Ensuring Pay for Our Military Act of 2011

Mr. President, I rise to share my deep concern that we are careening toward a shutdown of the government. Just a little more than 24

hours from now--tomorrow night--our government will shut down if this Chamber and the House Chamber cannot come together and put a simple continuing resolution on the President's desk.

There is a lot that we should be proud of. One is to be a nation that has been a light for the world, presenting the ideals of democracy in action and advocating for and defending human rights. We should be deeply pleased that we have fought for fair working conditions and economic opportunity for Americans across this great land. We should be proud of the tradition of public education that gives children an opportunity to fulfill their full potential. We should be deeply pleased of our history, advocating for freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of liberty. All of these things are part of a legacy for our Nation, a part of what this Chamber has been about.

But we should not be pleased and we should not expect that this Chamber is now engaged not in those great and lofty ideals but in a very small argument over an extension of the budget for 6 months, and that we are so dysfunctional that we are risking shutting the American Government down for one of the few times in its history. That is not the model we wish to show to the world.

I am deeply frustrated by what has transpired since 2000. The first 11 years of this century--indeed, the first 11 years of this millenium--have not been kind ones for the United States of America. In 2000 we were running huge surpluses. I was back in Oregon as part of the legislature and very excited by the fact that we were paying down our national debt.

Economists were starting to debate whether we should pay it down in 3 years or 5 years; do we need to keep a substantial debt for some strange economic reason or should we pay the whole thing off. I was thinking, isn't that a great debate to have, because we are going to hand a debt-free nation to our children.

Mr. President, I think we all share the thought that there will be discussions tonight and we will not shut the government down. That is what this debate is about right now.

It goes back to the point that in 2000 we had a new President come in who decided that paying off the debt wasn't that important. No, President Bush said we should have bonus breaks, big giveaways to the wealthiest Americans, and he did so without paying for them in any other manner. Then we had a war launched in Afghanistan.

Instead of the President coming forward and saying we must sacrifice and pay for this war, it is important to our national security, he came forward and said: American citizens, please keep spending a lot of money in retail stores. That is the way you can participate in this. So the debt was greatly increased to pay for that war.

Then we had the President launch a war in Iraq--the same President, President Bush--and he proceeded to give away the Treasury to the wealthiest Americans. He decided not to pay for the war in Afghanistan. President Bush decided to launch a war in Iraq, on completely false premises, and to do so without paying for it.

Then we had Medicare Part D, which happened in that same 8-year period--a huge expansion of a government program that has and will indeed help many Americans, but it was not paid for.

Those four decisions doubled the debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, but doubling it was not enough. Indeed, the Bush administration did something else; they created a house of cards out of the most important financial document for every American family, the home mortgage. By deregulating retail mortgages, they allowed liar loans, undocumented loans. They allowed teaser rates, 2-year really low rates that mortgage agents used to talk people into subprime loans when they qualified for prime loans--steering loans that were regarded as such for steering families from prime loans into subprime loans.

Then they took all of those faulty subprime mortgages and packaged them into securities and allowed a new, unregulated form of insurance to back up those securities. Those were called swaps or derivatives. A $50 trillion unregulated industry came upon the American scene, and those securities ended up in every financial institution around this Nation. This great house of cards, which corrupted the fundamental value of primary wealth for most Americans, and the humble fully amortizing prime mortgage--subprime mortgage--was turned into an instrument of mass financial destruction.

That financial destruction that was brought down on our house in 2008 and 2009 added another $4 trillion to the debt. We went from $5 trillion to $14 trillion. That process continued this last December with a compromise that added another $500 billion to the debt, a compromise I could not support because it added $500 billion additional to the debt.

I had a lot of hope in January, 3 months ago, that we had a new group come in and we had a new Congress, the 112th Congress, and we were going to proceed to create jobs and do so by ending some of those frivolous giveaways, those massive oil and gas giveaways that line the bottom line of some of the deepest pockets in our Nation, those rules that prevent us from negotiating drug prices which results in our seniors on Medicare paying higher prices for drugs than seniors anywhere in the world, even though those drugs were invented right here, a potential savings of $6 billion per year; those bonus breaks for billionaires, on top of $100,000 per taxpayer, up to a million more for many taxpayers. Taking those bonus breaks away is a savings of $50 billion a year; ending duplicative Pentagon programs identified by the Secretary of Defense, a savings of $75 billion--all of these opportunities, and so many more, to bring our financial house into order.

But those hopes were soon dashed because the new team in the other House of the Congress did not decide to fight for jobs, did not decide to fight to get rid of frivolous programs. Instead they decided to lay out a plan that attacks the very communities that have been most hurt by the previous disasters because that meltdown, that mortgage meltdown that haunted us in 2008 and 2009, destroyed the wealth of basic Americans of their homes, homes lost enormous value, it proceeded to destroy jobs that those families counted on, huge job losses, it proceeded to wipe out their retirement savings. No wonder so many families today do not have confidence that their lives, the lives of their children will be better than their lives. For so many families-- in fact, their current life is not better than their parents' life was because of these kinds of devastating decisions.

The new arrivals said: No, we are going to increase the harm. We are going to attack the community development grants that build community organizations. We are going to attack the heating programs that keep people from freezing. We are going to diminish the food programs that keep people from starving. We are going to attack women's health programs, programs that have nothing to do, by the way, with abortion, but preventive programs, screenings, Pap screenings, breast exams. We are going to wipe those out because of misguided ideological opinions. And now we find a bill that says we are going to dismantle Medicare. We find an attack on housing for veterans. These are not the things that will bring jobs to America. These are not the things that will rebuild America.

On top of all of these attacks on specific programs, my colleagues in the House decided to create a whole long list of ideological riders to add to the budget debate. I have a copy, 4 pages, of policy riders to H.R. 1. It goes on and on, everything one can imagine, from Job Corps centers to training for our unemployed Americans. It is a huge list. It defunds the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will guard against the corruption of mortgages I was discussing earlier. It attacks the EPA's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act. And so on. It is an unbelievable list all Americans should see to see what the true agenda is on the other side of Capitol Hill.

Now is the time to set aside these games, these ideological riders. Now is the time to set aside these attacks on the core programs that strengthen our communities. We are past the time to have the ability to do a simple 6-month extension of our programs in the United States of America so we can go

on to debate fiscal year 2012. But not everybody is ready for that serious debate.

We have been hearing a lot of chanting at rallies that they do want to shut down the government over these ideological riders. Indeed, on April 5, the Washington Post reported Republicans gave the Speaker-- that is on the House side--an ovation when he informed them to begin preparations for a possible shutdown. They want the shutdown because they want this ideological fight.

After proceeding through devastating mistake after devastating mistake that increased our debt $5 trillion in 2000--remember, it was heading down toward zero--to nearly $15 trillion, we still cannot have a serious discussion. We have folks who want to shut down this government over these ideological riders.

We must return to understanding our role in the Senate and in the House in terms of the broad and challenging and important issues facing America--the issue of providing fundamental services, the issue of creating jobs, and the lofty goals of advancing democracy and human rights and civil rights around this planet.

Now is the time to set aside those shallow ideological games, focus on rebuilding our economy, and putting America back on track.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. We are on the verge of a

possible government shutdown, which is extraordinarily regrettable.

Controlling the deficit and paying down the debt is a critical priority of this country and must be done. It is a difficult challenge, but not insurmountable. We have done it before. In the 1990s I was a Member of the House of Representatives under President Clinton. We were able to push through an economic program that did not focus exclusively and entirely, as the Republican proposal does, on domestic discretionary spending. It looked across the board at not only domestic spending but defense spending. It looked on the revenue side. It also looked at some of our entitlement programs. The result from the 1993- 1994 action of the Democratic Congress was that by 2000, when President Bush was sworn in with a Republican Congress, there was a projected multitrillion-dollar surplus. We were looking at robust employment.

I think it is sometimes difficult to listen to some of my colleagues talk about the deficit and President Obama when recognizing, under their leadership, President Bush and a Republican Congress, a surplus was turned into a huge deficit. In fact, President Bush doubled the national debt in 8 years. It had taken almost more than 200 years to accumulate a debt he doubled.

So we are here and prepared to make those reasonable and responsible decisions that will lead us forward to a balanced budget and, hopefully, to what we accomplished under Democratic leadership and President Clinton in the 1990s--hopefully--even some surpluses going forward. But it can't be done in 2 weeks. We can't undo what has taken place since 2000 in 2 weeks or 2 months. It is going to take a concerted, collaborative effort.

