[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12631-12658]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 ESTABLISHING THE COMMISSION ON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT PROCESSING 
                           DELAYS--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 2 
o'clock shall be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders 
or their designees, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 
minutes each.
  Who yields time? If no one yields time, the time will be charged 
equally between the parties.
  The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask 
that the time under the quorum call be equally divided between both 
sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BEGICH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BEGICH. Madam President, I have come to the floor and talked many 
times of my constituents back home in Alaska and the importance of 
ensuring we have a balanced approach in how we deal with this 
incredible debt crisis we are in and how we manage to create some 
certainty not only for today but in the years to come. We want to make 
sure we not only create certainty but we also do what we can to protect 
working families, honor our commitment to seniors and veterans, and let 
our small businesses know that we stand behind them, we want them to be 
successful, and we want to create some certainty out there so they can 
expand their operations and opportunity.
  I am sitting here in Washington, DC, and it is whatever temperature 
it is outside right now--maybe 100 degrees, with 80 or 90 percent 
humidity--and sometimes I think we could have gotten this done quicker 
if we had just turned off the air-conditioning. We probably could have 
gotten things done quicker, with better results. But we are where we 
are. We are in the last 24 hours or so before we have to make a 
decision as to what to do with the proposals, the solutions that have 
been presented.
  I am here, but I wish I were home, to be frank with you. This last 
weekend, my son was celebrating his ninth birthday, and as a parent 
every birthday is huge and makes a difference. I know the Presiding 
Officer knows that very well. So while I am here, they were enjoying 
life, and it made me think about a lot of things.
  I wanted to put this poster up because I think it is a great poster. 
I got this text during a committee meeting. This is my son, who just 
turned 9, with a real fish. For those who can't see it, it is the same 
height as he is. He caught this fish with his mother a few days ago. It 
is a 40-pounder king salmon. It is what we call a real fish. We 
consider this small in comparison to some others we catch.
  But when I got this text--and that is what is so great about 
technology: He sends me little notes and comments during meetings and 
wants to make sure I am connected to what he is doing back home. But 
this debate we are having--this moment in time--to figure out where we 
are going is about the Jacobs and the other children of his age and 
those not yet born. It is about what we are going to do for them. The 
Presiding Officer and I have already experienced and enjoyed many years 
of our life, and hopefully we will enjoy many more, but really it is 
about Jacob and the other children.
  When I go back home, I get a chance to talk with the kids. I am sure 
the Presiding Officer has done the same, where you go into an 
elementary school--I know the Presiding Officer was a teacher in Sunday 
preschool--you go in and have conversations with the kids, and in their 
own way, which is sometimes very brutally honest, they tell you all 
about what they think is going on. And I will give a quote here in a 
second of what my son said to me. He doesn't understand everything we 
are doing, but he understands it is an intense time here because I am 
not home. I am not with him. So he knows it is important, what we are 
doing here, as we debate this solution and what will be the next step.
  Is what we have come up with a perfect solution? No. Are there some 
issues about which I am still concerned? Yes. But does it move us down 
a path to start dealing with the spending, the deficit, and the debt, 
creating certainty and protecting those who need protection, such as 
our seniors and our veterans? Yes.
  This proposal produces about a $1 trillion downpayment on our deficit 
and debt. It lays out a process by which we can achieve another $1.5 
trillion in debt reduction if this joint committee can come back with a 
proposal.
  In the process of all this, we will create certainty in the 
marketplace. We will create certainty for that small businessperson who 
has been thinking about expanding their business. They can do that 
because the markets will respond positively.
  We will create certainty for the individual who was thinking about 
buying a house or a car because now there will be stable rates.
  For those who are putting money aside for the education of their 
young family, as I have been putting aside for Jacob for his college, 
we will know now that the markets are better and safer, the bonds we 
invest in are safer, and our children's future is a little more secure 
if we do the right thing over the next 24 hours, still knowing it is 
not the perfect deal.
  The proposal evenly splits cutting between half in discretionary and 
half in Pentagon waste, ensuring we still are a secure nation and 
protecting our defenses but cutting what I would consider opportunities 
within the Pentagon to reduce.
  As we sit here today, I think about Jacob's future and the futures of 
all the kids I see back home. There is an enormous amount of 
opportunity for the pages sitting here in this room, for the kids here 
during the summer running around Washington, DC, and seeing these great 
monuments. That is what we are doing here--guaranteeing those 
opportunities for this generation and future generations. That is our 
task, making decisions based on that, not on what our next election 
cycle will bring should we get elected or not get elected or will this 
look good or not look good on a brochure. Those who have that kind of 
thinking are not about this country and are not supporting what this 
country is all about.

[[Page 12632]]

I think about all the issues in front of us, and there has been no more 
critical issue during my almost 3 years in the Senate that I have had 
to deal with.
  Is there a component missing in this solution? Yes. We are not 
dealing with the tax cuts the millionaires and billionaires received 
and benefited from when they really didn't need them. We are not 
dealing with the loopholes, the scams and shams people have taken 
advantage of with our tax structure. We haven't resolved the question 
of fairness in our tax structure so that the middle class doesn't 
continue to carry the burden. We have not created a tax reform strategy 
that creates an opportunity for us to be more competitive in this world 
economy. We know that is still a big piece of this.
  I am hopeful that the joint committee, made up of Democrats and 
Republicans, will present to us a plan before Thanksgiving and we can 
then sit down and look at that plan and realize it is an addition to 
what we are doing--hopefully in the next 24 hours--in creating more 
fairness.
  I know the amazing thing about here--and I know, Madam President, you 
know--this place is an unbelievable place for media. We breathe, they 
report it. We sneeze, they report it. There will be two opinions on how 
we sneeze--maybe three, maybe four--because that is how it works here. 
They feed on every word we say, everything we do, and I know some are 
out there bragging that this is a great deal because it just does cuts, 
and it doesn't deal with revenues. Then there are others who say it 
doesn't deal with revenues or it hurts Social Security. We can tell 
when that occurs, that is probably not a bad plan because there is so 
much that people don't like of each element or there are elements we 
don't like. But we do need to deal with revenues at some point.
  We will need to deal with a tax reform policy that brings balance and 
fairness where the middle class does not continue to keep holding the 
bag for everything.
  There is a proposal Senator Wyden, Senator Coats, and myself have 
proposed. It is bipartisan. It is tax reform. It creates 
simplification, creates more corporate competitive rates, reduces the 
rates down for individuals but gets rid of a pile of these loopholes, 
these scams and shams that people have taken advantage of so they don't 
have to pay their fair share for the services and the benefits we all 
receive in this great country: the roads we drive on, the schools our 
kids go to, the defense of this country, the border protection of this 
country, the safest food in the world--you name it, we have it. That is 
why we are the envy of every country in the world as a place to be and 
raise your family.
  But as I look at this picture--and, yes, I am doing a little 
marketing of Alaska salmon. I would be remiss if I didn't do that. I 
think about Jacob's future and what he has and what his potential is. 
But I also think about his dream--because as he celebrated his 
birthday, my father-in-law passed the same day. When he was a young man 
working in Connecticut, he bought a house in New Haven as he went off 
to Vietnam and served his country. He was a colonel as he retired in 
the Army, and then he sold that home to buy what is in the background 
here, his cabin for his grandson to enjoy the fruits of his life and 
what he enjoyed of his American dream. That is what this is about.
  It is about making sure this generation and future generations can 
also have that American dream; that they have choices and options not 
restricted by politics or the financial condition of the country but 
have huge opportunities.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
  Mr. BEGICH. I ask for an additional 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BEGICH. I think about where we are today.
  My son has been watching this because I am not home. He has a phrase 
he likes to use, even though it is not the perfect deal, but it does 
create balance. He will say at times: ``Suck it up, buttercup.'' I 
don't know what show he saw that on, but all I know is that is his 
phrase. That is what we are going to have to do here. It is not 
perfect, but we are going to have to do what is right for the next 
generation and future generations.
  Madam President, we have huge opportunities and challenges ahead of 
us. We have an economy that needs additional work to ensure we are 
creating every opportunity to create jobs in this country for 
everybody, no matter who they are, where they live, what age they are. 
We need to make sure we continue to be the respected country my father-
in-law fought for in Vietnam, my son hopes for, we hope for, and future 
generations hope for.
  So today I come down because I think we are close to resolving the 
issue that has stretched us almost to the brink. Hopefully, as we get 
beyond this issue we will have the ability as Democrats and as 
Republicans to look, first, as Americans, as Alaskans, as North 
Carolinians--wherever we are from--and focus on what is good for this 
country.
  We will hear more over the next 24 hours about the details and more 
of the deal. I have heard a lot of it already, but the public will 
learn. There will be pieces we don't like. There will be pieces about 
which I will get phone calls in my office that people don't like it. We 
will get calls. But at the end of the day, we are going to do it 
because it is the right way to move forward. It is going to be tough, 
and we will get criticism for what we could have done, but we are where 
we are and we need to move forward.
  As my son would say, we have to ``suck it up, buttercup.''
  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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
until 6 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their 
designees, and that Senators during that period of time be permitted to 
speak up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, for the information of all Senators, after 
the House votes later today--they have a 1-hour rule, so whenever they 
take it up they will debate it for 1 hour--it is my intention to try to 
lock in a unanimous consent to set a vote to complete action on the 
debt limit increase. This vote could happen either tonight or tomorrow. 
So I want Senators to be aware of that. Of course, with a consent 
agreement we could move anytime we wish to this bill, but it would take 
consent.
  When we finish this we have some nominations we have to deal with, 
and we have to get the FAA issue resolved. But I think this will 
probably be the last vote we have that I am aware of.
  It has been a pretty hard work period we have had, the last two 
weekends and working late, and I think the Senate deserves to be able 
to go home as soon as we can. If there were ever a time when we needed 
to work with our constituents, it is now.
  For me, personally, I have been here for a long time. I have a home 
in Nevada that I haven't seen in months. My pomegranate trees are, I am 
told, blossoming and have some pomegranates on them. I have some fig 
trees and roses and stuff that I just haven't seen. I have constituents 
I am anxious to see, friends I need to visit, relatives I need to 
visit. So as soon as we can complete our work, I would like to move as 
quickly as I can to the summer recess period.
  So what I would ask is that as the House moves to this bill this 
afternoon, Senators should use this time to come and talk about the 
bill, whether they like it or dislike it or are neutral. It would be a 
time that they could get their remarks on the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

[[Page 12633]]


  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I am happy to be the first to take the 
distinguished majority leader up on his offer and be here on the Senate 
floor to talk about this very important matter.
  I plan on voting no on this proposal. It is a very important matter. 
It is in many ways the greatest challenge we face as a nation. So I 
don't come to this decision lightly, but I do come to it firmly for 
three primary reasons.
  First of all, this bill, this so-called solution, doesn't 
fundamentally change our spending and debt picture. It just plays 
around the margins. It doesn't make any big change whatsoever.
  To put it differently, I don't want to default under any 
circumstances, but I don't want a downgrade of our credit rating 
either. From everything the markets and the credit rating agencies--
Moody's and Standard & Poor's--have said for months, this would result 
in a downgrade. This would result in higher interest rates--first for 
the government and then for all of us--on our home mortgages, on our 
car payments, and everything else. Why? Because, again, it doesn't 
fundamentally change our spending and debt picture. It only cuts $7 
billion in the first year and $3 billion in the second year, a total in 
the first 2 years of $10 billion. That is basically a minuscule 
rounding error in terms of the size of the Federal budget.
  Over the next 10 years, we continue to mount up $7 trillion worth of 
new debt. So we are at $14 trillion now; we are going to add on another 
$7 trillion of new debt under this plan, and we do nothing to stabilize 
our debt-to-GDP ratio, which is perhaps the most important metric that 
economists and others point to.
  We need to do better. We need to have some plan to balance the 
budget. This plan never balances. This plan has mountains of new debt 
still building. This plan never stabilizes our debt-to-GDP ratio.
  Again, I don't want to default. I will vote to avoid a default. But I 
do not want a downgrade either that costs every American in a 
meaningful way.
  Second, I have looked very hard at the enforcement provisions of this 
bill, and I am convinced that even the meager numbers in this bill, in 
terms of cuts, are going to be blown, are going to be waived, because 
there is no meaningful enforcement. The only thing it will take to bust 
the numbers in this bill is a new bill that passes by a simple majority 
in the House and by 60 votes in the Senate. We are constantly looking 
at those sorts of vehicles, particularly when we are probably going to 
have disaster appropriations and disaster bills coming to the Congress. 
There are no real teeth in this bill. There is not adequate 
enforcement.
  To their credit, several Members of this body and several Members of 
the House have spent months talking about how good, meaningful 
enforcement mechanisms could work. The Gang of 6 had real enforcement 
mechanisms that they spent a lot of time on. Senators here, such as Bob 
Corker, had meaningful enforcement mechanisms built into their proposed 
legislation. None of those are in this bill. Those could easily have 
been adopted. Those could easily have been put in the bill; they were 
not.
  Third, and finally, I am very concerned that the triggers in this 
bill that are supposed to be there to ensure a second round of savings 
and deficit reduction are not going to work. I do not see how they are 
going to incent, particularly the Democrats, particularly the left, to 
move to a new package of savings and deficit reduction. I think, 
rather, the triggers will be triggered, and we will have unsustainable 
defense cuts and also unsustainable cuts to doctors and hospitals in 
Medicare. That is perhaps another reason, going back to point No. 2, 
that even the numbers in this bill are not going to hold. They are 
going to be waived; they are going to be busted.
  I have to say I hope I am wrong on all three counts if this bill, in 
fact, passes. But I have looked at it carefully, soberly, and that is 
the clear conclusion to which I have come. I hope we can do better. I 
hope we do better because we must for the American people, because we 
need to start turning around our completely unsustainable spending and 
debt situation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I didn't come to the floor to comment on what Senator 
Vitter just said, and I can sure appreciate his view that a decision 
that ends up with a $7 trillion addition to the national debt over the 
next 10 years is not getting us very far down the road compared to what 
the people of the United States, who have to live within their income, 
believe this Congress should accomplish. But a $7 trillion addition to 
the debt over that period of time, compared to what the President 
suggested we spend over the next 10 years when he issued his budget to 
Congress, on February 14, we could end up with $13 trillion added to 
the national debt--so somewhere along the line, between February 14 and 
last night, when the President announced his support for this 
compromise, he has come to the conclusion that we could spend $6 
trillion less over the next 10 years.
  Even though a lot of people see this as not making progress, the 
President admitted he has found ways of changing his mind about $6 
trillion in the course of just a few months. I suppose it also might 
lead our constituents to think in terms of, there has to be something 
wrong with the thinking in Washington if, on February 14, they think we 
have to spend X number of dollars that will add $13 trillion to the 
national debt and here it is just 3 or 4 months since then and the 
President goes on television and says this is a good compromise and we 
can be at $6 trillion less in spending. It probably leads people to 
believe there has to be a lot of money wasted in Washington, DC, if, in 
fact, between February 14 and last night, the President can find 
consensus in spending $6 trillion less over the next 10 years. That is 
a comment on what Senator Vitter just said and not disagreeing with 
Senator Vitter's comments in any way.
  When we are in the Senate of the United States talking about what to 
do about the deficit situation and how much deficit spending we are 
having, it probably gets lost in the minds of people that what we are 
spending today and adding to the national debt is creating a great 
legacy of debt to leave to our children and grandchildren. This debate 
around this issue brings me to this question: Is it fair to tax our 
children and grandchildren just because they cannot vote? Our children 
and grandchildren, for the most part, do not have any voice in this, 
except what is given by our generation and people representing the 
older generations, other than our children, making these decisions. 
That is because we, in fact, are doing just that; taxing our children 
and grandchildren by adding to the national debt. That is what we are 
doing with our irresponsible budget deficits.
  We have a choice between a brighter future for our descendants or 
more social spending now; more social spending or, as President Obama 
might put it, investments. Any way we look at it, money we spend today 
and we do not pay for, we are putting this bill on future generations--
our children and grandchildren. This is a choice we should be thinking 
about as we arrive at a decision of whether to vote for or against this 
grand compromise that has come out of these negotiations.
  It gets down to basic choices of what do we do to encourage private 
sector employment. It gets down to choices of what we do about the size 
of government. There is a real choice in this debate as we talk about 
how big government should be. The choice is, do we grow government or 
do we grow the private sector?
  What are the philosophical differences as well as the economic 
differences between growing government versus allowing business and 
entrepreneurship to flourish in America? We have had these dramatic 
increases in expenditures over just the last 2 years; 22-percent 
increases in appropriations in the last 2 years, when the economy only 
grows about 2 percent. Everybody knows that is not sustainable. On top 
of that, we had a $814 billion stimulus package that did not do what it 
was supposed to do to keep unemployment under 8 percent. At this time, 
we have

[[Page 12634]]

 gone from the national debt being 35 percent of the gross national 
product to today being about 65 percent and before the end of this year 
it is going to be 72 percent. And it is on a path to go to 90 percent. 
So we have seen government grow during the last few years out of 
proportion to the 20 percent of the gross national product that the 
public sector, represented by the Federal Government, took, compared to 
that growth from 20 to now 25.
  Those 5 percentage points of growth in the government may not seem 
like a lot but just look at the difference between incentives for 
growth of the private sector for creating wealth as opposed to the 
Government consuming wealth. That is a fact. Government consumes 
wealth; it doesn't create wealth. People who are using their labor and 
their minds and investing are the ones who create wealth in our 
country. Those 5 percentage points make a difference because it is a 
very dramatic growth in government. As government consumes more--and I 
said it does not create wealth--it takes money out of the private 
sector, where it can grow more and create jobs and, consequently, then 
limits the opportunity for expanding the economic pie. That is what the 
private sector does through investment and labor, expands the economic 
pie. We can have economic growth so we can have more for more people.
  But when government gets bigger, we restrict the opportunities for 
economic growth in the private sector and we have less pie for more 
people.
  So a 5 percentage point growth in the government for the last 5 years 
compared to a 50-year average lessens the chance for a brighter future 
for our children and grandchildren, and that has to be a part of this 
debate as we decide the size of government versus the size of the 
private sector--the wealth-producing private sector.
  If we keep government at 20 percent, then that is going to leave more 
in the private sector that is going to create wealth. It is going to be 
a more productive use of our resources.
  The promise of our free market system can only be realized if we 
choose less social spending, if we choose less intrusive regulation and 
more efficient use of our resources in the private sector as opposed to 
the public sector.
  We should be doing those things not only in this budget agreement, 
this deficit reduction agreement, but in all the decisions we make in 
the Congress. We should be doing more to encourage productive uses of 
our resources in the private sector, rather than consumption of those 
resources in the public sector.
  President Obama has launched a campaign over the 30 months he has 
been in office to defend the welfare state and of course the woefully 
inefficient government-run health care system that is an example of 
that welfare state. I think we can learn some lessons from the rest of 
the world as well in looking at what is right for America. We should 
learn from history and not repeat the mistakes that have been made in 
other countries.
  Since the 1950s, we have seen a lot of countries around the world use 
transfers of wealth from one generation to another or the transfer of 
wealth from one group of people to another. We have seen grants. We 
have seen a redistributive philosophy in a lot of countries. What did 
that do? It did very little to raise the living standards of those in 
Asia, Latin America, Africa. More open economies have proven otherwise. 
More open economies as we have had in Japan since the 1950s have lifted 
more people out of poverty in 10 years than welfare state programs have 
done in 50 years.
  Japan--just using it as an example--forced its producers 50, 60 years 
ago to compete. Private sector resources are more productive than those 
of the public sector making the decisions on how to use those 
resources, or a command economy, as you might call it. After Japan, we 
had Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More recently, in the last 
20 years, China and India have been encouraging more competition and 
more productive uses of resources with less of it promoted by the 
government. There are more decisions being made by the private sector 
in Brazil, and even parts of Africa are learning that is the route to 
go. We should learn from that. We should not turn backwards and rely 
more on government than we have in the past. By doing that, we retire 
opportunity in America. We retire opportunity by growing government at 
the expense of individual initiative. I hope we don't go that route. I 
think this budget debate has something to do with whether we are going 
to turn this around from the direction that it has taken over the last 
few years. Those last few years have not just been the 30 months of 
this Presidency but a little bit going back into the previous 
Presidency as well.
  In regard to President Obama's programs, we have had few results from 
the government becoming more involved in the economy. We have dealt 
with near zero interest rates for a long period of time. I have already 
mentioned the $814 billion stimulus. There are other things that have 
been done in recent months to turn this economy around. We still have 
unemployment above 9 percent. The recovery that was supposed to come 
from all of these programs that have had greater government involvement 
in our economy have made a recovery very elusive.
  In fact, there are even questions in the media recently of whether we 
could be going into another recession. President Obama tried mightly 
and wastefully--and in the end, very ineffectually--to turn this 
economy around through a massive number of government programs, but it 
has not worked. Progress would have been greater if we had tried 
programs by President Reagan or even President Kennedy's policies. In 
both of those instances they cut marginal tax rates. They eliminated 
burdensome regulations. Instead, what do we have out there right now 
even today coming from the White House? Promises yet of higher taxes; 
almost a demand that Congress pass higher taxes right now, and more 
regulations.
  I just recently read about a businessperson saying there are 29 
onerous regulations coming out of EPA that will be detrimental to job 
creation because they are so costly. Another way of putting it is it 
might cause businesspeople to worry about the uncertainty of what 
government is going to do. When we have that uncertainty--and right now 
there is a heightened uncertainty--it retards growth. It retards growth 
because people will not invest. When there is not increased investment 
and hiring, there is less productivity. What these issues are all about 
is creating jobs, and we are not creating jobs right now. That is what 
people are going to see as a test as to whether we are out of a 
recession--regardless of the leading economists who made the decision 
that we have been out of a recession now for 2 months.
  For people who are unemployed, it is not a recession; it is a 
depression. They are going to measure coming out of a recession or 
coming out of a depression by whether they have a job. Jobs are not 
being created.
  President Obama promises what he wants is something that is fair and 
balanced. When I hear him talking about ``fair and balanced,'' I wonder 
if he is trying to steal those words from Fox News. Why is it fair to 
distribute more welfare to the present generation and today's voters by 
growing government at the expense of the wealth-creating private 
sector? That harms our children and our grandchildren who are going to 
end up paying for it with less productive uses of the resources of this 
country.
  We should not be thinking, as Europe has thought, about growing 
government, having government consume more of the resources of the 
economy, leaving less to individuals to make decisions whether to save 
or spend and what to save and what to spend on. That is the way it is 
done in Europe. We should not go that way.
  I always use a statistic that may seem so small to be insignificant, 
but I use a statistic of 1 percent. If we compare the United States 
with Europe over the last 25 years, our growth has averaged about 1 
percent more in the United States than in Europe. Now that 1 percent 
may not sound like very much, right? However, over a generation, just 1 
percent difference in

