[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12148-12151]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I have spoken several times over the last 
several weeks with regard to the issue at hand. Clearly, the time 
continues to escape us, and the day of reckoning is coming in regard to 
the debt ceiling issue. I have said from the very beginning that in my 
view it would be irresponsible not to raise the debt ceiling, but it 
would be as irresponsible if not more so to raise the debt ceiling 
without reducing the spending, getting our books more in balance, and 
moving us in the right direction toward a balanced budget in the 
future. I recognize this cannot be accomplished overnight, and I 
recognize there are those who bring different points of view and 
perspectives to the Senate floor. This is a body of people who 
represent individuals who live in all 50 States and have points of view 
and philosophies and backgrounds that are different than perhaps the 
constituents I represent from the State of Kansas.
  I have been a strong supporter of the legislation entitled ``cut, 
cap, and balance.'' I actually believe it is not just cut, cap, and 
balance; it is cut, cap, balance, and grow. We could do so much for our 
country both in the fiscal sense and with the idea that we could better 
pay our bills if the revenues are increased by putting people to work, 
by creating a climate in which people could find jobs, people could 
improve their situation in regard to their jobs, and in the process of 
doing that the revenues increase to the Federal Treasury.
  It was back in the days of President Clinton that we came the closest 
to having our books balanced. While there was spending restraint and 
disagreement among Republicans and Democrats about new spending 
programs or bigger government, in my view, the real reason we had a 
balanced budget was because the economy was growing.
  So I again ask my colleagues to pay attention to what I believe was 
the message of the 2010 election: It is the economy. It is the desire 
of people to have a better life, to save money for their children's 
education, to save money for their retirement, and to be satisfied that 
the job they have today is the job they will have tomorrow.
  I believe there is much that we can do with regard to the regulatory 
environment, making the Tax Code fair and certain, issues regarding 
access to credit, a trade policy that will allow us to increase 
exports--both agricultural and manufactured goods--and a trade policy 
that reduces our reliance on foreign energy and gives us greater 
control over its costs. But the time has come for us to reach an 
agreement, and we anxiously await what action the House of 
Representatives may take.
  In light of this point in time, I would like to share with my 
colleagues in the Senate an e-mail I received from one of my 
constituents, a Kansan named Gina Reynolds. Gina is from Shawnee. She 
expresses this point of view I think very appropriately for where we 
are today. In asking Gina if I could share with you what she wrote to 
me, she indicated this was the very first time she had ever written a 
Member of Congress. Here is what she had to say that I hope we will 
take into account. Again, while we bring philosophies and viewpoints 
and approaches to government to Washington, DC, there is an opportunity 
for common sense and good judgment to prevail.
  Here is what she says:

       I firmly believe the United States needs to start living 
     within our means. However, I am frustrated beyond belief with 
     the inability of Congress to do their jobs and ensure that we 
     do not throw the country back into recession. While I and my 
     husband are employed, we feel lucky to have jobs. We work 
     hard, pay our taxes and try to raise our children the right 
     way. It absolutely boggles my mind that we cannot come to a 
     compromise on the debt ceiling issue that is so critical to 
     the financial markets and the average American citizen.
       For it is us, the middle class, that will suffer the most; 
     from lost jobs, to lost 401Ks, and lost savings. We need real 
     tax reform, real entitlement reform (for even though I am 42 
     years old, I do not believe I will ever see a dime of Social 
     Security) and real spending cuts. Congress has had months to 
     work on this issue, and now the time is to act in the best 
     interests of the People, not the political interest groups, 
     not some ideology.

  It is sad to say, but I honestly don't know if my children will have 
a better future than me. I know that there are a lot of tough decisions 
yet to be made regarding spending and taxes, but we

[[Page 12149]]

