Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2011, Part IV

Madam President, I wanted to spend some time talking about what is coming forth Saturday morning. As a member of the Gang of 6, I am wanting us to solve our problem. But the best way to solve that problem would be the bill that is going to be voted on Saturday morning. Why is

that? We are borrowing $4 billion a day, and I have enough gray hair to know that regardless of all the good intention and regardless of all the statements of the Members on the floor that we will never live within our means in Washington until we are forced to live within our means, and just because a constitutional amendment would take probably 4 years to pass--given what the American people think about it--isn't a reason not to go on and do it no matter what we do about our short-term problem coming up August 2. So the very fact people would say we are not going to pass the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act because it won't happen in a period of time is exactly the same approach that got us $14.3 trillion in debt, that has our credit rating at risk and puts us in the kind of problems we have today.

I have offered a plan I think is even better. I know not many of my colleagues will, but here is a plan to cut $9 trillion over the next 10 years. It is the only plan that specifically states what you would cut, where you would cut it, and why you would cut it. It is backed up with the facts. Nobody else can claim it. You don't have to like all of them, but what we do know is if something doesn't come out of this body between now and August 2 that cuts at least $4 trillion, this country is going to see significantly increased interest rates as a cost of that. What so often happens is you hear wonderful words and wonderful speeches on the Senate floor but nobody putting their name on where you would cut. Well, I put my name on $9 trillion worth of cuts. It pinches everybody in this country. Everybody. But you know what. We are all in this. We have lived for the last 30 years on the backs of those who are going to pay the taxes for the next 30 years. It is time we start paying back. It is time we start giving back.

The Senate is a different place today than when I came to the Senate. When I came to the Senate, the idea was not to block legislation but to discuss legislation, to have the courage and the backbone to vote against something and go home and tell your constituents why you voted against it, to offer amendments you thought would improve legislation and defend those amendments, and to vote for a bill you thought was in the best interest of the country and be able to defend that. What has happened in the last 3\1/2\ years in the Senate is we don't vote because the politicians of the Senate don't want to go home and explain their positions. So if you are not voting, you are not accountable and you are not responsible.

That type of behavior is exactly the opposite behavior we need to have. So Saturday morning, when Members of the Senate vote against proceeding to cut, cap, and balance, they will display either courage or cowardice. I am not talking about simple words. There is only one plan that has passed the House of Representatives that raises the debt limit and addresses what is said to be needed by the rating agencies, and that is cut, cap, and balance. And to not allow proceeding to that debate whether you agree with it or not--you can change it through amendments. You have the votes to change it through amendments. But to not allow it to proceed so the American people can see their elected Senators and their real positions and what they know has to be done-- you know, what happens around here is we say things so we can protect our political careers. You know what that does? We are not only bankrupting financially, we are bankrupting our country's history and heritage. The heritage of this country was sacrifice, and that means even sacrifice of political careers to do the right thing right now for the country.

I believe if you were to pass something like this, we would lower our debt by at least $2 trillion over the next 10 years, the economy would absolutely boom, and we would quit undermining self-reliance and enforcing dependency. We would hold accountable a Pentagon that is wasteful, we would eliminate duplication of hundreds of programs that all do the same thing with multiple layers of redundancy and administrative bureaucracy. If we were to do that, this proposal will never come to a vote in the Senate nor any of the aspects of it because Senators don't want to make those hard choices, and that is what the debate about cut, cap, and balance is all about. It forces Senators to go back to embrace the heritage of this country and make the hard choices. If you don't pass a balanced budget amendment and you don't force the discipline, the political expediency of this country will continue to run and the problems will not be solved.

I would also say raising the debt limit doesn't have anything to do with our real problems. That is just the symptom of the problem. The problem is not living within our means. Somehow thinking the U.S. Government is different than all the State governments, all the city and county governments, every family in this country, every business in this country, and every other organization in this country that has to live within its means, I refuse to believe the American people will not hold Members of the Senate accountable for not giving them a chance to put those fixed parameters on us and their government for the future.

We are going to hear all sorts of reasons why we can't do that, why we won't do that, or we may not hear many at all. What we will see is voting against the procedure with no comment whatsoever. My plan is if that happens, to be all over this country to make sure every citizen of every State of every Senator who does not allow them to proceed is aware of that. I want to personally make them aware of that. Because what you are doing is denying the liberty and the freedom of this country to hold you accountable to do the right thing. So we are going to see.

I wanted to spend a few minutes saying that the only thing that is possible right now to solve the problems in front of us--even though I have endorsed a $9 trillion plan and $3.7 trillion plan--the only thing is this $6 trillion plan. It has passed the House of Representatives. They voted to increase the debt limit and they put significant cuts into our budget for next year. They put significant caps as we go forward and they said we have to vote to pass a balanced budget amendment. Right now that is the only thing that will get us out of a jam. You know what. That is not hard to do. The first point, we are going to cut another $111 billion at least next year, no matter whether that passes. We are going to cap spending in the years that go forward whether or not that bill passes. But the difference is as soon as we get our balance again, the politicians who don't want to make hard choices will be back to not making hard choices and we will get in trouble again. That is why it is absolutely critical that this country's citizens have the ability to hold us accountable within the parameters of living within our means.

We will hear all sorts of reasons why we can't do that, that it might hurt the poor. Nobody here wants to in any way intend anything other than support for those who cannot help themselves. That is their excuse, we can't do that. Well, let me tell you what is going to happen in our country. The very programs that help the poor are going to be diminished in the future through fiscal necessity when we are mandated to make cuts to be able to borrow more money. So it is a false statement because by not voting for a balanced budget amendment, what you are saying is I want to plan one thing but I know something else is going to happen.

I paraphrase a statement by Martin Luther King that I think describes this place more than anything I have ever known and it was this: Vanity asks the question: Is something popular? Cowardice asks the question: Is it expedient? Character asks the question: Is it true and right? We have tons of vanity. We have tons of cowardice. We limit ourselves on courage and character.

As we listen to the debate over the next 2 days on this motion to proceed on the only thing that will solve the problem in front of us today, I want my colleagues to listen for political expediency, I want my colleagues to listen for vanity, and then I want them to search hard for courage and character because we will see an absence of it from those who oppose this. They know this will solve the problem. They know this is one of the few things that can pass the House of Representatives. Yet we are not going to have it come to the floor for an amendment process, for a full debate, and for a vote. We are not going to allow it to have a vote because

we are political cowards. We do not want to truly address the problem because it might affect our political careers. That is a sad commentary on the heritage of this country--a sad commentary--but it is a commentary to be expected; otherwise, we would never have gotten into the position we are in today.

Let me talk about some details of what we can do. We are going to hear all sorts of reasons why we can't do things and all sorts of reasons why we couldn't come up with $9 trillion. But when the American people truly know what is going on--if they go and read about it in ``Back in Black''--when they find out about the background of all the waste, all the duplication, all the stupidity that goes on in our government, all the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility in bureaucratic agencies, all the silly decisions that get made that spend billions of dollars and don't help anything--the Tax Code. Tax earmarks and tax credit and tax expenditures are nothing but, most of the time, corporate welfare or socialism. The greatest tax in the world comes when we allow the Federal Reserve to print money which devalues our assets through inflation and the earnings on those assets. So the greatest tax in the world that is coming in America is we are going to devalue the dollar and inflation is going to go up and what we can earn on our assets is going to be limited by the interest rates, and the differential is that which we actually lose in real value of what we own every day.

The other thing I would point out is, through the tax earmarks and tax credits in our Tax Code, anybody who doesn't get one of those is actually paying for it. So if a person doesn't have an ``in'' up here, if a person doesn't have a lobbyist, if a person doesn't have some special interest looking out for them and they are not getting one of those, they are paying for them through the increased taxes. It is inherently unfair.

Let's look at duplication for a minute. It is interesting to look, as we have gone through the government programs in a detailed fashion, at the GAO report. We have 100 different programs with 100 sets of bureaucracies for surface transportation. Why do we have that? Because Congress has mismanaged. That is why. Because of expediency, because of vanity, because of wanting to get reelected, we create another program, another program, another program. It looks good and sounds good, but nobody ever does the research to see where they overlap. Nobody ever requires us to ask if this program is effective, and nobody ever looks at the Constitution to see if it fits with article I, section 8 of the Constitution--the enumerated powers we are supposed to live by and which we blow by all the time doing things.

Today, the Judiciary Committee passed a bill for State prisons called the Second Chance Act. When we passed it the first time, I finally let it go because it was supposed to be a demonstration and a limited program. It is now going to get reauthorized for 5 more years. It legitimately has zero role for the Federal Government, and we are going to spend $600 million which we don't have. We will borrow. It is well intended, but it is not our role. It is the States' role. We have hundreds of thousands of examples such as that, where we have ignored what the Constitution says so we can look good politically.

We have teacher quality programs. Teacher quality programs--82 different programs by the Federal Government to improve the quality of our teachers. Thomas Jefferson was truly the father of education in our country. He worked for years to establish the University of Virginia. He was committed to the fact that a great education will produce great benefits, not only for the individual with the education but for their family and our country as a whole. Here is what he said: For the Federal Government to become involved in education would require a change to the U.S. Constitution, and he happened to be one of the people who wrote it.

