[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11853-11856]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         DEBT CEILING EXTENSION

  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I ask to speak as in morning business. I 
certainly will not take 10 minutes that the majority leader has 
requested because I know the Senator from Alabama is eager to speak. I 
wish to make sure I understand where we are with regard to the debt 
ceiling.
  I have an article from The Hill, dated yesterday. It points out--it 
heard the same thing in the speech the rest of the Nation heard when 
the President spoke--the President said he would be willing to work on 
any plans lawmakers brought to him over the weekend. The President went 
on to say:

       The only bottom line I have is that we have to extend this 
     debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.

  I ask my colleagues what does the election of 2012 have to do with 
the debt ceiling? What does it have to do with deciding to pay our 
obligations after August 2? What does it have to do with avoiding the 
calamity we have all heard about from both sides of the aisle and 
certainly from the administration? It strikes me as very odd that most 
debt ceiling extensions have been about 7 months during a decade-long 
period, and for some reason because of the election of 2012, the 
President of the United States wants to extend the deadline past that 
election into 2013. I think it makes Americans wonder if the President 
is playing politics with this very important issue.
  The President went on to say in the press conference that we all 
listened to that he wondered if the Republicans were able to say yes to 
any agreement. That was the President on Friday evening. Now we come to 
Washington, DC today with the clock ticking, 8 days away from a 
supposed debacle, and I read in today's Wall Street Journal this report 
by Jamie Dupree, President Obama last night rejected a bipartisan deal 
offered to him by congressional leaders of both parties which would 
have provided for a short-term extension of the debt limit in order to 
avoid a U.S. Government default. The agreement involved Speaker 
Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Senate GOP Leader McConnell. 
In fact, according to this Wall Street Journal article, staffers from 
Senator Reid and Senator McConnell's offices were working on the 
legislative language together on Sunday. When Reid took the bipartisan, 
bicameral plan down to the White House, it was rejected by the 
President.
  I ask my colleagues: Who is unable to say yes? The Democratic 
majority leader of this body said yes to a bipartisan agreement. The 
Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, the leader of that 
majority in the other body, said yes to an agreement. Senator Reid's 
colleague and friend, the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, said 
yes to a bipartisan agreement, and then Senator Reid was given the task 
of taking it to the President of the United States and the President 
rejected it.
  I think Americans have a right to ask who is unable to say yes to a 
bipartisan deal that gets us out of this box. Who is playing politics 
with this issue? The public debt is $14.2 trillion. We meet the 
deadline a week from tomorrow. The clock is ticking. The President had 
an opportunity to say yes to a bipartisan agreement endorsed by the 
leadership of this Congress and yet he said no. I am calling on this 
President, on my President, to do the right thing by the American 
people and to do the right thing for our country and for our economy 
and ask this bipartisan group of leaders to come back to the White 
House and say yes to the agreement which they offered him last night.
  I thank the President. I thank the Senator from Alabama for allowing 
me to go in front of him.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I know we have talked about having an 
opportunity to digest and analyze and score any kind of proposal. I 
understand this afternoon the majority leader, Senator Reid, said he 
would propose legislation tonight and file cloture tonight, and that 
would, according to the rules of the Senate, move this vote up to early 
Wednesday morning. That would give us only tomorrow, 1 day, to digest a 
bill that would impact our spending trajectory for the next decade. I 
would ask my experienced colleague, who was a distinguished Member of 
the House and now in the Senate, does that cause him concern?
  Mr. WICKER. I think absolutely it should cause concern and this is 
something both parties have campaigned on in the past, the lack of 
transparency, the lack of time, things being rushed through at the last 
minute. But my larger point is that on Friday afternoon the President 
was calling for a plan, any plan. He said there was only one condition: 
We must be political about it. We must get past the presidential 
reelection in 2012. Then on Sunday night not just any plan was 
presented to the President but a bipartisan plan by both leaders in 
this body on behalf of their membership and the Republican Speaker of 
the House who said, we believe we can get this through, and the 
President rejected it out of hand. That is the larger point.
  The point of the Senator from Alabama is well taken. The legislative 
language is important. The agreement in concept is one thing, but as he 
is pointing out, the legislative language is also important. As ranking 
member of the Budget Committee, he knows full well Members need time to 
see if the language actually reduced the concepts into writing that can 
be enforced and work long term to get us out of this horrendous debt 
crisis we are in. I appreciate the Senator's point.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator. I appreciate that. The point the 
Senator made is tremendously important. All year we have conducted 
Senate business, with regard to the financial future of our country, in 
the most troubling way. It is unlike anything we have done in our 
history. I would say from a structural, systemic circumstance, this 
Nation has never had a more serious debt problem. We are borrowing 40 
cents of every dollar we spend. Yes, we do have a war going on that is 
costing $150 billion this year. But the deficit this year will be $1.5 
trillion. It is not the war. That is only about 10 percent of our 
deficit, unfortunately.
  Back in World War II, we could see our way out of the war and into 
our victory, and we saw great growth in the future. But the deficits we 
are now accruing every day, every week, every month are significant 
because they are going to be hard to change. We are spending more than 
we take in and we have got to change. We can change. If we do change we 
will get this country back on a growth path.
  I have repeatedly warned against avoiding the normal budget process 
this year, a process required by law but that this Senate under the 
Democratic leadership explicitly refused to do--the majority leader 
said it would be foolish to produce a budget. We are now about 820 days 
or so without a budget. For over 2 years we have not had a budget for 
the United States of America, and they never even attempted to move a 
budget even though a law says we should pass one by April 15. Well, it 
doesn't put anybody in jail. Maybe that is what it should have done. 
Maybe a bunch of people would be in jail today. Maybe we would have a 
budget if we had some teeth in the axe. It is the statute of the United 
States that requires we have a budget and we do not have one.
  Then we begin to hear the warnings 6 months ago that we would reach a 
point where we would need to raise the debt limit, the debt ceiling we 
have. Congress has said: Mr. President, you can borrow money, but only 
so much. You cannot borrow more than the amount, $14-some-odd trillion, 
that is all. If you need to borrow more, Congress will have to approve 
it. We have the power of the purse under the Constitution.
  This has been brewing for some time. I have been warning about this, 
since we have not done our job, since the Budget Committee has not met 
about these issues, the Appropriations Committee has not met about 
these issues,

