Social Security Benefit Protection Act

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, like you, I have heard a lot of loose talk over the past months invoking the Founding Fathers--loose talk to underscore an expedient argument about what they would be doing if they were legislating today. But the way our Founders are often used is as a caricature to distort history for the benefit of partisan and narrow interests.

To hear some people talk about it, you would think the Founders were engaged in a process of dismantling a country rather than building one. That version of events is not only wrong but it also thoroughly diminishes the founding generation's extraordinary accomplishments and the lessons we should draw from them.

Our Founders met enormous challenges with great courage and sacrifice to start a country around an ideal. In the same vein, our modern history has been characterized by meeting great challenges with distinct qualities. We are hard working. We meet our challenges by refusing to allow their complexities or attendant political difficulty to lead us toward accepting failure as an option. We are inclusive. We meet our great challenges by meeting them as one, by crafting solutions that involve buy-in, participation, and sacrifice from all parts of the political landscape, and the American people.

We act with courage. We meet our great challenges when, and only when, the leaders of the day have the courage to decide they will be the ones who meet those challenges, that they will transcend the short- term incentives and political imperatives of their time to do something of greater importance.

These traits have enabled us to end a Civil War, overcome the Great Depression, and march toward civil rights. But they have also allowed us to do smaller and still very important things such as work together in the 1980s to protect and preserve Social Security.

Today, that honorable past and the sacrifice it entailed has been hijacked to protect and defend narrow interest group politics and tax loopholes.

Our tax and regulatory codes are backward, facing in a way that is straining our recession-battered middle class and failing to drive innovation in our economy. As a result, middle-class

income continues to fall, the gap between rich and poor grows wider, and all of us wait for a 20th-century economy to produce 21st-century jobs. That wait will be in vain.

It will particularly be in vain for those of our citizens unlucky enough to be born poor and who therefore stand a 9 in 100 chance of ever graduating from college in the United States of America in the year 2011. That is because year after year we have torn each other up so much on issue after issue, because of the smallness we have exhibited in the face of what our big challenges are, and now we find ourselves at a crisis point without a politics capable of even addressing the kinds of challenges we face each year, let alone a generational crisis like our deficit and debt.

I have come to the floor for months arguing for the need for a comprehensive approach to addressing our deficits and debt. What Colorado wants is nothing more than what this country has seen from past generations of leaders in past times of crisis. As I have said over and over, what people in red parts of the State and what people in blue parts of the State want is a solution that materially addresses the problem. They know we are not going to fix it overnight, but they want it materially addressed. They want a demonstration that we are all in it together, that everybody has something to contribute to solving the problem. They emphatically want it to be bipartisan because they don't believe in an either-party-going-it-alone approach when it comes to our debt and our deficit.

I add a corollary to that, which is that we need to assure our capital markets that the paper they bought is actually worth what they paid for it.

It was in the spirit of getting together on a solution like that my colleague, Senator Mike Johanns, and I wrote a letter to the President. Sixty-four Members of the Senate--evenly divided between both parties-- signed onto an approach that called for entitlement reform, tax reform, and discretionary spending cuts. The math compels this answer. The economy needs this certainty. Colorado and the country want this result. It should achieve the $4.5 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years and should have a 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases. That is what the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommended.

Our political system seems intent on thwarting an approach supported by Senators in both parties. Both parties seem willing to submit to that flawed system's perverse incentives.

While I am convinced that many in this body and the House would actually like to make this deal, these interests distort the conversation into a partisan war and rip it apart from the inside.

On one side, some advocate for no changes to the Medicare Program; on the other, for no changes to revenue. Yet these are among the two biggest drivers of our long-term debt--and everybody knows it.

Only in Washington could people pretend that significant deficit reduction could be accomplished while ignoring the two biggest fiscal challenges we face. I am a former school superintendent, and what that tells me is that Washington has a severe math problem. We are in need of remediation.

When it comes to a solution on the debt, the contrast between Washington's dysfunction and Colorado's common sense could not be clearer. Yesterday, I had a call with Colorado business leaders who spanned the ideological spectrum--both Democrats and Republicans--to talk about our deficit and debt. Despite their differing party affiliations, there was clearly a consensus that everything needed to be on the table when it comes to the debt--including both tax revenue and entitlement changes. But somehow this common sense gets lost in the current debate.

If changes to entitlements are off the table, we as leaders will fail. If changes in revenue are off the table, we as leaders will fail.

I turn to the American people watching this debate with worry or disgust and say: If challenges to our ideological beliefs or to the politics that historically define our debate are off the table, then as a generation we cannot meet the challenges we face, and we are not going to be able to support the aspirations we have for our kids and our grandkids.

This is about courage: courage on the part of Democrats who know refusing to touch Medicare is an argument we could win, but the price of winning that argument may be losing America's ability to pay its bills; courage on the part of Republicans who know revenues are unpopular but who secretly understand that we can't simply cut our way out of this budget hole. And in a moment of such crisis, this should be the least Americans can expect of us.

During the worst recession since the Great Depression, Madam President, it was my privilege to spend the last 2\1/2\ years traveling my State while we were going through this horrible economic turmoil. Americans and Coloradans have made gut-wrenching decisions in their personal lives--about where to send their children to school, how and where to live, what medicines they can afford, and what medicines they might hope to live without. Local officials have been held accountable to citizens for the decisions they have had to make. Yet Congress has struggled to reflect the ideals and aspirations of the people we represent.

This DC political culture serves special interests but it doesn't even register the needs of Coloradans. No business would sacrifice the economic interests of its shareholders, because the ones that do are gone. No mayors in Colorado would threaten their bond rating for political ideology--not one. It wouldn't occur to one of them to threaten their credit rating, because mothers, fathers, taxpayers, and everyday citizens would have their heads, and rightfully so. I think the difference is that no special interest stands between a Colorado local government official and the people he or she represents.

Having served in local government, I have to say what often seems to be an unattainable standard for a high officeholder is simply life in the real world for the rest of us. Last week, we came to Washington to cast a series of inconsequential votes. But by the end of the week, some of us were encouraged by the talk coming from the President and the Speaker.

My friend John McCain came to the floor pushing the need for a breakout strategy, referenced a Wall Street Journal editorial that called for a far more comprehensive and far-reaching plan. But now we learn a comprehensive deal feels once again out of reach. We are told we will have to settle for something small that one more time kicks the can down the road; that taxes and entitlements are just too hard for Washington politics.

I may not have spent enough time here to see through these political games. This may all be part of an elaborate strategy to get to yes. But I shudder--I shudder--when I wonder what investors, our creditors, and the American people think of this political game of chicken. Unlike Congress, they do not conduct their business with winks and nods, and they solve their problems before they become insurmountable.

All of which brings me back to our Founders and the political leadership of other generations past that made these enormous and difficult decisions. As for us, we have chosen to put them off time after time, and now we are at an inflection point where we need to get this done. We have a $1.5 trillion deficit and almost $15 trillion in debt. Revenue is at a 60-year low and spending is at over a 60-year high. And we have the path to begin to bridge this. The Simpson-Bowles commission has given us that path forward.