[[Page 12635]]

growth--between the economy of Europe and the economy of the United 
States--adds up to 25 percent differential in per capita income.
  It seems to me the issues of this debt reduction debate--or if you 
want to call it increasing the deficit ceiling, the borrowing capacity 
of the Federal Government--too often tend to be about what is the 
situation right now, but it is really a debate about what is fair for 
our children and grandchildren because those are the decisions on 
borrowing that we are making today.
  I have to go back to where I started with a question of whether it is 
fair for us to tax future generations for the borrowing that we are 
doing today, and simply say it is not fair to tax future generations 
just because they cannot vote.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to say a few words to my fellow 
Vermonters and anyone who might be interested as to why I will be 
voting against this deficit-reduction package when it comes to the 
floor. The reason is pretty simple. This deficit-reduction package is 
grotesquely unfair, and it is also bad economic policy. It should not 
be passed.
  The wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations 
are doing phenomenally well. In a recent 25-year period, 80 percent of 
all new income created in America went to the top 1 percent who now 
earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. In terms of wealth, the 
United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major 
country on Earth with the top 400 people owning more wealth than the 
bottom 150 million Americans.
  When we talk about this deficit-reduction package with the richest 
people becoming richer, huge corporations making billions of dollars in 
profits and in some cases paying nothing in taxes, how much are those 
people--the wealthy and the powerful--asked to contribute toward 
deficit reduction and shared sacrifice? How much are the rich and the 
powerful going to contribute into this deficit-reduction package? The 
answer is zero. Not one cent.
  Meanwhile, as everybody in America knows, we are in the midst of a 
horrendous recession. Real unemployment is over 16 percent. People have 
lost their homes, their life's savings. We have the highest rate of 
childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Yet this deficit-
reduction package comes down on those people--the working families, the 
low-income people, the sick, the elderly, the children. The rich pay 
nothing. Large corporations pay nothing. Yet working families and the 
most vulnerable people in this country are going to be shouldering the 
burden of deficit reduction on their shoulders. That is immoral, that 
is wrong, that is bad economic policy.
  Mr. President, as you well know, this is a complicated package, and 
nobody can predict with any certainty exactly what programs will be cut 
and how much they will be cut because the process will kick in to the 
appropriations committees all over, the House and the Senate, and they 
will go to a supercommittee that will make very significant decisions. 
Nobody with certainty can tell exactly what programs will be cut.
  What we can say is we are looking at up to $1.4 trillion in cuts, and 
virtually every program that working families depend upon, that our 
children depend upon, that the sick depend upon, is on the line.
  In my State, for example, it gets cold. We have a beautiful State. We 
love our winters, but it gets cold. It gets 10 below zero, 20 below 
zero. Many people in my State, including senior citizens, desperately 
need a program called LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance 
Program, which provides help to many people, including a lot of 
seniors, to help keep them warm when it gets 20 below zero. I fear very 
much there will be major cuts in that program.
  In our State we have done very well in expanding community health 
centers. We have over 110,000 people now accessing new community health 
centers, finally being able to get a doctor and dentist when they need 
it. I am going to do everything I can to prevent those cuts. I fear 
that those programs can be cut.
  In Vermont, in Connecticut, all over this country, we have a major 
crisis in childcare. Families want to get into the Head Start Program. 
They want affordable childcare. Those programs will be cut.
  In my State, we have a program that helps struggling dairy farmers, a 
program called the milk program. It helps them stay in business. I fear 
very much--and I am going to fight against this--I fear that program 
will be cut.
  We have young people today from working-class families hoping upon 
hope that maybe they will be able to afford to go to college. Well, we 
can expect major cuts in Pell grants and other programs that make 
college affordable for our young people.
  In this country, we have people who are going hungry. We did a study 
recently. There is more hunger among seniors. Some of those programs 
will be cut. Affordable housing programs will be cut.
  So let's not kid ourselves. In the midst of a terrible recession, 
when so many people are hurting, so many people are struggling just to 
keep their heads above water economically, this deficit-reduction 
package is going to slap them at the side of the head and make life 
much more difficult for them.
  Now, Mr. President, as you well know, this is a two-part program. The 
first part calls for approximately $900 billion in cuts, and the second 
part calls for about $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in cuts. Here is 
where it gets a little bit complicated because a supercommittee, made 
up of six Democrats and six Republicans, will have the opportunity to 
look at everything.
  As the majority leader said, everything is on the table. Now, what 
does that mean? If everything is on the table, Social Security is on 
the table. What we have heard from our Republican friends, what we have 
heard from some Democratic friends, what we have heard from the 
President of the United States is that maybe we should adopt a so-
called chained CPI, which will result in very significant cuts in 
Social Security benefits. If you are 65 now and that program is 
implemented, when you are 75, you are going to lose $560 a year, and 20 
years from now, when you are 85, you are going to lose $1,000 a year. 
Am I saying that definitely will happen? No, I am not.
  Social Security will be on the table. Medicare will be on the table. 
Medicaid will be on the table. Everything will be on the table.
  If that committee ends up not coming to a decision, if they end up 
being deadlocked, say, six to six, then we go to a sequestration 
program and more cuts will be made.
  So I would say, when poll after poll after poll suggests strongly 
that the American people want shared sacrifice--a poll just came out 
last week from the Washington Post where 72 percent of the people 
polled said they believe folks making more than $250,000 a year should 
pay more in taxes in order to help us with deficit reduction. Poll 
after poll says it is absurd that large corporations get incredible 
loopholes that enable them to make billions of profits and not pay one 
nickel in taxes.
  So this is a bad proposal. This is an unfair proposal. We can do 
better, and we must do better. I do not intend to vote for a deficit-
reduction package where the sacrifices are being made by people in the 
middle class and working class who are already hurting. It is time for 
the big-money interests to start remembering they are also Americans 
and they should contribute to deficit reduction.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.

[[Page 12636]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. 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. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Nomination of Matthew Olsen

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, later on this afternoon the Senate 
Intelligence Committee is going to vote out the nomination of Matt 
Olsen to be the next Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. 
I rise today in support of the nomination of Matthew Olsen to be the 
next Director of NCTC.
  Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, we did a lot of self-
examination as a government and, putting it simply, realized that 
pieces of intelligence that should have been connected had not been or, 
in other words, the dots had not been connected. Congress understood we 
could not afford another lapse like 9/11, so it created the National 
Counterterrorism Center to analyze and integrate counterterrorism 
information across the government.
  While we have not suffered another 9/11, our record is not perfect. 
From the Christmas Day bombing attempt, to Fort Hood, Times Square, and 
the New York subway plot, the threats to our homeland are very real. At 
the same time, changing political landscapes and challenges from 
adverse nations require constant attention. In this environment, it is 
essential for NCTC to perform its mission beyond reproach.
  After the Christmas Day near-bombing aboard flight 253, the Senate 
Intelligence Committee conducted a review to determine where the 
intelligence community could have done a better job of anticipating 
this attempted attack. Unfortunately, the committee's review showed 
that NCTC had not lived up to its statutory responsibilities. The then-
Director, Mike Leiter, to his credit, took criticism in a very positive 
way and made the right kinds of changes at NCTC to move us in the right 
direction.
  While I am encouraged by the progress NCTC has made since then to 
repair those shortcomings, there is much work that still needs to be 
done. I believe Matt Olsen has the right background to take the helm of 
this important intelligence center at this very critical point in our 
history. He is no stranger either to the Senate Intelligence Committee 
or to the serious threats that face our Nation. Members and staff have 
worked with him on several high-profile issues over the last few years.
  As a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security 
Division, he was responsible for ensuring that our intelligence 
professionals had all the legal authority they needed from the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to continue this country's 
safety. Let me just say this was no easy task and the stakes were high, 
especially given the political wrangling over FISA and the USA PATRIOT 
Act in recent years. Matt spent countless hours briefing our staff and 
other committees on many highly sensitive FISA issues. In large part 
because of his willingness to stick to the facts and not play political 
games, he has earned the respect of Members on both sides of the 
political aisle.
  For the last year, Matt has served in a very professional way as the 
General Counsel for the National Security Agency, a position that has 
also put him in close contact, again, with the Intelligence Committees.
  GEN Keith Alexander, who heads up NSA, provided a letter of support 
for Matt's nomination. I have also spoken personally with General 
Alexander about Matt. I have a great deal of respect for the general, 
and it speaks volumes to me that he has such high, unequivocal praise 
for Matt, both as a leader and as a person.
  Matt's other job--not an enviable one--which brought him in close 
contact with the committee was his service as the Executive Director of 
the Guantanamo Review Task Force. I have had numerous conversations 
with Matt about some of the recommendations made by the task force on 
transferring what I believe continue to be potentially dangerous 
detainees.
  I appreciate that the task force was following a deadline set by 
Executive order to close Guantanamo Bay. But I believe we have accepted 
too great a risk to our national security by transferring many of these 
detainees to other host countries. The recidivism rate continues to 
climb. It is today somewhere in the range of 26 percent. We have no 
reason to expect it will stop climbing anytime soon. Our first 
obligation must always be to ensure the safety of the American people, 
not to transfer dangerous detainees to meet an arbitrary political 
deadline.
  Of particular concern to me are the transfers of a number of Yemeni 
detainees during 2009, when the intelligence community was already 
warning about the dangerous security situation in Yemen. Of course, we 
all know that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula makes its home in Yemen 
and that several former GITMO detainees now hold high positions in 
AQAP. AQAP was directly responsible for the Christmas Day bombing 
attempt, and their efforts will continue to inflict harm on our Nation.
  Matt acknowledges the difficulties presented by the Yemeni transfers, 
and he has acknowledged that the task force did not get every 
recommendation right, just as the previous administration did not get 
every recommendation right. He also shares my personal view that 
Guantanamo should remain open so that we are not transferring any more 
detainees as the recidivism rate continues to grow.
  I appreciate the many conversations and briefings he has had with my 
staff on those transfer issues. I appreciate his willingness to 
continue to discuss these issues and the need for a long-term detention 
policy even after taking on his new position as NCTC Director.
  Ironically, in his new position, he will be responsible for tracking 
former detainees, including detainees whose transfer the task force may 
have recommended who slipped into their old ways, before they can 
strike us again. It was in this capacity that Matt had an issue with a 
colleague, and I have vetted this with Matt and with most of those who 
were in the room on the occasion the issue arose. While better judgment 
could have been used, the issue is now behind us. I have impressed upon 
Matt that if he is confirmed as the Director of NCTC, his credibility 
must be unquestionable. He has confirmed to me that he will always 
communicate with Members of Congress fully and openly without political 
censorship. He also is committed to being totally open and will have an 
ongoing dialog with members of the respective House and Senate 
Intelligence Committees.
  My good friend Senator Kent Conrad, who is actually the home Senator 
for Matt since he is originally from North Dakota, spoke extensively 
about Matt's reputation and commitment to public service during his 
confirmation hearing. Many intelligence professionals on both sides of 
the political lines wrote letters of recommendation on Matt's behalf.
  I believe Matt when he tells me he is committed to working closely 
with Congress and the Intelligence Committees to do the job needed to 
keep this country safe. I will be supporting his nomination when it 
comes to the floor, and I look forward to working with him.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, the Senate Intelligence Committee just 
approved the nomination of Mr. Matthew Olsen to be the Director of the 
National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, by a unanimous voice 
vote.
  The distinguished vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee spoke 
on the floor earlier in support of this nomination. I would like to add 
to his comments and offer my support so that the Senate can take up 
this nomination quickly and hopefully confirm Mr. Olsen before the 
Senate goes on its August recess.
  I have tried to move quickly on this nomination because the period 
leading up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is a

[[Page 12637]]

period of heightened threat, and one in which all parts of the national 
security agencies of the government need to be operating at full 
capacity.
  Mr. Olsen is currently the general counsel of the National Security 
Agency and has held a number of senior positions in the Department of 
Justice, including at the National Security Division and the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation.
  Let me take just a moment to discuss the current terrorist threat and 
the role of the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, which Mr. 
Olsen will be leading, if confirmed.
  The NCTC is the central agency within the U.S. government dealing 
with the identification, prevention, disruption, and analysis of 
terrorist threats. While it is best known for its role in consolidating 
and analyzing terrorism-related intelligence, the NCTC also plays an 
important role in conducting strategic planning for counterterrorism 
actions across the U.S. Government.
  As I mentioned before, I believe that the period leading up to the 
tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a period of heightened threat. 
Despite counterterrorism pressure against al-Qaida in Pakistan--
including the successful strike against Usama bin Laden in Abbottabad--
the group remains dangerous and vengeful.
  At the same time, the threat from al-Qaida's affiliates and adherents 
around the world has increased and presents particular challenges. I am 
especially concerned about the threat to the U.S. homeland from al-
Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, as well as threats emanating from 
terrorist safehavens in Somalia and elsewhere.
  This means, to me, that this is a crucial time for our 
counterterrorism establishment to be at full strength. And the NCTC is 
a linchpin of that establishment.
  So I am pleased that the President moved quickly to nominate Mr. 
Olsen--an individual serving in a senior intelligence community 
position today--to take the helm of the National Counterterrorism 
Center.
  As I mentioned previously, Mr. Olsen is currently the general counsel 
of the National Security Agency. In that capacity, he has the 
challenging job of ensuring that the NSA's highly technical and highly 
capable signals intelligence system is operating fully within the law, 
and using all legal authorities available to it.
  Before his current position at the NSA, Mr. Olsen served in the 
Department of Justice in several capacities for 18 years, including 12 
years as a Federal prosecutor.
  Among Mr. Olsen's positions at the Department of Justice, which has 
been the subject of some recent attention, was that of executive 
director of the Guantanamo Review Task Force created by Executive Order 
13492. The role of the task force was to conduct a detailed review of 
all of the information available on each of the roughly 240 detainees 
being held at Guantanamo as of January 2009.
  It was Mr. Olsen's job to lead the large, interagency effort of more 
than 100 national security professionals to compile and analyze all 
intelligence relevant to the detainees, the feasibility of prosecuting 
them, the ability of a potential country receiving a detainee to 
mitigate the threat the detainee posed, and whether some detainees 
should be held in long-term Law of War detention.
  I will say this to my colleagues. Being the director of a large task 
force making recommendations on Guantanamo detainees is about as 
thankless, as difficult, and as controversial a position that I can 
imagine. Every decision would be reviewed and criticized. But the new 
Attorney General asked Mr. Olsen to take on this job, and he agreed to 
do it. That is what we admire about career professionals in government 
service. And we should respect and reward that dedication and 
willingness to take on the difficult and unpopular jobs.
  I note as well that Mr. Olsen has been recommended by his current and 
past colleagues in the current and the past administration. The 
Intelligence Committee received letters of recommendation from General 
Alexander, former Attorney General Mukasey, former DNI McConnell, all 
three former assistant attorneys general for National Security, former 
NCTC Director Mike Leiter, and many others. They have all spoken to his 
capability and to his character.
  I believe that Mr. Olsen is well qualified for the position, that he 
will be forthcoming with Congress, and that he will do a good job in 
leading the NCTC.
  Prior to serving on the Guantanamo Review Task Force, Mr. Olsen had 
been the Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the 
Department of Justice as well as the deputy assistant attorney general 
with responsibility for intelligence matters.
  He led the Department's effort to update the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act, a process that eventually led to the passage of the 
FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In that position he worked closely with 
both sides of the aisle, and was an invaluable resource as we found a 
compromise to update important surveillance authorities and strengthen 
civil liberty protections.
  Mr. Olsen was also previously a federal prosecutor in the U.S. 
Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, chief of the office's 
National Security Section, and a special counsel to FBI Director Robert 
Mueller.
  The Intelligence Committee has thoroughly reviewed Mr. Olsen's 
background, he has answered all of our questions, and we held a hearing 
on July 26 on his nomination. In sum, our due diligence is complete.
  Now it is up to the Senate to confirm Mr. Olsen so that we do not 
leave the NCTC without a permanent director as we approach the 10th 
anniversary of 9/11.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CONRAD. 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. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the agreement that has 
been reached between the leaders in the Senate, the House Republicans 
and Democrats, and the President of the United States with respect to 
an extension of the debt limit and certain deficit reduction steps to 
be taken in conjunction with that action.
  I wish to remind my colleagues that if we fail to act, most 
economists believe we will face an interest rate spike. For every 1 
percentage point increase in interest rates, we would add $1.3 trillion 
to deficits and debt over 10 years. If there was only a 200-basis point 
increase, that would wipe out all the deficit reduction that is in this 
package.
  Colleagues need to keep in mind the consequences of our actions and 
how critically important it is to prevent that interest rate spike.
  In addition, David Beers at Standard & Poor's, global head of 
Sovereign Ratings, made a statement in an interview on CNBC on July 26. 
The chart is headlined, ``To avoid a U.S. credit rating downgrade, S&P 
wants to see a bipartisan debt reduction effort.''
  He said this, specifically:

       We will measure this matter on a number of parameters. One 
     is, is it credible? And credibility, among other things, 
     means to us that there has to be some buy-in across the 
     political divide, across both parties, because politics can 
     and will change going forward. And if there's ownership by 
     both sides of the program, then that would give us more 
     confidence. . . . It is not just about the number. It is 
     about the all-in intent.

  However imperfect this agreement is--and it is imperfect because, 
after all, it is a work of the hands of men. We are all imperfect. But 
it is critically important. It is important to demonstrate that we can 
work together to achieve a result.
  This package contains these elements: First, it prevents a default. 
It saves the Nation from immediate economic crisis. It creates a 
process to allow a debt ceiling increase to 2013, so we don't have to 
reenact this entire episode in just a matter of months. It provides a 
$900 billion downpayment on

[[Page 12638]]

deficit reduction that is enforced with 10 years of spending caps. It 
creates a joint select committee of Congress on deficit reduction, 
tasked with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in savings and to bring 
us a report before Thanksgiving. This select committee has a goal of 
$1.5 trillion in savings as a floor; it is not a ceiling. This 
committee could come back to us with an even more ambitious, more bold 
proposal to get our fiscal affairs in order. Let us hope that it is so.
  The overall package that is before us--or about to be before us--
requires a vote on a balanced budget amendment. The debt ceiling 
increase is not contingent on its passage, but there is a requirement 
to give colleagues in both Chambers an opportunity to vote. It also 
protects Pell grants from deep near-term cuts. I think most of us 
understand how important Pell grants are to providing opportunities to 
young, talented people all across America to improve themselves through 
higher education.
  I was raised by my grandparents. My grandmother was a schoolteacher. 
We called her ``little chief,'' because she was only 5 feet tall. But 
she commanded respect. She commanded respect because she had character, 
and she told people in our family there are three priorities in this 
household: No. 1 is education. No. 2 is education. No. 3 is education.
  We got the message. I can remember, fondly, her telling us over and 
over: What you put in your head no one can take away. They can take 
your property, they can take your wealth, but one thing nobody can take 
from you is what you have done to improve your mind. That ought to be 
something that is taught in every household in our country because it 
is central to America continuing to be a world leader.
  The proposal that will be before us also creates a joint select 
committee on deficit reduction. As I have indicated, they have a goal 
of finding an additional $1\1/2\ trillion in savings, but they are not 
limited to that level of savings. They could do more. It is bipartisan 
and bicameral, 12 Members--6 Democrats, 6 Republicans. Congress is to 
have a report by Thanksgiving on their work. No amendments are allowed 
and a simple majority vote to pass in the Senate and the House.
  This closely follows the recommendation of Senator Gregg and myself 
from 5 years ago to create a commission empowered to bring to a vote in 
the Senate and the House a plan to get our debt under control and to do 
it so we wouldn't have the endless process our current situation 
requires. The idea was to create a BRAC-like system, so a proposal 
could come before the Senate and the House to get our debt down. It is 
modeled, in many ways, after the reconciliation process that was 
designed for deficit reduction and only requires a simple majority 
vote.
  There is a fail-safe if this committee fails to produce a result. The 
fail-safe is across-the-board cuts in defense and nondefense spending, 
with exemptions for Social Security, veterans and low-income people and 
it limits the Medicare reductions to 2 percent. I would prefer the 
Medicare reduction not be there because there is no revenue that is 
assured in this plan. But we do have to have a fail-safe. We do have to 
have some assurance that savings are actually realized, and this 
mechanism does that.
  I think all of us know our current status finds us borrowing 40 cents 
of every $1 we spend. In fact, we are in a condition in which the 
United States is borrowing more than we have ever borrowed before as a 
share of our national income. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget 
Office has told us the long-term outlook is even more sober; that we 
have a debt held by the public that is about 70 percent now. Right 
here--the debt held by the public is at about 70 percent. Our gross 
debt is actually approaching 100 percent, but our publicly held debt--
that is debt held by the public, not counting what we owe to trust 
funds such as Social Security--is about 70 percent.
  But look where we are headed if we stay on our current course. The 
Congressional Budget Office tells us by 2037 our publicly held debt 
will be 200 percent of our gross domestic product if we fail to act.
  How did we get into this circumstance? This says it very clearly and 
very well. The red line is the spending line of the United States and 
the green line is the revenue line going back 60 years. What we can see 
is the red line--the spending line--is the highest it has ever been. 
Twenty-four percent of gross domestic product is Federal spending. The 
revenue line is the lowest it has ever been in that period--the lowest 
it has been in 60 years. Some of our friends on the other side say we 
just have a spending problem. They have it half right. We do have a 
spending problem. Spending is almost the highest it has been in 60 
years. But we also have a revenue problem because revenue is the lowest 
it has been in 60 years as a share of our national income. That is a 
fact. So we have to work both sides of this equation.
  If we go back and reconstruct how we got into this ditch, a story on 
May 1, 2011, in the Washington Post, is instructive. This is what they 
found:

       The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax 
     revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple 
     rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills 
     enacted under former President George W. Bush, and to a 
     lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in 
     anticipated revenue. That's nearly half of the $12.7 trillion 
     swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax 
     collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage 
     of the economy in 60 years.