only make it harder by defaulting on any of our country's obligations. 
I am fiscally conservative and generally vote Republican, but I do not 
blindly follow any one path. I try to use my vote wisely and pledge my 
loyalty to my God and my country, not a political party.
  I believe we have the greatest country on Earth, but our inability to 
compromise, to stop acting like spoiled children, saddens me. The 
Founding Fathers were able to compromise and write a document that has 
stood the test of time for 235 years. Can we not now do the same? 
Please do the right thing for the American People, the ones frustrated 
and angry and hurt by this self-produced impasse.
  I thank Gina Reynolds for her message to me and Members of the 
Senate, for taking the time to communicate with her Senator, with me as 
a Member of Congress. I think she in many ways expresses a conservative 
yet commonsense point of view so many Kansans have.
  I often think too many times we are caught in a circumstance that we 
find an inability to resolve. Sometimes we are trapped by our political 
party. In my view, while we ought to have strong opinions and ought to 
have a solid philosophy, we need to make certain that we are motivated 
for the right reasons and that the good of America is at the forefront 
of our minds.
  I indicated in my maiden speech when I spoke here on the Senate floor 
4 months ago as a new Senator that when I need a perspective as to what 
we need to do here--and sometimes we get bogged down in those things 
that are a lot less important--I will put my walking shoes on, my 
running shoes, and I will walk up to the Lincoln Memorial. You go by 
the World War II Memorial, you walk on past the Vietnam Wall, and you 
walk by the Korean War Memorial, and in each one of those locations, I 
am reminded that no American memorialized in those settings fought and 
died, sacrificed for their country for purposes of Republicans or 
Democrats but because they believed they had an obligation to serve our 
country and because they believed that in that service, they had the 
opportunity to make life better for their family and for future 
generations of Americans. We need to remind ourselves that we need that 
perspective. It is not a fight between the Republicans and Democrats. 
It is about doing what is right for America. We owe it to those who 
sacrificed in military service for our country, and particularly those 
who have died in that service, we will do what is right. I know my 
colleagues share that point of view. I think from time to time we have 
to be reminded about what the priorities have to be, what the focus 
must be.
  Again, I appreciate the sentiments expressed by this Kansan and would 
indicate that we, as American citizens, and certainly me, as a Member 
of the Senate, our primary responsibility as citizens is to make 
certain we pass on to the next generation of Americans this country 
called the United States of America in which we maintain the freedoms 
and liberties guaranteed by our Constitution and we allow the next 
generation of Americans, our children, our grandchildren, and young men 
and women yet to be born, people we don't even know, the opportunity to 
pursue the American dream.
  I think this Kansas constituent of mine expressed those sentiments 
very well, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to see that 
we do what is right for the future of our Nation and that this next 
generation of Americans can pursue that which we all idolize and 
believe in, the American dream.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, let me, first of all, compliment my 
friend and colleague, the Senator from Kansas, for his comments and for 
his approach. He made a few comments we haven't heard much of in this 
Chamber or in the other Chamber in the last few days. He said before he 
was a Democrat and before he was a Republican, he was an American. I 
want to compliment him on those sentiments, and I want to rise in that 
same vein because whether you are somebody from Kansas or somebody from 
North Carolina or folks I hear from Virginia who keep saying to me: Why 
can't you guys get this thing done? Why can't you both be willing to 
give a little to put our country first? As somebody who has had the 
honor of serving as Governor of Virginia and somebody who served as a 
businessman for 20 years, I never thought that I would be standing on 
the floor of the Senate 6 days, 5\1/2\ days away from the United States 
of America potentially defaulting on our obligations. Yet most of the 
debate and, Lord knows, almost all of the press conferences have been 
less about solutions and more about who is to blame.
  Whether they are sitting in the gallery or they are watching at home 
or, like most Americans, trying to get through an unbearably hot 
summer, they wonder who are these folks they hired to get the people's 
business done.
  I have been involved with a group of Senators over the last 9 months 
who have done something I didn't think was extraordinary, but 
unfortunately today is pretty extraordinary. There is a group of 
Democratic and Republican Senators who have said the most important 
issue we face in our country is to get our debt and deficit under 
control, and who have said that the only way we can get that under 
control is to sit together for hours on end, reason together, argue, 
and do something as basically American as compromise.
  After months and months of going back and forth, last Tuesday, when 
we revealed the so-called plan--which, frankly, the Gang of 6 has built 
upon the work of a previous year's work of Democrats, Republicans, 
Independents, and business leaders, the President's deficit 
commission--a remarkable thing happened for a couple of days in this 
body. Instead of everybody coming out and saying why this couldn't 
happen, they said: Hey, this isn't perfect, but this would actually 
lower our deficit by close to $4 trillion, take on tax reform, take on 
entitlement reform, and cut spending. It might just be a path out.
  Well, that lasted a couple of days, and then we got back to who was 
going to score points in the next 24-hour news segment.
  Well, I desperately hope and pray that at this moment in our country 
we will rise to the task and make sure, with the eyes of not only the 
Nation but the world on us, that we do our basic job. Let's make sure 
the United States of America doesn't default next Tuesday.
  The only way I think we are going to get there is if we lower the 
rhetoric, lower the finger-pointing, and recognize it is going to take 
ideas from both sides. It is going to take a change in attitude from 
some.
  There is a Congressman who gave a press conference sometime in the 
last day or two who paraphrased Winston Churchill. He said:

       We're going to fight you on the beaches. We're going to 
     fight you at sea. We're going to fight you in the air to make 
     structural changes in the way this place known as Washington, 
     DC, operates.

