[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12418-12420]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     EXTENSION OF MORNING BUSINESS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request that has 
been cleared by the Republican leader. I ask unanimous consent that 
morning business be extended until 6 p.m., with Senators permitted to 
speak for up to 10 minutes each during that period of time; further, 
that at 6 p.m. I be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized for whatever time I shall consume as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there is a simple reason we are all 
talking about the debt limit increase. It is the fact that this 
President has spent more money than I ever believed would be possible. 
So far, he has spent over $10 trillion in 3 years, and next year, if he 
has his way, he will spend another $3.5 trillion.
  I remember so well back during the Clinton administration--I think it 
was 1995--I was outraged. I came down to this podium. I said: Can you 
believe a President has a budget of $1.5 trillion? And this President 
has spent $10 trillion in this short period. If he had not spent all of 
this money, then we would not be here talking about a debt limit 
increase right now. I hate to sound so partisan about it, but it is 
truly a partisan issue.
  The Democrats have supported his spending, and the Republicans have 
not. The Boehner plan we are going to vote on--they are going to vote 
in the House today, and I think we may have an opportunity to vote here 
later on tonight--may not be perfect. None of the stuff around here is 
perfect. But it is good. It has dramatically improved over the last 12 
hours. It allows the debt limit increase but only after we 
significantly cut spending. Never before have we tied--in the history 
of this country--a debt limit increase to spending cuts, but it is 
something we have to do now that we are so far into this mess.
  The first step to this plan cuts spending by over $900 billion in 
exchange for a $900 billion increase in the debt limit. That will last 
the President until around February. I think it is a fair deal. I would 
like to cut the spending more, but we can only do so much when we only 
control the House.
  The second step of this plan is also good. It establishes a mechanism 
to quickly consider $1.8 trillion in additional spending cuts between 
now and the end of the year.
  It also requires Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution and send to it the States for ratification. This is 
something that just happened in the last 12 hours. People were talking 
about, well, do we really want to do something? A balanced budget 
amendment is the only way it is going to be good for now and for the 
future.

[[Page 12419]]

