[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8201-8206]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes this evening 
talking about where we are as a nation.
  I have to say I am discouraged at the work of the Senate. If we look 
around and take in the whole picture here, there is nobody here, 
essentially, and they are not going to be here for 9 or 10 more days. 
The question I put forward is, If your own personal household was in 
trouble, financially or otherwise; if you knew you weren't going to be 
able to pay the bills; if you knew your credit cards were maxed out, 
would you just sit on the couch and do nothing or would you work to 
protect your family? Would you go out and do whatever you could? Would 
you take advantage of every opportunity to secure the future for your 
family?
  Well, we have big problems in our country, and it doesn't matter how 
we got here. The fact is, we are borrowing $4.3 billion a day. The 
interest on our

[[Page 8202]]

debt is $2.8 billion a day. We are at a point where if we don't start 
making the very difficult decisions for our country despite our fear of 
the political consequences, we will be like the person who, when his 
family was in trouble, didn't try to solve the problem.
  Mr. President, we don't have a budget. Yesterday we had political 
votes on budgets, but it was a game. For the last 2-plus years, no 
budget has come through the Senate. There is a reason for that, and the 
American people need to know it is not because of our great budget 
chairman, whose name is Senator Kent Conrad. It is not his fault there 
is not a budget. It is because of the leadership in the Senate. The 
leadership does not want the votes that come along with a budget. You 
see, the political thinking is, we don't want any of our members to 
have to be recorded on things that might affect the next election. So 
to hell with the country. What is more important is the next election.
  What is happening in the Senate is a complete meltdown of the very 
purpose the Senate was created. The fact is, we had votes on four 
separate budgets, and let me tell you, what is most astounding is that 
nobody voted for President Obama's budget. The President of the United 
States submits a budget to the Congress, and nobody in the Senate 
agrees to vote for it. How disconnected could that budget be from the 
realities of what our country's needs are if even the people of his own 
party won't vote for it? I was inclined to vote for it just so we could 
have a debate on his budget. But the fact is, we didn't have a debate 
on any budget.
  So as we sit here, we are borrowing $4.3 billion a day and running a 
$1.6 trillion deficit and mortgaging the very future of our children. 
The very reason we work so hard and the reason we live is to nurture 
and support those who come after us, and to ignore that responsibility 
is absolutely uncalled for. Congress deserves every recognition from 
the American people for being a farce. You can't have the kinds of 
problems we have in front of us and not attempt to address them.
  I want to spend a minute talking to every Medicare patient in the 
country. I have practiced medicine for 25 years. I have cared for 
thousands of Medicare patients. I understand, at 63 years of age, with 
three pretty significant disease processes going on in my own body, 
about worrying about one's health. I worry about the security around 
that health. It is important enough to me to really take the medicines 
and to follow the diet my doctor is offering me now that I am 63. I 
probably wouldn't have paid attention 20 years ago, but today I am 
doing that.
  The health care that is available to me is important to me, as I know 
it is to every Medicare recipient out there. But the facts are the 
following: Politicians want to use Medicare as a tactic to scare people 
into not doing what we as a nation are going to ultimately do anyway. 
We will have to fix Medicare. And we can fix it in a way that assures 
every senior who absolutely needs the help of Medicare and is dependent 
on Medicare will have that health care. Anybody who says something 
other than that either cares a whole lot more about themselves and 
their political career or they are absolutely dishonest, because it is 
absolutely impossible for us to raise the money to continue to run 
Medicare the way it is today. It will change in the next 4 or 5 years 
no matter what the politicians say, no matter what the next election--
it has to change. The good news is we can give as good care or better 
with fewer dollars if we will make the right changes in Medicare.
  What most Medicare patients don't understand is that $1 out of every 