What have we done since the beginning of the Department of Education? We have spent $2.6 trillion on education in this country at the Federal level and every parameter measuring a metric on the progression of our kids in school is worse or the same after that $2.6 trillion. Hey, it is not working. The reason it is not working is a person can be a teacher at home and the Federal Government looks at that person and they don't know what to do, but we can hire that person to do the work in Washington and all of a sudden that person knows what they need to do. So we have this massive bureaucracy that has ruined our education because we spend all our money filling out forms and requirements and meeting mandates and we have taken the power and control of education away from the parents and teachers, the very people who care most about the success of the kids. So $2.6 trillion with nothing to show for it, other than for the politicians to feel good about themselves and to say we were doing something.

We have 88 different economic development programs, with $6 billion just in four of them. Not for 1 of those 88 programs is there a metric anywhere that says it is money well spent that gets a positive result for the country. There is anecdotal evidence that says it worked here or it worked there, but we don't know what we are doing. We are throwing money we don't have at things we don't know are working and when we go to vote for them to eliminate them, the Senate votes against it because it might bother their political position. It might bother their next election. We don't do it. We don't address it and do our job.

I will never forget in one of the committees I was on last year, two separate times bills were brought up in committee that were doing identical things that we were already doing in the agencies. The Senators and their staffs didn't know it. Had I not raised objections, we would have created more agencies.

Eighty programs for transportation assistance--80. If it is our role, why do we need 80? Oh, by the way, has anybody measured to see if any of the 80 actually work? The answer is no. We have none that have a report on whether they are effective to the goals of what they were set out to do because there is no oversight carried out by Congress. We were so busy earmarking for so many years, everybody forgot to check to see if what we intended to do is working, and we still aren't doing it.

We have 56 different programs to teach the American people to become financially literate--56. The Federal Government is teaching financial literacy when we can't balance our budget. We have multiple programs. We don't live within a confined budget. The first principle of financial literacy is living within your means. Yet we have this many programs--56--to teach American citizens to be financially literate.

Job training. Here is one of the best. This is great. We have 47 job training programs that cost $16 billion a year. All but three overlap one another. That is what the GAO says, and there is not a metric on one of them to see if they are working. When we talk to the people who go through the program, half of them say it is a waste, it is a joke. I have actually talked to them. Yet we are spending that kind of money, in excess of $15 billion a year, on job training programs. There is no question we need job training programs, but we need job training programs that work. Why would we need 47? So when somebody tells you we can't balance our budget, you ought to blow a hole right through them with your thought that says you obviously don't know what is going on in the Federal Government.

Homeless prevention/assistance, 20 different Federal programs. We should be helping people who need our help. I am not denying that. But how we help and the mechanisms of the way we help ought to be frugal, efficient, and effective.

I have served in Congress--I am in my 13th year, 6 years as a Congressman, 4 years out of here to get a breath of fresh air, and now my seventh year in the Senate. What I know is, we don't know what we are doing, and it is obvious looking at our budget. It is also obvious looking at the dysfunction of the Senate and the leadership in the Senate, that we--we haven't had a budget in 2 years. The one thing any financial counselor will tell you is the first thing you have to know is where you are and set up a plan. We have had no attempt to bring a budget to this body in well over 2\1/2\ years--no attempt. What does that tell us? It goes back to vanity. It goes back to cowardice. It goes back to

us not doing what we are intended to do because we care more about our position than we care about the country.

There are 18 programs to feed the hungry. We have 17 disaster response/preparedness, just in FEMA--17 different programs, of which 11 overlap. FEMA didn't set those up. The bureaucracy didn't create those; we did. Every one of these programs was created by a Member of Congress. So we can't blame administrations and we can't blame Presidents. What we have to do is blame Congress.

We have 130 overlapping programs in the Department of Agriculture; 18 overlapping programs in the Department of Commerce; 230 overlapping programs in the Department of Education; 17 in the Department of Energy; 36 in the Department of Human Services; 32 in the Department of Homeland Security; 60 in the Department of Housing and Urban Development; 40 in the Department of the Interior; 53 in the Department of Justice; 35 in the Department of Labor; 6 in the Department of State; and 180 governmentwide if we look at all economic development programs. We just listed the 88 that run through 4 of the agencies.

Is it any wonder we are going belly up? The problem is us. The problem is we have a solution now that has come to us from the House and we are not going to let that solution go forward because politically--politically--it is uncomfortable. Politically, we don't want to allow the people of this country to decide whether we ought to live within our means and put a bridle with a bit in our mouth that says, whoa, you are not going to continue to destroy the future of this country and the prospects for our children anymore.

When I came to the Senate, I came after having read a book called ``Running On Empty.'' It was written by a man by the name of Pete Peterson. He was bipartisan in his criticism of both parties, and he was absolutely accurate. We are in trouble because parties matter more than the country, because control matters more than the country, because political careers matter more than our children or our grandchildren.

So I go back to talk about what is possible. A lot of people would disagree with what is in here; this $9 trillion of what the House has sent us would take about 60 percent of it. But here is what I say to my colleagues who don't want to vote on a balanced budget amendment, don't want to vote on cut, cap, and balance. Where is your plan? I have listed 625 pages of specific cuts, elimination of duplication, elimination of waste, elimination of fraud, and 3,000 footnotes that looked at every program throughout the Federal programs--looked at every CRS report, looked at every OIG report, looked at every GAO report, looked at every OMB report, and looked at every other outside report we could find.

The fact is, we could solve our problems tomorrow, America. We could solve them tomorrow, with good old-fashioned common sense that the vast majority of Americans have and is sorely lacking here.

We do not have a fiscal crisis. We have a commonsense crisis in this body and in the leadership in Congress. We lack common sense, we lack sound judgment, and we need the hard bit of a bridle put on us through a balanced budget amendment to control us. Because human nature is human nature in whatever we do today, we will be back to our bad habits tomorrow. Even if we pass cuts, even if we cap spending, if we do not have a balanced budget amendment that forces us to live within the constraints of our revenue, we will be back here again.

What does that mean? That means the future of America is suspect. It does not have to be. We do not have to go the way of every other republic. We do not have to fail over fiscal issues. We can cheat history. The American people are the greatest people in the world because they are a blend of all the people in the world and they desire freedom and opportunity and that is limited because we have limited it.

We, through our profligate spending, our inattention to detail, our failure to do oversight, have undercut the potential of our country. Let's restore it. Let's restore it Saturday morning by moving on to this bill and allowing ourselves to have a debate, offer amendments, and truly debate--have what the Senate has not had in a year and a half: a real debate about the issues of our day and the reasons behind it.

But I would caution the American people. Remember what Martin Luther King said as you hear that debate: Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? But conscience and right and good asks, is it right?

I tell you, it is not right to have multiple programs doing the same thing, wasting our kids' future. It is not right for the Congress not to do oversight and eliminate programs. It is not right for us to spend money we do not have on things we do not absolutely need. It is not right for us to take the control of our children's education from the parents and teachers who have their best interests at heart and place it in a bureaucracy that has no compassion whatsoever, even though it feigns that it does. It is not right. It may be politically expedient, it may be popular to some people, but it does not make it right.

As you look at this, here is how you get $9 trillion, and you can pick any part of that to meet this cut, cap, and balance or you can come up with your own. But the fact is, nobody wants to lay on the table what they think. I have already been roundly criticized in the press for certain aspects of this by people who disagree. That is fine. I am planning on defending everything I put in here. With the best of my knowledge and a great staff that spent thousands upon thousands of hours on this, we came up with a way to solve America's problems, and we can do it.

America can be bright, can be growing, can be developing jobs, if we get the government out of the way and limit the role of the Federal Government.

I see my colleague from Delaware, one of my great friends. We hear that said a lot here, but he is a great friend. It is not the conventional, common greeting. I believe I am over my time. I will be back to the floor to finish this conversation.

But America needs to know we do not have any problem we cannot fix. What we lack are leaders who will fix it. That is our deficit. It is a deficit of courage. It is a deficit of will.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, thank you very much for this time to speak.

Before Dr. Coburn leaves the floor, I thank him for the kind things he just said. As to Tom Coburn and I--a lot of people say: Well, that is an unlikely duo who would end up working together as much as we have and actually having the sense of trust and friendship. There are things people certainly find in me not to like, and the same is true of all of us. But I would say, there is nobody in the Senate who cares more about getting our deficits under control. He and Dick Durbin have shown terrific courage and leadership, along with others in this so-called Gang of 6, and also as members of the deficit commission, in trying to get us to a comprehensive, bipartisan solution as to how we rein in the budget deficit without destroying our economy, making sure we do not pierce the debt ceiling and have our financial world begin to crumble around us. So I very much appreciate what he said today. I heard most of it, not all of it. I have had a chance to work with him in a number of areas.

What we try to do, and Senator McCaskill--who is presiding at this moment--what she tries to do, along with others of us who serve on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is we try to look in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government. Whether it is defense spending, entitlement spending, domestic spending, we look at the so-called tax expenditures, tax breaks, and so forth, and we look at all of them and ask this question: How can we get a better result? Whether it is health care, education, transportation, defense, how can we get a better result for less money or how can we get a better result for not much more money?

