[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10827-10830]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into 
a colloquy with my Republican colleagues.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank Senator Klobuchar. She is a 
valuable Member of the Senate, and she mentioned some savings or 
additional revenue from tax increases--some were $10 billion, one was 
$8 billion, and I think one was $3 billion. I would just say that over 
10 years, that is how much those changes would raise.
  I would recall for all my colleagues that we unwisely spent $847 
billion on a stimulus package that produced little income, and we are 
paying interest on that of about $27 billion to $30 billion a year. It 
adds up as the years go by, every year, just the interest on that one 
single expenditure.
  We have now gone 804 days without a budget in this body. During that 
time, this country has spent $7.3 trillion. That is $7,300 billion. We 
have paid in interest on the money we have borrowed $439 billion just 
in that period of time we haven't had a budget. Interest on our debt is 
$439 billion in 804 days. And we have accumulated, during this time, an 
additional $3.2 trillion in debt. During the past 2 years, under the 
super Democratic majority here in the Senate and in the House--60 
Democratic Senators and the President's leadership--the discretionary 
nondefense spending went up 24 percent, and the President proposes in 
his budget next year to increase the Education Department, the State 
Department, the Energy Department, and the Transportation Department 
double-digit increases again, when this year 40 cents of every dollar 
we spend is borrowed.
  I am glad my colleagues can be with me now. I see Senator Johnson is 
here. He is a member of the Budget Committee. We had more people want 
to get on the Budget Committee this year, the new Senators who were 
recently elected. Senator Johnson was one of the few to be selected. 
And they hope to make a difference and to confront the problems we 
face.
  Senator Johnson is a successful businessman. He just joined the 
Senate last year. How has the Senator felt to date about the process?
  Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I appreciate the kind words. My background 
is in accounting, and I have been in business for 34 years. I have 
produced budgets for people on time. I have had people produce budgets 
for me on time. I look at the process--or the lack of a process here as 
absurd. Think about it. I have certainly produced budgets for smaller 
businesses--let's say a $10 million company. They would go through an 
awful lot of detail to draw up a budget. Talk about a little bit larger 
business, maybe a $1 billion-per-year business. There would be a lot of 
people involved, a lot of detail, and all that information filters up 
to the top. Then you come here to Washington and you see business as 
usual. I just want to make sure the American people understand how 
absurd this process is, the fact we haven't passed a budget in the 
Senate in over 2 years.
  We now have the President--at least he has finally gotten engaged 
this last week. They are meeting behind closed doors. Is it really true 
they are going to produce a budget over the course of a couple of 
meetings--a budget for the Federal Government that would be $3.7 
trillion, $3,700 billion worth--and they are going to do this behind 
closed doors, just a couple of people? That is an absurd process.

[[Page 10828]]