$3 spent on Medicare is not going to help you get better and isn't 
preventing you from getting sicker. Those are facts. They are backed up 
by four studies now, four long-term studies. If $1 out of every $3 is 
going into Medicare and it is not effective in actually helping you 
with health care, and that $1 out of every $3 we are borrowing from the 
Chinese this year to keep Medicare afloat--and that is just the 
hospital system, that is Part A--why would we not want to make the hard 
choices and fix it?
  The reason you are not seeing that come forth is somebody sees an 
advantage in an election to game Medicare. The fact is, it is not just 
Medicare that is broken. The whole entire health care system is broken 
because we do not allow markets to allocate it in an efficient way and 
we do not hold physicians such as myself accountable to be very frugal 
with the tests we order and the treatments we order.
  As we continue to think about ourselves and say I do not want any 
change--and that is the other point I want to make. As I get older, I 
find I resist change more than anything. But the one absolute that is 
going to happen is that Medicare is going to change and it does not 
matter what any politician from Washington tells you, it has to change. 
Otherwise we will be in an absolute depression. We will not be able to 
accomplish any of the things we are accomplishing now under Medicare. 
It will change.
  If it is going to change, why don't we change it in a way that 
continues to guarantee the promise of Medicare and puts more of a 
burden on those who have more dollars with which to do that and takes 
care of the sickest and poorest the best and puts a greater load on 
those who have less of a need for Medicare?
  Some would say that is not fair. Let me tell you what is not fair. 
What is not fair is the average American puts $138,000 into Medicare 
over their working career and takes $450,000 out. That is what is not 
fair. What is not fair is for a 5-year-old to complain about something 
not being fair. To quote P.J. O'Rourke: ``You were born in America. 
That's not fair.'' Life is not fair.
  The fact is, we have a system that is getting ready to crash and we 
have a political dynamic that people are actually saying we do not care 
because we want to win the next election more than we want to fix the 
problem. That does not apply to everybody, but people who are gaming 
this issue, people who are scaring people who are on Medicare, lack the 
integrity and courage to talk about what the real problems are in this 
country.
  The real problems are we have made promises without creating the 
revenues to pay for it. We can tax 100 percent of all the income of 
everybody above $100,000 in income in this country and you will not fix 
the deficit this year--if you took 100 percent of everything everybody 
earned over $100,000--that is how great the problem is. We have a $14.3 
trillion debt that, if in fact the debt limit is extended, will be past 
$15 trillion by December. When is it going to stop? When are we going 
to start thinking about the future of our country and the security of 
our country instead of the next election and how we can look good as 
the media plays the game on politics?
  It is amazing; today most of the stories in the newspaper were about 
Medicare and the effect of an election up in New York, a congressional 
election. I don't think that matters a twit on what is going on in this 
country. What was not said in the papers is that nobody voted for the 
President's budget. That was not the headline anywhere. It was not the 
headline that the Congress does not have a budget. The House has passed 
a budget. You don't have to agree with it but at least they passed one. 
But you have all this criticism of a proposed plan that came through 
the House that actually will solve the problem, make sure everybody on 
Medicare actually gets the care they want and actually will take $1 of 
those $3 that we are wasting, one out of every three, and put it into 
actually taking care of patients. But the people who are critical of 
that plan have no plan themselves. And, if you have a plan, the plan is 
the following--it is the plan that passed, what we know as ObamaCare, 
but what is the health care bill that was passed in the last Congress. 
Here is the plan, just so we understand.
  According to the President's speech at Washington University, the 
plan is that if we have to, we have two mechanisms. He mentioned one of 
them. He didn't mention the other. We have the Independent Payment 
Advisory Board. Under the Affordable Care Act, the Independent Payment 
Advisory Board

