[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2488-2490]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           WASTEFUL SPENDING

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, when I reran for the Senate in 2010, there 
were two major issues that dominated the campaign and that continue to 
dominate the discussion and debate in the Senate postelection. One was 
the Affordable Care Act, now called ObamaCare, which was pushed through 
without any bipartisan support. There was a lot of concern among the 
American people about the impact this would have on their lives. That 
was an issue of intense discussion and debate during that campaign.
  The second was the plunge into debt at a level Americans had never 
seen before in the history of the country. It took nearly 200 years, 
from the beginning of our Nation until 1981, to reach the $1 trillion 
debt mark. That is a lot of governing. That is a lot of growth of 
America. But we were essentially on a path--including expenditures for 
war and so forth--that didn't take us deeply into debt relative to our 
gross domestic product.
  All of a sudden, in 2010, there was the revelation that debt held by 
the public was rapidly nearing the $10 trillion mark--a tenfold 
increase in less than 30 years. It took 190 plus years to get to the 
first $1 trillion and only 30 years to add ten times that amount. That 
was a hot topic of debate during the 2010 election. During that 
election, the American people came out in significant numbers and said: 
Get to Washington and do something about this.

[[Page 2489]]

  In the background, a debt clock was ticking away, and not only on my 
website but clocks around the country at different times, and people 
were astonished at how fast those numbers were churning.
  That led to a pretty intense effort on the part of both parties and 
on the part of many organizations. I can remember Simpson-Bowles--a 
former Chief of Staff of President Bill Clinton along with a former 
distinguished Senator from Wyoming, a Republican and a Democrat 
together--Simpson-Bowles. The public was getting behind this--a $4 
trillion, over 10 year fix to the problem. It was pretty dramatic, yet 
there was a lot of momentum for it. That was shot down, unfortunately, 
by the President when it was presented.
  Following that, we had the Gang of 6, a bipartisan effort, and the 
Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction--the group of 12, 6 Democrats and 
6 Republicans working diligently to try to put something together, 
along with outside organizations, to fix the debt. There were any 
number of these--the Domenici Rivlin task force--proposals that were 
worked on together in a bipartisan way, realizing that as the debt was 
continuing to accumulate it was going to have major negative 
consequences to the future of our children and grandchildren and 
perhaps even our own generation.
  We stand here today, having gone through all that--the Vitter 
committee, which I was a part of; eight of us agreeing with the 
President, with no staff and no press, closed room, months and months 
and months of negotiation--only once again to come up short. 
Ultimately, we sacrificed so many things we thought we needed to do 
just to get something going. But once again it was shot down in the end 
by a President who really wasn't willing to accept even the provisions 
he had proposed in his budget proposal that was publicly proposed. We 
took those and said: Can we at least do these, Mr. President? You have 
announced this is your initiative. But it was a no go.
  Well, as a member of the Committee on Appropriations, I then tried to 
work with various agencies. They all had to come before us to make 
their requests known for the coming year. I asked them: Do you have a 
plan B in place? What do you mean plan B? What is plan B all about?
  Plan B is the fact that mandatory spending is running away with our 
budget and the available amount of money for your discretionary 
spending is shrinking every year. So what is your plan B in terms of 
having less money available, whether it is for health care, for 
education, for building roads? All of the discretionary issues that 
fall under the discretionary spending that we are in control of, we no 
longer have control of. That is shrinking and you are going to have to 
do more with less. And I asked that they provide a plan B before they 
could get my clearance in terms of supporting their requests.
  They never came forward. No, we have to stay with what the 
President's budget is and so forth. So here we are now, over $8 
trillion more than where we were in 2010, and an $18 trillion-plus 
deficit.
  Everyone knows this is unsustainable. Everyone in America knows we 
are careening toward insolvency, with an inability to cover even some 
of the most basic functions of government.
  I talk to agencies about a policy of triage. I suggested they 
separate out what they absolutely essentially have to do and we will 
fund it. Then part B is what they would like to do if they had the 
money to do it. Part C is their asking: Why are we doing that in the 
first place or that program is long past its need, its existence or it 
hasn't worked. Let's start there, with part C, and let's get rid of 
excess spending that has no real function going forward or it is 
duplication or fraud or waste or whatever.
  That leads me now to this poster. I have kind of gone from acting 
like the President's Chief of Staff to the co-chair of the ``go big 
guy'' in terms of what we need to do. We can't go there, but maybe we 
can go a little. And we are all the way down now to what I call ``waste 
of the week.''
  Let us at least identify those things that the Government 
Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office have 
identified as those things we know don't work, that we know are a 
waste, that we know are duplication, and let's see if we can get at 
least some start in terms of dealing with this debt.
  Senator Coburn took the lead on that in the last several sessions of 
Congress. We are going to miss him because no one can do it better than 
he did in pointing out and really embarrassing a lot of us in asking: 
Why are we funding that? I am not trying to take his place. But I did, 
with my staff, come up with the idea to at least let our colleagues 
know--those who say we can't cut a penny more, we have cut too much--
that, yes, we can cut more. We can at least do something to address 
this debt or have money to offset a needed funding program.
  So we are going to inaugurate ``waste of the week'' today. In its 
debut, I will go back to something I tried to amend when we were 
addressing the unemployment insurance issue. Ultimately, I was not able 
to offer the amendment thanks to the majority leader's filling of the 
tree and not allowing any amendments. I made a big stink about it. I 
didn't understand why we could not at least take that up.
  So waste of the week this week is the cost to the taxpayer for those 
in the safety net receiving Social Security Disability Insurance or 
unemployment insurance and getting checks from both agencies.
  Now, if you can prove to the appropriate government agency that you 
can't work, you can be eligible if you go through the process for 
Social Security Disability Insurance. But if you go to the Social 
Security Disability Insurance agency and make your claim, you can't 
then go to the unemployment insurance agency and say you can't work, 
that you can't find work, that you are able to work but that you need 
to get that check from that agency. What has been documented now is the 
fact that there are very significant numbers of people who are gaming 
this issue and receiving checks from both agencies.
  Either you can work or you can't work. You are eligible for one 
safety net program or the other, but not both. That totals $5.7 billion 
of duplication.
  My amendment that I had offered under the unemployment insurance 
extension in the last Congress was simply to say you can't do both, and 
we are going to put procedures in place so we can find out who is doing 
both.
  One would think this would be pretty simple, even in the paper age, 
but we are in the digital age. I don't understand why the people 
administering this can't simply take the Social Security number and 
plug it into unemployment insurance and say: Do you have this person's 
name with this Social Security number? Are they receiving unemployment 
insurance? Or vice versa. It ought to be the push of a button on a 
computer so that it is not all that costly and makes a great deal of 
sense.
  The worst they would have to do is pick up the phone and say: I have 
John Doe here whose Social Security number is X. He is applying for 
Social Security Disability Insurance. Do you have him on the 
unemployment role? Or vice versa. I am sorry, Mr. Doe, but you can't do 
both, and you are gaming the system. This duplication of benefits costs 
$5.7 billion. That is a pretty good savings.
  This is the first of what will be a weekly presentation of programs 
that are no longer needed, that are duplicative, where there is fraud 
or waste involved. I am going to bring this forward every week, and we 
are going to try to add it all up.
  We start here with $5.7 billion, and I have my spending thermometer 
going up to $100 billion. I think we can go much higher than that. Tom 
Coburn said we could, through his Wastebook and the work he has done.
  So we have already inked it in here. We are going to start filling 
this in by coming here every week.
  People may say: Well, that is small change. Look, $5.7 billion is not 
small change. In comparison to our debt, does it solve the problem? 
Absolutely

