PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak about the PATRIOT Act. I think it is a shame we are not going to be debating or having any votes on this act, particularly since it was promised by our leadership.

I would like at this time to yield the floor to my good friend, the Senator from New Mexico, if he would like to make a few remarks.

I thank the Senator for his comments. I think what this shows is that it is a bipartisan effort that says we should protect our Constitution. Those on the left and those on the right who believe in the Constitution believe it should be protected. That brings together some of us who may not necessarily agree on all other issues, but when it comes to the Constitution, when it comes to the basic Bill of Rights, we are concerned both on the right and left, on the Democratic and the Republican side. The problem is that those of us who are concerned with the Constitution are in the minority of both sides, so we are being quieted down, we are being told to sit quietly in the back of the room and don't make waves. We want to have a debate over the PATRIOT Act because we are concerned about our liberties. We are all concerned about terrorism too, but we don't think you have to give up your liberties in order to combat terrorism.

On February 15, we extended the PATRIOT Act for 90 days. During that time and on the Senate floor on February 15, we were promised a week of debate, and we were promised an open amendment process. We are now amidst a process where we will have no debate and no amendments. Do we fear terrorism so much that we will not have debate? Do we fear terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution and are unwilling and afraid to debate our Constitution? I think it is a sad day that we can't do that. Are Senators afraid to vote on the issues of the day, afraid to debate the Constitution, afraid to have an open forum and debate whether the PATRIOT Act is constitutional? I think this does a great disservice to the voters.

They talk about this being the world's most deliberative body. We are unwilling to deliberate. We are unwilling to have questions broached as to whether the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional. We have had 99 days since we extended it, 43 days in session, and we have had 56 votes. What does that mean in the context of things? We are setting a record for the least amount of votes ever to occur in the Senate. There are some important questions we should be debating, but unless it is a forgone conclusion, unless they have counted the votes and decided the outcome before we have the debate, we are precluded from debating.

Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist, wrote, ``Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.'' The PATRIOT Act is a perfect example of how a lack of vigilance leads to loss of liberty.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we amended the Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. You say: Whoa, we didn't have an amendment to the Constitution, did we? We did not do it the way we are supposed to, but we did in reality amend the Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. How did this happen? We were fearful. Mr. President, 9/11 had happened, and we wanted to stop terrorism. All of us want that, but do we have to give up our constitutional liberties in order to do that?

How did the PATRIOT Act change the Constitution? How did the PATRIOT Act change the fourth amendment? In the fourth amendment, it says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons,

houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches

and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall

issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or

affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be

searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The PATRIOT Act changed this. The PATRIOT Act changed the standard from probable cause, which is a longstanding position and standard within the courts which limits the police from coming into your house unless there is probable cause that you have either committed a crime or are in the act of committing a crime--we changed this to a standard we now call relevance. But that is changing the Constitution.

How do you change the Constitution by majority vote? It is supposed to be a supermajority in both bodies. Then it is to go back and be ratified by three-fourths of the States. It is supposed to be difficult to change the Constitution, difficult to amend the Constitution. Why? Because we thought some of these rights were so important that we should not allow a majority to change them. Those of us who own guns and believe in gun ownership think the second amendment is protected from a simple majority taking away the second amendment. Likewise, the first amendment--those of us who prize the ability of the press to print and to respond and to hold beliefs, however unpopular, those of us who wish to have a country in which religion is not hampered and we can say what we believe and not have it hampered by the government, we don't believe a majority should take away these rights.

But a majority did take away part of the fourth amendment because we changed the standard of the fourth amendment from probable cause to relevance. So if they want to look at your records, they just have to say it is relevant. They don't have to say you are a terrorist. They don't have to say you are a foreigner. They don't have to say you are conspiring with anyone. They just have to say they have some interest in your library records.

How often is this going on? There is something called suspicious activity reports. Some of this was started before the PATRIOT Act, some of it is separate from the PATRIOT Act, but much of it was emboldened by the PATRIOT Act. The suspicious activity reports are where your bank spies on you. You may not know this is happening, you may not even know if they have spied on you, and they probably won't tell you. But if you made a transaction that involved more than $5,000, you could well have been spied on by your bank and reported to the government.

Some people say: I am not doing anything wrong; I don't care if they look at my records. Here is the thing: If you look at my visa bill, you can tell what doctors I go to. If I see a psychiatrist and I don't want everybody to know it, that may be on my Visa bill these days. What magazines I read is on my Visa bill, what books I order from Amazon or another bookseller from the Internet, whether I drink alcohol, whether I gamble. There is a lot about your life that is involved in your financial records, and I think they do deserve protection and we do deserve a standard where we don't say, well, it might be relevant, or, we might just want to troll through all these records to see if anybody might be committing a crime.

This one is even worse than many of the other aspects because the suspicious activity reports do not begin with the government asking any questions. They tell your bank to watch you. Your bank is to watch you and to watch all of your transactions and to report to the government. So they have force.

You say: Maybe they are only reporting terrorists. Since 2001, since 9/11, 8

million suspicious activity reports--8 million--have been filed. Over 1 million of these are filed a year. The thing is, you could well ask for a Freedom of Information Act inquiry and ask whether you have been investigated by your government for your transactions.

My point is this is an invasion of your privacy. It does not have any judicial restraint upon it. And the other thing is, it may not even be good for finding terrorists. It may be they are getting so much information they cannot even read or listen to all the information. It is kind of like what they are doing at the airports. Because they insist everybody be searched and everybody be patted down, we are patting down 6-year-olds. A little girl in my town--her dad is a physician and practiced with me at my same practice--was patted down where they are putting their hands inside her pants. This is absurd--6- year-old girls.

The thing is, by doing that, they are wasting time on people who will not be attacking us and spending less time on people who will be attacking us. It is the same with banking records. If they are looking at your banking records, they do not have the time to spend looking at records of people who possibly would be attacking us. Eight million records have been looked at--no judge's order, no judicial review. This one is not even reviewed by anybody in government. They are giving this power carte blanche to banks, and they are telling the banks: If you do not spy on your customer, you will be fined. They estimate that $7 billion a year is spent by banks complying with this order to spy on their customers.

The thing is, we are having trouble in our economy. The banks are struggling. The economy is struggling. We are having trouble with jobs. And yet we are going to add $7 billion of costs onto the banks to spy on their customers.

Might there be an occasion where a bank transfer or bank activity could be a terrorist activity? Yes. If we are investigating those, let's ask for a warrant. You say: It will be too slow. We never get it. Warrants are almost never denied. There is a special court set up for the investigation of intelligence. It is called the FISA Court. It has been around since the 1970s. Before the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Court never turned down a warrant.

You say: These people are awful; we have to get them off the street. It doesn't matter, I don't want any restraint; I just want it done.

Unfortunately, that has been the attitude of the people up here and a majority of people after 9/11. The people were so frightened that they said: Do anything, I don't care.

The problem with that attitude is, even if you want to argue that has not been abused yet, what happens when people are elected to your government who decide they do not like your religion or you believe in a certain kind of marriage, and you want to say this and they want to investigate you? There is no step to stop that. There is no step to say: Your church believes in this unorthodox belief or this belief that we do not call politically correct or it is no longer acceptable, but we want to investigate the banking records of the church and see if we can take away their IRS number or tax exemption. If you do not have any restraint to these activities, someday we will get a government that has no restraint and then goes forward to say: We want to get that church shut down because that church is saying something we disagree with or these people are reading these books we do not like.

This goes across the party aisle. The Library Association is concerned with this also, that people's books are being looked at. Think about it. Do you want the government to know what books you read? Do you want to be on a watchlist because of the books you read?

They say: Oh, there are provisions. We have made provisions. That will not happen.

The only way you have a real provision or protection is if you have procedural steps that say someone must review this before it happens.

If we have someone who we think is terrible and they need to be off the streets, if they are accused of rape, accused of murder, accused of robbery, accused of the most heinous crimes we can think of, and it is 2 in the morning, we call a judge and we get a warrant. It is almost never turned down. But it is one step removed from the police breaking down every door of every person they suspect and not having any kind of discussion with someone who has a level head, who is not part of the investigation.

Many up here will say we are in grave danger. If the PATRIOT Act expires, all things could happen and terrorism could break loose. What they are arguing, though, is that there is a scenario where we would not get warrants to investigate terrorism. That never existed. Before the PATRIOT Act, we were not turning down these warrants.

Some have argued that Moussaoui, the 19th hijacker--he was captured a month in advance of 9/11--many have said that if we only had the PATRIOT Act, we could have gotten him. That is untrue. There is a provision called the lone wolf provision in the PATRIOT Act, but we did not get Moussaoui because we did not do our job. We did not communicate well. The superiors to the officers and the FBI agents in the field did not even ask for a warrant. They turned down a request for a warrant without even asking the FISA Court for it.

We have the 19th hijacker a month in advance. We have his computer. When we do look at his computer on 9/12, we link him very quickly, within a matter of hours, to all the other hijackers. It is easy in hindsight to say we could have stopped 9/11, but to tell you the truth, we have to look at the rules and say: Could we possibly have gotten that information? The answer is yes.

The FBI agent in Minnesota wrote 70 letters to his superiors. The FBI was told that Moussaoui was possibly an agent of terrorism. The French Government confirmed it. That was all we needed. With that information, had they gone to the FISA Court, they would have gotten a warrant. When the 9/11 Commission report came out, they acknowledged as much. Moussaoui's warrant, in all likelihood, would not have been turned down, and there is a possibility we would have stopped it.