[[Page 11854]]

the Finance Committee has not met about the tax and mandatory 
entitlement programs that are under their jurisdiction. No work has 
been done all year. None. We are told not to worry, our leaders are 
going to meet a few times in secret. This little group failed, and this 
group with the Vice President met and that didn't work. Then they are 
going to meet with the President, and that didn't work. Finally, last 
night, as Senator Wicker said, it did appear an agreement was reached 
between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership on a 
bill that at least would get us past this debt crisis. They had the 
leadership agreement. I have not read it. I do not know what is in it. 
I am going to know what is in the bill. I have a constitutional 
responsibility, as do the other 99 Senators here, to make a good 
judgment on it.
  It is odd that after all of that a bipartisan agreement was reached, 
and the President walked away from it. Now he is going to blame Speaker 
Boehner, who produced a budget. The Republican House produced a far-
reaching, historic budget that would actually change the debt 
trajectory of our country and put us on the right path, the path to 
restoring prosperity and the creation of jobs. This debt is so large it 
is a wet blanket, as Speaker Boehner said. I called it an anchor, a 
weight that is pulling down the economy, as expert economists have told 
us. Not just me. Experts tell us that when you have this much debt, you 
lose 1 million jobs a year that would otherwise be created.
  We have a serious problem, and I am not pleased about it. I felt all 
along that this is exactly what was going to happen. Somewhere in the 
back of the minds of the President or the leaders or somebody was the 
idea that they would bring up a plan at the eleventh hour, fiftieth 
minute, bring it to the floor of the Senate, and say: If you don't vote 
it, Members of the Senate, if you don't vote for it, Members of the 
House, we are going to have a debt crisis and it will all be your 
fault. Well, I am not interested in that. I am not going to vote for 
any kind of significant legislation, as this is, until I have had a 
chance to read it and think about it. Majority Leader Reid told us of 
his plan this afternoon and he told us not to worry, he has a 1-page 
summary. Trust us. He is going to introduce legislation tonight and we 
will vote Wednesday morning, and it will be good for America. Just do 
what I tell you and go along and mind your manners and we will get this 
thing taken care of. Trust me.
  Well, the American people have been trusting Washington too long. The 
American people know there is no justification whatsoever in this 
country for spending so much money that 40 percent of every dollar we 
spend has to be borrowed. They know better. They know we have no 
business spending $3,700 billion when we take in only $2,200 billion. 
That is what happened in this last election. They said: Oh, these tea 
party people, they are not good Americans. They are angry. They are 
mad. That is not good. You are bad people. Well, give me a break. Why 
shouldn't they be? If we had a recall election, we all ought to be 
voted out of office, I suppose. There is no way we should ever have 
been in this situation.
  Now under the pressure of the American people and fear of the next 
election, why did the President reject this bipartisan agreement? Well, 
it would require us to meet again next year. We will need to talk about 
more cuts because the cuts they are talking about are clearly 
insufficient to meet the challenge we are facing today--clearly 
insufficient. We have to do more.
  So if a person runs up their credit card too much and they hit the 
limit and they want the limit raised, the person who is loaning the 
money--the American people--would like to know, have you changed your 
habits? Are you going to do better? Let's see a plan--a budget--a plan 
that gets us out of this fix. That has been steadfastly rejected by the 
leadership in this Senate all year, and we knew we were heading to this 
date. So Senator Reid is throwing something out there. Let's talk a 
little bit about what appears to be in it.
