David Perdue

Mr. President, I rise to do something I rarely do. To start, I want to talk about a very special Georgian and a good friend of mine--a man by the name of Billy Payne. Billy is a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great Georgian, and, yes, a great American. Recently, he was one of five individuals to be inducted into the 2019 World Golf Hall of Fame. It is quite an honor. Billy Payne is a riveting storyteller, a creative thinker, and an effective leader.

Golf Magazine once wrote: ``Wherever he goes, Payne is the most interesting person in the room.''

Billy was born in Athens, GA, and he went on to play football for his hometown team, the Georgia Bulldogs. He earned a law degree from the University of Georgia and went on to open a small practice in Atlanta.

After helping to raise money for a new sanctuary at their church, Billy and Martha, his wife, were inspired and started looking for ways to make a difference in their community. The day after the new sanctuary was dedicated, Billy Payne came home from work and said to Martha: I've got it--we're going to bring the Olympics to Atlanta. Billy was undaunted by the magnitude of this decision.

He didn't have many connections at the time, but he called up city and State officials and formed a team to make a bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games. Billy spent the next 3\1/2\ years personally traveling to 110 countries to convince Olympic officials to bring the games to the city of Atlanta. On September 18, 1990, Atlanta won the bid for the 1996 Olympics all because of Billy Payne's leadership and his vision for the city.

The 1996 Olympics put Atlanta on the world map. It transformed the city and allowed us to build infrastructure that later helped Georgia to become the No. 1 State in the country in which to do business. To this very day, my alma mater, Georgia Tech, actually uses dormitories that were built to house the athletes in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

After serving as President and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, Billy was invited to join Augusta National. In a very short period of time--actually, in 2006--he was selected to be the club's chairman, which is a role he served in for 11 years. Billy oversaw the Masters Tournament and turned it into a global brand with worldwide reach. When Billy took over at Augusta National, the club's membership was all male. Under his leadership, Augusta National broke the gender barrier and allowed women to join the club for the very first time.

He also started two major amateur events--the Latin America Amateur and the Asia-Pacific Amateur. The winners of these tournaments are invited to play in the Masters each year. As a result, young people from all over the world now have a chance to actually compete in the Masters every year.

In 2014, Billy launched the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship--a junior golf competition that gives 7- to 15-year-olds the opportunity to develop their golf skills, to compete with their peers, and to earn the opportunity to actually play and compete at the Augusta National on the Sunday before the Masters. I have seen this. It is an exciting event to see these young people compete at the very home of the Masters.

Probably the greatest achievement, however, for amateur golf may have been this year's first Augusta National Women's Amateur tournament. When the final pair walked onto the 18th green arm in arm--one the winner, the other the runner-up, two women, arm in arm, cheering each other--it was a highlight in amateur sports. In my opinion, Bobby Jones, who is the hero of amateur sports in America, was in Heaven and probably stood up and cheered.

Finally, Billy had a hand in naming his alma mater's football field, Sanford Stadium, after his coach at the University of Georgia, Vince Dooley. Last month, the university's athletic board approved the name change, and now the field is officially known as Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium.

I would be remiss if I didn't say ``Go Dogs'' this morning.

Clearly, Billy Payne's impact on Georgia and the entire country is hard to measure, but I want to tell you a story that really tells the true heart of this leader from our State.

After he announced his retirement from being the chairman of Augusta National, he was at a private dinner and was asked by no less than Bret Baier what he was going to miss the most. Without hesitation, Billy said, ``The people.'' Well, those of us at the table thought he might have been talking about the members, but he wasn't. He was talking about the employees at Augusta National. Its employees have been there for their entire careers, and they adore this man because he loves them. He treated them right, and he built their careers there.

His tenacious spirit, his love for humankind, and his steadfast leadership serve as an inspiration to us all. I thank Billy Payne for his lifetime of service to the State of Georgia and to the United States, and I congratulate him, his wife, and their kids on this induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Border Security

Mr. President, on another topic, there is a growing crisis at our southern border, and we are told, next week, we are actually going to vote on an appropriations package for humanitarian aid at the southern border.