The suspicious activity reports are particularly galling because they are businesses that are forced to spy on their citizens. There is another form of spying that goes on as well. These are called national security letters. These are like warrants. They go after your banking records, such as the suspicious activity reports, but they are a little more targeted in the sense that the government is asking for an NSL. But it is not a judge who asks for an NSL. The person who asks for an NSL is an FBI agent, essentially a police or law enforcement agent. The danger here is that we have removed the step where the police officer or the FBI agent would then ask for permission from a judge. That is my problem with these national security letters.

Some say: We are not doing that many of them. Initially, we were not. Now we have done over 200,000 national security letters. One of my reforms, if it were to take place, would be to ask judges to review these. I see no reason why they should not review them.

Some have said: You have no expectation of privacy. The courts have already ruled that you have no expectation of privacy in your papers or electronic records. This is the way it has been interpreted, but I think it has been misinterpreted. I think it has been interpreted that your banking records do not deserve privacy when they are not in your house, and I think it is an incorrect interpretation of the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment says that in your papers, you are to be protected. It does not specify those papers are in your possession or in someone else's.

At this time, I yield the floor to my good friend from South Carolina.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, not only are we not debating the PATRIOT Act, but does the Senator from South Carolina think we have given sufficient floor time to amendments and proposals as to how to deal with the debt problem?

Mr. President, one other question is, we will not all agree necessarily on the PATRIOT Act. The thing is, even for those who feel it is important it not expire, why would they not consent to some debate? I have asked for three amendments, three votes. We could do them in the next hour. We could debate and have this time and there would be no expiration of the PATRIOT Act for those who think it expiring is a problem.

Mr. President, I do not quite grasp why they are so fearful of debate and fearful of votes, that they are willing to let the PATRIOT Act expire to prevent debate and prevent votes. The sticking point turns out to be an amendment basically on preventing gun records from being sifted through under the PATRIOT Act. People say: Well, what if someone--a terrorist--is selling guns illegally? Couldn't we get them? Yes, we could get them the way we get everybody else: Ask the judge for a warrant. Judges routinely do not turn down warrants. It worked for us for 225 years, until the PATRIOT Act, when we had a process, the fourth amendment, protecting us from an overzealous government. But it also worked to catch criminals.

At this time I yield the floor temporarily to my good friend from Utah.

When we look at this debate and we talk about exactly where we should go from here and why it is important, it is important to look at the PATRIOT Act and say to ourselves: How do we protect our Constitution if we are not willing to protect all parts of it? So many conservatives are avid for the second amendment. I am one of them. I want to protect the second amendment. But I tell those who want to protect the second amendment that they can't protect the second amendment if they don't believe in the first amendment. If they don't believe in the first amendment, they can't have that voice that it will take. If they want to place limitations on groups that advocate gun ownership under the second amendment, that will limit the second amendment. But, likewise, they cannot protect the second amendment if they don't believe in the fourth amendment.

There is no reason we should allow a government to look at our gun records and to troll through all of them. If a government thinks someone is a terrorist, name that person, name the place, and show probable cause. Do we want to allow government to troll through our records? The government has looked at 28 million electronic records--28 million. They are just sifting through all of our records looking for what. I want them to catch terrorists, but I want them to look at the Constitution with some restraint to say this person is a terrorist or we suspect him to be so, for this reason. We need not be so frightened that we give up our liberty in exchange for security.

Some would say our government is full of good people who would say: I have not done anything wrong, and I don't have to worry about it. We are not worried about good government; we are worried about bad government. Jefferson said once upon a time if all men were angels, we would have no concern for constitutional restraint. But there have been times in our history and in the history of other countries where unsavory characters, where despotic characters have won election.

When Hitler was first elected in the 1920s and early 1930s, he was elected popularly. The thing is, they were so mad and upset over World War I that they basically traded. They said: We want a strong leader. Give us a strong leader. But if we have rules that allow that strong leader to grab and do things, that is the real danger. At a minimum now, the danger is--it is a great danger to us if we allow this to go on if we get a despotic government at some point in time.

We are not worried about good people in government. We are worried about people who might be elected who would abuse these powers. It has happened. Look at what happened during certain administrations where people looked at IRS records of enemies. Look at what is happening now where the executive branch is looking at donor records for those who do business with government. If you are a contractor and you do business with government, they want to know who you donate to.

There are dangers to allowing the government to snoop through our records. It doesn't mean we don't want to stop crime, we don't want to stop terrorism. It means we need to have a rule of law, and we need to pay attention to the rule of law.

We proposed several amendments. One of them went through the Judiciary Committee. It was deliberated. It was amended. It was passed with bipartisan support, but we won't get a vote on it. It disappoints me that they are afraid to debate this on the Senate floor, and we will get no vote on amendments that were offered seriously to try to reform the PATRIOT Act to take away some of the abuses of it.

We offered three amendments to the PATRIOT Act. One was on the gun records. That apparently unhinged people who are afraid of voting on any gun issues. Because of that, we are all going to be denied any debate or votes.

Some will say: Oh, you are going to keep your colleagues here until 1 in the morning. Well, I think when they are here tonight at 1 in the morning, maybe they will think a little bit about why they are here and why we had no debate and why we had the power to have the debate at any point in time. I have agreed and said we can have a vote on the PATRIOT Act in an hour or 2 hours. We could have had a vote on the PATRIOT Act yesterday. But I want debate, and I want amendments. I think that is the very least the American people demand and this body demands, that there be open and deliberate debate about the PATRIOT Act.

One of our other amendments has to do with destroying records. Some of these records they take from us through the bank spying on us, or the government spying on us, are not destroyed. I think these records should be destroyed at some point in time.

For goodness' sakes, if you are not a terrorist, why are they keeping these records? There ought to be rules on the destruction of these records if you are not a terrorist and they are not going to prosecute you.

The fourth amendment says we should name the place and the person. We have one wiretap called the John Doe. They don't name the place or the person, and they are not required to. I think we should. Now, are there times when it might be a terrorist when we say, well, we don't want to name the person? We don't have to name them in public. We could name them to the FISA commission. I do not object to them being named and the name being redacted, but the name should be presented to the judge who is making the decision. I want a judge to make a decision.

James Otis--part of our revolution--for the 20 years leading up to the American Revolution, there was a debate about warrants. They issued what were called writs of assistance. They are also called general warrants. They weren't specific. They didn't say what crime one was being accused of, and the soldiers came into our houses. They would lodge soldiers in our houses, and they would enter into our houses without warrants. The fourth amendment was a big deal. We had passed the fourth amendment, and it was one of the primary grievances of our Founding Fathers.

I don't think we should give up so easily. I don't think we should be cowed by fear and so fearful of attack that we give up our liberties. If we do, we become no different than the rest of the countries that have no liberties. Our liberties are what make us different from other countries. The fact that we protect the rights, even of those accused of a crime--people say, well, gosh, a murderer will get a trial. Yes, they will get a trial because we don't know they are a murderer until we convict them. We want procedural restraints.

People say: You would give procedural restraints for terrorists? I would say at the very least, a judge has to give permission before we get records. The main reason is because we are not asking for 10 records or 20 records or 40 records of people connected to terrorism. We are asking for millions of records.

There are people in this room today who have had their records looked at. It is difficult to find out because what happens--here is the real rub, and this is how fearful they were. When the PATRIOT Act was passed shortly after 9/11, they were so fearful that they said: If a letter, a demand letter, a national security letter asks for records, you are not allowed to tell your attorney. You were gagged. If you told your attorney, they could put you in jail for 5 years. It is still a crime punishable by 5 years in jail.

If I have Internet service and they want my records on somebody, they don't tell me or a judge. We have no idea. There is no probable cause. This person might be relevant, which could mean anything, however tangential. If I don't reveal those records, I go to jail. If I tell my wife they are asking for my records, I could go to jail.

This secrecy on millions of records, this trolling through millions of records is un-American. It is unconstitutional. They have modified the Constitution through statutory law. We have given up our rights. It should be two-thirds of this body voting to change the Constitution and three-fourths of the States. We did it by 50 percent with one bill. The bill was hot when it came here. There was one copy of it. No one read it.

I came from the tea party, and I said: We must read the bills. I propose that we wait 1 day for every 20 pages so we are ensured they are reading the bills. The PATRIOT Act was hundreds of pages long and nobody read it. Not one person read it because it wasn't even hardly printed. There were penciled edits in the margin, and it was passed because we were afraid.

But we can't be so afraid that we give up our liberties. I think it is more important than that. I think it is a sad day today in America that we are afraid to debate this. The great constitutional questions such as this, or great constitutional questions such as whether we can go to war with just the word of the President, these great constitutional questions are not being debated because we are so fearful of debate.

I urge the Senate to reconsider. I urge the Senate to consider debating the PATRIOT Act, to consider amendments, and to consider the Constitution.

Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we had an unfortunate series of votes last night, in my opinion, because it was all arranged by our leadership in the Senate to have a series of votes to do nothing. That is unfortunate because the United States of America, and the Senate are proceeding with an idea that they do not have to have a budget. In fact, the majority leader, Senator

Reid, said it would be foolish to pass a budget. And as one of the staffers said, on background: Well, if we pass a budget, we will have to tell people how much we are going to raise their taxes and talk about spending reductions, and that will not be popular.