  The President has had a friendly press on most of the things he has 
proposed. He proposed a budget--the Democratic Senate never produced 
one, but by law the President has to produce one. Every President has 
to produce one every year. So the President produced one this year. The 
lowest annual deficit in that budget would be $740 billion. The highest 
deficit President Bush ever had was $450 billion, and he was criticized 
for that. The lowest he would have in 10 years was $750 billion, and in 
the 10th year it was back over $1 trillion, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office's analysis of his budget. So that is where 
we are heading. That is the kind of thing the President has submitted 
to us.
  Do my colleagues know what he said about it? He said: I am proud of 
my budget. It will have America living within its means.
  Can we believe the President of the United States said that--that a 
budget with a lowest annual deficit of over $700 billion was living 
within our means?
  He also said, ``It would add no more to our debt.'' And his budget 
director, Mr. Jack Lew, said the same thing. He actually testified to 
that effect before the Budget Committee. It was breathtaking.
  So forgive me if I am not buying into a proposal based on one page. 
It was produced this afternoon. It said we are going to reduce the 
deficit by $2.7 trillion. Forgive me if I am not buying into that until 
I see it and it has been scored. That is what I think ought to happen 
here today.
  By the way, we have heard the debates--and Speaker Boehner used this 
phrase and others have used it: we want to have dollar for dollar 
spending reduction to debt limit increase. What that means is that if 
we increase the debt ceiling and allow the government to borrow another 
$1 trillion, we should cut spending by $1 trillion. That is just a 
rough idea. I don't know how they came up with that. That is what they 
came up with.
  Remember, the debt is still going up every year because we are still 
spending more than we take in. This is like Wimpy in the old ``Popeye'' 
cartoon. Wimpy said: Give me a hamburger today, and I will pay you 
tomorrow. So we are going to get the immediate ability to borrow $1 
trillion, $2 trillion more, raising the debt limit that much, on a 
promise that we will reduce spending by that amount over 10 years--not 
1 year but 10 years.
  This is a dangerous process. This is the kind of rhetoric that has 
put us in the position we are in today, which is that 40 cents of every 
dollar we spend is borrowed. It is what is threatening the financial 
future of our country, this kind of thinking in Washington, and we have 
to change that. We have to be honest about our numbers. As the ranking 
Republican on the Budget Committee, I feel an obligation. And our staff 
is eager to see the legislative language, not a one-page outline, about 
what will actually happen with our spending. We want to be sure the 
promises made with this bill are more accurate than the ones President 
Obama made when he said his budget would call for us to live within our 
means when it plainly does not.
  I will mention a couple of things at this point that jump out at me 
from the one-page outline we have seen.
  Majority Leader Reid says his plan would produce savings of $2.7 
trillion, but really it appears to represent a $1.2 trillion or so 
reduction in discretionary spending, and the rest of it is accrued in 
other ways. Speaker Boehner's proposal has discretionary spending 
reductions of about the same, but what is obvious is that Speaker 
Boehner's commission would reduce spending more and has a target, a 
goal to reach an additional $1.8 trillion. The one produced by Senator 
Reid, on the other hand, mentions a commission, but has no reduction in 
spending as a requirement of that commission. They don't have any 
obligation to produce a reduction in spending.
  What else is in there? Another factor is that we are now drawing down 
the cost of our military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last year, we 
spent a little over $150 billion. This year, we will spend a little 
over $100 billion. The plan is to at least be down to $50 billion