  This buttresses and confirms the point I just made. In addition, if 
one examines our history going back to 1969 and looks at the five times 
we have balanced the budget, in each of those times, revenue was almost 
20 percent of GDP. Right now--remember what I just said--revenue is 
14.8 percent of GDP. The five times since 1969 we have balanced the 
budget, revenue was 19.7 percent of GDP in 1969; in 1998, it was 19.9 
percent; in 1999, it was 19.8 percent; in 2000, it was 20.6 percent; 
and in 2001, it was 19.5 percent. By the way, all these budgets--these 
last four--were the responsibility of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton not 
only balanced the budget, he stopped using Social Security funds to 
finance other government operations, and he did it with the longest 
period of uninterrupted growth in our Nation's history and created 23 
million jobs. The Clinton administration record on deficits, on debt, 
on economic growth, and job creation is the best, by far, of all modern 
Presidents.
  Facts are stubborn things. We have a Tax Code that is riddled with 
tax expenditures. It is riddled with tax expenditures. We are losing to 
the Treasury $1.1 trillion a year to tax expenditures--tax preferences, 
tax loopholes, tax deductions, tax exclusions. Guess who gets most of 
the benefit. Twenty-six percent of the benefit goes to the top 1 
percent of those tax expenditures--those tax loopholes, those tax 
preferences.
  Here is a quote from one of the most conservative economists in 
America--Martin Feldstein, professor of economics at Harvard, Chairman 
of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan. This is 
what he said about tax expenditures on July 20 of last year.

       Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce 
     government spending. Eliminating tax expenditures does not 
     increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving, 
     investment or risk taking. It would also increase overall 
     economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort 
     private spending decisions. And eliminating or consolidating 
     the large number of overlapping tax-based subsidies would 
     also greatly simplify tax filing. In short, cutting tax 
     expenditures is not at all like other ways of raising 
     revenue.

  That is precisely why the fiscal commission and the Group of 6--both 
groups I was proud to participate in--chose the reduction of tax 
expenditures as one way of reforming the tax system, improving the 
competitive position of the United States, and raising revenue to help 
reduce this debt threat.
  Anybody who wonders what is happening with respect to loopholes--
exclusions, deductions, preferences in the Tax Code--doesn't have to go 
any further than this picture I have shown many times. This little 
five-story building--Ugland House, down in the Cayman Islands--claims 
to be the home of 18,857 companies. What an

[[Page 12639]]

amazing building that is. This little building, the home to 18,000 
companies. They all say they are doing business out of this building. 
Anybody believe that? They are not doing business out of that building. 
They are doing monkey business, and the monkey business they are doing 
is to avoid paying the taxes all the rest of us pay because the Cayman 
Islands is a tax haven. They do not impose taxes on these companies.
  Guess what these companies do. They file returns that show--
miraculously--the profits from all their operations across the United 
States don't show up in the United States. They show up in this little 
five-story building down in the Cayman Islands. They say that is where 
the profits are being realized. What a blessing that is because the 
Cayman Islands do not impose any taxes on the profits that show up in 
the subsidiaries of the companies that are doing business all over the 
world.
  Anybody who wonders if this is costing all the rest of us huge 
amounts of money, here is what our Permanent Subcommittee on 
Investigations found in a report in 2007.

       Experts have estimated the total loss to the Treasury from 
     offshore tax evasion alone approaches $100 billion per year.

  Let me repeat that--$100 billion a year. If there is any doubt about 
this, go home and Google tax havens. See what you find. I think you 
will be quite startled by what you see. Continuing the quote from the 
report:

       Those losses include $40 to $70 billion from individuals, 
     and another $30 billion from corporations engaging in 
     offshore tax evasion. Abusive tax shelters add tens of 
     billions of dollars more.
  My family and I, we pay what we owe. The vast majority of people in 
this country pay what they owe. We have a few people--unfortunately, it 
is a growing number and they tend to be people with much greater 
resources--who are not paying what they owe. We shouldn't permit it. 
That should come to a screeching halt.
  The bipartisan groups proposing comprehensive and balanced plans with 
spending cuts and new revenue include the fiscal commission, the 
Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Group of 6. These are the only 
bipartisan plans that have come from anywhere, and all of them 
recommended a balance between spending cuts and revenue. Almost all of 
them focused on reducing tax expenditures--the loopholes, the 
exclusions, the preferences, the tax havens--in order to raise revenue, 
to reduce rates, and make America more competitive but also to raise 
additional revenue to dump this debt.
  The other day there was a spirited debate on the floor between the 
senior Senator from Arizona and the senior Senator from Illinois. I 
arrived at the end of that debate and didn't have a chance to 
participate. There were a number of assertions made there by my friend, 
Senator McCain, and I wish to set the record straight. If we look at 
the records of Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Clinton, with respect to 
deficits, the record is very clear.
  Here it is: During the Reagan administration, deficits exploded, and 
we can see on the graph the deficits that averaged about $200 billion a 
year. During the first Bush administration, the deficits actually got 
worse and ended up still in the range of $200 billion a year. President 
Clinton inherited deficits of $200 billion a year, but we can see by 
the last 4 years of his administration, he was in the black. The 
budgets were balanced, and for 2 or 3 of those years, he actually 
stopped using Social Security money to fund government operations. 
Then, of course, we see what happened in the second Bush 
administration: Deficits absolutely exploded--absolutely exploded.
  The second Bush administration was, by far, the worst on record for 
deficits and debt of any of these administrations; and, by far, the 
best was the Clinton administration.
  But we can look at it a different way. This chart shows, in dollar 
terms, what happened to the debt. We can see in the Reagan 
administration the debt more than doubled. The Bush administration took 
it up much further. The Clinton administration actually started 
bringing down the debt. President Clinton was actually paying off debt 
during his administration. Then we saw what happened in the second Bush 
administration: The debt absolutely skyrocketed, going up well over 
2\1/2\ times.
  Mr. President, when we then look at the record of economic growth 
under those different Presidents, it is very interesting. Reagan, who 
more than doubled the debt, had a pretty good record of economic 
growth--3.5 percent. Bush 1, who ran the debt up even further, had a 
pretty paltry record--2.1 percent economic growth. Clinton, who 
actually paid down debt, had the best record of economic growth--3.8 
percent on average. Bush 2, who put in place the massive tax cuts that 
ballooned the deficits into debt, had the worst record of economic 
growth, averaging 1.6 percent.
  Let's connect the dots. There was a big increase in debt during the 
Reagan administration but pretty good economic growth; he took the No. 
2 spot. Bush 1: massive increase in deficits and debt, and economic 
growth faltered. The Clinton administration has by far the best record 
on deficits and debt and also the best record of economic growth. Bush 
2, who had huge tax cuts never offset by an adjustment, as Reagan did, 
had the worst record of economic growth.
  Finally, on job creation, during the Reagan administration, 16 
million jobs were created--quite a strong record of job creation during 
his 8 years. During the first Bush administration, only 3 million jobs 
were created. During the Clinton administration--by far the winner on 
the jobs derby--23 million jobs were created, and he had the best 
record of deficit and debt reduction and the best record on economic 
growth. Do you know what. He raised taxes and cut spending. Wow. Our 
friends on the other side said, when President Clinton raised taxes and 
cut spending, it would crater the economy. I was here. I heard the 
majority leader on that side say that proposal would crater the 
economy. Republicans repeated that line all across America. The Clinton 
plan to get the deficits and debt down by raising revenue and cutting 
spending, they all said, would crater the economy. They were wrong. 
Then it came time for the Bush administration, and he had massive tax 
cuts, and they all said that would be a huge job creator and fire up 
the engines of economic growth. They were wrong again.
  The record is clear. Look at the difference. There were 16 million 
jobs created under Reagan, 3 million under Bush 1, 23 million under 
Clinton, and 3 million under Bush 2. Clinton had the biggest reductions 
in deficits and debt by far of any of them. He had the best economic 
growth, and he had the best job creation. And the second Bush 
administration comes and they say big tax cuts--that is going to fire 
up economic growth, that is going to fire up job creation. They were 
wrong.
  When Clinton had a proposal to raise revenue and cut spending, they 
said it would crater the economy. Yet Clinton had the best record on 
economic growth and the best record on job creation. They were wrong 
again. During the second Bush administration, at the end--has everybody 
forgotten?--we were on the brink of financial collapse. I was called to 
a special meeting in this building with the Bush administration's 
Secretary of Treasury, and I, along with other leaders of the House and 
Senate, was told we were days away from a financial collapse. This idea 
that you can't raise revenue or it will kill jobs, you can't cut 
spending or it will kill jobs has not proven to be right. In the real 
world, the Clinton administration raised revenue, cut spending to get 
our debt under control, and they had the strongest record of job 
creation, the strongest record of economic growth of any of the four 
Presidents during that period by far.
  I would just say I wish I could have participated in that debate last 
night. I missed it, but I wanted to set the record straight.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor to talk 
about the deal the Senate will vote on sometime later tonight or 
tomorrow. Before I do, I want to say to my distinguished colleague from 
North Dakota,

[[Page 12640]]

the chairman of the Budget Committee, as always, what an exceptional 
job he has done in laying out fact from fiction, the realities of the 
choices before us. I only hope that the revenue possibilities he 
clearly expressed exist as part of an equation to a solution could be 
invoked, but I am concerned based upon what the other side says.
  We have a deal before us that is a result of a manufactured crisis. 
The debt limit has historically been raised as a matter of course by 
both Republicans and Democrats, both sides, without conditions. Ronald 
Reagan did it 18 times without conditions. George W. Bush did it 7 
times without conditions. But, no, not this time.
  For days, for weeks, this Congress has been held hostage by a radical 
few--a band of tea party tyrants--who believe their opinions, their 
values, their view of the world, their vision of government must be 
America's vision. It is not. In their world, there is no room for 
reasonable compromise, there is no room for fair and balanced budget 
approaches, the kinds of approaches to budgets I and many on this side 
have worked for and voted for throughout our careers in Congress.
  I have voted for balance going in, and I was looking for balance in 
the final agreement or the hope of balance that the American people 
themselves have expressed clearly they wanted to see: spending cuts but 
also ending those tax loopholes and creating revenue.
  I have voted for $2.4 trillion in cuts in the Reid amendment, with 
the inclusion of a joint committee process--Senator Conrad was talking 
about that--that could include revenues, a balanced approach.
  I have supported increasing the debt limit in a responsible way, a 
balanced, responsible, fair approach that implements significant but 
responsible deductions.
  I voted in 2010 to establish the Bipartisan Task Force for 
Responsible Fiscal Action--the precursor to the Bowles-Simpson 
Commission--to review all aspects of the financial conditions of our 
government, including tax policy and entitlement spending.
  I voted to protect Social Security from being used to balance the 
budget when it hasn't contributed to our debt.
  I voted in favor of the Pryor amendment to reduce the budget deficit 
by at least $154 billion with a balanced approach to cutting our 
deficits that included discretionary spending, entitlements, and 
revenues.
  I have supported budget enforcement measures, such as the statutory 
pay-go, to pay as you go when you come up with a new idea for spending 
or a tax break, to control both spending and revenues.
  I led the effort in this Chamber to cut $21 billion in unwarranted 
Big Oil subsidies and supported saving almost $6 billion this year 
alone by cutting ethanol subsidies.
  I have voted five times in the past to increase the debt limit in a 
responsible way.
  But this eleventh-hour deal, with so many strings attached that it 
has become a tangled web of conservative social values, is nothing more 
than a concession to the radical right of one party, and it flies in 
the face of our values as a nation. It would mean drastic and dramatic 
cuts to one side of the ledger, overwhelmingly from nondefense 
spending, and no balance--I repeat, no balance--on the revenue side.
  I know their suggestion is that the commission can look at revenue. 
Yes, it can look at revenue, but that commission which is going to be 
appointed with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats and 
appointed by the leadership in both Houses pretty much tells you where 
it is going to end up.
  Speaker Boehner has said he won't appoint anyone to the committee who 
would accept revenue as part of the mix. Senator McConnell has said 
there will be no new revenue. They get appointments to that commission. 
That is half of the commission. Even Gene Sperling, the President's 
economic adviser, said there will be no new revenues for the next 18 
months, which is a clear reflection of what Speaker Boehner and 
Minority Leader McConnell have said.
  Since they won't accept revenue except maybe in the context of tax 
reform, which the joint committee has said it can't do by the end of 
the year, which is when this commission is called upon--by 
Thanksgiving--to come forth and make a presentation, and we Democrats 
will have members on the commission who will be responsible and want to 
strike a deal, we will end up either having to accept the commission's 
spending cuts without revenue, leaving us with trillions of dollars in 
nondefense and entitlement cuts, or automatic sequestered cuts that are 
even more Draconian.
  Does anyone in this Chamber really believe that the Bush tax cuts for 
the top-tier, the richest, the wealthiest people--millionaires and 
billionaires--which will expire in 2012, will be on the table in an 
election year, that the President will issue a veto threat for those 
tax cuts and make them the hallmark of his reelection campaign? I don't 
think so.
  While I know that if we go to the automatic sequestered cuts, nearly 
$1 trillion of those automatic cuts will come supposedly from defense, 
what guarantees are there that we won't use the overseas contingency 
fund of $1 trillion to meet the defense side of the cuts--the very fund 
which Republicans, in the budget passed in the House, put in their 
budget and which virtually all of my Republican colleagues here in the 
Senate voted on, and they voted on it as cuts. If that isn't the case, 
what makes us think that supplemental emergency appropriations won't be 
offered on the defense side while warfighters are in the field, leaving 
us with no real defense cuts but a hard $1 trillion in cuts on domestic 
programs such as education, student loans, health care, renewable 
energy, research and development? And the list goes on.
  For those who suggest that this commission and the threat, the sword 
of those automatic cuts will make people act responsibly, what makes us 
think that the old paradigm, which I long for, that people will be 
responsible will take place given what we have seen in which we have a 
manufactured crisis that has brought us to the verge of an economic 
crisis that is not only national but international in proportion? If 
people have been willing to bring us to that point, what makes us think 
this negotiation as proposed by the legislation will work?
  They will continue to look for deeper and deeper cuts to those basic 
services we as a party and as a nation have fought for. We will spend 
the next year headed into the national decisionmaking that will take 
place next November forced to debate deeper cuts, refight old battles, 
debate a balanced budget amendment and the Bush tax cuts, instead of 
talking about creating jobs, which is what Americans want to see again, 
and helping middle-class families who are struggling to make ends meet.
  But don't listen to me on that. Listen to Paul Krugman, a Nobel 
Prize-winning economist who wrote today that this deal is a disaster--
his words--for the economy. He said:

       Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply 
     depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have 
     a depressed economy all through next year. And we will 
     probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if 
     not beyond.
       The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash 
     government spending, since that will depress the economy even 
     further. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence 
     fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure 
     businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It 
     doesn't work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of 
     the historical record.
       Indeed, slashing spending while the economy is depressed 
     won't even help the budget situation much, and might well 
     make it worse. On one side, interest rates on Federal 
     borrowing are currently very low, so spending cuts now will 
     do little to reduce future interest costs. On the other side, 
     making the economy weaker now will also hurt its long-run 
     prospects, which will in turn reduce future revenue. So those 
     demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who 
     treated the sick by bleeding them and thereby making them 
     even sicker.
       And then there are the reported terms of the deal, which 
     amount to an abject surrender on the part of the president. 
     First, there will be big spending cuts, with no increase in 
     revenue.
       Then a panel will make recommendations for further deficit 
     reduction--and if these recommendations aren't accepted, 
     there will be more spending cuts.


[[Page 12641]]


  I described before the possibility of getting revenue in that 
equation with the appointments being made by the authorities making 
them, saying they will appoint no one who will consider revenues. There 
will be, therefore, even more spending cuts. That is a Nobel Prize 
economist.
  No, there is no balance in this agreement, no real compromise. It 
simply does not force the shared sacrifice the American people have 
demanded. Oil companies will make $143 billion in profits this year, 
the Big Five. They will keep picking the pockets of American taxpayers 
with a ridiculous handout while they earn those billions in profits. 
Ethanol millionaires will be off the hook with this deal. There is no 
balance in this deal. There is no fairness. There is nothing but 
concessions to the radical rightwing of the Republican Party that is 
holding the American economy hostage, with a gun to its head, 
threatening to pull the trigger if they don't get their way.
  Yet no one on the right seems to be happy. They want more. They 
believe they have not gotten enough. When is enough, enough? How far do 
we have to bend before we break? How much do we have to give of our 
values, our beliefs, our vision of America? How much do we have to give 
of the promises we have made as a nation to hard-working, middle-class 
families struggling to make ends meet, struggling to pay the bills, the 
mortgage, pay for health care, tuition to put their children through 
college, and give them a chance at a better life?
  How about those whose lives would be shattered except for the 
government's protection? We are their voice. I speak for them when I 
say this is not a fair deal, but it is the deal before us. What is fair 
is fair, but this plan is not fair to the American people. I cannot in 
good conscience support a plan where soldiers, seniors, students, and 
working families must endure trillions in cuts while oil companies, 
billionaires, corporate jet owners are not asked to pay one cent toward 
shared sacrifice.
  The Republicans turned a relatively routine vote to meet America's 
obligations into a crisis threatening the world's economy. In response, 
the Reid plan met them 80 percent of the way by proposing $2.4 trillion 
in cuts, creating a process where a bipartisan commission could find a 
balanced approach to deficit reductions that would go beyond that and 
that would meet the American people's call for shared sacrifice from 
those who have not only the greatest wealth in the country but also 
those who seem to have the privilege and the power to fashion the Tax 
Code in a way that benefits them but doesn't benefit working-class 
families in our country.
  No, that was not enough for the tea party, nor for the party they now 
control. No, instead they have insisted on a process where oil 
companies, billionaires, offshore tax havens, and the corporate elite 
are completely protected from making shared sacrifices. That is simply 
not fair. I cannot support it. The thought that because our soldiers 
will join seniors, students, and working-class families on the chopping 
block that Democrats should flock to this plan is wrongheaded. 
Eliminating troubled DOD weapons systems is one thing, but across-the-
board cuts will punish those who are bravely serving our country in a 
time of war. Adding these cuts just makes what was a painful plan a 
totally unfair, unbalanced, and unacceptable plan.
  I supported the majority leader's plan. I have shown I am serious 
about deficit reduction. I have supported a fair deal as described by 
people in New Jersey and across our country, a reasonable deficit-
reduction plan that truly represents compromise, a deal that fulfills 
the commonsense idea of shared sacrifice.
  I know shared sacrifice. This is not shared sacrifice. This is 
capitulation to a radical fringe of the Republican Party that will not 
bend until they break this economy or get their own way. I have been 
for deficit reduction. I have voted for fair approaches to deficit 
reduction. I know fairness, but this deal is not fair, and I will not 
support it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the proposed debt 
crisis agreement. The first thing I would like to do is express my 
appreciation--I think I would actually say empathy to the President, 
the Vice President, and the bipartisan leadership of both Houses of 
Congress who have had to deal with this enormously significant and 
difficult problem for our Federal Government because the obvious fact 
is we have worked our way into a very deep hole of debt. When I say 
``we,'' I mean we, all of us--succeeding Presidents of different 
parties, Members of both parties in both Houses of Congress. There is a 
tendency, when you have a problem such as this, to want to point and 
blame everybody else. The truth is, we are all responsible, and we are 
only going to get out of this hole and get the American government and 
the American people out of this hole if we work together to solve the 
problems, just as we have together caused these problems.
  I saw some numbers recently--I think I have them right; I know I have 
them almost right--that express very simply what happened over the last 
decade. In fiscal year 2001, the last year of the Clinton 
administration, the Federal Government tax revenues--revenues--were at 
about 19.6 percent of the gross domestic product. Federal Government 
spending in that year was about a point lower, 18.5 or 18.6 percent of 
the gross domestic product. So you are raising about 1 percent more of 
the GDP than you are spending, and you have a surplus.
  What is it now? It is startling how the change has occurred. Spending 
is up close to 25 percent of the gross domestic product, and revenues 
are down to about 15 percent. Now you have a gap of about 10 percent of 
spending, as a percentage of GDP, over revenue, and we have this 
enormous deficit and debt--$14 trillion. If you said to me when I came 
to Congress in 1989 that our government would one day have a debt of 
over $14 trillion, I would have said: Impossible. But here we are. And 
it is growing at $1 trillion a year and more. That is the problem we 
have.
  When you think about those percentages I cited, speaking very 
simplistically, the way we are going to get out of the hole we are in 
is by cutting spending and raising revenues. We would like to do that 
in a way that also gets us back to economic growth. That is the 
critical third factor. If we are growing economically, the revenue 
system we have will raise more money and help us to close this gap.
  But doing these two things that are critical to solving the national 
crisis we have--which is to raise revenue and cut spending--is 
difficult politically, very hard politically. It is not what a lot of 
politicians think our constituents want us to do. But I think today the 
American people are so anxious about the national debt, so anxious 
about the economy, and so frustrated and angry with Members of Congress 
that they would like us to do what is counterintuitive, which does not 
seem like traditional politics, which is to actually do together what 
will solve the problem--stop the partisan politics, solve the problem. 
They know we have to cut some spending, we have to raise some revenues, 
and they want us to do it fairly. That is the difficult dilemma the 
White House and the bipartisan congressional leadership faced in 
dealing with this problem, and it results in the agreement.
  I thank the leaders and the White House for the agreement because it 
does do some significant things. No. 1, it avoids the unknown risk of a 
default for the first time in our history. Some people think it would 
not be so bad. I do not want to play that game with our economy and our 
financial future. I think it would have hurt us. So it avoids that. 
Second, it does begin to