I am the first to say--and I should say--this debt is something we all own. I voted for things that contributed to it, as have all of my colleagues, and of all the things that comprise the debt, there is something each member of our great Nation wants or needs. We all share in the responsibility for how we arrived at this point.

So to be clear, if anybody thinks this is merely an attack on the institution, we need to understand this massive debt is something for which we are all responsible. Those who voted to fight the wars and to pass the tax cuts did so as a reflection of what they believed was a moment of truth. These decisions were not made in a vacuum. We got here because we aspire to be a society that is better than our competitors. We are all responsible. We are all responsible for the crisis that looms. But the inflection point we have reached has

led to a different mandate, a different moment of truth. The American people are asking us to lead.

This is a country of patriots, of incredibly courageous people who take on challenges little and big every day. I have tremendous respect for my colleagues and for this institution, and I am well aware that until about 6 months ago I had never even been elected dogcatcher. So I recognize how much I have to learn. But clearly--clearly--we are not living up to the standard of courage that past generations of leaders and every generation of ordinary Americans have set for us. Congress is certainly not living up to the standard the people of Colorado and of this country expect from us.

I wonder if maybe we have looked at this the wrong way. The President has put entitlement cuts on the table, and that is the right thing to do. I encourage him to do more.

As for the question of revenue, I will tell any politician that this is not the time to be wedded to the status quo. There is nothing magical about current revenue levels, about our Tax Code, or about all the loopholes and special interest perks that we account for only by borrowing more and more money.

But there is something else important to mention, which is also lost in the debate. We have waged two long and costly wars. I don't want to re-litigate today the wisdom of going to war. My colleagues in the Senate and House--many of whom are still here in the Congress--had to cast difficult votes to send our young men and women into harm's way. But regardless of your position for or against, Congress ultimately made a decision to layer those costs on top of our current budget. We did this instead of accounting for them as part of our annual expenses. That was the decision that Congress made, and it began our slide from surplus to deficit.

So for a moment let us separate the costs of these wars from the important and robust debate we are having about entitlement spending-- Medicare, Social Security, and our discretionary programs--and resolve a threshold question, or maybe two: Are we, as a generation, going to pay for these wars or are we going to continue to borrow from foreign governments and stick our kids with the bill? Are we even willing to make just a down payment on their incremental costs? Because that is what we are talking about.

The amount outlined by the Debt and Deficit Commission--$785 billion in tax reform--which, by the way, would lead to lower rates, doesn't even cover the incremental expense of the war commitments we have made. But it would be a good start. Are we willing to walk away from this moment and say we put the burden of fighting and dying in these wars on our sons and daughters, and at the same time leave the burden of paying it to our grandchildren?

And, after all, are we really willing to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States by failing to raise the debt ceiling for debts we already owe? This is not like cutting up your credit card. This is like getting your mortgage this month and saying, I'm not going to pay it because I spent my money somewhere else. Are we really willing to do that by failing to act comprehensively against our debt at a moment of global fragility in the capital markets? Would we risk all of this just for politics?

Interestingly enough, in their wisdom, the Founders understood and anticipated this very problem. They had a spirited debate about whether the Federal Government should have what they called ``a general power of taxation'' or whether we should have a system of ``internal and external taxation''--a system where the States could impose taxes but the Federal Government would be limited to collecting its revenue through duties on imports.

Ultimately, the Founders resolved the question in favor of the general power of taxation for the exact reasons that are staring us in the face today. So rather than talk about the Founders, I actually want to read what they said on this subject, in the hopes it will give us some guidance. Let me quote from Federalist No. 30. I apologize for the length, Madam President, but, as always, their words impoverish our own.

If the opinions of those who contend for the distinction

[between internal and external taxation] were to be received

as evidence of truth, one would be led to conclude that there

was some known point in the economy of national affairs at

which it would be safe to stop and say: Thus far the ends of

public happiness will be promoted by supplying the wants of

government, and all beyond this is unworthy of our care or

anxiety.

They went on to say:

Let us attend to what would be the effects of this

situation in the very first war in which we should happen to

be engaged. We will presume, for argument's sake, that the

revenue arising from the impost duties answers the purposes

of a provision for the public debt and of a peace

establishment for the Union. Thus circumstanced, a war breaks

out. What would be the probable conduct of the government in

such an emergency? Taught by experience that proper

dependence could not be placed on the success of

requisitions, unable by its own authority to lay hold of

fresh resources, and urged by considerations of national

danger, would it not be driven to the expedient of diverting

the funds already appropriated from their proper objects to

the defense of the state? It is not easy to see how a step of

this kind could be avoided; and if it should be taken, it is

evident that it would prove the destruction of public credit

at the very moment it was becoming essential to the public

safety. To imagine that such a credit crisis might be

dispensed with, would be the extreme of infatuation. In the

modern system of war, nations the most wealthy are obliged to

have recourse to large loans. A country so little opulent as

ours must feel this necessity in a much stronger degree. But

who would lend to a government that prefaced its overtures

for borrowing by an act which demonstrated that no reliance

could be placed on the steadiness of its measures for paying?

The loans it might be able to procure would be as limited in

their extent as burdensome in their conditions. They would be

made upon the same principles that usurers commonly lend to

bankrupt and fraudulent debtors, with a sparing hand and

enormous premiums.

I am going to paraphrase that in a minute. But it is almost as though Alexander Hamilton, who wrote these words in 1787, were sitting here today. And from the bottom of my heart, I wish he were. He closed the Federalist Paper No. 30 with an admonition to ideologues, writing that:

. . . [s]uch men must behold the actual situation of their

country with painful solicitude, and deprecate the evils

which ambition or revenge might, with too much facility,

inflict upon it.

As we have at other times in our history, we experienced the kind of evils that Hamilton anticipated on 9/11. We responded. And now, at this extraordinary time, it is left for us to get our house in order.

In truth, these are small decisions, when we consider them in the context of what our Founders faced. Their greatness is measured by the large task they took on and conquered. Ours is merely a junction between our own institutional impulse toward fecklessness and our individual love for our country and for our kids. When faced with similar decisions, families cut back; they sacrifice. And now we must do the same. Now, to paraphrase Hamilton, the last thing we need to do now is act in a way that jacks up our interest rates.

The 100 of us who are here in the Senate didn't create the system in which we operate. None of us decided it would be fun to have special interest groups scoring our every move or lobbyists hounding us about this or that tiny little provision or television channels reducing everything we do and say to a story line of endless minute conflict. And look, I understand what the incentives are here. It is possible we could fail and get away with blaming somebody else. It is possible cutting off our nose to spite our face could be a smart political move in this insane system. But there is a reason we venerate the Founders and Lincoln and the great legislative and executive figures of the last century. They were great not only because of what history threw at them, but because of the way they threw themselves at history.

They raised their hands. They showed real courage not only when they had to but when they didn't. They made themselves of use.

The Founders were practical people--dare I say it, Madam President, practical politicians searching for an ideal that became the United States of America, and they created in their practicality what Lincoln called the last, best hope of Earth. Think of that. Think of our actual history, not a cartoon, and imagine that we stumble, not because the Founders in their time failed to form a union but because in our time we failed to act as one.

Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from North Dakota, has, in fact, laid out a budget. It puts us on a serious road toward budget balance by utilizing real numbers, not sleight of

hand numbers, not budget fakery numbers, not a budget as a political document but a budget as an economic document. And it nips--indeed, it savages--the annual deficit and the Federal debt of $4 trillion over 10 years.

This is real money, and it is real money that is basically in balance between $2 trillion of spending cuts--which we have had all of those kinds of talks going on down at the White House, and they seem to get to an agreement of $2 trillion of spending cuts. But when it comes to the revenue side, there seems to be an unwillingness to accept revenues.

What I would like to do is elucidate further on the Budget Committee chairman's presentation yesterday or the day before of this budget on how we can produce $2 trillion of new revenue and it not be considered as just straight tax increases but, instead, of going to two other parts of the Tax Code that have been off limits to so much of the tax planning and tax cuts that we have been talking about. Of course, I am talking about the $14 trillion of tax expenditures that the Federal Government expends by not having that tax revenue coming in to the tune of $14 trillion for special tax preferences over the course of the next decade.

Now, if that were not enough in itself, there is also an additional $1 trillion that is money that is kept abroad that is not brought back into this country and, therefore, is not taxed. Just a little portion of that money being kept overseas could be brought in and used in productive activities in the United States. But it would be brought in as income instead of housed in one three-story building in the Cayman Islands for 18,000 corporations, where all it is is a residence for a corporation to use to avoid U.S. taxes.

Now, if we are going to do anything serious about lowering the deficit, we are going to have to try to stop this nonsense that is going on. In the case of tax preferences, the tax expenditures, the $14 trillion, the Senate, in an overwhelming vote a couple of weeks ago, actually attacked one of those tax preferences.

Remember when we voted something like 95 to 5 here to get rid of the subsidy on ethanol made from corn? It was a subsidy put in years ago to encourage ethanol made from corn as a way of blending it with gasoline that would then lessen our reliance on oil, particularly foreign oil. But now we know we can make ethanol from a whole bunch of other things, and it doesn't have to be making ethanol from something that we eat, which all it was doing was driving the price of corn higher and, of course, corn is being used as a feed in the feed lots and, therefore, the meat products that the American consumer was getting at the grocery store went much higher in price.

So we realized here was a tax subsidy, a tax preference, in other words, a tax expenditure, that had outlived its usefulness. There are $14 trillion of these tax preferences that are, in effect, for the next decade, and it would not be an unreasonable question to ask: Could we reduce those tax preferences just a little bit? If you reduced them, just 17 percent of all those tax preferences, you would produce $2 trillion. If that $1 trillion that is kept overseas--if you could stop some of those laws that keep foreign income held by U.S. companies abroad, if you could just tax a little bit of that, then we could even lower the percentage that we needed to get into the tax expenditures.

Now, there are some tax expenditures that are obviously very popular and very necessary. Charitable contributions, which include contributions to churches, they get a charitable deduction that you deduct from your overall income in order to get your adjusted gross income. From that you subtract the various deductions you have to get to your taxable income. Clearly, giving charitable contributions is an activity that we want to encourage, and we encourage that in the Tax Code.

Another example is, you own a home. You go to the bank, you get a mortgage, the mortgage payments that include principal and interest. You are able to deduct the interest that you are paying on that mortgage, and that is a tax preference. It was originally put in to encourage home ownership. Well, should that preference continue for those who don't need the help?

I think these are questions. So if we start just doing little things with this $14 trillion of tax preferences, we can make major reductions in the annual deficit.

Let me give another example: Oil and gas. There are a lot of tax preferences for the oil and gas industry. Normally, when a business goes in and provides capital to get a business up and going, that capital equipment is allowed to be deducted over the life of that piece of equipment.

Well, so much of oil and gas equipment is allowed to be written off in the very first year as an expense of doing business in that first year. That is just one other example. So if we look at it, are we capable of taking $14 trillion of tax preferences--some people call them tax expenditures; some people call them tax giveaways--and, therefore, reduce those, especially the ones that are ineffective and inefficient, even though it is going to step on somebody's toes? Some special interest that has that tax preference, they are not going to like it. They want their goodies. But for the purpose of balancing the budget, for the purpose of bringing this deficit down so we can get on the road to fiscal order instead of the fiscal chaos that we have now, is that not a legitimate question to ask and a legitimate road to go down?

No less than one of the senior economic advisers to President Reagan--his name is Martin Feldstein. He was a Harvard professor and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Reagan. I want you to see what he says about reducing tax expenditures.

Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce

government spending. Eliminating tax expenditures does not

increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving,

investment or risk-taking. It would also increase overall

economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort

private spending decisions. And eliminating or consolidating

the large number of overlapping tax-based subsidies would

also greatly simplify tax filing. In short, cutting tax

expenditures is not at all like other ways of raising

revenue.

Martin Feldstein, well regarded in conservative circles.

With this crisis looming, why can't we get people to recognize that if we want balance, they have to give, too, and here is a good way. I want to expand on this--another way we could do it.

We could actually, as the Simpson-Bowles commission suggested, lower these tax expenditures Martin Feldstein is talking about. We could even take that additional revenue and pour it into the rest of the Tax Code and lower the tax rates for everybody, including corporate tax rates, and in the process we could also simplify the Tax Code into three tax brackets. All of the tax brackets would be lowered if we got rid of some of those tax expenditures. There are multiple ways we can use this, and in the process, then, we are starting some serious tax reform.

The Senator from North Dakota has laid this out. He has explained this to the Senate. He has the unanimous support of the majority of the Senate Budget Committee. He has the near-unanimous support of the entire majority in the U.S. Senate. He has explained this to the President and to the Vice President.

Of course, one of the easy ways to react to this is, well, there is not enough time. If we want to do major tax reform and tax simplification for the sake of our consumers, there sure is time because we could solve this debt ceiling crisis with a commitment down the line to doing just exactly what I have talked about.

As we are in this maelstrom of all of these different ideas going around about what we are going to do before August 2 so the debt ceiling can be raised and so the country can pay its bills, I have heard about some disturbing things out there on the horizon. One is that Social Security is going to get whacked and that Medicare is going to get whacked.

By the way, what the Budget Committee is proposing does not whack Social Security or Medicare providers. In the first place, Social Security is not in financial trouble in the foreseeable future. It is not until the late 2030s that it starts to get into difficulty. It is around 2035 that it would not, in that year, be able to pay 100 percent of its payments. We can correct that before then.

Our problem is now. Our problem is this next decade of bringing this budget on a path toward balance and bringing the annual deficit down to a much lower percentage of gross domestic product.

The budget I have just outlined, that is the work product of the Senate Budget Committee chairman, brings it down at the end of the decade to 1.8 percent--the deficit--to GDP. Anytime we get below 3 percent of the deficit being a percentage of GDP, we are on the path to fiscal stability, and we would be moving toward that position of balance--a position, by the way, we enjoyed 11 years ago because we were in surplus. Eleven years ago, we had 4 years of surplus in a row, but we started enacting policies--and, I might say, not with the vote of this Senator--that caused the revenues to drop off considerably. Then, of course, when we got in the situation where we started increasing expenditures for one reason or another--increasing expenditures for national defense, for two wars--and those were wars we were not paying for with a revenue source; in fact, we were just going out and borrowing the money.