[[Page 11855]]

in 2 or 3 years. So over the 10-year period, there will be about 8 
years, nearly, at $50 billion or so spent on the war instead of $150 
billion. That is part of the plan we have been operating on for a long 
time. So $150 billion for the war is not a baseline projection of the 
United States. It was never projected to continue at that level. So 
hopefully we can bring it below $50 billion. Maybe we won't get to $50 
billion; I don't know. But what is the reasonable estimate? I think the 
House Republicans and the President said it would drop to $50 billion, 
so that should be the baseline projection for the rest of the time. 
That is $1 trillion total. So if we take $1 trillion out of the $2.7 
trillion in savings, we are down to $1.7 trillion in savings.
  Another thing is that since the $1 trillion is war-related spending, 
as Mr. Reid wants it, it is not a real reduction from baseline 
spending. It is always considered to be extra, war-related emergency 
spending. And he claims interest savings on this money as another $200 
billion. So now we have about $1.2 trillion right there, overstating 
his cuts through the elimination of the war. Speaker Boehner does not 
do that. His numbers are far more accurate and honest and realistic.
  I also would like to point out that when we talk about spending and 
how we measure it, we have to know what the baseline is. One reason 
this country is broke and is in financial crisis is because we claim we 
are cutting spending when we are actually increasing spending.
  The way it works is the Congressional Budget Office produces an 
assumption that we will increase spending at the rate of inflation or 
some other rate over a period of years. Then, if we reduce that rate of 
spending increase a little bit, politicians claim they have produced 
savings, that they have cut spending. But spending is not really 
reduced. Spending is still going up. There are various baselines out 
there that are used to calculate this, and it is very significant over 
10 years and even more so over 20 years. So we hear people saying: We 
are cutting spending under this plan. So for Speaker Boehner or Senator 
Reid, either one of those plans, I am confident will show we are 
spending a good bit more money in the 10th year than we are spending 
today.
  This is confusing to the American people. I am really convinced the 
only way we can honestly compare the plans is to go back to basics--the 
way families do it: Do you increase your spending or not, based on what 
you spent last year? You take a flat level, and how much do you 
increase it over the next year, 2 years, 10 years? How much does it go 
up? That is the way to do it. Then we can compare plans. Then we can 
see what Speaker Boehner has, what Congressman Ryan has in his budget 
plan for 10 years. Senator Toomey proposed a very thoughtful 10-year 
budget plan that balanced our budget in 10 years. That was not easy to 
do, but he did it. We need to be thinking like that and get away from 
this confusing mishmash, which we use to claim that we are saving $1 
trillion when really nobody plans for us to be spending $150-plus 
billion on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 10 years. That 
money has never been projected to be spent in that fashion.
  So we are in a situation where it is important for the country to 
reach an agreement and we need to pass something that raises the debt 
ceiling for America. I hate to say that, but it is a fact. It would be 
too disruptive not to do that. But, in exchange for that, as a part of 
that process, we truly need to start bringing our house into financial 
order. We are in disarray and discord, but if we were to do that, we 
could leave this a better country for our children and grandchildren.
  I know some just want to increase spending and then raise taxes to 
pay for it. The Defense Department last year got about a 2-percent 
increase, a 3-percent increase. Next year, there is projected to be a 
2-percent increase in some of the budget numbers. It might not happen 
because we don't have even that much money.
  But we know how much nondefense discretionary spending increased 
during this time of record deficits under President Obama's leadership, 
not counting the almost $900 billion in stimulus money. Baseline, 
nondefense discretionary spending increased 24 percent between 2008 and 
2010, and now we are seeing the biggest deficits ever. President Bush 
never had any increases in baseline spending like that--never. It is 
just stunning.
  There was a huge Democratic majority in the Senate and in the House, 
and the President wanted his investments, and he got these huge 
increases, and now they want to raise taxes to pay for it and keep it 
up there and maintain it. We can't afford to maintain that level. We 
have to bring it back down to 2009, 2008, 2007 levels. The country is 
not going to go bankrupt--broke--and people are not going to be thrown 
into the streets if we return to those levels of spending. If we make 
some tough choices, the same way cities and counties and families are 
doing all over America, we can get this house in order. That is what we 
are going to have to do.
  I look forward to studying plans put forward by the majority leader 
and to studying the plan put forward by Speaker Boehner. The American 
people need time to know what is in them and what they mean to us in 
terms of taxing and spending, deficits, and interest payments. And then 
Congress needs to have time to vote on it.
  Again, I repeat my deep frustration that we have not conducted this 
in open, public debate for months now, utilizing the established Senate 
procedure of regular order. Instead, we have attempted to solve this 
big problem in secret, behind closed doors, with just a few people. I 
believe that is contrary to the historical understanding of the role of 
Congress, and I am not happy about it. I oppose it, I object to it, and 
I expect to have an appropriate amount of time to consider whatever 
plan comes forward.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, this weekend, driving around the Twin 
Cities, I was listening to public radio. The host of the program 
introduced a Republican member of the House Budget Committee. The 
member, whom I will not name to spare him or her a great deal of 
embarrassment, was asked about the consequences of not raising the debt 
ceiling.
  The member assured the host and listeners that failing to raise the 
debt ceiling would not create a default for a number of reasons. Among 
them was, according to this member, we can pay out all the Social 
Security checks to seniors because--and I quote--``the money is in the 
trust fund.''
  Well, of course, there is $2.6 trillion of assets in the trust fund, 
but the Social Security trust fund is composed entirely of Treasury 
notes. Allow me to quote from the Congressional Research Service:

       By law, Social Security revenues credited to the trust fund 
     . . . are invested in non-marketable U.S. government 
     obligations. These obligations are physical (paper) documents 
     issued to the trust fund and held by the Social Security 
     Administration. When the obligations are redeemed, the 
     Treasury must issue a check (a physical document) to the 
     Social Security trust fund for the interest earned on the 
     obligations.

  CRS continues:

       However, unlike a private trust that may hold a variety of 
     assets and obligations of different borrowers, the Social 
     Security trust fund can hold only non-marketable U.S. 
     government obligations. The sale of these obligations by the 
     U.S. government to the Social Security trust fund is federal 
     government borrowing (from itself) and counts against the 
     federal debt limit.

  Now, I have no idea what this Republican member of the House Budget 
Committee believes is in the Social Security trust fund. Stacks of 
hundred-dollar bills? Gold bricks? Warehouses of freezers with steaks 
in them?
  To me, it is shocking--shocking--that a Member of Congress--let lone 
a member of the House Budget Committee--can be so wildly ignorant of 
the basic workings of our government. We come to Washington to work 
together to solve our Nation's problems. How are we to do that if 
Members are unwilling or unable to come to even the most rudimentary 
understanding of our government?

[[Page 11856]]

  None of us is immune to making mistakes. Yet we find ourselves in 
this moment of existential crisis, with the full faith and credit of 
the United States being held hostage by a menagerie of ideologues who 
invent their own realities and are only too happy to share these 
fantasies with an unsuspecting public.
  We are playing with disaster. Can we please just stick to the facts? 
The fact is, if we do not act immediately, we will see a downgrade of 
our credit rating and possibly even default on our debt. Both would be 
entirely counterproductive to our goal of shrinking our deficits and 
growing our economy. We cannot control the fantasies of clueless 
ideologues, but we must act responsibly and do our jobs. And we must do 
it now.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________