One of the problems we have had, frankly, is that the goalpost has been continuously shifting in terms of Republican proposals. My recollection is that last year the Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee insisted on a cut of roughly $20 billion from the President's budget request for fiscal year 2011. Then, this year, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, proposed initial cuts of $33 billion from the fiscal year 2010 level. Days later, the Republican leadership decided that was not enough, so then it became more than $60 billion, with cuts in everything from EPA water and sewer grants to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to Head Start--programs that are critical to working families and communities. Also, these investments are critical at a time when our economy is just beginning to regain some of the economic traction it had before. We are seeing some encouraging employment numbers. We are seeing some increase in consumer demand. This Draconian approach to cuts could very seriously undermine the emerging--not yet complete--but emerging recovery.

In addition to the numbers that keep moving around, the proposal of the Republican House is studded with special interest riders--social policies, not fiscal policy. In fact, there is the impression sometimes that the deficit reduction claims are an excuse to try to advance not through the legislative process but through the appropriations process--through the threat of a shutdown--very conservative social policies. These policies should be debated. They should be voted upon. But to try to present them as nonnegotiable demands with the penalty for failure to heed to their demands the shutdown of the entire U.S. Government is, I think, inappropriate.

The President and Leader Reid have been meeting with House Republican leadership continuously. There was a sense that a proposal of about $33 billion in cuts from the appropriate baseline could be accomplished, but then that seems to keep moving again. This is unlike 1995 when we saw the last shutdown of this government by a Republican Congress. Again, this is becoming almost ritualistic. A Republican House is elected, and then within months there is a shutdown of the government. The 1995 shutdown lasted about 26 days. It cost about $1.4 billion in essentially dead weight lost to the economy and to the government. We are on the verge of repeating that mistake.

Back in 1995, we weren't engaged in two conflicts with American service men and women engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were not participating in a very volatile NATO operation involving Libya. We had yet to see the threat of international terrorism unleashed so dramatically on our shores as it was on 9/11. Again, if this government is shut down, there are thousands of civilians and civilian contractors who are part of our intelligence services that are at least in limbo as to whether they can continue to provide us the information and the insights we need to protect ourselves against a still existing and now clearly obvious threat. These are much more challenging times.

Indeed, for months now, in terms of a response to why the economy isn't growing, many of my colleagues have said, Well, it is the uncertainty of the Obama policies. That was the argument last year for the extension of the income tax cuts not only to middle-income Americans but to the wealthiest Americans. That uncertainty would breed a lack of investment, a lack of focus on job recovery. What could be more uncertain than shutting down the Government of the United States without any plan to bring it back and, indeed, without any clue as to what is the critical issue that must be addressed? At one point it is deficit; at another point it is social policy. That uncertainty I think could lead--I hope it does not--to a lack of confidence in our capacity to govern which will ripple through economic markets worldwide, and which also I think could challenge perception of the United States as a coherent world leader.

There are some things that would unfortunately result from such a shutdown. We know military Federal pay will be delayed. In fact, uniformed military will be required to come to work, as they do, so dedicated to the service of this Nation, but their pay will cease the moment we shut this government down. Literally, there will be soldiers on the ground--sailors, marines, airmen in Iraq and Afghanistan-- fighting and they will not be paid and their families at home will not receive those benefits. The Federal Housing Administration will not be able to endorse any single-family mortgage loan. So if you are ready to close on your loan next week, you have the downpayment and you are ready to go, because the FHA will be out of business. SBA-guaranteed loans for business working capital, real estate investment or job creation--for those things that are trying to move the economy-- stopped, dead in their tracks. So if you are a small business man or woman, you are ready to expand your company and hire more people, sorry, the SBA is closed until further notice. The IRS cannot process tax refunds for those who are filing paper returns and are depending upon their tax refunds, as so many working families do, to get through the next several months.

We didn't get here overnight. In 1993, Democrats saw these same problems: a deficit that was prolonged and gnawing at the economic fabric of this country. We took deliberate action. It took several years, but within those several years, by the end of President Clinton's administration we saw a surplus, a robust employment situation, and the future looked very good to working families.

In 2001, as I indicated, President Bush came into office with a surplus, but after tax cuts that were unpaid for, two costly wars that were unpaid for, and an unpaid-for extension of our entitlement program in terms of Part D Medicare--the largest, by the way, expansion of government entitlements in many decades--we are now looking at a huge deficit.

President Obama came into office at a time when unemployment was, in my State, reaching beyond 12, almost to 14 percent. He was, I think, required to take appropriate action. With the Recovery Act, we were able to begin to restore some of the jobs. We have seen over the last year growth in civilian jobs, the private sector workforce, that we didn't see under President Bush. In fact, recent reports suggest over 200,000 jobs. Those are the kinds of numbers that have to be sustained, not undercut, and you don't sustain them by shutting down the government and shutting down agencies such as SBA and the Federal Housing Administration.

We are and have to work diligently. I hear my colleagues talking about

reaching out, collaborating, and I hope that is the spirit we embraced in the last several hours. But we have heard many other statements coming, particularly from across the Capitol in the other Chamber, about how we have to shut this government down, how we have to go ahead and make a point, not make sound policy. That is not going to lead us to a better future for American families.

I believe we have to be responsible. We have to recognize the problems before us will take months, if not years, to fully resolve, because it took years, not days or weeks, to accumulate. We have to respond to the troops in the field, not only to order them into battle but to support their families at home.

We have to be responsible to families all across this country and give them a chance to use their talents to contribute to this country. I urge responsibility at this moment, not a shutdown of the U.S. Government.

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

Mr. President, I take this time because we are now only literally hours away from a potential shutdown of government. I must tell you that my constituents are angry about this, and I join them in saying this should never happen. There is no reason why we should have a government shutdown.

We know the financial issues, and there have been good-faith negotiations. It is my understanding we have pretty much resolved the financial issues. And, remember, we are dealing with 12 percent of the Federal budget. We need to get to the 2012 budget and get a credible plan to deal with the deficit. We all understand that. We are talking about the 2011 budget--the budget that started on October 1 of last year and will end on September 30 of this year. We are over halfway through that budget year.

There are differences between where the Democrats were and where the Republicans were. Everyone understood it couldn't be what the Republicans wanted or the Democrats wanted; that we needed to have good-faith negotiations. Those negotiations have taken place, and it is my understanding we have pretty much agreed on the dollar amounts and we are prepared to move forward.

But let me talk a little about what will happen at midnight tomorrow night. I have the honor of representing the people of the State of Maryland. There are almost 150,000 active civilian--civilian--Federal employees who live in the State of Maryland. I happened to bump into one of those Federal employees today who asked me a question. She asked me: What am I supposed to do if we have a government shutdown and I don't get a paycheck? I don't have any savings. How am I going to pay for my mortgage?

We already have too many people whose mortgages are in jeopardy because of the weakness of our economy, and now 150,000 Marylanders are in jeopardy of losing their paycheck as a result of the inability to resolve this year's budget.

I also happened to talk to people who run our Metro system here, and they told me if we have a government shutdown it will mean $1 million less in the fare box, possibly every day, because of the number of people who won't be taking the Metro because they are not going to be going to work. A lot of Federal workers are not going to be going to work.

Guess what. They are not going to stop at the coffee shop to buy coffee or buy that lunch. They won't be patronizing the shops. It is going to hurt the small business owners who depend upon that business; depend upon the people who use their paychecks to do their cleaning or go to the different shops. It is going to hurt our economy. It is going to hurt innocent small business owners, just at a time that our economy is starting to recover.

I will give another example. A person contacted me today, one of my constituents in Maryland who happens to have an issue concerning the need for a passport to be issued. It needs to be issued rather quickly. We are going to try to accommodate that person to get it done by tomorrow. But suppose that call would have come in next week after there is a government shutdown and that person has travel plans that now may be disrupted because we cannot issue that passport. The list goes on and on of people who are going to be

hurt as a result of a government shutdown.

We know a government shutdown will actually cost the taxpayers more money. A shutdown costs taxpayers money, More money than the differences in our negotiations in the last couple of days will be lost. So don't tell the taxpayers of this country that we are having a government shutdown to save money. It will not save taxpayer money, it will cost them additional moneys. It will jeopardize our recovery, and individual people will get hurt as a result of the government shutdown.

What is the issue? We have already said the money issues--this is a budget debate--have been pretty well resolved. It is not the dollars. It is not the differences you heard--and the differences, frankly, were quite small compared to the size of our budget deficit and the gap between spending and revenues. The issue that is now being raised by the Republicans has nothing to do with dollars. It has to do with their social policies. It has to do with family planning. It has to do with the Environmental Protection Agency being able to enforce our environmental laws, the Clean Air Act. Does that sound familiar? It should because we debated those issues on the floor of the Senate yesterday, and we took votes on these environmental issues yesterday on the floor of the Senate, as we should do, debating these issues on their own individual merits.

It should not be included in the budget resolution for the remainder of this year. That is not the appropriate place for it. We are not here to debate the social agenda. Those issues should be done on the bills, the substantive bills that come forward.

You sort of get a little suspicious as these issues are being raised as to whether, in fact, those who are negotiating on the Republican side are sincere in trying to reach an agreement to prevent a government shutdown or whether they continuously move the goalposts and change the rules in order to bring about a government shutdown.

