Floor Statements

Would the Senator yield?

The Senator mentioned the problem we have of the Defense Department running schools which ought to be run by local school districts. It goes even beyond that.

Just in the past couple of years we have absorbed into the defense budget a capital maintenance--new capital building and replacement of schools that are managed by the local district. Several hundred million dollars just in the past couple of years, and obligated for the next several years, will be used to rebuild or refurbish or to maintain schools which are the responsibility of local districts.

What has happened is people say the local districts may not be able to afford it or the Department of Education doesn't have jurisdiction. There is a defense budget we can put it in. We have seen that in other areas as well. So the Department of Defense is assuming responsibilities it just shouldn't have. When it does, typically the costs are much greater as well.

So I take the Senator's point and just say it is worse than we know because we have added new responsibilities and new budget items just in the past couple of years.

Mr. President, it is interesting in terms of the money being used where it should not be. I gave the example last week, and I am coming down every week and speaking at least 5 minutes on waste and duplication in government. I talked a couple of weeks ago about the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture--this is the Department of Agriculture, but you would not know it when you look at some of the programs run by the Department of Agriculture. No. 1, they have a Single-Family Housing Direct and Guaranteed Loan Program in the Department of Agriculture. It provides zero downpayment mortgage loans. It has cost the taxpayer about $10 billion since 2006. That is the Department of Agriculture, running a housing program.

We see this all over government. It is wrong. Eliminating the duplication that Senator Coburn, the Senator from Oklahoma, has spoken of many times can save our government and the taxpayers billions of dollars a year.

I appreciate, my colleagues, this colloquy we have had, and I look forward to more.

Mr. President, we are now at the halfway point in the countdown to the next budget deadline. By December 13 the budget conference committee has to report its plan for the remainder of this fiscal year 2014 and beyond. We are already 2\1/2\ months into the fiscal year. It is critical the conferees agree on funding government within the framework of the Budget Control Act.

As I have mentioned before on the Senate floor, the BCA, which places caps on discretionary spending, has provided us with a necessary dose of fiscal discipline. While the BCA is not a silver bullet which fixes all of our problems, it represents $2 trillion in projected deficit savings that improves the Nation's long-term fiscal outlook. Without it, Federal spending would go unchecked, allowing the deficits to be even higher.

In 2013 the deficit reached $680 billion; in 2014 it is estimated to be $750 billion. Should Congress ignore the BCA, we will find ourselves even deeper in the red. In fact, some across the aisle have indicated that they want to spend a whopping $91 billion more than the BCA mandates in 2014 alone.

Instead of offering smart spending cuts to eliminate waste and prioritize funds, many are compiling a list of their favorite tax hikes to replace the sequester. That action fails to recognize one simple point, a point I made on the floor last weak and one I will make over and over. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In fact, 2013 set a record for the most taxes ever collected, $2.77 trillion. That is a 13-percent increase from 2012. Yet some of my colleagues want taxpayers to shoulder the burden of their plans to increase Federal spending.

While the BCA has proved to help moderate the Federal budget's hunger for taxpayer dollars, make no mistake this budget is still bloated. Anyone who says there is nothing left to cut simply is not looking hard enough.

Last week I offered my suggestion for cutting waste at the Department of Agriculture. Just the programs I highlighted--and there are surely others--would save $5 billion when compared with the President's budget. Today I wish to share some similar fiscal follies at the Department of Energy.

The Department of Energy spends an astonishing amount of taxpayer dollars on industries and technologies that are already well established in the public marketplace. But few examples stand out more than the agency's growing role in the automotive industry. Take the Vehicle Technology Program which is slated to receive $575 million under the President's 2014 budget. This program conducts research and development into seemingly every facet of vehicle manufacturing from hybrid technologies to engine efficiency to advanced lightweight materials. It even goes so far as to draw marketing strategies to promote consumer acceptance of products such as electric vehicles and renewable fuels.

Is there anyone in America who does not know what an electric vehicle is or what it does? Yet we are supposed to spend money to improve consumer acceptance for these products. The Vehicle Technologies Program has also awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to automakers, including Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. Since 2010, the program has received $1.2 billion in taxpayer funds. Curiously, the Vehicle Technology Program's official online listing of goals and accomplishments has not even been updated for 2010.

Another well-established industry benefiting from taxpayer largesse is wind energy. Read DOE's budget request which prominently highlights the wind industry's ``great success in deploying planted-based technologies over the past 5 years.'' You may recall recently retired energy Secretary Steven Chu's admission that he considers wind a ``mature'' technology. Why then are we pumping money into a technology that even DOE indicates should be able to stand on its own?

A recent Navigant Research study made headlines when it reported that the United States is both the world's largest wind power market and home to the world's No. 1 wind power supplier, General Electric. A recent GAO report found that 82 Federal wind-related initiatives funded across 9 agencies cost $2.9 billion in fiscal year 2011. This is for what we have been told is a mature technology.

