[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9065-9069]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his courtesy in 
allowing us to proceed and discuss issues at this point in time and 
wanted to recall for my colleagues that we are now at 776 days since 
the Senate has agreed to a budget. We have not passed a budget in 776 
days. This is not responsible at a time in which we are having the 
largest deficits this country has ever seen.
  This year it is projected our deficit, as of September 30, when the 
fiscal year ends, will have been $1.5 trillion. I think this is a big 
issue.
  Last year the Budget Committee moved a budget out to the floor of the 
Senate, and Senator Reid chose not to bring it up, the majority leader. 
This year he declared that it would be foolish to bring up a budget to 
the floor even though he has a majority in the Senate. We can pass a 
budget with a simple majority. It is a priority item. He has apparently 
asked, and the Budget Committee has not even had a markup.
  The Budget Act requires a markup to begin by April 1 and a budget to 
be passed by April 15 so we can go about the business of funding next 
year's government. We need a budget. States have budgets, cities have 
budgets, counties have budgets. No city, county, or state that I am 
aware of is anything close to borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we 
spend as this Congress is doing. We are spending $3.7 trillion. We are 
taking in $2.2 trillion. That is a stunning number.
  One reason we are so out of control is we do not have a budget. I 
have been harping away at that, and I have been talking about its 
impact on jobs. The Rogoff and Reinhart study makes it clear from 
nations around the world they have studied that when the debt reaches 
90 percent of the economy, the entire economy of the country equal to 
that much debt, median growth drops 1 percent. Really the average is 
above that, I believe, but at any rate, 1 percent.
  We had 1.8 percent growth the first quarter. Could we have had 2.8 
percent? We are talking about more than 30 percent reduction in our 
growth and 1 percent in growth in our economy equals

[[Page 9066]]

the creation of 1 million jobs. So that is the kind of thing I have 
been talking about and going into some detail about and have been 
unhappy and disappointed that my majority leader would have the gall to 
attack the House Members.
  I have a chart. We do not want to forget this number. It is a pretty 
big number. It is 776. That is how long it has been since we had a 
budget. So I complained about that. My friend, Senator Reid, has the 
toughest job in Washington, being the majority leader in the Senate. I 
do not know how he does it, but he has to lead.
  As my wife says to me: Don't blame me. You asked for the job. Well, 
he asked for the job to be the leader, and he announced it was foolish 
for us to have a budget just a few weeks ago. When will we ever have 
one presumably?
  Just today, earlier this morning, I guess he got a little tired of my 
harping, and he said: I heard our friend, the ranking member on the 
Budget Committee--that is me--come here and talk for hours, and he 
keeps talking about things that really have no bearing on what I think 
is important to the country today, and that is we know that the 
Republicans have put forward a budget that destroys Medicare.
  Republicans did not destroy Medicare. Give me a break--and that is 
not the only problem we have facing the country. Medicare is going 
broke and we need to do something to save it, that is true. There are 
big issues. One of them is the surging debt that Erskine Bowles, 
appointed by President Obama to head the fiscal commission, testified 
about before the Budget Committee just a few weeks ago. He said we are 
facing the most predictable economic crisis in our Nation's history. 
This has the potential to put us into another doubledip recession. The 
economy is not doing well.
  The things I have been talking about do have bearing on the future of 
our country, and I am disappointed my good friend, the Democratic 
leader, does not agree.
  Housing prices continue to drop. They are expected to go down another 
5 percent or 6 percent this year. We thought we had hit the bottom on 
housing. Gasoline is still close to $4 a gallon. Unemployment just went 
up. We had a meager increase in 54,000 jobs last month. We need to have 
about 200,000 to actually reduce unemployment. As a result, 
unemployment went up. It is the lowest and worst job numbers we have 
had in some time.
  The debt, the economy, gasoline prices, jobs--those are matters that 
have no bearing on what is important to our country? I think they have 
a bearing on what is important. What does the majority leader believe? 
What does he think we should be doing?
  This bill we have been fiddling with for weeks has no monumental or 
significant ability to alter the debt trajectory which is taking us on 
the most predictable course to fiscal disaster, that is what we need to 
be addressing. It is the most important issue facing our country. Of 
that I have no doubt. I do not think anybody has any doubt.
  Listen to the news programs. Listen to the business channels. Read 
your newspaper. The debt we are facing is critical to our country.
  The instability of our entitlement programs, such as Medicare, is an 
issue we have to talk about. We cannot deny that. We have opposition 
here to doing things that make sense, such as producing more oil and 
gas. We have a permitorium, a blocking of permits on drilling for oil 
and gas off our shore presumably so we can buy more oil and gas 
produced offshore in Brazil or Nigeria or Venezuela but not off our 
shores, transferring our wealth abroad that could be creating jobs and 
tax revenue for the United States Government.
  What about this Medicare problem? Let me talk about it because it is 
a part of the problem. It is one of the difficulties we have to deal 
with, although certainly not the only one. The biggest problem we have 
now is discretionary spending that is out of control, not Medicare 
right now, not Social Security right now. In the last 2 years, under 
President Obama, nondefense--not defense--nondefense discretionary 
spending--not Social Security, not Medicare--went up 24 percent at a 
time when the deficits have been $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and this 
year $1.5 trillion, perhaps. We have never had deficits that large. The 
problem is, it is systemic. We have never had this kind of challenge.
  I know there was a big fight in the mid-1990s, and the government was 
shut down, and Newt Gingrich and his team fought and said they wanted 
to balance the budget, and they balanced the budget. The country didn't 
sink into the ocean as that little shutdown occurred, but they balanced 
the budget. Now we are in a much deeper hole, I am telling my 
colleagues. I have looked at the numbers. I am the ranking member of 
the Budget Committee. It is not easy for us to get out of this fix, not 
easy at all. It is going to take some real effort and leadership.
  The President submitted a budget that came before the Congress and 
was voted down 97 to nothing in the Senate. Not a single Member voted 
for his budget, which would have doubled the debt over the next 10 
years. He made it worse than the baseline we were already on, which was 
utterly unsustainable.
  So is Medicare something that absolutely cannot be discussed even 
though it is going into default? Let me tell my colleagues what some of 
our Democratic leaders have said about Medicare.
  Steny Hoyer, the House whip, one of the top Democratic leaders in the 
House, said this:

       Do I believe that there are other things we can do related 
     to Medicare? The answer is I do. I am not going to get into 
     articulating each one, but my expectation is they will be 
     under discussion by the Biden group.

  They have a little secret group down there meeting with the White 
House--some Republicans and Democrats--and we are supposed to all relax 
now because they are going to solve our problems and put it on a silver 
platter for us, and we are just going to vote for it, and it will be 
good for the country. Well, I am a little dubious about it, but I am 
anxious to hear about what they are going to produce. The longer they 
wait, the more critical our situation is.
  What about the House minority leader, the former Speaker, Nancy 
Pelosi? She was on Larry Kudlow, CNBC business channel. Mr. Kudlow is a 
very articulate moderator, and he asked this question of former Speaker 
Pelosi: Is Medicare on the table or entitlements on the table?
  Answer: Yes. I think Medicare is on the table.
  What about President Obama and his health care summit on February 25 
of last year?

       Almost all of the long-term deficit and debt that we face 
     relates to the exploding costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

  That is his direct quote, the President of the United States.
  He goes on:

       Almost all of it. That is the single biggest driver of our 
     Federal debt, and if we don't get control over that, we can't 
     get control of our Federal budget.

  Our former President, Bill Clinton, I guess maybe the spiritual head 
of the Democratic Party, one of the most respected Democrats, said:

       I am afraid that the Democrats will draw the conclusion . . 
     . that we shouldn't do anything. I completely disagree with 
     that. The Democrats may have to give up some short-term 
     political gain by whipping up fear, if it's a reasonable 
     Social Security program, if it's a reasonable Medicare 
     proposal. You cannot have health care devour the economy.