We need to do that across our government. We need to change, if you will, the culture in the Federal Government from sort of a culture of spendthrift--which a lot of people think we operate under--we have to change it to a culture of thrift and not just for a couple

weeks or a couple months or a couple years; I mean for as far as the eye can see, until these pages who are sitting in front of me--who are rising juniors in high school--until they are rising juniors in college and out of school and off into the world and well beyond that. That is what we need to do. That is part of our obligation.

One of the recommendations--I am going to go back to over 1 year ago when we voted on whether to create a deficit commission that would have a number of members who would be responsible--some elected, some not-- they would have a responsibility to look across the Federal Government and to come back to us at a date certain with ways to rein in the Federal deficit to get us back on a more fiscally sustainable and responsible track.

We voted in the Senate. Our Presiding Officer will recall not all the folks who were cosponsors of the legislation that created the deficit commission actually ended up voting for it. In fact, seven of them who were cosponsors--as I recall, I do not believe any of them were on this side of the aisle; I think they were on the other side of the aisle-- ended up voting against it, and we did not actually have the votes to create the deficit commission.

With that happening, a number of us encouraged the President to use his Executive powers to create one by Executive order. He did that. Last year, the deficit commission was created, and there were 18 people named to it. Madam President, 12 were elected, 6 were not, and he named 2 cochairs. One was Erskine Bowles.

Erskine Bowles, who is he? He used to be, in the second term of President Clinton's administration, Chief of Staff for President Clinton. Erskine was asked by President Clinton to negotiate the deficit reduction package with the Republican House and Senate. At that time, during those years, Republicans were in the majority in the House and Senate. President Clinton said: Erskine, go out and negotiate a deficit reduction deal, where some of the deficit reduction comes on the revenue side and some comes on the spending side, so we can follow up on, actually, an earlier deficit reduction package adopted in 1993 with only Democratic votes. But he said: Let's see if we can't actually balance our budget. We had not done that since 1968.

God bless Erskine Bowles and the folks he negotiated with too. He went to work in 1997 and came up with a deficit reduction package with 50 percent revenues, 50 percent spending that had everything on the table. A long story short, we ended up with a balanced budget--not 1, not 2, I think at least 3 years in a row at the end of the Clinton administration and handed off to a new administration balanced budget surpluses as for as the eye could see.

I remember Alan Greenspan testifying, I think, before the Banking Committee, when Alan Greenspan was the Federal Reserve Chairman. He said he was concerned at the time we were going to pay down our debt too soon, too fast. I mentioned to him later that concern was misplaced because we certainly did not pay down our deficit too fast. About starting 10 years ago, we turned black ink surpluses as far as the eye could see to red ink, to deficits as far as the eye could see.

A lot of people like to reinvent history. They say we did not do much to reduce deficits in the years from, say, 1993 to 2000. Actually, we had two big votes, one in 1993, with all Democrats--and I am not saying this in a partisan way--and one in 1997, where the Republicans in the House and the Senate actually negotiated in good faith with a Democratic President. With those two packages together, with a strong, robust economy, we balanced the budget not once, not twice, three times, created something like 21 million new jobs, and ended up for the decade ending in the year 2000 among the nations with a balanced budget and the most productive workforce on the face of the Earth. Those were halcyon days for our country. We need to get back to that.

So President Obama, naming the cochairs of the deficit commission, goes back to an earlier President and taps the same guy, Erskine Bowles, to be a coleader of the deficit commission.

On the Republican side, the President asked a guy a lot of people remember, Alan Simpson, a Republican Senator from Wyoming, here for a number of years, as maybe the funniest person who ever served in the Senate. He is also one of the most insightful, commonsense deficit hawks, and a great guy to be a partner with Erskine. They went together.

We had 12 Members of the House and Senate--6 Democrats, 6 Republicans--and some other folks from civilian life. Dave Cote, who is chairman and CEO of Honeywell, was among the private sector participants. But they worked for months and gathered input from all kinds of sources and came up with a broad-based plan that was recommended, adopted, endorsed by, if you will, 11 out of the 18 Commissioners. That was not the magic threshold of 14 before it actually would be the official recommendation of the Commission, but it was a majority, and it included 3 Republican Senators: Judd Gregg, who was then a Senator from New Hampshire, Tom Coburn, and Mike Crapo. I thought they were courageous, those Republican Senators.

On our side, among them included Kent Conrad and Dick Durbin, and I want to say Mark Warner, but I may be mistaken. Mark has been all over this stuff. I think he has been a real leader, but I am not sure if he was the third Democrat. Yes, the third Democrat was John Spratt, Democrat from South Carolina, chairman of the House Budget Committee. But anyway, those three Democrats and three Republicans basically agreed to a package and said: Let's reduce the deficit over the next 10 years by $4 trillion. Let's do it mostly on the spending side--two- thirds to three-quarters on the spending side--but let's have revenues as well.

They did not propose raising the rates. What they actually proposed was to reduce the rates for business, put us more in line with other advanced countries, bring us down from about 35 percent to somewhere roughly between 25 percent and 29 percent on the corporate income side, to reduce personal income tax rates for middle- to low-income families to as low as 8 percent, and to actually reduce the upper income rate from somewhere in the mid thirties to the high twenties. But at the same time we would bring down the rates. We would eliminate not all but a lot of the so-called tax expenditures.

The tax expenditures--what are tax expenditures? They are tax breaks. Some folks call them loopholes. Actually, a lot of them are meritorious: the mortgage deduction, deductions that will encourage people to make charitable donations, stuff that a lot of us will say: We don't want to change that. We don't want to get rid of that. But if you add all those tax expenditures over the next 10 years, do you know what that adds up to? Madam President, $15 trillion. Think about that. Add all the tax expenditures for the next 10 years, and it is $15 trillion. If we only were able to somehow reduce that by 8 or 9 percent, we would come up with the revenues that were called for in the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission to be part of a $4 trillion package.

In order to be able to bring the rates down, to lower the rates, broaden the base--in order to do that--we are going to have to take more than 8 or 9 percent out of tax expenditures. They may have to be reduced by as much as 50 percent.

I would argue, at the end of the day, we should preserve the deduction for interest we pay on mortgages, especially for our primary home. Also, to encourage charitable donations, I think we ought to preserve the deduction for charitable donations. There are others as well. But those are a couple of the good ones. But that was sort of the sum and substance they came up with.

Among the things the Bowles-Simpson commission also said we ought to have on the table for deficit reduction is entitlement programs.

What are entitlement programs? Things that we are entitled to by virtue of our age, our station in life. If we are 65 years of age and we have paid into Social Security and Medicare, we may be eligible--we will be eligible, in all likelihood, for Medicare. If we are disabled and totally unable to work, we will be eligible for Medicare even before age 65.

If we paid into Social Security for a number of years, we would be eligible for early retirement for Social Security at age 62. If we want to take it later, we can take it at age 67 for full

retirement benefits, which I think are roughly about $2,000 per month max, something like that.

Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security are entitlement programs. They said they should all be on the table. They did not propose using Social Security to balance the budget. But they did say: We have a long-term problem in Social Security with an imbalance between now, the amount of money that is coming into Social Security, and the amount of money that is going out.

As the baby boomers are starting to retire--my generation--we are paying out now, for the first time in a long time, more in Social Security benefits than we are raising. The reason is, for today it is roughly, for every one person receiving Social Security benefits there are about 2\1/2\ people working. Before long it will be for every one person receiving Social Security benefits, it will be two people working and paying into Social Security. The mismatch of inflow into the Social Security trust fund versus the outflow is going to get worse not better.

Sometime, a couple of decades down the road, we are going to start running out of money to pay 100 percent of Social Security benefits. We will not have to stop them all together, but we will have to get them a pretty serious haircut. I was a freshman Congressman, sworn in on January 3, 1983. The day I was sworn in at the other end of the Capitol, they told all of my freshman class: We are going to run out of money in Social Security. That is what they said.

We said: Well, when? In a couple of decades or when?

They said: No. This year. This year.

We said: Are we going to provide a haircut, reduce Social Security payments?

They said: No, we are going to stop making them because we are running out of money in the Social Security trust fund.

That was where we were on January 3, 1983. Thanks to the good work of the commission led by Alan Greenspan and others, but the good work they did then, they handed off to us not just a problem but a solution. Their solution was a combination of new sources of revenue for Social Security and some reductions in benefits, gradually raising the full retirement age over a period of 25 years from 65 to 67; requiring what people pay into Social Security, State and local employees, among others. A balanced plan.

Ronald Reagan, then President, provided political cover to Democrats to vote for that. Tip O'Neill, then Democratic Speaker of the House, provided cover for the Republicans to vote for that. Almost everybody, House and Senate, Democrat and Republican, drank the Kool-Aid and voted to preserve Social Security. It preserved it for another 25 years. We did not have to stop paying Social Security benefits that year or the next year or the next year after that. We had a significant surplus that has gone up in the Social Security trust fund.