What is more troubling than the sheer cost of the Federal Government's fragmented Wind Program is GAO's finding that more than 80 percent of those programs have overlapping characteristics. GAO's subsequent recommendation seems reasonable enough; that the DOE should formally

assess and document whether Federal financial support of its initiatives is actually needed. Yet the President's budget, released 1 month later, recommends an unprecedented level of $144 million for the DOE wind energy program, just in 2014.

Wind's windfall from DOE comes on the heels of yet another extension of the multibillion dollar wind production tax credit. This tax credit was temporarily established more than two decades ago to encourage investment in the then-fledgling wind industry. This is two decades ago. Congress gave energy a 7-year window to take advantage of and prepare for the expiration of the original PTC in 1999--given 7 years.

But to the surprise of no one, parochial interests and a host of extensions continue to keep this zombie subsidy from expiring as designed. Today, as the credit supporters repeat their plea for just 1 more extension, they ignore America's debt-ridden reality and so the walking dead wind production tax credit, which is little more than a taxpayer-funded entitlement program, lives on. While I have singled out automotive and wind programs at DOE, similar arguments could be made for reducing or eliminating the Department's support for other established industries, including oil, natural gas, solar, and nuclear. Many of these programs are both unnecessary for further development of these technologies and are blatantly duplicative.

In fact, another GAO study identified a mind-boggling 679 renewable energy initiatives across 23 agencies in fiscal year 2010. Prominently featured in a report by my colleague from Oklahoma Senator Coburn, these redundant programs cost $15 billion in 2010 alone.

Instead of continuing to pick winners and losers, Congress needs to reduce its footprint in well-established areas of the energy sector. Not only will this help level the playing field for emergency energy technologies that are actually preparing to compete in the marketplace, it would save taxpayers untold billions of dollars.

With just 1 month to go before the budget deadline, I urge my colleagues to reject the urge to fixate on raising taxes and instead help focus negotiations on smart, achievable spending reductions. By eliminating waste and prioritizing spending within the BCA framework, we can shore up this country's fiscal future. Turning out the lights on wasteful programs at the Department of Energy would be a step in the right direction.

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

As my colleagues have said, I think all of us have heard from hundreds of our constituents in the past week who have had their insurance policies canceled or their insurance policies have been made unaffordable by the Affordable Care Act.

I wish to talk a minute about Greg and Linda. They live a couple doors down from me. I heard from Greg earlier this week. Greg and Linda are in their late fifties, early sixties. They know at this stage in life what kind of policy they need. They know what they do not need. They had a premium of about $400 under their old policy. They paid $440, to be exact. The new plan they have been able to find that matches most closely with what they had, after their other policy was canceled, would cost them just over $1,000--$1,055 to be exact. How is that affordable?

The President promised: If you like your plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep him or her. Period. That has not been the case. The President needs to explain to Greg and Linda and to hundreds and thousands of other Arizonans who are losing their health coverage how it is he said they could keep their coverage and now they can't.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, after weeks of budgetary wrangling and a government shutdown that had the country on edge, last week marked the beginning of the bicameral budget conference. I commend my colleagues who are meeting on the issue and are trying to reconcile the goals of wildly different budget outlines. That is no easy task. I think we all know that. However, we all know that shoveling more IOUs into our $17 trillion debt is simply unsustainable.

No matter on which side of the aisle we sit, I hope we can all agree that America's present fiscal trajectory is untenable and that our Nation's future depends on turning these economic issues around. There is no secret formula. At a minimum, Congress should abide by the budget control framework which has produced some of the most meaningful discretionary spending reductions in decades. Beyond that, we have to slow the rising costs of entitlement programs in order to achieve significant long-term deficit reduction.

Sadly, some seem fixated on spending beyond the BCA's cap for next year. Some of our colleagues have suggested that the spending discipline we achieved with the sequester should be replaced with revenue increases. Now, we all know that sequestration is a blunt instrument for reducing spending, but this desire to replace it by driving up taxes is based on an incorrect assessment. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In 2013 the government spent some $3.5 trillion. We are on track to spend another $3.7 trillion in 2014. Before anyone starts to look at tax hikes, we should realize that we are nowhere near cutting our budget to the bone. In fact, there is a lot of fat left in a lot of agencies. These budgets deserve to get the knife. But do not just take my word for it. The administration, our colleagues in the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and numerous concerned-taxpayer organizations have also posed examples of wasteful spending that should be eliminated.

If the sequester's bluntness has taught us anything, it is that Congress ought to jump at the chance to make smart, surgical spending cuts. To that end, I intend to take 5 minutes each week for the coming weeks to highlight some of the wasteful spending programs that still, even in times of economic belt-tightening, lurk in our Federal budget.