So this brings me now to Medicare and Social Security. It might make some people in Washington, DC, feel good to whack Medicare. It certainly wouldn't make this Senator feel good. It certainly wouldn't make an awful lot--as a matter of fact, some 45 million senior citizens in this country are on Medicare, some of whom are living from hand to mouth, from Social Security check to Social Security check, and from Medicare reimbursement to Medicare reimbursement for their health care. It certainly wouldn't make them feel good. And it is not going to do anything immediately for the deficit we are having to confront. So why trade off, saying we are going to whack these two programs and not attack things such as tax expenditures that are inefficient and don't produce what they are supposed to do via the incentives in the Tax Code? It simply doesn't make sense.

Oh, by the way, isn't it interesting, isn't it almost ironic that the people who are now attacking Medicare and saying we have to whack it are the very people who were criticizing us 2 years ago in the health care bill when we eliminated $\1/2\ trillion of inefficiencies and overpayments out of Medicare to put the program on a more financially solvent path? And they were the very ones who were criticizing us for taking that money out of Medicare. Well, I say to my colleagues, we already took on Medicare, so we ought to get down to the hard choices of budget deficit reduction, which means cutting spending and getting rid of some of these tax expenditures so we can start bringing our budget into balance.

My final subject is Social Security. Now, why in the world would we want to scare the bejabbers out of 45 million senior citizens of this country, some of whom literally are living hand to mouth and from Social Security check to Social Security check and some of whom cannot afford the cost of drugs even partially provided for through Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit? I don't think we want to do that.

As we get closer to August 2, I am hearing--and I hope every other Senator is hearing from all of these senior citizens and these disabled workers who are relying on Social Security--that they are concerned about Washington's failure to get its house in order, and if we fail to get our house in order, it is going to threaten the very source of income they count on. So to risk a government default and to say the only way we can do it is by taking it out of Social Security is not going to do anything for us in reducing the deficit over the next decade, which is the problem at hand.

Yesterday, the President was asked if he could tell the folks at home that no matter what happens, Social Security checks are going to go out the day after the government is supposedly going to go into default. Do my colleagues remember what the President said? He said: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3 if we haven't resolved this issue because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.

So the people who are relying on a fixed income of Social Security to survive--Social Security payments are more than just a government statistic. For them, Social Security is more than just a Federal outlay or an entitlement expenditure. There are almost 4 million Social Security beneficiaries in my State. I can tell my colleagues that their Social Security pays the rent, it pays for the groceries, and it helps pay their medical copays. It helps pay for that over and above what is provided in Medicare.

It is interesting, these speeches I hear. It is all ``it is your fault, and it is your fault, and it is the other guy's fault, and it is so partisan, and it is so ideologically rigid.'' The only way we are going to solve something that is as tangled up as this is for people of good will to be willing to respect the other fellow's point of view and come together and build consensus to find a workable solution.

So as we get closer--and we can almost hear the background music; it is getting more ominous day by day as the clock ticks down to August 2--there is something we can do about it. The threat that Social Security payments could be delayed should not be used as a weapon to force a slash-and-burn cut to these entitlements. I said 45 million earlier; it is actually 56 million retirees who rely on these payments.

A recent report from the Congressional Research Service states:

Under normal procedures Treasury pays Social Security

benefits from the General Fund and offsets this by redeeming

an equivalent amount of the Social Security Trust Funds'

holdings of government debt. Treasury now may need to issue

new public debt to raise the cash needed to pay benefits.

Treasury may be unable to issue new public debt, however,

because of the debt limit.

In other words, if the debt ceiling is not raised, Social Security benefits could be delayed or jeopardized. So perhaps what we ought to do is enact some legislation that takes Social Security out of the equation in the event we don't reach a deal on the debt ceiling by August 2.

In the past, the President and the Congress have agreed to exempt Social Security from the debt ceiling in order to ensure that the payments go out to Social Security recipients. As a matter of fact, as recently as 1996, Treasury reported it had insufficient cash to pay Social Security benefits in March of that year. In response, Congress then passed--and it was a bipartisan Congress; it was headed by a majority of the Republican Party, and there was a Democratic President, President Clinton. They passed--and it was signed into law--a measure that provided the Treasury with temporary authority to issue securities to the public in the amount equal to the Social Security benefit payments due.

I will conclude by pointing out that after that was done in 1996, Congress later extended the borrowing authority for an additional 2 weeks.

I believe we should use what we know works and not play games with Social Security benefits. So I am introducing some legislation, and I am introducing it today. It is called the Social Security Benefit Protection Act. What it suggests is the way we ought to go. Now, I know we are not going to take up and pass this legislation, but I have a means by which I can get this idea out. What it does is guarantee that the Social Security Administration will be able to continue paying Social Security benefits to retirees, survivors, and disabled workers regardless of what happens to this political gridlock here in Washington.

Similar to the 1996 legislation, this legislation gives the Treasury Department temporary authority to issue new debt to ensure the payments can be made to Social Security beneficiaries, but only to the extent necessary to cover the needs of the Social Security Program.

I urge our colleagues to try to come together and give the assurances to millions of retirees that they are not going to be whacked and, especially so, they are not going to be whacked out of political gridlock by all the rest of us for these excessive reasons. I urge my colleagues to take a look at the ideas in this legislation that I have filed.

Mr. President, the Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from North Dakota, has, in fact, laid out a budget. It puts us on a serious road toward budget balance by utilizing real numbers, not sleight of

hand numbers, not budget fakery numbers, not a budget as a political document but a budget as an economic document. And it nips--indeed, it savages--the annual deficit and the Federal debt of $4 trillion over 10 years.

This is real money, and it is real money that is basically in balance between $2 trillion of spending cuts--which we have had all of those kinds of talks going on down at the White House, and they seem to get to an agreement of $2 trillion of spending cuts. But when it comes to the revenue side, there seems to be an unwillingness to accept revenues.

What I would like to do is elucidate further on the Budget Committee chairman's presentation yesterday or the day before of this budget on how we can produce $2 trillion of new revenue and it not be considered as just straight tax increases but, instead, of going to two other parts of the Tax Code that have been off limits to so much of the tax planning and tax cuts that we have been talking about. Of course, I am talking about the $14 trillion of tax expenditures that the Federal Government expends by not having that tax revenue coming in to the tune of $14 trillion for special tax preferences over the course of the next decade.

Now, if that were not enough in itself, there is also an additional $1 trillion that is money that is kept abroad that is not brought back into this country and, therefore, is not taxed. Just a little portion of that money being kept overseas could be brought in and used in productive activities in the United States. But it would be brought in as income instead of housed in one three-story building in the Cayman Islands for 18,000 corporations, where all it is is a residence for a corporation to use to avoid U.S. taxes.

Now, if we are going to do anything serious about lowering the deficit, we are going to have to try to stop this nonsense that is going on. In the case of tax preferences, the tax expenditures, the $14 trillion, the Senate, in an overwhelming vote a couple of weeks ago, actually attacked one of those tax preferences.