But now it is beginning to be paid down. But the fund is going to be going in the wrong direction in the years to come. Over time the outflow will increase as my generation retires. The question is, Do we wait until the 2020s or 2030s to do something about it? I do not think we should. I swore, 28 years ago, I did not want to hand off to the next generation the problems we should solve today.

We have an opportunity not to use Social Security to balance the budget, but actually under the plan that has been now sort of reworked from the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, the opportunity to secure Social Security for the next 75 years, and to do it in a way that involves a number of, I think, relatively modest changes, some new revenues, and to gradually increasing the full retirement age from 67 to 68 by 2050, and from 68 to 69 by 2075.

Remember, when Social Security was first introduced, signed into law by FDR back in the 1930s, a person had to be 65 years of age in order to receive Social Security benefits. The average life expectancy then was just over age 60. Think about that. Back then a person had to live to 65 to draw benefits. The life expectancy for most people under 65 was between 60 and 65.

We are talking today about a life expectancy closer to 80. People still get early benefits for early retirement benefits under Social Security at age 62, but to gradually increase the full retirement age and make a couple of other changes as well that on the surface do not seem to be major changes--in fact, I think they are relatively modest. But when we put them all together over many years, it is a lot of dollars and a lot of people.

We can put Social Security on a safe footing for another 75 years. The idea is to actually kind of wall that off from the rest of the problems so we are basically preserving Social Security for a lot longer, for my lifespan and the lifespan of these young pages who are about 16 years of age, throughout their lifetimes as well.

On Medicare--let me talk about Medicare, health care for people 65 and over, people who are totally disabled under the age of 65 and are unable to work. We will spend this year about $550 billion in Medicare--about $550 billion. The amount of fraud in Medicare--Eric Holder, our Attorney General, tells us that fraud each year from Medicare is about $60 billion. That is roughly 10 percent of the amount of money we spend in Medicare--$60 billion. Roughly 10 percent.

GAO keeps track of something else that is called improper payments. One of the things GAO does is tell us every year how much we are making in improper payments in our Federal Government across the board. They said last year improper payments were about $125 billion. That is different from fraud. That is just overpayments, accounting mistakes, that sort of thing--$48 billion in improper payments for Medicare, and another $60 billion, according to Eric Holder, just from fraud.

If those numbers are true, $60 billion out of $550 billion in Medicare payments, that is actually more than 10 percent. Well, let's just say it is only 10 percent or close to 10 percent.

How are they doing over in the private sector? How are they doing in the private sector in terms of controlling their fraud? Well, their fraud costs are not 10 percent of their costs. That is probably not a surprise. They are not 9 percent. They are not 8 percent. They are not 7 percent. On balance, they are probably closer to 5 percent, and in some cases less than 5 percent. Roughly half, their fraud cost, over Medicare. Maybe they are doing something over in the private sector to control fraud in ways that we can learn from in the Federal Government. If we can learn those lessons, maybe we can provide better rules for less money in Medicare.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Improper payments. Last year Medicare had $48 billion in overpayments, mistakes, that kind of thing--$48 billion--separate from fraud. The President said we are going to cut it in half by the end of next year, from roughly $50 to $25 billion. If we do that for 10 years, 10 years times $25 billion, what does that add up to? $250 billion. That is real money around here, one-quarter of a trillion dollars.

If Eric Holder, our Attorney General, is right on the fraud side, we actually have $60 billion in fraud losses for Medicare in a year, if we could cut that in half--and we put in the health care law, the new health care law, all kinds of tools to do that kind of thing. If we can cut that in half, that would be a savings of $30 billion a year. Over 10 years that is $300 billion--$300 billion in potential fraud savings, $250 billion in potential savings by cutting in half improper payments for Medicare. That is $550 billion. That is over $\1/2\ trillion.

For those who say we have to savage Medicare and Medicaid in order to reduce outlays in them and achieve savings in Medicare and Medicaid, that is not correct. That is not true. Let me give you a sense for where some of the money is being lost in fraud.

I have learned a new term this last week called the ``death master file.'' Maybe you have heard that term before but did not remember it.

But we are trying to keep track of the folks who are dying so that we--when people die who are getting Social Security, we do not continue to send out Social Security checks forever for people who are dead. The same thing with folks who are eligible for other benefits, whether they are benefits for--whether they happen to be educational benefits or health benefits. We do not want to pay benefits for folks who, frankly, are not with us anymore.

By the same token, we want to make sure that when doctors die, we do not face the possibility that someone steals their provider ID number, their Medicare provider ID number, or their Medicaid provider ID number, if they have one, and write prescriptions for, among other things, controlled substances. What we have today are crooks, criminals, stealing provider ID numbers from dead doctors and using those to write prescriptions for controlled substances, which then feed the drug trade and provide profits to criminal groups.

The inspector general tells us in the most recent report in terms of buying advanced wheelchairs, we spent almost $200 million a few years ago. Over half of the payments did not meet the Medicare reimbursement rules for the wheelchairs.

We have to be smarter than that. Over in Japan--I have my friend from Florida sitting here waiting for me. He is cooling his jets, but he will not do it for long, so I will close with this: As he knows, we served together on the Finance Committee, and we used to serve together in the House. He is an old friend and a good one. But as we wrestled with health care reform legislation a year or two ago, one of the things we heard in our hearings was, over in Japan--we compete against Japan, friendly competition, but they are our competitor in a lot of ways: electronics, cars, any number of products, we compete against them. They spend about 8 percent of GDP for health care. We spend 16 percent. They get better results: longer life, longevity, less infant mortality. They get better results. They spend half as much, they get better results. They cover everybody. They cover everybody.

I would like to say, they cannot be that smart. As smart as they are in Japan, they cannot be that smart, and we cannot be that dumb. There are any number of ways that we can actually save money that does not reduce benefits in Medicare or Medicaid. We can learn from some of the things they are doing to uncover fraud and reduce improper payments in the private sector and just navigate some of those ideas over to the public sector, and find out what works.

I like to say--this was Alan Blinder's. Alan Blinder testified before us a couple of months ago, a month or two ago, as the Senator will remember.

Alan Blinder said: In terms of reducing the deficit, especially on health care costs, he said: I am not an expert on this thing, but here is my advice to you. Find out what works. Do more of that.

Think of that. Find out what works, do more of that. The converse of that would be, find out what does not work, do less of that. If we do that sort of thing, if we do it not just once or twice or for a couple of weeks or a couple of years, but we just make that a cultural change going forward, we will get us back on the right track. That is our challenge.

It is not just Democrats, it is not just Republicans, it is not just the Congress, we are in this with the President. We are all in this together.

In closing, that is a good thing for us to remember. We are all in this together. We do not have all of the smart ideas on this side, neither do the Republicans. It has to be a combination of spending and revenue. If we are smart about it, we will come out of this at the end of the day just fine.

I yield the floor to my friend from Florida.

Madam President, I listened both to Senator Wyden and to the remarks of Senator Blunt. They are both very thoughtful individuals, thoughtful Senators. I enjoy working with both of them.

Madam President, why are Republicans refusing to agree to raise the debt ceiling, something we have done 89 times since the 1930s, including 18 times under President Reagan? I might point out, the Republicans at that time controlled the White House and the Senate and the Democrats controlled the House.

Also, in September of 1987, President Ronald Reagan used his weekly radio address to urge Congress to increase the debt ceiling. He said-- and here it is. I thought it was worth printing out. Here are the exact words of Ronald Reagan spoken in September of 1987:

Unfortunately, Congress consistently brings the Government

to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This

brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and

those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits.

Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in

financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. The

United States has a special responsibility to itself and the

world to meet its obligations.

I didn't put it on here, but President Reagan went on:

It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability

and credibility--two things that set us apart from the rest

of the world.

Today, so many of our friends on the other side, Republicans, constantly invoke Ronald Reagan as a role model, almost as a kind of a patron saint. I wish they would heed his words and what he said in September of 1987.

I also remind my colleagues when President Reagan realized that his 1981 tax cuts were resulting in large deficits, he turned right around and supported corrective income tax increases in 1982 and 1984. That is right, President Reagan supported income tax increases in 1982 and 1984. In stark contrast to President Reagan's example, today Republicans reject any compromise that requires raising any new revenues from the wealthy.

One of the things we are talking about is eliminating tax expenditures. Those are special interest tax breaks that even Senator Coburn, on the Republican side, described as ``corporate welfare.'' As the distinguished chair of the Budget Committee said in his remarks earlier today, Senator Conrad pointed out that tax expenditures now total more than $1 trillion, more than all of our discretionary appropriations in the Federal budget.

Here is the difference. The discretionary appropriations for the most part go out for programs such as health, education, research, transportation, security, police, the judiciary--it goes out for that. What do tax expenditures go out for? They go out to support the wealthy. Here is why I say that. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans get 26 percent of the benefits from these tax expenditures. That is what Senator Conrad pointed out this morning.

Many of our Republican friends are perfectly willing, indeed eager, to slash Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, education, other programs that undergird the middle class. But they have made it clear they would rather default on the debt than agree to a compromise that requires shared sacrifice from the most privileged people in this country.

