[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12297-12298]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I follow my colleague who mentioned 
our need to prevent default. The need we have--the reason we are here 
and why there will be a vote in the House and the Senate tonight--has 
to do with the need of our Nation to prevent default, and also, of 
course, the need to cut spending. Our problem is that we spend too 
much. Americans all around the country are calling in to Members of the 
House and Senate and saying: Hey, let's get things under control and 
let's cut the spending.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle, I am happy to see with the 
proposals being brought forth, are beginning to understand what my 
constituents in Wyoming have known from the very beginning: Americans 
are not taxed too little, Washington spends too much. But the President 
seems to be more concerned about the next election than about the next 
generation of Americans.
  I was astonished last week when the President was addressing the 
Nation and he talked about what his bottom line was in this whole 
debate. He said:

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

  This was the President of the United States saying this:

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

  Since 1962, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times. On average, 
the debt ceiling is usually for about 8 months. But now the folks on 
the other side, and the President, are calling for the largest debt 
ceiling increase in history and it is designed to last a lot longer 
than 8 months--almost for a year and a half, as the President wants it 
to go into 2013; and specifically, as he said, through the next 
election.
  The President's Treasury Secretary has essentially said the same 
thing. He said:

       We have to lift this threat of default from the economy 
     for, you know, for the next 18 months. We have to take that 
     threat off the table through the election.

  Well, if the President and the Treasury Secretary get their way, they 
will be able to ignore the single biggest threat to our national 
security until after the next election. As the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff has said: The greatest threat to our national security 
is the debt.
  The President could have gotten what he wanted last week--which is an 
increase in the debt ceiling beyond the election--when the House passed 
its cut, cap, and balance legislation. I was one of the original 
cosponsors of that in the Senate. I was in favor of it, supported it, 
and continue to support that. Instead, the President issued a veto 
threat. He told Democrats in the Senate to kill it. After all, they are 
still the majority party.
  The Senate Democrats, I believe tonight, will have the power to save 
our country's finances once again. They can do that by passing the 
Boehner plan--pass it through this body and send it to the President's 
desk for him to sign. Instead, the majority leader has said no 
Democrat--not one--will support this plan. It has what the President 
wants. It raises the debt ceiling. It lets us, as a nation, avoid 
default. But it doesn't take us beyond the election.
  It is interesting. It would seem support by the Democrats for this 
plan would clearly signal their desire to continue working to rein in 
Washington's wasteful spending, to get our fiscal house in order. But 
that doesn't seem to be the signal the President wants to send. The 
Boehner plan is the only plan currently on the table that can get 
through the House of Representatives and protect us from default.
  Republicans have put forward plan after plan. Democrats and the White 
House have done nothing but criticize from the sidelines. The White 
House Press Secretary has even said:

       Leadership is not proposing a plan for the sake of having 
     it voted up or down and likely voted down.

  That is what he said. He said the Democrats have even sent a letter 
asking for a long-term debt increase. But how can we have a long-term 
debt increase if they have no plan to get there? The White House 
Secretary claimed recently the President's plan is well-known. He said:

       There is no plan that has been offered, certainly in the 
     last several months, about which more detail is known.

  I say: Where are the details? I want to know how I could get this 
well-known plan and share it with my constituents back home in Wyoming. 
How did the CBO score this plan that, according to the President's 
Press Secretary, is a plan about which so much

[[Page 12298]]

detail is known? Where is it? What is the CBO score? Where is the text 
of it? How can we read it and bring it here and discuss or debate it?
  These things don't exist--neither a CBO score nor a text--because the 
White House has continually refused to release a plan, even with pleas 
coming from Congress and from the media. I can understand why the 
President might be reluctant, since the time he last brought a budget 
to this body it was defeated 97 to 0. Not one Democrat voted in support 
of what the President had proposed--not one. No one supported the 
President's budget plan.
  There is a Reid plan being proposed. According to the Congressional 
Budget Office, the Reid plan cuts about $2.2 trillion from our budget 
over the next 10 years. But if you dig a little deeper, you find these 
so-called cuts are accounting gimmicks. The House Budget Committee 
looked at the Reid plan and their assessment was not very flattering. 
Let me quote from that assessment:

       Reid's plan relies on the inaccurate assumption that surge-
     level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled to 
     continue over the next decade.

  No one in America, and I would hope no one in the White House, 
believes that surge level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled 
to continue over the next decade. But the plan endorsed by the 
President relies on such an inaccurate assumption. Why is he trying to 
mislead the American people? The Democrats are claiming to save money 
by cutting spending that was never, ever going to be spent in the first 
place. This is the strongest possible proof the White House is not 
realistically dealing with the situation and is not, in my opinion, 
serious about realistically and reliably cutting the debt.
  In fact, even if you assume the Reid plan would work, it wouldn't cut 
spending fast enough to keep up with the spending the President is 
doing. The President wants to borrow at least $2.4 trillion to get him 
through the election--to get him into 2013. But the last draft of the 
floor plan we are going to be asked to discuss cuts $2.2 trillion over 
10 years while raising the debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion. It would take 
over a decade to pay back what this President wants to borrow over the 
next year and a half. So we would still be borrowing at a much higher 
rate than we are cutting. That is not responsible leadership. 
Responsible leadership would be to recognize the solution to our 
country's financial woes, and that solution is to avoid default, while 
consistently cutting spending and balancing our books the way that 
families do. That solution would require us to keep working until we 
get it right. That is the theory at the heart of Speaker Boehner's 
plan.
  The President talks about wanting a balanced approach. That means 
different things to different people. When the President is talking 
about wanting more taxes, I think what Americans want is actually a 
balanced budget. Speaker Boehner will bring us one step closer to that 
balance by forcing a vote on the balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution. I look forward to voting for a balanced budget amendment 
to the Constitution.
  We live under a constitution in the State of Wyoming, and from the 
very beginning we have balanced our budget. As a result, we have excess 
money and scholarships available to all students to study at our 
universities and community colleges, because year after year we live 
within our means.
  The President talked a bit about public opinion being important in 
this debate. Yet he is opposed to a balanced budget constitutional 
amendment. In a recent Sachs/Mason-Dixon poll, 65 percent of Americans 
say they support a balanced budget constitutional amendment. So where 
is the respect for that public opinion? The Boehner plan works because 
its authors have listened to the American people.
  The White House refuses to seriously confront the problems facing our 
Nation, and Democrats are trying to shut down the only plan that can 
pass the House and save us from default. I am alarmed at their denial 
about how to solve these problems. The President must not veto America 
into default. It is time we pass a real plan that cuts spending and 
avoids default. We don't need to wait until midnight on August 1 or 
August 2. We can do it, and we should do it today.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

                          ____________________