Remember when we voted something like 95 to 5 here to get rid of the subsidy on ethanol made from corn? It was a subsidy put in years ago to encourage ethanol made from corn as a way of blending it with gasoline that would then lessen our reliance on oil, particularly foreign oil. But now we know we can make ethanol from a whole bunch of other things, and it doesn't have to be making ethanol from something that we eat, which all it was doing was driving the price of corn higher and, of course, corn is being used as a feed in the feed lots and, therefore, the meat products that the American consumer was getting at the grocery store went much higher in price.

So we realized here was a tax subsidy, a tax preference, in other words, a tax expenditure, that had outlived its usefulness. There are $14 trillion of these tax preferences that are, in effect, for the next decade, and it would not be an unreasonable question to ask: Could we reduce those tax preferences just a little bit? If you reduced them, just 17 percent of all those tax preferences, you would produce $2 trillion. If that $1 trillion that is kept overseas--if you could stop some of those laws that keep foreign income held by U.S. companies abroad, if you could just tax a little bit of that, then we could even lower the percentage that we needed to get into the tax expenditures.

Now, there are some tax expenditures that are obviously very popular and very necessary. Charitable contributions, which include contributions to churches, they get a charitable deduction that you deduct from your overall income in order to get your adjusted gross income. From that you subtract the various deductions you have to get to your taxable income. Clearly, giving charitable contributions is an activity that we want to encourage, and we encourage that in the Tax Code.

Another example is, you own a home. You go to the bank, you get a mortgage, the mortgage payments that include principal and interest. You are able to deduct the interest that you are paying on that mortgage, and that is a tax preference. It was originally put in to encourage home ownership. Well, should that preference continue for those who don't need the help?

I think these are questions. So if we start just doing little things with this $14 trillion of tax preferences, we can make major reductions in the annual deficit.

Let me give another example: Oil and gas. There are a lot of tax preferences for the oil and gas industry. Normally, when a business goes in and provides capital to get a business up and going, that capital equipment is allowed to be deducted over the life of that piece of equipment.

Well, so much of oil and gas equipment is allowed to be written off in the very first year as an expense of doing business in that first year. That is just one other example. So if we look at it, are we capable of taking $14 trillion of tax preferences--some people call them tax expenditures; some people call them tax giveaways--and, therefore, reduce those, especially the ones that are ineffective and inefficient, even though it is going to step on somebody's toes? Some special interest that has that tax preference, they are not going to like it. They want their goodies. But for the purpose of balancing the budget, for the purpose of bringing this deficit down so we can get on the road to fiscal order instead of the fiscal chaos that we have now, is that not a legitimate question to ask and a legitimate road to go down?

No less than one of the senior economic advisers to President Reagan--his name is Martin Feldstein. He was a Harvard professor and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Reagan. I want you to see what he says about reducing tax expenditures.

Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce

government spending. Eliminating tax expenditures does not

increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving,

investment or risk-taking. It would also increase overall

economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort

private spending decisions. And eliminating or consolidating

the large number of overlapping tax-based subsidies would

also greatly simplify tax filing. In short, cutting tax

expenditures is not at all like other ways of raising

revenue.

Martin Feldstein, well regarded in conservative circles.

With this crisis looming, why can't we get people to recognize that if we want balance, they have to give, too, and here is a good way. I want to expand on this--another way we could do it.

We could actually, as the Simpson-Bowles commission suggested, lower these tax expenditures Martin Feldstein is talking about. We could even take that additional revenue and pour it into the rest of the Tax Code and lower the tax rates for everybody, including corporate tax rates, and in the process we could also simplify the Tax Code into three tax brackets. All of the tax brackets would be lowered if we got rid of some of those tax expenditures. There are multiple ways we can use this, and in the process, then, we are starting some serious tax reform.

The Senator from North Dakota has laid this out. He has explained this to the Senate. He has the unanimous support of the majority of the Senate Budget Committee. He has the near-unanimous support of the entire majority in the U.S. Senate. He has explained this to the President and to the Vice President.

Of course, one of the easy ways to react to this is, well, there is not enough time. If we want to do major tax reform and tax simplification for the sake of our consumers, there sure is time because we could solve this debt ceiling crisis with a commitment down the line to doing just exactly what I have talked about.

As we are in this maelstrom of all of these different ideas going around about what we are going to do before August 2 so the debt ceiling can be raised and so the country can pay its bills, I have heard about some disturbing things out there on the horizon. One is that Social Security is going to get whacked and that Medicare is going to get whacked.

By the way, what the Budget Committee is proposing does not whack Social Security or Medicare providers. In the first place, Social Security is not in financial trouble in the foreseeable future. It is not until the late 2030s that it starts to get into difficulty. It is around 2035 that it would not, in that year, be able to pay 100 percent of its payments. We can correct that before then.

Our problem is now. Our problem is this next decade of bringing this budget on a path toward balance and bringing the annual deficit down to a much lower percentage of gross domestic product.

The budget I have just outlined, that is the work product of the Senate Budget Committee chairman, brings it down at the end of the decade to 1.8 percent--the deficit--to GDP. Anytime we get below 3 percent of the deficit being a percentage of GDP, we are on the path to fiscal stability, and we would be moving toward that position of balance--a position, by the way, we enjoyed 11 years ago because we were in surplus. Eleven years ago, we had 4 years of surplus in a row, but we started enacting policies--and, I might say, not with the vote of this Senator--that caused the revenues to drop off considerably. Then, of course, when we got in the situation where we started increasing expenditures for one reason or another--increasing expenditures for national defense, for two wars--and those were wars we were not paying for with a revenue source; in fact, we were just going out and borrowing the money.

So this brings me now to Medicare and Social Security. It might make some people in Washington, DC, feel good to whack Medicare. It certainly wouldn't make this Senator feel good. It certainly wouldn't make an awful lot--as a matter of fact, some 45 million senior citizens in this country are on Medicare, some of whom are living from hand to mouth, from Social Security check to Social Security check, and from Medicare reimbursement to Medicare reimbursement for their health care. It certainly wouldn't make them feel good. And it is not going to do anything immediately for the deficit we are having to confront. So why trade off, saying we are going to whack these two programs and not attack things such as tax expenditures that are inefficient and don't produce what they are supposed to do via the incentives in the Tax Code? It simply doesn't make sense.

Oh, by the way, isn't it interesting, isn't it almost ironic that the people who are now attacking Medicare and saying we have to whack it are the very people who were criticizing us 2 years ago in the health care bill when we eliminated $\1/2\ trillion of inefficiencies and overpayments out of Medicare to put the program on a more financially solvent path? And they were the very ones who were criticizing us for taking that money out of Medicare. Well, I say to my colleagues, we already took on Medicare, so we ought to get down to the hard choices of budget deficit reduction, which means cutting spending and getting rid of some of these tax expenditures so we can start bringing our budget into balance.

My final subject is Social Security. Now, why in the world would we want to scare the bejabbers out of 45 million senior citizens of this country, some of whom literally are living hand to mouth and from Social Security check to Social Security check and some of whom cannot afford the cost of drugs even partially provided for through Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit? I don't think we want to do that.

