[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 19235-19246]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     MAKING CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2014--Resumed

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair lays before the Senate a message 
from the House which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Resolved, that the House recede from its amendment to the 
     amendment of the Senate to the resolution (H.J. Res. 59) 
     entitled, ``A joint resolution making continuing 
     appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other 
     purposes,'' and concur with a House amendment to the Senate 
     amendment.

  Pending:

       Reid motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the 
     amendment of the Senate to the joint resolution, with Reid 
     amendment No. 2547, to change the enactment date.
       Reid amendment No. 2548 (to amendment No. 2547), of a 
     perfecting nature.
       Reid motion to refer the message of the House on the joint 
     resolution to Committee on the Budget, with instructions, 
     Reid amendment No. 2549, to change the enactment date.
       Reid amendment No. 2550 (to (the instructions of the motion 
     to refer) amendment No. 2549), of a perfecting nature.
       Reid amendment No. 2551 (to amendment No. 2550), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked on the motion to 
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment, the motion to 
refer falls as it is inconsistent with cloture.
  The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, am I correct we are in postcloture time 
now?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time to talk about the budget 
agreement that was negotiated by Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan 
and the work they did, but I first wish to relate to my colleagues 
conversations I had with numerous Marylanders over this past weekend--
people I didn't know who came up to me and said how pleased they were 
that Congress was on the verge of getting something done--something 
that will make a difference in our budget over the next 2 years. They 
were pleased that Democrats and Republicans were actually able to reach 
a compromise and that we were actually able to get our business done in 
some regular order. They were hopeful that it would not only make a 
difference in the budget of our Nation this year and next, but that it 
was a sign that Democrats and Republicans were prepared to work 
together to do the people's business. They were pleased this was truly 
bipartisan--a real compromise--something we haven't seen enough of in 
this Congress.
  The American people understand that the Congress is controlled--the 
House by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats. They understand that. 
What they do not understand is how we have not been able to get 
together and compromise on our differences in order to move forward on 
the important issues of our time. They are very encouraged by this 
action.
  So I intend to support the final vote on the budget agreement, and I 
hope my colleagues will support this agreement. It provides the 
framework for appropriations bills for the next 2 years without 
sequestration. That is regular order. The appropriations committees can 
now meet and decide the policy of our country through the 
appropriations bills as to where we believe priorities should be on 
Federal resources.
  It allows us to operate, hopefully, without a continuing resolution. 
The number of continuing resolutions that we have passed indicate a 
failure because when we pass a continuing resolution, we do not adopt 
the priorities for the current time. Instead, we just freeze in prior 
years' priorities. We now have the opportunity to enact priorities that 
are important today, recognizing that some of the past spending is not 
necessary and there are other areas that we need now to adopt, 
considering the changes in our own communities and considering the 
international changes.
  It allows us to operate without the fear of a government shutdown. 
Before I said a fear of a government shutdown because we thought we 
would not see a government shutdown, but as we know, in October we saw 
a government shutdown, and we saw people who were hurt, and we saw our 
economy that was hurt as a result of that shutdown. Now this budget 
agreement gives us the opportunity to use regular order so we can pass 
appropriations bills or an omnibus bill that sets current priorities. 
It allows us to do that without the fear of closing government, which 
is inefficient, costly, and harms our economy and people.
  The framework that was adopted in this budget agreement allows us to 
protect our Nation's seniors, disabled children, and the disadvantaged. 
The resources can be made available to deal with our most vulnerable to 
allow us to move forward as a nation, and it shows we can work 
together.
  So I strongly support this budget agreement. I do so but I want to 
express my disappointments. I am sure that every Member of the Senate 
will have disappointments. But I am concerned about what is included in 
this budget agreement and what is not included, and I want to spend a 
few minutes talking about it.
  I am disappointed that this is a 2-year agreement, that it does not 
completely remove sequestration. I think all of us would acknowledge 
that sequestration is something we do not want to see in effect because 
it is mindless across-the-board cuts. It does not set priorities. We 
are responsible to set priorities. If you ran into a problem with your 
own home budget in your family, if you lost some income, you would not 
cut every expenditure item identically. You would make decisions. You 
would make sure your family had a roof over them. You would make sure 
they had food on the table. Maybe you would postpone a weekend trip. 
You do not treat every expenditure the same. Sequestration treats every 
expenditure the same.
  The good news in this budget agreement--the good news--we do not 
worry about that for the next 2 years. The bad news: It returns after 2 
years. I know Senator Murray has worked very hard to get rid of 
sequestration. I know she is going to continue to work on that as the 
chair of the Budget Committee and, as I said earlier, I applaud

[[Page 19236]]

her greatly for being able to reach an agreement with the Republicans, 
particularly in the House. But I would hope we could get rid of 
sequestration once and for all. Unfortunately, this budget agreement 
does not do it. It is for only 2 years. I would have liked to see a 
long-term budget agreement.
  On that, I would like to see us enact a long-term budget agreement. 
We talk frequently about the fact that one of the most damaging parts 
to our inaction is uncertainty. When businesses have to make decisions 
and individuals have to make decisions, the uncertainty of our Federal 
budget causes them harm, extra costs, anxiety. We need a long-term 
budget agreement, the so-called grand bargain. Yes, we will get an 
agreement for these 2 years, but it does not take us beyond that. We 
all understand we need a responsible budget, one that deals with the 
investments that are important for job growth, but also reduces the 
budget deficit.
  I know Chairman Murray has mentioned this frequently, but let me just 
repeat this. During the past 2 years, we have reduced the deficit by 
$2.8 trillion. We have done a good job in reining in the Federal 
deficit. That is over the period of fiscal years 2014 to 2023, and that 
is before sequestration.
  So when you go back to Simpson-Bowles and the amount of deficit 
reduction we were trying to get, we are about three-fourths of the way 
there in reducing the deficit. Yes, we have to do more. We have to 
continue to reduce the deficit. But let us acknowledge that we have 
done a pretty good job in reining in the Federal deficit, and I applaud 
the Chair of the Budget Committee for her leadership in that regard.
  We also must allow for critical investment for job growth. We are in 
a global economy today. We have to invest in modernization. We need new 
investments in energy in this country. We need transportation 
investments, not just in roads and bridges, but in transit systems. We 
need to invest in education. Education is the great equalizer in 
America. We are in a global competition. We know we are behind in the 
STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. We have 
passed legislation to try to catch up. We have to fund those 
initiatives. The Federal Government has to be an active partner in 
education.
  I can mention many agencies, but I always like to mention the 
National Institutes of Health, which happens to be headquartered in my 
State of Maryland. It is very important to New Jersey, the Presiding 
Officer's State, and very important to every part of our country. Why? 
Because they do the basic research which is the building block for the 
type of technology growth which is critically important in America.
  We have the best trained people here in America. We need to invest in 
the basic research so we can continue to lead the world. Yes, the 
budget for NIH has not been as strong as it needs to be. We have to 
invest more money in that.
  There are many reasons we need a long-term budget agreement. We need 
it for predictability, so we do not govern from one manufactured crisis 
to another manufactured crisis. But we also need it so we can invest in 
critical investments for job growth in America. That is another reason 
why I hope we are able to build on this 2-year agreement for a longer-
term budget agreement.
  We also need to protect the safety nets as we do that. We need a 
balance here, and those who are most vulnerable need to be assured 
their government is on their side to help them, whether they are our 
seniors, whether they are people with disabilities, whether it is young 
people who need an opportunity to be able to take advantage of the 
opportunities in America.
  We need to enhance the protection of our environment for future 
generations and have an energy policy that makes sense not only for 
America's security and environment but also for our economy.
  So a balanced agreement for a long-term budget, which is not in this 
agreement, would give us that predictability, would give us that 
ability to move forward. To do that we need to deal with mandatory 
spending. This budget agreement deals with discretionary spending. It 
does not deal with mandatory spending.
  We have taken steps to move in this direction. The passage of the 
Affordable Care Act puts in place a manner in which we can deal with 
health care costs, by reducing the growth rate of health care 
expenditures, by dealing with the readmissions to hospitals, by 
managing complicated illnesses, duplicative tests, getting people out 
of the emergency room into our clinics and into preventive care, having 
seniors take advantage of preventive health care because they do not 
have to pay a copayment that they could not afford.
  These are ways we improve what we call the delivery system of health 
care in America, where you bring down the costs of health care. That is 
the best way to bring down the mandatory spending accounts in Medicare 
and Medicaid--reduce health care costs. We need to do more of that. We 
need to reduce the cost of our mandatory spending in this country. We 
could have done more, and this budget agreement did not deal with that.
  Then there is the issue of revenue. I am going to talk about revenue 
because I was proud to be part of the Congress that balanced the 
Federal budget when Bill Clinton was President of the United States. Do 
you know what we did back then? We brought in more revenue, we reduced 
spending, and we balanced the budget. What happened? Our economy took 
off. We were not only growing jobs, we were growing good-paying jobs, 
and the standard of living for all Americans went up. We have to get 
back to that.
  We are spending too much today, and we do not have enough revenue. 
Yes, this agreement takes care of reducing some spending, but not all, 
and does virtually nothing about revenues. We have to get back to that. 
We can bring in the revenue necessary to balance the Federal budget by 
reforming our Tax Code. There has been some great work done in the 
Senate Finance Committee I am privileged to serve on--Democrats and 
Republicans taking a look at our Code to see ways we can make more 
sense out of our Tax Code. We can do things about it.
  Let me just remind my colleagues that we spend more money in the Tax 
Code than we do through all the appropriations bills. We spend more in 
our Tax Code. Over $1 trillion a year is spent in our Tax Code. These 
are tax breaks that go to some but not all taxpayers.
  So there is no need to raise rates. All we need to do is close 
loopholes and be more critical of how we spend our money in the Tax 
Code, as we do on the appropriations side. Every dollar we spend on the 
appropriations side is scrutinized all the time. We need to do the same 
on the tax side. Quite frankly, Senator Baucus and Senator Hatch have 
worked out a way that the members of the Finance Committee can take a 
look at some of those. I think we can reach some agreements on areas of 
the Tax Code that are not high priorities that can reduce the revenue 
hemorrhaging we have. Put another way, if we eliminated all the tax 
breaks that are in the Tax Code, our rates could be one-half of what 
they are today--one-half of what they are today.
  So we not only can bring in the revenue necessary to balance our 
Federal budget and allow for the types of investments that are 
important for job growth, we can actually reduce the rates for a large 
number of Americans. Unfortunately, that is not in this budget 
agreement. To me, that is a disappointment, that we are not dealing 
with the balance that is necessary for a long-term budget agreement.
  Then there is one other area I want to talk about, and it is not 
going to be a surprise to my colleagues--a couple of areas I want to 
talk about, one of which is the Federal workforce.
  This agreement provides for a 1.3-percent increase in retirement 
contributions for new hires under Federal service. That is on top of an 
increase that was just done a year ago on the extension of the payroll 
tax, where we increased the retirement contributions for new hires. We 
also, in this budget