Today I would like to highlight some of the programs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With a budget request of $146 billion in 2014, the USDA rounds out the top five most expensive Federal agencies. Many programs within the USDA provide valuable services, including meat inspection, crop data collection, and managing the agricultural safety net. But the USDA also has its own agency-level homeland security department, pays for Sunkist to advertise overseas, and underwrites an astonishing number of zero-down-payment suburban home mortgages. That is the USDA.

The most obvious place to realize significant savings in the USDA is with the Federal Crop Insurance Program. Here is a program in which the taxpayers cover the majority of the risk. It pays private insurance agents commissions to sell and administer individual policies. It funds the oversight of the program and, on top of all of that, subsidizes policyholders' premiums. That is a pretty good deal if you can get it.

In 2012 taxpayers spent more than $7 billion to subsidize this program. In 2010--one of the better recent crop years--when the USDA took in a record $2.5 billion more than it paid in claims, the Federal Crop Insurance Program still cost taxpayers $3.7 billion. That is because taxpayers foot the bill for roughly two-thirds of each premium, leaving the policyholder only to cover the remaining third.

Congress could reap significant savings just by reducing the percentage the taxpayers have to spend to subsidize these premiums. In fact, according to CBO, simply rolling back the percentage of taxpayer subsidy in the program to pre-2000 levels would shave more than $40 billion in spending from the pre-2013 farm bill baseline. To that end, I have introduced the Crop Insurance Subsidy Reduction Act, which would do just that.

There are a number of other places at USDA where Congress can find savings. Surely one of those is USDA's own Office of Homeland Security, created in the post-9/11 security glut. This department is supposedly responsible for providing oversight and coordination for USDA's preparation and response to matters of homeland security importance. A $1 million program such as this may be easily lost in the President's $4 trillion budget, but there is an entire agency in the Federal Government tasked with the same objective and funded with the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Another place to find savings at USDA is in the Market Access Program, which has spent $1.4 billion since 2006 and looks to collect another $200 million in taxpayer funds in 2014. This program has spent billions of tax dollars on overseas advertising campaigns that benefit some of the most deep-pocketed corporations around, including McDonalds, Nabisco, Welch's Foods, and Sunkist.

When it comes to questionable budgetary items at USDA, the single- family housing direct and guaranteed loan program takes the cake. This obscure but growing home loan program writes and guarantees mortgages for low- and moderate-income families in rural and suburban areas. These loans are 100 percent financed and require no down payment. While home buyers in big cities are not eligible for these loans, residents of many fast-growing towns and suburbs--some within 30 miles of this very building--are receiving those kinds of subsidies. Do not be fooled into thinking these loans are for rustic farmhouses either. They are specifically designed to finance your standard home, and, inexplicably, the USDA discourages buyers from using them to purchase farms or ranches. This is the USDA discouraging us from using these subsidies to purchase farms and ranches but, rather, regular homes.

Since 2006 the USDA--remember, that is the Department of Agriculture--has spent nearly $10 billion on single-family housing direct loans. While it did not show up in the budget, home loan guarantees by the USDA have also put taxpayers on the hook for another $118 billion. The agency has requested another $320 million to fund single-family housing direct loans in 2014 and plans to issue another $24 billion in guarantees. To put the figures in perspective, the entire Department of Housing and Urban Development submitted a budget request of $47 billion.

When we have such egregious examples of waste, why should we demand more of the taxpayers' money?

In the coming weeks I hope my colleagues on the budget conference committee, along with the President and Members of Congress and various fiscal organizations, will consider some of the proposals I am offering to eliminate this wasteful spending. A good start would be sowing the seeds of fiscal restraint at the Department of Agriculture.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the work the Senator from Oregon did with my office this week to try to arrive at language we could put into an amendment. We were not able to get that amendment.

When I voted for ENDA in the House in 2007, as the Senator mentioned, it did not contain the provisions with regard to gender identity. Those added provisions have concerned me in terms of potential costs of litigation or compliance. I still have those concerns. I hope that as we work through the process, as this bill moves on to the House, we can find ways to make sure employers can implement these provisions in a way that is reasonable and proper.

I also thank the Senator from Wisconsin for working with my office on these issues as well. I have a better appreciation for what needs to be done and what we can do with this legislation as it moves through the process.

I yield to the Senator from Wisconsin.

I thank both the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Wisconsin for working with me and look forward, as this process goes on, to making sure the provisions in the legislation work for employers as well as for employees. I appreciate the work and the assistance the Senator has given our office. I thank the Senator.

Madam President, I know this is not a town that has ever been known for having a long memory. In fact, the recent warning bells rung about our deficits and our debt have predictably faded into the background with all of the attention on the rocky start to this fiscal year.

Last month, the Congressional Budget Office released its long-term budget outlook. Headlines and news stories associated with that release use words such as grim and gloomy and raised alarm about our ``long- term fiscal crisis.'' The very first line in that report reminds us that between 2009 and 2012, the U.S. Government recorded the largest budget deficits--when compared to the size of the economy--in over half a century.