  The fact is, I am glad the President finally acknowledged Medicare is 
unsustainable. That is a sad fact. I wish it weren't so, but the first 
step, of course, in any process of being healed is to acknowledge that 
you have a problem. So I am glad the President finally acknowledged 
Medicare is unsustainable. But if he was really serious about 
structural reform, if he was really coming to the table in good faith, 
he would have come to the table 6 months ago. He would have been 
sitting down in good faith with Republican Senators, Republican Members 
of Congress, who understand how urgent the problem is, who want to work 
with this President, who want to work with anyone who is willing to 
seriously address the fact that we are bankrupting this Nation.
  So, again, I find this process absurd. And I would ask the American 
people to please think about what is happening here. Rather than an 
orderly process, rather than a process being conducted in the light of 
day, we are doing it behind closed doors, and there will be something 
dropped, I am afraid, in our laps with no time to review it--another of 
these bills nobody has time to read. And that is what the financial 
fate of America rests on? I don't think so. It should not be that way.
  Mr. WICKER. I wonder if my friend would yield on the matter of the 
process.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Absolutely. The floor is the Senator's.
  Mr. WICKER. Of course, the process is important, and it is designed 
for the President and the Congress to work together to solve these 
problems. I think the process may be broken, which I think points up 
why we really, bottom line, need a constitutional amendment to require 
the President to submit a balanced budget and to require this Congress 
to enact a balanced budget.
  You know, the President submitted a budget to us with deficits as far 
as the eye could see. The budget was brought to a vote under sort of an 
interesting procedure here, and it didn't get one single vote. Not one 
Republican, not one Democrat would vote for President Obama's budget.
  We hear rumblings that the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget 
Committee may actually be about to bring a budget forward. It has been 
800 days. We passed the 800-day mark last week. The chairman of the 
Budget Committee and the process have failed to work to actually bring 
a budget out to the floor, out from behind closed doors, as my friend 
from Wisconsin had said, and let us vote on all of these procedures.
  So I would simply say the President's budget was a nonstarter. I 
think if the Senate Democratic version ever were to be devised and 
brought to the floor, it would be a nonstarter, which is why we haven't 
seen such a proposal in 800 days.
  Bottom line: Republicans are united on this side in resisting tax 
increases on our economy at a time when we are at 9.2 percent 
unemployment, and we are united--all 47 of us--in saying we need a 
basic change in the process in this country of enacting a balanced 
budget amendment and sending that amendment out to the States for 
ratification. That would be the type of process reform I think the 
American people agree we need.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask my colleague, Senator Lee from 
Utah who just joined us, his late father was Solicitor General of the 
United States and law school dean, and we are glad that Senator Lee has 
put a lot of effort in drafting a constitutional amendment, the good 
lawyer that he is, that would make a difference for our country.
  Maybe the Senator would share his thoughts about his observations as 
a new Senator on how things are going and why he believes a 
constitutional amendment, as Senator Wicker from Mississippi said, 
would be helpful for our country and help put us on a sound path for 
the future.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, the need has never been greater for us to 
avoid gimmicks. Gimmickry in this context can have very high stakes and 
can prove most detrimental to our economy and to the ability of our 
government to function.
  We have to look out for those gimmicks that would say we are going to 
make a few cuts now, but most of the cuts we are going to propose in 
return for our ability to raise the debt limit will involve sacrifices 
by future Congresses, not the 112th Congress. We will just make a few. 
But we will say that the 113th and the 114th and successive Congresses 
after will make the difficult necessary sacrifices.
  We can't do that. Nothing allows us to bind a future Congress. That 
is why we need something that is gimmick free. That is why we need to 
amend our laws of laws, our U.S. Constitution, to place important, 
meaningful, permanent restrictions on the ability of Congress to engage 
in perpetual reckless deficit spending of the sort that has produced a 
national debt now fast approaching $15 trillion, to a degree that is 
escalating now at a rate in excess of $1.5 trillion every single year.
  In order to rid the problem, we have to change the root causes. We 
have to change the ability of the Congress to exercise its authority 
that it has so severely abused in recent decades under clause 2 of 
article I, section 8 to engage in deficit spending. A balanced budget 
amendment, the balanced budget amendment that has been endorsed and 
embraced and cosponsored by all 47 Republicans in the Senate will do 
that. We have a growing number of Republicans, a couple dozen, who have 
now gotten behind the one proposal that would allow us to approach the 
debt limit with this in mind, and would require the balanced budget 
amendment to be part of that, and I urge my colleagues to support that.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Lee for his leadership and hard work on 
that. It is not an easy thing to draft something that people would all 
agree with, but I think all the Republicans have signed on to that, and 
we are happy for that, and I believe this is not an impossible dream.
  When I came to the Senate in 1997, we had a vote on the balanced 
budget amendment. It fell one vote short. We got 66; it required 67. 
How much better off would we have been today, how much less debt would 
we have placed on our children and grandchildren had that amendment 
been passed then? I do think it is time for a national discussion again 
on this issue and to make that change, and would wish to point out 
something about the debt we now have.
  The unemployment rate came in disappointingly with only 18,000 jobs 
created last month, in June. We look to have 150,000 just to stay 
level. Unemployment went up. Economic growth in the first quarter was 
expected to be much higher than it came in. I think the first number 
was 1.8. Maybe it has been revised to 2 percent.
  The Rogoff-Reinhart study has studied debt defaults in countries all 
over the world for eight centuries, a highly respected study. Secretary 
Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, said it is an excellent study and in 
some ways it underestimates the risk.
  This study says when your debt reaches 90 percent of the economy, 90 
percent of the gross domestic product, it pulls down economic growth by 
1 percent to 2 percent. We are now at 95 percent debt to GDP. We will 
be at 100 percent of debt to GDP by the end of this year.
  I believe our growth could have been 3 percent instead of 2 percent 
the first quarter. And 1 percent growth, according to Obama White 
House's economic adviser Christina Romer amounts to 1 million jobs 
created. So I believe we have lost 1 million jobs that could have been 
created, we have lost additional tax revenue and growth and prosperity 
that would help us deal with our debt because of the debt. You see, you 
can't keep borrowing.
  Maybe when we get our GDP was 30 percent--maybe that is what it was 
when Senator Wicker probably came to Congress and now we are at 100 
percent. Our debt is as large as the entire productivity of our 
economy, and economists tell us it is pulling down our growth and it is 
costing jobs. Americans are not working today because of debt, and what 
we hear is, Don't worry about it; debts don't matter.