[[Page 19237]]

agreement, have a reduction in the COLA increases for military 
retirees.
  I think that is regrettable. I do not believe that should have been 
in this budget agreement. Our civilian workforce has already 
contributed. When you add up what will be done by retirement 
contributions, that is going to be over $20 billion. We have had 3 
years of a pay freeze. We have a way in our law where we make 
adjustments to our civilian workforce pay each year that reflects not 
the cost of living, something less than the cost of living. Our Federal 
workforce has seen a freeze. They have not gotten that for the last 3 
years. That is close to $100 billion in contribution to the deficit. 
They have already done that. So they have contributed already about 
$120 billion-plus, and that does not include--does not include--the 
fact that many of our Federal workforce have had to endure furloughs as 
a result of sequestration and government shutdowns.
  So our Federal workforce has contributed. These are predominantly 
middle class families, a large number of veterans, a large number of 
women, a large number of minorities. They have contributed more than 
any other group of working Americans already in dealing with this 
deficit reduction, and I find it very regrettable that this retirement 
contribution provision was included in the budget agreement.
  Let me just quote, if I might, from the nonprofit Partnership for 
Public Service that commented to Senator Murray and Representative Ryan 
during the budget negotiations. I quote this for what they say because 
I think it expresses my view and I hope the view of all the Members of 
the Senate:

       As you work to put our federal government on a sustainable 
     fiscal path, we encourage you in the strongest possible terms 
     to treat the federal workforce as the considerable asset that 
     it is, and ensure it is appropriately trained, compensated 
     and resourced to serve the American people with excellence 
     for the long term.
       The federal civilian service is smaller today on a per 
     capita basis than at almost any time since the Kennedy 
     Administration--yet its responsibilities are greater than 
     ever. Rather than asking how to make the federal workforce 
     smaller or less expensive, Congress should be asking what we 
     need the Federal Government to do, and what it will take to 
     ensure that we have a workforce with the necessary skills in 
     appropriate quantities to execute those responsibilities with 
     maximum effect at a reasonable expense.
       Proposals to freeze federal pay, change retirement 
     contributions or reduce the workforce through attrition do 
     nothing to improve the capacity and performance of the 
     federal government and those who serve in its civilian 
     workforce. These proposals are easy and expedient, but they 
     miss the opportunity to make real and sustained improvements 
     in how the Federal Government manages its people.

  I could not agree more with those comments. We have a smaller 
workforce today, asked to do more extremely important work. These are 
people who are protecting our food supply. These are the great 
scientists who are doing the research to give us what we need, new 
technologies in health care. These are people making sure our seniors 
get the services they so richly need and deserve. These are people who 
are on the frontline in so many different ways.
  Our responsibility is to make sure they have the resources to carry 
out their mission. Yes, we make value judgments as to what are the 
priorities, but to put our class of Federal workers through additional 
cuts, to me, is wrong. I regret that was included in the budget 
agreement.
  I also wish to mention I was disappointed that we were not able to 
use this last train that will reach the finish line before we recess to 
extend unemployment insurance. Some 1.3 million workers are in danger 
of losing benefits come January 1. In 2014, as many as 4.7 million 
workers will not be getting the extended benefit, 83,000 of whom are 
located in my State of Maryland.
  Let my point out, I know the unemployment rates are getting lower. We 
are all working to make sure to get them as low as we can. But they are 
still substantially higher than they were when we first recognized that 
we needed to have extended Federal unemployment benefits because of the 
softness in our economy. Particularly for those who are long-term 
unemployed, it is extremely difficult to find a job. If you are 
unemployed and you are looking for work, it is tough out there.
  So the right thing for us to do is to continue these benefits for 
people who are actively looking for work and cannot find jobs. This is 
an insurance program. The moneys have been collected during good times 
so that we pay during these times. The money is there. We need to make 
sure those benefits are continued. I was disappointed it was not 
included in the legislation. It will help our economy grow.
  There are more and more economic studies that show every dollar we 
make available in unemployment compensation returns much more to our 
economy in job growth. So this is hurting ourselves by not extending 
it, plus we are hurting millions of Americans who are going to be more 
vulnerable in trying to keep their families together during these very 
challenging times.
  Let me conclude by saying that as I said in the beginning, this is an 
important budget agreement to get approved. I strongly support it. I 
applaud the leadership of Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan in 
bringing us to this moment. My constituents believe this is a very 
important step forward, showing that we can compromise and work 
together and get our work done.
  In a few days we will bring the first session of the 113th Congress 
to a close and leave Washington to spend the holidays with our families 
and friends. I hope each one of us will use that time to reflect on the 
extraordinary privilege of being a Member of Congress. I hope each one 
of us will reflect on the extraordinary challenges our Nation faces. I 
hope each one of us will come to the conclusion that we can do 
extraordinary things if we work together. The American people demand 
and deserve no less.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to express my disappointment that the 
budget deal we will soon be voting on reflects just that, a deal--not 
legislation, a deal. It raises spending above the cap. That is the 
spending limit we put in place just 2 years ago.
  It raises revenue from hard-working Americans to pay for this new 
spending and promises to cut some spending in the future. We have seen 
before how that story ends. We have already read that book. We will 
spend more now, we will grow the government more now, and ultimately 
the spending cuts will never materialize.
  I have a favorite retired truckdriver in Pinedale, WY, who has 
suggested that we need to quit putting people in the wagon and get more 
people pulling the wagon. What he, of course, is referring to is the 
way we are growing government. Every time we grow government we put 
some more people in this wagon that the private sector has to pull. 
Yes, everybody in government pays taxes. But not one person in the 
government pays as much in taxes as they earn, so they become a part of 
the burden in the wagon.
  Yes, even Senators are part of that burden in the wagon. But we are 
getting less and less people pulling the wagon. They are getting a 
little tired of pulling the wagon. I am going to show some things that 
are happening in this budget that are making it even tougher for them 
to pull the wagon.
  So this is not the right path forward. My constituents back home in 
Wyoming and Americans across this country deserve better. We talk about 
how we have reduced the deficit. Reduced the deficit? Yes, that means 
we used to be overspending $1 trillion a year, and now we are only 
overspending $500 billion, which is one-half trillion. That is still 
overspending.
  Families across America know you cannot keep spending more than you 
take in. Is there any indication that this causes a problem? We have 
been experiencing some of the lowest interest rates in the history of 
the country, which means the Federal Government has been able to borrow 
its money for less than it ever has before.
  A few months ago I went to one of these bond sales. It was $40 
billion worth of bond sales, sold in 30 minutes.

