[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12134-12136]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has 
presented a plan to address our deficits and to end the debt ceiling 
impasse that threatens to cripple our economy.
  The Treasury is projected to run out of money next week and time is 
running short. Senator Reid has shown great leadership with his 
pragmatic package. Leader Reid's proposal would give the Treasury the 
authority to ensure the United States does not default on its debt, 
while at the same time cutting $2.7 trillion from our budget.
  The unprecedented set of cuts would have a significant effect in 
balancing our budget and restoring fiscal sustainability to the Federal 
Government. I wish to highlight one key fact. Unlike the House 
Republican budget and unlike the so-called cut, cap, and balance plan, 
Leader Reid's plan will preserve Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid.
  Protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits is particularly 
important. The Republicans have long coveted Social Security and wanted 
to turn it over to Wall Street. George Bush tried and failed to do this 
because the American people wanted none of it, but they tried.
  The House Republican budget attacked Medicare, effectively turning it 
over to the private health insurance industry in 10 years. When the 
American people found out this was hidden in the Republican budget, 
they wanted none of it. Huge majorities of the American public 
disapproved of the Republican budget attack on Medicare.
  But instead of relenting, the Republicans came back with cut, cap, 
and balance. Hidden behind that slogan was an even worse attack on 
Medicare. The House budget would have raised senior's costs more than 
$6,000 a year. Cut, cap, and balance would have gone $2,500 beyond 
that. Cut, cap, and kill Medicare was a better name for it.
  Against that relentless Republican effort to go against the will of 
the American people and kill off Medicare, Leader Reid's proposal 
protects this vital program and the freedom and security it provides to 
American families.
  Make no mistake about it, our deficit reduction plan will not be 
easy. It will cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion over the next 
decade. These budget reductions will require some tough but necessary 
choices. The plan would also count for an accelerated wind-down of U.S. 
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, saving $1 trillion in the process.
  Our troops in the Middle East deserve our admiration and praise for 
so successfully carrying out their missions. We must, however, continue 
to press for a strategy that will bring our troops home as soon as we 
safely can.
  The Reid deficit plan would find an additional $40 billion savings by 
cutting fraud and abuse in tax compliance and a number of nondefense 
Federal programs and $60 billion in other savings, including cutting 
unnecessary spending on agricultural subsidies and auctioning off 
electromagnetic spectrum that the government currently holds.
  Finally, by cutting the budget by over $2 trillion, we will have to 
borrow less money than anticipated, and that will save an additional 
$400 billion in projected interest costs. In total, the Senate 
Democratic plan on which we will vote would cut the deficit by $2.7 
trillion over the next 10 years.
  While Senator Reid's proposal would not address the tax gimmicks and 
loopholes throughout our Tax Code that help favor the well-connected, 
this omission does not mean Democrats have given up on ensuring that 
there is shared sacrifice as we work to balance the budget.
  Instead, this package acknowledges the political realities of the 
moment. Many House Republicans have flatly refused to entertain raising 
any revenue: not one tax loophole, no cutting of taxpayer subsidies to 
profitable oil companies, no closing down of offshore tax havens. That 
is wrong. The Reid package reserves the tax side of budget reform for 
another day.
  We look forward to a robust discussion in the weeks and months ahead 
over Republican priorities that put special interest loopholes ahead of 
the interests of American families and ahead of the interests of the 
American economy.
  The Reid plan would establish a bipartisan commission to recommend 
budget changes and those recommendations would then be guaranteed an 
up-or-down vote in both Houses of Congress before the end of the year. 
These recommendations should focus on cutting the unjustifiable tax 
giveaways--the tax earmarks--that allow profitable companies to avoid 
taxes entirely and permit megamillionaires and billionaires to pay 
lower effective tax rates than do middle-class families.
  The Reid plan meets the Republicans' initial demands in the debt 
ceiling negotiations. It cuts $2.7 trillion from the budget--greater 
than the amount by which the debt limit would be increased--and leaves 
tax reform for the next round of budget reform. But it does not yield 
to the Republican attack on Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
  I hope Republicans in the Senate and the House will appreciate the 
balance of Senator Reid's approach and support it. But what if they do 
not? The House is in disarray. The Speaker does not

[[Page 12135]]

