[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16578-16581]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           FISCAL CHALLENGES

  Mr. COONS. Madam President, this is a critical moment. Over the next 
few weeks, serious choices must be made about how our Nation spends its 
money, about our national budget. At its heart, a budget is a statement 
of balance. A budget shows the world what we care about, what we 
prioritize, what we invest in, how we intend to build our future. 
Everyone who comes to this Chamber comes with their own values, 
representing their own State. But each of us also knows we have to find 
a way to bridge those divides to work together to solve the enormous 
fiscal challenges we face as a Nation. That means addressing the more 
than $500 billion in automatic spending cuts, tax increases, and other 
fiscal changes all scheduled to take place at the beginning of the next 
year and known collectively as the fiscal cliff.
  We find ourselves at the edge of this cliff because of our shared 
beliefs that deficits matter and that we can't keep spending money we 
don't have. As it stands today, our deficit and debt are unsustainable. 
Last year we ran a budget deficit of well over $1 trillion, and now we 
have a national debt that exceeds $16 trillion. If we don't get these 
numbers under control, interest payments will inevitably skyrocket, 
taking up a larger and larger percentage of our budget until they crowd 
out other critical, progrowth investments in our country's 
competitiveness and the essential social safety net that

[[Page 16579]]

puts a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our country. 
I don't believe either one of us wants to put those two vital things at 
risk.
  When a budget is so out of balance we have to take a hard look at 
both the money coming in and the money going out. The only way to get 
back on track, in my view, is to address both sides of this equation--
revenue and spending. We have to find a balanced solution that combines 
tough spending cuts with reforms to our Tax Code that bring in more 
revenue while also ensuring fairness to taxpayers. I believe there is 
real momentum for this kind of big, balanced, bipartisan solution for 
the first time in a long time.
  We have seen some courageous Republicans in both the House and Senate 
recently stand and say that revenue has to be on the table and a few 
even that an increase in tax rates for the wealthiest Americans may be 
necessary to get a budget deal that moves us forward. They know what we 
all know--that, frankly, even the most drastic across-the-board 
spending cuts, like the kinds contained in the sequester that will kick 
in in January, won't save enough to close the budget gap. At the same 
time, across-the-board, meat ax cuts to domestic programs violate some 
of our basic American values by failing to protect the most vulnerable 
in our society, those who I believe our values call us to put a circle 
of protection around, even in this most difficult recovery.
  Risking public safety, for example, by cutting funding for police and 
firefighters or leaving families out in the cold this winter by cutting 
heating assistance to low-income seniors--these are not American 
values. They are not the best way to solve our fiscal challenge. The 
truth is that those programs specifically have already been cut more 
than I would ever have liked to have seen. The Budget Control Act 
passed last year made a dramatic $1 trillion in spending cuts over the 
coming decade, which fell like an ax on some community-based programs 
on which Delaware families depend and which I used as county executive, 
in partnership with our community, to fight for the disabled for 
affordable housing and for low-income heating assistance programs.
  So let's not let this moment pass us by. Let's instead seize the 
opportunity before us and start finding areas where, across the aisle 
and between the Chambers of the Senate and the House, we can agree. One 
of those areas of agreement is the need to extend tax cuts for the 
middle class, for families and small businesses still working their way 
out of the deep hole of the financial collapse of 2008 and still making 
their way through this recovery.
  No one from either party, from the House, the Senate, or any State in 
this country, wants to raise taxes on middle-class families and small 
businesses and families like Deborah's.
  Deborah is a single mother in Wilmington, DE--my hometown--who is 
working a full-time job and a part-time job on top of that just to make 
ends meet. She wrote to my office, concerned about tax increases and 
the fiscal cliff. She said that ``the middle class is the heart and 
soul of this country--what keeps it going--what else can we be hit 
with? I know that I cannot take on any more financially.''
  So my first call today is let's give Deborah and families like hers 