What did they do? One of the most incredible things I have ever seen in the Senate. Did they express regret that they could not pass a budget, that they would not state for the American people a vision for spending and the financial future of America? No. What did they do? They have the majority in the Senate. They called up the budget passed by the House of Representatives, which is a really historic budget, an honest budget that deals fairly and objectively with the challenges we are facing, reduces spending, actually was able to reduce some taxes, and proposed, a decade out, that the Congress confront Medicare because it is going broke. So what did they do? They called up that budget. Did they call it up to amend it? Did they call it up to offer us a chance to debate it and offer amendments and fix anything anybody did not like about it? No. That was not what was done. They brought it up only with the most limited debate before all four votes. They stacked all four votes on four different budgets and projections and just voted them down. They voted down every budget that was offered.

I have on my desk in my office the President's budget. It is four volumes, hundreds of pages, and it lays out a budget. Every President submits budgets. They have a 500-person Office of Management and Budget staff. Every year, they produce a budget. The law requires them to produce a budget. This is the Code, the United States Code Annotated, and in this is the law that says a President should submit a budget and the date by which he should do it. It says the U.S. Senate should commence markup in the Budget Committee by April 1 and the Congress should pass a budget by April 15. Last I heard, April 15 is long since passed.

How do you get a budget out of committee and to the floor of the Senate? What are we supposed to do by April 1? The chairman is supposed to call a markup, and he is supposed to bring up the budget he proposes, offer it to the Budget Committee. It is open for amendment, change, and debate, then it is voted on. A budget should then come out of the committee to the floor of the Senate. It has expedited procedures, but you are allowed to offer amendments, and there is 50 hours of debate--not too much. It does not require the normal 60 votes we have to have for legislation here; it only requires a majority, 50 votes.

That is basically designed, frankly--when the people wrote the Budget Act back in the 1970s--to allow the majority party to be able to pass a budget because there were too many filibusters of budgets and no budgets were getting passed. If you have the majority in the Senate, at least you should be able to produce a budget. So it provides the Democratic majority--the 53 Democratic Senators they have--the opportunity to produce a budget on a partisan basis if it cannot be done on a bipartisan basis. So the normal process is, you work with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and if you think a good agreement can be made in a bipartisan fashion, you do so and move a bipartisan budget.

I remember last year when Senator Gregg, our Republican ranking member, talked about his conversation with Senator Conrad, and he said: He is not letting me see the budget. It is going to be produced the next morning. What that means is, he is going to produce a partisan budget. He does not want our opinion. He is not going to show us what is in his budget until the day of the mark-up.

So this year, we wrote--all the Republican members; I am the ranking member now--we asked the Budget chairman to show us his mark 72 hours before the mark-up because he had not consulted with us and it appeared he was going to produce a partisan budget. Actually, he told me the date the hearing would commence to mark up his budget, but he did decline to give us any advance notice or opportunity to see what was in it.

All I am saying is that the procedure is set up realistically under the Budget Act to allow the majority party to meet its responsibility to pass a budget. They do not need a single Republican vote to pass a budget. I think it is better if you can get a bipartisan agreement. Oftentimes in the past, there have been. But since budgets represent visions for America, oftentimes in recent years they have gone on pretty much a party line but not 100 percent. That is what I would say.

So the President submitted his budget, and it was roundly criticized around the country, and I was a very severe critic of it. So we offered that budget last night. That was one of the four budgets that was offered. We brought it up. It is the only Democratic budget to be produced. I believe the Progressive Caucus produced one in the House, but, of course, it did not pass. It had a lot of tax increases, a lot of spending increases in it. It had no chance whatsoever of being passed. The American people sent us a message last year that they want us to get spending under control. They want us to reduce the size and scope of government. That is what they asked us to do.

So the President's budget came up last night, and, 97 to 0, every Democrat voted against the President's budget. Well, they should because it was unacceptable. I have referred to it as the most irresponsible budget in the history of our country because we are in a deeper financial hole than we have ever been. That is just a fact, and it is not a short-term, little problem; it is a problem that is getting worse in the years to come.

So the American people have come to the conclusion that we need to change the trajectory of debt that we are piling on year after year, month after month, day after day, by the billions--trillions, really.

The President's budget, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, would produce uncontrolled debt year after year after year, in amounts never before contemplated in our country, making the debt trajectory of our current baseline spending worse, not better.

I was under the impression everybody understood we had to change and get better. I thought, when we came in with this Congress, the debate would be over how much to change in the right direction, how much could we do to reduce the deficits, put us on the right path. Not the President's budget, which made things worse.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed his budget and scored it, as we say, the lowest single deficit that budget would produce is $748 billion, the lowest deficit to be produced under his 10-year budget. President Bush was criticized for spending. The highest budget deficit he had was $450 billion. That was the highest President Bush had, and he was criticized for that by many of my Democratic colleagues quite vociferously.

President Obama is now heading to his third trillion dollar budget deficit. This year, it is going to be $1.5 trillion, it looks like three times the size of President Bush's highest deficit. As I said, the lowest deficit they are projecting is $748 billion, and then it starts going back up again. In his 10th year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit will be $1.2 trillion.

It is an indefensible, irresponsible budget. I am stunned that it was presented here. It has been widely criticized, as well it should be. So it was voted down last night.

If you are going to vote down something, should you not offer something in its place? That is what the fiscal commission that President Obama appointed said. That was their rule. That is what they promoted publicly: If you oppose a budget, you should offer your own. And, in fact, after Congressman Ryan, who served on the fiscal commission with Mr. Bowles and Senator Simpson, the cochairmen, he produced a budget. They gave him great credit. They said it was honest and courageous, and it faced the challenges of America, and it deserved respect, and then said: Anybody who does not agree with that should show what they would do.

So yesterday afternoon, we had the spectacle of Democratic Senators hammering and complaining about the Ryan budget, which in my opinion is the most historic and responsible budget to be produced in decades. No, it is not perfect. It is perfectly acceptable to believe that it ought to be amended.

But it was a historic, honest attempt at dealing with the fiscal challenges we face, and would put us on a financial path to solvency and stability and eliminate the risk we are facing. We probably should do more to reduce spending than he proposed. But it was courageous and bold and honest and without gimmicks. I thought a very impressive document. I looked forward to debating parts of it in our Budget Committee.

So what did we have last night? Yesterday? They just brought it up and every Democratic Member voted it down. And why? Because he had the gumption to actually suggest that for people 55 and younger, we should begin to create a Medicare system that would be solvent and effective and save Medicare, because the trustees have reduced the year again at which it goes insolvent. Senator Reid and Senator Schumer had cleverly thought up this theory and were explicit about it. Their theory was they would not bring up their own budget. They would not tell the American people how much they wanted to increase their taxes. They would not tell the American people they were going to cut anything, because they might make someone unhappy and be unpopular. They would just call up the Ryan budget and attack Republicans as wanting to kill Medicare, and produce nothing in response. They do not have any plan to fix the situation we are in.

I am disappointed about that. It is unthinkable that we would be recessing and going home for a week without commencing markup hearings in the Budget Committee to produce a budget that we are required by law to produce. It is unthinkable we would do that.

I will be presenting to the majority leader a letter today from Senators on our side of the aisle--large numbers of Senators have signed it, saying, we do not need to go home until we have confronted this problem, and you have shown us how we are going to move forward to meet our statutory responsibility to pass a budget.

I think that is reasonable. That is what we are going to be asking today. I am not going to vote to go home without having met our duty. We call up our young men and women in uniform. We say: You will go to Iraq for a year. They say: Well, I would rather not go. It is in your contract. You signed up. You have to go. It is your duty. And they say, yes, sir, and they go.

Many of them have lost lives and limbs and we ought to remember them this Memorial Day. But Do not we have a duty here? I think we do. I think we have a duty to the United States of America to produce a budget, whether or not it is law. But it is law in the United States Code. That is our duty. We do not need to be going home until we fulfill it, and we have a plan to go forward with it. I want to say this is not a little bitty matter with me. We are not going to have four votes--as we did yesterday--and then the majority leader is going to say, see, it is foolish to produce a budget. I told you we could not produce a budget. We are not going to fool with having a budget this year.

It has been 757 days since the Senate has had a budget, because the majority leader did not bring up a budget last year either. Does anybody have any wonder about why we are going to have a $1.5 trillion deficit this year, why 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed? We spend $3.7 trillion and we take in only $2.2 trillion.

Experts and financial wizards all over the world are telling us, what are you doing in the United States? You are about to threaten the world's most prominent economy. It could have worldwide ramifications. Our debt to GDP compares with Portugal and Spain, almost as high as Greece. It will be 100 percent by September 30 of this year.

And we are going away without a budget again. The people who have asked to be given a leadership responsibility in the Congress cannot even comply with the Budget Act. They refuse to stand before the American people and say what they want to tax, what they want to spend, what they want to cut--because it would not be popular. It would be foolish.

I do not think so. It is not acceptable. You asked to be the leader of this Congress. You asked to be the President of the United States. You have a responsibility to submit a responsible budget, an honest budget, a fact-based budget, a budget the American people have an opportunity to understand, to read and study before we vote. And if the American people find we have cast a bad vote, they can cast a good vote to throw some people out of Congress.

They threw some people out last fall. It does not look like we have gotten the message--Business as usual. We are in denial. We do not have to change. Oh, no, you cannot cut this spending program. What do you mean you cannot cut spending programs? Give me a break. The Alabama Governor, Dr. Bentley, had to announce a 15-percent reduction in discretionary spending. Why? He did not have the money. Is that something we have forgotten in Washington--when you do not have money, you should not spend it?

Well, you say, it is all because of this economy, or something else. Look, under President Obama, nondefense discretionary spending in 2 years went up 24 percent. We are going broke. We are increasing spending on all the government programs. On an average, in the last 2 years that is 12 percent a year. You know, the value of your money will double in 10 years if your interest is 7 percent. At 12 percent, I guess the size of government would increase and double in 6 years.