Reflecting on the current state of play, CBO noted that the Federal debt currently stands at roughly three-quarters of our gross domestic product. More alarming, they predict our Federal debt will match the size of our economy or be equal to 100 percent of GDP by the year 2038.

I understand the temptation to roll our eyes and politely suggest that those facts and figures are of more interest to green-eyeshaded bean counters or to simply wave them off as last month's news. Frankly, this is made much easier when the administration says things such as ``we don't have an urgent debt crisis'' and when appropriations bills come to the floor at levels that make little sense given our current fiscal realities.

Unfortunately, these facts and figures only tell part of the story. The CBO provides us insight into the impact these facts and figures will have on the economy and the Federal budget deficit. If the growth in our Federal debt is left unchecked, we could eventually see a further drop in private investment, an increase in interest payments, a decrease in Congress's flexibility, and, obviously, a risk of fiscal crisis.

CBO notes that ``the unsustainable nature of the federal government's current tax and spending policies presents lawmakers and the public with difficult choices . . . To put the federal budget on a sustainable path for the long term, lawmakers would have to make significant changes to tax and spending policies.''

We all know that given the current environment, it is difficult to do that. It is difficult when we have a problem just bringing routine spending measures to the President's desk. So this is not an easy conclusion to hear.

But within our dim current fiscal landscape and even dimmer outlook, there has been at least one bright spot. In 2011, Congress agreed to and the President signed into law the Budget Control Act--the BCA. This included statutory discretionary spending caps as well as automatic, across-the-board spending cuts for our failure to enact additional deficit reduction measures.

Certainly trimming Federal spending via across-the-board sequestration cuts is an inelegant means, at best, of addressing our spending problem. It is often referred to as a ``blunt instrument.'' At a minimum, it is a lazy way to legislate. I believe I join a number of my colleagues when I say I am open to providing additional flexibility while staying within the budget caps with respect to the sequester. But we simply can't deny that locking in discretionary spending caps and enforcing them with automatic sequestration has yielded some of the most significant spending cuts we have seen in Congress in years.

As my colleague from Tennessee, who recently came to the floor, said, 2 years ago, discretionary spending stood at nearly $1.5 trillion. Last year, under the BCA spending caps, that number dropped to just under $1 trillion. This year, if no changes occur to the sequester enforcement cap, we will be at $976 billion. That is a significant drop. That is significant. And that is a good thing.

A recent Wall Street Journal story entitled ``The GAO's Unheralded Victory on Spending'' quoted the head of Americans for Tax Reform as concluding that we had ``made a fundamental shift in the size of the government equation.''

While runaway spending on mandatory programs represents an ever- present issue we have to get our arms around, the BCA spending caps and sequester have put real and meaningful downward pressure on discretionary spending that represents about a third of our Federal budget.

My colleague from Kentucky, the minority leader, recently pointed out that the BCA which passed 2 years ago ``actually reduced government spending for 2 years in a row for the first time since the Korean War.'' I agree with him when he urges that we not walk away from the spending reductions we have already promised taxpayers.

I have made no secret of the fact that I do not favor the strategy of tying the funding of ObamaCare to the current continuing resolution. As the resulting shutdown drags on and there are more stories about the fights over funding next year, and then the coming debate over the debt ceiling, I find myself favoring this strategy even less. It is entirely likely that the sequester opponents will use the larger debate to push to undo the gains we have made of

meaningful spending cuts by abolishing the sequester by replacing it with meaningless savings, budget gimmicks, or even new taxes.

Far from a conspiracy theory, in recent months there have already been calls for a 2-year sequester hiatus. I agree with Taxpayers for Common Sense when they say that ``this may be the convenient answer, but it is no way to get our fiscal house in order.''

It is my hope we can find a way through this shutdown sooner rather than later. It is also my hope that we can at some point have a real conversation about the long-term drivers of our crushing debt that underlie our need to regularly hike the debt ceiling. In the meantime, and as this debate unfolds, I urge my colleagues to resist any effort to undermine the sequester-enforced Budget Control Act spending caps.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was necessarily absent during Friday's cloture vote on H.J. Res. 59, the continuing resolution, as well as the motion to waive the budget act points of order with respect to H.J. Res. 59, the amendment offered by Senator Reid to strike language defunding Obamacare, and final passage of the resolution, due to my son's wedding in Arizona. Had I been here, I would have voted against all four measures.

I would not have supported a bill that would weaken the meaningful spending reductions required by current law. The rate of spending under this continuing resolution exceeds the budget cap set by the Budget Control Act. Additionally, I took issue with the restrictive process under which this bill was considered on the floor: There was no indication that Senators would have had the opportunity to vote on an amendment that respects the overall budget cap and funds the government at the required $967 billion level for next year.

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

Mr. President, as we debate legislation to keep the government running, we should not be debating a budget number that is higher than the Budget Control Act asks for. Frankly, this is a statement that should not have to be said here on the Senate floor. Why would we even begin to consider a budget number that is some $20 billion higher than the Budget Control Act? Have we somehow become flush with cash? I don't think so. Did we decide the way to run the country is to increase spending for a few months, only to have the sequester kick in, in January? Who are we kidding?