in Delaware and around the country the certainty, before we end this 
calendar year, of knowing their taxes will not go up in 26 days when 
the calendar turns to 2013. One way to do that is for the House to take 
up and pass legislation this body has already considered and passed in 
a bipartisan way that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for 98 percent 
of families and 97 percent of small businesses while also achieving 
nearly $1 trillion in debt and deficit reduction.
  This bill extends tax cuts that would otherwise expire for all 
Americans who earn income and for all small businesses that earn 
revenue but just on the first $200,000 of individual income or $250,000 
in family income.
  Tax rates on income over and above $\1/4\ million a year would revert 
to the levels of the Clinton administration, the time of enormous 
economic growth and prosperity.
  This one step would blunt the impact of the fiscal cliff for the vast 
majority of Americans and give them the certainty they so badly need. 
It would also be a serious downpayment on meaningful deficit reduction 
and ensure that our budget more closely reflects our values, our 
fundamental belief in the American dream and that if you work hard, you 
can still get ahead.
  Leading Republicans in the House and the Senate, including Senator 
Snowe and Congressman Cole, have urged the House to move forward and 
pass this bill to provide badly needed security and certainty to 
middle-class families before the end of this year. I join their call, 
but let's not stop there. Let's keep going and find additional areas of 
compromise and constructive common ground to provide the business 
community with the certainty they need to plan the deployment and 
investment of capital so they can get Americans back to work. This 
would provide the market with certainty to sustain this recovery, while 
continuing to invest in our future. This would help families who need 
to know their budget future and need to be able to have confidence to 
take risks, to invest in growth. They want to educate their children, 
to buy a larger home, to take care of their children and their parents. 
To find the kind of balanced, bipartisan, long-term solution we need is 
to find a solution to all of these problems.
  It is only by coming together over the next few weeks--not as 
Republicans and Democrats but as Americans--that we can avoid a fiscal 
calamity that was entirely predictable. This is the result of a decade 
of unresolved budget fighting in this Chamber. For both parties, simply 
blaming the other side and waiting for the next election to give us a 
stronger mandate is no longer a tolerable or sustainable path forward. 
Working together is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.
  Americans have faced tough times before, but our strength has always 
been our unity and our ability to come together. It is my hope, my 
prayer, that faced with the challenge of the impending fiscal cliff, we 
can do it again.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to enter 
into a colloquy with the senior Senator from Delaware.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARPER. Would my colleague yield?
  Madam President, I want to follow up--we are supposed to talk about 
tomorrow being Delaware Day, if I could do that. But I wish to follow 
up on Senator Coons' remarks on the fiscal cliff.
  A friend of mine who has done a lot of research on the fiscal cliff 
says that if you look at domestic and discretionary spending, that is 
not really the overwhelming problem as far as why we continue to have a 
big budget deficit. The problem is really twofold. One of those is that 
if you look at revenues as a percentage of GDP, historically when we 
have been in budget, the revenues as a percentage of GDP, at least in 
the last 10, 15 years, revenues have been about 21 percent of GDP. 
Today they are about 15, 16 percent of GDP.
  But the other big driver in our deficit situation going forward is 
health care costs. It is health care costs, including Medicare and 
Medicaid. While we have to be smart enough to try to figure it out 
while being humane about caring for older people and the poor who count 
on Medicaid and Medicare to some extent, we have to focus on how to get 
better health care results for less money. That is what we have to 
focus on--how to get better health care results for less money. There 
are a lot of good ideas for doing that. Some of them are actually part 
of the health care law for our country.
  So it is revenues, and the other key here is better health care 
results for less money. We need to make sure that we have focused on 
Medicare and Medicaid in a humane way and that we do so in a way that 
doesn't harm, doesn't hurt, is not mean-spirited to those who depend on 
those programs.
  At the same time, we need to preserve those programs for the coming 
generations. For the pages down here--how old are you guys? Fifteen, 
sixteen