  Well, that is the truth. Of course we have to talk about it because 
it is on an unsustainable path.
  Let me talk a little bit more about that because Congressman Ryan and 
I wrote a letter to the President today asking him to do his duty with 
regard to Medicare on a matter that just came up.
  On May 13, the Medicare trustees issued their annual report on the 
financial status of the Medicare Program. Medicare has a trust fund. 
They have trustees who are committed to preserving the program, trying 
to make sure they can pay the recipients what they have been promised 
in the years to come and make sure the money is well handled. They do 
annual reports on this massive program. The Medicare Hospital Insurance 
trust fund--that is

[[Page 9067]]

the HI trust fund--ran an annual cash-flow deficit of $32.3 billion 
last year, in 2010, and will continue to run deficits throughout the 
decade. That is what the trustees say about Medicare.
  They went on to say this: The Medicare trust fund will become 
insolvent in 2024--5 years earlier than last year's date of exhaustion. 
Can we imagine that? They redid the numbers and have concluded it is 
going to be in default, become insolvent, 5 years sooner than they were 
predicting just last year.
  They went on to say: If current law remains unchanged, Medicare's 
unfunded obligation is $24.4 trillion over the next 75 years. In other 
words, to put this on a sound basis, investing today, you need $24.4 
trillion.
  Like last year, the nonpartisan Chief Actuary of the Centers for 
Medicare and Medicaid Services, Richard Foster, used his statement of 
actuarial opinion at the end of the report to warn that:

       The financial projections shown in this report for Medicare 
     do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program 
     operations in either the short range (as a result of the 
     unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or in 
     the long range (because of the strong likelihood that 
     statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of 
     Medicare provider services will not be viable).

  On May 20, a week after the trustees' report was released, the Chief 
Actuary, Mr. Foster, produced his ``illustrative alternative'' 
projections based on ``more sustainable assumptions.'' Those estimates 
indicate that under a more likely scenario for future spending, 
Medicare's unfunded obligations are $36.8 trillion over the next 75 
years--a figure that is far larger than the official trustees' estimate 
of $24.4 trillion.
  Mr. Foster has been there a long time. He is a very serious person. 
He understands his responsibility to tell us the truth. He understands 
the responsibility to Medicare recipients. He is telling us we need to 
do something about Medicare.
  It goes on: The trustees projected that total Medicare spending will 
draw more than 45 percent of its funding out of the Treasury's general 
fund in 2011.
  A lot of people think Medicare is funded by the Medicare tax 
deduction we see on our paycheck, the withholding tax we pay, and that 
is a significant amount of money, no doubt about it. But the Medicare 
trustees just reported to us that of the total money Medicare spends, 
45 percent is funded directly out of the general fund--general tax 
revenues--not the payroll withholding. As a consequence, for the sixth 
year in a row, they say--2006 through 2011--the trustees made an 
``excess general revenue Medicare funding'' determination. Two 
consecutive ``excess general revenue Medicare funding'' determinations 
trigger a ``Medicare funding warning.'' This Medicare warning requires 
that the President submit a legislative proposal to address this crisis 
within 15 days of his next budget. So for 5 years in a row there has 
been a Medicare funding warning issued. President Bush submitted a 
proposal when he was President to deal with the shortfall in Medicare, 
but the Democratic majority in both Houses at the time failed to act on 
it, or do anything about the crisis. But now we have gone further and 
deeper into debt and the trustees issued a Medicare funding warning for 
the fifth consecutive time in their report this year, 2007 through 
2011. But President Obama is not responding.
  So who cares about Medicare? I think all of us do. But does anyone 
dispute that the trustees, the people who are statutorily required by 
law to superintend this fund, don't care about it, aren't worried about 
the recipients? They have a lawful obligation to try to ensure that the 
program is on a sound basis.
  Under the Medicare prescription drug bill that was passed here, 