[[Page 19238]]

People in other countries had so much confidence in the United States 
that they were willing to pay us to take their money. They put in bids 
of negative interest rates. They paid us to take their money, to keep 
it, to make sure it was secure. They believed it would be secure. So 
they paid us a negative interest rate.
  At that particular bond sale, the interest rate was .86 percent to 
borrow $40 billion. That is what it averaged out at. Last week we did 
bond sales. Last week we sold $30 billion worth of bonds. I do not know 
how many minutes it took to do that, but it was a relatively short 
period of time, probably less than 30 minutes as well.
  Do you know what the interest rate was? It was 3.90 percent. In just 
a few months it has gone from .86 to 3.90. Is that factored into this 
budget? I bet you it is not. If that interest rate keeps going up, if 
it hits 5 percent, we are not going to be able to do nearly as much as 
we are now. We have to pay our interest first, otherwise we have 
bankrupted the United States and proven it.
  When we talk about raising the debt ceiling, it is a minor issue 
compared to being able to pay the interest on the debt. If it keeps 
going up significantly, we and our kids and our grandkids are not going 
to be able to pay the debt. That is what I hear across Wyoming. That is 
what I hear across America. So what are we trying to do? We are trying 
to come up with a reasonable amount of spending for the United States. 
This budget does not do it.
  Because Members are going to be voting on a deal rather than a bill 
that had the opportunity to be improved through the committee process 
with feedback from other Members, we will not have the opportunity to 
discuss the potential unintended consequences and address them before 
they become law. I just heard 15 minutes of that discussion from the 
Senator from Maryland who knows a whole bunch of items that are in this 
bill that he is upset with, and I, quite frankly, think he ought to be 
upset with.
  But I am on that conference committee. When the deal was made, we 
read about it in the papers just like everybody else. We did not get 
any special notice that there had been a deal made. On conference 
committees, I have seen the deals made before. I have never seen one 
made by so few people before. In this one there was a Democrat from the 
Senate and a Republican from the House. The two of them came up with a 
conclusion that this is what we should have.
  That is not too bad, provided it goes through a normal process, which 
means we get to make some amendments. When we make amendments, some 
pass, some fail. But at least we get to bring up the unintended 
consequences that we see. That is why we have so many people in 
Congress: 100 here and 435 on the other side. That is why we have a 
whole lot of backgrounds looking at everything that happens around here 
from a whole lot of perspectives so maybe we can stop the unintended 
consequences.
  But that is only if it goes through a normal process. So far the tree 
is filled on this bill. What does that mean? That means no amendments 
allowed. Take it or leave it. No matter what you think of it, forget 
it. We are going to have some unintended consequences that are going to 
come out of this and they are going to become law.
  For example, I applaud the proposal that would limit access to Social 
Security's Death Master File to prevent identity theft, and individuals 
from fraudulently claiming government benefits and tax refunds 
associated with those who have passed away. That is a good idea. 
However, I am concerned that certain organizations that use that same 
Death Master File for legitimate business purposes that benefit 
consumers may have their access restricted.
  If we discussed these issues in committee, we might have been able to 
address them, perhaps with a sensible solution, perhaps in a way that 
would have protected the identity and still protected the benefits to 
the consumer.
  The budget deal makes a permanent provision that would require States 
to pay a 2-percent administrative fee to the Federal Government for the 
collection of mineral royalties. This only affects a few States, 
particularly Wyoming. The negotiators and the administration see this 
as an easy pot of money. We saw the same situation play out last year 
when the Federal Government saw a pot of money associated with the 
abandoned mine lands, that primarily go to Wyoming, and spent it on an 
unrelated highway bill.
  When the Federal Government first started to withhold the mineral 
royalty money owed to States, I introduced legislation with Senator 
Barrasso and Representative Lummis and a bipartisan group of 
legislators from affected States to stop it. Each of those States is 
fully capable of collecting its own share of the mineral revenues 
without help from the Federal Government. We should not have to pay for 
that. We will continue to reverse this unjust practice.
  Another fascinating little item was when we did the sequester, the 
money that comes in from Federal mineral royalties to the Federal 
Government was considered to be revenue. The money that went out, which 
is by law to the States, was considered to be revenue to the States 
that passed through the Federal Government. The Federal Government took 
5.3 percent out of it until, of course, we started having a lot of 
success at reversing both this 2 percent that I just talked about and 
the stealing of the Federal mineral royalties. Suddenly the Federal 
Government said: Oh, that was a mistake. You are going to get your full 
half of the Federal mineral royalties less, of course, the 2 percent.
  Another little problem is the deal raises premiums private companies 
pay the Federal Government to guarantee their pension benefits. That is 
something we have also insisted on. We have said companies need to pay 
a fee so if they go out of business, the people they promised a pension 
to will get at least 60 percent of what they were promised. That is 
supposed to be a trust fund, a trust fund to be able to pay those 
people if the company goes out of business.
  We have addressed that a number of times. We have held that 
sacrosanct until a couple of years ago. This raises the premium. That 
is gentle for a new tax. A premium is a tax. If every company has to 
pay another $200 per employee who receives a pension, that is a tax.
  If it goes into the trust fund, maybe it is a fee. But here is the 
real kicker: This money we raise does not go to the Pension Benefit 
Guaranty Corporation, so it is a tax increase. It does not shore up 
this trust fund. It will be spent on discretionary programs, and it 
will be spent this year. But it will be collected for 10 years. How 
many people in America get to take 10 years of revenue, spend it this 
year, and then not worry about it? Nobody that I know of.
  Employers are still in the process of implementing and paying for a 
$9 billion tax increase called for in the highway bill last year. That, 
again, is a 10-year tax to build highways for 2 years. When that 
highway bill comes up, where are we going to steal the money next time?
  There is always the Social Security trust fund and a whole bunch of 
other trust funds. I can hear the yelling about that, and I will join 
the yelling about that if it is even considered. If we can tap it in 
the private sector, undoubtedly we can tap it in the government sector 
as well.
  A $9 billion increase, that was for the highway bill. We have another 
$200 per employee, so we have another $900 billion increase that is put 
on the backs of private industry, the ones pulling the wagon that I 
talked about. To put it simply, over 2 years the flat-rate premium will 
have increased 40 percent, and over 3 years the variable-rate premium--
which is a tax if it doesn't go where it is supposed to--will have 
increased over 100 percent. That is a huge tax.
  I guarantee that will end the willingness of some companies to 
continue pensions. Pensions are voluntary.
  If the cost to continue them goes up, the companies will reevaluate.
  In fact, I can state that they are reevaluating right now. When we 
are looking at $200 per year per employee,

[[Page 19239]]

we have to take a look at how that affects this. Pensions will change 
drastically because of this agreement.
  A few of the concerns I have just raised could be addressed, if not 
in committee, then on the Senate floor. Once again, the majority leader 
has decided that no amendments will be allowed. They won't be allowed 
to be offered, and they won't be allowed to be voted on.
  I filed two amendments to the budget deal that are relevant to this 
discussion. One was with Senator Murphy regarding the need to follow 
congressional intent and to clarify that the funding of the accounting 
standards-setting bodies is not subject to sequestration.
  We have a system where there are rules set up to have generally 
accepted accounting principles, and we have a body that is supposed to 
be very independent that is supposed to come up with those rules.
  We do force the companies that are in the accounting business to pay 
for that body, to standardize the accounting process. It comes directly 
from the accountants, and it is supposed to go directly to this 
accounting board. We have decided that sequestration should take a 
little chunk out of that. That should not happen. That is stealing 
money again. That is one of the amendments.
  Another one was to strike the language making it permanent for the 
Federal Government to withhold 2 percent of mineral royalty owed to the 
States for administrative expenses. We should have the opportunity to 
discuss, debate, and vote on them on the Senate floor.
  There are a lot of others, but those are the two primary ones. We 
have to stop dealmaking and we have to start legislating.
  Our constituents sent us here to legislate. They deserve better than 
a deal agreed to behind closed doors without input and improvements 
from the rest of the legislators, not even the committee to which it 
was assigned. Even though I am disappointed in the process that has led 
to this point today, I am even more disappointed in the product that 
resulted from the dealmaking.
  This budget deal breaks the promise we made to our constituents in 
2011--as part of the Budget Control Act--that we would reduce spending. 
It has worked. It hasn't worked the way a lot of people would like for 
it to work because it has been across-the-board. But for the first time 
since the Korean War, it has reduced spending 2 consecutive years.
  We were close. After 2014, overall discretionary spending would have 
increased even with the sequester. Yes, we were almost at the end of 
the part of taking down the spending, but we couldn't find the will to 
prioritize spending this year under the current spending levels and, 
instead, decided to ask Americans to send in more of their hard-earned 
money to Washington so the Federal Government could spend it the same 
way we always have--promise the cuts in the end and take more money in 
the beginning.
  I think my constituents in Wyoming know best how to spend their 
money. Of course, this penalizes them for their principled budgeting 
which they have been doing and makes it look as if they have money. 
Every State could have money if they were as careful as Wyoming has 
been.
  Washington, DC, has a spending problem. We don't have a revenue 
problem. We can think of all kinds of things we would like to spend 
money on, things that we think would be a good deal and probably that 
would buy some votes out there. That is wrong. We need to get things 
under control before that 3.9 percent interest rate goes to 5 percent, 
10 percent--or it has been as high as, I think, 18 percent before.
  The budget deal increases spending and shows the one thing that some 
Democrats and Republicans can agree on, and that is putting off our 
decisions. This plan spends more than the current law. It charges 
people and States for more and uses the money to increase spending in 
nonrelated areas.
  Spending cuts are scheduled for outlying years, and so the so-called 
savings are used right away. Yes, just shift that money from out there 
and put it into the current spending. That isn't real. Nobody else gets 
to do it. It is only a government trick.
  We cannot spend our way to prosperity. We need to prioritize spending 
cuts. We need to find the spending cuts that will do the least harm, 
start there, and go through an appropriations process that works. We 
have been doing omnibus bills around here for a long time. I have 
constituents who will start coming in January, and they will want me to 
take a look at their program and add only a few dollars there. I have 
to tell them the last time I had a look at a line on appropriations was 
about 5 years ago. We just take one whole lump of $1 trillion and vote 
it up or down one time. That is not doing our job. Our main job is 
spending the money. We need to prioritize those cuts.
  I will tell us how Wyoming did it. Wyoming was facing an 8-percent 
cut, they thought. We are talking about 2.03 percent for the Federal 
Government. If we compress it down to only a few months, we are talking 
about 5.3 percent. But the true amount of that sequestration was 2.3 
percent.
  Wyoming thought they were going to get hit for 8 percent, mostly 
because of some of the regulations on energy that reduced some of the 
energy production in Wyoming.
  How did they go about doing this? The Governor said to every single 
agency: I wish to see from you how you would spend it if you have to 
cut 2 percent, if you have to cut 4 percent, if you have to cut 6 
percent, and if you have to cut 8 percent.
  Do you know what he did when he got those four lists from all of the 
agencies? He looked to see if the items at 2 percent, 4 percent, 6 
percent, and 8 percent were the same.
  That is the way we find out what the agency thinks they can get rid 
of. That is a simple way of prioritizing spending. Did we ever do that 
around here? No. We do have a process by which the President can have 
his agencies say what they intend to get done and then tell what they 
got done and how well they were doing.
  We never pay attention to that. So the ones that come out rated very 
badly on this continue spending money as they always did. We need to 
have a prioritization process. We need to have a way that we can look 
at some of the details of the spending bills. Putting off spending 
forever and forever, and then coming in after the fact and saying: OK, 
this is how much we spent, how much we are going to spend, then we get 
to vote yes or no, is wrong. That again is dealmaking, not legislating, 
and it won't rein in the out-of-control spending.
  I have talked a little bit about the prioritization we have to start 
doing around here. When we do the sequestration, the complaints are the 
agencies will always make it hurt. I watched this when I was in the 
Wyoming legislature. If we only told them how much of a cut to make and 
didn't tell them specifically where to take it, they always did 
something that was very visual that their constituents would notice. 
Their constituents would complain about, and their constituents would 
make us put it back into the spending.
  They didn't have to do that. There isn't any business, there isn't 
government agency that doesn't have some waste. That is what ought to 
go first.
  Then the duplication ought to go--and there is about $900 billion a 
year in duplication around here, but we ought to take a look at that.
  Another thing we can do is the government shutdown legislation. That 
is the one that needs to tell those spending committees they need to 
get the leader to bring up their bill and get it finished with the 
amendments in the appropriate time. If they don't, then they will have 
to cut another 1 percent off their spending every quarter until they 
get their work done. Then we don't have a shutdown, but we have a 
reduction in spending; there is some incentive for them to do that.
  We need to do tax reform. I agree with Senator Cardin. I think that 
could make a huge difference in how we are doing our revenue.