[[Page 16580]]

years of age? Several of you are nodding your heads. We want to make 
sure these programs are still around when you are 65, 66, 67 or older. 
That is what this is for. It is sort of a P.S. to the wonderful 
comments of my colleague from Delaware.
  What is tomorrow in Delaware, I ask the Senator?
  I seem to forget. What is this all about?
  Mr. COONS. Madam President, as anyone who has looked at the beautiful 
Delaware flag knows--and it flies in our offices and hallways here--it 
has a date emblazoned on the bottom--December 7, 1787, and that is 
known as Delaware Day. That is the day when Delaware became the first 
State to ratify the Constitution. So to celebrate Delaware Day, we do 
some things together, don't we?
  Mr. CARPER. And we have fun doing them. One of the things we are 
going to do--a great idea from a brand new Senator to Delaware about a 
year ago--is to have a ``Taste of Delaware.'' In fact, we are doing 
that this afternoon. It is not something paid for by the Federal 
Government but sponsored by our Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, as 
I recall, and others of its members to sort of be able to show off some 
of the finest of our State, and some of them pretty tasty, as it turns 
out. So we are looking forward to a lot of people coming by and 
enjoying that.
  Mr. COONS. We are looking forward to doing that in just a few 
minutes, actually. We have Dogfish Head Beer, we have Grottos pizza, 
and Capriotti subs, and dozens of restaurateurs and breweries and 
wineries from across Delaware--in age-appropriate settings--who will 
make available some of the finest of what Delaware has to offer. So it 
is my hope members of staff and our colleagues will join in the 
celebration of Delaware Day.
  One of the questions folks who are listening might have is: What 
about Delaware are you celebrating? It is, in my experience--and I 
believe my colleague's--a State that is not just the First State 
because of a wonderful accident of history, where we were the first 
State to have the vision and the courage to sign the Constitution, to 
ratify it, but it is also a State that has a nearly unique culture--a 
culture of respect, of innovation, of education, and of civility. It is 
a place that has a special, even a unique political culture, one that 
is at times the polar opposite of what I have seen here--forgive me, 
Madam President--in the last 2 years. Delaware, much like New 
Hampshire, feels and seems like a small town that is, through the magic 
of federalism and the Connecticut Compromise and the Continental 
Congress, a State with two Senators.
  One of the things I am proudest of about my State--and Senator Carper 
knows this well--is a tradition that just celebrated its 200th 
anniversary. It is the epitome of what we call the Delaware Way. It is 
a tradition that happens 2 days after every election. It is called 
Return Day, and it happens in Georgetown, which is the county seat of 
our southernmost county, Sussex County. What happens 2 days after the 
election--or the first thing that happens, because there are a lot of 
different pieces to it--is we all gather out at a local farm, and two 
by two--ark rules--the candidates who ran against each other in the 
general election get into horse-drawn carriages and ride--slowly--down 
the main streets of Georgetown where crowds of thousands come out to 
see the candidates, who just days before were engaged in vigorous 
political combat, being polite, being friendly, and waving to the 
crowds.
  What happens after that, I ask Senator Carper?
  Mr. CARPER. We have this beautiful center of Georgetown, with all 
these beautiful old brick buildings, courthouses and other buildings, 
and as we gather there in the circle of Georgetown--and the Senator may 
have said this and I just missed it--but the town crier comes out on 
the balcony of the courthouse and he has on his top hat and his tails 
and he announces the results of the election 2 days earlier. This is 
Thursday after the election. He calls out the results of the election 2 
days earlier just for Sussex County, DE, where about a sixth of our 
State's population lives. He calls out the results of everything from 
President, Vice President, all the way down to justice of the peace or 
sheriff. And when he finishes, we have a couple of short speeches on 
the platform there in front of thousands of people, maybe a patriotic 
song or two, and then the leaders of parties, Democrat, Republican, 
maybe Libertarian chairman, take a hatchet--a pretty big hatchet--and 
they grab it, each holding on, and they put it down in a glass aquarium 
half full of sand. And then someone brings in some buckets of sand, 
maybe from Rehoboth Beach or Dewey Beach, and they cover up and 
literally bury the hatchet.
  Some of my colleagues from New Jersey said: If we had a ceremony like 
that in our State, and we buried the hatchet, it probably wouldn't be 
in the sand. It would be in the anatomy or some part of the body of our 
opponents. But we do it in the sand. And then we have maybe a 
benediction, and we go off and eat, and people open their homes for a 
reception. So as the day carries on and the Sun sets in the west, the 
travails and the passions of the election begin to dissipate and people 
start to think and refocus not on how do we beat our opponents' brains 
out but how do we work together to govern our State.
  It is a wonderful tradition. We have talked about this before. I 
think we could use a Return Day for our country. It certainly works in 
our State. It has a very civilizing effect on all our campaigns.
  Mr. COONS. Whether it is the reception in the morning, the long 
carriage ride through the middle of Georgetown, the speeches on the 
podium, the announcement of the results, the literal burying of the 
hatchet, or the receptions that go on all afternoon and into the night, 
the experience of Return Day for me--and I believe for my colleague 
Senator Carper--has been one of reconciliation, one of moving past the 
election and then forward toward the challenge of making decisions 
together for the people we represent.
  Everybody shows up--the winners and the losers. It is only the sorest 
of losers who don't show up and only the most arrogant of winners who 
don't show up. So, frankly, it is almost always everybody. In the 
elections I have been blessed to stand in and be successful in for the 
people of Delaware, the Return Day is a great end to the campaign 
season and beginning of our season of service to the people of 
Delaware.
  So as we go from the floor now to the reception in honor of Delaware 
Day, I want to say how grateful I am to serve with my senior Senator, 
who has always been personally a model of the civility, of 
graciousness, and of the service that marks the Delaware Way and marks 
Delaware Day which we celebrate officially tomorrow but which we kick 
off tonight with a reception.
  Mr. CARPER. I would add to that this is a commitment to civility that 
Senator Coons and I share, and it is also one that our Congressman John 
Carney certainly does, and winning in races before him, Mike Castle. If 
you think of all of those--Castle with a ``C'', Carney with a ``C'', 
Coons with a ``C'', and Carper with a ``C''--people say what is it with 
the letter ``C'' and the State of Delaware? If I can, before I close 
here, I want to roll back in time about the economy of our State. 
People say what do you all do there? How do you provide for your 
living, your income? I would say the economy of our State is pretty 
much founded on the letter ``C.'' It includes corn. We started off by 
growing corn. Then chickens. There are a whole of lot of chickens 
there. For every person in Delaware, there are 300 chickens. For anyone 
listening and wondering what to have for dinner, chicken would be good. 
We have chemicals--the DuPont Company. A poor impoverished French 
family came to Delaware over 200 years ago and established what I call 
the DuPont country club. They didn't have many members. They figured 
they needed to establish some jobs so people could join their country 
club, so they started a chemical company, and a power company, and now 
they have quite a successful science company in our State--