Great scott. No wonder people are upset with us. We have been spending incredibly recklessly. Also the 12 percent I mentioned--24 percent in 2 years--that does not include the stimulus package, the almost $900 billion stimulus package that was thrown out the door with almost no oversight. It was just designed to spend. And do you remember, it was supposed to stimulate the economy.

We probably have had the slowest ever rebound from a recession. It has been a very shaky recovery. They will say, well, we should have spent more. But Rogoff and Reinhart, the professors, tell us, when your debt gets as high as that of the United States, then you begin to show a decline in growth. One percent of GDP growth is reduced when your debt reaches 90 percent of GDP. We reached that this year, and we will go over 100 percent by September 30.

This is the budget that the President has submitted to us. He has a large staff over there. They maintain it. A large number of them have been there for many years. The President submitted to us a budget. It was rejected yesterday 97 to 0. It confirms the fact that we do not have a legitimate budget before us. The President's budget has been rejected utterly. The Democrats have refused to produce one.

They say: Why don't you have a mark-up and offer your budget? I cannot call a mark-up. The chairman calls the mark-up. The majority leaders confer and tell the chairmen when to call a mark-up. They decided not to call a budget mark-up. We do not have an opportunity to go to the Budget Committee and pass a budget.

We had such tremendous interest, and a lot of the new people who got elected to the Senate last fall wanted to be on the Budget Committee. They traveled their States. They had heard from their people all over their States that they wanted us to control spending. They wanted to be on the committee. It was the committee which had more interest and more people pushing to be on it than any other committee. We finally selected a fabulous group of people to serve on the committee. And now we do not meet. Now we are not even going to mark up a budget. What a disappointment for those new Members coming here with vim and vigor and ready to do something about the future of the Republic.

You know, one of the things that was interesting about the President's budget is how much praise it got from our Democratic colleagues who voted it down last night when it came out. This is what Senator Schumer said about it: ``This is a responsible proposal. I believe this approach should have bipartisan support.'' Senator Bill Nelson: ``I personally think the President's budget is a step in the right direction.'' Senator Max Baucus: ``The President's budget strengthens our economy.'' Senator Ben Cardin: ``President Obama has given us a credible blueprint.'' Senator Tom Carper: ``The President's budget is an important step forward.'' Senator Frank Lautenberg: ``President Obama's budget presents a careful evaluation of what our Nation needs.''

They all voted no last night. You know, with friends like that, you do not need enemies, as they like to say. But what about Mr. Erskine Bowles, the man President Obama chose to serve as chairman of the debt commission? Mr. Bowles talked about the budget. He was rather stunned actually when it came out. It came out I think on Friday. On Sunday, Mr. Bowles said: ``It comes nowhere close to where they will have to go to avoid a fiscal nightmare.''

Can you imagine? This is the man President Obama chose to head the deficit commission, and he hammered this budget.

He said it is nowhere close, and it is nowhere close to doing what we have to do. So I believe what we went through yesterday was a sham, a mockery, a joke, and had no meaning. It was nothing but politics, nothing but an avoidance of responsibility to help provide leadership.

We all know some serious choices have to be made, and I will close with these thoughts. We are going to need a partnership in the Senate between our parties. There are going to be some tough choices which have to be made. In my view, we simply cannot continue at our rate of spending. It has to be reduced. But we have people in denial, who don't think it has to be reduced. But when your lowest deficit in 10 years is projected to be $740 billion, and this year's will be the highest in the history of the Republic, $1.5 trillion or more--how do we get there?

We are going to have to make some choices. I have saluted the Gang of Six, who have tried. Apparently, they have fallen on hard times and the prospects aren't good for that. Now the Vice President is meeting. There is some excuse, they say, that we don't have to do our business openly and before the public and stand and be accounted for because that would not work. People are afraid to make tough choices and decisions in public.

I believe the American people are not happy with us. I know they are not happy with us. Seventy percent of them believe this country is on the wrong track, and the biggest part of that, surely, is our fiscal management. They know this debt cannot be sustained. So we need to do something. The best way to do it is to follow the regular order, follow the legally constituted method of budget processing. Let's have a Budget Committee meeting, and if the Gang of Six has ideas, let's have them brought up in the Budget Committee and vote on them. If Vice President Biden wants to send something over, I am glad to hear it. If the President wants to send his people over to defend this budget that has been rejected 97 to zero, let them do it.

I will tell you what he and his Budget Director, Mr. Lew, said--can you believe it? They said this budget will allow us to live within our means and not spend money we don't have. That is the way they promoted this budget. It was rejected last night. If it caused us to live within our means and allowed us to pay down our debt then I would vote for it. It did not come close to that. Yet the President talked about it all over the country, and his staff ran around saying this budget will allow us to live within our means. That is totally inaccurate, and that is irresponsible. What the President should have done, and what our Democratic leaders have to help us with, is go to the American people and, with clarity, without equivocation, say we cannot continue. We must tell them big changes have to be made, and we are so sorry this country has gotten in the shape we are in. We must say that we are going to make some changes, and we urge you to help us stick together and do it. We must do this to put the country on the right path.

But what do we have? We have Congressman Ryan, in the Republican House, who had the temerity, the courage, the discipline, and the sense of duty sufficient to pass a budget that would actually do what needs to be done. They called it up and attacked it with everything they had, but they will not produce anything of their own.

It cannot be denied that this is a failure of leadership. I believe the process and path we are on now is dangerous; it is not public, it is secret. They tried to produce a secret plan on comprehensive reform of immigration. The American people heard about it, and down it went. They tried to negotiate in secret this health care reform bill. They were able to hold their votes on a straight party-line vote--60 to 40-- but the American people were not happy with the process or results and a lot of people who participated in that spectacle didn't come back after this last election.

That is not the path we are hearing from our constituents. Our constituents are saying: You work for us. We want to see you publicly stand and defend the values we believe in. If you don't do so, we are going to hold you accountable. I think that is democracy in America, and that is healthy. I don't think there is anything wrong with it. I respect the American people who are watching Congress and demanding that we change the trajectory we are on.

I believe strongly that we need to do better. I believe strongly that this Congress should have in play and commit before we recess--or not recess--a plan to deal with the financial crisis our Nation faces. When we do that, we can feel like we are fulfilling our duty both in law and morally to the people who have given us the honor of serving in this body.

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

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from North Dakota for allowing me to go first. I will be relatively brief.

I have spoken on the floor on a number of occasions regarding my frustration about the Senate not spending enough time debating what I think is the key, essential issue and challenge facing us, probably greater than any other challenge facing this body in a long time. My frustration only grew yesterday as we voted down four budget proposals.

You know, it has been 757 days since we have passed a budget in this body, and so far, no budget has been proposed this year out of the Budget Committee for us to examine. The President offered up a budget earlier this year that would have spent more, taxed more and borrowed more. It was voted down last night in what I think probably was a historic vote. I did not go back and check the records, but I am not aware of any budget that has ever been presented by the executive branch to the Congress for approval that has not received at least some votes.

The vote last evening was 97 to 0 against the President's budget. It is almost unthinkable that a President--the executive branch--would send a budget to the floor to be debated and voted upon and not achieve one vote. I think what it tells us is that, obviously, that budget was not designed to gain any kind of bipartisan support. But it didn't even obtain any partisan support.

It was not taken seriously, at a time when we need to have in front of us a serious budget to debate and vote on. As I said, there have been 757 days without a budget before us. You cannot run a company, a family, or run anything, unless you prepare a budget and avoid going into debt. That is where we are today.

Republicans did come forward with three proposals. Unfortunately, all of those were voted down. You can argue that none of those three were sufficient

to garner enough support. All three received a significant level of support--particularly two of them. Yet there were not enough votes to pass this body. So while the House has passed a budget, which we voted on yesterday, but unfortunately fell short, these are the only proposals we have had in front of us to debate. These are the only proposals we have had to vote on and set the structure for how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money.

So here we are now approaching the month of June, 5 months into the current calendar year, and 9 months into the fiscal year, and we still don't have a handle on how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money, what restrictions and restraints we will put on that, and how we can live within our means.

This is the debate this Congress should undertake, and it has not been undertaken. Many of us have come to the floor in situations such as this where we have asked for some time to speak, but the issue itself has not been put before us. We know there are negotiations going on relative to how to put a plan into place, but we are a long way from that.

I am here once again to try to urge my colleagues to work together and try to achieve a result--or at least a product on which we can have serious debate to determine the future of how we are going to spend the taxpayers' dollars in a responsible way. The most important factor we have to address is the need, in my opinion, to rein in Washington's excessive spending. The bottom line is that government spending is out of control. The public understands this. I think the response in 2010 to those of us who were running in all the elections sent an unmistakable, long, loud, easily understood signal: We have too much government, we cannot afford the government we have, and we cannot continue to add even more government, which pushes us deeper into debt.

Nearly $1.4 trillion of our spending is discretionary spending that requires us to borrow money. That borrowed money increases our debt obligation reinforcing the need to rein in our spending. This is something we should debate, something that is part of the responsibility of the Congress and Senate. When we are talking about addressing a national debt of over $14 trillion, we need to get serious. A little nick here, a little nick there in spending reductions will not solve the problem. We need to look at the larger picture. We are staring down $14.3 trillion in debt. Credit ratings by Standard & Poor's have downgraded the outlook for the U.S. debt, with a negative warning. Economic growth is sputtering across the country. Unemployment remains high, and States are dipping deeper into the red, zeroing in on billions--which is a lot of money, but it is only a minuscule amount compared to the trillions we are saddled with in debt that we ought to be addressing. It is time for Congress and the administration to stop ignoring the obvious. The rapid growth of mandatory spending is endangering our financial future.