[[Page 19240]]

  I also have a penny plan. The penny plan just takes 1 cent off of 
every Federal dollar the Federal Government spends. When I first 
started looking at this, the Congressional Budget Office said that it 
would balance the budget in 7 years. If we did that for 7 consecutive 
years with 1 percent off every year, it would balance it in 7 years.
  The newer valuation is that with the sequestration it balances the 
budget in 2 years--only 2 years. When I talk to my constituents about 
it, that it would be 3.3 percent over 2 years, and it comes to almost 7 
percent over 3 years--I think that we could do that, and we could do it 
with so little pain--people would say: Please continue that another 
couple of years and pay down some of the debt.
  Just getting rid of part of the deficit means we are still 
overspending, but we ought to at some point start paying down that debt 
so we don't have to pay the interest on the debt.
  When we pay down a little bit of the debt so we don't have to pay as 
much interest, we ought to use that interest that we saved to pay down 
the debt some more. That is how we pay off things. People who have 
credit card problems know that is the way to go about it.
  I would also like to go to biennial budgeting. We supposedly spend $1 
trillion in discretionary spending and the military every year--$1 
trillion. That is so much money that nobody can look at it, and we 
don't.
  If we divided those 12 spending bills up into two packages of six, 
and we allowed them to have spending worth 2 years each time, they 
could plan ahead much better. We would do the six toughest bills right 
after the election, the year right after the election and we would do 
the six easy bills just before election. We could get through those.
  Then we could do what my constituents think that we are doing, which 
is to look at every one of those expenditures and decide whether they 
ought to go up or down--allowing amendments on bills, allowing the 
spending bills to go through one at a time, maybe a week at a time. We 
could have them all done before October, and then there wouldn't be any 
government shutdown anyway.
  There are a lot of ideas out there on what we could do. I sit up 
nights worrying about the Nation's debt and how it will affect the 
children of Wyoming, how it will affect my children, and how it will 
affect my grandchildren. This budget conference was an opportunity to 
apply reasonable constraints to impossibly high future spending, but 
instead we got more spending and no real plan to solve the problem. 
Yes, we said, we got some savings from out there in the future. We will 
spend that now, and we will make those cuts later. It never happens.
  For all of those reasons, I cannot support the budget deal. I hope 
our next fiscal deadline dealing with the debt limit early next year 
will provide an opportunity for my colleagues and me to have a real 
conversation about the spending problems our country faces. The 
spending issue isn't going away. The longer we put it off, the worse it 
will become. That is the reality our country faces.
  I hope that we continue on the bill that says, no budget, no pay, and 
actually get that done so that we have the emphasis to actually finish 
a budget much earlier. Yes, there is blame, blame enough to go around 
on the budget process. We are actually too late for the budget process 
to have an impact. We are at the spending part. We are not getting to 
address that with amendments, and I am deeply disappointed we are not 
legislating.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Enzi for his leadership on the Budget 
Committee. He is a long-time member, a senior member, and he has worked 
hard on these issues for years.
  He is an accountant. He is able to add and subtract. He can see a 
debt crisis when one is there, and I appreciate the comments he has 
made. I believe he is exactly correct on so many of those points.
  The Senator suggested that something is awry on the pension benefit 
commission in which we, in effect, tax employers more supposedly to 
help the guarantee fund be able to honor people's pensions if a company 
goes bankrupt. But it seems to me in simple dollars and cents if we do 
that we can't then spend it on other items unrelated to pension 
guarantees.
  Is that the concern the Senator has raised, essentially?
  Mr. ENZI. Yes, that is exactly the issue I was raising. We keep 
promising people that money is going to go to certain places and then 
we divert it to other places.
  I think that under the system of accounting we use, we probably could 
get it to show up in two places and get to spend it twice. That is 
double the problem. So we have to start being honest with the public 
about where we are taking the money and where we are actually putting 
the money, and that was my purpose in making that comment.
  I thank my colleague for his comments and for his dedication on the 
budget. I don't think anybody spends as much time looking at those 
numbers as the Senator from Alabama does, and commenting here on the 
floor. It is an effort to educate America on what is really going on, 
and my colleague is very good at it. I thank him for his leadership.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank my colleague. And I was referring to the fact 
that Senator Enzi is the one who has explained to us in a very clear 
way, from his accounting background, the problems we have had with the 
pension guarantee fund, and it is a very real situation. It is 
actuarially unsound in the long run. It needs to be put on a better 
basis, but we can't put it on a better basis if we tax the employers. 
That may even reduce, as the Senator from Wyoming says, the number of 
employers who provide a pension. That would be a terrible policy error, 
if we keep driving up the cost to supposedly fix the fund but then 
spend the money on something else and we therefore disincentivize the 
businesses from even having retirement plans for their employees. So I 
thank my colleague for raising that very important issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
recess from 12:30 until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus 
meetings and that the time during the recess count postcloture on the 
motion to concur in the House message to accompany H.J. Res. 59.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the bipartisan 
budget deal that is currently before the Senate.
  Chairman Ryan and Chairman Murray have shown us true leadership on 
divisive and complex budget issues. The legislation we have before us 
today is the embodiment of compromise--something that has, 
unfortunately, been absent in Washington as of late. They have crafted 
a bill that sets forth the guidelines for spending for the remainder of 
this fiscal year and the platform for the next fiscal year.
  This deal will set overall discretionary spending for the current 
fiscal year at $1.012 trillion--an amount that is approximately halfway 
between the Senate budget number and the House budget number. This 
number is also less than the 2014 spending level set forth in Chairman 
Ryan's 2011 budget. While the overall spending number is higher than 
what I would have wanted, the House and Senate Budget Committee 
chairmen were able to craft a budget deal that produces $23 billion in 
net deficit reduction. Very honestly, with the deficit we have been 
running, $23 billion is a mere pittance, and I think all of us who are 
concerned about the debt and the deficit of this country would like to 
see that number higher. But more importantly, they have produced a 
budget that will set in place some fiscally responsible spending 
policies and give us a way forward. Regardless of how each Member of 
this Chamber feels about the resulting policy, we should all recognize 
the importance of