[[Page 10829]]

  Senator Wicker has been here in the House and in the Senate. Has the 
Senator seen the situation in which our financial crisis, short term 
and long term, systemically is more severe than it is today?
  Mr. WICKER. Well, I guess I got to the House in 1995; my friend from 
Alabama came to the Senate 2 years later. I don't think we could have 
imagined an annual deficit of $1.5 trillion in 1 short year. We are 
spending that much more than we are taking in. In other words, we take 
in $2.2 trillion a year, approximately, and we spend $3.7 trillion a 
year, a difference of $1.5 trillion. I don't think we ever expected it 
to get that serious when the Senator from Alabama and I first got here.
  Clearly there is no way we can turn back the clock, but the Senator 
is correct. If we had enacted with just one more vote in this very body 
a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, clearly we would not 
be facing this fiscal crisis.
  I want to also make a very important point, and it is what all of the 
papers are talking about, and that is whether somehow a tax increase 
targeted to deficit reduction is the thing to do.
  Listen, my friends, Republicans and Democrats over time until 
recently have been united in saying tax increases are a bad thing to 
do. I want to ask my colleagues if they can help identify the public 
official who said this quote:

       The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the 
     middle of a recession, because that would take more demand 
     out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.

  Would any of my colleagues care to guess? Senator Lee?
  Mr. LEE. That was President Obama in the middle of 2009 who made that 
comment.
  Mr. WICKER. Absolutely. Somehow the President, who made a very cogent 
and correct statement in 2009, has completely changed his tune now.
  We could have a budget deal in place on the floor of the House and 
Senate and ready to be passed if the President of the United States 
would simply come back to the position he took in 2009 and 2010. As 
late as December of 2010, the President was telling the New York Daily 
News we should keep the tax rates in place. The budget chairman in the 
Senate told Reuters last July, only 1 year ago, that he supported 
extending the tax cuts and keeping them in place, because to raise 
taxes on the private sector during a time of economic downturn is 
taking money out of the private sector and killing its ability to 
create jobs.
  I would simply call on my colleagues from the other side of the aisle 
to return to the position they had 1 year ago and 2 years ago. Let's 
get a budget deal that addresses the debt by cutting spending and be 
united as we were on that issue some 1 year and 2 years ago.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Johnson, as I recognized, is a businessman. 
President Clinton recently said we need to reduce our corporate tax 
rate. I was on a TV show with Senator Bill Nelson, my good Democratic 
colleague, who said we ought to reduce some of these tax expenditures, 
as some call them. My understanding was we could use that to help get 
our rates down so we are more competitive worldwide and create more 
jobs.
  I guess my question is, if you simplify the Tax Code and you 
eliminate gimmicks, should the money be applied, as President Clinton 
suggested, to reducing our rates so we are more competitive or should 
they be used to subsidize more spending by Washington?
  Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Well, obviously it makes more sense to 
actually use them to make us more competitive so that global capital 
actually flows to the United States to create jobs here.
  I am a long-term job producer. I certainly recognize it is the 
private sector that creates long-term self-sustaining jobs. I am afraid 
that is what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and 
President Obama simply don't understand.
  I am often asked, Are you surprised by anything in Washington? I will 
tell you one thing I am not surprised about is that their solution is 
increasing taxes. Let's face it, we just undertook a $4 trillion 
experiment in Keynsian economics. We are down more than 2 million jobs 
since that grand experience began when President Obama became elected. 
It doesn't work. And now for the Democrats and President Obama 
proposing $1 trillion, $2 trillion or, as was pointed out, as much as 
$2.8 trillion in new taxes? What is that? That is actually taking money 
out of the private sector where real jobs are created. That would be 
the wrong direction. That would be a big mistake. That is why the 
Republicans are united in saying increasing taxes at any time, 
particularly in a weak economy, is the wrong prescription.
  Getting our debt and deficit and spending under control, a balanced 
budget amendment is the solution. It can actually be enacted very 
quickly. We don't have to face the crisis that President Obama and the 
Treasury Secretary are trying to whip up here.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I would say that I do believe we are at a national 
crisis with our debt. I believe it endangers the Nation, because 
Erskine Bowles, who chaired the Debt Commission appointed by President 
Obama, has told us that we are facing an economic crisis as a result of 
the debt in written testimony to the Budget Committee, and he warned 
that we have to change our course. I certainly believe that is true; 
and I believe the Rogoff and Reinhart study, affirmed by Secretary 
Geithner, is correct, that it is already pulling down our growth. I am 
worried about the future of our country.
  Maybe Senator Lee will wrap up for us. He just finished a campaign, 
talking to hundreds of thousands of people in his State. What is the 
Senator's perception of what we need to be doing at this point in time?
  Mr. LEE. The American people expect us to stop burying our children 
and our grandchildren under a mountain of debt, to stop spending money 
we don't have, particularly when we are spending about 40 cents out of 
every dollar that is borrowed, much of that being borrowed from foreign 
sovereign governments such as China.
  Obviously there are times when as a country we have needed to do 
this, when our circumstances have required it. The reason Congress was 
given this power to begin with is to make sure that, particularly in a 
time of war, Congress had the means at its disposal to provide for our 
national defense and to provide for other immediate emergent needs.
  But this practice of what I refer to as perpetual deficit spending 
has become not just something we do on an emergency basis, not just 
something we do in a time of war or other kind of unusual circumstance; 
it has become something we do as a matter of course to keep things 
moving, to keep business as usual operating in Washington to the point 
where we are accumulating over $1.5 trillion a year in new debt.
  Our constituents in every single State expect more and they deserve 
better. The reason for this has everything to do with the fact that 
this unites people along every point along the political spectrum. 
Whether you are a conservative and you care about the deficit because 
you want to protect our national defense system or because you care 
deeply about our economy or whether you are a liberal and you care 
about the deficit because you are concerned about what this will do to 
our entitlement programs, all of those things stand in grave jeopardy 
as a result of this practice of spending, this practice that will 
result in the U.S. Government having to spend a lot more money every 
single year to pay interest on the national debt, interest that doesn't 
benefit anyone, interest that crowds out private investment and kills 
jobs. That is what voters in my State and every State are concerned 
about.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator. Madam President, I would cite that 
the interest factor my colleague mentioned is very real.
  This year we are expected to pay $240 billion in interest. How much 
is that? That is just a number. The amount of money that we spend under 
the Federal Highway Program is $40 billion. The amount of money we 
spend on Federal

