassroots movement. I thank those who started it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the crisis we have. 
I guess I ask my Republican colleagues: Please, don't shut down our 
government. A shutdown will hurt all Americans--our businesses, our 
middle-class families, our servicemembers who could see their paychecks 
delayed. It will hurt this economy. Eight percent of mortgages are FHA 
guaranteed. None can be issued that are FHA guaranteed starting 
tomorrow. Housing is one of our largest industries, and it has been on 
its knees. This will put it on its back. IRS checks that are mailed, 
where the refund is mailed back, will stop. That is billions of dollars 
that would be circulating in the economy that will not happen.
  We Democrats have been listening to the people. We want to avoid a 
shutdown and have met all of the Republican demands on the spending 
side.
  Last night at the White House Speaker Boehner said to the President: 
If you go with me, it is $78 billion in cuts. That will satisfy me.
  The President said: We will get to that number.
  We have moved in every direction Speaker Boehner has asked. We 
believe there should be cuts. There is tremendous waste in government. 
I think any Democrat who ignores the lesson of those who voted, the 
lesson of the last election, makes a mistake. The people did want 
government to cut out the waste and to shrink, but they didn't say cut 
everything. They didn't say use a meat ax. I didn't have a single 
person tell me--and I met a whole lot of tea party people--to cut 
cancer research, cut loans to students who are going to college because 
the American people have wisdom. Cut the things that are wasteful and 
hurt the middle class but grow the things that help the middle class 
achieve a better life. That is what the President has tried to do when 
he said: We are going to out-educate, out-build, out-innovate. That is 
what we are trying to do.
  There are a lot of tough cuts in our proposal, some that I don't 
like. Every Member on this side will be able to find things they 
seriously don't like, but at the same time we have gone to a level, 
about as high as we can go, that doesn't cut our seed corn, our future, 
a growing economy for our people and their children.
  On cuts, we are in a good place. So why didn't we come to an 
agreement? Why, after Speaker Boehner offered a number and the 
President accepted, why are we still here today worried about a 
shutdown that will hurt so many? The answer is simple: the so-called 
extraneous riders. These add-ons, which have nothing to do with deficit 
reduction, are standing in the way. Why are they standing in the way? 
Because a minority of the House--perhaps even a minority although a 
large number of Republicans--insists that they be there. They are the 
hard right of the Republican Party. They are the same people who have 
said: We cannot give an inch on their H.R. 1 bill, which did cut our 
seed corn, did cut loans to colleges and cancer research. Now they say 
they have to insert these extraneous riders dealing not with abortion--
the Federal Government can't fund abortion because of the Hyde 
amendment--but rather about women's health, about who, not how much, 
should get the payments to do chest screenings and blood tests and 
cancer tests for women. That battle has been raging for a long time, 
decades. It has nothing to do with reducing the deficit.
  So why is it there? Let me show why on this little chart, this little 
pictorial representation. Speaker Boehner has said: ``No daylight 
between Tea Party and me.''
  Let me repeat that because these are his words: ``No daylight between 
Tea Party and me.''
  Does he have the exact same views as the tea party? Obviously not, 
but he is pulled by them. He has a choice. He can listen to the tea 
party and shut down the government, or he can take the very difficult--
and I admit it is difficult; I believe Speaker Boehner is a good man; I 
like him; I think he is a decent, honorable man who is caught between a 
rock and a hard place--alternative which is to take the mantle of 
leadership and tell those on the hard right they cannot run the 
government completely.
  They will have influence--they already have--but they cannot run the 
government completely. They certainly can't impose their social 
ideological agenda on a budget process, frail enough as it is. These 
riders are the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes the 
shutdown.
  Speaker Boehner is trying to say today it is not the riders, it is 
the budget numbers; but that is belied by two facts: No. 1, he offered 
a number to the President last night and the President accepted, $78 
billion in cuts. No. 2, if it isn't the riders, as my colleague from 
Washington State said, take them off the table. Tell the tea party and 
others that this is not the time or place. There will be a debate on 
this issue. We can guarantee that. Even if we didn't want it to happen, 
it would. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would make 
sure. But not here and not now; not when continuing the government with 
all the ramifications is at stake.
  What we have is a flea wagging a tail wagging a dog. The flea is the 
minority of House Republicans who are hard right. The tail is the House 
Republican caucus. The dog is the government. That flea is influencing 
what the dog does. More than influencing, right now it is determining. 
It is sad.
  Leadership is tough. Frankly, when either party goes to the extremes, 
they don't do the right thing. When Republicans go to the hard right, 
when Democrats go to the hard left, my experience is they lose 
politically. Much more importantly, they do what is wrong for the 
country substantively. We are a country that governs from the middle. 
We are a country that believes in compromise. We are a country of what 
the Founding Fathers profoundly weaved through the Constitution: checks 
and balances.
  It says two things: When the people want change, a new group will 
come in, and they will certainly have an effect. Our government, our 
structure of government the Founding Fathers created, is not ossified. 
They also said they won't control everything. That is the beauty of our 
government.
  We in the Senate are the cooling saucer. That is what we are doing 
here. We are performing our function. It is a function that the 
Founding Fathers wished us to perform, some of whom, I might note, come 
from the State of Virginia. In any case, we have a serious issue ahead 
of us.
  I say to Speaker Boehner: Please, tell the tea party folks they are 
going

[[Page 5588]]

 to get some of their way but not all their way. They will not get 
their way on these extraneous riders related to women's health. The 
battle for whether the government shuts down goes on inside Speaker 
Boehner's head.
  When people ask me: Are we going to shut down?
  I say: Look inside Speaker Boehner's brain and see what is going on 
there. I am sure there is a lot of torment and tumult. I sympathize 
with the situation.
  This is a time for leadership, and if leadership emerges, this 
government, on which so many people depend, will not shut down.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the American credit card is maxed out. We 
continue to add about $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion to that credit card 
every single year to where it is now at $14 trillion. The amazing thing 
is, right now it is about noon, and between now and midnight tonight 
when this continuing resolution expires, if nothing is done the 
government would shut down. We will add more than $2 billion to that 
debt. In a 12-hour time period between noon and midnight tonight, we 
will add another more than $2 billion to that $14 trillion debt that is 
growing by the hour.
  We have a crisis in this country. We have had experts tell us, such 
as the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, that 
there is a 50-percent probability that we will see a debt crisis in the 
next 2 to 3 years.
  Interestingly enough, there was a story in the Wall Street Journal 
this morning that says:

       Europe's central bank became the first monetary authority 
     in a major developed economy to raise interest rates since 
     the global financial crisis struck, a sign that an era of 
     cheap credit is coming to a close.

  It goes on to say the ECB increased its benchmark by a quarter point 
to 1.25 percent.
  Now, if we started to see an upward tick in interest rates, it would 
have a profound impact on the deficit and on the debt because the 
experts also tell us--the Congressional Budget Office and others--that 
for every 1 percentage point increase in interest rates, it would cost 
about $140 billion every single year.
  To put that into perspective, the interest on the debt in the year 
2015--if we stay on our current trajectory, will exceed the amount we 
spend for defense. So we will be spending more on interest on the debt 
than we actually spend defending this country in 2015. That is assuming 
we did not see any kind of an increase in interest rates. If we were to 
see, as I said earlier, as much as a 1-percent increase in interest 
rates, that adds $140 billion every single year in interest costs to 
finance the debt. This is a serious situation which requires serious 
action.
  We have in front of us a continuing resolution to fund the government 
because we did not get the work done last year. The Democratic 
majorities in the last year did not pass a budget, did not pass a 
single appropriations bill. So we are doing the unfinished work of last 
year. We are in the now sixth continuing resolution which, as I said, 
expires tonight at midnight. If nothing is done, the government would 
shut down, but there is an alternative. Of course, the best alternative 
would be to pass legislation that passed the House of Representatives 
earlier this year--it was voted on in the Senate and was defeated--that 
cut $61 billion from discretionary spending and would take us back to 
2008 levels.
  Just to remind my colleagues, in the last 2 years discretionary 
spending has increased 24 percent. That is if we do not include 
stimulus money. If we add stimulus money, it was 84 percent. We have 
seen discretionary spending increase in the last 2 years by 24 percent 
at a time when inflation in this country was 2 percent. So we were 
spending at a rate that was literally more than 10 times the rate of 
inflation.
  I do not think the American people would think it is unreasonable--
when we are running $1.5 trillion deficits every year, when we have a 
$14 trillion debt--that we ought to be able to go back to 2008 spending 
levels. That is what the House bill did that failed in the Senate. So 
that triggered a negotiation, which is ongoing.
  My point very simply is, there is a solution in front of us now that 
would prevent, at midnight tonight, the government from shutting down, 
and it would also fund our troops through the end of this fiscal year, 
which ends on September 30. So all we have to do in the Senate is--the 
majority leader, all he has to do is call up that House-passed bill, we 
move that, and it would fund the government for another week until the 
negotiators can come to a final conclusion on a longer term funding 
resolution that would take us through to the end of the fiscal year.
  There is a very simple answer to all this. So there is a big debate 
about that particular short-term funding resolution. They say, well, 
maybe it cuts too deeply. All the cuts that are in that short-term 
funding resolution are cuts that have been agreed upon largely by both 
sides, by both Democrats and Republicans, and it is to the tune of 
about $12 billion, which is significantly less than the number both 
sides have agreed we ought to cut from the budget this year.
  As I said, it also would fund the military. It is important we fund 
our troops, that we not put our military at risk of not having the 
funding that is necessary for them to conduct their very important 
duties when we are trying to fight two wars, and perhaps three. So it 
would fund the military through the end of this fiscal year.
  So why will it not be picked up and passed by the majority leader in 
the Senate? Well, according to our colleagues on the other side, it is 
because of these ideological riders, this rigid partisanship, this 
insisting upon things that just absolutely do not have any support in 
the Congress.
  Well, I want to point out something. In 2009 the other side was 
singing a very different tune because at that time they were passing a 
big spending bill, and at that time President Obama and then-Speaker 
Pelosi loaded such riders onto a government funding bill similar to the 
one now being negotiated. A senior Democratic aide is saying: Well, 
they are not comparable. Well, many of the same provisions--in fact, 
one of them was an abortion provision that was included in that 
particular spending bill. It goes on to say--and this is quoting a 
Democratic aide later on:

       There is a difference between including riders on a bill 
     when they are supported by a majority of the Senate and just 
     need a vehicle and including riders on a bill because a 
     minority is trying to ram through something that would not 
     have support on its own.

  Well, just to point out, the rider that was added by the House 
Republicans on the short-term spending bill is a ban on taxpayer 
funding of abortions in Washington, DC. It would affect one city in the 
country. Interestingly enough, it is a position that has been supported 
repeatedly by the leadership on the other side. The majority leader, 
Senator Reid, has voted for this very ban 10 times since 1995. The 
majority whip, Senator Durbin, has voted for this very ban 9 times 
since 1995. Believe it or not, the President of the United States, when 
he was a member of the Senate, voted for that ban twice, and he, as 
President, signed legislation that includes that ban.
  So to suggest this is something that lacks majority support just does 
not pass the smell test. You cannot make an argument that it is about 
ideological riders that do not have majority support when you have 
people on both sides, by large majorities, voting for these particular 
riders. I think you cannot argue that this is an ideological battle 
because these are things that have been passed before right here in the 
Senate.
  I think most of these--a lot of legislative things, a lot of things 
that get funded in government are an expression of someone's ideology. 
Now, there are some of us who happen to believe the taxpayers in this 
country should not be supporting abortion; that taxpayer funds should 
not be going to support abortions.
  The broader debate about funding for Planned Parenthood is not just 
ideological, it is a funding issue because

[[Page 5589]]

they have received somewhere on the order of over $300 million a year 
in taxpayer funds. So when you are looking at ways to trim government, 
you are looking at every area of the government. You are by definition 
making decisions that in some cases may be based on someone's ideology. 
The fact is, you cannot argue with a straight face on the floor of the 
Senate that this short-term funding resolution ought to be held up over 
a couple of riders that have broad support by Members on both sides and 
have countless previous votes in support of those.
  So I would suggest to my colleagues in the Senate that a shutdown at 
midnight tonight can be avoided very simply. All it requires is for the 
majority leader to pick up the bill that passed the House of 
Representatives yesterday; a bill that, as I said, funds the government 
for another week until our negotiators can come to that final 
conclusion, that funds the military through the end of the fiscal year, 
and that includes a couple of provisions that have been supported 
numerous times by Members on both sides in the Senate.
  A shutdown is totally avoidable, but it is completely up to the 
majority to pick up that legislation and pass it. We cannot afford to 
wait to deal with out-of-control spending and debt for the reasons I 
just mentioned. Over 40 cents of every dollar we spend at the Federal 
level is borrowed. As I said before, we have seen discretionary 
spending increase by 24 percent over the past 2 years. What the House 
Republicans have proposed in terms of spending reductions, I think by 
any definition--I think the American people would find it to be very 
reasonable. It represents literally less than 2 percent of total 
Federal spending.
  At a time when most Americans are tightening their belts, most small 
businesses are tightening their belts, families are having to make hard 
budget decisions, at least in Washington we ought to be making 
decisions in the best interest of getting this country back on track so 
we do not spend money we do not have and we are living within our means 
and not saddling future generations with an enormous debt, which is not 
fair to them and which, by the way, also has a profound impact on the 
economy.
  Everybody makes the argument up here that somehow if we reduce 
Federal spending it is going to hurt the economy. Well, I would argue 
the opposite. If we do not get Federal spending under control, it is 
going to hurt the economy because you are going to see these kinds of 
impacts. You are going to see interest rates start going up. You are 
going to see inflation start going up. You are going to have people not 
making decisions about hiring out there in our economy because they do 
not believe Washington, DC, has gotten the message about getting 
spending and debt under control.
  So I would argue to my colleagues that we have a solution, a very 
simple solution in front of us. It certainly does not necessitate at 
midnight tonight the government shutting down. I do not think that is 
in anybody's best interests. I do not know of anyone on this side of 
the aisle who wants to see that happen. All we are saying is, it is 
high time this government started to live within its means, started to 
stop spending money it does not have, started putting us on a fiscal 
path that will ensure that this country is around for future 
generations of Americans, and that we do not have young people in the 
future carrying around an $88,000 debt, which is what their debt will 
be in a few short years if we do not take steps to get Federal spending 
and Federal debt under control.
  So I urge my colleagues--the Senator from New York got up and said: 
Please, Republicans, don't shut the government down. I would say to my 
colleagues on the other side: It is very simple. If the majority leader 
just picks up the House-passed bill, passes it, this crisis is averted. 
The negotiators can continue their discussions on a longer term 
solution which it sounds like they are very close to coming to a 
conclusion on. That is all it would require. It is a very simple 
solution.
  I hope my colleagues will do it, and we can make sure the government 
continues to function, but that we start to get spending and debt under 
control.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be added as 
a cosponsor to S. 724.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to proceed for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and I do not 
intend to object--but I am just wondering if the Senator from 
Massachusetts would be willing to amend his request to allow subsequent 
Republican speakers to also have 15 minutes to make their remarks. So 
if the Senator would agree to amend that request, I will not object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this is a 
critically important issue, and I think a lot of us all want to speak. 
I just want to make sure--I have been presiding and waiting for some 
time as well. I hope we do not start rearranging all the rules here so 
we all get a fair chance to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request from the 
Senator from Massachusetts?
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I continue to reserve the right to object. 
If the Senator is willing to amend his request, I will not object. But 
if he is not, then I agree with the Senator from Virginia. There is a 
long list of Republicans and Democrats who would like to speak.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I withdraw my request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The request is withdrawn.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, that is sort of an indication of the kind 
of problem we have around here, which is the ability to accommodate a 
simple request that used to be accommodated around here all the time.
  Let me say very quickly, what the Senator from South Dakota just said 
is a massive oversimplification of what is happening. The President of 
the United States made it very clear, we are not going to fund the 
government week to week to week to week to week. It costs more money. 
It is a completely incompetent way to fund the Government of the United 
States of America. People need to make plans. People need to let 
contracts. People need to be able to know how much they are going to be 
spending, how much can they hire, who can they hire. That is an 
incompetent way to manage the United States.
  The President made it clear, we have already done two short-term 
fundings of the government, and he said we are not going to do it 
again. It is time to reach an agreement. It is time to show the 
maturity and the capacity to be able to do the business of our Nation. 
They are just asking for another delay. But they are not just asking 
for that, they have also put their ideological wish list into that 
particular request.
  This is a dangerous moment for our economy and for our country. 
Frankly, it is an embarrassing moment for the Congress of the United 
States. It is an embarrassing moment, I think, for the American people, 
who have to watch their Congress struggling to do what we were sent 
here to compromise and find a way to do the business of our country.
  There is a reason we are standing on the precipice of this argument. 
I believe we can still get an agreement in these next hours. I believe 
we may well get that agreement in these next hours. But what a show to 
get there. How extraordinary it is that for the first time since the 
1990s, when, incidentally, the Republicans ran the House--does it ring 
a bell? That is the last time we had a shutdown in the U.S. Congress, 
and here we are back again with the same threats, the same need to do 
brinksmanship that puts an ideological wish list on the table, that you 
cannot pass any other way, to try