I point to this chart on my left. It simply points out the dramatic growth that has occurred and will continue to occur over the years in the future. It doesn't take a mathematician--although the math is pretty simple--when you spend $3.7 trillion a year and take in $2.2 trillion, that leaves you with a big deficit. But it doesn't take a mathematician or anybody with any sophistication in economics to understand that if we stay on the current path, we are going to continue to see this line escalate. This red on here is red ink. It is net interest we will owe. What does that mean? It means that to continue borrowing in order to finance what we are doing, we are going to have to pay larger and larger rates of interest to the lenders because of the risks associated with our potential inability to pay back the loans we have taken.

This flow of red ink, this red tide--if we don't address this, it is going to make it difficult for Americans to buy cars, pay their mortgages, purchase homes, and buy groceries. The prices of products will go higher because the interest rates will go higher. We are running ourselves into a desperate situation. I think everyone understands that. I think it has been made clear to the American people.

We don't have to spin this whole message here in order to convince the American people we don't have a problem. We do, and they understand that. That is what 2010 was all about. We cannot continue to go forward in 2011 without providing any basis of a real solution to assure the financial world and the people that we are taking steps in order to address this.

I think there is a consensus--and if anybody doesn't understand this, they haven't looked at the problem--that we could tax Americans to death, we can cut discretionary spending by massive amounts, and we won't begin to address the problem we have, unless we address the massive amount of spending on mandatory programs. We don't have control over mandatory programs in terms of budgeting; they are simply there, and if you are eligible, you get to draw from the program. All of that is fine, if you have money to do it. But we are running out of money to pay those recipients who are continuing to receive benefits from these entitlement programs. Unless we address those, we are not going to solve the problem.

Let's take a couple of these, and let's look at Medicare. Everybody says this is a political nonstarter. If you dare talk about it, you are going to get zinged in the next election, and you will be characterized as taking away benefits from the elderly, when the plans that have been put forward don't do anything of the sort. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the dimensions of the problem we are facing from this one entitlement. Over the next 10 years, Medicare spending-- spending on this one entitlement--is expected to double.

A few weeks ago, the Medicare trustees announced that the hospital trust fund would be exhausted by 2024--5 years earlier than estimated in last year's report. Who knows what next year's report is going to tell us.

The bottom line is this program is going to go broke. Failing to restructure Medicare jeopardizes the medical benefits of present and future elderly Americans. So rather than terminating Medicare, as has been charged but is not true, rather than destroying Medicare, which has been charged but is not true, what we are trying to do is find a way to restructure it in a way that Medicare will be viable and solvent so benefits will be available for future retirees.

When Medicare was first enacted in 1967, the program cost $2.5 billion. At that time, Congress predicted that the program would cost $12 billion by 1990. That wasn't the case. We underestimated it just a bit--by $86 billion, which is more than just a bit. When it starts at $2.5 billion, and you project it will be $12 billion, and you ended up being off on that estimate by $86 billion, you have to start asking yourself some questions. You have to start thinking that maybe we got this formula wrong, or maybe our assumptions didn't turn out as we thought they were going to on the cost of Medicare.

Today, Medicare is roughly $494 billion, with approximately $89.3 trillion in total unfunded liabilities. These are staggering numbers. They are numbers beyond our ability to comprehend. These numbers are beyond our ability to sustain.

There is no possible way on Earth, no matter how fast or how hard we grow, that we can reach solvency in the Medicare Program without any action. Why? Because after World War II, soldiers came home, and people had deferred having families, and the so-called baby boom generation was born. It has moved through our entire history, over the last 60 years or so, like a pig moves through a python. Early on, there was a rush to provide housing for soldiers and their families. There was a massive infusion of money into baby cribs and the need for hospitals and doctors and nurses to deliver children.

A few years later, all of a sudden, we had to build a massive number of new elementary schools. As this baby boom has moved through their lifespan, we have seen dramatic impacts on the economy--many of them positive. But the colleges that had to be expanded and built, and universities and training facilities, and the education that had to be provided, the employment that needed to be provided--all of this has had a dramatic impact on our economy. We have known for decades that eventually the pig moving through the python was going to reach the point of

retirement, and when it reached the point of retirement, it was going to have an enormous impact on our finances.

Instead of anticipating this coming and putting into place structural plans that would accommodate the needs, legitimate needs of those for retirement income and benefits, we have instead ignored this reality. We have pushed it down the road. Nobody wanted to touch it. Election after election, it was said we better postpone that debate for the next election because it is too hot to deal with now. Well, it is all coming undone. We are at the point almost of no return.

The proposals that have been put forward--you may not agree with every portion of them, and I don't. But the House brought to us a budget plan. You have to give Paul Ryan a great deal of credit for the extraordinary amount of work and effort he put into it. Maybe you don't like all of it, but it is at least a plan to debate, modify, and adjust; it is something that gives us an opportunity to start down the path of paying off our debt, of maintaining solvency for the Medicare Program.

That is what we ought to be debating instead of saying we are into another cycle of ``gotcha,'' and you have touched the third rail. You made the decision to put Medicare in play and go to the public and tell them we are going to take away their health care benefits when they retire. The opposite is true. We are trying to save that for those who are retiring. We are trying to look at ways to restructure the program so it doesn't break Medicare, or break our entire economy.

Today, the average man is living into his 70s, and an average woman into her 80s, or even 90s. As a result, more elderly Americans are on Medicare than originally anticipated. The Federal Government can no longer continue with business as usual. It is time for some honesty for the American people. Washington is promising to deliver benefits it can't afford. We can no longer nickel and dime doctors and hospitals and force them to pay for the care Washington promised elderly Americans. More and more doctors are forced to turn away Medicare patients. The American Medical Association revealed that 17 percent of the more than 9,000 doctors surveyed are forced to limit the number of Medicare patients they accept. And among primary care physicians, this rate is 31 percent. Why? Because we don't have the money to reimburse them for the cost it takes to provide that care.

The American Osteopathic Association said 15 percent of its members refused Medicare and 19 percent declined to accept new Medicare patients. Physicians and hospitals in my home State of Indiana are feeling the pain from the Congress's inaction as well. Hospitals such as Deaconess Clinic in Evansville, IN, say one-third of their patients are on Medicare. When hospitals and doctors are not receiving the necessary compensation for services conducted on one-third of their patients, it has a devastating impact on their businesses.

If we don't reform Medicare, we lose Medicare. Let me repeat that. If we don't take steps to reform Medicare, we lose Medicare. If we don't restructure the program, more patients will lose the care they desperately need.

Mr. President, a very prominent figure--a leader of this country-- made this statement:

Almost all of the long-term deficit and debt that we face

relates to the exploding costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Almost all of it. That is the single biggest driver of our

Federal debt. And if we don't get control over that we can't

get control over our Federal budget.

That defines, in a very basic statement, exactly the challenge that is before us. It gives us the warning we need to heed, and it should spur us into action.

Let me repeat that statement once again.

Almost all of the long-term deficit and debt that we face

relates to the exploding costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Almost all of it. That is the single biggest driver of our

Federal debt. And if we don't get control over that we can't

get control of our Federal budget.

That statement was made by President Barack Obama. It was not made by a Republican. It was not made by an editorial piece in the Wall Street Journal. It was not made by a tea party leader or advocate. It was made by our current President. Our President has said we cannot sustain what we are doing, and we have to address it or it is going to take down our whole budget.

I think that is true--it has been backed up by analysts who have looked at this whole situation, left, right, nonpolitical, political, whatever. Why then are we not going forward with addressing this very question? That is what people sent us here to do in 2010. That is what they are asking us to do now. Yet we are acting as if this statement by the President of the United States has nothing to do with what we need to do, that we can simply ignore this and go forward and just cut a little here and cut a little there but we can't touch the entitlements--we can't touch Medicare.

The papers are full today with headlines saying that the results of the New York special congressional race was because the people have been scared--well, they didn't say ``scared,'' but that it was people saying ``don't cut our Medicare.'' What it should have said is, those people who are saying ``don't cut our Medicare'' are basically saying ``keep mine going until this thing runs out. I am afraid I might live too long, and then I won't have benefits at the end.'' But for sure our kids won't have it, for sure our grandchildren won't have it because at its current rate, as the President of the United States has acknowledged, it is unsustainable.

So we have two options here. We can continue with the status quo--we can quibble over how much to cut from our discretionary spending, or that portion of the budget which we have control of--and continue ignoring the entitlement programs or we can make a commitment and have the political will to fulfill that commitment by saving those programs through some sound restructuring. This does not mean current recipients of Medicare are going to be knee-capped or have their benefits dropped. This does not mean that even those nearing retirement are going to face that prospect. What it does mean is, if we don't put the structural reforms in now to address the future problems, we are going to lose the whole program. The gravest threat to Medicare is doing nothing. If we do nothing, not only will Medicare collapse but so will our fiscal house.

In the papers today, a former President--another Democrat, Bill Clinton--has urged his fellow Democrats not to ``tippy-toe around'' Medicare. Continuing that quote, he said the program ``is part of a whole health-care system that has a toxic effect on inflation.'' He went on to say, ``We've got to deal with these things.''

Mr. President, I am here not to criticize the Democrats for putting us in this situation. I think we all bear some responsibility. The country does not want us to point fingers at each other, and they do not want us to use this as a political advantage for the 2012 election. They want us to do the right thing, which they all know needs to be done, and I believe they will reward us and recognize us for at least having the courage to step forward and address a real problem that I think everyone now understands and recognizes.