[[Page 19241]]

this agreement and thank the chairmen for their tireless work to end 
this chapter of political disagreement.
  Although I would still prefer a grand bargain to solve our fiscal 
crisis, this deal marks the first step in that journey. Congress will 
now be in a better position to tackle the issues of taxation and 
entitlement reform in the short term, and I truly hope the committees 
of jurisdictions will take this as a sign that that does need to be 
what happens next if we are truly going to address our fiscal issues.
  The budget deal before us is not perfect. There is a lot in this 
proposal to like and there is a lot in this proposal to dislike. But 
there is one provision related to military retirement pay that will 
certainly have to be addressed after the passage of this bill, and it 
is one of the provisions that, frankly, I don't like. I am told by 
Pentagon officials that this provision basically came out of nowhere. I 
think it is terribly unfair to our men and women in uniform. They 
should not have a disproportionate share in our deficit reduction 
measures.
  However, I feel confident this issue will be resolved in the near 
term. I have had a conversation with the chairman of the Committee on 
Armed Services, as well as a number of other members of the Armed 
Services Committee who are committed to making sure we address this, 
and hopefully we will come up with some alternative before this 
provision takes place, which doesn't happen, interestingly enough, 
until December of 2015.
  Many Georgians have served with honor in our military, and while the 
changes to their annual cost-of-living increase may appear 
insignificant on paper in this bill, this is real money promised to 
those who put their lives in harm's way in defense of this Nation. I 
want to assure our service men and women that there is ample time to 
address this issue before it takes effect, and I am committed to 
addressing it, and I will not turn my back on those who fight and have 
fought for this country.
  That said, this budget deal is a necessary and crucial step toward a 
functioning Congress. With passage of this budget deal, we can close 
the book on discretionary spending arguments for the next couple of 
years. We can turn our full attention to entitlement reform and tax 
reform as Congress debates raising the debt ceiling once again next 
year.
  Also, with this bill we will no longer need to provide additional 
flexibility for defense spending. This bill will give the defense 
community the resources they need, No. 1.
  In conversations with top officials at the Pentagon and within the 
intelligence community over the weekend, they have urged the support of 
this bill as a way to address their current budget crisis, and I am 
extremely sympathetic to both those communities and wanted to make sure 
that whatever product came to the floor of the Senate did that. This 
bill does address the shortfalls and the flexibility issue in the 
defense community and in the intelligence community.
  I was pleased at the approach the budget chairmen took will not turn 
off sequester but will extend the mandatory cuts for an additional 2 
years beyond what the Budget Control Act prescribed because, as I see 
this, this has been an $85 billion fix on the sequester that keeps it 
from going too deep into the defense budget, which had the potential 
for causing real problems within the Pentagon as well as within the 
intelligence community.
  With this budget deal, we can also put in place a 302(a) budget 
allocation--the top-line number Congress can spend on discretionary 
spending. For the first time in several years, this will allow the 
Appropriations Committee to do the job that it is actually intended to 
do. Our appropriators have previously been forced to make spending 
decisions without a top-line number and through continuing resolutions. 
They had no information and no guidance from Congress. It is no wonder 
our spending has caught up with us. The country benefits when Congress 
approaches the appropriations process through regular order and not 
through last-minute continuing resolutions. This agreement makes that 
process more likely.
  The Budget Committee chairmen have also made a good-faith effort to 
attack the real problems in our budget by cutting money from mandatory 
programs rather than searching for more discretionary cuts. In their 
agreement, they took notice of how often the Federal Government has 
given special treatment to certain groups and they have taken efforts 
to curb that. While many outside groups may attack these reforms, they 
are representative of the types of reforms that will have to be 
included in any future agreement to achieve entitlement reform, which 
at the end of the day is where the real problem in our Federal budget 
lies.
  This deal does little to address the $17 trillion debt, but it is a 
start down that road, and I truly hope this will lead to more serious 
discussions on the floor of the Senate about our debt and a solution 
for how we are going to see that $17 trillion repaid.
  In all, this budget deal represents a partial completion of the work 
the American people expect from us. It is far from perfect and leaves 
much to be desired. But the prospect of compromise on the single most 
important issue of our time requires attention and serious looking at 
by every Member of this body. I will vote for the passage of this bill 
because it lays the groundwork for the next chapter in our pursuit of 
fiscal sanity.
  For 3\1/2\ years now, Senator Warner and I have been involved in 
seeking out a much larger debt and deficit reduction deal than what is 
currently before us. We know the American people are tired of out-of-
control spending and don't understand why Congress can't address our 
$17 trillion debt. It is not rocket science. The Bowles-Simpson 
Commission gave us a roadmap 3 years ago this month, and I regret that 
the White House has not followed the leadership of its own Commission. 
This bill represents a small step toward the type of cooperation that 
will be necessary to comprehensively address our debt and deficit. It 
is my hope that this agreement allows that effort to restart in a 
meaningful way.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and 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.
  Mr. SESSIONS. 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. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish we had an agreement that is grand 
and great and would do what a lot of people have been dreaming of for 
some time and would put us on a sound financial path for decades to 
come. It is within our grasp. But it seems we are unable to make those 
choices or bring that forward.
  I believe if the President has led and given a commitment to fixing 
our financial problems in America, we could have done it in the last 
few years. But he has not. So it has put us in a bad position, and we 
end up with the agreement we have today, which essentially would save 
some of the risk of a government shutdown and reduce some of the 
tension, which a lot of people think is great and I do too. It would be 
good for the country to have more predictability. It would be good for 
the Defense Department to have more predictability. It would be good 
for the financial community to have more predictability about what is 
happening in Washington. But what occurred is not sufficient in any 
way, and it has been postured to look a good bit better than it is.
  Essentially, we remain on an unsustainable financial path in America. 
The numbers are real clear. We are seeing a reduction in our deficit in 
the near term, but the Congressional Budget Office tells us in the next 
several years we will begin to see the relentless increase in deficits 
every year, reaching almost $1 trillion again by the end of this 10-
year window. That is not a good path to be on.
  We pay interest on the debt which we accrue each and every year, plus 
all the money we have borrowed previously. The amount is notable. We 
have exceedingly low interest rates, so it is

[[Page 19242]]

not impacting us as much as it is likely to impact us in the future, as 
they will return to the mean and we will see rates go up.
  But just to point out that this agreement--the legislation before 
us--spends $63 billion to $70 billion in the next 2 years. Where does 
that money come from? Essentially, it adds to the debt. But we are told 
not to worry because we have other cuts in spending, other fees that 
will come in, which will eventually pay for it. But over half of the 
pay-fors occur outside the 8 years left on the Budget Control Act 
window and in the last 2 years of the 10-year budget window for this 
legislation. But the Congressional Budget Office has scored that, 
because we are spending more money sooner--money which has to be 
borrowed--it would add $10.5 billion to the interest payment of the 
United States over this 10 year period.
  So the claim it is going to reduce the debt over time if every bit of 
this is adhered to--which our pattern is not to adhere to what we 
promise. But if we were to adhere to it over the 10 years, the savings 
wouldn't be $23 billion as claimed, it would be $12.5 billion because 
the legislation supporters haven't discussed the interest cost of this 
gimmicked-up bill, where we spend more now and save later. It is a very 
serious matter.
  They say the sequester is hard. The sequester is so bad that it 
cannot be sustained, America will collapse, and we will not be able to 
act in a compassionate way and be supportive of people in need or meet 
the basic needs of the government.
  The former Speaker Pelosi, now leader of the Democrats in the House, 
said the cupboard is bare. There are no more cuts to make. She said on 
September 21 of this year: There are no more cuts to make.
  There are plenty more cuts to make. There are ways to save money. For 
example, the majority in the Senate changed the rules of the Senate 
using the nuclear option to ram through the appointment of three new 
Federal judges. Each one of those, with their staff, costs the 
taxpayers $1 million a year, and it was for the DC Circuit, which 
absolutely does not need these judges. They are not needed. The DC 
Circuit has by far the lowest caseload per judge in America, even with 
the vacancies on the court.
  So what we should have done, and I worked toward previously, is not 
filled those judges and move them to other circuits which need judges 
that we are going to have to fill. That would have saved $3 million a 
year. That is just one example of the waste of money. It is the 
equivalent of burning $1 million to $3 million a year on the mall out 
here because those judges were not needed.
  So to say there are no cuts to make and we can't reduce spending any 
more is not accurate. It is all through the system. As Senator Enzi 
said, his State was prepared to take an 8-percent cut. But under the 
Budget Control Act, which includes the sequester, we are not cutting 
spending over 10 years; we are increasing spending over 10 years. We 
are just increasing it $2 trillion less than before. We were on the 
path to increase spending, at the time the Budget Control Act was 
passed, by $10 trillion--from $37 trillion to $47 trillion over 10 
years. We passed the Budget Control Act and said it would increase to 
$45 trillion instead of $47 trillion.
  So we go from $37 trillion to $45 trillion. That was essentially what 
the agreement was. It passed both Houses of Congress. It had no tax 
increases in it. It was simply a commitment to contain the growth of 
spending, and it sharply reduced spending. It reduced spending in the 
near term. But after this year, spending is allowed to continue for the 
last 7 years or 8 years of the Budget Control Act agreement, a 2.5-
percent-a-year annual increase every year after this year.
  So the cuts began to bite this year. They were being felt this year. 
What did Congress do? It folded up like a house of cards. Congress 
couldn't sustain the heat and couldn't honor the promise we made in 
August of 2011 to reduce the growth of spending just a little bit. That 
was the promise. To raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion, we agreed to 
reduce the growth of spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years.
  Now we have already hit the debt ceiling. We have already borrowed 
another $2.1 trillion. So now we hit the debt ceiling again, but we are 
not honoring the promise to reduce spending.
  What happened? The sequester said we had to have more cuts this year, 
more reductions this year, and Congress couldn't sustain it--just 
couldn't--would not take the heat, and we came up with this new plan 
that is before us to avoid a shutdown. I guess we can say we avoided a 
shutdown, but we can also say we did not do the right thing about 
spending in America. We have not faced the challenge we have because we 
remain on an unsustainable financial path. In a couple years we will be 
back on a deficit growth pattern which is going to be very serious and 
will threaten the financial future of America. As President Obama's 
Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission has told us, nothing fundamentally has 
changed in that.
  So we have our colleagues who are anxious to have more taxes--more 
revenue they call it. What they are talking about are more taxes.
  House Minority Leader Pelosi says that there are no more cuts to 
make, American people. We have cut all we can cut. There is no more we 
can cut. So now we have decided the problem is you, American people. 
You haven't sent us enough money. We demand, we insist, we require you 
to send us more money so we don't have to make any tough decisions 
anymore. We don't have to make the financial choices they made in 
Wisconsin or Alabama or Wyoming, that every State and city has had to 
face during this financial crisis, and they are leaner and more 
productive and more efficient as a result of having to make those 
choices. But we don't have to because we want to have more revenue.
  So after this August of 2011 Budget Control Act passed, which reduced 
spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion, the President signed and 
agreed to, had no tax increases in it, it was just a commitment that we 
would contain spending--that is what the agreement was, a spending 
containment bill. In January, President Obama submitted a budget that 
wiped it out, busted it wide open. It would have added $1 trillion in 
new taxes and $1 trillion in new spending.
  Wow. What kind of commitment was that to the American people; you 
sign a bill, you say you are going to do something, and before the ink 
is dry you are proposing a different idea that goes back on the very 
promise that was made.
  Eventually, this year, the Senate Democrats passed a budget 
increasing spending $1 trillion and increasing taxes $1 trillion. It is 
a tax-and-spend budget, the same budget the President submitted each 
year.
  They said we are going to have a balanced approach. What they wanted 
the American people to hear when they said a ``balanced approach'' is: 
We have a plan to reduce the deficit, and the plan is we are going to 
cut some spending and increase revenues. That is what they wanted the 
American people to hear. It was a subtly and carefully crafted message, 
but it was not the truth. The truth was that they wanted to spend more 
and tax more. Taxes were not used in a balanced approach to bring down 
the deficit from the unsustainable path on which we remain. The taxes 
were used to fund additional spending above the amount we agreed to in 
the Budget Control Act of August 2011, which is still in effect--unless 
this legislation passes, and that is going to amend it.
  The fundamental fact is that my colleagues want to tax and spend. 
They say they have cut all they can cut and they want more revenue and 
more money from the American people. Just send it to us, and we will 
spread it around and we will do all the good things we can dream of 
with your money. We don't have enough of it; we want more.
  I don't think that is good for America. I don't think that is good 
for the economy. We need a vibrant private sector with growth 
possibilities and the opportunity to have innovation and creativity and 
the efficiencies that