The legislation before us, which is called cut, cap, and balance, and which should be more fairly described, as Senator Conrad and others have said, as cut, cap, and kill Medicare, this bill that is before us now would enshrine in the Constitution a requirement that two-thirds supermajorities in both the House and Senate vote to raise revenues. Fifty-one percent could cut spending but it would take two-thirds to raise any revenues.

What does that mean? It means as a practical matter that it would permanently lock in the benefits of the current tax breaks for the wealthy, such as the outrageous 15-percent tax rate for hedge fund billionaires, and by building a firewall to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, this legislation would shift even more of the burden of deficit reduction onto the backs of middle-class Americans. Really, it should be cut, cap, and kill Medicare. That is what it is all about.

Let me take this a step further. In this bill before us that was passed over here from the House, it would cap Federal expenditures at 18 percent of GDP. Where did they get that number? Is that an arbitrary number? Why isn't that 18.5? Why isn't it 19? Why is it 18? I will tell you why. That number has a purpose. The last time Federal spending was at 18 percent of GDP was in 1966, right before Medicare kicked in and started expanding. So, guess what. They want to roll it back to a point in time before we had Medicare. This assault, now, on Medicare comes on the heels of another Republican assault on Medicare. You remember the Republican budget, the so-called Ryan budget. What was its centerpiece? A plan to dismantle Medicare, replace it with a voucher system that would require seniors to spend $6,400 additional out of pocket for Medicare every year. It was basically the dismantling of Medicare, turning it into a voucher system. That was the Republican budget.

So now we have a two-front assault on Medicare by Republicans. One is the Ryan budget, kind of a frontal assault, if you will, to dismantle it, turn it into a voucher system, and now we have the so-called balanced budget amendment that takes an indirect backdoor approach. It would simply defund Medicare. It would put the Federal Government in a fiscal straitjacket and allow it to spend no more than we did in the mid 1960s, before Medicare started. That is why it is at 18 percent.

I would say this legislation before us is also a direct assault on Social Security, the bedrock of our American retirement system. It is vitally important to the middle class of America, to ensure that seniors are able to enjoy their retirement years without falling into poverty or moving in with their kids. Social Security's modest benefit, around $14,000 a year now, has become the biggest source of retirement income for two out of three retired Americans.

I am glad to.

I think my friend from Ohio put his finger on it. Of course it is. It is a backdoor approach. We all want to have surpluses. We don't want to have deficit spending. So it sounds good: We will balance the budget. Most people say that sounds like a good idea, let's do that, without looking behind this cap they put in of this 18 percent. Eighteen percent is a number picked by the Republicans because that would take us back to where we were in 1966, before Medicare kicked in. It would throttle it, a backdoor approach as a way of defunding Medicare and also as

a way of getting at Social Security, moving it to privatization, which the Republicans never have given up on.

They started under Gingrich. My friend is right. I remember them talking about privatizing Social Security. They have never given up on it. They cannot do it frontally but they are trying to do it through the back door.

Another thing we ought to think about, I say to the Senator, is this: What the Republicans are saying--there are a lot of Republicans who do not care if we default. They don't care if we default. In fact, Michelle Bachmann, Congresswoman Bachmann--who is one of their frontrunners for the Presidency--said she would never vote to increase the debt ceiling no matter the circumstances. As President Reagan said in 1987, it would mean that ``those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits'' wouldn't get their Social Security checks, and that is exactly right.

People have to think about this. If we default, that means all the people who have put their money into Social Security in the past, what we are saying is you may have put your money in there and guess what. We are not going to pay you. Is that what we want to do as a country? Social Security is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government--more than anything than Wall Street has ever gotten. Wall Street can go under. The Senator is right, if we had put Social Security in the stock market it would be in the toilet now. But we put it into U.S. Government bonds because it is backed with the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. That is why we have to support Social Security. That is why we can't support this cockamamie scheme they are trying to do here.

I thank my friend Ohio for pointing those things out. It is a backdoor assault on Medicare and on Social Security. People are saying: Well, Social Security--we have to shore up Social Security. It is sound for about the next 20-some years, but looking ahead, yes, we should shore up Social Security. One good way to do it is to raise the cap on Social Security taxes. Well, right now the cap is $106,800 a year. What does that mean? That means if you make up to $106,000 a year, you pay into Social Security on every dollar you earn. If you make over that, you don't. Well, let me put it another way. If you make $50,000 a year, you pay on every dollar you earn into Social Security. If you make $500,000 a year, you only pay on every 20 cents of every dollar you earn into Social Security. Why is that fair? Why is that fair that someone who makes $50,000 a year pays on every dime they earn, every dollar they earn, but someone who makes $500,000 a year only pays 20 cents on the dollar? If you want to shore up Social Security, raise the cap on payroll taxes. Raise the cap. That is something no one is talking about. What are they talking about? Cut benefits. Cut the benefits. Well, we don't have to cut Social Security benefits in any way. We just have to make it fairer in terms of how we raise the payroll taxes.

As I said earlier, the bill before us would require a two-thirds vote before we could even change that. So if we wanted to raise the cap on payroll taxes on Social Security, it would require a two-thirds vote. That means we would never get it done. That means, yes, at some point we would probably have to start reducing Social Security benefits. Well, again, as the Senator from Ohio pointed out, this is a backdoor approach to dismantling Social Security.

Republicans are rejecting any notion of shared sacrifice. They demand we dismantle Medicare, slash Social Security, slash education, cut infrastructure--all those things that undergird the middle class. They shred the safety net for the most vulnerable people in our society, as Senator Wyden pointed out earlier, but they insist on shielding the wealthiest people in our society from even contributing $1 to the mess we are in.

Lastly, why are so many people here--to pick up on what Senator Wyden said earlier--obsessed with deficit reduction to the exclusion of the single largest priority we should have in this country: putting people back to work. That is the most urgent deficit we have--the jobs deficit. Senator Wyden spoke eloquently about that.

My friend from Missouri, Senator Blunt, talked about that too. He talked about private sector employment. Well, something has to happen to get that moving. It is not giving more tax breaks to the wealthy. The old trickle-down theory, we tried that and it never worked. All these big tax cuts we gave to the wealthy happened under George Bush and a Republican Congress. Look at the mess it got us into. We have been losing jobs for the last several years. Our jobs have been going overseas. It put us in a huge budget deficit.

One of the things we need to do now is not to turn a chainsaw on ourselves but to recognize that the Federal Government can be a powerful force for stimulating the private sector. Again, one of the things I think we need to do is to put more money into the infrastructure of this country. We need to rebuild our roads, our highways and bridges, and our sewer and water systems. We have hundreds of billions of dollars needed to remodel and upgrade our schools all over America. We need a new electric grid, a smart grid. We need to be putting more into green energy so we won't be importing so much oil into this country. There is only one place that has the power to focus on that in a large, comprehensive way, and that is the Federal Government. But then people say: We can't do that. We can't afford it. We don't have any money. Well, they are right.

So there are two ways we can get these wheels of our economy going again: We can either borrow the money or we can raise the revenue. I would prefer that we raised the revenue. There is plenty of it out there. The businesses in America are sitting on, I have heard, anywhere from $1 trillion to $2 trillion that they are not investing. Well, if they are not investing it, I know where to invest it. Let's put it out there rebuilding the infrastructure of America.

Now, that is not the government doing the work; it is simply the government providing the input so that the private sector can go to work. It is not government workers out there who would be building the roads, bridges, highways, remodeling our schools, and rebuilding the new electric grid. No, this is the private sector doing it, but we can marshal the forces from the Federal Government, marshal the power to focus the funds in that direction to rebuild America, to make it a more energy efficient, a better educated, a more innovative, technologically competent future for our kids and grandkids. Once we start doing that, then other elements of the private sector will take off because they will see we have made a commitment to the future, the growth of this country--not a dismantling, not a withdrawing, not a shrinking, but, as Senator Wyden said, a growth. Once the private sector sees we have made a national commitment to growth, they will start investing.

How many times do we have to learn that the investment we have made in infrastructure has spun off into all kinds of private sector entrepreneurship and jobs and new businesses or research, the money we have put into research and how that stimulates the private sector?

How many times have you heard this old Republican line--I hear it all time--the government doesn't create wealth, it consumes wealth. I hear that all the time. Well, that is nonsense.

Just about a month ago, I had a hearing before my committee, the HELP Committee, which has jurisdiction over the National Institutes of Health. We

had the National Institutes of Health here, and Francis Collins, who is now the Director of it, brought us up to date on what the NIH is doing. He pointed out something very interesting. Some 20 years ago, we began to invest taxpayer money--your money, taxpayer dollars--into something called mapping and sequencing the human gene. It was called the Human Genome Project. It became the Human Genome Institute at NIH. After 12 years, they finished the process of mapping and sequencing the human genome.

The Battelle Institute--a research institute that is privately owned, not government, based in Ohio--did a study of what happened because of that. We invested $3.8 billion in mapping and sequencing the human gene--$3.8 billion. The Battelle Institute said: In the last 8 to 10 years, that $3.8 billion of taxpayer money invested in research resulted in over $790 billion of private sector investment. Let me say that again: $3.8 billion of taxpayer money resulted in $790 billion of private sector investment. Tell me again that the government can't create wealth. Of course, it can because it can marshal the kinds of resources that this sector or that sector can't do. No private entity could have mapped and sequenced the human genome. Well, they probably could have, but it would have taken 40 or 50 years to do it. It took the massive power of the Federal Government to get it done, and in a short period of time.