[[Page 2490]]

not. It is at least a start. Can we at least not come together in 
sensible things such as this and at least get started in the right 
direction?
  In the meantime, I think we are still going to be pushed into 
situations by crisis, when no longer the countenance of the investment 
world in America in terms of the rate of return is acceptable, because 
the debt continues to accumulate.
  So here we are, back to 2010, back to where we were. I know it is not 
talked about very much at this stage. We have foreign policy issues and 
domestic issues we have to engage in. But the clock is ticking away, 
minute after minute, second after second, and it is a continued plunge 
of the deficit spending--borrowing money we don't have in order to pay 
for things we need, but also paying for things we don't need.
  So I will be here every week with a new proposal. We will be filling 
in this chart, and hopefully at least start us on the process once 
again of getting through to one major challenge we have here in this 
Senate, the Congress, and the executive branch, and that is dealing 
with our debt. It is generational theft. It is putting the burden on 
our children and grandchildren, and even on workers here today. It is 
holding down our economy. It is one of the major challenges this 
Congress has not successfully addressed and which this administration 
has not successfully addressed. It is kicking the can down the road to 
the extreme, and we do not need to forget that. We need to emphasize 
it. This is my small step, after many large steps that have failed, to 
try to continue to alert the American people and alert my colleagues 
that there is money we can save and spend and run a much more 
efficient, effective government.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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