[[Page 12642]]

cut some spending and put some caps on. Third--and maybe this is the 
most hopeful--it creates a special joint committee of Congress to 
recommend further cuts in this so-called second tranche of cuts.
  But it does not do two other things, and as a result, this proposal 
before us now is unfair. What doesn't it do? It seems to me that in 
reaching this agreement, each political party yielded to the other 
party's highest priority political and ideological interest. So this 
agreement does not deal with entitlement reform at all, including 
Medicare reform, which is a priority for Democrats, and it does not 
raise revenues, which is a priority for Republicans. Why do I say it is 
unfair? It is unfair because it sets before us a solution to the 
problem that only asks of the discretionary spending lines in our 
budget.
  What I mean to say here is that discretionary spending in fiscal year 
2010 represented about 35 percent of all government spending. Mandatory 
spending, the so-called entitlements, was almost 60 percent. So 35 
percent discretionary, 60 percent mandatory. Interest payments were 
about 5.5 percent. So if you are taking the mandatory spending off the 
table and you are not going to add any revenues, then you are left with 
taking all the savings that this agreement proposes to achieve--almost 
$3 trillion, maybe at best $3 trillion--you are taking it all out of 
discretionary spending. In doing that, you are going to end up having a 
devastating effect on our security and I believe on our prosperity and 
also on our future, on the capacity of our government to take care of 
those who are most vulnerable and on the capacity of our government to 
help the economy grow.
  To better explain this, I just want to say very briefly, what is 
discretionary spending? Well, there is the defense side, which is the 
Department of Defense. In some cases in the agreement, it is described 
as security, and that would include Homeland Security and the Veterans' 
Administration. The nondefense discretionary includes most of what most 
people see as our government: education, health, administration of 
justice, energy, environment, agriculture, commerce, community and 
regional development, science, space, technology research. All of those 
will suffer devastating cuts under this proposal because we have not 
been able to deal with entitlements, particularly Medicare.
  Why do I cite Medicare? I believe in Medicare. I think it is a great 
program. But, look, it is on course to do two things: One, it is going 
to go bankrupt soon, according to the report of its own trustees, no 
later than 2024 but as soon as 4 or 5 years from now. The hospital part 
of Medicare is going to go bankrupt. It is not going to have enough 
money. Why? Because though people put money, through their payroll 
taxes, into hospital insurance, the reality is that the average 
beneficiary of Medicare takes $3 or $4 out for every $1 put in. You 
cannot do that and have it be sustained over the long haul. And over 
the next decade, approximately 20 million more Americans are going on 
to Medicare because of the baby boomer generation. So it is the single 
largest, fastest growing element of our Federal budget.
  It seems to me--again, I support Medicare. I voted against the Ryan 
budget. I do not want to privatize it. But you cannot protect Medicare 
as it is and expect it to stay as it is. You are only going to protect 
Medicare by changing it, and this budget does not touch that at all. I 
could say more about that, but that is enough for the moment.
  So the end result of all this is that of the approximately $1 
trillion in the so-called first phase or tranche of cuts adopted by 
this plan, they are pretty much all from discretionary spending, 
defense and nondefense--Head Start, Pell grants, education, and 
defense.
  The second phase is the part that bothers me and really worries me, I 
would say. The proposal before us sets up a committee, 12 Members of 
Congress equal in terms of party allocation. They have the opportunity 
to deal with the problems that are left out of this and have this be a 
fairer proposal to get America back in balance; that is, to deal with 
the entitlements and deal with the revenues--tax reform, entitlement 
reform, whatever you want to call it. But will they? And if they do 
not, if the two parties' priority political and ideological interests 
are reflected in the committee and stop it from dealing with 
entitlements and revenues or are reflected on the floor, then there is 
an automatic mechanism for cutting an additional $1.2 trillion to $1.5 
trillion, and that all comes out of discretionary spending, defense and 
nondefense.
  Some of my other colleagues have come to the floor to describe the 
impact on nondefense discretionary spending, really most of what we 
know as government: education, health care, environmental protection, 
transportation, et cetera, et cetera.
  I am on the Armed Services Committee. I am on the Homeland Security 
Committee, privileged to be chair. My priority in my service in the 
Senate has been our national security. I will tell you this: If that 
sequester ever went into effect, it would have a devastating impact on 
the ability of our men and women in uniform and their leaders to 
protect our security in what remains a dangerous world.
  The initial $1 trillion of cuts mandated in this proposal includes 
$350 billion over the 10 years from defense, as I understand the 
numbers. President Obama had earlier directed the Department of Defense 
to cut $400 billion from their spending over the next decade.
  The Department of Defense is working on that. GEN Martin Dempsey, 
soon to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, testified before the Senate 
Armed Services Committee, said he was working on that. He thought he 
could accomplish it, but it was not going to be easy.
  He was asked: What would happen if you were demanded to go beyond the 
$400 billion in cuts from defense over the next 10 years? He said it 
would be extraordinarily difficult and involve very high risk to our 
national security. He is not against cuts in defense. I am not against 
cuts in defense. But they have to be reasonable because, in the end, 
the first responsibility of our national government is to protect our 
security.
  If we do not have security, we do not have anything else. We do not 
have freedom. We do not have prosperity. We do not have anything else. 
The world is full of people who want to do us damage, who want to kill 
us, who want to bring down our civilization, who are involved in an 
ideological--some sense theological--clash with us. I am just saying 
that if the joint committee, the special committee, cannot reach 
agreement or reaches agreement and Congress rejects its proposals, 
there will be an automatic cut in defense of an additional $500 to $600 
billion over the next decade. Add that to the $350 billion already in 
the first phase mandated by this proposal, we have $1 trillion in cuts. 
We are not going to be protected, as we have to be.
  It is as simple as that. It is unfair--not only unfair, it is 
irresponsible. Admiral Mullen was in Afghanistan over the weekend. He 
had a conversation with some of our troops that got a lot of attention 
from the media. One of the soldiers got up and said: Admiral Mullen, we 
were following the debt debate in Congress. Can you promise us we will 
get paid regularly in the coming weeks?
  Admiral Mullen quite honestly said: I do not know. Because it was not 
clear whether we were going to come to an agreement and avoid a 
default.
  I will tell you, if this full package goes forward and the joint 
committee does not reach a different result and recommendation and $1 
trillion of cuts are imposed on our national security-Defense 
Department budget over the next 10 years, whoever is Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff when this goes into effect--it will be General 
Dempsey--he will still be there, fortunately, in January of 2013--when 
they are asked: Will we get paid, I believe they are still going to 
say: I do not know. Some of you will. We may have to have a reduction 
in end strength in the force, the number of people we have protecting 
our country. If families of

[[Page 12643]]

men and women in uniform for the United States ask, if this total 
package of cuts goes into effect on defense, if their families of the 
military ask: Are our loved ones in uniform going to be given the 
equipment to carry out the missions our country is asking of them in a 
way that maximizes their ability to succeed and protects them, I do not 
think anybody in the military can say yes. I could not say yes, if that 
was the case.
  So I am disappointed. I will say one other thing because we are all 
so focused on jobs and the economy. The American military does not just 
protect our security and advance our ideals, as it does, and live by 
our ideals, as it does, but it also has a tremendous positive impact on 
our economy. It is the American military that is the foundation of an 
international system of stability and security that has undergirded, 
that has been the precondition of the enormous growth that has happened 
in America and a lot of other places in the world, where hundreds of 
millions, probably billions, of people have come out of poverty because 
they could rely on the safety of the sea lanes, they could rely on 
order in the world in places such as Asia, Europe, and throughout the 
world.
  If the American military is cut as much, in the worst case as this 
proposal would cut it, it is the beginning of the end of America as a 
great international power. It is the beginning of the end of this 
system of international security that has undergirded our prosperity 
and so much of the prosperity of the world. Which other nation will 
assume the responsibility we have? We have benefitted from it greatly. 
It is a statement that we are prepared to decline as a country.
  I come back and say again, that to get us out of the fiscal hole we 
in the Federal Government have put this country into, everybody is 
going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to take cuts. That 
includes defense, and there is a lot that can be cut out of defense. 
But there is also a lot that has to be changed in entitlement spending.
  There are people who are getting away with tax loopholes who ought to 
be paying more in taxes. Everybody has to contribute to solve this 
national crisis. Right now, this proposal is unfair because it adds 
contributions, cuts, sacrifice only from the recipients of 
discretionary spending, and that means while all of them should be 
paying--should be accepting cuts, they are being asked to take cuts 
that are unfair and counterproductive to our security, to our liberty, 
to our prosperity, to our morality as a country that has always taken 
care of people who could not take care of themselves.
  If these discretionary cuts go into effect, all that will be 
jeopardized. So I have come to say this to my colleagues and to say, 
frankly, that I have not decided how I am going to vote. I understand 
the proposal does prevent the default, it does begin some process of 
cuts, and it has this committee which offers the most hope.
  But on the other hand, I see in front of me a mechanism set up which 
I think--if it goes through its conclusion--will have not a net 
positive effect on our future, if the committee's work is not good and 
accepted by Congress, but a net negative effect on America's future.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the debt 
ceiling agreement that was reached last night.
  Over the past week I have heard from countless Minnesotans who want 
Congress to come together and reach a compromise on the debt ceiling.
  They did not want their interest rates to rise, the value of the 
dollar to fall, or to see their retirement savings decimated again 
because some in Washington believe that if they refuse to compromise, 
the resulting crisis will score them political points.
  I would like to share with you some of the comments I received from 
Minnesotan's throughout the State.
  Judy from Rochester writes:

       As senior citizens, we understand where our country is 
     compared to where it has been in the last 50 years or so, and 
     we appreciate that sacrifices must be made. It is almost too 
     far back to remember when people all pulled together, 
     including congress, to solve our corporate issues.
       . . . all the American people want is for you to represent 
     us and make the best decisions for us . . . using your best 
     judgment. Not prejudice or narrow viewpoint, but the best 
     judgment.

  Paul from Rochester writes:

       This is not the place for partisan political stubbornness. 
     It is the time for our elected officials to work together for 
     the good of the United States.

  Louis from Lakeville writes:

       It is time for all you legislators to put your political 
     affiliations aside and act as Americans and do what is right 
     for all Americans not just those who voted for you. We have a 
     tremendous fiscal mess in this country and we cannot waste 
     time blaming each other. It was jointly created and must be 
     jointly resolved.

  Bonnie from Osseo writes:

       Please put your ideologies aside and work in a 
     collaborative effort to restructure our debt and to give the 
     USA the opportunity to continue to prosper.

  Marla from St. Paul writes:

       It is so frustrating to see the same game of political 
     budgetary chicken playing out at the national level that 
     happened in the state level in Minnesota.

  Tom and Mary from St. Paul write:

       If you wanted to wake us up as citizens, you certainly 
     have. We've been told that if you allow a default, that will 
     cost our 401K to lose $9,000. Our stock portfolio and 
     retirement savings will likely take a 6 percent hit.
       If ever a situation called for compromise, this is it. 
     Raise the debt ceiling, and not just for 6 months, (Reagan 
     did it many times) but make real promises to deal with the 
     debt, and then make the real fight where it belongs, over the 
     next budget, not paying for our current obligations. Do you 
     really want the Chinese to call in all our debts now? Have a 
     phased, sane plan for bringing down the debt, not a forced/
     false crisis. We're just hard working Americans trying to go 
     on with our lives. We never write these kinds of messages. 
     This is scary and we won't forget. Get it done please.

  Jake from Minneapolis writes:

       In these upcoming days, as you are faced with difficult 
     decisions, I implore you to work with your colleagues on both 
     sides of the isle to finalize the budgetary issues facing the 
     United States at this time. As a husband who is supporting 
     his wife as she attends a graduate program at the University 
     of Minnesota, I am very concerned about what a default of 
     United States loans would mean in regards to our finances.
       I am faithfully paying down student loans and my wife and I 
     will begin to pay down the student loans that she has 
     incurred to pay for her education as she finishes her program 
     in May. Paying off loans is never fun; it means cutting some 
     things out of our budget (things that we like such as going 
     out to eat or to the movies) and compromising on difficult 
     decisions.
       I hope that as decisions are made regarding the financial 
     situations facing the United States you will be a person who 
     reaches across the aisle, with a willingness to compromise 
     and to make difficult decisions.

  Marilyn from Buffalo writes:

       As an independent voter I am asking you to compromise on 
     the budget issue. I am also asking you to use a balanced 
     approach to reduce the budget deficit.

  Jay and Bonnie from Moorhead write:

       We would like to see a timely resolution to both the debt 
     limit issue and deficit reduction by means of genuine 
     negotiation resulting in a nonpartisan compromise which will 
     keep our country financially solvent.

  Kim from Duluth writes:

       I am writing to add my voice to the growing number of 
     citizens worried about Washington's inability or perhaps 
     unwillingness to get done the work you were elected to do. In 
     my opinion as a working class American, I believe we ALL are 
     expected to compromise in hopes that we can further the good 
     work of our nation. I firmly believe all of America needs to 
     be accountable to the economic disaster we have known was 
     approaching these many long decades. So please, in the 
     vernacular, ``suck it up'' and get the job done!

  While no one feels the agreement we will soon vote on is the perfect 
solution, we are in the bottom of the ninth here, the time has come to 
break through the partisan stalemate and pass something to provide 
certainty so we can move our country forward.
  This is why I plan on voting for this agreement as it will ensure our 
country does not default on our obligations--something that would have 
caused real pain for Minnesota families and businesses--while also 
providing a down payment on deficit reduction.
  Unfortunately, this debate has once again shown we need to change the 
way Congress conducts its own business.

[[Page 12644]]

  I come from county government and I can tell you local governments do 
not operate this way.
  Minnesota is home to more Fortune 500 companies per capita than any 
other state. After fielding many calls over the past few weeks from 
business leaders from the biggest businesses in our State, like General 
Mills, to the smallest, one, two, three-person operations, they do not 
run their businesses this way.
  And there is no doubt, this is not how families balance their 
budgets.
  The sooner we can come together to agree on the next stage of this 
package, the better for our economy and the better for our country.
  I believe we should look at things such as closing the loopholes for 
oil subsidies. I believe we should look at things such as tax cuts on 
the wealthiest expiring at the end of 2012. These are things that 
should be in the mix as we move forward.
  It is time to put our political differences aside to work on an 
agenda that strengthens our economy, promotes fiscal responsibility, 
and increases global competitiveness.
  If we insist on using the debate as a vehicle for rhetoric only, we 
will not just be doing ourselves a disservice, we will be cheating our 
children and grandchildren out of knowing the America in which we grew 
up.
  We already know much of what will need to be done. Our failure to act 
has not been because we lack solutions but because, too often, Congress 
has lacked the political will to get behind a consensus proposal.
  In the Senate, we have had this work going on. We have had bipartisan 
groups of Senators, including the Gang of 6, working together to find a 
solution. We need to now take that work and make sure that gets 
included in the consideration by this committee.
  It is time for us to work together and tell the American people what 
they need to hear. We need to show them that Washington isn't broken; 
that, instead, we are willing to put aside our partisan politics to do 
what we were elected to do--to do what is right for America.


                        Passing an FAA Extension

  Mr. President, I will turn to another issue I hope we can resolve 
before the end of this week, which is to pass an FAA extension.
  I rise today to speak about the urgent need to pass a Federal 
Aviation Administration extension. The Federal Aviation Administration 
not only keeps our airways safe but it also ensures that our air 
transportation runs effectively by overseeing grants for critical 
construction projects at our airports.
  As you know, Congress allowed the FAA's most recent extension to 
expire on July 22. This has resulted in a partial shutdown of the FAA.
  While the current partial shutdown of the FAA is not affecting the 
safety of our airways, it is still having some detrimental effects on 
our country's air service.
  The lack of an extension means the FAA doesn't have the authority to 
collect the fees and taxes the aviation system needs to fund ongoing 
construction and improvement projects at our airports. This is 
approximately $200 million a week.
  The fees and taxes have nothing to do with the current debt issues we 
have been debating over the past few weeks. These fees and taxes go 
into a trust fund that is self-funded and separate from the budget that 
has been in the news.
  The trust fund pays for construction projects such as a new terminal 
at the Duluth Airport in Minnesota. This new terminal is critical to 
the Duluth area. The terminal will allow more flights in and out of the 
airport, which is vital as more and more businesses are moving to 
Duluth.
  Unfortunately, the airport at this time is waiting for a $5.2 million 
grant that has already been awarded from the FAA. For each day that the 
airport waits to receive its grant money, the risk is higher that the 
airport will be forced to delay the terminal project for 1 year. Why is 
that? Why can't they go through constructing things in December and 
January in Duluth? It is pretty cold in Duluth then, and it is hard to 
do the construction, if not impossible. That is why it is so critically 
important that we get this money in Duluth immediately. Such a delay 
will not just be inconvenient, it will cause the cost of the project to 
significantly increase.
  Duluth is not the only airport suffering. Construction projects are 
being halted throughout the country. The Associated General Contractors 
estimates that 70,000 construction workers in related fields have been 
affected by this shutdown.
  I know there are political issues surrounding Congress's inability to 
pass an FAA extension. However, these issues have nothing to do with 
the construction projects such as the Duluth terminal, the 4,000 
furloughed FAA employees, or the 70,000 construction workers just 
trying to make a living.
  I appreciate the bipartisan work that has gone on in the Commerce 
Committee and in this Chamber with Senator Rockefeller from West 
Virginia and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas. I continue to 
support them in their efforts to get this FAA extension done.
  I urge my colleagues to pass the FAA extension. The lack of one is 
hurting our aviation system and our economy.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, are we in a quorum call?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are not.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the debt ceiling agreement that will soon 
come before the Senate is a clear and present danger to the fragile--
indeed, faltering--economic recovery. To say this is the wrong policy 
at the wrong time is a gross understatement. One has to ask the 
question: Is anyone paying attention? We just learned economic growth 
fell to a 1.3-percent annual rate in the second quarter. The first 
quarter growth was revised downward sharply to just four-tenths of 1 
percent--virtually flat.
  The economy created a meager 16,000 jobs in the month of June--again 
flat, not even keeping up with population growth. Last month, over 25 
million Americans could not find full-time employment. Let me repeat 
that: over 25 million Americans are effectively out of work. This 
includes those formally looking for work and those so discouraged that 
they are no longer looking but want to work. State and local 
governments continue to slash funding for jobs at a stunning pace, 
destroying an estimated 500,000 jobs in the last 2 years. Let me repeat 
that: In the last 2 years, State and local governments have destroyed 
an estimated 500,000 jobs. Those are consumers too. Those are people 
who shop and buy cars and clothes and houses and go out to eat at 
restaurants and things such as that.
  According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, in the first 
half of 2011, all government spending fell at a 3.5-percent annual 
rate, enough to knock three-quarters of a percentage point off the GDP. 
On top of this wreckage, this so-called budget deal is proposing to 
slash funding in investment by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years--an 
unprecedented step that will further destroy demand and directly kill 
millions of public- and private-sector jobs.
  This is what Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of the bond investment 
firm of PIMCO, said just yesterday on one of the network shows in 
regard to this budget deal:

       Unemployment will be higher than it would have been 
     otherwise.

  Speaking of this budget deal we are talking about, he said 
unemployment will be higher because of it.

       Growth will be lower than it would be otherwise, and 
     inequality will be worse than it would be otherwise.

  He added:

       We have a very weak economy, so withdrawing more spending 
     at this stage will make it even weaker.