Public Law 108-173, Congress established the Medicare ``trigger'' to 
call attention to the program's growing fiscal imbalance. If, in their 
report, the Medicare trustees project that Medicare will draw more than 
45 percent of its funding out of the Treasury's general fund within a 
7-year period, the trustees must make an excess general revenue 
Medicare funding determination. By law, two consecutive excess general 
revenue Medicare funding determinations produce a Medicare funding 
warning, triggering action by the President. Under the public law, U.S. 
Code, the President is required to submit legislation--submit 
legislation to whom? To the Congress, us--in response to a funding 
warning within 15 days of the next budget, and the proposal would then 
receive expedited consideration in Congress.
  So when we have this 45-percent level breached, the President is 
supposed to submit to us a plan, and we are supposed to give it 
expedited attention. Why? Because Medicare is important. That is why. 
And when it is not on a sound financial basis, Congress has a 
responsibility to do something about it--not do nothing, not criticize 
somebody such as Congressman Ryan who proposed a sound, well-thought-
out, long-term approach to Medicare. It may not be the one I would 
agree with or other Members would agree with, but no one can doubt, in 
my opinion, that it was a serious, thoughtful effort that would have 
put Medicare on a sound footing. But if it is not the plan we want, 
let's have another.
  What is the President's plan? That is the one that is required by 
law. The President is required to submit a plan. While a Medicare 
funding warning has been issued each year since he has taken office, 
President Obama has failed to submit a single proposal to Congress in 
response to these warnings.
  So today I joined with Congressman Paul Ryan, the young chairman of 
the House Budget Committee to write a letter to the President. Nobody 
has worked harder. Nobody is smarter. Nobody loves this country more. 
Nobody is prepared to stand before the American people and explain what 
he thinks is best for the country and be prepared to defend it with 
facts, with integrity, and with responsibility. What a refreshing face 
he is. I have come to have the greatest admiration for him.
  So what happened to Congressman Ryan? He helped write a budget, and 
in part of the budget, after 10 years, he proposed some changes to 
Medicare that would put it on a sound footing over the long term. When 
it came over to the Senate it was attacked by Democrats--but where is 
the Senate budget? The House has produced a budget. It reduces spending 
in the short run. It had a responsible approach to dealing with some of 
the long-term entitlement issues that threaten us in the long term.
  It was a sound program the Congressman had, and I thought--but we 
could disagree. So we are looking forward to what would happen over 
here. Well, the majority leader said: We think it is foolish to have a 
budget. We are not having a budget. Do not let the Budget Committee 
commence its hearings. We have not even begun a markup in Budget 
Committee. We do not have a budget. So instead we are having secret 
talks. In a committee, you have to stand up before the world, offer 
amendments, debate the issues, express your views. You cannot hide. It 
is on the record; they take down your words. But secret meetings with 
the White House are off the record, and talk occurs behind closed 
doors. So I do not know what is going to happen out of this. I am 
nervous about it, frankly. I would rather do it by the regular order. 
Maybe something good will come out of it. I am not going to prejudge 
it. If it is good, I am going to celebrate. If it is not good, I am 
going to oppose it.
  We wrote to the President today, and we called on him to show some 
leadership. We noted that the trustees have projected general revenues 
would account for more than 45 percent of Medicare spending for the 
sixth consecutive year. The Trustees have issued another funding 
warning that requires the President to submit a legislative proposal to 
Congress. He knew this was coming. The numbers have been there for 
several years. They knew it was coming. He is supposed to submit a 
legislative proposal to get Medicare on the right track. Does he plan 
to raise taxes? Cut benefits? Ration care? Or is he going to create a 
more competitive system that does the job with a little less money. 
What are you going to do? What is your answer? We wrote: As chairman 
and ranking member of the House and the Senate committees, 
respectively, we are deeply disappointed