As we get closer to August 2, I am hearing--and I hope every other Senator is hearing from all of these senior citizens and these disabled workers who are relying on Social Security--that they are concerned about Washington's failure to get its house in order, and if we fail to get our house in order, it is going to threaten the very source of income they count on. So to risk a government default and to say the only way we can do it is by taking it out of Social Security is not going to do anything for us in reducing the deficit over the next decade, which is the problem at hand.

Yesterday, the President was asked if he could tell the folks at home that no matter what happens, Social Security checks are going to go out the day after the government is supposedly going to go into default. Do my colleagues remember what the President said? He said: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3 if we haven't resolved this issue because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.

So the people who are relying on a fixed income of Social Security to survive--Social Security payments are more than just a government statistic. For them, Social Security is more than just a Federal outlay or an entitlement expenditure. There are almost 4 million Social Security beneficiaries in my State. I can tell my colleagues that their Social Security pays the rent, it pays for the groceries, and it helps pay their medical copays. It helps pay for that over and above what is provided in Medicare.

It is interesting, these speeches I hear. It is all ``it is your fault, and it is your fault, and it is the other guy's fault, and it is so partisan, and it is so ideologically rigid.'' The only way we are going to solve something that is as tangled up as this is for people of good will to be willing to respect the other fellow's point of view and come together and build consensus to find a workable solution.

So as we get closer--and we can almost hear the background music; it is getting more ominous day by day as the clock ticks down to August 2--there is something we can do about it. The threat that Social Security payments could be delayed should not be used as a weapon to force a slash-and-burn cut to these entitlements. I said 45 million earlier; it is actually 56 million retirees who rely on these payments.

A recent report from the Congressional Research Service states:

Under normal procedures Treasury pays Social Security

benefits from the General Fund and offsets this by redeeming

an equivalent amount of the Social Security Trust Funds'

holdings of government debt. Treasury now may need to issue

new public debt to raise the cash needed to pay benefits.

Treasury may be unable to issue new public debt, however,

because of the debt limit.

In other words, if the debt ceiling is not raised, Social Security benefits could be delayed or jeopardized. So perhaps what we ought to do is enact some legislation that takes Social Security out of the equation in the event we don't reach a deal on the debt ceiling by August 2.

In the past, the President and the Congress have agreed to exempt Social Security from the debt ceiling in order to ensure that the payments go out to Social Security recipients. As a matter of fact, as recently as 1996, Treasury reported it had insufficient cash to pay Social Security benefits in March of that year. In response, Congress then passed--and it was a bipartisan Congress; it was headed by a majority of the Republican Party, and there was a Democratic President, President Clinton. They passed--and it was signed into law--a measure that provided the Treasury with temporary authority to issue securities to the public in the amount equal to the Social Security benefit payments due.

I will conclude by pointing out that after that was done in 1996, Congress later extended the borrowing authority for an additional 2 weeks.

I believe we should use what we know works and not play games with Social Security benefits. So I am introducing some legislation, and I am introducing it today. It is called the Social Security Benefit Protection Act. What it suggests is the way we ought to go. Now, I know we are not going to take up and pass this legislation, but I have a means by which I can get this idea out. What it does is guarantee that the Social Security Administration will be able to continue paying Social Security benefits to retirees, survivors, and disabled workers regardless of what happens to this political gridlock here in Washington.

Similar to the 1996 legislation, this legislation gives the Treasury Department temporary authority to issue new debt to ensure the payments can be made to Social Security beneficiaries, but only to the extent necessary to cover the needs of the Social Security Program.

I urge our colleagues to try to come together and give the assurances to millions of retirees that they are not going to be whacked and, especially so, they are not going to be whacked out of political gridlock by all the rest of us for these excessive reasons. I urge my colleagues to take a look at the ideas in this legislation that I have filed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am in somewhat of a unique position as a returning Senator after being out of Congress for 12 years. I never contemplated running for the Senate again or being back on this floor in any capacity except as a former Senator, but I had a chance to do it over, I guess is the best phrase, and assess what is important and why I am here.

I ran for only one reason. I am deeply concerned about the direction of our country and our plunge into debt. I want to try and avoid coming here and assessing blame, but rather set aside who is responsible. I want us to avoid the politics of all this and simply recognize this is the situation we face. Our fiscal situation has potentially dire consequences for the future of this country, not just for our children and grandchildren, but even for this generation.

Our economy is not in good shape. We still have not recovered from one of the deepest recessions since the Great Depression. There are a lot of people out of work. The official unemployment number is 9.2 percent. The real number is a lot higher than that because many people have given up looking for work, or they extended their time in school because they know that if they graduate and get out into the job market they are not going to be able to find work in the area they are trained for, or perhaps in any area. A lot of people have tried and tried and simply cannot find work.

It is clear and I think there is a consensus--if not total consensus at least pretty close to total consensus--that we simply have run out of money. As a government we have made promises that we can no longer afford to pay for and fulfill, without serious financial restructuring. We have enjoyed a lot of largess and a lot of prosperity in the past. As a result, commitments were made for spending in discretionary programs, building highways, and sewer systems, etc.--a lot of good things but things we simply no longer can afford.

We see this happening across the world. There has been a 60-year spurt or commitment to credit and now the money has run out to pay for all that. Whether it is southern Europe, other parts of the world or the United States, this is a very difficult situation. For the last 6 or 7 months a lot of us have worked very hard to try to find a solution. We are now in the month of July, and we are approaching the date in which we reach our debt limit. We no longer can continue to borrow without raising that limit.

About 40 percent of everything we spend now has to be borrowed. That is unsustainable. We are told that funding for the basic programs that help the senior citizens of our country enjoy the rest of their lives-- Medicare and Social Security--are drying up, and it will not be long before either benefits have to be cut or programs become insolvent. No one here wants to see that happen. What we do want to see happen, though, are necessary steps to preserve those programs for the future.

This crisis is occurring all over the world. We are watching it take place as it creeps through different countries, and now we are facing that. Whether it is a liberal economist or conservative economist or someone in between, or someone with no political interest, there is consensus that we have to take action and we need to take it now. We cannot postpone it. We have been doing this for years.

We all knew the baby boomers would retire and put tremendous pressure on our budget, and that is exactly what has happened. The quicker we take action, the less painful it will be. It is going to be painful because we have put fixing this problem off for so long.

For 6 or 7 months there has been a sincere effort by a lot of people to solve this problem--Republicans and Democrats. These are people who genuinely have concern for the future of this country and believe we need to address these issues, as painful as they are. It goes against political instincts of preparing and positioning oneself for reelection, whether it is 2012 or beyond.

But as I said from the beginning, we must find a way to transcend politics

and the 2012 election. Unfortunately, the closer we get to the crisis, the more we see politicians positioning themselves so as not to be blamed.

The reason we came here was not to position ourselves politically so we can succeed in the next election. The reason we came was to deal with the problem in front of us right now and that needs to be addressed right now. What is the rough consensus? The rough consensus is that if we don't have at least, over the next 10 years, $4 trillion to $6 trillion of cuts in discretionary spending and in some of the mandatory programs, we are not going to have a credible program the financial world will be able to look at and say: You can still trust in the value of the dollar and ability to continue viewing America as a safe haven to place investments.

