[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 8970-8972]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I had the opportunity this morning to 
catch the CNBC program that had Jack Welch, former CEO of GE on, and I 
thought he made a number of valuable points. He is very worried about 
our economy. He believes we are facing serious troubles, and we need to 
take action to do something about it. As a corporate leader of great 
renown, one of the more respected corporate leaders in America at this 
time, he evidenced a real frustration at the lack of leadership this 
administration is showing with regard to our financial crisis.
  He said a number of things. One of them was classic leadership, 
classic thought by a manager, a man who has managed a very large 
corporation worldwide with many moving parts. He said we have to have a 
strategy, and we have no strategy. I think that is correct. I do not 
believe the American people sense that this country is able to 
articulate a serious strategy to confront the difficulties with which 
we are now dealing.
  He said everything needs to go through a screen, and in his opinion 
the screen should be what our strategy is and our strategy should be, 
in general, to create an economy that is productive, innovative, and 
growing; creating jobs, creating wealth, creating prosperity, and 
everything ought to be judged by that.
  One of the points he mentioned was drilling for oil and gas in 
America. We have all kinds of government agencies here, all kinds of 
regulations and a permitorium, a blocking of the giving of permits, 
that has substantially reduced the ability of this Nation to produce 
oil and gas at home, a critical factor if we are going to be 
competitive and economically prosperous.
  We need to quit buying so much abroad, sending wealth abroad, and 
keep it at home. He just threw that out as one of the things that would 
never get through a screen. Instead of helping this country to be more 
prosperous and create jobs and growth, it does just the opposite. Yet 
in this massive government, we take contradictory actions, and as a 
result we are muddling along at a very unhealthy rate, and the American 
people are worried about it.
  Last week was the sixth consecutive week that the stock market fell. 
We were told in January, when things were progressing, that everything 
was just doing great and that we are creating a lot of jobs; we are 
creating jobs, and the market is doing better. But in fact it is not 
moving very well. If we read the financial pages, we see that the

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people who spend their lives dealing with the economic threats we face 
are uneasy about our future.
  Just read those articles in Barron's that just came out over the 
weekend about the roundtable of worldwide economic experts. It was very 
troubling to me. Many of them had serious concerns about the future. 
Would we have a doubledip? Some seem to say yes. The Presiding Officer, 
Mr. Coons, is on the Budget Committee and knows the numbers we are 
dealing with and has heard the testimony that Mr. Bowles, former Chief 
of Staff for President Clinton, and Alan Simpson, in their Fiscal 
Commission Report, said we are facing the most predictable crisis in 
our history, and it could cause economic difficulties for us soon. Mr. 
Bowles said 2 years, give or take. Not just for our grandchildren, but 
soon.
  This is why the experts say we have a problem. I do not believe we 
have from the White House any call to the kind of action necessary to 
alter the unsustainable debt trajectory we are on.
  I do not think the American people fully understand, but they 
understood enough to punish the Congress in this last election. I am 
afraid they are going to punish us again because no Congress can defend 
itself from the criticism that we have presided over a government that 
is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar and spending $3.7 billion and 
taking in only $2.2 billion and borrowing the rest. We are on a path 
that does not alter that. The President's budget is the most 
irresponsible ever submitted and would make our debt path worse rather 
than better, so I am worried about it. So the majority leader 
announces: Well, it would be foolish to have a budget. Senator Reid 
said it would be foolish to have a budget, at a time when we have never 
faced a greater threat to the integrity of our economic system than we 
face today.
  Let me repeat that. We have never been in a position in which the 
economy could do as much harm to our Nation as it can today. We are 
heading to the wall at warp speed. It is a dangerous circumstance. But 
we can get off this path. We have to do some things that are not very 
pleasant, but not impossible, that are being done by mayors and county 
commissioners and Governors all over America and in countries around 
the world. The British made some very substantial cuts to their overall 
spending program, far more than we are discussing, and some people 
pushed back and said, We are cutting too much. That debate will happen 
here, if we cut spending here.
  The International Monetary Fund, certainly no bastion of conservative 
economic thought, said, No, U.K., stay the course. Don't weaken now. 