[[Page 5590]]

to force it down the throats of Americans at the last minute by 
threatening to shut down the government.
  I have to tell you, in China, they have to be laughing at us right 
now. They have to be clapping. How terrific that the United States of 
America cannot make a decision. Boy, does that send a wonderful message 
to businesses all around the world: They can't make a decision. They 
can't decide an energy policy. They can't decide an infrastructure 
policy. They can't fix their schools. They can't do anything, and now 
they can't even get a budget. That is a hell of a message around the 
world. While we are running the world preaching the virtues of 
democracy, people have to be scratching their heads and saying, That is 
what we are going to get?
  This is not because both sides of the political aisle cannot agree 
about a plan for cutting the deficit. This is not about the deficit. We 
only have to listen to Speaker Boehner and to the President, the 
majority leader and others, and add up the math. It is beyond dispute 
that Democrats have agreed to make the largest budget cuts in American 
history in discretionary spending. It is also beyond dispute that we 
have agreed to travel far more than halfway. We are at about 73 percent 
of what they requested in terms of spending reductions.
  Last night, the President of the United States sat with Speaker 
Boehner and said, I agree to your number. This is not about the number. 
We agree with the number, providing we can also look beyond 
discretionary spending and look to the larger budget, which is the way 
we ought to be doing budgeting for the United States. We have 
compromised. We have agreed to well more than what is reasonable with 
respect to some of these reductions.
  So this is not about making cuts to the deficit. That is not what it 
is about. America needs to understand that. In a negotiation, there is 
always a back and forth. There is a give and a take. But we are at this 
extraordinary moment in American history where a small group of people 
seems to be intimidating their own leadership.
  I keep hearing about what a tough position the Speaker is in. He is 
not in a tough position. He is the Speaker of the House of the United 
States of America. It is a job he always wanted. It is a job he wants 
to have. He asked for it. His position is no tougher than anybody else 
here who has to make a cut on these kinds of issues. What are you for? 
But he is allowing this small group, a minority within a group--maybe a 
minority of a minority, I don't know--to dictate and they are saying, 
Oh, we have to do this. We have to take America right up to the brink, 
right up to the edge, and show the world we are not able to do our 
business in a quiet and responsible and thoughtful way.
  Rigid ideology is threatening to shut down the Federal Government of 
the United States. Let's not play games and pretend with some short-
term stopgap measure when the President has said we are not going to do 
that anymore. It is no way to run the government and it costs more 
money. They are doing this with impunity because all the voices of 
moderation and common sense--all the voices on the other side of the 
aisle who say we don't want to shut down the government--and they 
really don't. I know some of our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle. They get it. They don't want to do this. But either they are not 
being listened to or something has happened over there where there is a 
level of anarchy within the institutional process of the Congress that 
is dictating where we are.
  So why is it that 100 percent--100 percent--of the cuts we are being 
asked to make are coming from only 12 percent of the budget? There 
isn't an American who will sit there and say, What do you mean? You 
mean only 12 percent of the budget is up for grabs, and they are taking 
100 percent of their cuts from the 12 percent of the budget? That 
doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Defense 
spending at the Pentagon: Are you telling me that every system we are 
buying over there, the procurement process of the Pentagon is so 
perfect that we can't make some cuts? But they are not trying to cut 
defense. That is not on the table.
  Everybody knows the big items of our budget deficit are Medicare, 
Medicaid, and Social Security. Those aren't on the table. They are not 
being considered. How can they say this is not ideological when the 
only things that are being cut in their proposals are the very things 
some people have been trying to cut for 40 years? They have opposed 
them as a matter of principle their entire political life and they 
can't get them any other way, so now they are trying to jam them down 
the American throat by saying we are threatening to shut down the 
Government of the United States.
  This isn't about the budget deficit. If it were, we would have made 
the largest cuts in American history because we have agreed to those 
cuts. Every single one of us understands why we are in the predicament 
we are in. Yes, we have a huge budget deficit and huge debt. I can't 
get over how quickly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are 
able to forget about how we got here. When President George Bush became 
President, we had a path toward a $5.6 trillion surplus. We had 
balanced the budget. We did what we needed to do. Then they came in and 
passed two huge tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country that 
they didn't ask for and didn't need, and all of a sudden we had a 
deficit. Of course, it was because they gave tax cuts on the credit 
card. Then we had two wars, one of which was a war we never had to 
have--the war in Iraq at a cost of $1 trillion. That is our deficit. 
Then they had all their cronies guarding the financial system with the 
foxes guarding the chicken coops. The result was Wall Street ran away 
with American economic interests, and we had the housing crisis and the 
Wall Street crash--the greatest loss of wealth in modern times. As a 
result was the deficit and the debt went up. When President Obama came 
into office we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. They forget that. They 
forget their complicity in that.
  So we are where we are now. The fact is this fight--do my colleagues 
know what they have been trying to do? They have been trying to shut 
down the government if they don't get Environmental Protection Agency 
restraints which they weren't able to win otherwise. They have about 65 
different ideological wish list items now being reduced, but that is 
what the fight has been about for these last weeks. Folks, we had that 
debate. It is fresh in our minds.
  This week the Senate debated Senator McConnell's amendment to cut off 
EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act. It lost. Three other 
amendments with similar approaches had up-or-down votes. Each one of 
them failed. The process worked. Amendments were debated and votes were 
counted.
  So now it is do it or we will shut down the government. I don't 
remember a lot of Americans voting for dirtier air or water they can't 
drink or longer droughts for farmers but now they are saying the 
government is going to be shut down if we don't handcuff the EPA.
  We have been here before. In December 1995, one of the reasons that 
the Federal Government shutdown was the Republican attempts to include 
a ``. . . excessive number of anti-environmental riders.'' And here we 
go again. The Budget Committee chairman, Senator Conrad, reports that 
last night in the middle of the night, the other side put mountaintop 
mining riders on the table. What does that have to do with reducing the 
deficit?
  And that is just the start of this ideological excess. Planned 
Parenthood, we are fighting over whether Planned Parenthood can get any 
money from the Federal Government for cancer screenings for low-income 
women.
  We had that debate over here. We voted on the House budget to kill 
Planned Parenthood. It lost. It lost overwhelmingly. Senate Republicans 
opposed it. So now the gang from the House say defund Planned 
Parenthood or we shut down the government. Strip Planned Parenthood of 
money it uses to provide lifesaving, preventative care to millions of 
women each year or we shut down the government.

[[Page 5591]]