So whether it is the Paul Ryan plan coming out of the House, whether it is a Democratic budget plan coming out of the Budget Committee, whether it is some other plan coming out between the negotiations that are going on--or should go on--between the executive branch and the congressional branch, this is something we have to do. We have simply got to put aside our partisanship and concerns and worry about the 2012 elections and rise above politics. We did that in 1983 when we restructured Social Security. We had a Republican President, a Democratic House leader, and members of the Democratic congressional committee and Senate committee--the political people--all stood together and said: This rises above the election. It is too important not to address it.

We can just take this one issue and say: Let's take this out of politics. Let's stand together as Republicans and Democrats, along with the President, and do what is right for the country.

The bottom line is that no matter what we do here, if the President doesn't support us in this effort, it will not succeed. He has the veto pen, and he has the ability to lead or not lead. So I guess, as I have before, I am calling on the President and saying this important issue can only be successful

if he will engage and lead us and be part of this effort to solve a problem that affects every living American and those yet to be born in this country. It dramatically affects our future but sooner than any of us, I believe, think. It affects our economy and our ability to grow.

All of this has to be coupled with pro-growth policies. We can't cut our way out of all this. We can help restructure, we can help make cuts where necessary, and we can help our economy grow by putting policies in place that will stimulate the economy. That combination, put together in a package, is what we need to support. And I am hoping we will put politics aside for this one issue that is so important to the future of our country.

Mr. President, I have probably said more than I needed to say at this particular point in time. I appreciate the opportunity and again thank the Senator from North Dakota for agreeing to let me go forward here. As chairman of the Budget Committee, I know he is fully cognizant and aware of these issues and is working to try to address them also. I hope we can work together to find a solution to this very urgent problem.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Sessions be recognized to speak for up to 20 minutes for debate only.

Mr. President, the Senate is preparing to pass another 4- year extension of the USA PATRIOT Act. I have served on the Intelligence Committee for over a decade and I wish to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry. They are going to ask Senators: Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn't you know before you voted on it? The fact is anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act. Yet many Members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch because that interpretation is classified. It is almost as if there are two PATRIOT Acts, and many Members of Congress have not read the one that matters.

Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

I am going to bring up several historical examples to try to demonstrate what this has meant over the years. Before I begin, I wish to be clear I am not claiming any of the specific activities I discuss today are happening now. I am bringing them up because I believe they are a reminder of how the American people react when they learn about domestic surveillance activities that are not consistent with what they believe the law allows. When Americans learn about intelligence activities that are consistent with their understanding of the law, they look to the news media, they follow these activities with interest, and often admiration. But when people learn about intelligence activities that are outside the lines of what is generally thought to be the law, the reaction can get negative and get negative in a hurry.

Here is my first example. The CIA was established by the National Security Act of 1947 and the law stated that the agency was ``forbidden to have law enforcement powers or internal security functions.'' Members of the Congress and legal experts interpreted that language as a clear prohibition against any internal security function under any circumstances. A group of CIA officials had a different interpretation. They decided that the 1947 law contained legal gray areas that allowed the CIA to monitor American citizens for possible contact with foreign agents. They believed this meant they could secretly tap Americans' phones, open their mail, and plant listening devices in their homes, among other

things. This secret legal interpretation led the CIA to maintain intelligence files on more than 10,000 American citizens, including reporters, Members of Congress, and a host of antiwar activists.

This small group of CIA officials kept the program and their ``gray area'' justification to the program a secret from the American people and most of the government because, they argued, revealing it would violate the agency's responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure. Did the program stay a secret? It didn't. On December 22, 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh detailed the program on the front pages of the New York Times. The revelations and the huge public uproar that ensued led to the formation of the Church Committee. That committee spent nearly 2 years investigating questionable and illegal activity at the CIA. The Church Committee published 14 reports detailing various intelligence abuses which, in addition to illegal domestic surveillance, included programs designed to assassinate foreign leaders. The investigation led to Executive orders reining in the authority of the CIA and the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

In 1947, President Harry Truman and his top military and legal advisers secretly approved a program named PROJECT SHAMROCK. PROJECT SHAMROCK authorized the Armed Forces Security Agency and its successor, the NSA, to monitor telegraphs coming in and out of the United States. At the outset of the program, companies were told that government agents would only read ``those telegrams related to foreign intelligence targets,'' but as the program grew, more telegrams were sent and received by Americans and they were read. During the program's 30-year run, the NSA analysts sometimes reviewed as many as 150,000 telegrams a month.

While the Ford administration said it made all pertinent information about PROJECT SHAMROCK available, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department had kept the program secret from the public. They argued that public disclosure was both unjustified and dangerous to national security, and it avoided Congress's questions regarding the legality of the program by stating that the telegrams present somewhat different legal questions from those posed by domestic bugging and wiretapping. That program didn't stay secret either.

The newly formed Senate Intelligence Committee ultimately disclosed the PROJECT SHAMROCK program on November 6, 1975, arguing that public disclosure was needed to build support--build support--for a law governing NSA operations. The resulting public uproar led to a congressional investigation. The NSA's termination of PROJECT SHAMROCK and the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which attempted to subject domestic surveillance to a process of warrants and judicial review.

Years later, during the Reagan administration, senior members of the National Security Council secretly sold arms to Iran and used the funds to arm and train Contra militants to topple the Nicaraguan Government. Selling arms to Iran violated the official U.S. arms embargo against Iran and directly funding the Contras was illegal under the Boland amendment. That was the one Congress passed to limit U.S. Government assistance to the Contras.

But the officials at the National Security Council were convinced they knew better. They were convinced that violating the embargo and illegally supporting the Contra rebels would help free American hostages and help fight communism in Nicaragua. Instead of engaging in a public debate and trying to convince the Congress and the public they were right, they secretly launched an arms program and hid it from the Congress and the American people. How did that work out for them?

The New York Times published a story of these activities on November 25, 1987. A joint congressional committee was launched to investigate the Iran Contra affair with televised hearings for over a month. The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees held their own hearings. The first Presidential commission investigating the National Security Council was launched. Multiple reports were published documenting the administration's illegal activities, and the Nicaraguan Government sued the United States. Dozens of court cases were filed and National Security Council officials--including two National Security Advisers--faced multiple indictments.

Finally, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a handful of government officials made the unilateral judgment that following U.S. surveillance law, as it was commonly understood, would slow down the government's ability to track suspected terrorists. Instead of working with the Congress, instead of coming to the Congress and asking to revise or update the law, these officials secretly reinterpreted the law to justify a warrantless wiretapping program that they hid from virtually every Member of the Congress and the American people.

It is not clear how long they thought they could hide a large, controversial national security program of this nature, but they kept it so secret that even when it yielded useful intelligence, classification restrictions sometimes prevented the information from being shared with officials who could have used it.

I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee at this point--a relatively new member--but the program and the legal interpretations that supported it were kept secret from me and virtually all of my colleagues.

Again, did that program stay secret? The answer is no. After several years, the New York Times published a story uncovering the program. The resulting public uproar led to a divisive congressional debate and a significant number of lawsuits. In my view, the disclosure also led to an erosion of public trust that made many private companies more reluctant to cooperate with government inquiries.

As most of my colleagues will remember, Congress and the executive branch spent years trying to sort out the details of that particular program and the secret legal interpretation--the secret legal interpretation--that was used to justify it. In the process of doing so, Congress also attempted to address an actual surveillance issue. I think all my colleagues who were here for that debate would agree those issues could have been resolved far more easily, far less contentiously, if the Bush administration had simply come to the Congress in the first place and tried to work out a bipartisan solution to them rather than, in effect, trying to rewrite the law in secret.

When laws are secretly reinterpreted this way, the results frequently fail to stand up to public scrutiny. It is not surprising, if you think about it. The American law-making process is often cumbersome, it is often frustrating, and it is certainly contentious. But over the long run, this process is a pretty good way to ensure that our laws have the support of the American people, since those that do not will actually get revised or repealed by elected lawmakers who follow the will of our constituents. On the other hand, when laws are secretly reinterpreted behind closed doors by a small number of government officials--and there is no public scrutiny, no public debate--you are certainly more likely to end up with interpretations of the law that go well beyond the boundaries of what the American people are willing to accept.

Let me make clear that I think it is entirely legitimate for government agencies to keep some information secret. In a democratic society, of course, citizens rightly expect their government will not arbitrarily keep information from them, and throughout our Nation's history Americans have vigilantly guaranteed their right to know. But Americans do acknowledge certain limited exceptions to the principle of openness. We know, for example, that tax officials have information about all of us from our tax returns. But the government does not have the right or the need to share this information openly. This is essentially an exception to protect personal privacy.

Another limited exception exists for the protection of national security. The U.S. Government has an inherent responsibility to protect our people from threats. To do this effectively, it almost always requires some measure of secrecy. I do not expect General Petraeus to publicly discuss the details of every troop movement in Afghanistan any more than early Americans

expected George Washington to publish his strategy for the Battle of Yorktown. By the same token, American citizens recognize that their government may sometimes rely on secret intelligence collection methods in order to ensure national security, in order to ensure the safety of the American people, and they recognize that these methods can often be more effective when specifics are kept secret.

But while Americans recognize that government agencies sometimes rely on secret sources and methods to collect intelligence information, Americans also expect these agencies will cooperate at all times within the boundaries of publicly understood law.