We are not kidding most Americans. They justifiably wonder what we are doing. Once again we find ourselves on the brink of a showdown and a shutdown. It is the same old story but amid the back-and-forth between the two sides of the aisle, Americans do not see Congress getting serious about Federal spending. We failed to pass even 1 of the 12 spending bills to responsibly fund the government for the fiscal year that starts in a few days. Had we taken up these bills in regular order, Members would have had the opportunity to review and consider our spending priorities. That is what people expect us to do here. Instead, we have procrastinated and put off the hard decisions like a bunch of teenagers putting off the pain of a term paper, but this has more serious consequences.

Over the past several months the Senate could have voted on these bills, setting spending priorities while abiding by the $967 billion budget cap for the next year. Instead, we chose to go through the motions of preparing spending bills as if no spending limit existed, with the knowledge that these bills would never see the light of day. Now as we quickly approach the 1st of October, we are faced with either passing the continuing resolution with a pricetag of $986 billion, $19 billion more than the law allows, or risking a government shutdown.

The Senate should at the very least take up a spending resolution that respects the realities we face, one that respects the Budget Control Act, one that funds government at the $967 billion level for next year.

If we pass a bill above the limit set by law, we will simply cause another round of sequester cuts in January. I am all for responsible sequester replacement legislation that brings down our national debt, but we cannot and should not weaken the law of the land, the Budget Control Act, that has locked in real and meaningful cuts in spending.

As such, I hope the majority leader allows us to have a vote on a fiscally responsible continuing resolution. The majority leader has made clear his intention to amend the continuing resolution to address his concerns. A fair process would include affording other Members the same opportunity.

Any process that yields a take-it-or-leave-it approach to funding government while ignoring spending caps that are the law of the land is, quite simply, irresponsible.

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

I came to the floor to urge my colleagues to do everything we can to ensure that ObamaCare is delayed, guaranteeing the least- harmful pass forward for patients, providers, and taxpayers.

We all have stories from our home States that highlight what many of us have said was going to happen when the Federal Government began its takeover of the Nation's health care system.

Because of ObamaCare, a constituent of mine in Arizona who owns a number of restaurants is eliminating the entry-level job of busboy because he can no longer afford to employ busboys and pay the new health care expenses for his other employees. Eliminating a restaurant- wide position is a decision that he had to make because of ObamaCare.

Another Arizonan, Michael Monti, who runs a historic restaurant in Tempe, was recently featured on the local news because he is being forced to decide about whether to offer health insurance to his employees working more than 30 hours a week or paying the penalty from the Federal Government. Again, it is likely that employees will be laid off or not hired.

He doesn't want to cut back his employees' hours. That doesn't help his business. I am sure it doesn't help his employees. Like other business owners, he doesn't have any other option.

Sadly, these stories are not isolated incidents. Companies like Trader Joe's and Home Depot have recently announced they will end health benefits for part-time workers next year, and those employees will be directed to the new insurance marketplaces.

SeaWorld announced that it will be cutting back employees' hours as well. UPS will no longer cover the health insurance for some 15,000 employees' spouses.

Just when we need a full bore, full-time economy, America is becoming a part-time economy. These are the effects of ObamaCare.

I believe that it is helpful to have this debate come sharply into focus as it has been over the past 24 hours. Like many of my colleagues, I have opposed ObamaCare from the beginning. I think every Republican in the House and in the Senate has done so.

I voted to do away with this legislation more than 30 times. Earlier this month I introduced S. 1490, a bill that would delay by 1 year all of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that are supposed to take effect on January 1, 2014, or later.

I believe we all know the President has already decided to delay the employer mandate. Doesn't it make sense to delay the rest as well? How can you tell individuals there is still a mandate for you to buy insurance but to tell employers you are going to get a year break.

As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to our constituents. We have to do everything we can to make sure that this train wreck of a law doesn't continue to wreak havoc. As we continue to discuss the need to delay this onerous law, I hope that Senators will join me in devoting the same time and energy to fix the fiscal problems facing this country.

In this debate we are told we have two choices. We have a continuing resolution with a price tag of about $986 billion--about $20 billion more than the law allows--or we risk a government shutdown. It is disingenuous to tell our constituents that these are the only two choices, a shutdown or a CR that busts our budget limits.

The majority leader is going to amend the CR to get what he wants. Shouldn't other Members be afforded the opportunity to offer amendments as well? Wasn't this the promise the majority leader made to the Senate when we made changes in January?

The Senate should be given the opportunity to vote on a continuing resolution that respects the Budget Control

Act and funds the government at the $967 billion level for next year. Passing a bill above that limit--above the limit set by law--will cause a second round of sequester cuts in January. Why would we do this? Lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis is no way to run a country.