[[Page 8203]]

is mandated to control the growth of Medicare. Here is how it does it. 
It makes a recommendation on the cutting of payments for Medicare. That 
recommendation comes before Congress and we either have to accept that 
or do something similar to that, in terms of the total dollar amounts, 
to cut back on the payments for Medicare.
  What is the No. 1 problem a new Medicare recipient has today? The No. 
1 problem new Medicare recipients have today is finding a doctor who 
will care for them, who will take their Medicare. That is their No. 1 
problem. If you think we can take this tremendous unfunded liability 
and continue to cut--I am not against, as a physician, physicians 
taking a 5-percent or 6-percent pay cut under Medicare today. I am not 
against that. But if you think we can continue to do the savings we are 
going to have to get out of Medicare by doing that, you will not have 
anybody taking care of Medicare patients because they will not be able 
to afford to. Those payments to the physicians are less than 30 percent 
of the total payments of Medicare.
  Then they transfer over to the hospitals, so we are going to cut what 
we pay to the hospitals. Some hospitals can afford that, some cannot. 
What happens when the hospitals that cannot afford that close? Where do 
you get your hospital care? Prescription drugs--we are going to cut the 
price of prescription drugs. Consequently, no new drugs are coming on 
line because of the rate of return for the billion dollar cost that it 
is for any new drug just to get it through the FDA. All of a sudden the 
things you count on are not there.
  Let me mention the second way the President would have us control. 
That is they have what is called an Innovation Council, under the 
Affordable Care Act. What is that purpose? The purpose of the 
Innovation Council is to decide whether Medicare can afford new 
innovation in medicine to be offered to Medicare patients. That is the 
same thing as saying: Here is a new drug, it will cure your breast 
cancer, but we don't think we can afford it so therefore it is not 
available under Medicare. One is direct rationing; the other is 
indirect rationing. But the fact is we cannot fix Medicare by 
rationing. You will not fix it that way. What you will do is limit care 
and limit access--similar to what we have under Medicaid.
  If you look at the trustees' report on Medicare, what they are saying 
will have to happen is that the reimbursement rates under Medicare will 
end up being lower than the reimbursement rates under Medicaid. That is 
the answer they have right now.
  That is not a good answer. No American thinks that is a good answer. 
My colleagues on both sides of the aisle do not think that is a good 
answer. But that is where we are sitting.
  I make the point if we do not address Medicare and if we do not 
address Medicaid and if we do not fix Social Security--and it is true, 
if Congress had not stolen the $2.6 trillion from it and it was sitting 
in an account, we would be in pretty good shape. We would make it 
another 30 years. But there is a problem in terms of paying back that 
money. Congress stole the money, spent it, and it is not there. So for 
us to get the $2.6 trillion to keep it going until 2036 we have to 
borrow more money. We have to borrow that $2.6 trillion. The problem is 
we are at a debt limit now and we are getting very close to the time 
when people are going to quit loaning us money.
  We can fix Social Security where it is for sure as available as it is 
today--actually we can make it better for the poorest Americans. We can 
actually make it better and we can assure that it is going to be 
working forever. But that requires change. The political dynamic says 
don't, you can't touch Social Security.
  How fair is that? How fair is not fixing Medicare, not fixing 
Medicaid, and not fixing Social Security to those who follow us? I am 
the grandfather of five great-grandkids, wonderful kids; I love them to 
death. I raised three daughters--actually my wife did most of that hard 
work and that is why they turned out well. But the fact is, the 
relationship with your children is a special relationship, but it does 