  Is this about abortion? No. They want to prohibit Planned Parenthood 
from receiving any Federal funds, including Medicaid--a proposal that 
would cut 1.4 million women off from their health care provider.
  This isn't even good fiscal policy--the preventative care saves 
taxpayers dollars in the long run. Every dollar ends up saving $3.74 of 
health-related costs to Federal and State governments.
  We are talking about women like Jennifer, a woman from Boston who 
credits Planned Parenthood with saving her life. She had little money 
and no doctor. She went to Planned Parenthood for a checkup, and the 
doctors found a precancerous condition of the uterus. She says now, 
``Because of Planned Parenthood's early intervention, I was able to 
have two children and a healthy life.'' But today, here we are--here is 
the choice they are ramming down our throats: defund that care or shut 
down the government.
  Last year, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees did 
their job. However, in December 2010, the Republicans objected to even 
considering this year's budget and forced us into this situation.
  That is ideology that has nothing--nothing--to do with balancing the 
budget.
  So if a small ideological group shuts down the government over all 
this, what happens? What happens?
  Well, for all the talk here about jobs and the economy, you would 
think somebody might be thinking hard about that, especially now that 
our economy is starting to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs 
every month.
  So just yesterday, one of our leading economists said: ``The economic 
damage from a government shutdown would mount very quickly. And the 
longer it drags on, the greater the odds of a renewed recession.''
  Goldman Sachs analysts say a shutdown will cost the economy $8 
billion every week. The Business Roundtable, whose companies account 
for $6 trillion in annual revenues, forecast increased sales and hiring 
by businesses over the next 6 months, but they say even a short 
shutdown would put that in jeopardy. ``I don't think any of the CEOs 
would welcome a government shutdown,'' said Ivan Seidenberg. Even 
Speaker Boehner says, ``if you shut the government down, it'll end up 
costing more than you'll save.'' The Republican economist Mark Zandi, 
says a shutdown would not only ``disrupt a wide range of government 
operations and significantly cut the output of government workers, but 
the hit to confidence could be serious . . . it could easily undermine 
confidence as questions grow about policymakers' ability to govern. 
This would be fodder for a new recession.''
  A new recession because ideologues continue to object to the 
compromises necessary to pass a budget? But here we are hours away from 
shutting down the government over abortion.
  And folks, that is the big danger--that the actions of these 
ideologues will stop the recovery.
  But it has a human face too.
  Just yesterday I read an e-mail from a constituent of mine named Tim. 
He lives in Norwood, MA, and he is a Federal employee at Homeland 
Security working in Boston. On March 26, he and his wife moved into 
their first home. Now, if the government shuts down, he will be 
furloughed. He is worried that he won't be able to pay his mortgage and 
he is terrified about the consequences this will have on his credit 
rating.
  I have no idea whether Tim is a Democrat or Republican, but I know he 
didn't vote in November to not be able to do his job or pay his 
mortgage.
  But that is what he is worried about this morning. He is one of 
800,000 families that will not be able to go to work and do their jobs. 
I heard one of them asked yesterday about it and about all the talk 
that after the shutdown she will get paid, and she said, ``Tell my two-
year-old he can eat retroactively.''
  But why isn't the job getting done? Because of issues wholly 
unrelated to the deficit.
  And what does it mean to the country?
  Well, the last time we had a government shutdown, they told us that 
at the NIH the scientists doing the research on cancer and cures had to 
go home. They couldn't work. The only person deemed essential was the 
guy who came in to feed the lab rats so they would still be alive when 
the government came to its senses.
  Did anyone vote last November for us to stop researching cures to 
diseases? I don't remember that being a part of the tea party platform. 
Bu here we are.
  At the height of filing season, IRS processing of tax refunds for 
returns could be suspended. So families who have been waiting for their 
refund checks won't get them.
  During the spring home-buying season, 15,000 homeowners could be 
prevented from getting a new home loan every week.
  We talk about honoring our men and women in uniform and those who 
have served our country, but we know that during the last shutdown more 
than 400,000 veterans saw their disability, pension or educational 
benefits delayed.
  We talk about honoring our seniors, but more than 100,000 new Social 
Security claims were delayed in 1995.
  We say we care about the disabled, but during the last shutdown 
services to 1.2 million people with disabilities were interrupted.
  And that is just the immediate consequences of a shutdown. But what 
about the long term? What happens when the world watches a small group 
of ideologues making it impossible to pass a budget for 1 year? We are 
preaching democracy all over the world and we can't make our own work. 
Our economic competitors are going to take advantage of this 
opportunity to strengthen their economy at our expense.
  Does it make businesses more likely to invest here, or go invest in 
China and in Latin America where governments are racing ahead investing 
in infrastructure and energy to own the markets of the future? They are 
going to laugh all the way to the bank.
  But instead here we are, about to shut down the government--and 
willing to slam the brakes on the investments and the research and 
development we need to make so America doesn't fall behind other 
countries. While we have these ideological fights, we eat America's 
seed corn today, even if it means going hungry tomorrow.
  This is about ideology. This is the takeover of our national dialogue 
by people who actually want to shut down the government--for them, it 
is a goal not an unintended consequence.
  Don't take my word for it. Just listen to them.
  Representative Ron Paul of Texas said: ``I don't think it would hurt 
one bit'': and that ``life would go on without the Federal 
government.''
  Representative Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia said the Republicans are 
simply ``listening to the American people'' and doing what they want.
  Now, I will grant you that Congress needs a ``jolt'' but it should 
not be a jolt that causes a government shutdown. It should be a 
``jolt'' to do the job that we were elected to do.
  There is a better way. We can balance our budget and we can grow our 
economy to benefit everyone and we can do both at the same time. How do 
I know? Because many of us were there when we did it before. We tackled 
a budget deficit and created jobs at the same time. And we didn't do it 
by cutting our budget to the bone.
  In the 1990s we grew our way to a stronger economy under the Clinton 
economic plan. We invested in the workforce, in research, in 
development, in new industries. As a result, we saw the longest 
economic expansion in history, creating more than 22 million jobs and 
generating unprecedented wealth in America, with every income bracket 
rising. And working with Republicans, we came up with a budget 
framework that put our Nation on track to be debt free by 2012 for the 
first time since Andrew Jackson's administration. Of course, it didn't 
work out quite that way, what with huge tax cuts, two wars and the 
worst economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 8 years that 
came before these last 2 difficult and divisive years.

[[Page 5592]]

  We can do it again. But it is going to take a serious dialogue within 
the Congress about our fiscal situation, discretionary spending, 
entitlements, and revenues--a dialogue that is long overdue. We need to 
work towards a long-term solution to reduce both our current budget 
deficit and our staggering debt. We will need to reduce Federal 
spending and make appropriate changes to our entitlement programs to 
meet the fiscal challenges facing our country.
  But that is not what is being debated here today. That is not what 
the House ideologues are doing. And it is not what the Senate is 
supposed to be doing. I have been here 27 years. I know that the 
world's greatest deliberative body can still be a decisive one. But we 
are not today.
  Before we entered into this show-down with the clock ticking towards 
a shut-down, Senator Inouye and I were going to be in Boston for the 
groundbreaking of the Edward Kennedy Institute dedicated to the study 
of how to make the Senate work as an institution.
  Ted Kennedy knew what the Senate could do when we made this place 
work. He understood the differences of 100 Senators from States as 
different as Alaska and Hawaii, California and South Carolina, Ohio and 
Oregon. He embraced different accents and different world views even as 
he was proud of his own. He became living, legislating proof that a 
most fiercely independent, plain-talking, direct and determined 
partisan could resolve the hardest issues, staking out common ground 
with those they disagreed with on almost everything else.
  Ted knew that the historic breakthroughs in American politics have 
been brokered not by a mushy middle or by splitting the difference, but 
by people who had a pretty healthy sense of ideology. Ted Kennedy and 
Orrin Hatch were a powerful team precisely because they spent a lot of 
time opposing each other. But he knew that they were opponents, never 
enemies; that they could be friends in life even as they were foes in 
politics. And again and again, over and over, when this ultimate odd 
couple found things they were willing to fight for together, arm in 
arm, all of us in the Senate leaned in and listened--and followed them.
  Make no mistake. Were Ted Kennedy serving in the Senate today he 
would be down on the Senate floor--red faced, fists pounding the bully 
pulpit--exhorting his colleagues that it is wrong to balance the budget 
on the backs of working people, that Senators should stop the political 
gamesmanship, and that we need to get back to doing the business of the 
American people.
  But he would be doing something else, too. He would be working the 
cloakroom quietly pulling aside Democrats and Republicans. He would be 
reading the rhythms of the institution. He would be appealing to the 
better angels of the Senate's nature--because as deeply as he believed 
in the issues, Ted believed just as deeply in the capacity of his 
colleagues, at critical times, to put country ahead of party.
  Ted Kennedy would be proud of today's groundbreaking for the Kennedy 
Institute for the Senate. But I know he would be insistent too that we 
have to break new and common ground in the institution that is the U.S. 
Senate itself.
  Generations of young Americans to come will come to the Kennedy 
Institute and learn to understand what the U.S. Senate was intended to 
be.
  But 100 Senators don't need to wait that long. We can do what Ted 
Kennedy and Bob Dole and so many other Senators of both parties used to 
know how to do--which is find common ground and insist on common sense.
  We don't have to shut down the government. We don't have to continue 
the ideological bloodletting. We can do better than we are doing. The 
question is whether we are going to get back to work and ensure that 
the great center of American politics holds once again. Our country 
deserves that--and nothing less.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I join the Senator from Massachusetts in 
saying also we don't have more time on this. We all want more time. 
Each of us would like to spend more time on this important issue, but 
we want to give everyone the chance to speak and this is why we have 
the limitation.
  I think it is important to put this whole issue in perspective. 
People are saying, Well, the clock is ticking and we are 12 hours or 
less away from having to shut the government down. Well, yes, the clock 
is ticking. But the clock that has been ticking year after year on the 
mounting debt and fiscal crisis that is going to take this country into 
bankruptcy if we don't do something about it. That clock is ticking a 
lot faster than the clock is ticking on this debate.
  Let's put this debate into the perspective of the larger picture. In 
the last 3 years we have added over $4 trillion to our debt--$4 
trillion plus in the last 3 years. This country is on an unsustainable 
spending binge. People throughout the year in 2010 expressed their 
views about the egregious, reckless spending of this Congress, and they 
sent a new Congress here to do something about it.
  Because the other party that was in control in 2010 didn't pass a 
budget, didn't do anything about it when the time ran out on September 
30 at the end of the fiscal year--we are at this point today because we 
have had to have these continuing extensions which we are trying to do 
something about, and I hope we can resolve this. I don't want a 
shutdown any more than anybody else does. But people have to put this 
in perspective. What we are dealing with here is a request put out by 
the Republicans--because there is no request from the President of the 
United States and there has been no request from the other party as to 
what the package should be to deal with this--and that request requires 
and asks for a reduction of 1.6 percent of the total amount of spending 
that is going to take place in 2011--1.6 percent.
  If you are the head of a family or an individual making $50,000 a 
year and you find out you are running yourself into bankruptcy, that 
amount you would have to come up with to save, to start the process of 
getting your financial situation back in order is $800. If you are 
making $100,000 a year, what we are asking for is a $1,600 equivalent 
cut in the spending. If you are a business making $1 million a year and 
the boss comes and says we are spending way more than we take in in our 
revenues and this company is going to go bust and everybody is going to 
get released from employment as a result of that unless we make a start 
in moving forward in dealing with our fiscal crisis, and we are going 
to start by cutting $16,000 out of the $1 million, that is the 
equivalent of what we are doing here. Yet, we are talking as if this is 
doomsday, this is cataclysmic: These are the greatest cuts in the 
history of the Senate.
  We have a timebomb, a debt bomb, ticking away out there that is going 
to take the country down into second tier or third tier status, at 
best, or we are going to have the bond markets do it for us if we don't 
start. This isn't just a Republican plea. Democrats, the President's 
own commission, headed by Erskine Bowles, who was the President's Chief 
of Staff, has said there has been no more predictable collapse facing 
America than this one and we need to do something about it now.
  What we are trying to do about it now is simply do something that 
wasn't done for 2011, for the 2011 budget, with a modest 1.6-percent 
cut so we can move to what we need to do, and what we need to do is 
address the whole picture. As the Senator from Massachusetts said, we 
have to deal with more than this 12 percent of the discretionary 
spending for 2011.
  We have to put mandatory spending on the table, defense spending on 
the table; we have to look at tax reform as a way to grow our economy. 
There are a whole range of things we have to do. We have one plan in 
place that has been put there for us to at least begin to start the 
debate on what we need to do--get this thing out of the way so we can 
start that debate, and that is the Republican plan put forward by House 
Member Paul Ryan, the head of the