  Who is the ``you'' he is going to fight? Is he going to fight people 
who say maybe America and Americans want us to actually work together 
and compromise? I mean, this kind of sentiment goes beyond the pale in 
a moment when our Nation is in this kind of crisis.
  There has been a lot of talk recently--particularly coming from the 
other body--that the only way to solve this problem is an amendment, a 
constitutional amendment. Well, I would point out 49 States have that 
kind of amendment. They have to balance their books. My State, 
Virginia, and the Presiding Officer's State, North Carolina, meet that 
goal. There are an awful lot of States that have that kind of amendment 
in place. I don't know what kind of accounting they use, but I have not 
heard many folks point to the California State budget and say: That is 
a balanced budget.
  So some kind of process argument isn't going to solve the problem. We 
have to make the hard choices. We have to cut spending. We have to 
reform our entitlements. We have to reform our Tax Code to generate 
additional revenues.

[[Page 12150]]

  The numbers don't lie. We are spending at an all-time high, 25 
percent of our GDP. We are collecting revenues at only 15 percent of 
GDP. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out any time our 
Nation's budget has been in relative balance is when we have been with 
spending and revenues at 19.5 percent to 20.5 percent. Why can't we 
come together to put a plan in place that does that?
  Folks who are watching are saying: Well, there is actually a plan. 
More than one-third of the Senate has said: We will be with you--about 
an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. But instead we are going 
back and forth, ping-pong, who is going to have which plan? Who is 
going to win each day? It is also pretty remarkable at this moment in 
time--I don't know who this Congressman is, but when we have roughly 
one-fifth of the House who at least on record saying they will never 
vote to increase the debt limit, I wonder when they took the oath to 
uphold the laws of our country, which said we have to pay our bills, 
how that commitment matches with those promises or those political 
positions.
  My sense is they want to have an amendment to the Constitution. What 
they are advocating, this we will never change, our way or the highway 
approach, the amendment they ought to talk about is basically 
restructuring our whole Constitution and turning our government into a 
parliamentary system. There are a lot of places around that if you win 
an election, you get to choose the chief executive. You get to control 
the legislature. You can pass anything you want. Yet these very same 
folks are the ones who say they want to support the Constitution.
  Well, the Constitution and the genius of our Constitution was the 
fact that the Founders said the most basic American principle was 
checks and balances. We have a House, we have a President, and actually 
they have to work together. Somehow the attitude of some of these 
Members in the House, do it our way or let's drive our country over the 
cliff, is dramatically as un-American as anything I have ever seen.
  At the same time, we hear other Members who say: Maybe we just need a 
little more economic shock to make us do the right thing. What are 
these folks thinking of? The stock market closed down 200 points today. 
It has been down about 400 points this week. There are an awful lot of 
Americans who only now are starting to recover from the financial 
crisis of 2 years ago. There are an awful lot of retirees who saw their 
401(k)s plummet 2 years ago, who slowly have seen that nest egg that is 
going to get them through rough times recover.
  Now 400 points--how much more stock market decline do we need before 
we all have the courage to do the right thing, 1,000 points? Do we need 
to put another 1 million Americans out of work? Do we need to throw 
more people out of their homes because of the tax increase that will 
result--the real increase that will result with the rise in interest 
rates that will happen next week?
  There are others who say: Let's do it short term. Let's kick the can 
down the road for a short while, something that is being discussed in 
the House. It doesn't matter whether it is Democrat or Republican. It 
matters because that approach will result in a lowering of our debt 
rating. I know people's eyes glaze over when they hear about debt 
ratings. Unfortunately, debt ratings matter--and we are the only 
country in the world with a AAA debt rating. That means we are kind of 
the gold standard.
  If we have that debt rating reduced, it is not only a black eye for 
America, it not only means that what we have to pay in interest rates 
will go up, not just for government but if you have a school bond, if 
you have a State bond, the prices are going to go up. You have an auto 
loan, a home mortgage, you have a student loan, you are a business 
trying to expand, the cost of that is all going to go up.
  The very same folks who say they will never look at raising more 
revenues don't seem to mind at all that if we have to have an interest 