You can say what you want about it, but the Budget Control Act has provided us at least some meaningful cuts in spending we wouldn't make otherwise. Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported our debt is on track to total 100 percent of our Nation's output in 25 years. Interest on the national debt will consume 14 percent of our annual budget in 10 years' time, up from 6 percent today.

Those projections demand we take a harder look at our spending and, at the very least, we should be allowed to vote on a fiscally responsible continuing resolution that meets the $967 billion budget threshold.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 5 minutes.

Madam President, today, September 11, 2013, is a day in which we remember lives cut too short in the attacks on our Nation 12 years ago. We also remember acts of bravery, selflessness, and all that took place that morning and in the days and months and the years that followed. I wish to take a moment to thank all the others who have sought to protect us from harm in the intervening years.

I also rise today to speak about the need for continued attention to our Nation's fiscal health and to encourage my colleagues to seize the opportunity to take the necessary steps to rein in our out-of-control spending. As so often happens this time of year, talk has turned to the need for a continuing resolution for at least part of the next year, and I urge my colleagues to join me in pushing for a CR that respects the commitments we have already made.

As we all know, the President and the Congress approved the Budget Control Act in 2011, putting in place annual spending caps and establishing a deficit reduction commission to find additional savings and solutions to ensure the solvency of our entitlement programs. With the failure of that commission, a sequester that forced $1.2 trillion in automatic spending reductions was put in place. In the absence of an agreement to replace them, the caps and sequester guarantee at least $2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Seventy-four Members of the Senate believed these enforcement measures were needed to put us on the right fiscal track. The President signed the Budget Control Act into law, saying that, ``It's an important first step to ensuring that, as a Nation, we live within our means.'' Yet there are continuing conversations about passing a short- term continuing resolution that would fund the government at a level above that established by the Budget Control Act for next year.

I should have to remind no one that under the Budget Control Act, passing a continuing resolution at anything higher than the $967 billion limit would trigger another statutory, across-the-board sequester cut in January that would bring spending down to the $967 billion level for the next fiscal year of 2014.

I can see why there are those who would like to take such action. Passing a CR at a higher-than-BCA-appropriate level would create yet another fiscal cliff, with hopes, I am sure, of causing enough pressure to finally do away with the sequester. That is what some would like. However, such a scenario does little to add pressure to address the sequester, provides the pretense that the BCA levels don't mean anything if even for a short while, and it further complicates agencies implementing what are sure to be the required cuts.

Make no mistake, I understand the sequester process is a blunt instrument and not a preferred method of fiscal restraint. However, it was put in place because Congress failed to do what is needed to rein in reckless spending.

I also understand the difficult position it puts agencies in, particularly the Department of Defense. I am open to allowing reasonable flexibility and to replacing the sequester, albeit with changes to mandatory spending and entitlements, and not hikes in taxes. But that deal, much like the supercommittee's success, has been elusive, and to seek to pass a CR that doesn't reflect the reality of the post-BCA world raises itself a set of problems. However, such a scenario does little to add pressure to address the sequester, as I mentioned. It simply would make it more difficult for agencies to address their needs and to bring down their own spending.

Certainly, passing any budget bill for next year at levels in excess of those that are outlined in the Budget Control Act breaks any promise to ``live within our means.''

In addition, passing a short-term CR that will allow agencies to spend money as if the sequester isn't imminent early next year only complicates their situation. This would force agencies to squeeze all the necessary spending reductions in just over 9 months instead of an entire year. We can imagine the burdens that puts on agencies, particularly the Department of Defense, with unique procurement requirements.

A less charitable view of why anyone would seek to ignore, even for a short time, the realities of the BCA would be that they might think deficits have fallen and attention to our fiscal state is no longer needed. In fact, the President recently told an audience that, ``We don't have an urgent deficit crisis. The only crisis we have is one that is manufactured in Washington.''

I beg to differ. Our fiscal problems aren't solved. In fact, we are still on track to add $753 billion to our national debt in 2013. There is no doubt this is an improvement from past years. Yet the trillion- dollar deficits of the past 4 years are hardly appropriate benchmarks for today. Even at $753 billion, this year's deficit is larger than any of those under any previous administration.

Meanwhile, our entitlement programs are still on track to be insolvent, with Social Security Disability set to go broke by 2016, Medicare by 2026, and Social Security by 2033. This is simply not the time to backpedal, by any means, on the agreement we made in 2011.

Congress and the President agree that the Budget Control Act is the first step needed toward budget deficit reduction. We must complete the first stride to set our Nation on the right course and prove to the public we can address the even larger looming challenges we face, such as the solvency of our entitlement programs.

There is no doubt this is going to be a difficult job in the days to come, and we must address it. I urge my colleagues to keep their promise and push for appropriations bills that responsibly respect the spending limits outlined in the Budget Control Act. To that aim, I invite my colleagues to join me in sending a letter to the majority leader asking him to bring to the Senate floor a fiscal year 2014 spending bill that abides by the $967 billion discretionary limit that is required by law.