I must tell you, I was disappointed, as I heard Republican after Republican in the last couple of weeks talk about a shutdown might be good for the country; if we have a shutdown, so be it. Let's do it. Even some Republicans calling for a shutdown.

I understand there is a problem the Speaker of the House has in dealing with the members of the Republican caucus who belong to the tea party, and they are insisting he not compromise; they don't want to see any compromise. I understand that, but those Members do not control the process. We have a majority of the Members of the House and a majority of the Members of the Senate who are prepared to move forward with this compromise that will not only keep government functioning but will allow us to get on to the real issues of dealing with the deficit of this country by looking at the 2012 budget. There we will be considering more than just the discretionary domestic spending cuts, we also can take a look at the other programs, including military and mandatory spending and revenues, and get a credible plan to deal with the deficit.

We have enough votes among the Democrats and Republicans to pass this compromise. We do not have to yield to the extremists on the Republican side in the House who do not want to see any compromise whatsoever, but what worries me is that perhaps the design is to close the government; that is what the Republicans want. I know Speaker Boehner got a standing ovation when he informed his caucus to begin preparing for a possible shutdown.

These are serious issues--like that Marylander I talked to today who may, in fact, lose her home if there is a government shutdown or that constituent who had planned a trip and found out that because their passport will expire shortly, they need to get it renewed before they are permitted to enter a foreign country and will need to get that passport tended to or lose the opportunity to travel, perhaps, for a family event or perhaps for business or the taxpayers of this country who are scratching their heads saying: What are you doing adding to the cost of government when I thought this was a debate about reducing the cost of government.

It is not about the dollars. If we have a shutdown of government--and I really hope we do not have a shutdown of government, but if we have a shutdown of government, it is not the dollar difference, it is the social agenda that the Republicans are trying to push through this document, that should not even be on this document, that they are now using as a reason to deny a compromise. It is the extreme elements within the Republican caucus who are saying let's have this government shutdown who will be getting their way.

There is still time remaining. I hope common sense will prevail. I hope people understand how serious a government shutdown is to our country, to our image internationally, to our ability to conduct business internationally, as well as our ability to provide the services to the people of this Nation who expect those services. We still have time. This is a democracy. Let the majority rule. I think we have the majority of Democrats and Republicans alike who want to bring this issue to conclusion, who know that we have a good compromise done right now that compromises the differences between what the Democrats would want and what the Republicans would want. That is how the process should work.

Yes, I am here--representing the people of Maryland, including a large number who work for the Federal Government and a large number who depend upon those who work for the Federal Government and a large number who depend upon the services of the Federal Government--to say let's get this done, not yield to the few on the Republican side in the House. Let's get this job done for the people of Maryland and for the people of this Nation.

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

Mr. President, I thank the Chair and would share a few things.

If my Democratic colleagues would prefer not to shut the government down, then do not do it. The House, the Republican House, has passed a bill to fund the government, to fund the Defense Department, and the Senate, the Democratic Senate, has passed nothing. Indeed, the Democratic leadership proposed a bill that they said was worthwhile that would have reduced spending by $4.6 billion. Ten Democratic Senators defected from the leadership position--a pretty gutsy thing to do on an issue as important as this.

I will be glad to yield for a question, although my time is limited.

All right. Go ahead.

Well, I appreciate the Senator's comment. I would like to respond to that. The House has sent over a bill that does not have those provisions in it--a 1-week extension, and it funds the military. It is available to be passed, also, and would allow further discussions and negotiations on how to complete the last of the year without affecting the military.

I just have to tell you, I have no desire to fund Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America. Maybe that is what you think Federal taxpayers ought to spend their money on, but I do not. But that is not the critical issue.

The critical issue is how much we spend. I certainly agree with that. The House has sent over legislation, both for the whole fiscal year and for a short term, to continue it. If this government is shut down, it will be because of the Democratic Senate and the threat of President Obama to veto this legislation if it were passed. Why don't they bring it up for a vote? Perhaps it is because a number of Democrats who are uneasy about this reckless spending might feel that voting for this would be a good way to continue the negotiations and work through it and it might pass. So the President has now jumped into the middle of it and proposed to shut the government down.

And I do not appreciate my colleague--who is fine; we serve on the Judiciary Committee together--talking about that this is all extremist rightwingers. Give me a break. He said: They really have this secret agenda. They pretend it is all about the deficits. It is not about the deficits. It is about some extremist rightwing agenda.

He then launches into a full-fledged attack, as has Senator Schumer, on the tea party, some of the best people in our country who got terribly afraid for our Nation and went out and marched all over America--millions, tens of millions--who had never before done anything like that. I talk to them all the time. Are these bad people?

And let me tell you, Erskine Bowles, former Chief of Staff to President Clinton, chosen by President Obama to head his debt commission, came before the Budget Committee just 2 weeks ago, and he and Alan Simpson, his cochairman, issued a written statement: We are facing the most predictable economic crisis in our Nation's history. ``Predictable crisis'' means we could be thrown back into another recession or a depression. When asked by Chairman Conrad, our Democratic chairman, when this might happen, what did President Obama's chairman say? Two years, maybe a little before, maybe a little later. Alan Simpson piped up: I think 1 year.

Hopefully this is not so. Hopefully, we are not going to have a debt crisis in a year or 2 years. But these people who took testimony for weeks and months and provided their opinion on how to fix our debt, they say we are facing a debt crisis that could put us into a recession and surge unemployment, even though it is just beginning to come down a little bit. This is not a Republican-Democratic squabble. These are Democratic leaders who warned us.

Alice Rivlin headed the other commission with Pete Domenici, our former chairman of the Budget Committee. Pete Domenici, now retired from the Senate, said: I have never been more afraid for my country-- one of the most eloquent orators I have ever heard in the Senate--never been more afraid for my country. When you have deficits--this year, we take in $2.2 trillion and spend $3.7 trillion--borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, we are creating a nation at risk. That is what we are talking about.

So this past election, it was a big issue. All over America, candidates ran for office, and the ones who were the big spenders, who were in denial about the danger the Nation faces, got shellacked. Sixty-four Republicans got elected to the House--the biggest Republican victory in 80 years--over one issue, really. Spending, that is what it was.

When we came into the Senate they had only passed, when they had this supermajority in the House and in the Senate, a 5-month continuing resolution. The Democrats didn't pass a budget nor did they pass a single appropriations bill. So everybody knew that after this election, the funding level was going to be reduced. The American people had spoken.

He walks in, our majority leader, Harry Reid, and says, We will cut spending by $4.6 billion out of $3,700 billion we spent. Give me a break: $4.6 billion out of $3,700 billion that we spent is somehow significant? The House only recommended $61 billion in the last 7 months, but that makes a difference. When you reduce the baseline, $61 billion--and the interest you save--$61 billion plus interest, it adds up to $860 billion saved over a 10-year period. That is coming close to $1 trillion in savings, by that one act. But when you spend on the upswing, likewise, you end up raising the baseline and surging spending and debt. That is why we have to get responsible, and when we do, we can make a bigger impact than a lot of people think.

I remain unhappy and stunned that my Democratic colleagues are in full-fledged attack on the good and decent people who stood up and complained about what was happening in Washington and now don't hesitate to attack the tea party as extremists. I object to that. I think it is wrong.

We are in a serious problem. I think many of my colleagues--I know many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have expressed to me that we need to do better, that we have to change the trajectory we are on. I think there is a real possibility for bipartisan action, but it is only a possibility. I actually have been fairly hopeful, but--we have had a lot of talk on the other side of the aisle, but I haven't seen anything moving--nothing--except the President's budget.

The Senator from Wyoming said ``The Economist Magazine'' called it dishonest. It is. What they said about it was it has been found false by five different fact checks. They say it calls on us to live within our means. The budget director said it will allow us to pay down our debt, when the lowest single deficit we are projected to have under the budget the President submitted to us is $748 billion.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that of the 10 minutes allotted to this side, I be allowed to have 3 minutes and Senator Moran 7 minutes.

Mr. President, on the question of funding the Defense Department, it is a very serious matter. We need to handle that correctly. I will just recall for my colleagues that the House has sent legislation to us that would fund the government for an additional week, with a reduction in spending of $12 billion, but that would fund the Defense Department for the rest of the fiscal year and take that matter off the table, guaranteeing there would be no disruption of the Defense Department.

We should do that. We should have already done that. Senator McConnell, our leader on the Republican side, has said he will not support any more CRs unless we do fund the Defense Department. I have to suggest, however, that it appears to me our colleagues are using the Defense Department as a hostage and as leverage to the threat of shutting down, or partially shutting down, the Defense Department; the threat of that is used to sort of say that we are not going to cut spending anymore. So that is a fight we are in.