[[Page 10830]]

aid to education is $100 billion. This year we are paying $240 billion.
  However, under the budget that was submitted to the Congress by the 
President--the Democratic Senate has never brought one forward on their 
own--that budget added $13 trillion more to the debt, and the 
Congressional Budget Office, our nonpartisan accountants, has 
calculated what the interest payment would be in the 10th year of that 
10-year budget. It has concluded the interest payment that year would 
be $940 billion. That is larger than Medicare, it is larger than 
Medicaid, it is larger than Social Security, it is larger than the 
defense budget. These numbers are incredibly large and we cannot--as a 
gentleman told me at a townhall meeting--borrow our way out of debt. We 
cannot keep spending. It is dragging down our economic growth right 
now. It is costing jobs right now.
  There are some people who say we do not have enough jobs; we need to 
spend more. Where are we going to get that money? Borrow that money. We 
are already borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. Can we afford 
to borrow more to try to get a sugar high, keep growth artificially 
growing now? I think we just have to be mature, grownup, and realize we 
are going to have to work our way out of this fix.
  We can do it if we create stability and soundness in our economy. If 
we do this right we can create a system in which we can have growth. 
Our business community is hanging in there. They are doing pretty well. 
They are holding up, but we have to create jobs. We have to have more 
job growth and more growth in the entire economy. That is what we need.
  I do believe the debt is a weight on us. It is a burden that is 
reducing growth, and we must have that to pull our way out of this 
crisis. I am glad to see the President has joined in the discussions, 
but I have to say I think he has moved from the budget he submitted 
just a few months ago, which was the most irresponsible budget ever 
submitted to Congress calling for more taxes, more spending, and more 
debt. In other words, over the period of 10 years his budget laid out 
that taxes would go up, the spending would go up more than the taxes, 
and the deficit would go up more than the current path we are on. It 
made it worse.
  We cannot do that. When that budget was brought to the floor--I 
brought it to the floor--and we got a vote, it failed 97 to 0.
  I am glad the President is working now. Together we have to somehow 
develop a strategy to put us on a course so all Americans and the 
business community in our country and the world financial community 
will say: Boy, the United States is getting their act together. They 
are making the right decisions. They are on a sound course now. Maybe 
that is where we need to put our money instead of some other place 
because they are on the right path. Right now it is very dangerous.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Illinois.

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