  For months now, Washington politicians have been distracted by the 
phony manufactured crisis about raising the debt ceiling. This city has 
been obsessed with this. The rest of the country, for a very good 
reason, is more concerned with a far more urgent deficit than the 
budget deficit. They

[[Page 12645]]

are more concerned about the jobs deficit--25 million people out of 
work. In a recent CBS News-New York Times poll, 53 percent of the 
public polled named jobs and the economy as the most important problem, 
while only 7 percent named the deficit.
  So I oppose this misbegotten, misguided deal they have conjured up in 
return for raising the debt ceiling. I don't oppose raising the debt 
ceiling. I wish to make that clear. I believe we have a constitutional 
obligation to pay our debts and to make good on our debts, as we have 
done since the Revolutionary War. What I am objecting to is the deal 
that was put together in order to permit us to perform our 
constitutional obligation.
  I oppose it for four reasons: Reason No. 1 is this deal will destroy 
millions of jobs, as I have said, in both the public and private 
sector. By shutting off Federal funding in investment--a critical 
engine sustaining our sputtering economy--it could easily plunge 
America back into recession.
  Please read your history, see what happened in 1937 and 1938. We were 
coming out of the Depression and all of a sudden Congress decided to 
tighten down the screws and plunged us right back into higher 
unemployment.
  Secondly, I have always advocated a balanced approach to deficit 
reduction, including both spending cuts and revenue increases. This 
deal--the one we are going to have before us this evening, I guess--
rejects a balanced approach. It rejects any sense of equity and 
fairness.
  As my friend, the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez, said earlier 
on the floor: This is not fair. Are we concerned about fairness or is 
that just sort of passe? Is that something we should even be concerned 
about, whether something is fair? I think we ought to be concerned 
about fairness. This is the message that is coming across loudly and 
clearly in the phone calls coming into my office and the e-mails I am 
getting from Iowa and around the country.
  This deal offends people's basic sense of fairness--that Congress 
would slash funding for things such as student loans and cancer 
research and Head Start programs and Vista and legal services or cut 
essential funding for seniors--senior volunteer programs, senior 
centers, and Meals on Wheels--cutting support for people with 
disabilities, cutting the safety net for a lot of the most vulnerable 
people in our society, hurting the middle class. We can do that, but we 
simply can't ask for one more dollar of shared sacrifice from the 
millionaires and billionaires who have made so much money in the last 
decade and who have received, thanks to this Congress, huge tax breaks.
  This deal is not fair.
  Third, I oppose this deal for the simple reason that I oppose paying 
ransom to hostage takers. Since the 1930s, Congress has routinely 
raised the national debt 89 times, including 7 times during the recent 
Presidency of George Bush, and 18 times under Ronald Reagan. Did 
Democrats hold the economy hostage? Did we say: Oh, no, we are not 
going to raise the debt unless you do this, this, this, and this? No. 
Did we filibuster? No.
  Oh, there is always a skirmish on raising the debt ceiling. Ever 
since I have been here, for the past 35 years that I have been here, 36 
years now, there is always a skirmish on it. But do you know how it has 
always worked? The majority always has to come up with the votes so 
there is no default. Well, that is not the way it is working this time.
  This time congressional Republicans are holding our Nation hostage, 
threatening to default on our national debt and plunge America into an 
abyss that we don't even know what would possibly happen; that would 
affect our bond rating for years in the future, affect the interest 
rates that everyone pays on their car loans, their student loans, 
housing, and everything else. They would plunge America into that 
unless their demands are met.
  Let's be clear. This is not a negotiating tactic; this is blackmail. 
Republicans have basically said: We will inflict grievous harm on the 
economy if Democrats do not meet our demands. Well, President Obama 
said it earlier. We are not going to go into default. So with this kind 
of a lopsided deal, the ransom is paid, the hostage is released. But 
what a terrible precedent this sets. Make no mistake, Republicans will 
use these same despicable tactics down the road in the future.
  Now, if I sound like I am picking too much on Republicans, let me 
just say, with this kind of precedent, I can see a Republican 
President--and there will be another one sometime, but I hope not too 
soon. But there will be a Republican President and there will be a 
Democratic Congress, and Democrats will use this as a precedent: We 
will hold it hostage.
  Is this the way we want to start running our country? What a terrible 
precedent this sets. It reminds me of the precedent that was set 
starting back in the 1980s with the use of the filibuster in the 
Senate.
  Now, I say to the President that I have for years advocated that we 
do away with the filibuster over a short period of time; that we allow 
things to be slowed down but not be stopped because of a filibuster. I 
didn't just say this now; I said it in 1990s. It was right after 
Democrats had lost control of the Senate and Republicans had taken 
over, and I even advocated doing away with the filibuster then because 
I said it was escalating. It was a tit-for-tat. When the Republicans 
were in charge, we filibustered; and then when we got in charge, they 
filibustered, but they added a few more. Then when we got in charge, we 
filibustered, but we did it a little bit more than what they did. This 
went back and forth.
  I predicted in 1995 that if we didn't nip that in the bud, it was 
going to get out of hand. Sure enough, it got out of hand. That is what 
I mean. That is what happens. You set a precedent like that, and there 
is no end to it.
  So I think the precedent that has been set bodes ill for our country, 
not just for Republicans but for Democrats too.
  President Obama had an alternative, however, to capitulating to the 
Republicans' hostage taking and their blackmail. In remarks in the 
Senate on Saturday and many times, I have urged the President to 
respond to this unprecedented threat by taking the unprecedented action 
under the 14th amendment to the Constitution of basically eliminating 
the debt ceiling. I know the occupant of the chair, the distinguished 
Senator from Delaware, has advocated this for some time also. It is 
deeply regrettable that President Obama preemptively took this option 
off the table.
  Throughout history, where meaning is unclear, where precedent was 
nonexistent, the American people, through their elected officials and 
through their President, have acted boldly to protect the interests of 
the United States and to save our country.
  I have heard it said that people around the President at the White 
House--well, they got attorneys to weigh in on this and the Justice 
Department. I understand that the Vice President said this morning to 
the House caucus that the authority was unclear as to whether the 
President could take such action.
  Again, I repeat: Where there is no precedent, where the meaning is 
unclear, we can't run across the street to the Supreme Court and ask 
for an advisory opinion. They don't give those advisory opinions. But 
when the country is in a crisis mode and our future is at stake, I 
believe the President can act boldly, should act boldly, must act 
boldly, both to prevent the country from falling into a crisis but also 
to prevent this kind of hostage taking, this kind of blackmail that we 
either do it this way or we will not raise the debt ceiling.
  I pointed out in my speech Saturday, and I point out again, Thomas 
Jefferson concluded the treaty with the Louisiana Purchase--and he 
himself wrote letters, and I have copies of those letters. I have read 
them, letters to Senator Breckenridge anguishing over whether he had 
the constitutional right to do this.
  In one letter he said: I believe Congress is going to have to pass a 
constitutional amendment and send it to the States for their 
ratification before

[[Page 12646]]

I can do this. But, finally, Jefferson came to the realization that if 
he didn't take this action, the whole western part of the United States 
at that time might never become part of the United States. Think about 
that. We might have been facing a part of the United States that 
belonged to France.
  So Jefferson acted boldly. In fact, there were critics at that time 
who said he didn't have the authority to do that, and they had a vote 
in the House of Representatives, by the way. I think it carried by a 
couple votes.
  Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. There is 
nothing in the Constitution that gave him the power or the authority to 
do that, but he did it. He did it to help save the country and to right 
an egregious wrong.
  More recently, Franklin Roosevelt--you can read about it in the 
history books. In the 1930s, it was clear if we didn't come to the 
assistance of Great Britain, it was going to fall to Nazi Germany--not 
that they needed our men but they needed our material. They needed the 
kind of material that we could supply in a short amount of time so they 
could defend Great Britain against Nazi Germany.
  So Franklin Roosevelt concluded a lend-and-lease program. That is 
what it was called, the lend-and-lease program. Even President 
Roosevelt at that time said in his writings he considered this probably 
unconstitutional. But he had to do it to save our country because it 
was a crisis, and he acted boldly to do it.
  There was no clear authority for him to do that, but, as I point out, 
there was no prohibition against him doing that either. There was no 
prohibition explicitly in the Constitution to prohibit Thomas Jefferson 
from making the Louisiana Purchase. There was no express prohibition 
against Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. There was no 
express prohibition against Franklin Roosevelt signing the lend-and-
lease deal.
  So, again, I point out, where meaning is unclear--and in the 14th 
amendment the meaning is kind of unclear. But we do have a court case, 
Perry v. U.S., 1935. Read what Chief Justice Hughes wrote in his 
opinion. He said quite clearly that Congress has the power to borrow 
money. He said that is a good thing. It may be used to save our country 
sometime. But, he says, Congress does not have the authority to alter 
or destroy those obligations. We cannot alter or destroy those 
obligations once we make them.
  So as I argued Saturday, and I continue to argue, if Congress either 
through action or inaction destroys or alters those debt obligations, 
then I think it is up to the President of the United States to step 
into the breach.
  Is there clear authority for the President to do this? No. I submit 
there is no clear prohibition against him, either, to do this. So when 
I cast my vote later today against this deal, I am not casting a vote 
to send our country into default. I would not do that. If I thought 
that my vote was the determining vote to send this country into 
default, I would not do that. That is not the way I see it, Mr. 
President. The way I see it is even if we turn this down, the President 
can use his Presidential power and authority to sign an Executive order 
getting rid of the debt ceiling so that, constitutionally, we make good 
on our debt obligations.
  Read Perry v. U.S. I think you can see it there. So if this deal goes 
down either in the House or the Senate, the President can act before 
tomorrow to save this country. He may not want to do it, but he should 
do it. And he should have put that out there a long time ago.
  Each one of the three cases I mentioned, Jefferson, Lincoln, and 
Roosevelt, three great Presidents, took action to save the country, and 
they did the right thing.
  Mr. President, my fourth reason for opposing this deal is because, in 
truth, it is not about reducing the deficit. First and foremost, this 
deal is about preserving hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks 
for corporations and the wealthiest in our society. Bear in mind this 
is the singular purpose and goal of today's Republican Party: not 
reducing the deficit but preserving and expanding tax breaks for the 
wealthy. Here is why I say that.
  Back last December when Republicans demanded the deal to preserve the 
Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, that deal added a whopping $800 
billion to deficits in just 2 years: this year 2011, next year 2012. 
Here we have it. We are being asked to raise the debt ceiling. A big 
portion of that is to pay for tax breaks to the wealthiest just in 2 
years because of that deal last December where the Bush-era tax cuts 
were extended for 2 years, the wealthy can get billions in tax breaks 
for 2 years. So now what we are being asked to do is to pay for these 2 
years' of tax breaks to the wealthiest by slashing funds to the most 
vulnerable in our society.
  So that is the game here. The game here is to preserve those tax 
breaks even though we have to slash funding for the most vulnerable.
  In December, Republicans' No. 1 priority was preserving tax breaks 
for the wealthy even if that meant adding hundreds of billions of 
dollars to the deficit. So last December Republicans said: We have to 
extend the Bush-era tax breaks for 2 years. That tax bill added $800 
billion to our deficit. I didn't hear a peep out of them, not one peep 
from the Republicans about the impact on the deficit.
  Now, in recent weeks and months Republicans have repeatedly rejected 
grand bargains to reduce future deficits by nearly $4 trillion. Why did 
they reject the Reid proposal and proposals by the administration and 
others? Because each one would have required some modest sacrifice from 
millionaires and billionaires to help pay for those tax breaks they 
got. Republicans adamantly opposed this.
  In his remarks last evening announcing this debt ceiling bad deal, as 
I call it, President Obama said the result ``would be the lowest level 
of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President.'' 
That bears repeating. President Obama said the result ``would be the 
lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was 
President.''
  For the record, the American people do not want to take down Federal 
funding and investment to the level of the Eisenhower years. To do so 
would be tantamount to repudiating what we have done since then to make 
our country better and more fair, to make our country more of a middle-
class society, more a country where people born into poverty can aspire 
to be in the middle class to get a good education, good health care, 
decent housing, a ``Head Start.''
  To return to the spending of Dwight Eisenhower would be tantamount to 
repudiating the Great Society programs. We always hear from Republican 
friends how the Great Society was a failure, what a failure the Great 
Society was. I respectfully disagree. Head Start a failure? It was a 
Great Society program. Medicaid? Of course Medicaid now is exempted out 
of this measure. How about the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 
title I, where we have agreed to put money out to the States to help 
low-income students and schools in poor areas? That is a Great Society 
program. How about the Higher Education Act? Student loans help a lot 
of kids go to college.
  I have here a list of some of the Great Society programs: the Civil 
Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the Age 
Discrimination and Employment Act of 1967; Job Corps--that is another 
one which is going to get slashed because of this, Job Corps; VISTA; 
Upward Bound; food stamps, now called the SNAP program, which enables 
low-income people to have a decent diet during economic downturns; 
LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; the community 
action programs that do so much for the elderly and the poor. I 
mentioned the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher 
Education Act of 1965, the Bilingual Education Act to help kids--
learners of English as a second language. I mentioned Medicare and 
Medicaid. How about the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Land 
and Water Conservation Act and on and on. I am not going to read them 
all. These are all parts of

[[Page 12647]]

the Great Society programs. They made our country what it is today. 
But, they do cost money.
  We have cleaner air, cleaner water, better educated kids, better 
health care, better cancer research--all kinds of research done at the 
NIH. These programs, along with Social Security, undergird the middle 
class in our society. They create a ladder of opportunity to allow 
disadvantaged Americans to work, move upward, and become part of the 
middle class. These programs define America as decent, compassionate, 
and, yes, as a great society.
  The President is sorely mistaken if he believes the American people 
want to slash the budget to the level of the Eisenhower years and turn 
back the clock on half a century of progress.
  Mr. President, I hope that is not what you meant. I hope that is not 
what you meant. To turn spending back to the level of the Eisenhower 
years is not a bragging point. That is not something positive. To me, 
that is a big negative.
  What we need is to have a better and more fair tax system to pay for 
all the things that make our society great. We are not having the right 
debate here. We have not had the right debate for a long time. The 
debate ought to be about what is happening to our society.
  I just read a recent interview with Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers was 
asked what his greatest fear was. His greatest fear was that we in 
America would accept greater and greater inequality, wealth inequality, 
as the norm; that we would accept a greater and greater inequality as 
normal. Here is maybe what he was talking about. From 2005 to 2009, the 
median net worth of Hispanic households went down 66 percent. The 
median net worth of African-American households went down 53 percent. 
The median net worth of White--Caucasian--households went down 16 
percent. The median net worth right now of a White--Caucasian--family 
in America is 20 times that of an African-American family and 18 times 
that of a Hispanic family. This is twice the gap since before the 
recession, and it is the biggest gap since this data was collected by 
the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1984.
  Do you see what is happening? Our country is pulling apart. There are 
fewer and fewer people at the top getting more and more wealth and more 
and more people at the bottom, destroying the middle class.
  From 2005 to 2009, the median net worth--I keep stressing ``median 
net worth.'' What that means is you take all the things you own--your 
house, car, TV sets, all the stuff you own--and you subtract that from 
all your debts and obligations--mortgage, things such as that for the 
middle household with half having more and half having less. The median 
net worth from 2005 to 2009 of African-American households went from 
$12,124 to $5,677. The median net worth of Hispanic households went 
from $18,359 to $6,325. Keep those figures in mind--median net worth of 
African-American households in 2009, $5,677; Hispanic households, 
$6,325. That is their net worth. That is everything. White households, 
in 2009--from 2005 to 2009, the net worth went from $134,992 to 
$113,149. So as of just 2 years ago, the median net worth of White 
households was, indeed, 20 times that of African-American households 
and 18 times that of Hispanics. Here is Hispanic households: net worth, 
$6,325; median for Whites, $113,149. Again, that wealth, as I say, is 
the sum of all their assets--their houses, their cars, their bank 
accounts--minus their debts, including mortgages, loans, and credit 
card debt.
  The share of wealth? In 1988, the top 5 percent of Americans, in 
terms of wealth, had $8 trillion in assets. That was 1980. In 2010, 
that top 5 percent had $40 trillion in assets. That is more than 60 
percent of the national wealth. The other 95 percent of America has the 
remaining 40 percent.
  Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, Rev. Jim Wallis, said, ``A 
budget is a moral document.''
  ``We are making choices,'' he added, such as whether to cut $8.5 
billion for low-income housing or whether to retain a similar amount in 
tax deductions for mortgages on vacation homes for the wealthy.
  As Senator Menendez said earlier, it is not fair. This is the debate 
and discussion we should be having in America, in the Senate, and in 
the House. There is this huge disparity in wealth in this country, and 
it is getting worse year by year. Yet our Republican friends say: Give 
more tax breaks to those at the top.
  The American people get it. They understand this. They know there are 
over 25 million of them out of work. They know that wealth disparity is 
opening up a huge gap. The middle class is being destroyed in our 
country, and this so-called budget deal is going to make it even harder 
for anyone to succeed in becoming a middle-class person.
  I just want to say that the most important thing we can do right now, 
the single most important thing we can do--I hate to say this--is not 
``balance the budget,'' which is not what we are going to do now--this 
is raising the debt ceiling. That is not the most important thing. 
Slashing government spending is not the most important thing right now. 
The most important thing is to marshal the forces of the Federal 
Government to put people back to work, to get jobs going in our 
society.
  There is a lot of work to be done. There are highways to be built and 
bridges to be built and schools to be remodeled, new technologies, new 
power systems, new clean energy, a smart grid, cleaning up the 
environment. Anyone who has suffered through the heat wave in the last 
couple of weeks knows something is going on in this country. Something 
is going on. We need more clean energy.
  We need to make sure those children who are born today whose parents 
do not have anything, whose net worth is so little they don't have 
anything, we need to make sure that they have decent health, that they 
have early education programs and Head Start Programs. We need to make 
sure that every child has the best school and the best teachers in 
America, make sure that our streets and our neighborhoods are safe so 
families can go out and walk in the evening or at night and feel safe. 
We need to make sure the food we eat is duly inspected so we can have a 
high assurance we are not going to get sick and make sure the drugs we 
need are available, that the medicines we need, are affordable.
  There are a lot of jobs that need to be done in this country, and we 
can put a lot of people to work. That should be the role of the Federal 
Government.
  Some people say--I have heard it said many times: Government doesn't 
create wealth, only the private sector creates wealth. The government 
consumes wealth, it doesn't create it.
  I had a hearing in my committee about a month ago or so, the HELP 
Committee, and we had the head of the National Institutes of Health 
down, Dr. Francis Collins. The head of NIH had an interesting story to 
tell. It had to do with the Human Genome Project, mapping and 
sequencing the human gene. We did it. It was a tremendous scientific 
accomplishment. Dr. Collins headed that effort. So we mapped and 
sequenced the human gene. The Batelle organization in Ohio, a research 
organization, analyzed it and said we had to put in taxpayers' money, 
$3.8 billion worth of tax dollars into this. In the last 10 years, the 
private sector--because of this research that was done in mapping and 
sequencing the human gene--has put in over $790 billion in investment, 
creating thousands of jobs all over this country, making huge 
breakthroughs in the genetic causes of so many diseases and finding 
interventions to help cure diseases and keep people healthy. Private 
investment never would have been done if we had not put $3.8 billion 
into the NIH to map and sequence the human gene.
  The Interstate Highway System would never have been completed by any 
private company. We did, through the power of the Federal Government. 
You know what. It was not Federal Government workers out there working 
on that highway. It was young kids like me. When I was a kid, I was 
working out on the Interstate Highway System making summer money to go 
to college in the fall. I didn't work for the government; I worked for 
a private contractor.