[[Page 5593]]

House Budget Committee. That is the comprehensive plan we ought to be 
working on. We can't get to that plan because we are dealing with this 
1.6-percent fix to the problem that exists for 2011. It is 2012 and 10 
years beyond that needs to be addressed and needs to be addressed now.
  This country is facing as serious a debt crisis as we have ever had. 
Leading economists, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and 
conservatives, those from Harvard and those from Stanford and every 
college in between and every institution and entity that has studied 
this problem, say we have to do something and we have to do it now or 
it is going to be done for us, and the results of that will be a lot 
worse than if we start to address it now.
  Governors and heads of businesses and heads of families all across 
America know exactly what we are talking about because they have 
already had to make these tough decisions. They are already 
implementing what is necessary to get their fiscal house back in order. 
It is not just Republican Governors; it is Republican and Democratic 
Governors. Why aren't we listening to Andrew Cuomo? Why aren't we 
listening to Jerry Brown? Why aren't we listening to Mitch Daniels and 
other Governors, including Governor Walker from Wisconsin and Governor 
Kasich from Ohio? Why are we not looking at what they are doing? At 
least they are stepping up and doing it.
  Here we are, arguing over the extreme nature of a 1.6-percent 
reduction out of a $3.7 trillion budget. Revenues are coming in at $2.2 
billion for a $1.5 trillion deficit and we are talking about a 1.6-
percent cut out of all that, as if this is doomsday if we don't raise--
even come halfway, or a little more than halfway to this.
  Putting this in perspective I think is necessary for us. We have all 
the focus on this little, small grass fire happening over here when 
there is a five alarmer across the street. That is the fiscal house of 
America. Are we doing this because we are green eyeshade people and we 
don't like the way government functions and we want to take things away 
from people? No. We are doing this to save this country--to save the 
benefits available to those who are under Medicare, to save the 
benefits available to those under Medicaid, and other provisions. We 
are trying to keep these programs from collapsing and we are trying to 
keep this country's fiscal house from collapsing or burning up. Instead 
of fighting a little grass fire, we have a five alarmer over here and 
we have a little truck with a hose trying to put out that grass fire. 
Let us reconcile this and pass this now so we can get to the issue we 
have to get to.
  This whole thing about riders and about the largest tax cut in 
American history is a pebble in a pond of what is necessary for us to 
go forward and deal with the crisis that is before us. It is going to 
rest on all of our shoulders. It is going to reflect on all of us, 
Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, if we stand here 
and fiddle while our fiscal house burns to the ground and collapses.
  As I said, one way or another, this will happen. It may happen sooner 
or later. If you listen to Erskine Bowles and a former colleague, 
Senator Simpson, and to the President's own commission, and if you 
listen to any analyst who has looked at this, they say it is totally 
unsustainable. If you don't do it and start the process, the bond 
market and the interest rates will do it for you. It will fall on all 
of us for not stepping up to the plate and getting it done.
  We have 11 hours to get this done. Let's pass this now and make the 
decision to go forward and let our yeas and nays be recorded. Let the 
American people decide which side they want to be on on this particular 
issue.
  I think, given the results of the last election and the awareness of 
the American people, clearly they have come to the conclusion that the 
government is too big, it is growing too fast, it is spending too much 
money--money it doesn't have--and it is borrowing money at a rate that 
is putting us into severe jeopardy in terms of our creditors and what 
their demands will be in the future. When 40 cents of every dollar is 
borrowed, you cannot continue on that course without dire consequences.
  I believe the challenge before us today is to wrap up this 
negotiation and wrap up the issue that deals with the remaining months 
of 2011 so that we can immediately begin--and whether it means 
canceling the recess or whatever, I am more than happy to participate 
in that--to work on the necessary decisions and changes and debate that 
have to take place regarding our long-term future. If we fail to do 
that, we are going to reap the negative consequences.
  My time is about to expire. I simply plead with my colleagues, let's 
get past this little nothing of a skirmish here and keep this 
government functioning and get to work on what we have to do. We hope 
to have competing plans, but if not, let's go forward with the Ryan 
plan and get a yea or nay on it and let the American people decide 
whether it is the right way to go.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I wish I could say I was rising today to 
just debate some of the normal issues we talk about. Like most of my 
colleagues, probably, I rise today a bit embarrassed--not a bit but 
really embarrassed that we are here under these circumstances.
  People across Virginia cannot understand why we can't get this done. 
I had the honor of serving as the Governor of Virginia. I am a 
Democrat, and I had a two-to-one Republican legislature. We got things 
done. We compromised. We found that common ground that now seems to be 
viewed as a bad place to be.
  Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Indiana that whatever 
number we agree on today, that doesn't take us very far when you have a 
$1.6 trillion deficit and a $14 trillion debt. If this debate is 
showing anything, it is that there is not going to be a way to get 
there unless we can frame this in a bipartisan way. I agree with the 
Senator from Indiana that we ought to take the framework of the 
Simpson-Bowles plan and put it forward. There are a group of Democrats 
and Republicans who are trying to do that, and a lot of other Members 
would like to be part of that as well.
  We ought to take one lesson from this debate--that we are not going 
to solve the bigger problem unless we can start on a bipartisan basis. 
We have heard this morning back-and-forth about what is holding this 
up. I am not in the negotiating room. I wish I were. I don't know what 
is holding it up. I know, as somebody who has followed this debate 
pretty closely, that for the weeks of this discussion, it seems to have 
been focused on, can we at least take some small step toward attacking 
that deficit and cutting spending.
  It seems to me from every bit of the press reports I have read--I 
would like to say I have an insider's view, and many of the Senators 
are trying to figure out what is going on, but from all the press 
reports, it seems that, until the last day or two, this has been about 
cuts, and there has actually been agreement on the number and size of 
this first step of cuts. But now we have these other issues. I think, 
as some of my colleagues have said, there will be time to debate those 
issues, but why in the heck would we roll the dice with not just 
800,000 Federal employees but millions of Americans who rely on some 
level of continuity to have these extra social issue divisions right 
now?
  I heard some of my colleagues say earlier that, well, we have to shut 
it down for a weekend, and that won't be too much of a problem. Well, 
you don't have to worry about the Federal employees.
  Lord knows, anybody who puts a red herring--I appreciate Senators 
Hutchison and Casey making sure our troops are going to get paid. I am 
proud of that. Regardless, I think Senators and Congressmen should not 
be paid, either, if we shut down, and I promise not to take any salary 
if we are shut down. But just even for a weekend, what do you tell the 
motel owners, the restaurant workers, the private sector folks who are 
relying this weekend on people coming to