You set a good, tough path for constraining and reducing spending, and 
if you stay the course you will be more successful than if you give up 
and quit under the pressure that you might be under today.
  So how do we get there? How do we get to the point where we deal with 
these issues? Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, drawing from his and 
others' research on large fiscal adjustments across multiple nations, 
said this:

       Spending cuts are far more effective than tax increases in 
     stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns. In 
     fact, in several episodes, spending cuts adopted to reduce 
     deficits have been associated with government expansions 
     rather than recessions.

  Goldman Sachs has also done a study that indicates that. We have 
empirical evidence that countries that have taken firm steps to get 
their financial house in order have found that, maybe almost to their 
surprise, they have had economic growth quicker than many had 
projected.
  So where are we today? Apparently, we are not going to have any kind 
of regular budget process in the Senate, to my great disappointment. I 
believe Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee--I am the 
ranking Republican on that committee--was prepared to have a markup, 
but the Democratic leadership has decided not to. Senators can't call a 
Budget Committee markup; only the chairman and the leaders can do those 
kinds of things. They have decided not to. Under the Congressional 
Budget Act, the Budget Committee should have marked up and passed a 
budget resolution by April 1 of this year, and Congress should have 
passed it by April 15. We are now getting close to July 4 and we have 
had no real public discussion, no national debate, about the challenges 
this Nation faces.
  First we had the Gang of Six. They have been meeting in secret, and I 
don't know who advised them. I don't think average Americans, in their 
struggles--maybe they have lost their job or haven't seen their pay 
increase or have seen their overtime eliminated--were in the room with 
them. They are good people. I was kind of getting anxious for a month 
or so to hear something from them. Maybe it would be a good deal. Maybe 
it would be something to get us moving. I don't know. I had my doubts 
about it, and I expressed that, but I expressed my support to see what 
they could produce. Maybe it would be worthwhile. I am withholding 
judgment. So now we are not hearing from them, although they apparently 
have enough work product--maybe even a plan--that they met with 10 
other Senators, I understand, to discuss what they are planning on. 
They haven't let anybody else in on the deal.
  But now we hear, Don't worry about the Gang of Six. If that doesn't 
work, we have the Vice President. President Obama has asked him to have 
meetings with a very small group of Senate and House leaders, and they 
are going to write us a budget. There are some good people meeting in 
that group, I don't have any doubt about that. But weeks have gone by. 
We had a week recess and apparently it was over 2 weeks that they 
didn't even meet.
  The President is traveling around the world making speeches, raising 
money, and this country has not had a budget in 775 days. This Senate 
has not passed a budget in 775 days. The Budget Act requires us to pass 
a budget. It can't be filibustered. It can be passed with a simple 
majority. If it is going to be a partisan effort--and sometimes it is a 
purely partisan vote--53 Democratic Senators here ought to be able to 
pass a budget. We passed a budget when Republicans had a one-vote 
majority. Sometimes you can get a bipartisan agreement on a budget. 
That is the best thing. Sometimes it is done with a simple majority. So 
we have the potential to do that.
  But, oh, no. Weeks have gone by and we are waiting on these meetings 
at the White House. Nobody knows exactly what is happening there. It is 
supposed to be secret. Normally a budget is brought up, it is brought 
before the Budget Committee, the chairman lays down the chairman's 
mark, everybody gets to offer complete substitutes, gets to offer their 
whole budget or technical amendments or significant amendments to that 
budget, and they get voted on, and the matter is discussed. The 
American people can get a copy of the chairman's mark and the 
amendments offered by the other members of the committee. That is how 
we do business in a democracy, the last I heard, and then we are 
accountable, right? By how much do you think we ought to raise taxes on 
the American people? By how much do you think we are going to cut 
spending? Are you going to dare to make any changes in Medicare? I will 
not vote for it if you make any change in Medicare. Or: You have to do 
something about these entitlements. You didn't do anything about the 
Medicare entitlements? You are going to let them go broke? Those are 
the kinds of good discussions we would be having, and the American 
people could see it. Then it comes to the floor of the Senate. It has 
an expedited process, but there is a real opportunity to have 
amendments--even hundreds of amendments--to offer to the Budget Act, 
and we then have something that at least is seen by the American people 
and at least they will know if their representatives voted for or 
against it. But I think this idea of doing it in some other order, not 
the regular order, is an unhealthy process, and I hope we can do 
better.