[[Page 19243]]

occur in the private sector that are not present in the government 
sector. We can't run this government. We have never managed the 
government effectively. It is so massive. We spend so much money. We 
need to be leaner and more productive. We need to decide which areas in 
our country we don't need the government to undertake. We need to let 
the private sector handle that wherever possible. If we do that, we can 
manage a smaller and more efficient government. We need to extract less 
money from the American people.
  We have commitments. We are committed to Social Security, Medicare, 
and other funding we need to make sure we are honoring. We can't take 
money from Medicare, our seniors' health care program, and then spend 
it and say we have strengthened Medicare and made it better because we 
reduced its costs. The money that is saved in Medicare needs to be used 
to strengthen the long-term viability of Medicare, which is in great 
doubt. It is not on a sound path.
  I know we can do better. We are going to have to face up to this. It 
is not going to be easy. It has challenges for all of us. But 
reductions in Federal spending can work.
  For example, they say we need more revenue. Well, have we gotten more 
revenue? Yes, we have already. This Budget Control Act did not include 
more taxes. The Budget Control Act represented a $2.1 trillion 
reduction in the growth of spending, but in January of this year we 
passed a $650 billion tax on the rich, upper income people, and the 
ObamaCare legislation included a $1 trillion tax increase on top of 
that. This bill has $34 billion in fees and taxes. Is there not revenue 
around here? Revenue is being increased, but the problem is that it is 
not being used to reduce our deficits and it is not being used to put 
us on a sound financial path. It is being used to advance more 
spending, and that is the danger we are in, that is the danger we have 
to watch, and that is the danger that threatens us all.
  I know how seductive it is for us to think we just can't reduce 
spending; the cupboard is bare. Minority Leader Pelosi says that we 
can't cut any more. Well, we can. There is a lot we can do to make this 
government leaner and more productive, and we are required to do so.
  I yield the floor
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from South Dakota.


                               ObamaCare

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I listened to the Senator from Alabama 
talk about the current budget debate we are having on the floor, and I 
couldn't help but think of the discussion we had when we were debating 
the ObamaCare legislation a few years ago and how many of us at the 
time were making the argument that this is the biggest expansion of 
government in literally half a century. I think that it is becoming 
increasingly clear that was, in fact, the case.
  We are seeing dramatically more levels of spending. I think we are 
going to see dramatically higher levels of debt over time. But you 
would think that with $\1/2\ trillion in cuts to Medicare, $\1/2\ 
trillion in tax increases--and when it is fully implemented, it will be 
much bigger than that. The overall cost of the bill, when it is fully 
implemented, goes to about $2.5 trillion. The expansion of government 
that occurred as a result of the passage of ObamaCare was, frankly, 
stunning relative to anything we have seen in recent history. You would 
think with that you would see some relief, if you will, in terms of the 
burdens being placed upon middle-class Americans, but we are seeing the 
opposite.
  Many Americans are already feeling the effects of ObamaCare, whether 
it is higher insurance premiums, canceled health plans, or the loss of 
a doctor they like. Middle-class Americans are going to be hit the 
hardest.
  Lower income families will face steep premiums and deductibles under 
ObamaCare, but they will get some help in the form of subsidies from 
the government to pay for some of their health care costs.
  Upper income families are also going to face higher health care 
costs. In fact, the majority leader told a Nevada newspaper that his 
premiums under ObamaCare will rise by $4,500 next year. Affluent 
Americans will be able to absorb those increases. What about a middle-
class family facing a $4,500 increase in health care costs, a family 
whose budget is already at its limit between housing costs, school 
expenses, and grocery bills? That family won't be able to absorb those 
costs. That family doesn't have a spare $4,500 anywhere in its budget. 
For that family, the $4,500 will have to come from money that was 
allocated for orthodontic payments or college tuition bills or money 
for a new car.
  Back when the President was trying to sell his health care proposal 
to the American people, he promised that ObamaCare would ``cut costs 
and make coverage more affordable for families and small businesses.'' 
Unfortunately, the last few months have made it abundantly clear that 
this promise is not being kept.
  Instead of seeing reduced costs and more affordable coverage, middle-
class Americans are seeing steep premium hikes and soaring out-of-
pocket costs. Those Americans who have been lucky enough not to have 
their plans canceled have been receiving insurance plan renewal letters 
with staggering premium increases. In some cases it has doubled or even 
tripled what they have been paying before. One constituent emailed me 
to tell me that thanks to ObamaCare her premiums will increase more 
than 100 percent, which she goes on to say is equal to 45 percent of 
her monthly income--45 percent just for health care. That is more than 
most Americans pay for their mortgage.
  Americans whose health care plans have been canceled as a result of 
ObamaCare and who are being forced to shop on the exchanges are 
frequently facing higher premiums and drastically increased out-of-
pocket costs.
  A couple of days ago an article in Chicago Business reported that an 
average Chicago family with a midlevel health plan in the individual 
market would go from a $3,500 deductible to a $10,000 deductible if 
they obtained a similar plan in the exchange. That is $10,000 on top of 
the $9,000 a year that family would already be paying in premiums.
  In Federal exchanges, many families are facing deductibles as high as 
$12,700. Barring catastrophic illness or injury, in many cases a family 
with a deductible that high might as well not have insurance at all.
  Of course, a family could buy a more expensive plan and greatly 
reduce those out-of-pocket costs. Many of the platinum plans, which are 
the high-end plans, have no deductible at all. As CBS News points out--
and this was for a Houston, TX, family--``that means shelling out 
almost $12,400 per year in monthly premiums, or about the same as the 
deductible for the bronze plans. Either way, families and individuals 
who don't qualify for tax credits may find ObamaCare failing to deliver 
on its promise of affordable health care.''
  That is from CBS News when talking about a specific family in 
Houston, TX.
  What makes it even worse--and this is what the Associated Press 
reported--many families don't fully understand the expenses they are 
taking on when they sign up for plans with high out-of-pocket costs. 
The Associated Press notes that ``only 14 percent of American adults 
with insurance understand deductibles and other key concepts of 
insurance plans, according to a study published this year in the 
Journal of Health Economics. If people with insurance don't understand 
it, it's likely that uninsured Americans' grasp is even fuzzier.''
  A family shopping on the exchanges may snap up plans with relatively 
low premiums without realizing that they are, in effect, purchasing 
nothing more than catastrophic coverage that may leave them on the hook 
for thousands of dollars in medical costs each year.
  So far, I have talked about the direct financial consequences of the 
President's health care law, but its effects don't end with higher 
premiums and skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs. Middle-class families 
will also take a financial hit thanks to the damage ObamaCare does to 
businesses.