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for over 200 years. We have cars. We have built a lot of cars over the 
years for GM and Chrysler. We are home to corporations of over half the 
New York Stock Exchange, half the Fortune 500. Credit card businesses 
are in our State. The coast of our State is the site of the Nation's 
summer capital--Rehoboth Beach and a bunch of other places. So the 
letter ``C'' has been pretty big.
  People say: Well, why do they call you the First State? Well, we are 
actually the first colony that threw off the yoke of British tyranny on 
June 15, 1776 and at the same time said to Pennsylvania, take a hike, 
we want to be a State on our own. And then 225 years from tomorrow, to 
be exact, we were the first State to ratify the Constitution.
  We have the best beaches in the country. Last year I think there were 
four five-star beaches in America, with two of them in Delaware--
Rehoboth and Dewey Beach. We have the best Air Force base, we think, in 
the world. We were first in Ph.Ds per capita. We have, I think, the 
finest Judiciary--acknowledged year after year after year as the finest 
judicial system in the States. We have the best financial controls and 
cash management system. We have had triple A credit rating since--what 
was that guy's name as Governor, Carper or something? We continue to 
have that kind of credit rating. So we are proud of being first.
  What is our State motto? ``It is good to be first.'' And we attempt 
to be first in a whole lot of ways. Some things you don't want to be 
first in, and we want to be last in those. But we are proud of what we 
are first in--first in civility.
  As Senator Coons said, this all goes back to Return Day. When you 
announce your candidacy for election, whether it is for the U.S. Senate 
or as sheriff, you know at the end of the campaign--2 days after the 
campaign--you are going to be in Georgetown, DE, in a horse-drawn 
carriage or maybe an antique car with the man or woman you were running 
against, their family, your family, and surrounded by friends and 
supporters and thousands of other people. And I think it has a very 
tempering effect on the nature of our campaigns, a wonderful effect.
  That is one of much that we are proud of in our State. We are lucky 
to be Senators from this State, but this is a State that works and 
focuses on results. This is a State where we govern from the middle, 
whether the Governor is DuPont or Castle or Carper or Markell. And 
whether the Senator is Carper or Coons or Biden or Kaufman, we govern 
from the middle. We are a State where Democrats and Republicans 
actually like each other. We just want to get things done and do what 
is right for our State.
  With that in mind, we hope some of our friends and neighbors can join 
us later today in the Russell Building up on the third floor. We will 
make a toast to Delaware and enjoy some sarsaparilla and some other 
goodies as well.
  It is a great joy to serve with my friend.
  Mr. COONS. I thank my colleague.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Let me be the first to congratulate my two colleagues 
from Delaware on Delaware Day. Have a happy Delaware Day.
  We have a lot of great things in Colorado, but I am not going to try 
to outcompete you on beaches this afternoon. We don't have a lot of 
those. I do think it puts me in mind of something, and that is our 
constitution. Delaware, as Senator Coons mentioned, was the first State 
to ratify the Constitution of this great country. My State didn't 
become a State until nearly a century later. We are the Centennial 
State as a result of that.
  That Constitution that enabled generation upon generation of 
Americans had a preamble which said: to secure the blessings of liberty 
for ourselves and our posterity. It is important in these days of these 
budget discussions to remind ourselves they didn't stop with 
themselves. The document doesn't stop with ourselves. It is about 
ourselves and our posterity. That is what we are talking about here 
when we are involved in this budget discussion. These aren't decisions 
that are about ourselves, these are decisions that are about the next 
generation of Americans and the generation after that. And it is time 
for us to do our job. It is time for us to walk back from this fiscal 
cliff and come up with a comprehensive plan. We know what the outlines 
of that are today, and we need to stop playing political games in this 
holiday season and get this work done, not for ourselves but for our 
posterity.

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