[[Page 12648]]

  There are plenty of jobs that need to be done, and we need to put 
people to work. That is the single most important thing we can be 
about. Yet what we are doing, as I quoted earlier, is we are actually 
going to make it harder. Economists say the deal could complicate the 
task of putting people to work. There is broad agreement that the 
United States needs to pay down its debts, but most economists say the 
government should have waited a year or more for the economy to 
strengthen. We sure missed a big window of opportunity to reduce our 
debt in our strong years when the asset prices were booming. This time 
it is different. Instead we are stuck trying to do it now when the 
economy is so weak, and we should not be cutting and slashing. We 
should be investing and putting people to work.
  Again, I urge my colleagues to reject this misguided, 
counterproductive debt ceiling deal. Let's stop this precedent of 
taking a hostage of the United States until we get what we want. Mark 
my word, if we do this, it is going to happen again. Then maybe 
sometime when there is a Republican President and the Democrats are in 
charge, then the Democrats will turn on the screws and we will hold 
them hostage for something. It is a terrible way to run a country. It 
is a terrible way to run a democracy.
  I urge my colleagues to reject this misguided, counterproductive debt 
ceiling deal. Let's join together to pass a truly balanced approach to 
bring deficits under control, one that first invests in putting people 
to work. Then as the economy begins to grow and the private sector 
begins to invest, then we start cutting spending, reducing the deficit. 
Let's have a balanced approach that will allow us to continue to invest 
in education, infrastructure, research, and the other things that will 
create jobs and boost our economy, that will build the middle class. 
This bill is a job killer. This debt ceiling deal is a job killer. A 
lot of economists agree with that. We should reject it.
  Mr. President, you have the pen, and you have the Executive order and 
you can get rid of that debt ceiling. Take a bold action to save our 
country and say: No, we are not going to let any group of Congressmen 
or Senators of any political party take our nation hostage again.
  I ask unanimous consent the time until 8 p.m. be equally divided 
between the two leaders or their designees, with Senators permitted to 
speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. I yield the floor.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, you have only been in the chair for a 
couple of minutes. I was going to ask you what is going on today, but I 
think I have a pretty good idea. You and I have spent a fair amount of 
time discussing and thinking through what we ought to do in light of 
these big deficits. We had the privilege of serving together as 
Governors for a number of years. We had a requirement to submit 
balanced budgets and to balance the outflows and revenues in an ongoing 
basis. In some cases we had pretty good fiscal controls in place to 
help us. The rules were in place to help us, whether constitutional or 
statutory. In some cases not.
  Your State and, I think, my State have a reputation for being 
fiscally sound operations. I was elected State treasurer and became 
State treasurer. In 1976 to 1977--as the Presiding Officer has heard me 
say before--we had the worst credit rating in the country, and we 
managed to climb from there until the time when I finished my last term 
as Governor to have a AAA credit rating. I am very proud of that.
  I am relieved, if you will, that today it looks as though we have in 
place a course that will enable us to preserve the AAA credit rating 
for our country and, hopefully, for our States around the United 
States. One of our members of our caucus said something the other day 
that really struck a chord with me with respect to deficits and the 
debt ceiling. He said: We need a solution, not a deal. That is what he 
said. He said: We need a solution, not a deal.
  I could not agree more. I could not agree more. While I am going to 
vote for what has been represented to us probably tomorrow, I do not 
regard this as a solution in the true sense. It is closer to a deal. 
Some may argue whether it is a good deal or a not-so-good deal, but I 
see it as a deal, not a solution.
  What is difficult for me is there is a solution out there. There is a 
solution that a lot of people worked on very hard, including the guy 
who helped craft the last bipartisan deficit-reduction plan in the 
Congress in 1997, Erskine Bowles, then-President Clinton's Chief of 
Staff. He worked with a lot of folks--a Republican-controlled House, a 
Republican-controlled Senate. One of the people he worked with was a 
guy named Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming. He was a pretty good 
deficit hawk in his day and still is.
  The two of them and others came up with the deficit-reduction plan 
that led to several balanced budgets at the end of the Clinton 
administration. A lot of people forget we actually balanced our budget 
a dozen years ago--not just once, not just twice, but several times. We 
can do this sort of thing.
  The deficit-reduction plan they came up with then was not just 
revenues, it was not just spending. I don't think it was just domestic 
discretionary spending or defense spending. As I recall, pretty much 
everything was on the table, and they came up with a deficit-reduction 
package--50 percent revenues and 50 percent spending--and as I said 
earlier managed to balance the budget several times in a row.
  I like to say there are four ways to balance the budget. The first of 
those is to cut spending. The second way is to raise revenues. A third 
way is to grow the heck out of the economy. The fourth way is to look 
in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government, including every 
kind of program--defense programs, domestic programs, entitlement 
programs--and ask this question: Is there a way to get better results 
for less money or better results for the same amount of money?
  If we pass this agreement and what is being presented to us that is 
before the House this evening, and we actually pass it in the Senate 
and the President signs it into law, we are going to see not the 
promise of the deficit commission's recommendations, which was 
cochaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. We are not going to see 
the opportunity to reform or overhaul entitlements, to reform the Tax 
Code, to raise some revenues--not by raising taxes but by broadening 
the base, limiting some of those $15 trillion of tax expenditures. It 
is what it is.
  One of the things we are going to have the opportunity to do and 
probably a greater need to do is this: We are going to need to redouble 
our efforts to look at programs--domestic, defense entitlements--and 
ask that question: How do we get better results for less money?
  We have one former Governor, the Presiding Officer, Senator Shaheen 
leaving, replaced by another former Governor, Senator Manchin, now the 
Presiding Officer, who knows what it is like to make these tough 
decisions. He has had to do them for 8 years.
  Just as an aside, I would like to say this: There are two Senators 
born in West Virginia. That is the two of us, two Senators who were 
former Governors and former chairs of the National Governors 
Association. So we share a very special bond.
  Madam President, I am talking about what could have been and what I 
think still should have been; that is, the deficit commission's 
recommendations, which is broad-based and a real solution and not just 
a deal. That is not going to happen. Whether we like it or not, it is 
not going to happen.
  The question is, What do we do? The suggestion is that we do at least 
more of what we are already doing; that is, trying to get better 
results for less money out of the Federal programs, all kinds of 
Federal programs, the kind of thing you and I did as Governors of our 
States, the kind of thing we are trying to do in the Federal Financial 
Management Subcommittee which I chair, formerly chaired by Tom Coburn. 
We work across party lines. It is a pretty good example of how we ought 
to work

[[Page 12649]]

on how to get things done. Democrats and Republicans on the 
subcommittee work together. We work on the OMB, we work with the 
General Accountability Office, we work with the inspector generals and 
all of the departments of the Federal Government across the landscape. 
We also work with nonprofits such as Citizens Against Government Waste.
  What are we working on? We are working on how to get better results 
for less money. How do we not just identify fraud, but how do we get 
rid it? How do we put a spotlight on agencies and departments and 
Federal folks who are doing a good job with good results for the money 
they are spending, and how do we put a spotlight on those who are not 
and make sure we get more good behavior and less bad behavior.
  Almost everything I do I know I can do better. I think the same is 
true of all of us. The same is true with our Federal programs. We have 
to go for it. I like to try to find an opportunity in adversity. Albert 
Einstein used to say in adversity lies opportunity. I have been looking 
at this deal and trying to see where is the opportunity. The 
opportunity is to just do a better job in evaluating performance, 
demanding high performance, and working hard to get that performance 
and working with the administration and those Democrats and Republicans 
in the Senate.
  One of the reasons I like the deficit commission's proposal is 
because it addresses some of the uncertainty that currently faces the 
business communities in our Nation, whether they happen to be large or 
small. I have heard--and I am sure the Presiding Officer has heard--
from all kinds of businesses that one of the things they need from us 
is some certainty, some predictability. Businesses need certainty and 
predictability.
  I have had any number of CEOs and businesses, large and small, who 
say to me that the reason we are sitting on a pile of cash and not 
investing our money is because we don't know what we are going to do 
with the budget. We don't know if we will have a default. We don't know 
what will happen with the Tax Code. We don't know if we are going to 
have an energy policy. We don't know if the Supreme Court or if the 
Federal courts are going to overturn the health care reform. We don't 
know if we are going to do something about our infrastructure, 
transportation or otherwise. Businesses are reluctant to spend money 
until we address those uncertainties.
  One of the things I loved about the deficit commission's 
recommendation, refined by the Gang of 6, is they would have addressed 
uncertainty with respect to the spending plan and getting us on the 
right track for deficit reduction. It would have been bipartisan, and 
it would have been comprehensive. It would take a big step toward 
providing expectations and predictability and certainty with respect to 
our Tax Code, and we could use both of those.
  I was talking today and listening a little bit to the news, and they 
were talking about who is winning because of this debate and who is 
losing. I would like to think that Democrats are not big winners or 
Republicans are big winners. I hope the American people, the people we 
represent, are at least modest side winners.
  One of the things the President didn't want to do was have us go into 
default. He was willing to bargain long and hard in order to avoid 
default, and I commend him for that. The President doesn't want to have 
another debate over the debt ceiling until we get past the next 
election, and for him that was important. He wants to be able to run 
the administration.
  As a Governor, I remember how hard it was for us in Delaware to work 
in the Governor's Office on more than two or three big things at a 
time. It is hard to do. This administration had their hands full on 
this issue for months and were unable to work on some of the other 
things they needed to be doing to help run our country and move us 
forward.
  The other thing I think is important to the President is he wanted to 
get started or continue on the deficit-reduction side and finding more 
savings in reduction. He didn't want to slam on the brakes right now. 
If I could use a car analogy of driving down the road, we have been 
driving down the road for the last couple of years to try to come out 
of this recession with both feet on the accelerator. What the President 
didn't want, and what I don't want, is to go from both feet on the 
accelerator to both feet on the brakes.
  One of the values of the plan that is being presented is that we 
don't make that transition. We do start tapping on the brake and 
eventually we do put the brakes on, but it is not just like that. So 
there are some things important to the President.
  On the Republican side, they wanted deficit reduction; they wanted it 
to be real, they did not want it to be illusory--neither do we--and 
they are unwilling to raise any revenues, even by reducing some of 
those $15 trillion worth of tax expenditures--tax breaks, tax 
loopholes, tax credits, and so forth. So we get, I think for the 
Republicans who are focused on spending and who didn't want to do any 
kind of revenues, even revenues that were being provided by dividing 
the base and lowering the rates, they weren't willing to go there. I 
think, for them, they can maybe declare victory.
  The question is, How about the rest of us? How about the people who 
don't work here, the people who don't focus that much on partisan 
politics, how did they make out? For them, it is sort of a mixed bag. 
It is a mixed bag. If I were a teacher giving a grade in a class, I 
think I would assign it incomplete because we have plenty of work to 
do.
  This idea of creating this bipartisan committee, joint committee, of 
10 people, 6 Senators, 6 House Members--the total would be 12, 6 
Democrats and 6 Republicans, I hope that works. I think--my preference 
would have been taking the Gang of 6, the people who worked for 1 year 
on a deficit reduction plan, which I think is a whole lot better, and 
just make them--if we are going to have a special committee--make them 
the folks on the committee. That isn't going to happen, unfortunately. 
They would have been my nominees, my appointees, but it is not my 
decision to make.
  But, anyway, we are going to create this joint committee. Sometimes I 
think if we can't come to consensus on good public policy, what we are 
inclined to do around here is just to do more process. I hope and pray 
this isn't more process. I hope, at the end of the day, the men and 
women who serve on this joint committee will be open to our input and 
certainly open to the input of some of the Senators, including the 
Democrats and Republicans who served on the deficit commission and who 
went on to be a part of this Gang of 6.
  The last thing I think I want to say is this: A lot of times in 
government--I hope we weren't quite as guilty of this in State 
government as here--but a lot of times in government we focus on 
symptoms of problems. We don't focus on the underlying disease or the 
cause of the problem. I like to use the patient analogy. The patient is 
exhibiting certain symptoms and sometimes we can look at those symptoms 
and figure what the cause of the problem is and try to cure the 
patient. Here the symptom has been all along the debt ceiling, but that 
is the symptom the patient is exhibiting or is facing. The underlying 
cause of the disease is the way we spend money and raise money. I think 
we have been treating the symptom--avoiding the default on the debt 
ceiling--but I am not entirely pleased that we are curing the patient, 
taking the steps to cure the patient.
  That is sort of where I see us. I will close with these words. I see 
Senator DeMint waiting to speak, so I will wrap up. A guy who never 
served in the Senate, served over in the House, Rahm Emanuel from 
Illinois, Congressman and later Chief of Staff to President Obama for 
his first couple years, Rahm Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago, has a 
saying, and I think it is his original saying. He likes to say: ``Never 
waste a good crisis.'' Sometimes it takes a crisis around here to get 
something done. He likes to say: ``Never waste a good crisis.'' We have 
wasted this crisis, and we should not have done that. We should have 
taken the

[[Page 12650]]

bull by the horns. I wish the President had embraced his own deficit 
commission sooner, more robustly. I wish our own leaders, Democratic 
and Republican, here and over in the House, had said: That is a pretty 
good idea. Let's give that a shot. Unfortunately, they chose not to do 
that. It was bipartisan. It was bicameral. It is unfortunate.
  But it is what it is. We need to move forward. I just hope colleagues 
will be given the opportunity to offer a lot of input to this 
bipartisan joint committee that is being created, and maybe, in their 
wisdom, reporting back to us at the beginning of December, there will 
be some of the elements in deficit reduction that were captured by that 
deficit commission that are missing in this deal that is before us 
today. If that happens, this will have been a better outcome than I 
might have otherwise hoped for.
  With that, I yield the floor and yield to my friend from South 
Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. DeMINT. Thank you, Mr. President.
  The last 2 years--2\1/2\ years--have been remarkable in a lot of 
ways. We have seen a lot of things around our country that are 
beginning to change the political landscape in Washington.
  After President Obama's election, with a lot of fanfare and hope 
attached, we saw a lot of changes begin in Washington--a lot of new 
spending with huge stimulus plans that clearly have not worked. We have 
seen a takeover of the health care system and the financial system.
  But what we saw across America is what encouraged me. We saw millions 
of Americans, from all spectrums of politics, united, coming together 
for tea party rallies and townhalls. They were concerned about our 
country. They were concerned about the spending and the borrowing and 
the debt. In these groups were liberals and Libertarians and 
Independents and Republicans and Democrats--people with all political 
beliefs who knew intuitively, instinctively, in their guts, that, in 
Washington, we couldn't keep spending more than we were bringing in 
without bankrupting our country.
  I joined a lot of those groups around the country, and these were 
hardly radical people. They were commonsense Americans from all walks 
of life who were just concerned about what we were doing in Washington. 
They wanted us to get control of the spending and debt. We saw a lot of 
people in Washington ignore what was going on. But across the country, 
many Republicans, and even some Democrats, were listening to what they 
were saying and made strong commitments that if they were elected to 
the House or the Senate, they would come and get control of the 
spending and the borrowing and the debt and try to return to some 
fiscal sanity, some concept of constitutional limited government that 
we promise people when we take our oath of office and that we would 
stand by it. So we saw many new Republicans come to the House and to 
the Senate with a commitment to get control of the spending and debt, 
to save our country from this obvious bankruptcy we are headed toward.
  The tea party was involved with that. It is hard for me to listen to 
a lot of the criticism of the tea party and their desire to balance the 
budget. There is no one tea party. What we are talking about are 
thousands of citizen groups across this country who are being vigilant 
about their government, which is what our Founders asked them to be. 
They are not radical people. They are very commonsense people, and they 
understand what we are doing in Washington is about to destroy the 
country.
  The tea party is being used a lot to suggest it is a small, radical 
group that is controlling some in the Republican Party. Over 70 percent 
of Americans agree with them--that we should balance our budget, that 
we should cut spending and send a balanced budget amendment to the 
States to ratify. For every person who says they are part of a tea 
party, there are hundreds of Americans who feel the same way who share 
those ideals of constitutional limited government and the concern and 
real fear that what we have been doing in Washington is taking our 
country literally to the brink.
  It is deeply disturbing to hear the Vice President refer to tea 
parties as terrorists, as he did today, holding a gun to the heads of 
Republicans and forcing us to make cuts. Clearly, Vice President Biden 
and many here are not listening to what Americans are saying, and they 
are trying to diminish what Americans are saying by suggesting this is 
part of one small group.
  The President showed right away this year, even after the November 
election, that he wasn't listening. He sent a budget to Congress that 
increased the debt another $10 trillion by his measures but actually 
another $15 trillion if we look at it in any kind of objective way. 
When the Republicans in the House demanded that they keep their 
commitment to cut $100 billion the first year, what did the President 
do? He said he would meet halfway, at $30 billion. He doesn't think we 
need to cut anything. He thinks we need to increase spending, and that 
is what he has been doing.
  This is the second crisis we have had this year. The first was that 
year's budget, where we came right to the edge of closing the 
government because the President and the Democrats did not want to cut 
anything--at least in the negotiations we see. If they are going to 
meet us halfway between 100, they start below zero if they end up at 
30. They are not with us, and it is hard to negotiate with people who 
don't understand that we truly do have a problem.
  Washington, as Senator Rubio said, has a debt problem, but America 
has a jobs problem. One of the things we need to understand is, if we 
could stop growing the government, we could start growing the economy. 
More jobs would mean more tax revenue and less debt. But, 
unfortunately, this President continues to make things much worse. He 
wants to continue to spend and borrow, but he will not take 
responsibility for his spending. He has failed to lead and he loves to 
blame others. Sure, he inherited some problems--every President does. 
George W. Bush before him inherited a recession. Reagan inherited 
double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates. Yet they moved to 
solve the problems. The difference is, Obama continues, after 2\1/2\ 
years, to blame others and his policies continue to make things worse.
  Let's talk about this debt ceiling for a minute, this debt crisis, 
and try to set the record straight. Clearly, President Obama has failed 
to lead in this whole process. We do need to remember, while he is 
trying to blame others for this debt ceiling problem, that it was a 
Democratic Congress and the President who signed into law the current 
debt limit we have. This was not a Republican-created problem that we 
have. Then, for the last 4\1/2\ years, Obama and the Democrats had 
control of spending, so they set the debt limit, and they have spent 
the money to take us up to the debt limit.
  We have known for the last 6 months that we needed to deal with this 
problem. Yet the President submitted no plan at all. He just asked 
Congress to rubberstamp an increase of $2.4 trillion in our debt, to 
borrow another $2.4 trillion, and, he said, with no strings attached. 
He didn't want to cut anything when this whole debate started--no 
leadership; 6 months, no plan, just speeches, trying to shift the 
blame.
  He likes to ignore the fact that the House passed a bill that would 
solve our problem. It was a bill called Cut, Cap, and Balance. It cut 
spending right now, it controlled spending out over the next 10 years, 
and it sends a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to the 
States to ratify. The response from the Democrats in the Senate and 
President Obama was truly astounding. The President says he wants a 
balanced solution, but he does not want a balanced budget. He has 
actually called us extreme for wanting to balance the budget, and, he 
said, we can do our job without a constitutional requirement to balance 
the budget. We can do a job on America, but we are not doing the job we 
were sent to do, and we certainly have proved we cannot control 
spending unless it is by law that requires us to do that.

[[Page 12651]]

  Even though this bill passed the House by a large number, with some 
Democratic support, and it gave the President a $2.4 trillion increase 
in the debt limit but only if we cut spending and controlled it and 
created some permanent accountability, we sent it to the Senate, and 
the leader of the Democratic Party would not even allow it on the floor 
for any debate because he saw the polls. He saw that already, within 
just a couple days, that 70 percent or nearly 70 percent of Americans 
supported the approach of cutting and controlling spending and creating 
some permanent accountability. So it was pushed aside so we could make 
some more backroom deals, with no transparency, no accountability, no 
leadership.
  I commend Speaker Boehner, Leader McConnell, the Republicans who have 
worked through this process. Dealing with people who will not put a 
plan on the table is very difficult. The Republicans passed cut, cap, 
and balance. Then they followed up with another plan that was not so 
good, but it was a plan, and it did not even get past the front door in 
the Senate.
  For 6 months, no plan from the President, no plan from the Democrats. 
Now we have gotten a deal with a partner who does not want to cut 
spending, after a November election where we were sent here, and the 
country pleaded with us to get control of spending, borrowing, and 
debt.
  We can look at this deal two ways. There are two realities. From any 
Washington standard, this is a historic sea change in the way we do 
business. Instead of what we were doing last year, where we were 
talking about how much more we could spend and how much porkbarrel 
bacon we could take home, at least this year we are talking about the 
fact that we need to cut spending. So we can say the deal makes 
progress in that respect.
  But in the real world, a dollars and cents world, we have to realize 
our country is on a path toward bankruptcy right now. We are projecting 
adding another $10 trillion or $15 trillion to our debt. No one is 
going to lend us that amount of money. We do not have 10 years. This 
deal does not change that trajectory at all. We will still borrow $10 
trillion or more in the next 10 years. We will still add $1 trillion a 
year to our debt.
  We cannot call this a debt reduction bill. We can not even call it a 
spending reduction bill. For the next couple years, it hardly cuts 
anything. When we talk about cutting in Washington, we are not cutting 
spending from where it is today; we are reducing the rate of increase 
that is planned. So it is important we tell the truth to the American 
people that while this deal may be the best we can do--with the 
leadership in the White House, or lack thereof, as well as the 
leadership, or lack thereof, in the Senate--it may be the best 
political solution we can get, but it does not solve America's problem. 
It certainly does not solve America's job problem, and it does nothing 
but add another $10 trillion to our debt if we are able to go that far.
  I will be voting against this bill because I do not believe we have 
10 years to try to get it right. I think it is very likely, over the 
next year or two or three, that we are going to reach a very real debt 
limit when no one will lend us any more money.
  Today, in America, we have to borrow $140 billion a month in order to 
pay our regular bills. The people who are adding to that debt every 
month think it is extreme to balance their checkbook. It is time we get 
our House in order and force this Congress, by the Constitution, to 
balance its budget. We cannot continue to spend more than we are 
bringing in and expect to reduce our debt. That is the inside 
Washington mentality.
  This deal is not a good deal for America. It may be the best deal 
Washington can come up with, with the current leadership, but it puts 
our country at risk. But in a Washington where there is no leadership 
in the White House, there is no accountability, and there is someone 
sitting in the Oval Office who will not take responsibility for 
anything, this may be a deal we have to accept for now.
  I intend to vote against it because it is important we tell America 
the truth; that this puts our country at risk. It is time we do what is 
best for America, not what makes the best deal in Washington. I would 
encourage my colleagues to vote against this deal, even though I know 
they already have the votes. But I hope when this is passed, we will 
not think for 1 minute we have solved the problem, we will not try to 
convince Americans that now we have a few more years to spend and 
borrow without any repercussions.
  We need to immediately get back to the debate that was getting 
America involved in the last election, which was balancing our budget 
and getting some fiscal sanity in Washington. While we are in desperate 
straits in our country right now, and we see our economy getting worse 
because of the policies of this administration, the good news is this: 
We can solve this problem with one more good election. That is what I 
am looking forward to: taking my case to the American people and the 
case they sent us here to make to this Congress, that we need one more 
election to finish the job they started in 2010. If they want us to get 
control of spending and borrowing and debt, we need a few more good 
people, such as the House freshmen who have stood their ground on this 
whole debate and those who have come in here in the Senate and have led 
the way for a balanced budget. It is that day I am looking forward to 
because on that day, we will once again, hopefully, listen to America, 
get our House in order, balance our budget, and do what is best for our 
country.
  I yield back.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Remembering Dr. Agnes Varis