Recently, I and a colleague of mine, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, traveled down to the McAllen sector of the border in Texas. We went out on patrol overnight with the Customs and Border Patrol agents--we were out all night with them--and then went on patrol in the early morning hours just as dawn broke on the river. We saw firsthand that we don't have just an illegal immigration problem--we have a national security crisis right there at our southern border.

My biggest takeaway was that the drug trafficking down there has now risen to being a full-blown crisis. Between fiscal year 1997 and fiscal year 2018, the CBP saw a 22-percent increase in heroin, a 38-percent increase in meth, and a 73-percent increase in fentanyl seizures. In that year alone, fiscal year 2018, enough fentanyl was brought into the country illegally to kill every woman, man, and child in America. The Border Patrol agents we

spoke to estimated that they are only able to interdict between 7 and 10 percent, however, of the drugs that actually cross the border in the McAllen sector. That is a crisis. If for no other reason, we have a crisis.

In addition, the amount of human trafficking we are seeing at the border is unprecedented. Last month alone, 144,000 individuals were apprehended at our southern border. This is the highest number of apprehensions in over 13 years.

In just the first 8 months of the fiscal year, 411,000 unaccompanied children and family units were apprehended at our southern border, including 84,000 family units and 11,000 unaccompanied children, just last month--11,000 unaccompanied children. How does an unaccompanied child get all the way from Honduras or Guatemala to our border?

This is a conspiracy led by the cartels. I have seen it firsthand. We heard the gunfire across the river the night we were on patrol. It is real.

If this trend continues, 800,000 children and families could be apprehended at the southern border by the end of this fiscal year alone. To put that in perspective, we issue 1.1 million legal green cards a year that are a pathway to citizenship. This year alone, just the family units alone could be 800,000 people apprehended at the southern border. Clearly, our Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed.

When an unaccompanied child arrives at the border, they are cared for by Border Patrol agents until they can be placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the number of children arriving today greatly exceeds HHS's capacity to deal with them.

As of last week, 1,900 unaccompanied children were in CBP custody awaiting placement in HHS's care. But Health and Human Services had less than 700 beds in which to place them.

Now, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol agents are spending more than half of their time caring for families and children, providing medical assistance, driving buses, and acting as food service workers instead of performing law enforcement duties.

Pulling Border Patrol agents away from their law enforcement duties only exacerbates the crisis at the border. We saw that firsthand on our overnight patrols.

The Acting Commissioner of CBP said recently: ``We are in a full- blown emergency, and I cannot say this any stronger: the system is broken.''

On May 1, the Trump administration requested $4.5 billion in funds to help address the growing crisis at the border. At the time, we were debating disaster relief for my home State of Georgia and a dozen other States across the country.

On May 23, President Trump broke the logjam and agreed to separate border humanitarian aid from the disaster relief question and it allowed us, then, within hours on this floor, to pass the disaster relief bill. Now we have to do the same thing for this humanitarian aid to the border.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis at the southern border has only continued to escalate, and we have to do something about it right now.

This week, Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to every Member of Congress. It said: ``Absent an emergency appropriation, we anticipate running out of funding as soon as later this month.''

The Department of Homeland Security has already started pulling resources away from critical missions in order to try and keep up with this surge of human traffic. Without additional funds by August, the Department of Homeland Security says they will have to redirect manpower and funding from TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard in order to address the crisis at the border.

The Acting Director of ICE just recently said: ``We are begging. We are asking Congress to please help us.''

This should not be a political issue. I am hoping that it will not be. This is about giving Federal agents the resources they need to care for children and families in their custody and respond to this crisis situation.

Even the New York Times editorial board said this: ``Congress, give Trump his border money.'' That is the New York Times, not a big fan of our President.