We have heard the discussion about riders, but the new CR the House sent to us today doesn't have those riders on it, and it is not a problem in that regard. I do think it is irresponsible for the President of the United States--the Commander in Chief--to threaten to shut down the government.

The Republican House has sent a bill over that funds the government and funds the Department. The threat to shut down the government is coming from the Democratic side. I don't think the people are going to be fooled. I do believe the American people's voices will be heard. The amount of reduction in spending makes a difference in how much is saved over a decade.

Nobel Prize laureate Gary Becker; a superb economist, John Taylor; and former Secretary of State, George Schultz did a Wall Street Journal article recently, noting that under our spending--spending now is 24 percent of GDP--if the House bill that cuts spending by $61 billion were passed, we would be spending 20.0 percent of GDP--a one-tenth of 1 percent reduction in spending from another calculation.

I yield to my colleague from Kansas. I am delighted to have him in the Senate.

Madam President, I rise to talk about the disastrous consequences if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to prioritize politics and posturing over what is best for Americans and our fragile economic recovery. We have 27 hours to convince them that shutting down the government should not be treated as a gimmick, that shutting down the government is a serious matter with serious consequences for almost every American. But before I go into the consequences and their impact on my constituents, I want to take a moment to reflect on how we got here, how we are now in a position where a government shutdown is 27 hours away.

One thing is certain: There is a lot of misinformation and confusion out there. A number of my friends on the other side of the aisle have been saying that the Democrats and the President refused or failed to pass appropriations for fiscal year 2011. This is revisionist and confused history.

One of my colleagues, a new Member, said today:

Why was it that a few months ago, after the election but

before the new Congress took over, when the President had

both houses of Congress under control of his party, why did

he opt not to pass a full budget for fiscal year 2011?

The Presiding Officer knows this is just not true. This isn't true. I have been hearing a lot of this.

We had appropriations legislation for the entire Federal Government ready to go. Democrats were in support of it. We were prepared to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. But, remember, it takes 60 votes to pass something like that in the Senate. There were 58 Democrats in the Senate last December, and there were 42 Republicans. So we needed some Republicans to pass a full budget for 2011--not many, but we needed two. We didn't get any. Not a single Republican agreed to support the bill. That is what happened.

For a while, we were told that a number of Republicans were going to support it. The bill had been negotiated on a bipartisan basis. But then, by all accounts, arms were twisted, and they were turned against the bill.

The minority leader said:

I am actively working to defeat it.

And he did. He killed it. That is the truth. And my friends on the other side of the aisle celebrated.

After they made clear that there would not be enough votes to pass the omnibus bill, my friend from Illinois engaged in a colloquy with Senator McCain, asking:

For those who don't understand what just happened, did we

just win?

Senator McCain responded:

I think there is very little doubt.

Senator Kirk concluded the colloquy by saying:

I congratulate the Senator.

We really do owe it in these serious times to engage in debate where we are being honest with the American people. There is little doubt about who opted not to pass a full budget for 2011. It was not the President or the Democrats in the majority; it was my friends on the other side.

My friends on the other side protest that they do not want to shut down the government, and then they point the finger at us.

Yesterday, there was a rally for the tea party on Capitol Hill. Part of my delegation, Michelle Bachmann, whom I like very much, said:

Democrats are trying to make it look like we want to shut

the government down. We don't. They are trying to do that.

Silence.

That same day at the same rally, Mike Pence said to them:

It looks like we're going to have to shut down the

government.

And what did the tea party crowd do? They started chanting: ``Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down.''

According to his own account, when Speaker Boehner told Republican colleagues in his caucus that he had taken steps to prepare for a shutdown, ``I got a standing ovation.''

There have been no standing ovations on our side about a prospective shutdown. Come on. We are trying to keep the government working. We desperately want to keep the government working.

Republicans are busy fighting ideological battles. For them, this is not about the deficit. It is not about the budget. It is certainly not about jobs. This is about ideology.

I was presiding today, and I had the opportunity to hear some of my colleagues talking about the bill the House passed today to fund the troops. We want to fund the troops if there is a shutdown. We do. There was all this sanctimonious talk about how Republicans want the troops to be funded, and the House had passed a bill to fund it. Do you know what was left out? That Steny Hoyer, the minority whip in the House, the Democratic minority whip, had offered a bill to pay the troops if there was a shutdown, a clean bill, nothing attached to it other than that. It was voted down by Republicans in the House. What passed? A bill with a rider on it about abortion. I didn't hear that in all the sanctimonious talk.

Let's at least have an honest debate. Really, adding abortion? Look, I know there are people who have very strong, heartfelt feelings, obviously, on abortion on both sides. This is something we have been talking about for decades. Why put it a rider about abortion on legislation to pay for the troops and then go in front of this body and say: Democrats don't want to pay the troops.

This can't be about holding a gun to our heads and saying: You have to come down on this side of this issue that people feel so strongly about and have been debating for 40 years.

The Republicans in the House talk about the Constitution. They started this session by reading the Constitution. They left out some of the embarrassing parts, that a slave was three-fifths of a person. They left that out. But there are two Houses, and there is a President. But they don't want to compromise. They just want to put a gun to our heads. And it is in the form of abortion and in the form of global warming. Look, 99.6 percent of climate scientists in the world believe there is global warming and it is caused by human beings. The other .4 percent work for coal companies or oil companies or the Heritage Foundation. Then there might be another guy somewhere.

Why put a rider on this that is about ideology? This should not be an ideological debate. This is about getting

the deficit down and about our economy. We had 216,000 new jobs last month. It is fragile, but we are beginning to come out of this. This is not the time to shut the government down.

What it is going to do to people in my State, to seniors--every week, there are hundreds of seniors--how many a day--170 a day applying for Social Security. They are not going to be able to do that, people who just turned 65. There are people who are going to try to get FHA loans and won't be able to. There are farmers who want to put seed in the ground who will not have the Farm Service open. This is not the time to do this. This is going to mean 800,000 Federal employees laid off. What is that going to do to the economy?

Look, there are things in this that I don't like, but I am willing to swallow and do it.

They want to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in hunger programs, $700-plus million to cut food for women, infants, and children. It has been analyzed, and because of that, the neediest kids will not get their allotted amount of fruits and vegetables that is recommended. And that is not just during the closing; that is what they want to do for the rest of the year and presumably beyond that.

At the same time, we were here last December, and they wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts. They insisted on it, not just to your first million dollars or your second million dollars, to your tenth million dollars, to your 13th million dollars, or to your 300th million dollars. The top 400 income earners in this country average over $330 million a year in income. They would rather those women, infants, and children not get food, the food they need to be healthy. I don't like that. Boy, do I not like that. Boy, do I not like that. But I was willing to swallow that for whatever is in the compromise to keep the government going so we could go through the year, so we could keep the economy going, so we continue the job growth we have had.

They know how to keep the government going. Take the ideological stuff off. Let's not resolve abortion in 27 hours. We have had more than 27 years--37 years--since Roe v. Wade. Let's not put a gun to everyone's head and say we have to resolve Roe v. Wade in 27 hours. That is just plain inappropriate.

I think you know how I feel. I think we know which side gives standing ovations when it is announced the government may very well be shut down. I think we know which side's crowd cheers and chants when they hear there may be a shutdown. I wish it were not that way. I wish we were working together. I hope we are working together. I hope we are working together on Monday.

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

Mr. President, if the Chair will please let me know when there is a minute left, I would appreciate it.

I rise to speak about the current issue. I am always glad to speak after my friend from Virginia, whom I have enjoyed working with on so many issues. I appreciate the work he is doing now to try to deal with the bigger issue we have to deal with.

I will not waste a lot of emotion or say things that might--look, we are involved in a powder puff right now. We are dealing with a small amount of dollars. We add $4.1 billion a day to the deficit--$4.1 billion a day. So probably, with the negotiations we are involved in today, maybe we are separated by 1 day of deficit spending.

I know there has been a lot of talk about what might happen with the government shutdown. I don't believe that is going to happen. I believe that when we come in on Monday morning, an agreement will have been reached. I am not going to waste time on the Senate floor talking about all the bad that might happen in this country because I cannot believe that, over the small ball we are dealing with right now, we are going to have a government shutdown. I think we will resolve this over the next few hours or maybe sometime over the weekend possibly. Maybe there will be a minor disruption this weekend. I have faith that this will be worked out.

What I want to spend time talking about is the fact that we do have a crisis that is looming. I don't think it is this weekend, and I don't think it is over a continuing resolution that goes for the rest of this year. I hope we are actually able to move beyond majoring in the minors, which is what is happening now, to majoring in the majors; that is, talking about trillions of dollars in less expenditures, not billions of dollars. Each day that goes by, with the $1.5 trillion deficit we have, we are spending $4.1 billion that we don't have.

I am convinced that negotiators on both sides of the aisle very soon will work out their differences, and when Monday morning rolls along, the government will be operating.

