[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7326-7327]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           BUDGET CONFERENCE

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, earlier today we were asked to give our 
consent to go to conference on the budget resolution. This is an 
important matter because we have now gone more than 4 years without a 
budget. This has been of great concern to many of us. I do not think 
there is one Member of this body who would not want Congress to pass a 
budget this year. We would like to see that happen. We need that.
  We do, however, have a concern--some of us--with the request that we 
go to conference without certain assurances. Most important, we want a 
very simple assurance that any conference report that results from this 
conference will not be used to raise the debt limit. The reason for 
this is simple. This is an important matter. At a time when we have 
racked up about $17 trillion in debt, we want some assurances that this 
important decision will be made under the regular order of the Senate; 
that the normal rules of the Senate will apply; that this will not be 
negotiated behind closed doors in a backroom deal. The American people 
deserve more. They demand more.
  Those who may have questioned our motives in connection with this, I 
ask them a very simple question: Will you give us an assurance that you 
are not going to use the conference report to raise the debt limit? If 
they can answer that question to our satisfaction, if they can simply 
give me an assurance that is not what they are going to use it for, 
then I will gladly give my consent. So I invite that to be the topic of 
discussion.
  All this begs the question. Why would they not give that assurance? 
What on Earth is wrong with the regular order? What on Earth is wrong 
with giving an assurance that, in connection with a conference report 
on a budget resolution, they would not be willing to say: If we are 
going to raise the debt limit, we are going to do it under the regular 
order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I was going to talk about the 
tornadoes, but I will take a moment to respond to my colleague from 
Utah.
  There are Members objecting to going to regular order on the budget,

[[Page 7327]]