So, again, this is what we ought to be thinking about: How do we create jobs? How do we put people back to work? I say it is by making sure we have the revenue to invest. We can invest in our infrastructure. I don't mean just the physical infrastructure, I mean also the human infrastructure. That means education and job training.

I just saw a figure the other day. This year, we are spending--of the taxpayer money--$14 billion training Iraqi and Afghanistan security forces. That is for training, $14 billion this year. Yet here in America, for all of our job-training and retraining programs for the entire country--all job-training programs--we are spending less than $10 billion. Do you think the American people think that is wise? Do you think they don't know this? There is $14 billion going to Iraq and Afghanistan to train their security forces while less than $10 billion is going to retrain our workforce for jobs of the future.

Well, I see others have come to the floor, so I will wrap this up.

Deficit reduction is important--I am not saying it isn't--but it is not the single most important thing right now. The single most important thing is to put people back to work. As Senator Wyden said, that will start to create the demand. It will spur more private investment as the Federal Government begins to invest in the future of this country. That is where we ought to be focusing. Once we get the wheels going again, once we get people back to work and the economy starts to grow, that is when we start to reduce the deficit. To just focus on deficit reduction right now to the exclusion of putting people back to work reminds me of when doctors used to put leeches on people who were ill. It only made them more ill because it drained more blood out of their system. And most times it proved fatal, as it did to our first President, George Washington. Our urgent, No. 1 priority must be to create jobs and put people back to work. We shouldn't just turn a chainsaw on ourselves.

I look at this Republican cut, cap, and kill Medicare proposal we have before us, and what I see is a budget predicated on fatalism-- fatalism and fear of the future. We need a budget that is predicated on hope and aspiration, of putting our people back to work.

So put the ideology aside. Come together in a spirit of compromise for the good of this country to have a balanced package--balanced-- spending cuts that will take place in the mid-and outer ranges of our years and revenue increases now so we can take that money and start putting people back to work rebuilding both the human infrastructure and the physical infrastructure of this country.

I ask unanimous consent that the time from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2560 be equally divided between the majority leader and the Republican leader or their designee and that Senators be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, one of the things that frustrates the American people about Washington is how hard it is to get reliable information and straightforward answers. We in the Senate and Congress have that same difficulty. It is hard to know sometimes what numbers and statements and plans mean and what they will cost. Politicians offer a budget proposal and they say it cuts taxes even though taxes go up. They even come up with new names to disguise tax hikes, like revenue enhancements or reduced spending in the Tax Code. It doesn't mean eliminating the earned income tax credit; it usually means some deductions somebody is allowed to take, and that has been renamed as spending.

We hear people come to the floor and blame our massive deficit on anything and everything but our out-of-control spending, whether it is the war in Iraq or it is a tax cut passed a decade ago, or it is special preferences for private yachts or Lear jets. We can't have an honest budget if we can't talk honestly and factually about it, and I hope to be able to contribute in some way to clarifying the issues. I will do my best today to plainly state some of the things I think are plainly true.

First, I wish to address the myth that the President has a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan. Some believe that the President has a plan to reduce spending by $4 trillion, but the only plan the President has put on paper and allowed anybody to see is his February budget, which doubles the national debt. The President has never put a single spending cut plan on paper that actually reduces spending, and he has no program that would substantially reduce the deficit. If he does, it is a closely guarded secret.

His budget, which he submitted earlier this year, increases taxes significantly but has greater increases in spending. By the Congressional Budget Office analysis, it would increase the deficit more over the next 10 years than if the budget were not passed at all. Indeed, it would increase the gross debt of the United States by $13 trillion, doubling the entire debt of the United States again in the next 10 years.

If there is a secret plan that does exist somewhere, it should be made public this afternoon. Let's see it. I would like to. I think millions of Americans would feel the same way. Summaries don't work.

The President summarized his budget, which I just described, as calling on Americans to live within our means and will not add more to the debt. That sounds pretty good, because this year our deficit is projected to be $1,500 billion. So we want to be living within our means again and we do not want to add more to the debt. But even by the President's own analysis, the plan didn't do this. The Congressional Budget Office, Congress's independent agency, analyzed the President's budget and found that in 10 years, the lowest single annual deficit that would occur would be $740 billion. The highest budget deficit under President Bush was $450 billion. But under the President's budget, the lowest deficit that would be accrued would be $740 billion. It goes up in the outyears until it goes over $1 trillion, over $1,000 billion in the tenth year of his budget.

How can that be living within your means? It will not add more to the debt? Every single year would be adding to the debt. So we can't deal with summaries and spin statements about a plan until that plan has been put in legislative language and scored.

We also have received no plan from our Senate Democratic colleagues. For a time there a couple of months ago, the Democrats were on the path of producing a budget in the Budget Committee as required by statutory law. I, as ranking Republican, was very anxious to see it. We were told we would get it the morning of the hearing, not a bit sooner. I grumbled about that. I wanted to have a little more time to see it. But we never received a budget. I think the majority leader and the Democratic leadership, not our committee chairman, decided they didn't want to have a budget. One of the committee folks said it would put a target on your back. Senator Reid said it would be foolish to have a budget. Why would it be foolish to have a budget? Well, you can't say your budget calls on you to live within your means if you actually put it out there. People can score it and find out whether it is true.

We haven't had a budget this Senate in 813 days. As of now, there is only one debt limit plan on paper, only one plan available for public scrutiny and review, and that is the one we are considering today, cut, cap, and balance. It cuts spending immediately, it caps it so it won't go up, and it requires the passage of a balanced budget amendment to ensure that Washington ends deficit spending once and for all.

The American people do not support a Washington plan to pass some grand deal with tax hikes that never go away and with spending cuts that are talked about but never materialize. They are wise to the gimmicks and accounting of Washington. They are not happy with us.

At this very moment the people's Representatives in Congress preside over a country that borrows 40 percent of every dollar its government spends.

People in the Tea Party are angry. And why shouldn't they be angry when this kind of leadership has occurred in the Congress of the United States of America? It is utterly, totally indefensible. It should never, ever have happened. Yet, it has. It threatens our financial future. It threatens our economy and our economic growth. So the American people are not happy about it.

That is why I introduced a piece of legislation that would require 7 days to review any bill that would increase the debt limit, because this is going to be complex. People want to bring it up at the 11th hour under a panic mode. Some warn that if we don't pass it tomorrow, the world markets are going to be destabilized, interest could go up. I don't know, some of those things could happen. So we absolutely should do something. But we ought to not wait until the last minute and have plopped down in the Senate some big complex bill that has got to be passed before the sun rises the next day and nobody has time to analyze it or score it to find out what it means.

But our Democratic colleagues here in Washington are resisting the cut, cap, and balance bill because there is no gimmick in it. There is no accounting trick to get around if this becomes law. They know it will work. And for the big spenders, the only thing you don't want to pass is a piece of legislation that will work to contain spending. You see, they want to spend more. They think if they continue to spend more, then they can go and demand you raise taxes to pay for it.

Washington is going to have to end this spending spree. These kinds of difficult choices are the responsible choices families, cities, States, and county commissions are making every day, every year.

In Alabama, Governor Robert Bentley oversaw an across-the-board cut of 15 percent from the general fund in the

current year because of the constitutional prohibition on deficit spending. Alabama is not going to run up debt. For next year, he has taken a cautious approach. Hopefully we will have more revenue, but he is cautiously approaching next year and he has proposed cuts of up to 45 percent for some agencies that he felt would be appropriate places to reduce spending. Those are tough choices. But unlike Alabama, the Federal Government is not required to live within its means.

Another myth I wish to address is the idea that our current budget crisis is the result of two wars and a tax cut. We have heard that over and over again. The wars cost money, a good bit of money. Over the entire decade, the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is about $1.3 trillion. That is a lot of money. Again, that is over 10 years, over a decade. This year alone, the deficit is expected to be $1,400 billion, or $1.4 trillion. The deficit this year will be larger than the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over 10 years. So the driving force behind our deficit is not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not. War costs represent only 4 percent of total outlays over the last 10 years. The total amount of money spent since President Obama took office is $8.5 trillion. By the end of his first 3 years in office, we will have added $5 trillion to our gross Federal debt. These are stunning numbers.

As I said, President Bush had a widely criticized--in many ways rightly criticized--$450 billion deficit. Since President Obama has been in office, the deficits have been 1.2, 1.3, looks like this year it will be $1.4 trillion, each year, more than double the deficit under President Bush.

We are borrowing close to half of what we are spending every single day. In 2 years, nondefense discretionary spending increased 24 percent, 12 percent a year on average. This is our discretionary spending. This isn't Social Security and Medicare, which increase more than that. The stimulus package alone added into law the largest expenditure bill in the history of the American Republic. It cost more than the entire war in Iraq has cost. In a single day in 2009 we passed it on this floor, over my objection, and every penny of it was borrowed. We were in debt, but they said: The economy needs to be stimulated so we are going to spend 850 or so billion dollars.