To me, the big picture is this: We have a debt ceiling vote that I think will be coming up sometime between Memorial Day weekend and the July Fourth recess. To me, that is the opportunity we have to really do something great for our country.

I know Senator Warner alluded to the Gang of 6. I know there are a number of people on both sides of the aisle who are working toward a long-term solution.

Claire McCaskill and I have offered the Cap Act, which is gaining momentum and has a number of Republican cosponsors. We picked up another Democratic cosponsor yesterday. It is very simple. It would keep us from doing the kind of thing that is happening right now.

One of the things that is most fascinating is today--and I know you just came from State government, Mr. President--today we are dealing with last year's business. The thing that is most frustrating for those of us who come from the business world or who come from State government or who have been a mayor, in this body, we never know where we are going. We are always debating issues that should have been resolved a long time ago.

What we need to do in this body for this country is to figure out where we are going over the longer haul and then both sides of the aisle need to sit down together and figure out how we get there. We need to somehow create a fiscal straitjacket where we know--we know we are at an all-time high with spending today relative to our economic output. We had the same thing back in 1945 and, candidly, even in the eighties. We got up to levels that were higher than they should have been. We have the ability to get back to the norm. We know that. We have to make some tough decisions to do that.

The CAP Act is a 10-page bill. Basically, it says we will go from where we are today in spending over a 10-year period to our 40-year historical average of 20.6 percent of our GDP. There are a lot of people in this body--and I am not going to point fingers--who use the word ``extreme.'' There is nothing extreme about this. It is common sense. It puts everything on the table.

What is fascinating to me is that today we are debating minor amounts of cuts in discretionary spending. Everybody in this body knows that if we cut all discretionary spending--discretionary spending, by the way, includes defense--if we cut all discretionary spending, including defense, we still could not balance our budget. What we need to do as a body is look at everything--all the entitlements, all the mandatory spending, and we need to cap Federal spending relative to our economy and take it down to the 40-year average over the next 10 years.

I think everybody in this body is aware that would save our country per projected policy $7.6 trillion. By the way, I think it would force us as a body to have the discipline to take up many of the issues on which the gang of six is working. We already had Paul Ryan from the House show us that it can be done, and there are people who criticize that, and that is fine. There are multiple ways of solving this problem.

The problem we have is politicians in Washington do everything they can to avoid making a tough decision. Back home, what we want to do is get the pain out of the way. Let's make the tough decisions so we can have blue sky in front of us. Here everybody wants to wait until the next election and hopefully move beyond their own election to deal with the tough issues with which we have to deal. That is just the way this body is.

It is amazing, here we are in April dealing with last year's business. Again, both sides are involved in that. I am not pointing fingers. But if we had a plan that we adopted, a statutory bill where we agreed we were going to go from where we are to where we need to be, our 40-year average--not extreme, over a 10-year period--it would force us to sit down and in a bipartisan way look at the big picture.

Everybody knows cutting discretionary spending is small ball. Let me say, that is powder puff. It is powder puff. We have our Nation at stake, and we are sitting here yelling at each other, saying things we should not be saying to each other that take us nowhere over powder puff. It takes us no place. I feel as though here our Nation is getting ready to have a fiscal crisis at some point--in a year or two--and we are all here trying to score points with each other over something that at

the end of the day and in the scope of things are important, certainly, but there is no question that today we are majoring in the minors.

I hope we can get by this and move beyond this without creating even further divides between the two sides and people saying silly things about who is to blame and who is not to blame. It is silly. It is beneath us. The American people have to be watching us with embarrassment. I am embarrassed.

This is the most dysfunctional place I have ever been a part of in my life because, again, we never know where we are going. It is a privilege to serve, do not get me wrong. It is a privilege to represent and get involved, but it is dysfunctional because we major in the minors. We can cut all the discretionary spending and not get where we need to go.

Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, a State very different from Tennessee, agreed that we have to deal with mandatory spending. We have to deal with entitlements. We want those programs to exist for our seniors down the road. We want them to exist for these pages, and we know on today's course, it cannot happen. We know without dealing with them, we cannot solve our country's fiscal issues.

Let's move beyond this episode that is beneath us, that is silly, that is small ball, that is powder puff. Let's move beyond this over this weekend and reach an agreement. The cuts we are making are the biggest cuts that have been made, and I applaud people on both sides of the aisle who are trying to get us there. No doubt it will pass through the budget for a decade. It could be $300 billion or $400 billion in savings. That is great. But we all know we need to be dealing with $7 trillion or $8 trillion over that decade. If we do not do that, we know that our country's fiscal future is in great jeopardy, and we lose in that the ability to display American exceptionalism that all of us want to see us do.

I hope we will stop talking about Republicans and Democrats. Candidly, I hope we will talk about the future or something else because this debate is almost beneath us.

I see my time is up.

I yield the floor to my great friend from Delaware who has been a sensible advocate on so many issues.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise as someone who lives in a State where we balance our budget every year, where the citizens of Wyoming and families all across the State live within their means, balance their budgets. They know what it means to have to live within a budget. That is why our State is one that currently today does not have a deficit, does not have a debt, a State where every year, by constitutional mandate, we balance our budget. It is time for Washington to take a lesson from Wyoming and balance its budget. This irresponsible spending must stop.

Here we are, a day from when it looks as if we may be dealing with a government shutdown, and I am ready to vote. I am ready to vote for a bill that already passed the House of Representatives early today. I am ready to vote to keep the government open and functioning, to make sure services are there. The bill passed the House. People who have studied civics in school realize that is how we make a law in this country. It passes the House, the Senate, goes to the President, who signs it into law. The bill has already passed the House. It is coming to the Senate. I don't know where other Senators are, but I am ready to vote.

I heard my colleague talk about a shutdown and who was rooting for a shutdown. It is no surprise to people who may be watching at home that it is former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean who is rooting for a shutdown. The former chairman of the Democratic National Committee says:

I think it would be the best thing in the world to have a

shutdown. He is the spokesman for the party of the other side

of the aisle. That may be what he wants. I don't want to do

that. I want to vote for the bill that passed the House. It

is the only proposal that is out there. I haven't seen the

Democrats offer anything. Even the New York Times said of the

President that he was ``silent for too long.''

We have heard our previous speaker talk about the social issues. Let's remember that it is convenient amnesia for Democrats to talk about that specific issue because the President voted for and signed into law spending bills that included similar--actually the identical social issue in the past, the one he is opposing today. So did 49 current Senate Democrats. They also voted for a spending bill that dealt with that social issue. Why all of a sudden today it is different? I believe it has to do with what the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee said:

I think it would be the best thing in the world to have a

shutdown.

Republicans are proposing solutions. What do we see from the other side of the aisle? We see the senior Senator from New York saying, ``I always use the word `extreme.' '' It doesn't matter what is proposed. He says, ``I always use the word `extreme.' '' There are tape recordings of him saying this. He then said, ``That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.'' Regardless of how reasonable a proposal may be, regardless of the solutions that may be proposed, ``I always use the word `extreme.' That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.''

I travel back and forth to Wyoming every weekend, visit with people and sit around at different locations, sometimes a morning breakfast group, sometimes it is people at lunch, dinners, community meetings.

I ask them: How many of you believe you have a life that is better than your parents had?

Every hand goes up.

Then I ask: How many of you believe your children will have a better life than you have right now?

Very few hands go up. That is the problem.

I ask them: What is the concern? Why do you believe you have a better life than your parents did but your children will not have as good a life as you?

The answer they give is the debt, the reckless spending in Washington--reckless, irresponsible, unsustainable. Yet, when we want to go ahead today, do cuts in spending, keep the military going, deal with the issue at hand, keep the government functioning so we can come back and continue to work on the debt and the spending, this body is not ready to vote.

I am ready to vote. I am ready to vote for the only proposal on the table--the one the Republicans in the House of Representatives passed today. That is real leadership. It is a plan. It will work. It is what the American people are asking for.

I have people from Wyoming coming to Washington all the time. They say: We realize things are tough this year. They come and explain a program that is good for people in the community, good for children, good for seniors--I met with six or seven groups like that today--good for students in school. They say: We know that all of us are going to have to deal with the realities of the facts, that we can't continue with this unsustainable spending where 40 cents out of every dollar we spend is borrowed, significant amounts from overseas. Our No. 1 lender is folks in China. I say: Is that your concern? That is absolutely the concern I hear around the State of Wyoming.

They see that the President of China comes over and tells America a few weeks ago that he wants the Chinese currency to be the currency of the future and the dollar to be the currency of the past. That is because he knows we have an addiction to spending, and it must stop. That is what I hear from people from Wyoming who come here as well. They say: We need to make sure we get the spending under control.

It seems reasonable to get back to the level of 2008 spending. That is the level many American families are living under. They balance their budgets. It is time for Washington to do the same.