I have served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a decade, and I do not take a backseat to anybody when it comes to protecting what are essential sources and methods that are needed to keep the American people safe when intelligence is being gathered. But I do not believe the law should ever be kept secret. Voters have a right and a need to know what the law says and what their government thinks the text of the law means. That is essential so the American people can decide whether the law is appropriately written and they are in a position to ratify or reject the decisions their elected officials make on their behalf.

When it comes to most government functions, the public can directly observe the government's actions and the typical citizens can decide for themselves whether they support or agree with the things their government is doing. Certainly, in my part of the world, American citizens can visit the national forests and decide whether they think the forests are appropriately managed. When they drive on the interstate, they can decide for themselves whether those highways have been properly laid out and adequately maintained. If they see someone punished, they can decide for themselves whether the sentence was appropriate, whether it was too harsh or too lenient.

But Americans generally cannot decide for themselves whether intelligence agencies are operating within the law. That is why the U.S. intelligence community evolved over the past several decades. The Congress set up a number of watchdog and oversight mechanisms to ensure that the intelligence agencies follow the law rather than violate it. That is why the Senate and House each have a Select Intelligence Committee. It is also why the Congress created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is why Congress created a number of statutory inspectors general to act as independent watchdogs inside the intelligence agencies themselves. All these oversight entities were created at least in part to ensure that intelligence agencies carry out all their activities within the boundaries of publicly understood law.

But the law itself must always be public. Government officials must not be allowed to fall into the trap of secretly reinterpreting the law in a way that creates a gap between what the public believes the law says and what the government secretly claims it says. Anytime that happens, it seems to me there is going to be a violation of the public trust. Furthermore, allowing a gap of this nature to develop is simply shortsighted. Both history and logic should make it clear--and that is why I brought these examples to the floor of the Senate--that secret interpretations of the law will not stay secret forever and, in fact, often come to light pretty quickly. When the public eventually finds out that government agencies have been rewriting surveillance laws in secret, the result, as I have demonstrated, is invariably a backlash and an erosion of public confidence in these government agencies.

I believe this is a big and growing problem.

Our intelligence and national security agencies are staffed by many talented and dedicated men and women. The work they do is very important, and for the most part, they are extraordinarily professional. But when members of the public lose confidence in these agencies, it does not just undercut morale, it makes it harder for these agencies to do their jobs. If you ask the head of any intelligence agency, particularly an agency that is involved in domestic surveillance in any kind of way, he or she will tell you that public trust is the coin of the realm, it is a vital commodity, and voluntary cooperation from law-abiding Americans is critical to the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies.

If members of the public lose confidence in these government agencies because they think government officials are rewriting surveillance laws in secret, it is going to make those agencies less effective. As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I do not want to see that happen.

I wish to wrap up now with one last comment; that is, as you look at these statutes, and particularly the ones I have outlined--where you have so many hard-working lawyers and officials at these government agencies--I wish to make it clear I do not believe these officials have a malicious intent. They are working hard to protect intelligence sources and methods and for good reason. But sometimes they can lose sight of the differences between the sources and methods, which must be kept secret, and the law itself, which should not. Sometimes they even go so far as to argue that keeping their interpretation of the law secret is actually necessary because it prevents our Nation's adversaries from figuring out what our intelligence agencies are allowed to do.

I can see how it might be tempting to latch onto this ``Alice in Wonderland'' logic. But if the U.S. Government were to actually adopt it, then all our surveillance laws would be kept secret because that would, obviously, be even more useful. When Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, it would have been useful to keep that law secret from the KGB so Soviet agents would not know whether the FBI was allowed to track them. But American laws should not be public only when government officials think it is convenient. They ought to be public and public all the time. The American people ought to be able to find out what their government thinks those laws mean.

Earlier this week, I filed an amendment, along with my colleague from the Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Udall, and that amendment would require the Attorney General to publicly disclose the U.S. Government's official interpretation of the USA PATRIOT Act. The amendment specifically states that the Attorney General should not describe any particular intelligence collection programs or activities but that there should be a full description of ``the legal interpretation and analysis necessary to understand the . . . Government's official interpretation'' of the law.

This morning, Senator Mark Udall and I--and we had the help of several colleagues: Senator Merkley, Senator Tom Udall--reached an agreement with the chair of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein. She is going to be holding hearings on this issue next month.

Senator Mark Udall and I, as members of the committee, will be in a position to go into those hearings and the subsequent deliberations to try to amend the intelligence authorization. If we do not get results inside the committee, because of the agreement today with the distinguished chair of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein, and the majority leader, Senator Reid, we will be in a position to come back to this floor and offer our original amendment this fall.

We are going to keep fighting for openness and honesty. As of today, the government's official interpretation of the law is still secret-- still secret--and I believe there is a growing gap, as of this afternoon, between what the public believes that law says and the secret interpretation of the Justice Department.

So I plan to vote no this afternoon on this legislation because I said some time ago that a long-term reauthorization of this legislation did require significant reforms. I believe when more Members of Congress and the American people come to understand how the PATRIOT Act has actually been interpreted in secret, I think the number of Americans who support significant reform and the end of secret law--the end of law that is kept secret from them by design--I think we will see Americans joining us in this cause to ensure that in the days ahead, as we protect our country from the dangerous threats we face, we are also doing a better job of being sensitive to individual liberty.

Those philosophies, those critical principles are what this country is all about. And we are going to stay at it, Senator Udall and I and others, until those changes are secured.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the fine remarks of my friend from Missouri. Seeing the damage that was done by the tornadoes in Alabama, they have far exceeded anything I have seen before. I appreciate more than most the damage and difficulties the people of Missouri are going through. I know there will be emergency funding for that. There is a legitimate question as to whether we ought to not find that emergency spending someplace in our budget where it can be recovered that is not so important. But I know we will process that as we go forward.

Unsustainable Budget Path

I truly believe our Nation is facing an economic crisis, but it's not so much what I believe but what every expert we have heard from believes and has testified to. Mr. Erskine Bowles, who cochaired the debt commission, who was appointed by President Obama, said, along with Senator Alan Simpson, his cochair, in a written statement to the Budget Committee, that this Nation has never faced such a predictable economic crisis. In other words, the deficit levels we are operating with are so high and they create such danger to the economy that we have to get off this path. Every expert has said we are on an unsustainable path.

Many people have thought the problem we are dealing with today places a burden on our children and our grandchildren; therefore, it has removed to some degree the immediacy of the problem. But that is not what Mr. Bowles said. In his testimony before the Budget Committee just a month or two ago, he said that we could have a financial crisis. When asked by the chairman when, he said 2 years, maybe less, maybe more. Senator Simpson said it could be 1 year.

We are taking a risk with the American economy. This has been echoed by Moody's bond ratings, and it has been echoed by S&P, which warned that our debt rating for our government debt could be downgraded. Alan Greenspan has made similar comments. Alice Rivlin, former OMB Director under President Clinton, made those comments. Pete Domenici, who cochaired a debt commission with Alice Rivlin, former chairman of the Budget Committee in the Senate, said to us with real passion: I have never been so afraid for my country. That is what Pete Domenici said.

We know we have to take action, and now we are heading today to 756 days since the Senate has passed a budget. We have not passed a budget. I say with confidence that in terms of a real, long-term threat to the American future, this Nation has never had a greater danger financially and in terms of debt because the problems we face are more severe than even in the nineties when we turned our business around and in 3 years balanced the budget. It is going to be harder to do it now.

We went through World War II. We borrowed money. But we had a vibrant, growing economy and growing population, and we promptly moved our way through that, and growth took care of us. But we cannot expect that the level of growth that according to the experts we can reasonably predict will be sufficient to get our house in order.

When you do not have enough money and the course you are on is unsustainable, you need to develop a plan that puts you on a sustainable path. How simple is that? That is grownup talk. How do you do it? What is our mechanism in the Congress?

This is a budget. This is title II, section 271 through et seq, and it has the Budget Act. We passed a Budget Act. It is law. Clever Congress did not put any penalties on it, so we can violate it and not go to jail. We do not have to personally pay fines. But it represented a serious commitment by a previous Congress that we needed a budget. They

also made as part of that budget law that it could be passed with a simple majority so it could not be filibustered. That was one of the reasons budgets sometimes failed to be passed. At a time when they were thinking about the future, they said: Let's make the budget passable by a simple majority. It also has a timeline in it. It says the Congress must pass a budget by April 15. We are long past that date--long past it. Are we going on to a third year now without a budget?

Mr. President, 1,000 days without a budget while our country is on a debt path unsustainable to a degree that threatens the future of America economically--yes, that is where we are heading.

People say: Surely, Jeff, that is not so. Surely there is some plan.

There is not any plan--not a plan to pass a budget. What there is a plan to do is not pass a budget. It is irresponsible. It is unwise. It is dangerous for our future because we are on a certain path, a predictable path, as the debt commission told us, to financial ruin. Our debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 100 percent by September 30 of this year. That is above the level that economic experts tell us puts our country at risk. Indeed, when we passed a 90 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, economists Rhinehardt and Rogoff, who completed a massive study of national defaults of economies around the world by sovereign states, warned that at that level you reduce the growth in the economy by at least 1 percent of GDP. The average was higher than that. They said on a median level, it is 1 percent of GDP, and they used that number--1 percent growth that we don't get. Well, some think we may not get 2 percent growth this year. Would we have gotten 3? If we get 1, would we have gotten 2? One percent growth in GDP is a large thing in an economy the size of ours. It increases tax revenue significantly. It increases jobs. According to experts, 1 percent of GDP growth means 1 million more jobs. A decline of 1 percent in our economy represents a loss of 1 million jobs. This is not a little-bitty matter.