The spending when President Bush took office was less than $2 trillion. Today, it is almost $4 trillion. It will be almost $6 trillion by the end of the decade. There is only one honest answer to the question of why our debt is rising so fast, and that is out-of- control domestic spending.

Another myth that is circulating, which I wish to address, concerns the outline from our colleagues and friends who participated and worked hard on the Gang of 6 proposal. I give them a lot of credit and respect for the hard work they put into it. I wish it had been produced a month ago so we could have actually had legislative language and know what it would mean today.

The authors of the summary, though, that they just produced for us, claimed the approach would reduce the deficit by $3.7 trillion over 10 years. That is a little over one-third or so of the deficit we projected to see in the next 10 years. But my staff on the Budget Committee, taking the summary pages they produced for us, can only find $1.2 trillion in reduced spending in that outline, along with what is a very clear $1 trillion tax increase.

Where does the other $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction claimed in the outline come from? Chairman Conrad, one of the members of the Gang of 6 and our chairman on the Budget Committee, a man I respect and have enjoyed working with, even said the outline has a $1.5 trillion tax cut. But this is compared--this is how these numbers get bandied about--it is compared against a baseline which assumes more than $3.5 trillion in tax increases would occur. So they are only going to increase taxes, I guess, by $2 trillion, and you can get savings by not having them go up as much. But based on the current tax rates that are in existence in America today, as we read their outline--and I think they would agree--it increases taxes by $1 trillion over 10 years. That is a large amount.

The real cost of the tax changes, some who have looked at these numbers say, is not $1 trillion but $2 trillion. That remains to be seen. Hopefully we will get the legislative language that can actually be analyzed, and we would know how much our taxes would actually go up.

The last myth I would like to address is perhaps the most important of all, and this is the myth that we only need about $2 trillion in actual spending cuts over the next 10 years. That has basically been what our colleagues are saying. They float the idea of $4 trillion in savings. What they mean is that you save $2 trillion by reducing spending and you increase taxes $2 trillion and you have saved $4 billion over 10 years. I am not sure that is what the American people are expecting of us when we say we are saving money. By taking it from them? It is not saving the American people more. It is not saving the private economy more, to take another $2 trillion from them. There is no free lunch. Somebody pays.

Our Democratic colleagues have said, although no plan has ever been made public to this effect, that they could get behind the budget deal that reduces the deficit $4 trillion over the next 10 years, half of it composed of spending cuts. This is not even close, frankly, to what is needed to ultimately balance our budget. We are projected to spend $46 trillion over the next 10 years. A $2 trillion reduction is only about a 4-percent reduction in spending, and that is set to increase by almost 60 percent.

Remember, we will say we are reducing spending. We are not reducing spending, we are reducing the rate of growth in spending by $2 trillion on a $46 trillion plan. Think about it. We are not talking about reducing spending. This budget would have the expenditures go up significantly in the next 10 years to $46 trillion. The $2 trillion means we are just reducing the growth of spending by $2 trillion. The $2 trillion in tax increases would mean we would still spend the same $46 trillion, but we just would borrow $2 trillion less because we have extracted more from the American people.

In just a little over 2 months, our debt will reach 100 percent of our economy--100 percent of GDP. That is the gross debt. That would match the size of our economy. It costs us 1 million jobs or more a year when gross debt reaches this level.

We have the Rogoff-Reinhart study that shows that when a country's gross debt climbs as high as ours has, it starts pulling down economic growth. Secretary Geithner said it is an excellent study. He said in some ways it understates the problem we have. Secretary Geithner knows this debt is a real problem for America.

We expected 3 percent growth the first quarter. It came in at 1.8 percent. Could that be because we have crossed the 90-percent debt-to- GDP threshold, and that debt is now a burden on the economy that is reducing growth? The experts have also downgraded the projected growth for the third and fourth quarters of this calendar year. It is very serious.

Christina Romer, who used to be in President Obama's White House on economic matters, said 1 percent growth means you will add 1 million jobs. So if our economy grows at 2 percent instead of 3 percent we will fail to add 1 million jobs we could have added. And I truly believe the debt is the reason we are having surprisingly low growth rates, below projected rates. Maybe I am wrong, but we certainly have a study that seems to say that exactly, and it has been widely praised by economists all over the country.

The honest truth is that this President and his Democratic Senate are not going to agree to the level of spending cuts in a debt deal that is necessary to put our country on a sound path. I think that is a fact. We have been negotiating and talking all year. The House laid out a budget plan. The Senate has refused--813 days without a budget. They are determined not to reduce spending after increasing domestic spending, nondefense, by 24 percent. They say they will freeze spending--freeze spending at levels that have jumped 24 percent? We do not have the money. We are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend.

Unfortunately, we're in a battle over the vision for the future of America. It is a big-government vision a lot of our Members have, and they are going to work as hard as they possibly can to preserve that vision, preserve that spending. After running up this huge

debt by a 24-percent baseline increase--that does not count the stimulus package of almost $900 billion that is thrown on top of that-- now they want to go to the American people and say: We are not going to cut spending; you have to pay more in taxes. I don't think that is what the American people want, so we have a national debate here.

This is the great debate of our time. It is not going to be settled in 2 weeks. A few people are not going to meet in secret and work out some grand and glorious deal. I wish they could, but I don't think they will. I would be pleased if they do.

I am confident that the good sense and wisdom of the American people will ultimately prevail. I am confident we will eventually get our spending under control. We will restore the American principles of limited government and build a better, freer future for our children. We will raise the debt limit, but we will also put this country on a sound path. If we get our debt under control, I think our economic growth will rise quickly, and I believe we will see the progress we have always seen in this great, productive, dynamic country.

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

Mr. President, it is my understanding I am recognized for 15 minutes; is that correct?

I see. If I hit 10 minutes, I might ask unanimous consent for an additional 5, and seeing the smile on the Presiding Officer's face, perhaps he will be conducive to that request. I also wish to associate my remarks with the distinguished Senator from Texas.

Every generation confronts challenges. The greatest generation declared victory over fascism and imperialism. The next generation faced down an enormous competition between the United States and its way of life based on free markets, private ownership, and free expression on one hand; and the Soviet Union and its way of life based on central planning, collectivization and police state control on the other. Again, victory belonged to America and the free world.

A new generation in America has now come of age since the Soviet system collapsed. It is a generation that too often, in my opinion, takes for granted the hardship and sacrifice of our forebears. It is this generation that must confront the crippling $14.3 trillion debt-- and climbing. We have met the enemy and he ``is'' us. The enemy today is our unsustainable debt, as has been pointed out by speaker after speaker on both sides of the aisle.

I am privileged to represent the people of Kansas and the people of Kansas are rightfully angry over the endless posturing and all the rhetoric and all the fingerpointing regarding yet another increase in the national debt. That is right, another increase in the debt limit. Here we are again trying to reach agreement. I wish the President and the House leadership well in their current talks. I wish the Senate was engaged. We certainly don't need to kick the can down the road any farther.

We are faced with one issue; that is, to rein in spending. Let me point out

that in 2 years, the debt limit was raised nearly as many times as it was in 8 years under the previous administration. It should come as no surprise that the American people in general, and those in Kansas in particular, reject these current spend-thrift policies.

I, from the first, decided it was time to stand up to spending, deficits, and debt. I am talking about the time when we were considering TARP, and we went through that very difficult time when many in the administration--the previous administration--indicated if you did not vote for TARP you were taking a very dangerous road.

I must confess, I have written a lot of speeches down through the years of public service I have been privileged to have. It is that old line of somehow or other we have to set our fiscal house in order not only for us but for our kids and grandkids. How many times do we have to say that? How many times do we have to give the speech? I decided no more during the TARP consideration. I voted no.

I remember the time when the administration folks came in to visit with me to convince me to vote yes. I said: Can you explain to me what a credit default swap is? I had not really heard that term before. They could not. They said they did not have enough time to do that. I just decided to vote no. I opposed TARP. I opposed the bailouts. I opposed the stimulus. I opposed Dodd-Frank. I opposed ObamaCare. And I oppose any increase in the debt limit without real, tangible cuts in discretionary spending and meaningful, structural reform to mandatory spending.

I do not challenge the intent of people who promoted all of these things, but the result has been an incredible increase in our national debt.

Remember the line: Did you read the bill?--that was the question people got when they went back home, faced up to the folks back home, especially with the health care bill. All of a sudden people became aware of the regulations and all the problems--now we have a hurricane of regulations pouring out of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now the question from folks back home is: Have you read the regulations? If we add up the costs of regulations, for goodness' sakes, clear back in 2008 alone it was $1.78 trillion in cost to the American public. Figure that in regards to the debate about the national debt. That was back in 2008. Think what it is today. It is probably twice that amount. So, consequently, we really have a problem.

Now, since last November the President has spoken to this issue. As a matter of fact, he has spoken rather continuously at the White House and campaign rallies. The problem is, there is no specific plan.