I know the people in Wyoming. I have visited with a number through the week and in many communities last weekend--in Worland, Caspar, Laramie. What they are saying is, get the spending under control, and do it in a reasonable manner. But for someone to come from the other side of the aisle and say he thinks the best thing in the world to do is to have a shutdown and for another person to say he always uses the word ``extreme'' because that is what his caucus instructed him to use this week--that doesn't solve the problem. That doesn't let us find a solution. There is a solution on the table right now. It is a solution that has been proposed. This Senate ought to be voting on it tonight.

For the President to say he is going to veto it shows that the President is truly not engaged in this process. He has been silent too long, according to the New York Times. His budget that he has proposed, the Economist, a world-renowned, respected publication, called ``dishonest.'' That is not the kind of leadership we need. We need someone in the White House fully engaged, taking an active role, and making sure we get back on a course that is responsible, that allows us to live within our means, as families know, because we have to stop spending money we do not have. Stop spending money we do not have. That is the way for Washington to behave in a responsible way, to make the difficult decisions necessary for the future of the country, to focus on the issues that affect families and their needs. Families who are trying to deal with kids and bills and a mortgage know what it means to have to live within their means.

When we see policies coming out of this administration that are ones making the pain at the pump even worse, as families are noticing they are paying $700 on average more for gasoline this year than last year, that is money that is not available for other bills or for a mortgage or to help with their kids. Those are the issues they are facing, people trying to pay for their own health insurance, realizing the increased cost of the insurance because of the Obama health care law that passed way over the objections of the American people, crammed down the throats of the American people by the other side of the aisle.

The American people are saying: This is absolutely wrong. That is why I think we saw last November the election results we did across the country. That is why we see people continuing to stand up and speak out across the country. That is why people continue to go to townhall meetings and share their views about the problems happening in this country.

It is interesting. When I think of the great Presidents through the history of our country--we all have our favorites--I think of Ronald Reagan. He said that you can't be for big government and big spending and big taxes and still be for the little guy. We have on the other side of the aisle people who are for big government, big spending, and big taxes. They are not for the little guy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think there are times around here that we lose sight about what real people are doing in our home States. I think we lose sight of the struggles, their

daily struggles, how they live their lives with integrity and honor every day and go to work.

Yesterday, we got a call in my office from a young lady. She was on her cell phone. She is a nurse, a nurse's aide at the VA hospital in St. Louis. She was on her break, and she was on her cell phone.

She talked to the young lady who answers our phone and said: I want you to tell the Senator that I have got kids, and I bring home the paycheck. The way I feed my kids is with my paycheck I get working here at the VA hospital, and I am scared. I am scared about what is going to happen if all of a sudden I quit getting my paycheck. I have no place to turn. I am a single mom, and I am very worried.

Then, she said: Would you hold on a minute? Then she handed her cell phone to someone else in the break room at John Cochran VA Hospital, and then that woman handed the cell phone to another woman. By the time this conversation was over, the young lady who answers the phone in my office had talked to half a dozen women who do not make a lot of money, who go to work every day caring for our veterans in a veterans hospital.

You know what they all said? Why is this happening? Why is this happening? If Latonya and her friends were here right now, I would say: You know what, that is a darn good question, why this is happening. This is not a game. This is not a game of ping-pong, where we are hitting the ball up and down this hall from the House to the Senate, fighting over divisive social issues that, frankly, our country has struggled with for decades and will continue to struggle with.

This is about running our government and about the money it takes to run our government. That is all it should be about. It should not be a time for us to argue about Gitmo. It should not be a time for us to argue about women's reproductive health. It should be about funding our government. We have many other occasions we can debate those issues and disagree. And reasonable people do disagree.

But now is not the time to debate those issues at the 11th hour, when Latonya is not going to get a paycheck to feed her kids. I am for cuts. I have been the odd man out many times in caucus fighting for cuts. I worked on spending cuts last year with Senator Sessions from Alabama. I continue to work with Senator Corker about cuts.

I am somebody who said the original proposals that my caucus made were way too little. But you know what I am beginning to feel like? I am beginning to feel like I have been duped, because I thought that was what this was about. I thought it was about cuts.

Let's review the facts. The chairman of the House Republican Budget Committee and the Speaker of the Republican House said we need to cut $32 billion out of the remaining budget this year. I have to tell you the truth. I did not think that was unreasonable. I will admit, I am to the right of much of my caucus on some of this cutting stuff. But I did not think that was unreasonable. So I was glad when we went to the Republicans and said: You know what, we will cut. We will cut what you wanted to cut. In fact, we will cut more than what the House Speaker and the chairman of the House Budget Committee wanted to cut. That is where we are today. We have put more cuts on the table than they initially recommended.

I am beginning to realize this is not about cuts. This is about a much more extreme agenda that has to do with social policy, not about money. They keep moving the goalpost. What is the number? They keep moving the goalpost. We have gone more than halfway. In my neck of the woods, that is called a compromise.

We have the Republicans controlling the House, the Democrats control the Senate. That is why compromise is so important. What is wrong with a compromise? Let's do the compromise, fund the government, and get on with it, so Latonya can get her paycheck and the other women who work with her at the VA hospital can get their paycheck.

They will not take yes for an answer on cuts at this point. They want to make it about something else. Was the CR today just about military pay? No. No, it was not. I did notice one thing they did not put in the CR today. Why will the House Republicans not pass the bill we had asked them to pass to cut our pay if the government shuts down?

I will certainly not take a paycheck, and no one should take a paycheck. Why is that not being passed by the Republican House of Representatives? Why was that not put on the CR today? They want to, once again, pass something about moving people out of Gitmo, which has nothing to do with the budget for the rest of the year. When they were doing the Gitmo thing, why did they not put the pay for Members in there? Why did that not occur? I know the talking point is that--this is one of the talking points we are hearing from the other side: Well, you should have gotten this done last year. We can get it done today-- we can get it done today.

We have gone more than halfway on a compromise. This is no longer about the cuts. This is not about the money; this is about an extreme agenda.

Latonya's paycheck and the paychecks of her friends in the break room at the VA hospital hang in the balance. Let's review what happened last year on the budget. The Republican Party participated in every Appropriations Committee in the Senate, and every Appropriations Committee passed a bill.

At the end of the year, that bill was brought to the floor because the appropriators believed the Republican appropriators were supporting the bills they helped write. In fact, those Republican appropriators stuffed that bill full of earmarks for Republicans. Hundreds of earmarks for Republicans were stuffed in that bill.

It was brought to the floor. I remember the night it was brought to the floor. It was in the lameduck. Then the Republicans decided they did not want to support it anymore. By the way, it was not as if passing anything around here was easy last year. If anybody was paying attention, it was about: Let's drag this out. Let's be stubborn. Let's make sure they have to get 60 on everything.

Is there blame to go around that the budget did not get done last year? Sure. There is blame that can go on both sides of this aisle. I am not here to say it was the Republicans' fault or the Democrats' fault. But certainly it takes a lot of nerve to say the only reason we do not have a budget is because the Democrats were not willing to pass a budget last year.

It was a little more complicated than that, if people will remember the facts as they occurred at the time. So it appears to me now that there are certainly a lot of people down the hall who want the shutdown. I was interested when I saw in the paper that when Speaker Boehner announced to his caucus they were preparing for a shutdown, he got a standing ovation.

Well, I can assure you, there are no standing ovations in our caucus. There are no standing ovations. I will tell you what, when I go to sleep tonight, I am going to be thinking about Latonya. I am going to be thinking about her kids and what she is telling them tonight and what not getting one paycheck means to that family. Just one paycheck can make the difference, can send a family down the path of getting behind on the mortgage, behind on the bills, and then not having a way to catch up. That is what we should be thinking about right now, not about those social issues that we disagree on and that we can debate and disagree on for many years, as we have for the last 40. But really, can we get a number? Can we make the goalpost quit moving? Can we agree on the cuts and then get on to the hard work? How embarrassing is it that we are fighting over literally a few billion dollars in difference.

If this is so much about cutting the debt--for another day, I want to talk about this, but, really, the Republican budget was released this week. Guess what it adds to the deficit over the next decade. The Ryan roadmap adds $8.2 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. That is how serious they are getting about the deficit. It cuts taxes for a lot of wealthy people. It doesn't do much on the deficit.

I am all for cuts. I have stood for cuts. I will continue to stand for cuts. This government has to shrink. But what is going on right now is a political game. It is shameful. It should

stop. We should make an agreement on the numbers, move on, and make sure Latonya gets paid.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we have been talking for a long time today about this fiscal crisis. I don't think anyone is looking at the looming deadline tomorrow night as something that we want, to have government shut down. I hope so much that the President and Speaker Boehner and the Democratic leader of the Senate, Mr. Reid, can come to terms because we are so close to having an agreement on a continuing resolution until the end of this fiscal year--which is what we need. If anyone would run a business the way this government is being run, in 2- week continuing resolutions and 1-week and 3-week--it is not a way to run anything. It is not organized and you cannot plan. Certainly, we know taxpayer dollars are not being the most efficiently spent if we are going in 1- and 2-week increments.