There is a consensus that unless we make structural changes--not just cuts and nicks and little slices here and there, but structural changes--in the entitlement programs, they will not be solvent in the years ahead. Then we will have to turn to those senior citizens and beneficiaries and low-income people and say: I am sorry. We simply cannot pay you what we had committed to pay you. Your benefits are going to have to be reduced, or we are going to have to raise taxes to pay for it.

Without comprehensive tax reform, we are not going to have the kind of package we need to create a dynamic, growing economy that can solve some of our revenue problems. It is not just cutting, it is not just growth, but it is a combination of those items and structural reform that is necessary in a package, and that is what we have been debating: how to get there.

What is disturbing to me lately is that we have shifted away from that central focus, and now we are focusing on who will take the blame when we default or don't default on August 2. There is a lot of political posturing around here. This is not about corporate jets. It is not about all these ads out there and mailings and so forth saying: Congress is going to take away your Social Security. Congress is going to slash your Medicare benefits.

I guess I am asking that we acknowledge the reality of the situation we are in, that we do our very best to put this above the politics of 2012, and work to find some sensible solution to all of this.

I believe comprehensive tax reform can potentially provide a way to address the need for revenue and the need for growth. As we know, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of special expenditures, exemptions, subsidies, credits in the Tax Code that were put in for the few and not for the many, that have complicated our Tax Code to the point where no one can understand it except for someone with an advanced degree in accounting or law.

So I believe tax reform is essential as a part of whatever reform package we finally come up with to address the debt. Senator Wyden and I, on a bipartisan basis--a Democrat from Oregon, a Republican from Indiana--have put together a comprehensive tax reform package. We don't call it perfect. We are open to suggestions. But it eliminates those special exemptions and uses the revenues gained from cutting loopholes to lower tax rates for Americans. Our corporations pay the highest corporate tax rate of every one of our global competitors except one. There are 36 countries that compete and sell their products around the world, and we are 35 out of 36 when it comes to our tax rate. We want to level playing field with the rest of them because we think we can outcompete, and that will be a significant and positive impact on our economy. So using those revenues from eliminating loopholes as a way of lowering tax rates and addressing some of the needs we have is certainly something we ought to be exploring.

Lastly, let me just say we need to focus on the reality of the situation in a personal way because we get caught up in numbers, and we get caught up in generalities. What are we trying to do? We are trying to get this economy moving again so people who have been searching for work for 2 and 3 years can get their jobs back; so young couples who wish to raise a family have the opportunity to buy a home; so parents who are saving and trying to get their children into good schools for postsecondary education have the ability to do that; so college graduates can come out of school with a degree and find a place to work and begin a career.

We owe it to the people of our country who are suffering right now, and there are many. We owe it to this Nation that has provided so much opportunity and so much prosperity for so many people. No country in the world has come close to what America has achieved. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren who will inherit what we have done or not done. The reality is, we are going to transfer a debt load onto our children and future generations that they may not be able to overcome. I don't want to leave that legacy. I don't want to be part of a generation that does that. So I think it is time for us to stand up and do what is necessary to address this problem.

Letters and emails from Indiana are running 100 to 1 in favor of cutting government, and running 100 to 1 against cutting anything in Social Security or Medicare. I have people coming into my office every day saying: We know we have to get our fiscal house in order, but let me tell you why our program needs to be exempted.

As politicians, we want to say yes to people. As responsible, elected officials faced with a very difficult situation, we have to, with compassion, look at people and say: No, we are not able to do this. We are not able to afford this, but we are taking this action today so we can afford it in the future. We are taking action now so we can leave future generations with the same types of opportunities our generation has enjoyed and the benefits that come from living in America. That may cost some people their elections. There are a number of people here who are willing to sacrifice for that purpose.

Do we want to leave and say: Well, I survived all these years unscathed politically, or do we want to leave here saying at the right time we did the right thing? At the time of crisis, at a time when our country desperately needed us to come together to address this very serious problem that could plunge our country into a deep recession, if not depression, at a time when financial institutions around the world are fragile, at a time when wars and conflicts are popping up all over the globe, did we do the right thing? What do we want our legacy to be regardless of the consequences?

We are 2 or 3 weeks away from defaulting on our debt. There are a lot of excuses around here about that and some even think it will not have many consequences. It will. The idea of using that as leverage to gain what we need to do doesn't appear to have worked.

I think if we keep our focus simply on default or not default, we still have a major problem. Just simply finding a way to get through this and raising the debt limit does not solve the underlying problem. That has to be addressed. I wish we had been able to do that because the situation is dire. We cannot wait until 2013. We need to do it now.

So here I am. I don't have answers. I have some guidelines from people who know a lot more about this than I do, people who do not have a political stake in this in terms of what they think we need to do to put together a package. We need a plan that has credibility with the financial world, so that what has happened in Greece, Portugal and Ireland and maybe now in Italy or Spain, and other places in the world will not happen here because we have restored some confidence and faith in the American people and the investment see the United States as a safe haven for their money. We need credibility so others know we have seen the problem, we have recognized it, we have taken meaningful steps, and while it will be painful and take time--America has come through.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: America always will do the right thing after it has tried all the wrong things. Well, we spent a lot of years doing the wrong things and not recognizing that we were building up an unsustainable fiscal situation that would come back to haunt us. We have tried a lot of methods and postponements and deferments and everything else. What we have not done is stand up to the problem we have and do what is necessary, take this above politics, and do what is right for America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for--well, it will not be 20 minutes but let me ask for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. President, nothing is more important in the short term than resolving our debt limit impasse, and I would urge my colleagues to take Social Security out of their gun sights. It has not contributed to our debt or deficits.

I would urge my colleagues to focus not on Medicare benefit cuts but, rather, on health care system reforms that will save not only Medicare and Medicaid costs but private health care and health insurance costs as well--cost savings throughout the system. I would urge my colleagues to yield a bit on defending every tax loophole, every tax gimmick and tax preference as if they were tax hikes. They are not. They are just not. They are earmarks in the Tax Code. They are special benefits in which ordinary Americans usually do not share, and we should not put the special interests first, ahead of ordinary Americans who did not get special tax deals.

But as important as all of that is in the short term, there are some things that are more important in the long term than our debt limit, and I rise to speak about one.

In April of this year a group of scientific experts came together to discuss an issue with consequences that will influence the planet and our American society for generations to come. They met at the University of Oxford to discuss the current state, and eventual fate, of our oceans. ``The ocean,'' as stated in the workshop's summary report, ``is the largest ecosystem on Earth, supports us and maintains our world in a habitable condition.''

For 3 days, 27 scientists representing 18 prominent research and conservation organizations worldwide, reviewed the latest findings on ocean stressors--and in particular the consequences of multiple, combined stressors--for marine life and for the human population. The scientists found that stressors in combination magnify the negative effect of each one occurring alone.

Based on this determination, the scientists at this meeting concluded:

We have underestimated the overall risks and that the whole

of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts,

and that degradation is now happening at a faster rate than

predicted.