not get close to comparing to the relationship to your grandkids. There 
is not anything I wouldn't do for my grandkids and they kind of know 
it. They have not taken advantage of it yet, but they know it.
  What I would ask is, anybody who is on Medicare today who is 
listening to this, here is what you need to know. No. 1 is there is 
nobody in Washington who does not want you to have a secure medical 
health care system. But the problems with it are so severe that it has 
to be fixed and it cannot wait. And that requires change. The problems 
of our country as a whole are so severe that we are not going to be 
able to borrow the money to pay back what we owe Social Security if we 
do not fix Medicare and Medicaid because nobody is going to loan it. 
They are going to say you haven't done what you need to do.
  What has to happen is we have to think about our grandkids. I don't 
like going through change very much but I will tell you there is one 
group of kids that I will go through change for, I will sacrifice for, 
I will give something up for me. What we are asking you to give up is 
the comfort of what you know now, and move to the comfort of something 
that is going to supply the same thing to you, just in a different way. 
Anybody who games that will not put forward a solution to the very 
problems that are in front of us.
  To the seniors out there who are on Medicare, nobody is proposing any 
impact on you today for the next 10 years. Any proposal would be for 
those people who are 55 and less and we are saying we have to change it 
so we can keep it. If we do not change it, nobody is going to have it. 
By the way, we are going to have trouble surviving if we don't change 
it because we are not going to be able to manage this tremendous amount 
of debt which is over $55,000 per man, woman, and child in this country 
today.
  We have to think about our grandkids. We have to quit listening to 
the political shill who says somebody wants to hurt you. Everybody who 
has put forward ideas on Medicare has a legitimate basis with which to 
be critical of any other. But any politician in the Senate or the House 
who has not put forth their solution to get us out of the problems you 
should give no quarter to. You should not listen to the first word they 
say because what they are thinking about is the next election. They are 
thinking how do I take advantage, how do I scare you over the next 
election? Nobody wants to take away health care for our seniors. What 
we want to do is ensure it is there in the future, and to put forward 
the idea that the motivation there is to scare you into thinking that 
somebody wants to disrupt your care, that is just not true.
  There could be a great debate, and I started this talk on the fact 
that there has not been any debate on the problems that are in front of 
us. There needs to be a great debate. People need to hear what the 
options are. We need to put a budget on the floor and have the hard 
debates on it, and take the hard votes, and then try to mix something 
with the House; otherwise, here is what is going to happen come 
September--which is not fair to any Federal employee. We are going to 
have another continuing resolution. That is what is coming because we 
refuse to have a budget that allows the people who work for you, 
through the Federal Government, to plan and efficiently carry out what 
the Congress directs. We are just going to do a continuing resolution. 
It is a highly inefficient way to run the Government. As a matter of 
fact, I will tell you that any family who does not run on a budget is 
set up for getting in trouble.
  We are not running on a budget now. The bills are coming in and we 
have a continuing resolution until September 30. But we do not have a 
budget, we have no plan, we don't know what we need to do, what are the 
changes we need to make. We are not listening to the people running the 
program. We are not listening to the American people as we do that.
  We can fix health care in this country. The problem is the cost of 
health care. The reason it costs so much is that the vast majority of 
Americans think somebody else is paying the bill.