  I wish to conclude by saying that in 775 days, I don't believe we 
have fulfilled our responsibility. We obviously have not fulfilled our 
statutory responsibility under the Budget Act, which

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says we should have a budget by April 15. It also says we should have 
held a markup by April 1. Well, it is tough business, standing before 
the American people in this crisis we are in, and proposing the kinds 
of severe actions that are going to be necessary to put our country on 
the right path--not the path to decline, not the path to debt crisis, 
but the path to prosperity. It is going to take some effort. It is 
going to be painful in some ways. But we are not moving in that 
direction at all.
  What about the House of Representatives? They passed a budget. They 
passed a bold budget--a budget that goes 10 years and then even 
further, and it laid out a historic plan. It confronted the growth in 
entitlement programs that is a threat to their very viability. It 
encouraged economic growth. It reduced spending, which has surged in 
the last several years. Indeed, in the last two cycles, we have 
increased nondefense discretionary spending 25 percent. People act as 
though if we cut spending, we are going to sink in the ocean. That 
growth could be eliminated and we would be no worse off than we were 3 
years ago.
  So the House did their duty. And what happened? Our Democratic leader 
over here in the Senate, instead of producing his own budget, calls up 
the House budget and he wants to talk about how horrible it is and then 
vote on it. It got quite a number of votes in the Senate--certainly not 
enough to pass. We got a lot of votes. So I offered the President's 
budget, the one he submitted a couple months ago and that I call the 
most irresponsible budget ever to be presented to this Nation--and I 
stand by that. We are in a systemic crisis that has to be confronted 
with serious decision making, and the President's budget comes nowhere 
close to doing that. So I offered it. The President's budget failed 97 
to 0. Not one Member of this Senate, Republican or Democrat, voted for 
that budget.
  I think this is irresponsible. We have seen 775 days pass. We didn't 
have a budget last year. We didn't pass a single appropriations bill 
last year. Everything was cobbled together in this monumental CR we 
heard about, the continuing resolution. It is a totally ineffective 
method of governing this country and spending money. Congress ought to 
do its 12 appropriations bills properly every year. First, they should 
have a budget that tells all the committees how much money they have to 
spend and then they should pass the 12 appropriations bills. Each one 
should be brought up subject to amendment and voted on.
  We have been in this irresponsible circumstance. My request is to our 
colleagues who are working either in the White House with the Vice 
President or whatever they are doing over there, the Gang of Six or 
Five or whatever--whatever they are doing--how about getting busy. How 
about let's see some numbers so we can get to work. I don't think it is 
going to be well received by Members of the Senate to have plopped down 
in our lap, on the eve of some important matter such as the debt 
ceiling, a budget proposal that nobody has had a chance to study and 
that the American people don't know the details of. I thought that was 
one of the things we learned in the last election. I thought we learned 
the American people want transparency. They want accountability. They 
want to know what their representatives are doing, and they want to see 
them working in the light of day, not the dark of night. I think that 
is reasonable. That is the way our Congress was set up to work. That is 
what I wish to see.
  I think it is time for these meetings to start wrapping up. I think 
it is time for us to start seeing some numbers. What are they going to 
do, wait for the last possible day to raise the debt ceiling and then 
waltz in here with some sort of agreement we are all supposed to 
rubberstamp in a state of panic? I don't appreciate that. I don't think 
the American people will either. It is not good government. If they 
have a plan, let's start seeing what it is. Let's bring it up and let's 
start having a public discussion on it and vote on it. I think that is 
the right way to go about our business.
  I am very concerned that we have gotten away from the regular order. 
I believe we have gotten away from our august responsibility to pass a 
budget, to decide openly and publicly how much we think we can spend, 
how much we are going to tax, how much debt we are going to have. We 
ought to do that publicly and openly. I believe that will be held 
before the public and it will help the American people understand how 
deep a hole we are in. It is far deeper than most of us realize. I have 
looked at the numbers. They are very grim indeed. We need to get 
started sooner rather than later.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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