Let us continue the progress that has been made so far and keep our promise to fight for a more sound fiscal future.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with Senator Stabenow.

Mr. President, as the two Chambers prepare to go to conference on the farm bill, I rise to request a commitment from the distinguished chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee to protect the Senate farm bill's vital provision to end direct payments outright.

While I commend the chairwoman for her leadership in facilitating the full and immediate elimination of direct payments in the Senate-passed farm bill, many of my colleagues may be surprised to learn that section 1101 of the House-passed farm bill contains a carve-out that would actually continue direct payments to cotton farmers at a rate of 70 percent in 2014 and a rate of 60 percent in 2015.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this House-passed extension of direct payments would cost taxpayers an estimated $823 million.

Already a poster child for Federal largesse, direct payments have more recently become synonymous with waste, fraud, and abuse. As the Washington Post put it, recent analyses of the program have found that it subsidizes people who aren't really farming: the idle, the urban, and, occasionally, the dead.

Investigations have uncovered taxpayer-backed direct payments being paid to billionaires, to New York City condo dwellers, and to nonfarming homeowners who happen to live on former farmlands.

Direct payments have also been the target of a series of scathing reports published by the GAO, the most recent of which went so far as to question the purpose and need for direct payments, stating that they did not ``align with principles significant to integrity, effectiveness, and efficiency in farm bill programs.'' The report went on to recommend that Congress consider eliminating direct payments outright.

I ask the distinguished chairwoman, was the unsustainable cost and the pattern of waste, fraud, and abuse associated with direct payments the impetus for the chairwoman to ensure that this subsidy was fully and immediately eliminated in the most recent Senate-passed farm bill?

To the chairwoman's credit, the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry has maintained a sustained effort to eliminate direct payments. In fact, between the 2012 and 2013 Senate farm bills and the majority's sequester replacement legislation, 76 current Members of the Senate--76 current Members of the Senate--have voted for the full and immediate elimination of direct payments.

Does the chairwoman agree that even the limited $823 million extension of direct payments found in the House-passed bill would be at odds with the recorded votes of a supermajority of the Senate?

To that end, I respectfully request that the distinguished chairwoman make a commitment that she will protect the Senate's vital provision and work to ensure that any conference report brought before the Senate achieves a full and immediate elimination of direct payments.

I thank the chairwoman for her commitment. To be frank, I believe the Senate farm bill leaves much to be desired. In fact, to gain my support, the farm bill will need to undergo dramatic changes to reduce the taxpayer cost of Federal crop insurance, remove market- distorting price supports, and limit the scope of the Federal Government in U.S. agriculture.

That said, the chairwoman is right to point out that as uncertainty continues to surround the farm bill, Congress appears poised to pass yet another extension of the 2008 farm bill and, in turn, continue direct payments.

With regard to direct payments, such an outcome would be a costly regression in light of the Senate's bipartisan efforts to eliminate this multibillion-dollar subsidy.

After 17 years, three extensions, and more than $92 billion paid out, it is time for direct payments to come to a full and immediate end. On this point, the chairwoman and I are in full agreement.

To that end, the chairwoman has my commitment to do everything I can to ensure that any legislation that should come before the Senate containing an extension of direct payments will be met with my fierce opposition.

I thank the chairwoman again for her commitment and for her attention to these concerns.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I thank my colleague as well.

Madam President, I rise today to discuss the so-called grand bargain referenced yesterday by the President.

On Tuesday President Obama recycled a number of policy ideas that have lingered for months, if not years, and repackaged them as what he called ``a grand bargain.'' This proposal seems to be an attempt by the President to extend an olive branch to the Republican side of the aisle by offering corporate tax reform. In exchange, he is asking for additional stimulus spending.

I am in favor of a grand bargain, but this is not even close to a grand bargain. It is not even a bargain. A grand bargain would involve reform to entitlement programs to make them sustainable over time. A grand bargain would involve a farsighted look at the outyears, not just a shortsighted attempt to score political points for the next election cycle.

The administration has taken the taxpayer down the road of stimulus spending before, with the idea that we can stimulate job growth with so-called shovel-ready projects. Sadly, we have all seen what throwing taxpayer money at supposed shovel-readiness gets you and just how lackluster this economic recovery has been. Wasting hard-earned dollars on so-called investments doesn't create jobs. Businesses and the people who build them is what creates jobs.

I think both sides of the aisle agree that our Tax Code is already far too complicated. In fact, a recent bipartisan letter from the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee discussed the complexity, inefficiency, and unfairness of our Tax Code, which acts as a brake on our economy. But if we can't bring ourselves to do entitlement reform--or the so-called grand bargain--at least at this stage what we can do is perhaps a small bargain for businesses and the taxpayers just by simplifying both the individual and corporate codes to foster an environment that is hospitable to business expansion, to hiring, and to international competitiveness.