In short, things for the ocean are worse than we thought and getting worse faster than expected.

All too often, we take for granted the fact that our oceans feed us, support our coastal communities, and drive our tourism economies. Unfortunately, these ocean ecosystems are severely stressed, from nutrient pollution, chemical dumping, overfishing, marine debris, invasions of exotic species, warming waters and, perhaps most alarming, a drop in ocean pH to levels not seen for more than 8,000 centuries: acidification of our oceans. Individually, these stressors would be cause for concern. In combination with each other, this expert group of scientists concluded, they are driving our ocean toward the brink of a mass extinction and ecosystem collapse.

One example of the multiplier effect on marine life comes from plastic debris and toxic chemicals. Plastics make their way as trash into the ocean where they break down into small particles that are consumed by marine life, like sea turtles, sea birds, and microscopic plankton. Consumption of plastic alone becomes fatal for marine life, when they consume so much indigestible material that they stop eating all together and starve to death. But the surfaces of plastic particles also easily absorb chemical pollutants, so they amplify the load of chemical pollution on these creatures.

The levels of chemical pollution are themselves on the rise in even the most remote seas where no human development exists. Many of these chemical pollutants, like flame retardants and fluorinated compounds are poured down home sinks, or expelled as waste from industrial facilities, directly into the ocean. Plants and animals have not evolved ways to break down these new synthetic compounds, so they ``bioaccumulate,'' meaning they become increasingly concentrated as they are passed up the food chain, or passed in marine mammals from mothers to calves in their milk, until many of our top oceanic predators, our most majestic creatures, are now swimming toxic waste.

Another example of what the scientists call ``negatively synergistic'' environmental harms is the combination of destructive fishing practices, nutrient runoff, and the presence of hormone- disrupting pharmaceuticals in our wastewater on coral reefs. But now, these precious ecosystems, known as the rainforests of the sea, do not have to just contend with overfishing, nutrient, and wastewater pollution. Now the reefs, like the mangroves, salt marsh estuaries, and seagrass meadows, in their damaged and less resilient state, must also face a rapidly changing climate and its dual effects of ocean warming and acidification. Coral reefs are more likely to bleach when exposed to both increased temperature and acidification than if they are exposed to either condition separately.

Add both conditions to pre-existing stressors, and 35 percent of the world's reefs are classified as in a critical or threatened stage. Scientific projections indicate that without urgent action, coral reef ecosystems could be eliminated in 30-50 years.

The death and decline of coral reefs, the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, dramatically impairs the reproduction and development of hundreds of other species that call them home. When a reef ecosystem collapses and does not recover, it quickly becomes dominated by algae, and the phenomenal biodiversity once present disappears. For human society, this is accompanied by a loss of food, loss of income, and damage to the billion-dollar per year tourist industries.

The workshop report echoes the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed science and literature on climate change and carbon pollution, stating that:

Human actions have resulted in warming and acidification of

the oceans and are now causing increased hypoxia (lack of

oxygen). Studies of the Earth's past indicate that these are

the three symptoms . . . associated with each of the previous

five mass extinctions on Earth.

We are now talking about changes whose precedents can only be found in geologic time. I have often said how we have veered outside of the bandwidth of carbon concentration that has prevailed for 800,000 years. This comparison is to mass ocean extinction events 55 and 251 million years ago. Back then, the rates of carbon entering the atmosphere in the lead-up to these extinctions are estimated to be 2.2 and 1.2 gigatons of carbon per year, respectively, over several thousand years. But, as this new report identifies, ``Both these estimates are dwarfed in comparison to today's emissions of roughly 30 Gt of CO2 per year.'' Such a massive dumping of carbon pollution into our atmosphere creates the prospect of devastating damage to our oceans.

And, in fact, we may already be witnessing this devastation. In one breathtaking part of the report, the scientists remark that, ``The speeds of many negative changes to the ocean are near to or are tracking the worst-case scenarios from the IPCC and other predictions.'' The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, created several scenarios predicting how the Earth's natural systems could respond to ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This report says observations are worse than the IPCC's worse case scenarios. The predictions of the IPCC have received a lot of special-interest-sponsored mockery on this floor, but these are not predictions now, they are observations. For instance, the decrease in Arctic Sea ice cover and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold enough water to

raise sea levels by more than 200 ft, are actually occurring, and faster than expected. Correspondingly, sea levels are rising.

Likewise, the report observes that ``acidification is occurring faster than in the past 55 million years, and with the added man-made stressors of overfishing and pollution undermining ocean resilience.''

These observations should be sobering. Not only are the changes great, but they are happening so quickly that marine life cannot adapt.

Numerically, the average ocean pH has decreased from 8.2 to 8.1 since the industrialized revolution. This seems like a small change, but the pH scale is logarithmic, so the change is profound. If that same amount of change in pH occurred in our blood, we could suffer respiratory or kidney failure. It is not difficult to imagine how this change has huge consequences for marine life and especially the calcifying organisms, like coral reefs, shellfish, and plankton, which are increasingly becoming soluble in their environment as it becomes increasingly acidic. If this unprecedented rate of change in ocean pH continues it could mean an almost 200 percent decrease by mid century. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are on the verge of an ecosystem collapse that we could see happen in a single generation.

Though mass extinction events have occurred in the past, workshop participants state that, ``comparing the current environmental change with these events is difficult because the rates of environmental change are unprecedented. It is therefore difficult to predict what the outcome of the current anthropogenic experiment will be.'' However, the report continues: ``it can be said that we are pushing the Earth system to its limits.''

The workshop participants concluded, ``Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean.'' Again, they mean in geologic time.

So what will we do? This is not the first report to state with certainty that our oceans, and thus our ocean dependent populations and economies, are in serious jeopardy. In 2003 the Pew Ocean Commission report led off with the following, ``America's oceans are in crisis and the stakes could not be higher.'' In 2004, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, as mandated by Congress in the Oceans Act of 2000, published their final report and pronounced, ``The importance of our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes cannot be overstated; they are critical to the very existence and wellbeing of the nation and its people. Yet, as the 21st century dawns, it is clear that these invaluable and life- sustaining assets are vulnerable to the activities of humans.''

Nearly two centuries ago, the poet Byron could write:

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll.

Ten-thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin--his control

Stops with the shore.

Well, no more. Now, in 2011, this international group of scientists reminds us that we are now marking the oceans with ruin and that ``the human interactions with the ocean must change,'' to quote their report, ``to sustainable management of all activities that impinge marine ecosystems.''

Mr. President, we must work together to preserve and protect the ocean ecosystems we rely on so heavily, for we too are greater than the sum of our parts. In a bipartisan effort, Senator Snowe and I have introduced the National Endowment for the Oceans to provide dedicated funding for ocean and coastal research, restoration, protection, and conservation. Too often, the knowledge and the information we need to better protect and understand these ecosystems comes too late or comes not at all. We hope to change that.

Together, we can still turn the tide to protect our ocean and our society, but if we are to have any chance, we must act soon, and we must make progress quickly. I look forward to working with my colleagues to confront these looming challenges.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.