[[Page 8204]]

  I will end with this story. I see my colleague from Alabama is here. 
I have delivered thousands of babies, but there is a particular group I 
always enjoyed delivering for because they are unique. They were the 
best purchasers of health care I have ever encountered. They are from a 
little town called Inola and another called Chouteau, OK, and they are 
Amish. When they come to buy health care--they don't have health 
insurance, by the way. Very few of them have a college education. They 
work with their hands. They are into dairy or carpentry or farming or 
something, but they work with their hands. They have lots of good 
common sense.
  I can tell my colleagues without a doubt that of the 500 Amish babies 
I delivered, they bought that service from the hospital, from me, from 
the radiologist, and from the labs at 40 percent less than anybody else 
bought it. Why is that? It is because they were great consumers of 
health care and the money was coming out of their pockets. They didn't 
think somebody else was paying for it. They knew they were paying for 
it, so therefore they asked for a discount. They said: I will pay you 
cash up front if you give me a discount. By the way, if you want to do 
this other test, please explain in detail why I should fork out $100 
for another ultrasound. And does my wife absolutely have to have this 
ultrasound?
  When you get questioned that way the doctor says: Well, if you 
understand that we may miss something but basically everything looks 
good, then I am fine with that as long as you are fine with that.
  The average pregnancy today in the United States has four or five 
ultrasounds. I was trained without doing any ultrasounds, and I had the 
same outcomes.
  So the point is that we can get better value if we reconnect the 
purchase of health care with some individual responsibility. If we 
disconnect that--and that is what we do through private insurance and 
low deductibles, and that is what we do through Medicare and low 
deductibles and supplemental policies. We do the opposite of that. Once 
we have met our deductible, there is no cost. So we are not prudent 
consumers. As we age, we worry a lot about new symptoms, so we access 
the health care system. Once you access, the costs just start ticking 
up.
  So the point I make is there are a lot of things we can do better in 
health care if, in fact, we have market forces and transparency helping 
us do that. I would suggest we can have a Medicare Program that is 
efficient, that works, and that doesn't have $70 billion worth of fraud 
in it by the end of the year, by the way--$70 billion, well over 10 
percent--and improper payments above 10 percent as well. So $70 billion 
in fraud and $70 billion in improper payments in Medicare. We could 
solve the problem right there if Congress would do it. But we don't 
because we would rather have a political game and game people's fears 
on health care and Medicare than fix the problem.
  What I hope seniors will do over this next year, as they hear the 
politicians make all these wild claims about people's motivations and 
the damage to Medicare, is when you hear that, think about that in 
light of your grandchildren. Think about yourself and what you want 
versus what you want your grandchildren to have because there is no 
question that the $14.2 trillion and under the President's budget the 
$23 trillion we are going to have at least in 9 more years is going to 
be paid back by them, not you. What that really means is they are going 
to have a far lower standard of living than you do so you don't have to 
get out of your comfort zone.
  I trust America a whole lot more than I trust the U.S. Congress. We 
have a $1 trillion deficit of common sense in Washington, and we have 
an excess of common sense outside of Washington. If you will trust your 
common sense and look at what we are doing, what you will find is we 
can solve our problems, we can come together as a nation, we can fix 
what ails us, and we can do that without destroying the future of our 
children and grandchildren.
  I yield the floor to my colleague from Alabama.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with 
Senator Coburn, if he has a moment to stay, for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Coburn served on the debt 
commission. Senator Coburn had no burden to run for reelection. I am so 
glad he did. He is one of the most valuable Members of this Senate.
  I have an understanding that the Senator from Oklahoma came here to 
try to do something about the debt this country faces. Is that fair to 
say?
  Mr. COBURN. That is correct.
  Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator believes this Congress has a responsibility 
to confront what Admiral Mullen calls the greatest threat to our 
national security, which is our debt.
  The Senator also has tremendous experience as a practicing physician. 
The Senator practiced up until the very day he was elected. How many 
years ago was that?
  Mr. COBURN. Seven years.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Seven years ago. He continued to practice even while in 
the Senate until the bureaucrats made it impossible, I guess, to do so. 
So the Senator from Oklahoma comes here with practical experience, a 
brilliant mind, and a committed vision for America.
  I appreciate the Senator sharing his frustration about what has 
occurred this week.
  This is a quote that was in the Wall Street Journal by Democratic 
Senate strategists about this scheme and plan that was offered in four 
votes yesterday--votes the majority had conceived in such a way that 
they were guaranteed to fail and nothing was going to happen. It was a 
guaranteed plan to ensure nothing would happen. This is what the 
journal said about it:

       As a political matter, Democratic strategists say there may 
     be little benefit in producing a budget that would inevitably 
     include unpopular items.

  The Senator is famous for telling the truth. If he would, I would 
like him to respond to that. What does that say about our Senate, that 
the Democrats say there would be little political benefit in producing 
a budget that might include unpopular items? Doesn't a tough budget 
that gets us on the right path have to have some things in it that some 
people might not like?
  Mr. COBURN. Well, to my colleague, through the Chair, I would answer, 
What is our obligation? Is our obligation to win the next election or 
is our obligation to solve the problems in front of our country? It is 
not even a matter of having votes. We can't even get bills on the floor 
for the Members that actually would save some money right now.
  Let me give an example. We had the small business bill up--the only 
thing we have done of significance since we have been back in this 
session. It took 2 weeks to get a bipartisan amendment that would save 
$5 billion out of the duplication that was reported by the Government 
Accountability Office--hundreds of billions of dollars. It took 2 weeks 
to finally get a vote on that. My colleague from Virginia and I 
cosponsored that. It won. That is one of the reasons we didn't finish 
the bill, is because they don't want to do that. They don't want to 
make the hard choices. So it is an abrogation of our responsibility to 
not do the hard part that comes with the job.
  The job comes with a whole lot of rasping on your skin. You are going 
to get criticized. But the ultimate fatal criticism is to make a choice 
not to get--put yourself in a position to be criticized. So what we are 
saying is we are going to do nothing. We are not going to do what we 
are constitutionally supposed to do by April 15 every year; that is, 
have a budget. We are not going to debate the issues. We are not going 
to cast our votes because somebody may affect somebody's election 
outcome. How big of cowards are we that we can't defend the vote we 
make? I don't have any problem. You throw the hardest vote from the 
other side at me, and I will make a decision on it, whether I think it 
is right or wrong, and then I will defend it. But to