appear to have the votes. Some of the extremists will not take yes for 
an answer, and some of the most extreme appear to relish the prospect 
of America's economy colliding with the debt ceiling.
  Let's consider what should occur if Congress fails to lift the debt 
ceiling. Congress will have sent President Obama three different 
messages, and they create an irreconcilable conflict. Think about it. 
Message 1 is: We want him to spend money on all these things. We want 
him to conduct our wars and our national defense. We want him to send 
out Social Security checks. We want him to pay the doctors and the 
hospitals that provide Medicare services. We want him to keep guards on 
our borders and in our prisons, keep air traffic controllers in the 
towers, run the rest of the Federal Government.
  We tell the President to do that by passing laws. It is by law that 
the President does these things. Message 2 that we send is: Here is the 
money we will allow him to collect for the Treasury to pay for all 
those things. Again, it is by law that we authorize the President to 
collect that money for the Treasury--by law.
  There is a slight problem. The things we have instructed the 
President to do by law add up to a lot more expense than the money by 
law we allow him--the executive branch--to collect. So the executive 
branch has had to borrow--and borrow they have--up to $14 trillion.
  If we do not lift the debt ceiling, we send message 3: Do not borrow 
any more. We do not change message 1, and we do not change message 2. 
We just add message 3: Do not borrow any more.
  As anyone can see, there is no way to reconcile those three 
instructions. One, by law, we tell the executive branch to send out all 
these checks and make payments; two, by law, we appropriate too little 
money to pay for what we have told the executive branch to do; and, 
three, by law, we would tell the executive branch of government they 
cannot borrow the difference.
  That creates an irreconcilably mixed signal. Do this, but there is 
not enough money, and do not borrow. This is irresponsible and it is 
bad government. If Congress wants to stop paying the troops, stop 
sending out Social Security checks, shutter agencies of the Federal 
Government or defund Medicare, we should have a proper debate and say 
so and be responsible for it.
  But we have not, and that failure creates an impossible situation for 
the executive branch under our constitutional principles of separation 
of powers. Remember why officials in the executive branch pay the 
soldiers and contractors who support our war efforts. Because Congress 
has told them to. Congress has the power of the purse.
  Remember why the executive branch sends out Social Security checks 
and payments to doctors and hospitals for providing Medicare services. 
Because Congress has told them to. Congress has the power of the purse. 
Remember why the President pays the salaries of Border Patrol agents 
and prison guards and air traffic controllers and FBI agents and staff 
in our veterans hospital. Because Congress has told him to do that. 
Congress holds the power of the purse.
  Who is responsible for not giving the President enough money to pay 
for all of this, for forcing the Treasury to borrow? Congress has set 
how much the executive branch can collect because Congress has that 
power of the purse.
  Now we are telling the President to do all we have told him to do but 
without enough money and do not borrow. We all learned in civics that 
Congress has the power to make laws and the power of the purse. We 
learned that the President has the solemn obligation to faithfully 
execute the laws Congress has passed. That is the basic structure of 
American Government.
  Outside of a few narrow and specific areas that are assigned 
exclusively to the executive or judicial authority by our Constitution, 
the constitutional rule is clear: Congress instructs the President by 
law what to do, and the President faithfully executes those laws.
  But what happens if Congress will not instruct clearly? What happens 
under our Constitution when faithfully executing one law Congress has 
passed requires the President to fail to faithfully execute another 
law? How can the President faithfully execute irreconcilably 
conflicting instructions from Congress?
  As a matter of constitutional principle, there is only one logical 
resolution I can see to this constitutional predicament which Congress 
has created.
  When the matter is sufficiently grave to merit the President's 
attention, and when Congress sends irreconcilable messages for the 
President to faithfully execute, a zone of executive discretion must 
necessarily open to allow the President to make the best decisions for 
the American people in the area where Congress has sent those 
irreconcilable mixed signals.
  Of course, the instant Congress resolves its conflicting signals, 
stops speaking out of both sides of its mouth, and sends a clear 
direction, that zone of executive discretion disappears. Congress has 
the power. Congress makes the laws. Congress controls the purse. 
Whatever fiscal path Congress instructs the President to embark on, he 
must faithfully execute that instruction from Congress.
  But Congress can't put the President in the untenable position of 
having to fail in the ``faithful execution'' of one set of laws in 
order to ``faithfully execute'' another. That is exactly where it seems 
to me we would put the President if we failed to lift the debt ceiling.
  The damage to the country from such failure would be profound. At 
least 40 cents of every Federal dollar would suddenly stop flowing into 
the economy. Considering what would have to be done with the remaining 
60 cents, it is not very likely that the Federal regulatory process 
would keep running. That means every job in the country, depending on a 
Federal permit or Federal approval or a Federal grant or a Federal 
contract, would likely grind to a halt.
  There would be a jump in interest rates that would hit Federal, 
State, municipal, corporate, and family budgets. A lot of other stuff 
might also go wrong, but those three are a bare minimum, and they alone 
would constitute a brutal shock to our struggling economy. The damage 
would be grave.
  Bad enough if Congress instructed the President to do this kind of 
damage, but do we really expect him to do that sort of damage without 
our clear instruction? The scale of this damage lights up in sharp 
contrast to the constitutional predicament Congress would create 
through Congress's failure and inaction to send clear direction.
  The 14th amendment provision, that the public debt of the United 
States of America ``shall not be questioned,'' may or may not be 
controlling here. That specific amendment is not my point. My point is 
a more basic one: How, under our separated powers, when Congress gives 
conflicting directives, does the President ``faithfully execute'' those 
conflicting directives? The conflicting directives problem is 
ultimately a problem for Congress to solve. But until Congress sorts 
itself out and gives a clear directive, all that can be 
constitutionally expected of the President is to do the best he can for 
the country. He cannot ``faithfully execute'' conflicting directives.
  In a sense, conflicting directives by Congress are a form of 
abdication by Congress--an abdication of the duty imposed on Congress 
by article I of the Constitution to make and pass laws. It is only 
reasonable and proper to infer that the constitutional duty of Congress 
to make and pass laws implies that the Congress will make and pass laws 
that are capable of faithful execution by the executive.
  A Congress that cannot meet that standard is in no position to 
complain that the executive branch has usurped its authority. More to 
the point, the constitutional cure is always right in Congress's hands: 
Sort out your differences; give the executive branch the direction it 
is Congress's duty to provide.
  To me, at least, this is a reading of the separation of powers in the 
U.S.

[[Page 12136]]

Constitution that makes sense, that is consistent with the underlying 
principles of that great document, that is practical and workable, and 
that allows for governance rather than paralysis in circumstances when 
congressional dysfunction deprives the President of the clear 
legislative direction that by clear implication is Congress's duty to 
provide.
  I hope before we pitch over the looming fiscal precipice, the 
executive branch gives these views thoughtful consideration.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________