[[Page 19244]]

  ObamaCare puts in place a slew of new regulations, new taxes, and new 
fees on businesses large and small. When faced with that, businesses 
will have two choices: They can absorb the costs of new taxes and fees, 
thereby reducing the amount of capital they have to expand their 
businesses, hire new workers, or promote existing ones, or they can 
pass on these costs directly to their workers, further burdening 
families already facing steep health care costs. It is a lose-lose 
situation.
  Small businesses are being hit particularly hard. Susan Gabay, 
cofounder and managing director of a small business investment banking 
firm, published a column on Saturday in the Washington Times in which 
she discussed the effect the President's health care law is having on 
her business. Thanks to ObamaCare, the health plan she offered to her 
employees was canceled. The new coverage she was offered contains a 48-
percent premium increase, which she says ``translates into 
approximately $1,676 in added costs per year for every individual 
covered on our plan.'' That is a $6,704 premium increase for a family 
of four. She says that is approximately $44,000 in added annual costs 
for her business that otherwise could be used to hire a college 
graduate.
  Maybe her employees are getting better coverage thanks to ObamaCare's 
regulations, right? Well, actually, the answer is no. Let me read her 
answer to that observation. She says:

       The response to our plight is that we are getting much 
     better coverage. But that isn't true, either. We have 
     historically provided our employees with a generous plan with 
     100% coverage for in-network preventative care and low out of 
     pocket maximums. Conversely, our new ``great alternative'' 
     plan offers comparable benefits with much higher out of 
     pocket maximums.

  So thanks to ObamaCare, Ms. Gabay's business will pay more for health 
care and so will her employees without receiving any meaningful 
increase in benefits.
  As every middle-class parent--wondering where money for the next 
dentist bill or tuition payment will come from--knows, America's 
economy is still struggling to recover from the last recession. 
Burdening any business--particularly our Nation's small businesses, 
which are responsible for a majority of the new job creation in this 
country--is the worst possible thing we could do for our economic 
recovery and for the millions of middle-class Americans searching for 
better jobs and opportunities.
  Democrats and the President made the American people a promise. They 
said: We will make health care more affordable. As long as ObamaCare is 
in place, that promise will continue to be broken, and middle-class 
families will suffer as a result. In fact, just recently, when asked a 
question in an interview about the health care plan, Secretary Sebelius 
said:

       There are some individuals who may be looking at increases. 
     I think you cannot make a statement based on cost unless you 
     compare what they had to what they are going into.

  That was Secretary Sebelius saying there are some individuals who may 
be looking at increases. I think that is the understatement of the year 
based upon the experience of literally millions of Americans, some of 
whom have lost coverage entirely, but millions of Americans who are 
suffering with the sticker shock of dramatic increases in the premiums 
they pay for their health insurance coverage, dramatic increases in the 
deductibles now available under their policies, and dramatic decreases 
in the take-home pay they have to meet the other obligations they have 
for their families. This is a direct hit to the pocketbooks and the 
future economic vitality of middle-class Americans.
  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. McCONNELL. 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. McCONNELL. Madam President, earlier this morning the Senate voted 
to advance a budget agreement that passed the House last week. The 
legislation has been a topic of much discussion over the past several 
days, and there are sincere arguments on both sides.
  While I appreciate the challenges House and Senate negotiators faced 
in crafting these budgetary guidelines, I voted against this 
legislation because in my view Congress should continue to adhere to 
the fiscal restraints both parties agreed to under the Budget Control 
Act.
  I was the principal Republican negotiator of that agreement. I have 
been particularly invested in its success, and I was very proud of it. 
As a result of the Budget Control Act, government spending has declined 
for 2 years--2 years in a row--for the first time since the Korean war. 
This was hard-won progress on the road to getting our Nation's fiscal 
house in order.
  As I said, I fully appreciate the constraints Chairman Ryan and 
Chairman Murray faced in their negotiations, and there is clearly some 
good to be said about their agreement. But we should not go back on the 
agreement we made under the BCA.
  Nonetheless, this has been a very important public debate. 
Unfortunately, our colleagues on the other side do not seem terribly 
interested in substantial debate on this or any other substantive 
issues this week, least of all ObamaCare, which has been wreaking havoc 
on our constituents for months now but which Democrats seem entirely 
uninterested in discussing. Instead, for much of this week the 
Democrat-run Senate has decided to devote its attention to pushing 
through nominations--nominations. They want to spend time seating 
political appointees at places such as the Department of Interior--
positions that, while they may be important, are certainly not in any 
way emergencies that need to be attended to right this second.
  Meanwhile, out in the real world, millions of Americans will continue 
to suffer under a law they told Washington not to pass in the first 
place, a law that Washington Democrats still stubbornly refuse to 
change in any meaningful way. Our colleagues on the other side seem to 
think they have no responsibility to do anything about the impact of 
ObamaCare since the White House issued a press release declaring 
partial victory--partial victory--in fixing the Web site. That is their 
whole approach to this rolling disaster: Let the White House dodge and 
deflect on any problem that arises until people forget about the last 
one. Point the finger at some bureaucrat or some Web technician and 
basically do nothing.
  We are now nearly 3 months into this national calamity, and what have 
Democrats done about this national calamity? Well, they have issued a 
lot of talking points and some halfhearted apologies. They have mouthed 
nostrums about ``private sector velocity.'' They have waived laws for 
fear of the political impact of leaving them in place. And there has 
hardly been any accountability for the massive consequences faced by 
American consumers as a result of this failed law. In other words, they 
haven't done much of anything. They have treated this whole thing like 
a public relations problem to get past rather than a real-life problem 
for middle-class Americans to be solved. They are engaged in daily 
battle aimed at one overriding goal: Protect the law. Yet nearly every 
day we hear more about its painful impact.
  Since the October rollout, millions of Americans have lost their 
insurance plans. More than 280,000 have lost coverage in Kentucky 
alone, and so many are feeling the squeeze of this law, folks such as 
Lana Lynch, a mom from Brandenburg, KY, who told me the annual out-of-
pocket expenses for her family rose from $1,500 to $7,000 under 
ObamaCare, and folks such as Barrett Simpson from Sweden, KY.
  Barrett had a health plan he liked and wanted to keep, a $540-a-month 
policy that was, in his words, ``perfect'' for his family. The folks 
responsible for ObamaCare apparently thought they knew better than he 
did about the needs of his family, so he lost it. Here is what he had 
to say about that:

       [My] plan is being eliminated because of the ACA, and the 
     cheapest, closest plan will

[[Page 19245]]

     cost [u]s $1,400 next year. We can keep the plan until the 
     end of next year, but we will have to pick a new one. We 
     don't need the extra coverage for maternity, for vision or 
     dental, but yet we will be forced to pay for it.

  He continued:

       These changes are absurd. Most people in this country who 
     are content with what they had are now paying for what Obama 
     is trying to do for a very few.