The stakes are very high. I look back at the year 2000, and we had balanced budgets. We had a balanced budget in the year 2000. We had a balanced budget up until 9/11. That was only 10 years ago, and we ought to be able, as the U.S. Congress, working with the President, to say if we had a balanced budget 10 years ago, we cannot possibly be so far over the line that we cannot bring it back into balance. But to bring it back into balance we are going to have to look long term. We cannot do it on $30 billion of difference from now to the end of the fiscal year's spending. The fiscal year ends October 1. We cannot do it. We have to have a 10-year plan; we have to have clear cuts in spending; and we have to start working toward a balanced budget in a responsible way.

I cannot say I agree with everything in it, but the House Budget Committee chairman, one of the Republicans in the House, has proposed a budget that would do exactly that. It would get us to nearly a balanced budget. Now we need to start talking about the plans he has put forward. The President has not been; Congressman Ryan has. We are going to change some of it, I hope. We should have the same goal; that is, to get to a balanced budget over a period of time, 5 to 10 years. But we certainly are not going to do it in the next 24 hours, talking about $30 billion or $36 billion going for the next 6 months.

I hope we will settle this issue so we can go to the long-term issues. The long-term issue is going to come up in about 1\1/2\ months when we are going to be called on to raise the debt ceiling. The debt is $14 trillion. We are looking at a deficit this year alone of $1.6 trillion. If we go with the budget the President submitted, $3.7 trillion more, over $14 trillion? No wonder the people of this country are up in arms. We need to listen to the people of this country who say stop doing business in Washington the way it has always been done. Stop it now and start cutting back on the appetite for spending so we will be able to have the balanced budget that we can see in our future.

What we are looking at now is the potential of a government shutdown. I hope it does not come to that, but there is one thing we ought to be able to do in this Congress, and that is at least protect our military who is serving in Afghanistan and Iraq and their families who are back home worried enough about them because of where they are and who most certainly should not have another burden put on them of not knowing if their paycheck is going to come at the normal time of the month--the 1st and the 15th.

I have introduced S. 724. I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Sessions as a cosponsor.

I will say that makes our 46th cosponsor of S. 724. It is a very simple bill. It just says if there is a government shutdown, the military will be paid. The Secretary of Defense will have the discretion to also pay the civilians and those who are serving our military so the food service in Afghanistan and Iraq will not be stopped because we have a government shutdown and the paychecks are not going to come.

I want to alleviate any fear on the part of any member of our military or one whose family is watching the debate on the House and the Senate floor, watching this play out and thinking: Am I going to be able to pay the mortgage on time? I want to alleviate that fear right now.

I hope we will be able to pass this bill that is gaining sponsors about every 15 minutes, as people start looking at the looming shutdown of government that will happen a little later than this tomorrow night if we do not have an agreement. I think all of us should put our military in the front of the line and say: They are going to show up for work. Let's assure them their pay will not be delayed. That is not the message they are getting right now, but I think we can assure they will get it.

I have a letter we just received from the National Association of Uniformed Services, which says:

On behalf of the more than 180,000 members and supporters

of the National Association for Uniformed Services, I offer

our full support for your legislation, S. 724, the Ensuring

Pay for Our Military Act of 2011.

I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I hope we come to agreement and do not shut down the government. We are so close to getting this temporary fiscal year--which we are already halfway through--finished, and let's take this off the books. What we ought to be doing right now is focusing on the 2012 budget that starts October 1, where we are having our hearings, and we are asking our questions, and we are trying to set our priorities with a lower scale of government. We are going to cut back way below what we spent last year and the year before, but we are going to prioritize our spending.

We had FBI Director Mueller testify before our Commerce-Justice Subcommittee of Appropriations to talk about the law enforcement needs of our FBI. I want to spend my time talking about the needs of the FBI and the other necessary functions of government; certainly, our armed services bill. I do not want to be talking about shutting down government in the middle of the fiscal year because we are not coming together on $6 billion or $3 billion--I don't know exactly where they are now, but it is not very much in the scheme of things. What we need to do is get this behind us, alleviate the fears of our military personnel, alleviate the fears of their families that they might have a hiatus in their paychecks.

We need to start thinking about the big picture, the big picture of what we must focus on, which is cutting spending so we can go toward a balanced budget and agree on a 5- to 10-year trajectory that will put us back in a fiscally responsible position for our country to have the credibility in the world we should have, for our children to be free of the debt for what we have used in government in this country. We don't need to pass that debt to our children if we are responsible stewards of both their lives and our taxpayer dollars.

We need to be the leaders that people expect us to be. The people spoke in very loud terms last November, that they do not want more spending. I hear it everywhere I go. I hear it in the airports, on the streets, when I am talking to people in informal meetings, the grocery store--people are scared to death of a $14 trillion debt. It has never been so high in our country before.

I don't want that to be the legacy of this Congress and our generation. That is not the legacy we should have as leaders of the greatest country in the free world.

I implore the leaders of Congress and the President to get the continuing resolution behind us so we can focus on the big picture; that is, the $14 trillion debt that we are facing right now and doing the responsible cutting that will begin to cut back on the deficits, take down the debt, and address the issues that have not been addressed for all these years, once and for all.

I yield the floor.

I say to the Senator from Michigan, she was one of the first to sign on as a cosponsor of this bill. I think that is the right thing to do. I appreciate her leadership.

I just got a note from my staff, and I also ask unanimous consent to add Senator Scott Brown and Senator Amy Klobuchar as cosponsors of S. 724.

I thank the Senator from Michigan. I think we can do this together if we will come together and focus on those great young men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq serving right now and do something that is right for them regardless of whether we have to face a government shutdown for all the rest of us.

Mr. President, I associate myself with my colleague from Utah. I appreciate the clarity of his remarks. I wish to add to them.

I am glad we have some folks here today listening in. There is probably no other place in the country we can hear so much nonsense as we will hear on the Senate floor today. Unfortunately, we just heard that from the colleague before my colleague from Utah.

The House just passed another resolution to fund the government, fund the military for the rest of the year, pretty much at a figure we have all agreed on. It includes funding for 1 week to keep other aspects of the government open, and it makes some very modest cuts to our budget. Most of these have been agreed to in advance. But there seems to be one sticking point. This bill would prohibit using taxpayer money to fund abortions in DC.

My colleague who spoke a minute ago said this is an invasion of reproductive rights. I am here to tell colleagues that no one has a reproductive right to use somebody else's money for an abortion. That is all this is about. Not only taxpayers' money, but we are borrowing money to do something at a time when the country is nearly broke that Americans disagree on, and it violates the conscience of many Americans.

But my colleagues on the other side have decided to make this the crucial issue. Either Republicans agree to use taxpayer money for abortions or they are going to shut down the government. And they say we are emphasizing social issues. This is not just a social issue. It is an American issue. Even people who support abortion support the idea that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for it. It is a small request. The cuts are small. But it is clear, as the Senator from Utah just said, this shutdown has been planned by the President and the Democratic majority for a long time, believing they can win the PR battle, thinking that Americans are too stupid to figure it out. I am confident, as we go into this, that Americans are much smarter than my Democratic colleagues. I think they are going to figure out how irresponsible the President has been, how much lack of leadership there has been in the Senate, trying to blame Speaker Boehner in the House who controls one-half of one branch of government for a shutdown, when last year, when the President controlled the whole government, we didn't pass a budget. We didn't fund any aspect of government. This landed in the lap of a new Congress which still includes a Democratic majority here in the Senate.

There has not been one bill from the Senate that the Democrats agree on. The President has not sent down one funding request we could vote for. We don't have a bill proposed by Senator Harry Reid today that we can vote for to keep the government open. Yet he is saying what the Republicans on the House side are sending over is not good enough.

The House just passed another bill. Fifteen Democrats voted for it. If we had 15 Democrats in the Senate who were reasonable, we wouldn't have to deal with this ridiculous, irresponsible government shutdown. I don't know what else Republicans in the House could do. They sent over, over 40 days ago, a bill that would have funded the government through the rest of the year with very nominal cuts. It was set up to fail in the Senate. We have yet to have hardly any debate on the issue. During all this time we have spent less than 3 hours of debate on the most important issue in the country. We spent the last couple of weeks on a small business bill. I bet no American could tell us what we are even talking about. Before that we spent a couple of weeks on a patent bill--anything we could do

to avoid the responsibility of debating the most pressing issue in this country.