  We have been talking about this for many years. I remember so well, 
way back in the 1970s, I was in the State Senate in Oklahoma when Carl 
Curtis, a very wonderful gentleman from Nebraska--he was a Senator, had 
been a Senator for quite some time. He was the perennial author of the 
balanced budget amendment, but he never could get it through. He had an 
idea. He came to me in the State of Oklahoma and he said: You know, 
Inhofe, we have been trying to get this balanced budget amendment for a 
long time, and they excuse they use is, you are never going to get the 
required number of States to ratify it.
  He said: I have come up with an idea. We will get three-fourths of 
the States to preratify a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution.
  Well, that is kind of ingenious.
  He said: Why don't you be the first State?
  So I did. We passed, by resolution in my State of Oklahoma, in 1975 I 
believe it was, a ratification of a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution that did not exist. That is kind of neat. We actually got 
up to almost three-fourths of the States, and some of the other forces 
knocked it down. But that is how long we have been doing this.
  But in the intervening years, there hasn't been 1 year where we have 
talked about a balanced budget amendment that it has not come up for 
discussion. Well, this is probably the first time it is a possibility 
because we have never been in the spending situation we are in right 
now--as I said, $10 trillion just 3 years.
  So right now, we have added that in the last 12 hours. If that 
legislation passes, the President will get an additional debt limit 
increase. So we are tying it to behavioral patterns in spending and 
austerity. That is a smart way to do it.
  This proposal would keep the debt limit and the spending debate at 
the forefront of the national conversation. We must have this 
conversation. If we do not, we will be worrying about things a lot 
worse than an increase in the debt limit. The President wants nothing 
to do with it. He just wants a blank check to increase the debt so he 
can continue to raise the deficit. Why do I think this? Well, if we 
undid all of his policies today, the policies that so rapidly increased 
spending and are killing our economy, then we would not need a debt 
limit increase.
  The President's spending addiction is the only reason we are here 
talking about a debt limit increase. This is unilateral. This is the 
President--his budget. It is not a group of people, it is him. A lot of 
people are asking: Does anyone in Washington really care? One guy 
doesn't--the President of the United States. His actions are what we 
are talking about today. We are looking at failed policies.
  Referring to the chart, first is ObamaCare. We are talking right now 
about trying to get something like $800 billion in these negotiations 
so we can increase the debt limit. In one fell swoop, ObamaCare was 
$1.5 trillion. This plan costs over the current decade, when fully 
implemented--the 10-year cost nearly doubles to $2.5 trillion. This law 
dramatically expands government's influence in the health care sector, 
and together with Medicare and Medicaid, it will result in the 
financial ruin of this great country.
  Second, we have the failed stimulus plan. We all know it didn't meet 
any of President Obama's expectations. It met all of mine because I 
didn't expect much. It didn't help the economy. It expanded the size of 
government. Even though we were opposed to it--I am among the most 
conservative Members, and Senator Boxer is a very proud liberal. She 
and I together tried to have an amendment to take some of the $800 
billion and put a large amount into infrastructure.
  Right now, we have to have roads and highways and bridges. We are 
supposed to do that here. Of course, they didn't do it. Only 3 percent 
of the $800 billion went for that type of infrastructure. Over $1 
trillion of this amount, once you add in the costs, that is how we get 
up to $1 trillion, the cost of interest we have to pay for extra 
spending. That is a total of $2.5 trillion.
  So we have the stimulus of $1 trillion and ObamaCare of $1.5 
trillion. Then there is the President's relentless pursuit for 
regulation. Whatever the President hasn't been able to do 
legislatively, he is attempting to do through regulation--most of it 
through the EPA. Cap and trade is a good example. We have debated that 
since the Kyoto Treaty was up. Clearly, the votes are not there. Right 
now, in this Chamber, we would not get 25 votes for cap and trade. Yet 
everybody is talking about how it is important to have cap and trade. 
Now he is trying to do it through regulation. That alone would cost the 
American people $300 trillion to $400 trillion a year--not just one 
shot; that is a year.
  There is the boiler MACT legislation, which is maximum attainable 
controlled technology. In other words, what can we do? What do we have 
the technology to do to stop emissions? We don't have it. But he has 
that, and that was billions of dollars a year.
  Ozone regulations: He was going to announce this week a tightening of 
the ozone regulations that would put 608 of our counties in America out 
of attainment. I am from Oklahoma, and it would put 15 of our counties 
out of attainment. They cannot recruit industry in those counties, and 
they cannot hire people, and many will have to go out of business 
because of the ozone regulations. It is not, in my opinion, legal the 
way he is doing it because he is supposed to address it every 5 years. 
It was done in 2008 on new technology, which is a requirement. Today, 
he is trying to do it using the same 2008 technology. Again, it is 
extremely expensive. That casts a tremendous cloud of uncertainty over 
the business sector, and that is a key reason they announced today that 
the economy is growing at 1.3 percent a year. That is terrible, 
especially when we consider the recession we are in.
  As a general rule, economies recover rapidly when coming off of a 
financial recession. It is not unusual for countries to grow at 4, 5, 6 
percent for the years following a recession. But we can't even get 
around 2 percent. That has a huge negative effect on the economy and 
the government. The President's regulatory agenda is the reason our 
unemployment rate is above 9 percent, and it is the reason our economy 
is growing so slowly. Because of this, our tax receipts are way off 
their historic levels. If we can get the economy to grow faster at a 
sustained period of time, the effect on tax revenues is unbelievable. 
This is pretty well accepted. I always said that every 1 percent 
increase in the economy equals about $50 million in new revenue. That 
is the way to grow revenue.
  Certainly, President Kennedy knew it, President Reagan knew it, and 
so the best way to increase revenue and get the economy moving again 
is, of course, to increase growth. If the economy grows at a rate that 
is 1 percent faster than presently forecast for the next decade, 
Federal tax revenues will grow by $3 trillion.
  I conservatively estimate that the cost to Federal revenues of the 
President's regulatory agenda has been $1 trillion. So we have, through 
his regulatory behavior, another $1 trillion. That brings our total to 
$3.5 trillion.
  Then in there is an increase in nonsecurity discretionary spending, 
which has added up to $500 billion in spending.
  There is the expanded and increased spending on unemployment 
benefits, which is also a consequence of his regulatory policies that 
have killed the economic recovery, and the cost of that is another $500 
billion.
  Together, all these failed policies add up to a $4.5 trillion 
contribution to the Federal deficit.
  Since Inauguration Day, the debt has increased by $3.7 trillion. It 
is on pace to increase by more than $5 trillion by the end of the 
President's first term. If we undid all of these failed policies, we 
would not find ourselves in the situation we are in today. We would not 
be debating this because it would not be necessary. It is because of 
the President that we are even talking about raising the debt ceiling. 
If we could undo the President's policies, we would not need to raise 
the debt ceiling at all.
  Where is the President? He has been totally absent from this entire 
debt

[[Page 12420]]

conversation. Today, he is meeting with terrorists from Cote d'Ivoire, 
and he is probably going to play golf in the afternoon--I don't know. 
But he is not participating. He doesn't seem to care about debating the 
debt ceiling. He wants to raise the deficit. If he did care, he would 
see the need for the Boehner plan, endorse it, and sign it into law. I 
guess that is too much to ask.
  We are going to have a chance to do that tonight. They are going to 
have a vote in the House around 6 o'clock on the Boehner plan, and it 
will come over here, and we will have an opportunity to do that. If the 
Democrats support us--a handful of them--we will be able to get that 
passed. We will wait until tonight to see what happens.

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