[[Page 9068]]

that the administration continues to ignore this legal obligation. In 
2008, the previous administration submitted a proposal to Congress that 
took steps to address Medicare's fiscal imbalance. By contrast, your 
administration has not provided a response to the annual Medicare 
trigger, ignoring the law in each of the past 3 years. This year, your 
budget did not even acknowledge the existence of the Medicare funding 
warning.
  I have the Medicare trustees report right here. Far from saying no 
changes are necessary in Medicare, the trustees have pleaded with us in 
their reports. The trustees' chief actuary has noted that in his 
official reports to us. He says: Do something.
  This cannot continue. So here we are. We are going down the road with 
debt the likes of which this Nation has never seen before. At the end 
of last fiscal year, the gross debt of our country was 93 percent of 
GDP. By the end of this fiscal year it will be over 100 percent of GDP. 
I mentioned when you get to that level of debt, your growth goes down, 
and lower growth means a loss of jobs, and that you are not creating 
the jobs you should have.
  How serious is our debt situation? Well, look at the chart for those 
around the world. Greece in this critical crisis is above 100 percent. 
They are at 142 percent. Their debt equals 142 percent of their 
economy, and they are in a state of virtual collapse. Expert after 
expert says they will default on their debt. They are not going to be 
able to work their way out of it. I hope that is not true, but that is 
what they are saying.
  What about Ireland? You have heard Ireland. The ``PIGS'' as they call 
them, these countries and others in debt, what is theirs? It is now 96 
percent, 2 or 3 percent higher than ours--only. They are second in the 
European Union. We are next at 93. Portugal is next. You have heard 
about Portugal being in financial trouble. Their debt to GDP is 83 
percent. Spain, you have heard them talked about as being in trouble 
financially. Their debt to GDP--gross debt is 60 percent. So we are 
well above that. I am worried about the country. What is critical is we 
need a budget that contains spending now. We need to demonstrate a 
commitment to reform the unsustainable path of entitlement spending, 
and we need to do it in a way that focuses on creating economic growth 
and jobs in this country.
  Growth and jobs, that is what our future should be focused on. I am 
confident this country has not seen its best days, but we are on a path 
of decline now. I truly believe it. I hate to say it. But our policies, 
if they are not changed, will lead inevitably to economic decline as 
witness after witness has told us in testimony.
  How do we get out of it? We send a message through ourselves and the 
world: We have got the message. We are reducing spending. We are 
putting ourselves on a path to a balanced budget. We also know that it 
is not just the short term, it is long term. Many of these 
unsustainable programs need to be changed and strengthened, and the way 
to do that is to make the changes now, and you will have massive 
impacts in the years to come. Modest changes now will be good.
  Those are the things that I think are important. Those are the things 
I think should be talked about. Those are the things I think my good 
friend Mr. Reid apparently thinks are not important. Because he said--
he has come down here and talked for hours, and he keeps talking about 
things that have no bearing on what I think is important for our 
country today.
  I submit to my colleagues and to the American people, are the things 
I am talking about important, or are they not? He wanted to talk about 
how the Republicans have put forth a plan that he says will destroy 
Medicare. That is what the majority leader wants to talk about. He 
wants to change the subject. Well, I wish it were not so. I wish 
Medicare were healthy. I wish it had the money to continue to honor the 
commitments we have made in the years to come. But it does not. It is 
just does not. We do not have the money to continue at this rate. It is 
not impossible, though, to fix it and it is even more possible to fix 
Social Security. Medicare is a little harder than Social Security. But 
both of these can be fixed and made permanent and sound. We need to 
talk to the Medicare trustees. We need to be honest with one another 
and see how we can make those plans solvent.
  But that is just one part of the problem. In the immediate time, we 
have got to reduce discretionary spending, across the board. I think we 
have to. I wish that were not so, but it is. Countries around the world 
are doing it. Cities are doing it. Governors are doing it. This 
Congress has done nothing of the sort. Indeed, as I mentioned, last 
year--the last 2 years--discretionary spending--nondefense--has gone up 
24 percent. Defense went up. We hear a lot of complaints about defense. 
It was up 2 or 3 percent a year for the last 2 years. Other nondefense 
went up 24 percent.
  I cannot tell you how deeply I believe our Nation is on a perilous 
course that needs to change. I want to say again, I have great 
affection for my friend Senator Reid. He has got a tough job. But he 
asked for it. He asked for it. And when the country is in financial 
crisis, we expect the majority leader of the Senate to effectively 
lead, and not to attack people who are trying to do the right thing, 
and to bring this country onto a sound path.
  To say it is foolish to have a budget, what he meant was, it is 
foolish politically, of course. He was saying it is foolish politically 
to have a budget. It is not foolish for America to have a budget. It is 
foolish for America not to have one. Certainly it is not foolish to 
attempt to have a budget.
  I feel that we, in this Congress, have not quite assimilated the 
severity of the situation in which we find ourselves. We remain in 
denial about how seriously we are being impacted and what substantial 
changes are going to be necessary. We are going to have to do like the 
Brits who are turning their country around. We might have to do as they 
did in Estonia. Talk to the Estonian people. The cabinet members took a 
40-percent pay cut. I wonder what would happen around here if we talked 
about taking a 40-percent pay cut? But their debt to GDP is 7 percent, 
not 93. They intend to keep it that way. And their growth is coming 
back already. They are showing about 6-percent growth. Our growth is 
1.8 percent in the first quarter. Coming out of a recession, it should 
be higher.
  If we do the right thing, we get this country on the right path, we 
reduce our spending, we watch every dollar we spend, and we make our 
country more productive, we eliminate unnecessary regulation, we focus 
on creating jobs and growth, the natural capabilities, work ethic, 
integrity, the legal system of America will allow us to continue to be 
the most prosperous Nation in the world.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter I 
referred to earlier to the President.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                    June 14, 2011.
     Hon. Barack Obama,
     President, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. President: Our country faces extraordinary 
     economic challenges: a soaring budget deficit, a jobs 
     deficit, and a leadership deficit in Washington that has 
     resulted in our failure to confront a looming debt crisis. 
     These fiscal problems are driven in large part by the 
     unsustainable growth in health care entitlement programs and 
     an inability to credibly face our budget challenges that 
     severely undermines confidence in our economy. The failure of 
     politicians to put forward real solutions that will save and 
     strengthen these critical programs is threatening the 
     economic security of American families and the health 
     security of America's seniors. Just last month, we learned 
     that Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will become 
     insolvent by 2024, only 13 years from now.
       On May 13, 2011, the Medicare Trustees not only warned us 
     that Medicare's insolvency date had advanced five years since 
     last year's report but also confirmed that the program is now 
     running a $32 billion cash-flow deficit. To pay current 
     benefits, the program is redeeming tens of billions of 
     dollars in treasury debt instruments and dramatically 
     contributing to our nation's surging publicly held debt. More 
     troubling is that, in total, Medicare faces $36.8 trillion 
     dollars in unfunded obligations over the next 75 years, 
     according to Medicare's non-partisan Chief Actuary.