[[Page 8205]]

not vote at all is an absolute abrogation of our oath, and that is the 
leadership we are experiencing. It is not just Democratic leadership. 
We have some on our side who don't want to cast hard votes either.
  The point is, the American people need us to be casting hard votes 
now. Our problems are greater than at any time since World War II. The 
challenge to our country is greater than World War II. The outcome of 
our Republic depends on us solving the very real and urgent and 
difficult problems in front of us and doing so in a way that preserves 
the future of this country and reestablishes and reforms us to where we 
get our mojo back so we can start believing in ourselves again. To not 
do it and to not have the courage to sacrifice your own position for 
the betterment of this country--that is what we ought to be about, and 
I don't see that.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Let me ask the Senator. The Senator just won an 
overwhelming reelection. There is not a Senator here, I don't think 
anybody would dispute, who has been more frank in expressing the need 
that all of us are going to have to rein in our spending and who shared 
that directly with his constituents. When they have asked for things, 
the Senator from Oklahoma has tried to help them, I know, but he is 
frank with his constituents.
  Would the Senator share with us what kind of percentage he got in the 
last election?
  Mr. COBURN. I got 71.8 percent.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Seventy-one percent. Does my colleague think perhaps 
that some of us here in Washington are overly afraid of being frank and 
truthful with our constituents about the challenges America faces?
  Mr. COBURN. Well, I would answer through the Chair that I think we 
are perplexed. We know intellectually that there is a big problem, and 
we have this challenge: Do I go down this path and do the best thing 
for the country or do I go down this path to do the best thing for me?
  I look at politics differently than most of our colleagues. To the 
Senator from Alabama, I would say I don't really care whether I am 
here; I care whether America is here. But the point ought to be, how do 
we secure the vote and how do we establish trust with the American 
people?
  If my colleague will go with me--and I know he knows this--look at 
the confidence in the Congress of the people in this country. Why is 
there a lack of confidence? Why is it that 80 percent of the people of 
the United States didn't have any confidence in Congress? I can tell my 
colleague why. It is because we have milked trust and credibility from 
those very people.
  I get letters all the time from people who disagree with me. They 
will write me, and I actually--I am involved in every answer to every 
inquiry that comes into my office. I actually read them because I want 
to know what the people from Oklahoma say. But even though they 
disagree with me, they vote for me because they trust me because I am 
not gaming them as they have seen with the gaming on Medicare.
  Our problems are real. The solutions are difficult. But America can 
overcome that if we come together. If we stay divided as we have seen 
here with no budget votes, no hard votes, and we try to game it 
politically, what we are doing is undermining our country's future. It 
doesn't matter who wins the next election; what we need to do is save 
America.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the Senator has served on the debt 
commission. I know there has been a concerted effort to blame and 
exaggerate and distort the House budget, particularly as it refers to 
Medicare.
  Again, quoting Democratic Senate strategists, this is what the Wall 
Street Journal said:

       Many Democrats believe a recent House GOP proposal to 
     overhaul Medicare is proving to be unpopular and has given 
     Democrats a political advantage. They are loath to give that 
     up by proposing higher taxes.

  Which they would prefer as a solution.

       Senate Democrats plan to hold a vote on the Ryan plan . . .

  Which they did yesterday--

     . . . hoping to force GOP Senators to cast a vote on the 
     Medicare overhaul that could prove politically difficult.