[[Page 5594]]

Washington to see the cherry blossoms? You may say that is small ball, 
but that is people's lives--not Federal workers but the private sector 
workers. What about the defense contractor who says that if we shut 
this down, he is going to lay off 70 folks starting next week? What 
about the shipbuilder in Norfolk who is living paycheck to paycheck and 
says they don't know whether they are going to see private sector 
dollars from their private sector employment, whether they are going to 
get paid or not? What do you say to our soldiers who are fighting in 
Iraq and Afghanistan to try to spread democratic government if the 
greatest democracy in the world is going to shut down not over 
trillions of dollars' worth of differences but over some issue that may 
or may not have been introduced at the eleventh hour? I don't get it.
  The notion somehow that this will send a good signal of fiscal 
discipline--I am proud, as my friend the Senator from Tennessee said, 
that we have spent more time in business careers than we have in our 
political lives. But what business hates the most is uncertainty. The 
markets hate uncertainty the most.
  Portugal, yesterday or the day before, said they need a bailout from 
the European Central Bank. The notion that we are out of the woods in 
terms of a macrofinancial crisis is not true. The situation in Europe 
is very uncertain. The situation in the Middle East is obviously very 
uncertain. It would be the height of irresponsibility if we were to 
kind of once again rock the bond markets with the fact that the 
American Government would shut down over some extraneous issue. I don't 
get it.
  The economists whom we have talked to have said that you can see up 
to a .2 percent decline in economic growth if we even shut down for a 
few hours. Frankly, it would end up costing us more than we save 
because shutting down operations and starting up operations, as any 
business leader or any government person who actually runs something 
knows, costs more money. People may say two-tenths of 1 percent, and we 
struggle for half a percent of growth here and there with all of these 
policies we try to promote--that is billions and hundreds of billions 
of dollars to our economy.
  Just as we started to see a little bit of good news with the job 
numbers last month, just as we started to see the beginnings of an 
economic recovery, are we going to show that we can't even continue to 
operate the government for the next 6 months, and are we going to shut 
it down, at least based on press reports, on extraneous issues that 
don't have to do with deficit reduction?
  If we can't get through this challenge, what happens when we move 
from the small-ball issues to the issues Senator Coats and my 
colleagues and friends, Senators Carper and Corker, all want to be part 
of--and the Presiding Officer--and how will we take on that $14 
trillion debt, to which we add $4 billion every day that we fail to 
act, if we can't solve this problem in a way that focuses on making the 
cuts and letting the government continue to operate, not simply for the 
sake of 800,000 Federal workers but for countless millions in the 
private sector who depend upon that certainty, and move on to the 
question of how we find, I believe, the bipartisan solution that I hope 
and pray is at least around the framework of the Simpson-Bowles 
approach, which puts everything on the table--revenues and cuts--and 
recognize that we need to put the country back on the path of economic 
prosperity.
  I hope the negotiators realize this is bigger than the small issues--
bigger than 73, 78, or whatever number they finally determine. We will 
send a signal by our actions today whether we are willing to then move 
forward to take on the much bigger issue, which is where we have to 
start.
  I will close with this. If there is anything we have learned from 
this effort, it is that if we start with guns ablazing at each other, 
we are not going to be able to take on the real issue that confronts 
us--the national security crisis that Chairman Mullen has said is the 
single biggest threat to our long-term economic stability based upon 
the rising debt.
  I yield the floor and hope and pray we will come to a solution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, if the Chair will please let me know when 
there is a minute left, I would appreciate it.
  I rise to speak about the current issue. I am always glad to speak 
after my friend from Virginia, whom I have enjoyed working with on so 
many issues. I appreciate the work he is doing now to try to deal with 
the bigger issue we have to deal with.
  I will not waste a lot of emotion or say things that might--look, we 
are involved in a powder puff right now. We are dealing with a small 
amount of dollars. We add $4.1 billion a day to the deficit--$4.1 
billion a day. So probably, with the negotiations we are involved in 
today, maybe we are separated by 1 day of deficit spending.
  I know there has been a lot of talk about what might happen with the 
government shutdown. I don't believe that is going to happen. I believe 
that when we come in on Monday morning, an agreement will have been 
reached. I am not going to waste time on the Senate floor talking about 
all the bad that might happen in this country because I cannot believe 
that, over the small ball we are dealing with right now, we are going 
to have a government shutdown. I think we will resolve this over the 
next few hours or maybe sometime over the weekend possibly. Maybe there 
will be a minor disruption this weekend. I have faith that this will be 
worked out.
  What I want to spend time talking about is the fact that we do have a 
crisis that is looming. I don't think it is this weekend, and I don't 
think it is over a continuing resolution that goes for the rest of this 
year. I hope we are actually able to move beyond majoring in the 
minors, which is what is happening now, to majoring in the majors; that 
is, talking about trillions of dollars in less expenditures, not 
billions of dollars. Each day that goes by, with the $1.5 trillion 
deficit we have, we are spending $4.1 billion that we don't have.
  I am convinced that negotiators on both sides of the aisle very soon 
will work out their differences, and when Monday morning rolls along, 
the government will be operating.
  To me, the big picture is this: We have a debt ceiling vote that I 
think will be coming up sometime between Memorial Day weekend and the 
July Fourth recess. To me, that is the opportunity we have to really do 
something great for our country.
  I know Senator Warner alluded to the Gang of 6. I know there are a 
number of people on both sides of the aisle who are working toward a 
long-term solution.
  Claire McCaskill and I have offered the Cap Act, which is gaining 
momentum and has a number of Republican cosponsors. We picked up 
another Democratic cosponsor yesterday. It is very simple. It would 
keep us from doing the kind of thing that is happening right now.
  One of the things that is most fascinating is today--and I know you 
just came from State government, Mr. President--today we are dealing 
with last year's business. The thing that is most frustrating for those 
of us who come from the business world or who come from State 
government or who have been a mayor, in this body, we never know where 
we are going. We are always debating issues that should have been 
resolved a long time ago.
  What we need to do in this body for this country is to figure out 
where we are going over the longer haul and then both sides of the 
aisle need to sit down together and figure out how we get there. We 
need to somehow create a fiscal straitjacket where we know--we know we 
are at an all-time high with spending today relative to our economic 
output. We had the same thing back in 1945 and, candidly, even in the 
eighties. We got up to levels that were higher than they should have 
been. We have the ability to get back to the norm. We know that. We 
have to make some tough decisions to do that.
  The CAP Act is a 10-page bill. Basically, it says we will go from 
where we

[[Page 5595]]