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I know the Presiding Officer cares 
a lot about Dr. Agnes Varis as well, and as soon as I finish speaking, 
I will take the chair so the Presiding Officer may say a few words 
about her.
  I would like to say some words about a great American, a wonderful 
New Yorker, and a dear friend, Dr. Agnes Varis.
  Sadly, for all of us, Agnes died last Friday, July 29. She fought a 
relentless disease for more than 2 years. She did not want a funeral, a 
memorial service or an obituary, but those of us who knew and admired 
Agnes could not allow this passing to go unremarked.
  Agnes was a miracle worker, and I would like to take a few moments 
just to share a small fraction of the wonderful things she accomplished 
in her life of over 80 years.
  Dr. Varis was an incredible woman who founded a generic drug company 
40 years ago, when a woman CEO was very uncommon. After great success 
in business, she turned her time and support to people and issues she 
cared about. From her tireless support for affordable drugs to her 
generous and unwavering assistance to students, artists, musicians, and 
animals, Agnes was an angel to so many.
  Agnes was a woman who did not take no for an answer. She fought for 
battered women of Bergen County, NJ, helped out music lovers seeking 
affordably priced tickets, supported and cheered on women in politics, 
and generously improved veterinary science and animal shelters.
  When one met Agnes, one saw she was a powerful woman and a caring 
woman. She combined both those features in a beautiful human being.
  She came from humble beginnings, and maybe that is why she never 
stopped making a difference in the lives of those around her. She would 
see somebody whom she hardly knew and hear about their plight and then 
move heaven and Earth to help them. She was a generous soul.
  She knew education, success, and culture were essential ingredients 
to a happy life, and she brought all those gifts and opportunities to 
thousands, if not millions, of people.
  Dr. Agnes Varis was born in Massachusetts in 1930 and was raised in

[[Page 12652]]

Brooklyn, NY, my hometown. She was the only one of eight children of 
Greek immigrant parents to attend college. She earned her degree in 
chemistry and English from Brooklyn College and later in her career 
attended NYU's Stern School of Business.
  Right out of school, she took an entry-level job in a chemical 
manufacturing company that focused on bulk pharmaceuticals and her 
smarts made her incredibly successful.
  Agnes was a pioneer and a leader in the pharmaceutical industry. As 
president and founder of Agvar Chemicals and Aegis Pharmaceuticals, Dr. 
Varis worked tirelessly to increase the accessibility of lifesaving 
pharmaceuticals for people in the United States and around the world.
  She was one of the founders of the modern generic drug industry and a 
key player in the adoption of the Waxman-Hatch Act of 1984, which 
created a streamlined approval process for generic pharmaceuticals. It 
is the reason affordable generics exist.
  Today, just about every one of us takes generic drugs. They are low 
cost, save people money, and, even more importantly, it makes those 
drugs accessible to people who might not otherwise afford them. In this 
way alone, Agnes probably saved the lives of hundreds of thousands, if 
not millions, of people.
  She was the one who introduced me, along with a few of her friends, 
to the issue of generic drugs and why they are so important. I have 
worked very hard on that issue for over a decade--a decade and a half--
and it was Agnes always importuning me on.
  She was always generous, as well as being a skillful and savvy 
businesswoman. Nearly 1,000 unemployed service workers who lost their 
insurance in the aftermath of September 11 got Agvar generic drug plan 
cards, which were good for 1 year, and they gave free generic drug 
prescriptions at any Duane Reade pharmacy in New York City.
  Isn't that amazing? No one asked her to do this. She heard it 
somewhere or other that there were people who lost their jobs, and she 
knew they needed drugs, so she bought them a drug card.
  At the height of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Agnes helped broker an 
arrangement between the Clinton Foundation and an Indian generic 
pharmaceutical company to provide affordable AIDS medications to 
African nations at a very low cost.
  This was written up in all the newspapers but not Agnes's name. She 
did not want her name out there. She just wanted to do good, help 
people who needed help, save lives.
  Agnes and her husband Karl were great music lovers. They loved 
classical music. Just as she brought affordable drugs to market, Agnes 
supported the arts and made music and concerts more affordable to all.
  She donated the Agnes Varis Performance Stage to Jazz at Lincoln 
Center and sponsored the Jazz Foundation of America's national 
educational children's Jazz in Schools Program, which employs elderly 
jazz musicians. Just like Agnes: She knew there were elderly jazz 
musicians who were out of work and struggling. She knew bringing jazz 
to young children would be a great thing for many of them. She combined 
the two and just did it. That was Agnes.
  She was one of the Metropolitan Opera's--in New York City, one of the 
greatest operas in the world--she was one of its most generous and 
engaging board members. She was committed to bringing opera, typically, 
again, to the widest possible audience, including those who could not 
afford tickets. In 2006, she funded the enormously popular Agnes Varis 
and Karl Leichtman Rush Tickets program, which offered expensive 
orchestra seats for $20, $25--affordable to one and all.
  In 2009, Dr. Varis was appointed by President Obama to the 
President's Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
  She was a great lady, a rare lady, someone who combined so many 
different attributes and made a powerful impression, even if one only 
met her for 10 minutes.
  Agnes, we will miss you. But all your good works and all the 
possibilities and opportunities you made for others will allow your 
spirit to live on.
  God bless you, Agnes Varis.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schumer). The Senator from Ohio
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I only wanted to add my voice to 
yours about Agnes Varis. I appreciate the junior Senator from West 
Virginia giving me a moment or two.
  I have known Agnes for many years. I worked with her on generic drug 
issues for the last decade--more than that--when I was in the House of 
Representatives. She had a commitment and a compassion for the underdog 
that is rare in this world, especially rare for someone as successful 
as she was.
  I remember years ago hearing her story as a Greek immigrant and with 
a mother who actually could not read and write and how Agnes was so 
important to that family after her father died when Agnes was a very 
young woman--a girl still--and how Agnes went to Brooklyn College and 
was, I believe, the only woman there at the time.
  And something else Agnes did--and I apologize to the Senator from New 
York, now the Presiding Officer, for not hearing all of his remarks. 
Agnes really stepped up after Hurricane Katrina and helped by not just 
giving some of her wealth to these musicians who did not have jobs 
because of the destruction of New Orleans but stepped up and actually 
hired these musicians so they were actually working, not just getting 
help from her, hired them to go around to the schools and through much 
of Louisiana and play for students and teach students music and, if 
nothing else for those students who had the musical talent that most of 
us have, which is limited, helped those students appreciate music and 
appreciate jazz. So she was a terrific woman whom I last saw maybe a 
month and a half ago. I miss her. I miss her already. I miss her laugh 
and her smile and her service not to just New York and New Jersey, 
where she lived, but much of this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from West Virginia is 
recognized.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Thank you. It is hard to add to the Senator's 
recognition of Agnes, and also my colleague, the Senator from Ohio. You 
can tell Agnes touched quite a few of us in so many different ways.
  Agnes was a friend of mine and also a friend of my family's. She was 
a dear mentor to my daughter Heather, who is in the industry. We are 
all going to mourn her passing. Heather introduced me to Agnes about 10 
years ago, and from the first day I met Agnes, she was the type of 
person I always heard my grandmother would say: People don't know how 
much you care until they know how much care.
  The thing about Agnes was it was not how much you had here, but it 
was what you had in your heart. Agnes was that type of person who was 
truly remarkable. She lived an astonishing life, Mr. President, as you 
referred to. She represented the best in our country, and she truly 
lived the American dream.
  Agnes was a first-generation American and went to college at a time 
when few women attended college. She started at the very bottom rung of 
the chemical industry and worked her way up the ladder to the top. She 
was truly an entrepreneur. She and her husband Karl loved the arts, but 
they also took a risk. They took their life savings together of about 
$50,000 to start Agvar Chemicals.
  Agnes was a fortunate American. She used her wealth to support the 
causes she most believed in, especially the arts, women's issues, and 
caring for the workers in New York after September 11 and, as we heard 
from our colleague from Ohio, after Katrina.
  Agnes was always telling my daughter Heather that you can see a lot 
more from the edge than the middle, and it was the few who were willing 
to be on the edge who created the right middle. That deep and poetic 
statement is a piece of wisdom many in this country could benefit from 
hearing. Agnes had such a generous spirit, and over the years, my 
daughter Heather sought her ``agvice,'' as she called it, many times.

[[Page 12653]]

  Our entire family and all of my colleagues, I know, who knew Agnes 
well are definitely going to miss her. Our thoughts and prayers are 
with her and her family. I am glad we had a chance to honor Agnes on 
the floor of the Senate. I know she would be so proud. I thank my 
colleagues for recognizing her also.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from West Virginia is 
recognized.


                  Unanimous Consent Request H.R. 2553

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, we are entering the second workweek 
of a partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration. I know 
the Congress, the President, and the American people have been focused 
on the debt and deficit crisis, but behind that, and not in the shadows 
to those of us who care about aviation, I want people to understand 
that what has been happening to the FAA is causing enormous pain 
throughout the country, and the pain will only grow because of an 
apparent shutdown of the attempts to pass the Federal aviation bill, 
primarily because of the House.
  Because Congress has failed to pass the 21st short-term extension of 
the FAA--do you understand what that means? It is simply saying: I 
would like to have a clean bill of extension. That is all. No policy, 
just a clean bill. Give us another several weeks to work on some of the 
complicated issues.
  So 20 times we have done that over 4 years, and there has been no 
objection. The 21st time, there is content--suddenly, policy is 
injected into the request for a clean extension, or the response to the 
request. In this time, nearly 4,000 hard-working Federal aviation 
employees have been furloughed. That means they go without pay. If 
things follow their current course, as I believe they will, they will 
go at least another month or more without pay. I do not know how many 
of them continue to stay in their jobs.
  It has halted critical airport safety capacity and air traffic 
control projects. To be quite honest with you, the whole prospect of 
NextGen, that is, the GPS system of tracking planes and how far they 
are from each other--once we have that like every other industrialized 
country, they will be able to land quickly and more efficiently and 
with fewer delays.
  They have suspended payments to hundreds of small businesses 
dependent upon reimbursement from contracts they have made with the FAA 
for their work. So that just stops. Things just come to a dead halt. 
Runways, control towers, whatever--they just stop, and they will stay 
stopped. They will remain stopped, as things are going now, throughout 
the month of August and the early part of September.
  They have forgone more than $250 million in aviation tax revenue that 
is critical to supporting our aviation system. That is about $25 
million a day that is meant to go into the airport trust fund that does 
not, and by the time we return, that will be about $1.2 billion.
  Very shortly, I will seek unanimous consent to pass a clean extension 
of the FAA, and it will be objected to by the Senator from Utah. In 
some ways, you can say it is a futile gesture, but it is all I have 
left. It is all I have left in trying to take this incredible process 
which we have been working on, Senator Hutchison and myself, forever--
forever.
  With so much damage being caused, you might ask why not all of my 
Republican colleagues but some of them have refused repeated requests 
to pass a clean extension, some here in the Senate, mostly all in the 
House, all of the leadership in the House. So I want to outline how we 
have, in fact, in my judgment, come to this point.
  The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure 
Committee, which is called T and I--that chairman is my counterpart on 
the Commerce Committee. He has certain jurisdictions, and I have 
certain jurisdictions. They are not always the same. He is 
transportation and infrastructure; that doesn't comport exactly with 
the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee. But in any event, he seems 
willing to shut down the FAA, you know, is certainly going to stick it 
to the FAA employees, and there will be many more of them by the time 
this has ended.
  It is a tragedy that never had to happen. It is a tragedy about ego, 
about bullying, about an attempt to prove one side would cave. It is 
sort of the worst kind of political bickering the American people are 
so sick of, but this time, they are going to pay a terrible price.
  They are insisting on antiworker language. It has to do with the 
National Mediation Board. They know full well this was destined never 
to happen in the Senate. They knew full well the President of the 
United States had already said publicly a number of times that he would 
veto anything which contained this kind of language for the National 
Mediation Board, basically changing 75 years of labor law.
  To be just a little bit explicit about this because it is 
interesting, what they want to do is have a system wherein if, when--
you are voting to join a union or whatever, and let's say I am a worker 
but my mother is very sick, so I am at home taking care of her, so I do 
not vote. The fact that I did not vote does not mean I just did not 
vote; it means I voted no, thus helping the company, thus tilting, in a 
very odd way, very un-American way, what an election is all about.
  We have not had a formal conference. Senator Hutchison and I have 
resolved over--and Maria Cantwell, John Thune--we have resolved over 
250 differences between the House and the Senate, and now there are 
only about 12 that remain to be resolved, all of which can be resolved. 
But that is of no consequence.
  I also sent over suggested language for a significant program such as 
the Essential Air Service Program, 6 weeks ago, to the chairman, 
Chairman Mica, that reforms in a way that saves $71 million each year 
for the 4 years of the bill in the Essential Air Service Program.
  Six weeks ago, the House passed a clean, short-term extension--the 
20th--like every other extension that has gone on around here forever--
passed it clean, no policy, nothing in it, just extend it so we have 
more chances to talk--but then they promptly left on a week tour of 
European and Middle Eastern airports, which made it a little more 
difficult to talk.
  Since they returned, I have been told that unless and until the 
Senate accepts House language on their proposed changes to the National 
Mediation Board, they would negotiate no further, and that message was 
reaffirmed in the strongest terms this afternoon.
  You know, this all started with Delta Air Lines. Delta Air Lines is 
out of Atlanta, GA. They do not have any unions. That is their 
business, not mine. They have had four elections. Unions have tried to 
organize four times.
  Four times the unions have lost. So it would appear their chances are 
not very good in the future. But that doesn't stop Delta. They want to 
make sure we put in place a structured system that is out of kilter to 
a fair election, and other purposes with other unions.
  What they then did is sent over an Essential Air Service policy rider 
on the extension--unprecedented--with which we didn't agree. Therefore, 
when you don't do it in the first place, or if you do it, both sides 
have to agree before you send it over--and it is easy to say we will 
extend it and include that policy because both sides agreed to it. But 
they sent over an Essential Air Service program essentially targeting 
rural communities in the States of Democratic Senators. If the House 
was serious about reforming Essential Air Service, they would have 
stayed at the negotiating table. They would have welcomed the chance to 
come back.
  The House-passed extension is not about policy; it is about politics, 
and everybody knows that. So here we are on the eve of the August 
recess, and we have a choice tonight. We can pass a clean extension and 
put people back to work--all the 4,000 people who are furloughed and 
have gone through some period of time without paychecks. They would 
automatically be taken back and life would be as it was before through 
September 16. So that is another month and a half of wages they

[[Page 12654]]

would have to feed their families, and contractors could go back to 
work, and projects at airports and related facilities could continue. 
It is very important.
  Aviation is 10 percent of the American economy--the GDP. We have 
inflicted far too much damage on our aviation system for the needs of 
one airline--one airline.
  I urge my colleagues to allow this consent agreement to go forward. 
It won't. But if you believe in the goal of having an FAA system that 
is funded, and is well, and which can take on the incredible 
technological needs that we have to--in particular, the Next Generation 
system, which is not just ground-based, but avionics have to be placed 
in every single plane that flies. That is a major undertaking.
  What they have done by their decision is to take $25 million a day 
outside, away from the airport trust fund. The airport trust fund 
cannot afford that. What I want the airlines to be thinking about over 
the next number of weeks, until we can get back at this--unless 
everything suddenly changes tonight, but I doubt that--is how they are 
going to divide up between themselves the $1.2 billion they will owe to 
the airport trust fund.
  I commit to the President of the Senate and my colleagues that I will 
do everything I can to make sure that not just the $250 million, which 
they have already vanquished out of the airport trust fund, which we 
depend upon for everything, but the billion above that. That will 
happen at $25 million a day, because they didn't want to give up 
anything so they could have their National Mediation Board stacked the 
way they wanted it, and in a most unfair and most un-American way.
  Having said that, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to 
the consideration of Calendar No. 109, H.R. 2553; that a Rockefeller-
Hutchison substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; 
that the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed; and that 
the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening 
action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). Is there objection?
  Mr. HATCH. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, for the third time in a week, I must object 
to another short-term Federal Aviation Administration extension. I want 
to make it absolutely clear that a long-term FAA reauthorization is a 
priority for this country, and it is a priority for me. The current 
lapse in FAA taxes and expenditure authority from the Airport and 
Airway Trust Fund is a detrimental situation brought on by the Senate 
majority's refusal to engage in substantive negotiations on a long-term 
FAA reauthorization bill, which, by the way, did pass the House. 
Additionally, it is not clear to me that the legislation just offered 
would avoid a retroactive tax increase on travelers. I didn't set out 
to cause FAA taxes to expire, but reinstating them on a retroactive 
basis is more than I am willing to subject taxpayers to.
  As I have already said, I share House Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee Chairman Mica's frustration, and the 
frustration of Republican leadership in both the House and Senate, that 
favors to organized labor have overshadowed the prospects for long-term 
FAA reauthorization.
  Last year, the National Mediation Board changed the rules under which 
employees of airlines and railroads are able to unionize. For decades, 
the standard has been that a majority of employees would have to agree 
in an election to form a union. However, the new NMB--National 
Mediation Board--rules change that standard so that all it takes to 
unionize is a majority of employees voting. This means the NMB wants to 
count an employee who doesn't vote as voting for big labor.
  Somehow, organized labor is able to claim that it is democratic to 
appropriate someone else's vote without that person's input and 
participation, even though the rule I am talking about has been in 
place for 75 years. They just changed it in favor of the unions. Unions 
win--at least the NLRB proceedings. They win 60 percent of the 
unionizing attempts.
  I personally have not had any communication with anyone in the 
industry. I am here because I think what the NMB did is absolutely 
wrong, and someone needs to stand up to them.
  This issue is much larger than the NMB itself, and the airlines and 
railroads impacted by the NMB ruling. If NMB succeeds, and the 
administration is allowed to put their thumb on the scale in favor of 
big labor in contradistinction to 75 years of labor law practice, every 
small businessperson anywhere will be at risk.
  The long-term House FAA reauthorization bill does not create a new 
hurdle to unionization; instead, it restores the longstanding ability 
of airline employees to make decisions for themselves--and not just a 
few of them but all of them.
  In a few minutes, I will ask unanimous consent for an amendment that 
includes NMB language from the original House-passed long-term FAA 
reauthorization, and this whole problem would go away. Again, in a few 
minutes, I am going to ask unanimous consent for an amendment that 
includes NMB language from the original House-passed long-term FAA 
reauthorization.
  My critics will point out that both times I have previously asked 
consent, it has been for legislation that didn't include the removal of 
the NMB's heavy new hand. However, I have spoken frequently on this 
issue, and I bet my position is very well known. I was hopeful my 
earlier request for consent would stimulate discussion on a long-term 
reauthorization and the issues preventing a long-term reauthorization 
from taking place.
  My concern is that the White House and their allies in Congress will 
continue to hide behind a perpetual series of short-term extensions, 
rather than working toward an actual bill. This is why I have decided 
to ask unanimous consent for an amendment containing the NMB language, 
because it is clear this is the only way to move this issue forward--by 
NMB language getting the law back to where it really has been for 75 
years. As my critics will point out, this wasn't my first choice. But 
as my critics have made clear, this is the only way to actually 
acknowledge and deal with the issue.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the 
immediate consideration of H.R. 2553, which was received from the 
House; that the Hatch amendment at the desk be agreed to; that the 
bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed; that the motion to 
reconsider be laid upon the table; and that any statements relating to 
the bill be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, may I make a further comment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I made one mistake in my remarks--which is very 
unusual. The repeal of the National Mediation Board's decision language 
did in fact pass the House. I said it didn't. It never passed the 
Senate and has never been debated in the Senate. The committee of 
jurisdiction has never brought it up, never had a hearing, and it was 
not raised during any of the floor considerations in the Senate.
  I suggest that if we were operating under the rules the Senator from 
Utah wants to see happen, I don't think any of us would be here. I 
don't think there would be any mayors, Governors, or Senators, because 
most people don't vote. They would all be voting no. One way or 
another, we would not be here. It is ludicrous.
  I regret very much that this card is being played. I regret even more 
the fact the business community and the airline community, in 
particular, led by Delta, was so quiet during all of this.
  I got a message in the middle of this afternoon that the American 
Transportation Association, which is a legacy of the big airlines 
association, and Delta