I know Republicans in the House are getting a lot of criticism for their plan. At least they have a plan. The cut, cap, and balance plan has received, as I said, a lot of criticism, but at least it is there. On the other side of the aisle we just do not find anything. There is no specific plan at all. We call that in Dodge City: Big hat, no cattle.

The President's first opportunity to put words into action came in February when the White House submitted its budget request: $3.73 trillion. It was estimated to add another $1 trillion to the debt. Obviously, that did not work. That proposal was defeated 97 to 0 in the Senate. Not too many bills get defeated 97 to 0.

Then, all of a sudden, now, we got into the tax situation. Maybe if we just got involved in a little more revenue enhancement--that is what we call it here; it is called taxes back home. Taxing is not the problem; the problem is spending money we do not have.

In May, the President's budget was, as I said, defeated. And rightly so. So here we are, more than halfway through the calendar year, 2 months away from the end of the fiscal year, and still no budget from this body--over 800 days. Meanwhile, we have met the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, and it is climbing. Rather than make meaningful cuts and meaningful reforms--specific reforms--the White House and some in the Senate want to increase the debt ceiling again.

Again, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Mr. President, $14.3 trillion--it is a sum so large that it is difficult to understand. Kansans with whom I visit and who call my office express shock we have allowed it to get to this point. How did we get to this point? Then, if, in fact, we kick the can down the road, what does it mean in regards to--as the Senator from Iowa pointed out-- the faith and optimism in our country? What does the future hold for a country that acts this way?

Paying down the debt should be bipartisan. What would Presidents Truman and Eisenhower say of a $14.3 trillion debt? I think they would be pretty harsh. Both Presidents had pretty tough quotes in regards to fiscal responsibility. What we need in this Chamber, what we need in Washington is a very strong dose of common sense and a sense of purpose, as evidenced by previous Presidents when they put leadership first.

Here are the facts. They are stubborn things. They are clear. We borrow 40 cents for every dollar we spend. A lot of people hear that. That is climbing. It is going to be 41 cents pretty quickly.

There is a lot of talk about tax breaks for corporate jets. Boy, am I tired of that. I am tired of this class warfare stuff in regards to saying: If we just apply taxes to a certain, small segment of the economy, or maybe a big segment like oil and gas--the bad guys, the fat cats--boy, if we get them, we can sure solve the problem.

Let's take corporate jets, which I would emphasize represents general aviation. It is called general aviation because the general public uses it. It is not all Hollywood stars. It is not all rich people using these so-called corporate jets. General aviation--it is the people who have to get from here to there because for 90 percent of our airports, a commercial flight does not land there.

What if you have a plant? What if you are a manufacturer? What if you are a farmer? What if you are a rancher and you have to visit several places in the country at one time, say, 5, 6, 7, 8, maybe 30? That is what general aviation is all about.

As a matter of fact, in the stimulus, the President recommended an extension of this same tax depreciation schedule. Now he is blaming the fat cats in regards to taking advantage of corporate jets. That is nuts. What the left hand giveth, the left hand taketh away in regards to this class warfare rhetoric. We make these jets in Wichita. They are great airplanes, and they service the general public for the public good.

According to Charles Krauthammer, the renowned columnist, if we collect the corporate jet tax every year for the next 5,000 years, we would cover only 1 year of the debt the President has run up--1 year.

The general aviation industry will persevere, but we have come through some tough times. We are coming in on a wing and a prayer--that old World War II song that is almost revered. So we will persevere. But can't we end this class warfare business? My Lord, the President talked about it six times in two paragraphs. As I say, again, that is the same industry he tried to help in the stimulus.

Here is another fact: Every cent of taxpayer money is used to pay for entitlement programs and interest payments on the national debt. All discretionary spending is borrowed. That is where we are headed; that is where we are at.

On average, we accumulate $4 billion in debt each day. It would cost each citizen $46,000 to pay the debt off. That means a family with a husband, wife, and two kids would owe $184,000. That is rather startling to Kansas families. They do not have that kind of money. I know perhaps some would say that is apples and oranges with the function of government and the function of families, but it is a good illustration.

We have gone over 800 days--I think it is 810 now--without a budget in the Senate of the United States. During that time, this country has spent $7.3 trillion. We have spent $439 billion in interest on the money we have borrowed.

We do not have regular order. If Robert C. Byrd were here today and sitting in that chair, he would be appalled. He would be making a speech in louder terms than I am, with short sentences, and he would point out we are not doing our duty.

It used to be that we would have a budget. Then we would have appropriations bills. Then we would have the

committees of jurisdiction meet those budget demands, meet that number. Then we would debate it on the Senate floor. Members would have an opportunity to bring amendments. That is how we worked. We do not work that way anymore. There is no regular order anymore.

What we do is bring up huge bills such as Dodd-Frank and the health care bill, usually written in private, and then we vote on it. Then the American public says: Have you read the bill? Then they say: Have you read the regulations?

We have to restore regular order and restore the Senate back to the Senate. People are fearful. The American public is fearful today. They have a real, conscientious worry that America is not the same as it used to be. Why is that? Because I think the American dream is that every American youngster can climb on the ladder of success as fast and as high as he or she can, with nothing government made or manmade in their way. Regardless, they may stumble, hit their chin on a couple of rungs, but, by golly, they get back up and they go right up again.

Not anymore. We have, apparently, a national agenda to level everybody with everybody else. It is called social justice. Nothing wrong with social justice except if it is an agenda to affect everybody. We now have the President of the United States deciding who is rich. It does not make any difference if a person does not make anything 1 year and makes $250,000 the next year; he is rich--despite his or her circumstances, family circumstances, or anything.

We have the national government, the Federal Government deciding everything: light bulbs, what you eat, rural fugitive dust. When a grain truck goes down a gravel road in Kansas we have the EPA worried about it. No kidding. We have navigable farm ponds now, farm ponds declared navigable waters. No self-respecting duck would even land there.

We have regulation after regulation after regulation. I cannot talk to any manufacturer, any business, anyone in Kansas where I have the privilege of speaking without somebody raising their hand and saying: Pat, what on Earth are you doing back there passing all these regulations that really don't make any sense and are about to put me out of business?

My reply to them: I am not a ``you'' guy; I am an ``us'' guy; and I am sure trying to do something about that. I do have a bill on that, by the way, and I encourage my colleagues across the aisle to look at it. I will be talking to you personally.

These are all serious issues, but the most serious matter is the national debt. At the rate we are going, in a few short years we will spend more paying interest on the debt than on all discretionary spending outside defense. Mike Mullen has said this is the biggest threat to our national security: $14.3 trillion. He is right. His comments echo the calls I receive every day from Kansans.

There is a lot of rhetoric going on now, and I understand that. Perhaps I have added to it. If I have offended somebody, I apologize. But let's all take a deep breath, if we can. Debate and posturing is nothing new in this body. In American history, in the earliest days of our Republic, it was between Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists on one side and Thomas Jefferson and his allies on the other. The enmity between these men was so obvious through vitriolic rhetoric. Much of the mudslinging that occurred then would be considered out of bounds by today's standards of political discourse.

Well, as the debate raged on between the early parties over the drafting of the Constitution, it seemed possible that the great American experiment would be over before it even began. Edmund Randolph wrote to George Washington, who at that time had retired to private life, and begged him to ``rescue America from the impending ruin.''

Washington rose to the occasion the way a leader does. He did it for his country, for his fellow Americans. He showed leadership because it was the right thing to do. In the end, a compromise was reached--yes, it was a compromise--to have the Constitution as drafted by the Federalists but with the Bill of Rights included as drafted by the Jeffersonians.

Later, after being elected our Nation's first President, Washington was dismayed over the continuous bickering between Hamilton and Jefferson--not so much different than we are doing today--over a wide range of issues: how to interpret the Constitution, the powers of Congress, the relationship between the States and the Federal Government, and the public debt--even then. Sound familiar?

Well, amidst the feuding, George Washington wrote to Jefferson and said this:

How unfortunate, and how much is it to be regretted then,

that whilst we are encompassed on all sides with avowed

enemies and insidious friends, that internal dissension

should be harrowing and tearing our vitals.

That is pretty tough. That is the bottle we ought to drink from every morning and stop to think about it.

I ask unanimous consent that I may proceed for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. President, since the founding of our Nation, people the world over have looked to us as a beacon of light because of our freedoms. Others have watched the great American experiment with a perverse hope that it falls. We can only fail if we fail ourselves, if we fail to balance the budget and bring down the debt.

America has always proven itself. We will meet any challenge and confront any enemy. The enemy before us is our own fiscal irresponsibility. It is time to stop talking. It is time to start doing. It is time for the President to come up with a specific plan, and in meeting with Republicans and Democrats in the House and the same in the Senate, let's do our duty.

In some of the toughest early debates in our country, Americans were fortunate to have steady leadership in keeping a hand on the wheel. I hope Members of this Chamber and the current President of the United States can look to character, to leadership, to love of our country to guide us through these very trying times.

Every generation confronts a unique set of challenges. The challenge we face today is the $14.3 trillion debt--and growing. I am so hopeful we can close ranks and confront this enemy. We owe the American people and our forebears no less than victory in this fight.

I yield the floor.