are today in spending over a 10-year period to our 40-year historical 
average of 20.6 percent of our GDP. There are a lot of people in this 
body--and I am not going to point fingers--who use the word 
``extreme.'' There is nothing extreme about this. It is common sense. 
It puts everything on the table.
  What is fascinating to me is that today we are debating minor amounts 
of cuts in discretionary spending. Everybody in this body knows that if 
we cut all discretionary spending--discretionary spending, by the way, 
includes defense--if we cut all discretionary spending, including 
defense, we still could not balance our budget. What we need to do as a 
body is look at everything--all the entitlements, all the mandatory 
spending, and we need to cap Federal spending relative to our economy 
and take it down to the 40-year average over the next 10 years.
  I think everybody in this body is aware that would save our country 
per projected policy $7.6 trillion. By the way, I think it would force 
us as a body to have the discipline to take up many of the issues on 
which the gang of six is working. We already had Paul Ryan from the 
House show us that it can be done, and there are people who criticize 
that, and that is fine. There are multiple ways of solving this 
problem.
  The problem we have is politicians in Washington do everything they 
can to avoid making a tough decision. Back home, what we want to do is 
get the pain out of the way. Let's make the tough decisions so we can 
have blue sky in front of us. Here everybody wants to wait until the 
next election and hopefully move beyond their own election to deal with 
the tough issues with which we have to deal. That is just the way this 
body is.
  It is amazing, here we are in April dealing with last year's 
business. Again, both sides are involved in that. I am not pointing 
fingers. But if we had a plan that we adopted, a statutory bill where 
we agreed we were going to go from where we are to where we need to be, 
our 40-year average--not extreme, over a 10-year period--it would force 
us to sit down and in a bipartisan way look at the big picture.
  Everybody knows cutting discretionary spending is small ball. Let me 
say, that is powder puff. It is powder puff. We have our Nation at 
stake, and we are sitting here yelling at each other, saying things we 
should not be saying to each other that take us nowhere over powder 
puff. It takes us no place. I feel as though here our Nation is getting 
ready to have a fiscal crisis at some point--in a year or two--and we 
are all here trying to score points with each other over something that 
at the end of the day and in the scope of things are important, 
certainly, but there is no question that today we are majoring in the 
minors.
  I hope we can get by this and move beyond this without creating even 
further divides between the two sides and people saying silly things 
about who is to blame and who is not to blame. It is silly. It is 
beneath us. The American people have to be watching us with 
embarrassment. I am embarrassed.
  This is the most dysfunctional place I have ever been a part of in my 
life because, again, we never know where we are going. It is a 
privilege to serve, do not get me wrong. It is a privilege to represent 
and get involved, but it is dysfunctional because we major in the 
minors. We can cut all the discretionary spending and not get where we 
need to go.
  Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, a State very different from 
Tennessee, agreed that we have to deal with mandatory spending. We have 
to deal with entitlements. We want those programs to exist for our 
seniors down the road. We want them to exist for these pages, and we 
know on today's course, it cannot happen. We know without dealing with 
them, we cannot solve our country's fiscal issues.
  Let's move beyond this episode that is beneath us, that is silly, 
that is small ball, that is powder puff. Let's move beyond this over 
this weekend and reach an agreement. The cuts we are making are the 
biggest cuts that have been made, and I applaud people on both sides of 
the aisle who are trying to get us there. No doubt it will pass through 
the budget for a decade. It could be $300 billion or $400 billion in 
savings. That is great. But we all know we need to be dealing with $7 
trillion or $8 trillion over that decade. If we do not do that, we know 
that our country's fiscal future is in great jeopardy, and we lose in 
that the ability to display American exceptionalism that all of us want 
to see us do.
  I hope we will stop talking about Republicans and Democrats. 
Candidly, I hope we will talk about the future or something else 
because this debate is almost beneath us.
  I see my time is up.
  I yield the floor to my great friend from Delaware who has been a 
sensible advocate on so many issues.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, first, I say a special thanks to Senator 
Corker, not just for what he said about the issues we are facing on the 
path forward but the nice words he said about his friend from Delaware. 
It is a pleasure to serve with him. I thank him for introducing the 
concept of tele-townhall meetings. We do that a lot in Delaware. I 
learned that from him.
  The President has been likening the squabble going on here to a 
family squabble between a husband and wife. He said what husbands and 
wives usually do is figure out their differences, find middle ground, 
compromise, and work them out.
  One of the things I love to do when I go up and down my State is to 
talk with people who have been married a long time--I am sure this 
happens to the Presiding Officer--50 years, 60 years, 70 years. I like 
to ask them what is the key to being married 50, 60, 70 years. I get 
some funny answers and some great answers as well. I am sure the 
Presiding Officer does too.
  One of my favorite answers is a couple said to me: Two Cs.
  I said: What is that?
  They said: Communicate and compromise.
  There is a little theme going on here with a former Governor of 
Virginia, Senator Warner, a former mayor of Chattanooga, Senator 
Corker, and a former Governor of Delaware. I want to continue with that 
theme.
  I go home at night to Delaware. I take the train home, and I come 
back the next morning. This morning, I was walking on the platform to 
catch my train. One person said to me: You all are acting like a State 
legislature in the Senate.
  I said: No, that is not the way we act in Dover, DE. When I was 
Governor, we had a Democratic senate, as we have here, we had a 
Republican house, as we have here, and we had a Democratic Governor for 
those 8 years. Yet we managed to work out our differences, to 
communicate and compromise and to be able to balance our budget 8 years 
in a row, cutting taxes 7 out of those 8 years, adding tens of 
thousands of jobs, which was no mean feat in our State, and to get 
ourselves a triple A credit rating for the first time in the history of 
our State. That is what you can do when you communicate and compromise 
in good faith.
  At the end of these negotiations--I think largely taken in good 
faith. I have a lot of respect certainly for our own leaders and a 
healthy respect for the Speaker of the House, with whom I served 
briefly. I think he is an honorable person and a guy who tries to do 
what is right.
  The President said--and I heard this from pretty good sources--the 
President said to the Speaker of the House: We will take your number. 
We will agree on the spending cuts. We may think it is a little too 
much focus on domestic discretionary spending, not enough on defense, 
not anything on entitlements, nothing on the revenue side. It is not a 
balanced package, but we will take your number. This ended up not so 
much a discussion over how we are going to further reduce spending in 
this fiscal year. The discussion is over things I think we addressed 
already in this body this week on whether the Environmental Protection 
Agency should be allowed to comply with the Clean Air Act, as ordered 
by the Supreme Court, to reduce pollution or are we going to tie their 
hands with some kind of a special rider on what

[[Page 5596]]