[[Page 12655]]

in particular, wanted to pass a clean bill of extension.
  Well, that doesn't work, Mr. President. It is so easy to say we would 
like to have it passed. But it is much too late to do anything about 
it. There are no phone calls. The whole thing is really a sham. It is 
very painful, and potentially very threatening, to West Virginia. I 
therefore object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I have not wanted to pursue this 
issue, because the debt ceiling issue has absorbed all of the air in 
the room and in the United States, as it should; it is a huge priority. 
But I have to set the record straight a little bit about how this came 
about.
  First, I agree with the House position. I would reverse the NMB 
decision because I think it is wrong. However, what happened here is 
that, after 20 extensions of the FAA bill because of disagreements on 
several issues, the House decided to put this one--well, actually, to 
be honest, the House didn't even bring up NMB; they put another issue 
on the extension language, and it is the Essential Air Service 
language, which we have been trying to negotiate but have not yet come 
to a full agreement on among all of the parties. It is really the NMB 
issue that is causing the House to shut down the FAA. So the entire 
FAA--not the air traffic controllers, thank goodness but 3,492 
employees of the FAA have been shut down, and this affects 35 States. 
They are on furlough without pay, through no fault of their own.
  And interestingly, airports that were in the midst of building 
runways or adding to their infrastructure or repairing their 
infrastructure also have had work stoppages because of the House 
action. The Associated General Contractors of America has estimated 
that 70,000 construction and related jobs are at risk because the House 
put an Essential Air Service amendment on a clean extension of the FAA.
  Mr. President, I want the House position to prevail. But we are 
getting ready, in the next day or so, to leave probably for the month 
of August and then come back after Labor Day. We should not shut down 
the FAA because of a rider put on the extension of the FAA legislation 
that has not been negotiated.
  In fact, Mr. President, the House has not even appointed conferees. 
The chairman of the House committee has not called a meeting of the 
chairman of the Senate, plus the two ranking members. There has been no 
full negotiation with the principals. Yet the House put this extraneous 
amendment on the bill, and the FAA is shut down and the lives of 70,000 
people are at risk.
  We got a letter from Boeing because they are trying to get their new 
Boeing 747-8 certification, but the workers are not there to do it. So 
in addition to the work stoppages--and the FAA has now issued a total 
of 219 stop-work orders across the country--we also are seeing the 
certification of a great new airplane also on hold. That may start 
disrupting the capability for the airlines that have purchased these 
planes to be able to start flying the airplanes and upgrading their 
services.
  This just does not make sense. We are going to lose $1 billion in the 
aviation trust fund if we leave this Congress for the month of August 
and we don't extend the FAA--$1 billion of revenue paid by passengers 
in a ticket tax. They are paying it, but it is just not going to the 
aviation trust fund. It is going to the airlines in the form of a 
higher ticket price. It should be going to the aviation trust fund 
because that is what we use to build the runways and to make the 
repairs and to keep our airports operating. So we are going to lose $1 
billion in revenue.
  Here we are, on the brink of cutting spending and raising the debt 
ceiling and trying to put our fiscal house in order. Yet we are going 
to let $1 billion be lost that rightfully should go to the aviation 
trust fund. The users are going to pay for it anyway, and that money is 
going to have to be made up. How is it going to be made up? It is going 
to have to come from general revenue because contracts have already 
been let. That money is going to have to be spent.
  I cannot think of anything more fiscally irresponsible than to tax 
the users, not put it in the aviation trust fund and have to replace 
that money at some point.
  I am a fiscal conservative, and I am trying to make the cuts that are 
necessary, trying to do the things that are right. But I have to 
question those who are saying we are going to not be for essential air 
service--which has a total budget of about $200 million--but we are 
going to waste $1 billion to not let a bill go through that keeps the 
aviation trust fund and the FAA going. That just doesn't add up.
  If we are going to be sincere about the wise use of our taxpayer 
dollars, I don't think it is right taking money from people who are 
traveling on the airlines and who are thinking that money is a ticket 
tax to pay for airport infrastructure when, in fact, it is going into 
the airlines' pockets, and then having the taxpayer make up that money 
because these contracts have already been let. Is that fiscal 
responsibility?
  Here we are on the eve of trying to show fiscal responsibility and do 
the right thing for our country. I don't think so, Mr. President. It 
doesn't pass the smell test.
  I hope my colleagues, before we leave--and the House of 
Representatives and the people who are supporting them in the Senate--
will relent and let the FAA keep operating. Let's come back in the 
month of September and negotiate an FAA bill as we normally do in this 
Congress. If we can't come to an agreement, then, on the NMB--and I am 
certainly going to support changing the decision that was made--maybe 
we can talk harshly and throw down the gauntlet, but not without any 
notice, adding it to this FAA extension without ever negotiating on it. 
That is not the way we ought to operate. It is enough to make the 
people of our country think: You know what. We expect better. We expect 
better, and I expect better.
  I cannot believe my colleagues would let the FAA shut down and 
jeopardize 70,000 jobs and take money from airline travelers--when on 
their ticket it says ticket tax for aviation trust fund--and defraud 
them because that tax is not going to the aviation trust fund. Is that 
going to make the people of our country believe Congress is doing the 
right thing? It doesn't pass the smell test.
  It is time for the airlines of this country to stand up and say: We 
need a clean extension of the FAA, and we need for the House and Senate 
to meet, as we normally do, in a conference and take up the issues. As 
I said, I am going to support the reversal of the NMB decision, and I 
am going to support a reform of essential air service in the context of 
negotiating perimeter rule and other issues that are in contention, 
which is the honorable way to proceed. But I don't feel very good right 
now about what the Senate is doing in supporting the House in an 
irresponsible position that is defrauding the airline passengers of 
this country right now because they are collecting a ticket tax that is 
not going to the aviation trust fund.
  It is wrong, Mr. President. I hope in the next few hours our 
colleagues will come to their senses, do the right thing, pass a clean 
extension, and send it to the House, where I hope they, too, will act 
so that we can have a conference committee and work out the issues with 
honor and integrity.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I understand the anguish of my dear friend 
from Texas, and I don't disagree, except for one thing. The tax is not 
being charged, and that should be a savings to the customers and 
consumers who are using the air services. But whether it is or isn't, 
that takes away from the major issue, and there may be another issue on 
essential air service, I don't know, because I am not on these 
committees. I have been asked by our leadership to make these 
objections.
  What is important here--and it is not some itty-bitty little thing--
is that we have labor law regulators out of control. When the NMB--the 
National Mediation Board--which is run by a bunch

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of Democrats--comes out and does away with 75 years of labor law with 
just the stroke of a pen and makes employee votes not important, that 
is not some little itty-bitty issue. That is a big-time issue.
  For 75 years unions have been winning union elections by getting a 
majority of the employees in a firm, not by getting a majority of those 
who vote. Those other people, whether they vote or not--and they may be 
sick, they may be ill, they may not have been able to be there, they 
may have been out of town--their votes are important as well. The 
unions have always had to get a majority, and they have done that year 
after year after year in most situations and in most union elections.
  Let me give an example: Let's say you have a company with 1,000 
employees and only 100 show up, and 51 of them vote for the union. Is 
it right to bind all 1,000 employees in the company itself when only 51 
out of the 1,000 employees have voted for it? Of course, it is not. 
This is a very important issue.
  All those who propose getting this long-term extension, or even a 
short-term extension, have to do is correct the National Mediation 
Board. Get union elections back to where a majority of employees are a 
requisite in order to have a union, and I don't think there would be 
any problem in solving this problem. It would be solved in a 
nanosecond.
  Now, maybe this essential air service language is something that 
might cause problems. Well, I would suggest both sides get together and 
try to resolve those issues. But this is not some little, small issue. 
This is a big issue.
  It even becomes bigger when you consider the National Labor Relations 
Board, run 3-to-1 by Democrats, and the President will not appoint the 
recommended Republican to make it an even 3-to-2, so it is 3-to-1. They 
are running ramshackle fast over labor laws in this country. This kind 
of oppressing is something they will do, if they can, in a nanosecond. 
They have been saying they are going to do it. They have been trying to 
enact card check for years. In fact, they have been trying to enact 
labor law reform--which I fought back in 1977 and 1978--for years so 
they can give the unions a decided advantage that should not be given 
under any circumstances in union elections.
  If this gets through--the NMB--then what would stop the National 
Labor Relations Board, which handles millions of employees--millions of 
employees--from doing the same and continuing to do things that are 
just outrageous, like they are doing? They are usurping the ability of 
this legislature, the Congress of the United States, to run these 
issues the way they should be run. They should not be acting as a 
superlegislature, enacting laws from a partisan board to do these 
things.
  This is not some little issue. This is a big issue. I wish I wasn't 
in the middle of it. I just happened to be here one day when I was the 
last one here, and I had to object. But I knew when I did object it was 
the right thing to do under the circumstances.
  If we allow these boards to usurp our powers of the legislative 
branch of government and do anything they want to do because they have 
a supermajority--a superpartisan majority--then this country can't 
last, and the freedoms we all value will not last.
  The freedoms we all value won't last. I don't want to see anybody not 
paid. I don't want to see anybody not be able to do their job. But, by 
gosh, I don't want to see a runaway National Mediation Board, either, 
or a National Labor Relations Board that will use a precedent such as 
this in ways it really shouldn't be used. So these are not small 
issues.
  I hope we can get together. I hope the two committees will get 
together and resolve this issue. I am not on either of the committees. 
I am just someone who around here has had to stand up on some of these 
labor union issues--not against unions. I am one of the few persons in 
this whole Congress who actually earned a union card and became a 
skilled tradesman and worked for 10 years in the building construction 
trade union, and I am proud of it. But I have to say that I am going to 
call on both sides to get this problem solved and get rid of allowing 
the National Mediation Board to usurp the powers of the legislative 
branch of government and get the law back where it was, where it is 
more fair and where it makes sense. If we do that, I don't see why this 
would be held up for 10 seconds.
  So I call on both sides to try to resolve this issue. I don't feel 
good being in the middle of it just because I happened to be on the 
floor at the wrong time. All I can say is that, having gotten in the 
middle of it, as much as I love and admire the distinguished Senator 
from Texas and appreciate and admire and love my friend from West 
Virginia--and I do--this could be resolved, and there is no reason we 
shouldn't resolve it. This is an important issue, and all I can say is 
that I would like to help get it resolved, if I can, and if I can, I 
will. But both sides have to get together, and that includes both sides 
of Capitol Hill. I think this problem could be resolved, but these are 
not little issues.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah, and I 
appreciate his passion for the issue. I agree with him on the issue.
  The way for us to get together and resolve it is to have a conference 
committee, to have the conferees appointed on the House side. The 
conferees are appointed on the Senate side already, and we are ready to 
negotiate this bill. And I am going to be for the same position as the 
Senator from Utah because I don't think NMB made the right decision. I 
think it is a terrible overstretch, overreach of that board to change 
the law or change the regulation about what is a union election. I 
think they are wrong.
  But we cannot solve the issue with the House sending an extension of 
the FAA with a rider that is completely separate from that issue. NMB 
is not in the rider, it is not in the rider at all, but that is the 
issue everybody is negotiating unilaterally here. The House has sent 
over a bill that has an essential air service amendment that also has 
not been negotiated, but what they are negotiating on is the National 
Mediation Board. Well, if that is confusing, there is a reason--because 
it is confusing.
  So why don't we unconfuse and have a conference committee the way we 
normally do here, and let's hash out these issues. If we would have a 
chance to actually have a conference, negotiate all the issues, and 
then if someone is not satisfied, there are procedures that are 
honorable to blow up a bill that you don't like, but it is not 
honorable for the House to send an extraneous amendment on an FAA 
extension and shut down airports that are being repaired and built in 
our country, jeopardizing an estimated 75,000 jobs, jeopardizing the 
certification of a major new airplane that wants to get out there and 
start being used and an aviation trust fund that will lose over $1 
billion because we are not collecting the tax, and the airlines are 
pocketing the money by having a higher ticket charge, mostly. They may 
not all be doing that, but most of them are. That is just not right, 
and we are going to have to make that up because there are contracts 
pending that are going to have to be paid for.
  It is not fiscally responsible, and it is not honorable, and it is 
time for us to pass a clean extension of the FAA. Let's negotiate until 
September 30, and then, if we can't agree, we won't sign a conference 
report and it won't come back. I will stand there and not sign a 
conference report, but it is kind of hard to do that if you are not 
doing the right thing by sitting down and talking.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Before the distinguished Senator from Texas leaves the 
floor, I wish to express my appreciation for her bipartisanship in 
working through this difficult issue.
  Everyone understands that the labor issue is something that is 
overhanging this very important piece of legislation, but it shouldn't 
be hanging over

[[Page 12657]]

an extension of the bill. Tens of thousands of people are not working 
because of this. Actual safety of our airports is a concern to me. FAA 
is doing everything it can to make sure it is safe and sound, but 4,000 
people who work for the Department of Transportation are off work, in 
addition to the tens of thousands of people who have construction jobs. 
We have a new airport control tower in Las Vegas being constructed. 
They worked about 2 weeks, and they are now all laid off. It is not 
fair.
  This extension should go forward and be resolved in conference with 
the other body. It is so unfair. But this is not the last word. There 
will be more said about this. This is wrong.
  We are going to be leaving town leaving up to 80,000 people who are 
construction workers out of work. We need those jobs. I can't stress 
enough how much we need those jobs. So it is too bad.
  I do thank my friend, the Senator from Texas, for being so forward-
leaning on this and not being partisan. I appreciate that very much.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Chair lays 
before the body the House message to accompany S. 365, I be recognized 
to move to concur in the House amendments; that the time until noon, 
Tuesday, August 2, be for debate on the motion to concur, equally 
divided between the two leaders or their designees; that at noon, the 
Senate proceed to vote on the Reid motion to concur; that the motion to 
concur be subject to a 60-vote threshold; that no amendments, points of 
order, or other motions be in order to the message prior to the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. For the information of all Senators, it is my intention to 
have the Chair lay before the Senate the House message to accompany S. 
365 at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, August 2. There will be no rollcall 
votes tonight. The first one will be tomorrow at noon.
  Mr. President, I would suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we do have a financial crisis in our 
country. The debt limit we will be considering tomorrow is the 
thermometer, the canary in the coal mine that tells us we are at a 
dangerous level. For example, we have reached it faster and at higher 
levels than we ever have, the result of which is that our debt rise is 
telling us we have to raise our debt limit. Those things happen 
periodically, but this one would be the largest debt limit increase in 
our history. We have never had such a surge.
  The deficit for this single fiscal year ending is expected to be $1.5 
trillion. The largest deficit President Bush ever had, and it was 
large, was $450 billion. The last 2 years have been $1.2 trillion, $1.3 
trillion, and this year it is expected to be $1.5 trillion. Under the 
President's budget, we will go from interest on our debt this year of 
$240 billion to $940 billion in the tenth year. That is for a single 
year.
  For example, our education and transportation budgets have greatly 
expanded. Spending $940 billion on interest will crowd out tremendous 
portions of the good things we would like to do with taxpayers' money. 
Instead of being able to improve our infrastructure or do other things 
we think could be good, we will be sending that money to debtholders 
abroad to pay them back for the money they have loaned us that we have 
been spending now. As I speak, 42 cents of every dollar we spend will 
be borrowed.
  This is a very real situation. I have always felt that we have a 
responsibility to be honest with our constituents, and we are going to 
need to raise the debt limit. It places too much risk on our economy 
not to raise it. But I want to share some thoughts about why I am 
uneasy about the legislation that is before us and why I will not be 
able to support it.
  I have been warning for months now that we are heading to a situation 
in which we will have a last-minute, eleventh-hour bill; that the 
Senate will be asked to pass it without adequate time to review it; 
that other bad items could be included in this debt limit increase. 
Additionally, it is not the kind of process we need to pursue.
  Our Democratic leadership decided they did not want to bring up a 
budget. They instructed the Budget Committee chairman--of which I am 
the ranking member--not to bring up a budget. When asked about it, the 
majority leader said it would be foolish to have a budget.
  We have gone now 824 days without a budget under the Democratic 
majority in the Senate at a time when we have had the largest deficits 
in American history. At this extremely important time we do not have a 
budget. They said it would be foolish to have a budget. My questions 
is, Why would it be foolish? Because, if you pass a budget--and one can 
be passed with a mere 50 votes. It is given an expedited procedure. It 
cannot be filibustered, it is guaranteed a vote in 50 hours, but you 
have a right to file amendments. When you file and get a vote on 
amendments, then people are held accountable for their yea or nay.
  We have had a lot of people say we would like to do more. Maybe if we 
had a budget we would have had a chance to vote on spending.
  The problem is a decision was made that it would be too difficult to 
execute the normal, regular order in the Senate, to bring forth a 
budget and actually have amendments filed and Senators do what they are 
paid to do. I think that is particularly problematic in light of what 
happened in the last election. The American people are not happy with 
us. They rightly believe that Congress cannot justify a situation in 
which 42 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed. Congress cannot 
justify a $1.5 trillion deficit this year. People are not happy about 
that. I have been to town meetings and people say: You work for me. I 
am not happy.
  You have seen that on television in the last election. It was a 
shellacking for those who thought that business as usual ought to 
continue in the United States of America; that money could just be 
borrowed, borrowed and spent, and when the problems hit we would just 
raise taxes on the American people and they would have to pay for our 
spending binge. People are not happy with this.
  They were demanding, among other things, accountability. They were 
demanding that we in Congress be responsible for what we do. We should 
be transparent and willing to answer at home for what we had done. That 
is a fair request in a great Republic such as ours. I have been 
critical of the absence of a budget. We will not vote on one.
  We had the Reid proposal and the Boehner proposal and finally this 
compromise proposal. Our colleagues, the Democratic majority, brought 
up the House budget so they could vote it down. It was a historic 
budget. They did it publicly. They voted on the floor. There were 
amendments. The House plan reduced spending by as much as $6 trillion. 
They changed the debt course of America. I would have liked to have 
seen them go further because even that plan to alter the debt 
trajectory of America, bringing down our deficits, still did not 
balance in the 10th year.
  People say the House was radical and they did strange things. Not so. 
Read that budget. It was an honest budget based on good numbers. It 
changed the debt course of America. But even that, as I said, did not 
go as far as we really need to go.
  The House did its bit and we did nothing in return. Now we get to the 
point where the debt limit, August 2, is upon us and we are supposed to 
vote. This morning at 3 a.m., apparently, legislation was finally put 
together. It was brought forth to the floor of the Senate. We will vote 
on it tomorrow morning, maybe noon, after a couple of hours of debate 
tomorrow. I am really uneasy about that. I am uneasy about what is 
contained in it.
  What does it do? The good part is it reduces our spending by about 
$2.1 trillion, maybe $2.4 trillion. A more solid belief is we will 
reduce spending if Congress adheres to the guidelines. Over a period of 
years we tend to figure ways

[[Page 12658]]

around the limits and constraints that are put on spending, but the 
plan is to reduce spending by $2.1 trillion.
  It is a step. It is better than more spending like we have been 
doing. In the last 2 years under President Obama, when the Democratic 
majority had 60 Senators in the Senate, nondefense discretionary 
spending went up 24 percent. The budget that the President submitted 
this year calls for a 13.5 percent increase in education for next year. 
Beginning October 1, fiscal year 2012, when we are in the worst 
financial shape ever, a 13.5 percent increase in spending? Is that 
common sense? Does that make reasonable judgment? Is that a reasonable 
judgment for America, when we are in a situation such as this?
  It proposes a 9.5 percent increase in the Energy Department. It 
proposes a 10.5 percent increase in the State Department. It proposes a 
60-percent increase in the Highway Department. And I'm told there will 
be a tax. I ask them: Mr. Secretary, what tax?
  It will not be a gas tax.
  I say: OK, we agree, it is not a gas tax. What is the tax?
  We will talk about that.
  The Congressional Budget Office said that is no income. You cannot 
say you have income to offset a big increase in high-speed rail and 
things like that if you do not have a source of revenue.
  That is the situation in which we find ourselves. We have a deep, 
philosophical disagreement. The majority in this Senate and the 
President believe in spending. When I said 24 percent increase, that 
did not include the almost $1 trillion in the stimulus package. It did 
not include that, all of which, every penny, was borrowed because we 
are in debt. When you spend this extra money, you borrow the money. We 
do not have it to spend.
  However, we have a disagreement about where we are heading in our 
country. We should have had a full, glorious debate in the Senate. The 
Finance Committee should be looking at how to deal with taxes. The 
Appropriations Committee should be asking how can we reduce 
expenditures. Every authorizing committee needs to be looking at what 
they can do to do the job better with less cost and more efficiently. 
The Budget Committee should be producing a budget that can be adhered 
to and passed, and that would bind the Senate to change the spending 
trajectory we have been on. But none of that has happened.
  Instead, we have a bill to raise the debt limit. We are here because 
we spent so much money. We are up at the limit and if we do not raise 
the debt limit there will be substantial reductions in spending 
occurring pretty quickly. That is where we are.
  I believe this bill raises serious questions about the Senate and how 
we do business. As I said, I warned that we would be at the eleventh 
hour when it all came forward.
  One thing particularly concerning to me as the ranking member of the 
Budget Committee is that this bill deems certain budget numbers and in 
a way gets around, again, the budget process. It is going to give my 
colleagues, the Democratic majority, additional avenues to avoid 
producing a budget for the third consecutive year. I do not believe 
that is a healthy process.
  Second, I ask my colleagues to think about this, and I will wrap up. 
I don't need to go into great detail about it. We are being asked to 
allow our leaders to select up to 12 people, 12 people who will be on a 
special committee and will have almost complete jurisdiction to work on 
any issue they choose. After they reach an agreement, if they do, that 
agreement will be presented to both Houses of Congress. There will be 
only 30 hours of debate, no opportunity to amend it, and there will be 
an up-or-down vote. I have to say the chance of an up-or-down vote 
being successful is very high, because the product that will come out 
of that committee will be in harmony with what the leaders who 
appointed the members of the committee desire, because the power to 
appoint is the power to control.
  The committee will come back with this leadership proposal. It will 
be on the floor and it will be for an up-or-down vote and it is very 
likely to pass. Hopefully, it will have some good things in it. But it 
is unlikely that it would go past $1.5 trillion in reduced spending 
over 10 years. That is roughly what they have been given. That on top 
of the $900 billion that would go into effect immediately with the 
passage of the legislation would result in about a $2.4 trillion total.
  I believe that is an insufficient number. It is not close to what we 
have to do given our expected debt. Over 10 years the debt of the 
United States will increase an additional $13 trillion. Reducing it $2 
trillion is not enough. We have heard the economists and others testify 
before the Budget Committee. Republicans and Democrats, say those 
reductions are not sufficient. Many economists said the absolute 
minimum was $4 trillion, and this will be half that.
  That legislation will then come before us. We will have an up-or-down 
vote and presumably it will pass. The great traditions of the Senate, 
full, free, open debate will not occur to the degree that it ought to 
occur. The regular order will not be followed. Committees will have 
only an ability to send over advice if they so desire. As a result, I 
think we as Members of the Senate need to ask ourselves if we are 
getting pretty far away from the traditions of this body when you do 
not have public debate on a budget, you create a committee of limited 
numbers of people to produce legislation that cannot be amended and 
will only be up-or-down and no ability to have a supermajority vote, 
but a 50-vote, contrary to the normal process of this body.
  For those reasons I believe, as a Senator and a ranking member on the 
Budget Committee who has wrestled with this for some time, I will not 
be able to support the legislation, although I truly believe it is a 
step forward, and I respect my colleagues who worked hard to try to 
bring it forward.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

                          ____________________