Last week I shared publicly with the leadership of our tax-writing committee my goals and principles for tax reform. Chief among them is lowering the business income taxation for corporations and those businesses that file as individuals.

With 95 percent of U.S. businesses structured as subchapter S corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability corporations, and other passthrough businesses, we can't ignore the fact that many of them pay a top rate of 39.6 percent in addition to several other layers of taxation. In my view,

any substantive tax reform should include a reformed tax system that allows all U.S. businesses, including passthrough businesses, to thrive. Unfortunately, the proposed corporate taxation reforms the President included in his recent announcement will once again have the government picking winners and losers in the Tax Code.

Here in the Senate, there are efforts to work in a bipartisan fashion to reform the Tax Code. This is a good-faith effort that should be encouraged. As I mentioned, it would be a bargain for taxpayers and businesses alike.

If we can make progress on the small bargain, then perhaps some day we can return our attention to the grand bargain--a bargain that would include and involve entitlement reform and substantive tax reform in the same package.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, this is the first appropriations bill we are considering for fiscal year 2014. Unfortunately, in my view, it gets us off on the wrong foot because of the spending level. The bill spends more than $54 billion, which is about $5 billion above last year's spending level and more than $10 billion over the House proposal for this coming fiscal year. Considering that our debt stands at over $17 trillion, we ought to be spending less, not more this year.

This bill already takes a larger portion of the allowable spending compared to last year. People will point out that the budget agreement we agreed to in 2011 simply sets an aggregate number and that we can spend whatever we want in certain appropriations bills as long as the total doesn't go over $967 billion. That is true, but it is impossible.

I can say that with experience in the House and now in the Senate; that if we overspend on the initial appropriations bills, we will somehow cut back in the bills that come later. Often the last bill to come up is the Defense bill. Nobody is going to undercut our troops or spend less on a defense bill, but that would be required if we were to stay under the budget control agreement number. When we overspend on the initial appropriations bills like this, it simply means one thing: that we are going to bust the budget.

I can tell my colleagues, to have any credibility with the taxpayers, we have to stick to the agreement that was agreed to in 2011. We passed so far. We even went through the sequester because we couldn't come up with an agreement to prioritize spending. But now, to go over the spending limit on the first appropriations bill would not set the right precedent moving ahead into the appropriations bills. We simply have to deal with this debt and deficit. This isn't the way to go.

That is why I support the upcoming motion to recommit that Senator Toomey will offer in a few minutes that will simply recommit the bill to the Appropriations Committee and say: Come back with something that fits within the Budget Control Act that is similar to what was spent last year, not overspending by $5 billion. I hope we will pass this motion to recommit. I hope it will start off the appropriations bills in the Senate on the right foot.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senators McCain, Crapo, Risch, Heller, and myself I am pleased to introduce the Stewardship Contracting Reauthorization and Improvement Act.

As we continue to search for ways to prevent future wildland fire tragedies, it is worth noting that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, are about to lose one of their most valuable tools in that ongoing fight.

The tool, known as stewardship contracting, allows the Forest Service and BLM--in collaboration with State and local governments, tribal agencies, and non-governmental organizations--to enter into contracts with public or private entities to carry out a variety of land- management projects, including those that can reduce the risk of wildland fire.

Stewardship contracts have been particularly useful in Arizona. The Forest Service awarded the first such 10-year contract to the White Mountain Stewardship Project in 2004, and the largest contract, the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, began in 2012. Unless Congress acts, the authority to enter into these agreements will expire at the end of September. Our legislation would not only extend the authority for Federal agencies to enter into these agreements, but it builds on past experiences to make commonsense improvements.

For example, it would give the Forest Service and BLM flexibility when establishing cancellation ceilings. A cancellation ceiling represents the amount of money the government would have to pay its contracting partner if the contract were cancelled. Typically, the government has to obligate the full amount at the inception of the contract. As noted in a 2008 GAO report, cancellation ceilings that require agencies to obligate large sums can serve as an impediment to long-term landscape-scale contracts, precisely the types of agreements that most significantly reduce wildfire risks.

Using Defense Department acquisition regulations as a model, our bill solves this problem by allowing Federal agencies to obligate funds in stages that are economically or programmatically viable. It would also require those agencies to notify the House and Senate natural resource committees, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, if the agencies propose contracts that do not fully cover the cancellation ceiling amount. Any extra value from a contract would be dedicated to first satisfying outstanding cancellation-related liabilities before being used to fund other stewardship projects. Finally, our bill incorporates key fire-liability provisions from timber sale contracts into the stewardship model, establishing parity between the two instruments.

Stewardship contracting and the resulting partnerships have helped restore forests, reduce the risk of out-of-control wildfires, and protect rural communities. I thank Senators McCain, Crapo, Risch, and Heller for their support and leadership. It is my hope that our colleagues will act quickly to extend and improve this important land- management tool.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.