rate rise because of a default or downgrade of our debt, doesn't that 
take more money out of Americans' pockets? I just don't get it.
  Frankly, as the Presiding Officer knows, I have been pretty obsessed 
about this issue for months on end. I hope that we will check our 
Democratic and Republican hats and go with what my colleague, the 
Senator from Kansas, said and recognize when we get out of bed tomorrow 
morning we get out of bed as Americans, not as Democrats or 
Republicans; that we not only get over the debt limit, which, 
hopefully, through some convoluted process we will, but we also 
recognize that getting past August 2 doesn't mean, OK, we are done, 
everybody go have a nice August. All that does is buy us a bit of time 
to decide whether we are going to come back to the really hard issues 
of not only how we start with some spending cuts, which will be part of 
our down payment, but how we really make sure the entitlement 
programs--important to so many of us on both sides of the aisle, but 
particularly on this side of the aisle--are actually there 10, 20, 30 
years from now.
  The notion that they are not going to change, that they cannot 
continue to be sustainable at the current rate, it is not Democratic or 
Republican.
  Thank goodness a lot of us are living a lot longer. When I was a kid 
there were 15, 16 people paying in for every Social Security retiree. 
Now there are 3. We have to make sure that for my kids, your kids, that 
there is Social Security in their framework. At the same time we have 
to have our colleagues on the Republican side recognize that we have to 
reform our Tax Code in a way that makes it simpler, flatter, and, yes, 
generates some additional revenue.
  The only way we are going to get there, if and when we get past this 
August 2 date, is if we combine that effort with long-term debt 
reduction. I am more than open to any valid, balanced comprehensive 
bipartisan plan that is around.
  For the effort of the so-called Gang of 6, a third of the Senate 
said, yes, this is worth considering. It isn't perfect, I can assure 
you. Some would even say, from some of the descriptions I have heard, 
that it may not meet all of those. But I will tell my colleagues three 
things it is: It is comprehensive, bipartisan, and, under any analysis, 
it does what our country desperately needs: It starts to drive our 
debt-to-GDP ratio in the right direction, which is a fancy way of 
saying we can maintain our books on a path to lead us to fiscal 
stability. Frankly, what that would also allow us to do is get back to 
what we should be spending our time on, which is creating growth in 
this economy and starting to unleash American creativity and 
innovation. But that is not going to happen if we spend all of our time 
pointing fingers back and forth about how we got here or which short-
term plan best meets the short-term interests of the next 5 or 6 days.
  I, for one, believe the plan Senator Reid has laid out is not 
perfect, but it gives us the time to deal with this debt and deficit 
problem in a serious way. It gives us the ability to ensure that we 
don't have a credit downgrade. Unfortunately, the plan being debated in 
the House right now may have some merits, but the one thing that is 
clear is that it will lead to a downgrade--not my words, but the words 
of all the rating agencies. Whether we like them or not, they are the 
folks who set that standard.
  Again, I urge folks who are making statements such as ``We are going 
to fight you on the beaches, we are going to fight you at sea, we are 
going to fight you in the air,'' to consider your fellow Americans 
here. If you don't like our system of government, then be honest and 
propose a change to a parliamentary system. If you do honor and respect 
the Constitution which we all took an oath to uphold, recognize that it 
is a Constitution that puts in place checks and balances to have us all 
work together, give a little, and recognize that when we get out of bed 
in the morning, we are not a Democrat or a Republican but an American 
first and foremost.
  I hope and pray we will find the path through these next 5 days and 
that we won't do the unthinkable. I have said

[[Page 12151]]

on a couple of occasions--I am sure it will come back and bite me--that 
if we don't do this we should all get fired, because the fact is the 
most basic promise we make is to uphold the laws and rules of our 
country. Frankly, I can't think of anything that is more 
quintessentially American than making sure we pay our bills and that we 
honor our obligations. So let's get that done, and then let's work 
together to make sure we put in place the long-term, comprehensive, 
bipartisan approach that is needed so we can get this Nation back on 
the right fiscal path but, more importantly, back on the right path to 
ensure that everybody gets that fair shot for that economic growth we 
all seek so much.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COBURN. I ask to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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