I also have to take issue with what the Democrats are trying to do with the tea party. I remind them that many tea party members are Democrats. They are Independents. They are Republicans. Many of them have never been involved with politics before. Many are Hispanic and African American. They are all Americans. But they are concerned about our country. They seem to be able to do something we can't do here. They add and subtract. They understand we can't keep spending more than we are bringing in and expect the country to survive. We even brought up a resolution--the Senator from Utah did--to have a sense of the Senate that we should balance our budget. Just about every Democrat voted against that. That means there is an intent to bankrupt our country. Because there is no way around it; if we keep spending more than we bring in, we will bankrupt the country.

That is the course this President has put us on. That is the course Senator Reid and the Democratic majority want to keep us on. When we try to do even modest, nominal reductions in spending to change the trend line, they are coached, as Senator Schumer has said, to call it extreme and to blame it on the tea party. Americans are smarter than that. I think my colleagues are getting ready to figure that out.

We come down to the bottom line the Senator from Utah mentioned. Why are they doing this? They look back to 1997, back in the 1990s, and they think they can win the PR battle. Even more importantly, the President needs a distraction. The focus on the President now is revealing a lack of leadership in domestic policy and foreign policy. He has led us into a mess in Libya. He has led us into a domestic mess and has us on a course to bankrupt the country. He is trying to take over health care. And all those unions and other people who were advocating for it are now asking for waivers. There have been over 1,000 waivers, people who want to get out of this health care bill. The financial reregulation Dodd-Frank bill is threatening to hurt the economy even more. The President needs a distraction. This is a choreographed distraction to close the government down, to draw attention, to try to shift the blame from a President who has been AWOL from leadership and has very little political courage.

That is what we need right now across America. That is what Americans are asking us to do, to keep fighting, be bold. This is not a matter of partisan politics as much as it is a matter of national survival. We have to make some hard decisions. We can't keep spending more than we are bringing in. We have to do what families do, tighten our belts, balance the checkbook.

These are not radical ideas. All we have to respond to is what the House has passed today. Senate Democrats who control this place have not offered any solution. The President has not offered a solution. I suspect we will not even be allowed to vote on the one option we have, what the House sends over here. Yet they think Americans are so stupid that they can come to the floor and blame Republicans who have no control over the situation except to send us what they think is best from the House.

That is what they are doing. They need to be applauded. Speaker Boehner has done everything he can to try to work with all parties here to responsibly keep the government going and at the same time to recognize we cannot keep this reckless spending the President has been doing the last couple of years. This is an urgent and serious matter that I am afraid is being played as a PR game by the other side.

The misrepresentations I heard just before about the budget being proposed on the House side are very difficult to swallow. The truth is very rare in this body. I hope all Americans will take the time to look at what is really going on because this is all a blame game, and the Democrats are counting on Americans not to pay attention, to take their cues from the national media.

We are going to do everything we can to keep the government open, to responsibly respond to what the voters told us last November, and not to play the blame game with the other side. But this is being played as a game instead of a matter of serious national survival, a serious national issue. But the bill we will hopefully have a chance at least to debate that the House just passed will take our No. 1 responsibility, to defend our country, fund our troops, and make sure that is done for the balance of the year. We can argue about the rest next week, but let's fund our troops this week and do what we were sent here to do.

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

Mr. President, I say hello to my good friend from Delaware. He made some very good comments. I want to follow up and talk about this debate we are having.

The Senator from Tennessee, Senator Corker, talked about the need to forget about whether you are a Republican or a Democrat and think about what is best for the country, and that is what we should be doing right now.

People around the country understand we have a serious debt problem. Spending has been run up under Republicans and Democrats. People can blame whichever party they want, but the reality is we now have a $14 trillion national debt. This year alone, $1.6 trillion is how much more we are going to spend than we take in. That is 40 cents, or a little over 40 cents, out of every dollar we are spending this year we are borrowing from countries like China. That is such a dangerous thing to do, because we are now dependent on other countries and our economy is on very shaky ground. Everyone in this body understands this is completely unsustainable.

Let's look at the path the President has set us on as far as his budget is concerned. If we took up his budget, this year alone we will spend about $250 billion in interest on our national debt. That is kind of like having a credit card and you are spending $250 billion in interest on that credit card. If we follow the President's plan over the next 10 years, that $250 billion will go to almost $900 billion a year. That is more than Social Security, more than Medicare, and more than national defense. That is why this is completely unsustainable.

So now we are in a debate over a few billion dollars compared to trillions of dollars? It is a drop in the bucket. That is why I believe it is important for both sides to get this behind us so we can focus on the much larger issues.

I have a 100-percent pro-life voting record. I believe very strongly that life is precious; that God created each of us in his image, and that life should be protected. But we have to face reality. The Democrats are in control of the Senate and in control of the White House. There is no way they are going to allow Planned Parenthood, which is the largest abortion provider in the United States--and I disagree with what they do--the Democrats will never allow us to defund Planned Parenthood while they are in charge. So we have to look at what we can do. What is achievable?

Right now, I think one of the biggest moral issues we face in this country is the debt. What we are doing to our children and grandchildren is handing them a country they cannot afford. The taxes will have to be too high. We could default on our debt and end in a depression which is worse than the Great Depression simply because this body, the body on the other side of the Capitol, and the White House have spent too much money for too long. We have spent money we do not have.

Next year's budget and the debt ceiling are much bigger issues than we are dealing with here. We don't need to shut down the government. We just need to sit down, make the compromises necessary so we can move this process forward and get to the much larger issues on spending and debt.

We have seen in the news that Portugal, Greece, and Ireland have had serious problems. They have actually had their debt downgraded to almost junk status. One of the countries is actually considered junk bond status. The others have now had their bonds seriously downgraded. What does that mean? That means they are paying higher interest rates.

Yesterday, the EU raised their interest rates. The European Union raised their interest rates because of fears of inflation. Here in the United States, our Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low. But we know inflation is coming, and eventually they are going to have to raise interest rates because of inflation and overspending by the United States. What does a rise in interest rates mean to the average American? It means that the home mortgage is going to go up.

Remember, a lot of Americans have these adjustable rate mortgages. So the next time they refinance those mortgages, their payments will be higher. They are already having trouble meeting these payments.

What does that mean for job creation? The small business owner who wants to get a loan will have to pay higher interest rates. That affects the cost of capital and whether they may be able to even start a business in the first place. It will hurt job creation right in the middle of this very little, very delicate bit of job recovery that we are having in the United States.

This spending and the debt is not some esoteric argument. It is real and it affects real people's lives. It isn't

something we can put off for another 3, 4, 5 years. We must deal with it now. We know that entitlements are the biggest part of the budget. Yes, discretionary is important. We have to deal with discretionary and we have to deal with defense. We overspend in defense in so many wasteful programs, but the big issue is going to be entitlement spending.

Congressman Ryan put out a very bold budget the other day--the first person to come forward with a bold proposal to deal with entitlement spending in this country. The President's debt commission put out a proposal, but the President, unfortunately, ignored his own debt commission and didn't put any of their recommendations in his budget. But both Republicans and Democrats are going to have to deal with this spending problem--this spending binge we have been on--otherwise we are not going to have the same United States of America we have all been enjoying our entire lives. We are literally going to become an economy that cannot exist the way we exist today because we cannot afford it. Our debt will literally collapse the economy of the United States.

A recent study came out, done by two incredible economists named Rogoff and Reinhart. These are viewed by both sides of the aisle as well-respected studies. They studied sovereign debt over the last 200 years of about 64 countries. What they found is any time the debt reaches 90 percent of the economy, or 90 percent of the GDP, it causes a net decrease of about 30 percent of economic growth going forward.

Those are numbers. But what does it mean? It means a loss of jobs. In the United States, we have over a million jobs that will be lost, that would otherwise be created. So this is real stuff. Where are we in the United States? Currently, we are about 94 percent of GDP. So we are already there, and it is going to get worse and worse.

That is why this debate we are having over spending is so critical, and critical that we get it under control. We need to forget about which party is going to have a political advantage. I am one of those Senators--and there are quite a few of us--who is not running for reelection. Everybody in this body needs to forget about whether they get reelected and do what is right for the country. It is so critical right now that we put our country first.

House Republicans have sent over a proposal that would do a couple of things. One, it would fund the troops. Let's not let our military come to work and not get paid. That would be ridiculous. Let's at least fund the troops and pass this 1-week spending proposal that would fund the government. It does cut $12 billion out. The only significant rider in there is the DC abortion rider that says DC can have funds to provide abortions. This is something that was in law and that President Obama signed, in a bill that many Democrats on the other side have signed, so it should not be that controversial.

In the meantime, since we have agreed on the spending number, we can work out some of these other controversial things in the next week. I believe that is the right thing to do to keep the government open, so people can continue to get their paychecks, so people can continue to visit national parks, and on and on and on. I think we all know the problems if the government shuts down.

I think it is critical that we start doing what is right for the country instead of what is right for somebody's reelection. Let's sit down and make the serious and tough choices so we can put this country on the right path.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.