The Senate will vote on this emergency funding next week, and I hope it will receive bipartisan support. It absolutely should. Going forward, we have to address the underlying cause of this crisis, however.

Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at the southern border has skyrocketed because of loopholes in our asylum and immigration laws. Minors and family units can easily assert broad and unspecific asylum claims. Then, they are released into the United States while they await formal removal proceedings, which could be months or years down the road.

These loopholes, combined with programs like the DACA Program, have led to a staggering increase in the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at our border.

Oftentimes, these kids and families are exploited by cartels on their journey to the United States and are in dire need of human services by the time they get here. It is truly heartbreaking what some of these people go through. These cartels profit off the most vulnerable. They fuel the drug trade and endanger communities across our country-- indeed, the world, for that matter. We have to put the cartels out of business. We have to close these loopholes that encourage illegal immigration into our country.

Finally, we have to give the Border Patrol officers the tools they need to do their jobs and protect our country. This means more technology, more personnel, and more barriers.

In conclusion, I want to say thank you to the women and men who protect our border. Their job isn't easy, but I will say this today: The best--and I mean the very best--are in our military uniforms around the world and doing our business, they are our Border Patrol people, who are protecting our border every day and night on our southern border here in the United States. We appreciate what you all do. God bless you.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, the national debt is what actually pulled me and you and others, to some degree, into this political process. I have come to this floor many times over the last 4\1/2\ years to talk about this. Today, again, it is very timely. It is why I ran for the U.S. Senate. Today, we have--I just checked--$22.3 trillion, and it is going up $100,000 a second, as we speak. I have a debt clock in the reception area of my office, in the Russell Senate Office Building, and that thing spins all day long, 24 hours a day.

Even more concerning, we have more than $130 trillion of future unfunded liabilities coming at us like a freight train over the next 30 years. That is $1 million for every household for every American.

What we have learned is that we can't cut our way out of it, we can't tax our way out of it, and we can't grow our way out of it alone. Any one of these three will fall short. It has to be a combination. We have to have a balanced approach over the long haul to solve this $22 trillion of debt problem.

I believe we will not solve this debt crisis unless and until we fix the way Congress funds the Federal Government. The current funding process is designed to fail. It really is. It doesn't work. It hasn't worked. It will never work.

Since the Budget Act of 1974 was put in place, Congress has only funded the Federal Government on time four times. That means that by the end of the fiscal year, Congress has only funded the Federal Government four times by the end of that fiscal year. Let me say that again. It has been four times in 45 years since the 1974 Budget Act was put in place. The last time it was actually done was in 1996, some 23 years ago, under President Clinton.

Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills to fund the government. Over the last 45 years, we have averaged just 2\1/2\ per year. Because of that, Congress has used a little known tool up here called a continuing resolution. In the last 45 years, Congress has used a continuing resolution 186 times. It is a release valve that lets the government continue to operate and on the surface doesn't really sound that onerous. You just keep spending at the same level you did last year. The problem with that is that it is devastating to some Agencies and, particularly, the Department of Defense, with regard to long-term contracts, long-term training, purchases, and maintenance over the end of the fiscal year, and so forth. They are devastating to our military. They create inefficiencies and uncertainty that hurt the bottom line and increase our procurement costs by dramatic amounts. The end result of that is that it lowers our readiness, and it causes the ability to fight to be reduced.

In addition, Congress has shut down the government, over the last 45 years, 21 times because they couldn't get together and agree on how to fund the government that year--21 times.

This funding process, in my opinion, is an unmitigated disaster, based on the actual results that have led to $22 trillion of debt today, which, in my view, is indeed a crisis. Over the last 4\1/2\ years alone, we have looked at practices in States, other countries, and businesses to find best practices. No one else in the world funds their operation the way the U.S. Congress funds our government.

