[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 10085-10087]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE NATIONAL DEBT

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand to talk about a looming crisis in 
this county, a problem that has the potential to affect every American 
from every State, from every political party, of every political 
ideology. That issue relates to our national debt.
  We have accumulated nearly $15 trillion in debt through the Federal 
Government, which is a lot of money split up amongst 300 million 
Americans. It works out to close to $50,000 a head. A lot of people 
don't make that much money in a year, and yet that is what every man, 
woman, and child owes on a per capita basis the moment they are born. 
If it is calculated out on the basis of debt per taxpayer, the number 
is much larger, anywhere between $120,000 and $150,000 per head, 
depending on how you calculate it.
  We are now approaching the August 2 deadline given to us by Secretary 
Geithner that has been identified as the time by which we must increase 
our national debt yet again, a debt that has been raised time and time 
again, resulting in our accumulation of about $10 trillion of new debt 
in roughly the last decade. This is a problem, and it is a problem that 
is only going to become more severe the longer we kick this can down 
the road without doing anything to change the way Washington brings 
money in and the way Washington spends money.
  I want to talk for a minute first about how Washington brings money 
in. There are those who have suggested in this town very recently that 
what we need right now is a tax increase in order to address the debt 
crisis. I could

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not disagree more, and I need to state with the greatest emphasis I am 
able to place on this issue that a tax increase is something I would 
oppose, something I would devote every ounce of energy in me to 
opposing. The reason is we have in Washington something that is not a 
revenue problem. What we have is a spending problem. Spending is the 
crisis that we need to address.
  But on a more fundamental level we have to remember what we do when 
we raise taxes. When we raise taxes, we chill investment. It is 
investment that we rely on for the creation of jobs. We have to 
remember that government doesn't have the power to create jobs, because 
it can't create wealth. It can create policies. It can adopt laws and 
regulations designed to promote or deter certain kinds of behavior. It 
can raise revenue through taxation. But it can't create wealth. All it 
can do is set in place certain circumstances that might allow wealth to 
be created or, in other circumstances, might deter new wealth from 
being created.
  To have true wealth creation leading to true job creation, you have 
to have a circumstance in which willing investors with capital are 
ready to invest, have the reasonable assurance and promise that if they 
invest their money and thereby place it at risk, any gains resulting 
from that risky behavior will be gains that inure to their benefit, not 
taken away by some third party and not taken away by the government. So 
when we raise taxes, in effect what we are doing is deterring 
investment, deterring investment at a time when we are hemorrhaging 
jobs, and we can ill afford to lose any more. Not one job should be 
lost as a result of something the government does. We need to find ways 
to get the government out of the way so job creation can occur. But it 
can't occur whenever we punish the investor, whenever we tell the 
investor: Invest at your own risk, because if you dare to make a 
profit, we are going to take away more of that money than we have 
previously been taking away in taxes.
  For that reason, I continue to emphasize the fact that I will oppose 
any attempt to address this debt limit crisis by raising taxes, and I 
will continue to oppose any effort to raise taxes. Spending is the 
problem.
  As to the question of how Washington spends money, if the definition 
of insanity is the practice of doing something again and again 
expecting to achieve different results than we have achieved every time 
in the past, then we would be insane if we approach this debt limit 
discussion with the same kinds of tired, malfunctioning, unproductive 
strategies that have been employed in the past, strategies that focus 
exclusively on immediate cuts or even long-term cuts. Let me explain 
what I mean.
  As we approach the debt limit discussion, there will be those who 
will want to focus a lot of the attention on long-term spending cuts. 
In other words, they might say, If we are going to raise the debt limit 
by $1 trillion, then we need to find $1 trillion in cuts that can be 
made. If we are going to raise it by $2 trillion, then we need to find 
$2 trillion to cut.
  But of course we can't cut $1 trillion out of our budget immediately. 
That is not possible. We can't do that in 1 year. That would have to be 
stretched over a period of many years. Most likely, in this scenario, 
as it has been discussed, it would be stretched over a period of a 
decade or more.
  We do have the power to control what we do in this Congress, but we 
can't bind the Congress that will take power in January of 2013, 
January of 2015, or 2017. Every 2 years, we get a new Congress in place 
and that Congress has the power to make those decisions that will best 
fit what they decide is in order at that time. We can't bind them 
permanently. So any promise that we make right now to cut, let's say, 
$2 trillion relies on the promise that that will be honored by future 
Congresses. We can't bind them to do that.
  There is one way, however, we can bind them. That is by amending for 
the 28th time that 224-year-old document that has fostered the 
development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. When 
we amend the U.S. Constitution, that is the one credible way, the one 
binding way in which one group of Americans can bind a future group of 
Americans. That is why I have said that the only circumstance in which 
I think it is appropriate for us to raise the debt limit is a 
circumstance in which Congress has first passed a balanced budget 
amendment out of Congress by the requisite two-thirds margin in this 
body and in the House of Representatives, and submitted it to the 
States for ratification. In that scenario, and only in that scenario, 
can we proceed with any degree of confidence that the commitments we 
make now to the American people, to make not just immediate cuts but 
long-term changes to the way we spend money, it is only in that 
scenario that those promises can be and will be honored, because it is 
only in that scenario that we can bind a future Congress.
  That is why I have pledged to vote against, and to oppose in any way 
I can, any debt limit increase that involves something short of prior 
passage of a balanced budget amendment, in addition to any caps, in 
addition to any immediate cuts that may be raised.
  We have got to have cuts. We have got to have some kind of spending 
cap, where we cap spending as a percentage of gross domestic product 
every year, and we have got to have a constitutional amendment 
requiring that and requiring the revenues and outlays match each other 
from year to year. If we don't have this, then we are at great risk for 
the practice of perpetual deficit spending in which Congress year in 
and year out spends more than it takes in. Congress can sustain this 
for a period of time. But where, as is now the case, the amount of 
money Congress spends is in excess of $1.5 trillion a year more than it 
brings in, we have reached a certain point of unsustainability at 
which, if we continue with this practice, a halt in borrowing will be 
much more immediate, much more Draconian than anything that could be 
within our control. At some point, those who would be willing to loan 
us that money, who would be willing to buy U.S. Treasury instruments of 
one form or another to finance our debt, will eventually start 
demanding a higher and higher yield. That means that instead of 
spending about $250 billion a year on interest on our national debt, as 
we are currently paying, the time could very soon come in which we 
might have to pay something closer to $700 billion just to pay the 
interest on our national debt. In fact, if we were now required to pay 
interest rates on our Treasury instruments consistent with the 40-year 
average, we would be about there.
  Mr. President, $700 billion is a lot of money. Seven hundred billion 
dollars in a year is roughly what we spend on Social Security. It is 
roughly what we spend on Medicare and Medicaid combined in a year. It 
is roughly what we spend in national defense in an entire year. If we 
have to spend that amount of money every year, as we could easily have 
to spend within just few years' time if we continue spending at this 
rate, that is going to crowd out funding for every Federal program out 
there.
  Whether you are most concerned, as many conservatives might be, about 
protecting national defense or whether you are most concerned, as many 
liberals are, about protecting our entitlement programs, you ought to 
insist, as I have been insisting, that we will not raise the debt limit 
until such time as the Congress has passed a balanced budget amendment 
to the U.S. Constitution. That is why I am pleased to support the 
``cut, cap, and balance'' pledge and why I will continue to take this 
position in addition to standing firm on my position that we ought not 
even consider any tax increase at a time when we can least afford it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask that I be allowed to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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