should be a continuing resolution to fund the government?
  We have had four bites out of the apple this week. None of the 
amendments to tie the hands of EPA and their ability to enforce the 
Clean Air Act has been adopted. What we are now trying to do with our 
friends in the other body is somehow put in the legislation as a rider 
language that would fly in the face of what we already decided here.
  A second point. As a former Governor, I was active in the National 
Governors Association. One issue I worked hard on with George Voinovich 
from Ohio when he was Governor was legislation that said we do not like 
Federal mandates. States do not like Federal mandates that say you have 
to spend money on something or you cannot spend money on something or 
you have to raise revenues this way or raise them in that way. We did 
not like that.
  Congress actually passed and President Clinton signed legislation on 
unfunded mandates. We do not do it nearly as much as we used to. One of 
the riders is to tell the District of Columbia what they can and cannot 
do with their money--not with Federal money but what they can and 
cannot do with their money. In my mind it is a violation of the 
unfunded mandate law, certainly in spirit if not in truth.
  One of the issues we appear to be divided on is whether Federal money 
should be used for family planning. I think we all agree we should work 
toward having fewer abortions. I think almost everybody agrees we would 
like to have fewer abortions. One way to make sure we have more 
abortions is to reduce the money set aside for family planning. It is 
counterintuitive. If you want fewer abortions, cut funding for family 
planning. That makes no sense to me. I hope we will walk away from 
making that bad decision.
  Again, I go back to the comments of our friends from Virginia and 
Tennessee who preceded me. This is a speed bump ahead of us. We are 
talking about how to come up with $4 billion, $5 billion, $6 billion in 
savings for the rest of this fiscal year. How about when we are looking 
for $4 trillion of savings over the next 10 years? That is the tough 
negotiation. It all has to be on the table. It cannot just be 
discretionary spending on the domestic side. We can eliminate it 
entirely, but we will still have a big budget deficit. Defense has to 
be on the table. Last year, there were $402 billion in cost overruns on 
major weapons systems. That is up $42 billion from 10 years ago. 
Defense and entitlements have to be on the table. Revenues have to be 
on the table.
  We have been given a roadmap--not a perfect roadmap, but a roadmap--
by the deficit commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.
  The last thing I want to say is, coming down on the train today, I 
read the business section of the New York Times. There is actually some 
pretty interesting stuff in there. One of the things they reported on 
was the retail numbers for last month. Most analysts thought they would 
be down, but they are up.
  I was at an auto dealership this past weekend in Milford, DE, talking 
about car sales. They are not flat. They are up. It was not just that 
dealership but throughout my State and the Nation. Two years ago, 9 
million trucks and vans; last year, up to 11 million; next year, 13 
million. Credit is available again and things are moving in the right 
direction.
  Every Thursday, as the Presiding Officer knows, we have a number from 
the Department of Labor. It is new unemployment filings, how many 
people have filed a new claim for unemployment. We get it every 
Thursday. If we go back to the end of 2008, I think the top number in 1 
week was 660,000 filings, people filing for unemployment, new claims at 
the end of 2008. Yesterday, for last week, we are down to 380,000 to 
390,000. We saw jobs numbers created, new jobs for March, 220,000 
private-sector jobs being created. We are going the right way.
  Finally, the economic recovery is beginning and we need to strengthen 
it. One of the best ways to undermine it--one of the worst things we 
can do--is to add uncertainty, add unpredictability. I am not sure who 
said this. Maybe it was John Ensign who said this before. One of the 
things businesses need and want, that markets need and want is 
certainty and predictability.
  One of the reasons big companies are sitting on the sidelines--a 
bunch of them still are--and not hiring people, even though they are 
sitting on cash--is unpredictability. What are we going to do with the 
budget, not just short-term runup, but for the 10-year plan, the $3 
trillion, $4 trillion, $5 trillion in savings? What is the Supreme 
Court going to do with health care? Are they going to throw it out or 
fix it and make it even better? What are we going to do about energy 
policy? What are we going to do about tax policy? What are we going to 
do about transportation policy? All those are uncertainties.
  We can begin to resolve the budgetary uncertainty by agreeing on a 
reasonable spending reduction plan for the balance of this fiscal year 
and go to work on the much tougher problem, and that is how to take $4 
trillion out of our debt in the years to come.
  Last thing I want to say is that a couple of us have been working on 
this in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. What 
we are beginning to do is to use our committee's jurisdiction to look 
into every nook and cranny of this government to ask this question: How 
do we get better results for less money? How do we get better results 
in domestic spending, how do we get better results in defense spending, 
and how do we get better results for less money in entitlement 
programs? And frankly, with the tax expenditures as well. How do we get 
better results?
  I call it getting rid of a culture of spendthrift and replacing it 
with a culture of thrift. Above and beyond all the other stuff we are 
doing, we need to do that as well. Because everything I do, I know I 
can do better. I think the same is true of all of us. Everything we do, 
we can do better, and the same is true of Federal programs. The 
question we have to ask as we look to every one, as we look in every 
nook and cranny of the Federal Government, is to ask this question: Can 
we get better results for less money or at least better results for the 
same amount of money or not much more money? For a lot of them, the 
answer is: Yes, we can. For us, the challenge is to do that.
  With that being said, I yield back my time. I see my friend from 
Nevada is here, and I am sure he is anxious to agree with everything I 
have said, and I welcome that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I say hello to my good friend from 
Delaware. He made some very good comments. I want to follow up and talk 
about this debate we are having.
  The Senator from Tennessee, Senator Corker, talked about the need to 
forget about whether you are a Republican or a Democrat and think about 
what is best for the country, and that is what we should be doing right 
now.
  People around the country understand we have a serious debt problem. 
Spending has been run up under Republicans and Democrats. People can 
blame whichever party they want, but the reality is we now have a $14 
trillion national debt. This year alone, $1.6 trillion is how much more 
we are going to spend than we take in. That is 40 cents, or a little 
over 40 cents, out of every dollar we are spending this year we are 
borrowing from countries like China. That is such a dangerous thing to 
do, because we are now dependent on other countries and our economy is 
on very shaky ground. Everyone in this body understands this is 
completely unsustainable.
  Let's look at the path the President has set us on as far as his 
budget is concerned. If we took up his budget, this year alone we will 
spend about $250 billion in interest on our national debt. That is kind 
of like having a credit card and you are spending $250 billion in 
interest on that credit card. If we follow the President's plan over 
the next 10 years, that $250 billion will go to almost $900 billion a 
year. That is more than Social Security, more than Medicare, and more 
than national defense. That is why this is completely unsustainable.

[[Page 5597]]

  So now we are in a debate over a few billion dollars compared to 
trillions of dollars? It is a drop in the bucket. That is why I believe 
it is important for both sides to get this behind us so we can focus on 
the much larger issues.
  I have a 100-percent pro-life voting record. I believe very strongly 
that life is precious; that God created each of us in his image, and 
that life should be protected. But we have to face reality. The 
Democrats are in control of the Senate and in control of the White 
House. There is no way they are going to allow Planned Parenthood, 
which is the largest abortion provider in the United States--and I 
disagree with what they do--the Democrats will never allow us to defund 
Planned Parenthood while they are in charge. So we have to look at what 
we can do. What is achievable?
  Right now, I think one of the biggest moral issues we face in this 
country is the debt. What we are doing to our children and 
grandchildren is handing them a country they cannot afford. The taxes 
will have to be too high. We could default on our debt and end in a 
depression which is worse than the Great Depression simply because this 
body, the body on the other side of the Capitol, and the White House 
have spent too much money for too long. We have spent money we do not 
have.
  Next year's budget and the debt ceiling are much bigger issues than 
we are dealing with here. We don't need to shut down the government. We 
just need to sit down, make the compromises necessary so we can move 
this process forward and get to the much larger issues on spending and 
debt.
  We have seen in the news that Portugal, Greece, and Ireland have had 
serious problems. They have actually had their debt downgraded to 
almost junk status. One of the countries is actually considered junk 
bond status. The others have now had their bonds seriously downgraded. 
What does that mean? That means they are paying higher interest rates.
  Yesterday, the EU raised their interest rates. The European Union 
raised their interest rates because of fears of inflation. Here in the 
United States, our Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low. But 
we know inflation is coming, and eventually they are going to have to 
raise interest rates because of inflation and overspending by the 
United States. What does a rise in interest rates mean to the average 
American? It means that the home mortgage is going to go up.
  Remember, a lot of Americans have these adjustable rate mortgages. So 
the next time they refinance those mortgages, their payments will be 
higher. They are already having trouble meeting these payments.
  What does that mean for job creation? The small business owner who 
wants to get a loan will have to pay higher interest rates. That 
affects the cost of capital and whether they may be able to even start 
a business in the first place. It will hurt job creation right in the 
middle of this very little, very delicate bit of job recovery that we 
are having in the United States.
  This spending and the debt is not some esoteric argument. It is real 
and it affects real people's lives. It isn't something we can put off 
for another 3, 4, 5 years. We must deal with it now. We know that 
entitlements are the biggest part of the budget. Yes, discretionary is 
important. We have to deal with discretionary and we have to deal with 
defense. We overspend in defense in so many wasteful programs, but the 
big issue is going to be entitlement spending.
  Congressman Ryan put out a very bold budget the other day--the first 
person to come forward with a bold proposal to deal with entitlement 
spending in this country. The President's debt commission put out a 
proposal, but the President, unfortunately, ignored his own debt 
commission and didn't put any of their recommendations in his budget. 
But both Republicans and Democrats are going to have to deal with this 
spending problem--this spending binge we have been on--otherwise we are 
not going to have the same United States of America we have all been 
enjoying our entire lives. We are literally going to become an economy 
that cannot exist the way we exist today because we cannot afford it. 
Our debt will literally collapse the economy of the United States.
  A recent study came out, done by two incredible economists named 
Rogoff and Reinhart. These are viewed by both sides of the aisle as 
well-respected studies. They studied sovereign debt over the last 200 
years of about 64 countries. What they found is any time the debt 
reaches 90 percent of the economy, or 90 percent of the GDP, it causes 
a net decrease of about 30 percent of economic growth going forward.
  Those are numbers. But what does it mean? It means a loss of jobs. In 
the United States, we have over a million jobs that will be lost, that 
would otherwise be created. So this is real stuff. Where are we in the 
United States? Currently, we are about 94 percent of GDP. So we are 
already there, and it is going to get worse and worse.
  That is why this debate we are having over spending is so critical, 
and critical that we get it under control. We need to forget about 
which party is going to have a political advantage. I am one of those 
Senators--and there are quite a few of us--who is not running for 
reelection. Everybody in this body needs to forget about whether they 
get reelected and do what is right for the country. It is so critical 
right now that we put our country first.
  House Republicans have sent over a proposal that would do a couple of 
things. One, it would fund the troops. Let's not let our military come 
to work and not get paid. That would be ridiculous. Let's at least fund 
the troops and pass this 1-week spending proposal that would fund the 
government. It does cut $12 billion out. The only significant rider in 
there is the DC abortion rider that says DC can have funds to provide 
abortions. This is something that was in law and that President Obama 
signed, in a bill that many Democrats on the other side have signed, so 
it should not be that controversial.
  In the meantime, since we have agreed on the spending number, we can 
work out some of these other controversial things in the next week. I 
believe that is the right thing to do to keep the government open, so 
people can continue to get their paychecks, so people can continue to 
visit national parks, and on and on and on. I think we all know the 
problems if the government shuts down.
  I think it is critical that we start doing what is right for the 
country instead of what is right for somebody's reelection. Let's sit 
down and make the serious and tough choices so we can put this country 
on the right path.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________