The problem is, we have a three-step process. We do a budget, an authorization, and then an appropriation. There simply are not enough days in the year to get all of those done. It is a 14-week budget process. We have 16 authorizing committees. If you did one a week, that is 16 weeks. And then you have 12 appropriating bills. Even if you did one a week, which is very hard to do, that is not enough time in the calendar year to do that.

Right now, Congress has yet to pass this year a single appropriations bill for the next year. This is not the appropriators' problem. They do their jobs. They proved that last year and the year before that. If given enough time and information, they can get their job done. The problem is that this year we have not even agreed with the House and with the White House on what the top-line spending should be.

As I stand here today, there are 17 working days until 31 July, when Congress leaves for a State work period called the August recess. When we get back, there are only 10 working days until the end of the fiscal year. That means we have 27 working days to reach a budget deal, pass 12 appropriations bills, and bring them to conference and get this government funded.

If we started today, we would need to pass an appropriations bill about every 2 days in order to pass all 12 bills by the end of the fiscal year. We are already behind, and I am afraid we are staring down the barrel of another CR unless we start taking these bills up immediately.

The minority leader and the majority leader in the Senate have been working diligently, along with the appropriations minority leader and chairman of the appropriations committee. They all have been working very well to get to a top-line number with the White House and the House of Representatives. I am told we are very close to a deal today. I hope we are.

Last year, when we paid attention to it, we got to 75 percent funding. But by 31 July, we had only done 12.5 percent of total government funding. Again, this is just for the discretionary part of our spending, which is only about 25 percent of the total spending that we have in the Federal Government, which includes mandatory expenses.

Last year, 16 of us wrote a letter to Leader McConnell, who agreed, and to his credit, kept us here in August, and we went from 12 percent to 75 percent funding by the end of August, including the Department of Defense and HHS, two of our biggest line items. By staying here in August, we did the people's work and did something that hadn't been done in 22 years.

I hope it doesn't come to that this year. It shouldn't. We have time to do what we need to do. I know the people in charge are doing everything they can to make that happen. That is not what this conversation is about today. I am hopeful that even this week we can get agreement on the topline number, move past the budget cap issue, and get to appropriating these bills so we can avoid any more CRs in our future this year.

The unfortunate reality is we have reached this same predicament almost every year since 1974. Einstein once said that ``insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.'' That is what this Congress has done continually over the last 45 years, with different Members and different colleagues. We keep doing the same thing.

I am convinced more than ever that we need a politically neutral platform to fund the government on time every year without all of this drama. It can be done. I think both sides want to do it. Both sides have talked about it when they were in the minority and majority at different times, but it is time to move on it.

Today 25 percent of our budget is discretionary. That is all. That is defense, the Veterans' Administration, and all domestic discretionary spending. That is 25 percent. That is what this is all about. This debate and drama is about 25 percent of the Federal Government.

What is the rest of it? We all know that is the mandatory expense side of our budget; 75 percent of what we spend in the Federal Government, over $3 trillion, is for things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension and benefits for Federal employees, and the interest on the debt. The interest alone has gone up $450 billion over the last 2 years with nine Fed fund rate increases, and it is projected that by 2023 we will be spending more on the interest alone on this debt than we do on national defense.

If we borrow about 30 percent of what we spend, that means, by definition, every dime we spend on discretionary spending is borrowed money. What is discretionary again? Our defense. So every time we are spending on defense, it is technically borrowed money.

I believe it is time to fix this, and the way forward is pretty clear. The way I see it, there are three things we have to do to fix this funding process. No. 1,

we have to change the budget process and appropriations process to make it streamlined, as most States do.

Yesterday I introduced a bill called the Fix Funding First Act, which I hope will start a dialogue. It is not the end result, but I am hopeful it will start a dialogue here and that we will be able to work through the details, take individual items one at a time, pass some bills, and start moving toward a solution.

Second, we have to address mandatory spending. We need to save Social Security and Medicare.

Third, we need to adjust the current committee structure so that the same committees on both sides can both authorize and appropriate.