and he is one of them. The Senator from Utah himself is objecting to 
regular order, which would allow us to go to conference on the budget. 
He was one of the critics when he was running for office. He made 
numerous statements while he was on his way to becoming a Senator by 
saying that the Senate and the House needed to have a budget.
  Well, the House has passed a budget, the Senate has passed a budget. 
Yet the Senator from Utah is the one--along with the Senator from 
Kentucky, and I understand earlier today, the Senator from Arizona, 
Senator McCain--objecting to going to conference to resolve the 
differences.
  I know the Senator from Utah has read the Constitution, just as I 
have. The Constitution and the laws that created the Senate of the 
United States give great strength to the minority--and he is in the 
minority. However, nowhere in the Constitution does it say one Senator 
from one State has the right to write the rules and laws for the whole 
country. I read it lots of times, and I have never seen that. Evidently 
that is what the Senator from Utah wants. He said if we would just do 
what he wants, we could proceed.
  Well, I have news for him and the Senators who are objecting. It is 
not about what they individually want. It is collectively what we want. 
We represent all the people of our country: Republicans, Democrats, 
conservatives, and liberals.
  For 4 years this same group yelled and screamed about not having a 
budget. Now that we have a budget, they are yelling and screaming that 
they don't want to work out the differences. I honestly don't know how 
to please colleagues like this. We had to literally listen to them 
ranting and raving for years about how we didn't have a budget. We 
worked extra hard. At the time we said--and I was one of them--that 
technically they're right, we did not have a budget. As the Presiding 
Officer knows, we had something that was stronger than a budget. We had 
spending limits that had the real teeth of law.
  What people might not realize is budgets are aspirations. Just as 
when someone does a budget at home, they can say: My budget this year 
is going to be set at $25,000. It is an aspiration. They might spend a 
little more or a little less. There is no mechanism for control; it is 
just an outline, and that is important.
  We thought what we had, as the Democratic leadership, is better than 
a budget. We had actual spending controls, but that wasn't enough for 
the Republicans. They knew we had spending controls, but they still 
went on ``Fox News'' and everywhere else explaining to people that we 
had no budget and inferred there were no controls. And that is patently 
false. We had spending controls. We have spending controls now. We have 
spending limits which are agreed to by Republicans and Democrats, 
except there are a handful of Republicans who don't agree with those 
limits. They decided because they represent half of four States that 
they want their way or the highway, and now the whole Congress cannot 
go to a conference on a budget.
  I don't understand this. I understand minority rights need to be 
protected. I understand it is important to make sure everyone's voice 
is heard. I understand everybody cannot get everything they want. I 
don't understand when my colleagues--the Senator from Utah, the Senator 
from Kentucky, and the Senator from Arizona--say: No, we can't go to a 
conference to work out the differences on the budget so the United 
States can move more quickly to a balanced budget. They have complained 
year after year that we didn't have a budget. It is the height of 
hypocrisy, and their position is completely unexplainable and 
unacceptable.
  I am glad I was on the floor. I came to talk about the tornado, but I 
am glad I had a chance to make a statement for the Record about why not 
many--but there are a few--Republican leaders have stopped the entire 
budget process until they get their way exactly the way they want it. 
That is not the way our government works. We don't have kings anymore. 
We don't have dictators anymore. We don't have people with special 
powers. We are all humans, and we are all on equal footing. We are all 
elected to represent our constituents. No one in this Chamber is 
entitled to write the budget exactly the way they want it.
  If I wanted to do something, I could say just as easily as he could: 
Well, I am going to object unless you promise me that X, Y, and Z are 
going to be in the budget. I could say that, as could the Senators who 
sit next to me, Senator Sanders and Senator Carper. Every Senator could 
say that. We all have things which are very important to us and our 
constituency, but if we act like that and we don't act in a mature and 
sensible way, we will never get anything done, and that is where we are 
now.
  We have a handful of Republican Senators--maybe less than five, I 
don't know--who are objecting every day so we cannot take our budget to 
conference and have it reconciled. They have yelled at everybody for 4 
years about how we didn't have a budget.
  The only way we are going to get a budget is to go to conference, 
have regular order, and work out the differences in a public meeting 
with public votes. It cannot happen behind closed doors or in some back 
room somewhere. It has to take place in a public meeting, during a 
conference so we can talk about what programs or what levels of funding 
should be reduced, such as what revenues could potentially be raised. 
Then, according to our process, those directions are given to 
appropriations committees. At that point we can do our work on building 
an appropriation for defense, building an appropriation for education, 
building an appropriation for health, and for our veterans.
  If we don't have a budget, we cannot even go to regular order on 
appropriations. As an appropriator, it is getting frustrating around 
here to not be able to go to a regular appropriations meeting and sit 
down as we used to do before this new crew showed up and talked about 
meeting our budget caps and how we wanted to allocate the taxpayer 
money in a public, open meeting instead of cramming things in an 
omnibus bill and doing deals in the middle of the night.
  If they would let us get back to regular order and do the people's 
business, I promise that the people of Utah would be happy, the people 
of Arizona would be happy, and the people of Kentucky would be happy. 
They want us to get back to regular order so we can try to negotiate a 
budget that the majority--and not even the regular majority. We have to 
have 60 votes to do anything around here. Before a conference committee 
can come back, there has to be a broad understanding of what was going 
to be in that conference.
  I have one final argument. I could understand a little trepidation on 
the part of the minority if they were not in control of the House, but 
the Republicans have control of the House, and the Democrats have 
control of the Senate. I mean, I could understand their concern if one 
party had the majority in both the Senate and the House. They might be 
concerned that what comes out of conference could get rammed down and 
the minority could be caught off balance. The minority controls the 
House. This is as fair a fight as they are going to have with one party 
controlling one and one party controlling the other.
  Yes, the President is a Democrat, but he has indicated what I think 
is very open-minded support for entitlement reform when it is 
appropriate and additional revenues that are being raised. The 
President has not put any particular line in the sand that I am aware 
of. He has been quite reasonable, but he cannot sign a budget unless we 
can get it to his desk.
  We have three or four Senators, if they can't get it exactly the way 
they want it, who are going to hold up everything. I don't think that 
is what the American people want, and I am disappointed in our 
colleagues.
  I yield the floor.

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