On Monday, I objected. I realized what is going on in the Senate, that there is no plan to deal with this situation, that there is a gimmicked-up scheme to bring up a series of budget votes that the majority leader knows will not pass. Indeed, he intends to bring up a vote on a budget that he and all his colleagues intend to vote against--the most responsible one out there, the House budget, passed by the Republican House. That is what they want to bring up for a vote and vote against. But the Budget Act does not say bring up a House budget. It says each House--the Senate and the House--should bring up its own budget and pass it on the floor. It should go to committee. None of the budgets we will be voting on have gone through committee. We have had no markups in committee. We never even had a markup on the budget. Why? What is this? What is going on?

Let me share with my colleagues why we are not having a legitimate process to produce a budget at the most critical financial time in our history. It is about politics. Does that surprise anyone? This is what Democratic staffers were quoted as saying in a Wall Street Journal article a few days ago. What did they say about it? Did they say: We have a plan to solve America's future. Did they say: We have a plan to reduce our debt and get us on a sound path. Did they say: We understand the future of the country is endangered by unsustainable debt growth. No, they did not say that. This is what they said:

As a political matter, Senate Democratic strategists say

there may be little benefit in producing a budget that would

inevitably include unpopular items.

They do not want to produce an honest budget, a budget that would make a difference, because it would have some unpopular items in it. I ask, is that responsible leadership? I suggest it is not.

It goes on:

Many Democrats believe a recent House GOP proposal to

overhaul Medicare is proving to be unpopular and has given

Democrats a political advantage. They are loath to give that

up by proposing higher taxes . . .

What does that mean? It means their budget, if they produce one, would call for higher taxes, and they do not want to do it. They do not want to propose a budget that reduces spending. They do not want to produce a budget that has higher taxes. Why? Because they are playing politics rather than serving a national interest. That is just plain as day. I wish it were not so, but there is no other explanation for why this Senate preparing to go into recess Friday for Memorial Day without having even commenced hearings on a budget.

This is what they decided to do. I am quoting from the article:

Senate Democrats plan to hold a vote on the Ryan plan--

The House budget--

hoping to force GOP senators to cast a vote on the Medicare

overhaul that could prove politically difficult.

Give me a break. Is that what it is all about? Is that what we are here for? It is not what many of my Democratic colleagues tell me. They tell me they know we are on an unsustainable path and we have to do something. But why are we going through this charade, to bring up one, two, three budgets and vote them all down and then say: Well, we tried. Maybe we will have some secret talks over here and we will plop something down right before some emergency date and demand everybody vote for it, not having a chance to read it. Is that what the process is going to be instead of an open process where the Budget Committee has open hearings, amendments are offered, a budget is voted out of committee, it comes to the floor, and there is a guaranteed 50 hours of debate? But the process comes to an end. The Budget Act states that we cannot filibuster it. There is only limited time of debate, but there is an opportunity to debate, an opportunity to offer amendments.

We are told Senator Reid does not want his members to have to take tough votes. None of us like to take tough votes. None of us likes to take tough votes. Isn't that what we are paid for here? Isn't that why they send us--to vote on important, tough issues that impact the future of our Nation? I am telling you, we are so far off path it is stunning to me.

I quoted his staffer earlier, but what about Senator Reid himself, the Democratic leader of the Senate? Anybody who has worked with Senator Reid likes him, and I enjoy working with him. I respect him. I know he has a difficult job, but at some point one has to stand and lead. He is not leading and neither is President Obama. But this is what Senator Reid said just a few days ago--I think Friday.

There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my

opinion.

Well, there is a need, a statutory legal requirement that we send a budget out of the Senate.

Then, he said:

It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.

Why does he say it would be foolish? I think my good friend, Senator Reid, has taken his eye off the national interest. He has taken his eye off the crisis our country faces, and he has his eye on politics. He means it would be foolish politically. He has a scheme, and this is what his scheme is. He is going to bring up the House budget--the Ryan plan. In all honesty, it is the only plan I have seen in my time in the Senate that comes close to providing a long-term alteration of the unsustainable fiscal path we are on. It deals with it. It makes some tough choices, but they are not unbearable and I think most of them will actually work.

It is not perfect. I don't promise that I would vote for everything in it. But it is a historic plan to put America on a sustainable financial course. I thought they could have reduced spending more in some areas, frankly. But it puts us on a sustainable course. It was produced by the House Budget Committee. They had public hearings, the committee voted on it, they brought it to the floor, and it passed in the House of Representatives, in the way the Congress of the United States is supposed to operate.

What does our leader in the Senate and his colleagues who support him do? They make a decision to do something political, not responsible. They are not putting forth the vision they have for the future, but they are going to bring up the Ryan budget so they can all vote against it. I don't think that is responsible. I don't think it is responsible at all.

I am not going to participate in this scheme to have a series of votes. Count me out. I am not supporting it. I am not going to give my consent to it.

That is the way I see it and I don't think that it makes sense. If I did, I would change my mind. But as I see it, it makes no sense for me to, in any way, consent to a process that is designed to fail. The whole process is designed to fail. With a simple majority in the Senate, our Democratic colleagues can pass any piece of legislation. They have 53 Members. They can win the vote. If they put up a good budget, they might have some Republicans--maybe all the Republicans, if we reached a bipartisan agreement. But there is nothing close to that. We have not approached this in any realistic way, and I am concerned that we are off track.

Senator Schumer, who once headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee--he designed all that--is a Senator who is considered to be a guru of politics around here. He is good, and there is nothing wrong with being a smart politician. But at some point politics goes too far. This is what he said on May 23 regarding the Ryan budget.

We will exhibit this issue as an example of why we need to

keep the Senate Democratic in order to counter House

Republicans. We will point to this week and say the

Republicans tried to end Medicare but a Democratic majority

stopped it in the Senate. It is that simple.

That is an open statement of raw politics. Where is the national interest? Where is the response to Mr. Bowles, a leading Democrat, to Alice Rivlin, a leading Democrat, and their principled cries that we do something about the debt crisis we now find ourselves in? Nowhere.

My colleagues want to go home, and they intend to go home--go home Friday. Our soldiers are out there, and they are not getting to come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are going down roads where bombs might be planted and they are putting their lives at risk. They do not get to come home. Their business isn't finished yet. But we plan to go home, apparently, not having done anything but having gone through a political exercise that is an embarrassment to the Senate at a critical time in our Nation's financial history--a very critical time.

President Obama utterly ignored, in his completely irresponsible budget, the fiscal commission that he himself created to seek a national consensus on funding. I have to say the President's budget is nowhere close to what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare. That is not a Jeff Sessions quote. That is a quote from Erskine Bowles, who cochaired the Commission, when he saw the President's budget plan that was submitted a couple months ago. He said it is nowhere close to where the Administration will have to go to avoid our Nation's fiscal nightmare.

So that is what the President has done, and the Senate has done nothing. They will not even hold a markup and propose a plan. Why? They think it is politically unwise. They think they can gain more politically by refusing to produce a budget, by attacking the House Members who produced a budget--as they are required to by law--that is honest and would make a huge long-term difference in America. It would put us on a sustainable path, not leave us on an unsustainable path.

I will conclude with a quote from the preamble to the fiscal commission's debt report. This is what they wrote to us. Remember now, Senator Reid's plan is to bring up the House budget and have all his Members vote it down so they can attack Republicans for having the audacity to propose any changes in Medicare--and not even in the 10 years of the budget. It is the outyears they are complaining about, and it is not law. Any change will not become law until it passes both Houses of Congress. But it is a vision that could work to make Medicare sound and actually save it.

They think they can scare people by saying we are going to end Medicare, so they are going to vote on it. That vote, in the minds of our Democratic politicians, shows that they are defending Medicare and that all the Republicans oppose Medicare. But the American people are getting too smart for that. I don't believe they are going to buy that story any longer. They know Medicare is on an unsustainable path and that it cannot continue.

The Medicare actuaries and trustees have reported today that it is going to go bankrupt a number of years sooner than was originally expected. But this is what the debt commission said about the need to have a plan to fix our future:

In the weeks and months to come, countless advocacy groups

and special interests will try mightily through expensive,

dramatic, and heart-wrenching media assaults to exempt

themselves from the shared sacrifice and common purpose. The

national interest, not the special interests, must prevail.

We urge leaders and citizens with principled concerns about

any of our recommendations to follow what we call the Becerra

Rule: Don't shoot down an idea without offering a better idea

in its place.

Isn't that a reasonable request--don't shoot down an idea unless you are prepared to present a better one in its place? That is exactly the opposite of what our Democratic leadership is proposing. They are proposing to bring up a budget they say they do not like. They are going to vote it down without producing anything in its place. That is not responsible leadership, it is not respectful of the budget process, which is required by law, and it is not in the national interest. It is not in the national interest.

Yes, we are going to have to deal with tough issues. We find ourselves in a fix, a deeper hole than we should ever have been in, and the American people punished Congressmen and Senators last year because they were unhappy, and they were right to be. There is no way any Member of this Congress can stand before their constituents and justify a deficit this year of $1.6 trillion and defend or justify a spending program in which 40 percent of every $1 we spend this year is borrowed. How can that possibly be called sanity? It is insanity. That is why every one of these people is telling us we have to change and why PIMCO, the largest bond company in the world, has said they are not buying any more American debt. They believe we need to get serious and make some serious changes.

I thank the Chair.

I will just wrap up by saying that is why I think the process planned for this week is unacceptable and I do not intend to support it.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I reserve the right to object and I will object at this time and would like to review that unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, under the unanimous consent request propounded by the Senator from Oregon, I will remove my objection. I will not object.