This is a chart of what we have today. This is reality. We have on the left 16 authorizing committees, and on the right we have 12 appropriating committees. You can see for one appropriating committee you may have five or six different authorizing committees that have to provide input, in theory, to the appropriating committee.

When I came to Congress I was asked to head the Subcommittee on State Department Oversight inside Foreign Relations. My responsibility was to provide oversight. Interacting with the person who was the chair of the subcommittee in appropriations--we never talked and there was very little input, but we found out that the State Department at that time had not been authorized in over 13 years. We changed that and got it authorized the very next year. But this is an archaic structure that will never work. It creates all of the confusion that we have right now and the time delays in trying to get this done.

The Fix Funding First Act I introduced yesterday does five simple things.

First, it changes the Federal Government fiscal year to match the calendar year. Why is that important? Well, in the first year of a new Congress we always start 3 months behind; we start in the fourth month.

Second, this bill establishes biennial budgeting. A lot of States do that. It is not the end-all solution, but it is a great place to start and will make things a lot easier here.

Third, this bill makes the budget a law. Simply put, today the budget is a resolution.

Fourth, it creates milestones with consequences to hold us accountable as a body when we don't do our jobs. There are 44 States, including my State of Georgia, that have a balanced budget law, and if they don't pass a budget by the end of their 44- or 45-day session, they don't go home. In most States that is a law. What we are proposing here is essentially the same thing. We have broken the appropriations process into four tranches and set deadlines before Congress's scheduled work break. If we don't make the deadline, we don't go home until we get that part done. It is just that simple.

Last, our proposal requires the Budget Committee to complete a 5-year strategic plan--something we have never done--just as people in the real world do. This gives us a chance to start talking about the long- term debt-to-GDP ratio that my colleague Senator Whitehouse has been talking about for the last several years, and I fully subscribe to what he is trying to do.

That is what the bill that was introduced this week will do, and I think it is the first step to fix the funding process.

Once we complete the first phase, we need to tackle mandatory spending, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and pensions and benefits. Right now, mandatory spending makes up about 75 percent of what Congress spends every year, but costs are expected to explode over the next 20 years.

The next chart shows the projection from the Congressional Budget Office, and these are generally agreed-upon numbers based upon the baby boomers maturing in age. What we have is the green line, total expenses of the Federal Government, going from just above $4 trillion today to almost $12 trillion in just 20 years. In 10 years, we are talking about it being over $8 trillion--almost double what it is today. These are in constant dollars, not inflated dollars. This is our crisis. What is causing that crisis in the green line are total expenses.

The blue line is discretionary expenses, which are what we spend most of our time arguing about here on the floor of the Senate and the House. But look at this. This is the mandatory chart. We go from a moderate one until we see cataclysmic geometric growth. We know that the Social Security trust fund goes to zero in 12 years. The Medicare trust fund goes to zero in 7 years.

We have to save these programs and turn these curves down. There is no way the world is going to allow us to borrow that much money. Until Congress works up the political courage to deal with the mandatory spending issue, we should make all expenditures discretionary, bring them under the budget process when they need to be subsidized, and that is going to happen within a few short years.

I believe the answer is very simple. Even if we pass this bill and the Appropriations Committee still has to write down its own defense authorization, defense bills and so forth, we have to streamline this process. Last year we did, and it almost worked. What we have now is totally dysfunctional.

I hope this proposal that we are putting on the board today will help start the dialogue about how we can fix this funding process.

America always does well in a crisis, but we are not always the first to decide that we are in a crisis. I personally believe we have been in a crisis for the last 15 years. Either we can wake up and face it now or I think we will regret it later.

There are Members on both sides of the aisle who recognize this crisis. I am encouraged by the conversations we are having together. This is not a partisan issue. This is one of those ways that people back home expect us to compromise and work together to solve this.

I am encouraged today. It is time we did this, and this is the time, this year. In the next few weeks, hopefully we will get past this impasse and make it happen this year.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.