  Barrett closed his letter by asking me to work to repeal ObamaCare.
  Well, Barrett and Lana should know this--in fact, every Kentuckian 
should know this, and every American should know this: Members on my 
side of the aisle hear you loudly and clearly. We are not going to give 
up this fight. No matter how much the other side tries to distract the 
country's attention, we won't be fooled and we know you won't be 
either.
  Look. The folks each of us were sent here to represent--not the 
government--should be the ones choosing plans that make more sense for 
their families. And when our colleagues on the other side go around 
referring to insurance being lost as ``junk,'' that is beyond offensive 
to the people we represent.
  There is a lot of ivory tower thinking that goes on in this city--way 
too much of it. It is time for our Washington Democratic friends to 
finally climb out of the ivory tower and see the reality of their ideas 
in action, witness the failure of their policies firsthand. It is time 
for Washington Democrats to drop their refusal to change anything of 
substance in ObamaCare, and it is time for them to listen closely to 
the people who sent us here in the first place.
  Here is what so many Americans are saying. They want Democrats to 
start working with Republicans to improve our Nation's health care 
system in a positive way, to help us implement real, patient-centered, 
commonsense reforms that can actually lower costs and improve the 
quality of care because we were sent here to solve problems, not to 
make them worse, as ObamaCare does.
  Let's erase that mistake. Let's get rid of it and start over with 
real reform. Working together, we can do it.
  Madam President, 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. SESSIONS. 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. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to continue to raise a 
simple point but a point of profound financial significance to America. 
One of the things that has happened in the bill that is before us is 
there has been an extension in the 10-year BCA plan--which was enacted 
2 years ago; there are only 8 years left--an extension of a 2-percent 
reduction in payments to hospitals and doctors who provide services 
through Medicare, treat patients, and get paid by the U.S. Government. 
So they were reduced 2 percent.
  This is scored as a savings for the country. In effect, it is 
perceived as a savings that allows us to spend more money somewhere 
else. That savings, as was done in this legislation, involved the last 
2 years--years 9 and 10--of the 10-year window from today. It creates 
some money, they say, because we reduced Medicare costs and we can 
spend that money in this year and next year on nondefense and defense 
discretionary spending, and we are going to promise to use the money we 
save in Medicare in years 9 and 10, outside the promised BCA 10-year 
window which is already moving along.
  What I want to raise is a deep and fundamental point. Medicare is 
already in deficit. Medicare is already spending more money to provide 
care for seniors than is being taken in off people's paychecks every 
week. But Medicare does have a trust fund. Medicare Part A does; it's 
called the Hospital Insurance trust fund. Social Security also has a 
trust fund. People have that money come off their paychecks every week 
when they go to work, and they believe, correctly in my opinion, they 
have a right to receive those benefits in the future.
  They are not happy. They believe America is going on the wrong track 
when we take that money and spend it, therefore, jeopardizing the 
confidence they should have in retirement that their Medicare and 
Social Security are going to be in place.
  We know there are some deep problems with Medicare and Social 
Security actuarially because people are living longer and there are 
more people retiring and we have to deal with some problems there. But 
what I want to say is, the worst thing you can do is to do the things 
necessary to make Medicare sound--tighten up payments to providers, 
perhaps; although there is a limit at some point as to how much you can 
do there--and do other things that make Medicare more financially 
stable, but you should not see that savings as something you can spend 
on a new program. The entitlement programs that went into ObamaCare, 
the Affordable Care Act, $500 billion of that money that supposedly was 
used to fund it was from Medicare and some from Social Security too--
saving money in those accounts.
  But those programs have trust funds. They have trustees. When they 
ran a surplus, as they had done for many decades--but not now--when 
they were running a surplus, the money was loaned to the Federal 
Treasury and they spent it. But the Federal Treasury owes it back to 
them. Now that both of those programs are heading into steep fiscal 
decline, they are calling the notes, they are calling back the money 
they loaned. The trustees of those programs know whom they represent. 
They represent Social Security recipients. They represent Medicare 
beneficiaries. They are demanding their money, they are going to get 
it, and we are going to honor it.
  So what I am saying is we cannot count that money twice. That is what 
Mr. Elmendorf, the Director of the CBO, told us on December 23, the 
night before the ObamaCare bill was passed on the floor of the Senate 
in 2009. He said: You cannot count the money twice, and to suggest you 
are strengthening Medicare and simultaneously providing a source of 
money to spend on the new ObamaCare program is double counting. He used 
the words ``double counting.''
  How simple is this? My question to him, when he gave the letter--and 
I asked him to put it in writing. I insisted he do that. He works for 
us, and he did what he is supposed to do. He said: Even though the 
conventions of accounting might suggest otherwise, you cannot 
simultaneously use the same money to strengthen Medicare and fund 
ObamaCare. That is what he said.
  So under our conventions of accounting, we have what we call a 
unified budget. The CBO does it both ways, but the one we talk mostly 
about, the one everybody focuses on, is the unified budget. So if 
Social Security is a little better off, it is assumed it is in the same 
pot. Everything is in one pot. So anything that cuts the expenses of 
Medicare and Social Security to make them strong is utilized and 
considered to put more money in the pot to be spent somewhere else.
  What is happening to us now is the unfunded liabilities in pension 
funds, retirement funds, Medicare, Social Security, and other accounts 
are reaching unprecedented levels, some say nearly $100 trillion, and 
it is growing considerably. This is the long-term threat to America. 
This is the thing that several attempts have been made in recent years 
to fix, to confront, to put us on a sound path financially, but it has 
always failed. People can blame everybody, and everybody is subject to 
blame, I assure you. However, I do believe it is quite plain it will 
not happen unless the President of the United States leads and 
participates and says: I want to fix it. He is basically saying: We do 
not have a problem. We are doing fine. He is not willing to call on the 
American people and use his bully pulpit to lay out the challenges we 
face in how we could put ourselves on a financially sound path without 
destroying the country.
  We can do that. We really can do that. But it will take belt-
tightening in

[[Page 19246]]

every aspect of our government, and everybody should share equally in 
the belt-tightening, not just a few, not just veterans, military people 
who have served 20 years, and disabled veterans having their retirement 
cut, as this legislation does. It needs to be something where everybody 
participates in tightening the belt. We could get the country on a 
sound path.
  But I want to register again--and I am going to continue to talk 
about this because I think it leads to a false impression. It leads to 
the impression we have more money than we have. You cannot use Social 
Security's money, Medicare's money to fund ObamaCare, the Defense 
Department or nondefense discretionary spending. It is not possible to 
use that money twice.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Remembering Erika Robinson

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, over the weekend, the State of 
Connecticut and the country and the world commemorated with grief and 
continued pain the first year anniversary of the tragic massacre in 
Newtown.
  On the morning of Saturday--1 year after the Newtown tragedy--I 
attended a church service, a beautiful, moving, powerful celebration of 
faith at the St. Rose of Lima Church, whose pastor, Monsignor Robert 
Weiss, has been such a great friend to so many in the community and 
such a source of strength and comfort.
  Later in the weekend, I visited with the family of Erika Robinson of 
West Haven, Connecticut, who was shot and killed at a nightclub in New 
Haven on October 26. This seemingly random act of violence left Erika 
dead and five other individuals injured by gunfire.
  I have spent months and have been grateful for the experience with 
the families of those victims in Newtown. I was equally grateful to 
spend this time with Erika's family--Celeste and Greg Fulcher--at their 
home, and I want to thank them for welcoming me to their home on that 
day.
  Erika Robinson was only 26 years old when she became a victim of gun 
violence. She clearly was a person full of joy and life and goodness 
for all of her 26 years and including the day she perished.
  She was building a business, a clothing line. As her business grew, a 
local store started selling that line of clothing. Those who knew her 
described her as hard working and driven.
  She was compassionate. Most recently, she released a special 
collection in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
  She had enormous potential. She did everything right. She played by 
the rules. She stayed out of trouble, and she had the support of her 
two loving parents.
  She was on track to fulfill the American dream, and now her life, 
tragically, has been reduced to a statistic, unless we make sure it is 
more than a statistic and that we work and fight to make her legacy one 
of helping to protect others, helping to prevent gun violence that 
takes victims like her who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong 
time, as she was that night in New Haven, when a shooter who was 
illegally in possession of a firearm--in fact, apparently on bail--
turned to take as a victim someone else in the crowd that evening in 
the nightclub, and she became a victim that night inadvertently, 
unintentionally, and five others were wounded.
  I have her picture here. Erika was more than a statistic. She was a 
person. Part of her clothing line was this small card she fashioned 
herself:

       It's so regular for us to say ``You only live once'', but 
     do you deeply understand that it's real. What I'm trying to 
     say is be fearless. Do things you always wanted to do. Never 
     let anyone hold you back. Enjoy this thing we call life while 
     we can. People going to talk regardless, so be you!
       Forever, Erika Robinson.

  May that legacy be forever. May that legacy be with us forever and 
inspire us to work as we have done on behalf of the families of Newtown 
and as we should be doing on behalf of the 10,000 other victims of gun 
violence since Newtown.
  The victims are not only the victims who perished among those 10,000, 
they are others who have been injured, such as the 5 who were injured 
that night when the shooter at that nightclub in New Haven was aiming 
for someone else and sprayed gunfire that killed Erika, took her as a 
casualty but also injured others severely and traumatized countless 
others who saw or watched or heard what went on in that nightclub that 
night, an establishment that was legally licensed by the State of 
Connecticut, legally licensed to entertain people and charge for them 
being there, an establishment that was the last place Erika Robinson 
knew.
  Such a promising young woman at the wrong place at the wrong time, a 
woman who could have contributed so much to New Haven, to Connecticut, 
to our country. This was a tragic loss for her family that continues to 
honor her life with courage and strength and a tragic loss for all of 
us and for the thousands of people who came to her funeral because she 
had already, in those young 26 years, touched so many lives.
  We owe it to her and to her family that her legacy will be one of 
protecting others such as she, protecting others across America 
regardless of the neighborhood or the place in that neighborhood, 
whether it is downtown New Haven, an urban area, or Newtown, a suburban 
neighborhood. It should not matter where gun violence is a threat. We 
should eradicate it everywhere. It should not matter who may be the 
victim of gun violence, what her background may be, her race, religion, 
anything about her.
  Every human being, every person in the United States of America is 
deserving of protection that our society failed to give this young 
woman. We do a great disservice to our Nation when we fail to honor 
those individuals who may not be in the headlines, who may not be from 
neighborhoods that we know but others that are unfamiliar to us. We owe 
it to ourselves, not just to Erika and her family but to ourselves as a 
nation to do better and to make America safer. She deserved better from 
the greatest country in the history of the world. We as citizens of 
that country deserve better and have an obligation to do better. So we 
will, I hope, leave a legacy for her in her name that speaks to a 
safer, better America.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________