  I say to Senator Coburn, you served on the debt commission. This is 
what your commission chairman said in a written statement after Paul 
Ryan and the House Republicans produced their budget:

       The budget released this morning by the House Budget 
     Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is a serious, honest, 
     straightforward approach to addressing our nation's enormous 
     fiscal challenges. We applaud him for his work in putting 
     forward a proposal which will reduce the country's deficit by 
     approximately the same amount as the plan of the President's 
     Fiscal Commission.

  They also went on to say that if you criticize it, you have a 
responsibility to offer an alternative.
  I say to the Senator, you served with Mr. Bowles. He was a Democratic 
Chief of Staff to President Clinton and was appointed by President 
Obama to chair this commission. That does not sound like the things we 
heard yesterday, attacking the House Ryan budget, does it?
  Mr. COBURN. It does not. But it is interesting to note that the 
President's deficit commission was set up by the President and had six 
of his nominees on it. It had six Republicans and six Democrats. Five 
of the six Presidential nominees he nominated agreed with the deficit 
commission, three of the six Republicans agreed, and three of the 
Democrats--a pretty good meeting in the middle. Yet the President did 
not embrace the results of his own commission, did not embrace the 
results of the people he appointed. So what was the purpose of that 
exercise? Was it to make political hay or was it to solve the problems?
  The fact is, I have five colleagues in the Senate who have been 
working hard on that over the past 5 months to try to build a 
bipartisan agreement out of the basis of that. That is what has to 
happen--except politics.
  I go back and just refer to my colleague, if you look at the history 
of republics, the track record is not very good. The average age of the 
world's republics is 207 years. That is our average age. We are 27 
years past the average. The question is, Can we cheat history? Can we 
not fall like the rest of the republics over the very same things? They 
all fell over fiscal issues. They let their spending get out of 
control, they let their debt get out of control, and then they could 
not afford the promises they made.
  I will say to my colleague, this is not an issue of the budget 
chairman. This is an issue of the leadership of the Senate that does 
not want a budget. We ought to be very clear that the American people 
know that Congress is not doing its job--this body, for sure--because 
we are not making the hard choices we were sent up here to make. What 
we are doing is punting. We are going to come to a crisis, and the 
crisis is going to be painful, and it is going to be much more painful 
than had we made the hard choices today.
  So I want to thank the ranking member of the Budget Committee for his 
leadership. We can solve any problem in front of us, Mr. Ranking 
Member, but we have to do it together, and we cannot deny that the 
problems exist.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Coburn for his leadership. I have 
watched him with admiration over the years with consistency and 
fidelity for the national interest to work to bring our spending under 
control.
  I see our colleague, Senator Alexander, in the Chamber, and I will 
yield the floor. I will just follow up, before I do that, with a quote 
from Erskine Bowles.
  When the President announced his budget not long after the deficit 
commission he called together had made some pretty good proposals about 
how to improve fiscal matters in the United States, Mr. Bowles was, 
obviously, deeply disappointed with what the President submitted and 
said this plan goes ``nowhere near where they will have to go to 
resolve our [country's] fiscal nightmare.''
  I think there is a consensus that we are facing a fiscal nightmare. 
We are going to have to take some serious steps in that regard.

[[Page 8206]]

  Mr. President, I think there are some other Members who have reserved 
time. If there are no other Members here who have reserved time after 
Senator Alexander completes his remarks, I ask unanimous consent that I 
be recognized at that time.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I will not object. I say to Senator 
Sessions, I think Senator Hatch is expected to come down. That is the 
only one I know of.
  Mr. SESSIONS. As I said, my consent would be that if anyone has 
reserved time, they would get it before I will speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate Senator Sessions and 
Senator Coburn for their principled remarks about the phenomenon of 
Washington spending. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we 
spend. We cannot keep spending money we do not have. And we want to 
save Medicare. So those two major difficult decisions are things that 
we need to work on together--to stop spending money we do not have and 
saving Medicare. We can do both if we put our minds to it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if you would let me know when 1 minute 
remains, I would appreciate it.

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