[[Page 9069]]

       For the sixth consecutive year, the Trustees have projected 
     that general revenues will account for more than 45 percent 
     of all of Medicare's outlays. When Medicare breaches this 
     limit, section 802 of P.L. 108-173, the Medicare Prescription 
     Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA), 
     requires the President to submit a legislative proposal to 
     Congress to respond to the warning within 15 days of the next 
     budget. Yet again, the Medicare Trustees have issued a 
     funding warning that requires action by your administration. 
     In fact, the Trustees have urged action ``sooner rather than 
     later'' in order to ``minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable 
     populations.''
       As Chairman and Ranking Member of the House and Senate 
     Budget Committees, respectively, we are deeply disappointed 
     that your administration continues to ignore this legal 
     obligation. In 2008, the previous administration submitted a 
     proposal to Congress that took steps to address Medicare's 
     fiscal imbalance. By contrast, your administration has not 
     provided a response to the annual Medicare trigger, ignoring 
     the law in each of the past three years. This year your 
     budget did not even acknowledge the existence of the Medicare 
     funding warning.
       The country deserves honest leadership on this critical 
     issue. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget that you submitted to 
     Congress this year showed a lack of seriousness about the 
     major fiscal challenges before the nation. And, although you 
     abandoned this budget in a subsequent speech, your 
     administration still has not formally submitted a revised 
     FY2012 budget to Congress. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have 
     not passed a budget in 776 days, disregarding legal statute 
     and further eroding the integrity of the federal budget 
     process. Now more than ever is the time to fulfill our 
     obligations under the law rather than skirt them, and we 
     would respectfully suggest that this mandate extends to the 
     Medicare warnings issued each year that you have been in 
     office.
       Under the budget you submitted to Congress, Medicare as we 
     know it will soon be unable to meet its promises to current 
     beneficiaries. Rather than impose cuts on current 
     beneficiaries and leave Medicare bankrupt for future 
     generations, the House-passed FY2012 budget resolution 
     outlines reforms to preserve and protect Medicare for those 
     in or near retirement while saving and strengthening the 
     program for future generations. Given the severity of this 
     problem and your legal obligations, the nation needs 
     leadership on this issue. Therefore, we reasonably expect 
     your administration to submit a detailed legislative proposal 
     to Congress addressing the Medicare funding warning as 
     required by law.
       We look forward to receiving a proposal from you that 
     responds to the Medicare warning and to working with you to 
     strengthen the health and economic security of those we have 
     the honor to serve.
           Sincerely,
     Paul Ryan,
       Member of Congress, Chairman, House Budget Committee.
     Jeff Sessions,
       U.S. Senator, Ranking Member, Senate Budget Committee.

  Mr. SESSIONS. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Coats, who is on the floor, and I be allowed up to 15 minutes to pursue 
a discussion about tax reform as if in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________