[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6758-6760]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--H. CON. RES. 25

  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise to make a few brief remarks. I 
will

[[Page 6759]]

leave most of those remarks until after I make another request for 
unanimous consent. I think I know where this unanimous consent request 
is headed. I am disappointed. I think we are on, I believe, day 51 at 
this point as to the request that many of us have made in this Chamber 
to go back to regular order. Part of that regular order is after a 
budget has passed for budget conferees to be appointed so we can 
resolve what I believe is the most important issue facing our Nation, 
the question of our debt and deficit, so we can try to take the actions 
needed to get this economy jump-started again. I will reserve most of 
my time for the remarks afterward.
  In the meantime, let me make this request:
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to 
consideration of Calendar No. 33, H. Con. Res. 25; that the amendment 
which is at the desk, the text of S. Con. Res. 8, the budget resolution 
passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof; that H. Con. Res. 
25, as amended, be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be considered 
made and laid upon the table, the Senate insist on its amendment, 
request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two 
Houses, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of 
the Senate, all with no intervening action or debate.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I ask 
consent the Senator modify his request so that it not be in order for 
the Senate to consider a conference report that includes tax increases 
or reconciliation instructions to increase taxes or raise the debt 
limit.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator so modify?
  Mr. WARNER. Reserving the right to object, simply as someone who has 
spent an awful lot of time on this issue, both sides need to be willing 
to comprise. We need to deal with both the revenue side of this 
challenge as well as the entitlement reforms that are needed to make 
sure we can get our close-to-$17-trillion debt back under control. 
Recognizing the Senator's request would take part of the opportunity to 
reach that common ground off the table, I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I simply want to again take a moment 
here, 52 days after we spent until 5 o'clock in the morning debating a 
budget--the budget that had over 100 amendments offered, a budget that 
had amendments from both sides offered and rejected but also accepted. 
Amendments from both sides were accepted into this budget. It passed 
with a majority.
  I know there are some of my colleagues on the other side who say we 
should go into the next step of this debate with certain things taken 
off the table. I do not understand how we are ever going to get to the 
point which every economist from left to right has all agreed upon, 
that we have to put this issue of lurching from one budget crisis to 
another behind us.
  The fact is there is an awful lot of consensus about what we need to 
do. Starting back with the Simpson-Bowles report, then followed up by 
the Gang of Six and the Domenici-Rivlin report, everyone agrees we need 
to do at least $4 trillion over the next 10 years. We don't have to 
solve the whole problem, we just have to take a good step forward.
  The remarkable thing is even lurching from crisis to crisis we are 
over half the way there. Depending on how you want to count, we have 
done between $2.2 trillion and $2.5 trillion of deficit reduction. That 
means we need about $2 trillion more to be done for us to again not 
only provide the boost to the American economy, not only to no longer 
make Congress the object of more than late-night jokes about our 
inability to get things done, not only to be able to ensure we have 
driven our debt-to-GDP ratio back down, headed in the right direction, 
but, perhaps most important, demonstrate to the American people that 
when we have an issue of this importance we can actually find that 
common ground.
  To do that is going to require, candidly, everyone in this body and 
our friends down the hall in the House to be willing to give a little 
bit. That means we are going to have to find ways to generate 
additional revenues. I believe, for one--I know sometimes many on my 
side disagree with me--we are going to have to find ways to reform our 
entitlement programs so the promise of Medicare and Social Security and 
Medicaid, some of the best initiatives ever put forward, are going to 
be here 30 years from now.
  But if we are going to reach that kind of compromise, it means the 
regular order has to proceed. It means we have to have these two very 
different budgets, one passed by the House, one passed by the Senate, 
resolved through the regular order of a conference committee. If we do 
not do this--if we do not do this--my fear is we are going to continue 
to do the kind of actions we have been on over the last number of 
months where we continue to cut back on that relatively small piece of 
Federal spending which is discretionary spending.
  We are already seeing, in States such as Massachusetts and Minnesota 
and Virginia, the effects of sequestration where we have put forward a 
policy that was viewed by everyone when it was originally thought up as 
so stupid, so beyond the pale, that no rational group of folks would 
ever allow it to come to pass. We are now 3 or 4 months into allowing 
that to come to pass. While we have taken action on certain items such 
as relieving the challenge of our air traffic controllers, we have not 
taken action on making sure the funds have been replaced for the 70,000 
to 80,000-plus kids who have lost their Head Start funding. We have not 
taken action to ensure the NIH cancer grants that are being cut, where 
we have done multigrant years--where the preceding years of research 
are now going to be flushed because we cannot do the final year of the 
grant, we cannot take action on that.
  We have not taken action on the fact that now, as announced by the 
Secretary of Defense, while we have made some progress, where no longer 
are there 22 days of furloughs, we are now seeing 11 days of furloughs 
to our defense civilian employees. This is at a time that makes 
enormous challenges to their budgets but beyond that to the readiness 
of the men and women who defend our Nation.
  We can continue this path on sequestration, frankly, retarding our 
ability to keep our military ready, holding back our ability to have 
the kind of economic recovery we would all like to see or we can allow 
the regular order, a regular order that my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle called for, for the last couple of years, for us in this 
Senate to pass the budget.
  We passed that budget. Now we need to take the next step in the 
process and appoint conferees and let us try to find that common ground 
between the House and Senate budget so we can address this issue of 
debt and deficit, so we can demonstrate to the American people that we 
can do our most basic responsibility, which is to make sure we pay our 
bills and operate the basic functions of government, and that we can do 
our job to restore the faith that this institution can work in a way 
the Founders set up.
  Unfortunately, we are not going to take that step today because now, 
for the fifty-second day in a row, our Republican colleagues have 
objected to the next step in regular order. I am greatly disappointed, 
but I know I and other colleagues will come down on a regular basis and 
continue to make this request. My hope is that at some point in the not 
too distant future we can let the process continue, and we can get to 
the hard work of resolving the differences of the House and Senate so 
we can put this issue of lurching from budget crisis to budget crisis 
in the rearview mirror.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota.

[[Page 6760]]


  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I thank the former Governor of 
Virginia. He knows how to balance a budget and how to have a strong 
budget for the good people of this country. I share his frustration 
that we are not able to bring this long-awaited budget that we finally 
passed in the Senate to conference with the House. I hope minds will 
change and we will be able to get this done.
  Again, I thank the Senator for his leadership and for a balanced 
approach on reducing the debt.

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