Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, tomorrow we will continue the markup on the Gang of 8 immigration bill. They have been meeting with businesspeople and special interest groups trying to craft a piece of legislation they can agree to, that they think is good. They didn't have anybody representing mainstream America. They didn't have anyone representing the law enforcement community who would explain how this system ought to work. As a result, their bill doesn't have any kind of improvements in our law enforcement that would be effective.

I wanted to talk today, because we will be going into it tomorrow, about the fundamental question on the nature of our immigration; how much this country would be able to sustain in a healthy way for immigrants, as well as American workers.

I have been concerned for some time that the numbers are just too large. We are not able to effectively assimilate people in these large numbers. Significantly, we don't have sufficient jobs to allow us to employ them. As the bill stands now, it would have only a negative impact on American workers.

People say: You need to be positive, Sessions. We are growth oriented. We are just going to grow this economy, and there will be plenty of jobs out there. Be like Ronald Reagan, would you? Be sunny all the time. Don't talk negatively. Don't worry about this.

I am looking at some numbers, and I think it is wise for America to be prudent, smart, and careful, before we establish policies we can't sustain, before we establish policies that create more unemployment in America and damage our economy. That could happen.

I asked one of the sponsors of the bill, Senator Schumer, how many people would be admitted under the bill. Well, he wouldn't say.

I said: It looks like it might be 30 million; is that correct?

He said: No.

I said: Well, how many is it, Senator Schumer?

He didn't say. They have yet to say how many people would be admitted under the biggest change in immigration we have had since at least 1986, and really it is larger in its impact than 1986.

This is an odd thing. Frankly, we ought not to proceed another day in the Judiciary Committee until the sponsors of the bill--and their great advisers who have been meeting for months, aided by the administration and all the staffs they have in Homeland Security and the Department of Justice--can tell us how many people would be admitted. They don't do that, I think, fundamentally because they don't want us to know. They really don't want to acknowledge what a huge alteration in our policies this will have in terms of economics and so forth.

Let's think about it. Here are some of the things we know: We know 11 million people are here illegally--some say 12 million--and they would all be given a legal status. Virtually all would be given a legal status immediately.

They would then immediately be allowed to pursue any job they would like to take. They could go down and apply for the county government, the city government, trucking firms, coal mining companies, oil companies, any good job out there they would like to apply for. That is not happening now because many of them have no identification and aren't able to take anything other than jobs off the books. Some have estimated--supporters of the bill--that at least half of the people here illegally are working off the books in some form or fashion. These numbers are big. We have those numbers.

In addition, there is a plan over the next years to legalize 4.5 million additional individuals in the so-called backlog. They are really not backlogged in the sense the immigration service isn't processing their papers fast enough, they are backlogged because we had caps on how many in these categories could come in and people apply until they reach the number. Well, they would remove the caps on those. That would be another 4.5 million that would come in.

Then they have a future flow that we are working hard on to analyze with my staff. I don't have the entire immigration service. I don't have the immigration lawyers association. I don't have the chamber of commerce or Richard Trumka to come in and do all the work for me, but we think there will be quite a number of immigrants coming in the future.

The Los Angeles Times--and I will use their number; it seems to be the number others have come up with and may be in the ballpark--they have increased the annual flow by 50 percent. That would be a 50- percent increase. We are supposed to be at about 1 million a year now, and this would increase the legal flow by 50 percent. It could be considerably more. So we estimate that something like 30 million people will be given legal status in the next 10 years, when, if the law were faithfully applied, there would be about 10 or 11 million over the next 10 years given legal status. Yes, of that 30 million, about 10 or so-- 10-plus--will be those who are already here, but many of those are really not effectively competing for jobs with the American worker, who by a large degree is out of work and needing a job.

First and foremost we are a nation of immigrants. We have always had a generous immigration policy. A million immigrants a year exceeds that of any other country in the world ever, and we are about to absorb a huge number of new people--15 million--and then we are going to increase the flow by 50 percent. So I am asking, can we handle this? That is all I am asking at this point on this subject, and we really should think about that. Don't we owe it to our workers to ask those questions?

Professor Borjas, at Harvard--himself an immigrant and the most serious student of immigration and wages and jobs in America, and he wrote a book on it a number of years ago and still writes papers in contributing to the debate--has demonstrated absolutely, through intense, high-level economic studies, that increases in workers produces reduced wages. Surprise--more workers reduces wages. It allows a business to find a worker without having to pay more money. They would be able to get more people to work for less, and they like that. That is great--for them.

My Democratic colleagues have been pointing out for a long time--and, sadly, there is too much truth in their complaints--that the average wage of the American worker since at least

2000--and some say as far back as 1970--has not kept up with inflation.

Profit is going pretty well for a lot of companies, but workers' salaries haven't even kept up with inflation, and our unemployment rate is exceedingly high today. That is a fact. Professor Borjas attributes a good bit of that to the immigration we have had over these years, which is at a level that, he said some years ago--and I remember when he wrote this--was higher than the country really ought to have then.

What is our current situation? Well, we looked at the analysis of the Congressional Budget Office in the budget study they present to Congress every year. And they work hard at this. Nobody knows the answers to all of these questions, but CBO's is as good and objective a number as one normally gets, and this is what they predict. They are predicting that what experts are saying is correct; that is, the economic growth in mature economies, such as the United States, Europe, and Japan, is not going to reach the peaks of growth we have had in some of the go-go eras of the past. Bill Gross, head of one of the biggest bond firms in the world--PIMCO--has called it a new normal. We are going to have lower growth. It will be steady, hopefully, but it is going to be lower and it will create fewer jobs. That is what the projections are for the future.

In February of this year, the CBO projected that job growth per month--the number of jobs employers expect to add to their workforce-- in the second 5 years of their 10-year budget analysis, years 2019 through 2023, would average only 75,000 a month. Isn't that something? Hopefully we can do something better than that. This is a 10-year-plus plan of immigration policy from this Gang of 8. Have they talked to Mr. Elmendorf? Have they talked to anybody about how many jobs we are actually going to need, other than some of the Silicon Valley gurus, the chamber of commerce, some of the big agricultural industries, and some of those folks? Is that all the people they are talking to?

What about the Blue Chip forecast? This is a forecast that is watched very closely. They make forecasts on a lot of different issues. It is the average of 55 private economic forecasters. So what do the Blue Chippers say the growth will be? They say that there will be 2.8 percent growth between 2016 and 2019 and that will drop to only 2.5 percent between 2020 and 2024. In short, they agree with CBO that economic growth will slow down over the next 10 years and not really pick up from the slow growth we are in now to any significant degree.

A number of academic economists--Robert Gordon at Northwestern University and Tyler Cowen at George Mason--argue that the U.S. economy has entered a long period of slower economic growth that is not likely to improve dramatically anytime soon.

Today the Wall Street Journal published its latest survey of 52 economists, who predict steady but slow economic growth in the near term. Slow growth means slow job creation. It means job caution.

Here is what the Brookings Institution says:

Adjust for population growth, and it will take 9 more years

to return to the prerecession level of unemployment at the

current rate of growth.

That is a liberal think tank, and they are saying it is going to take 9 more years just to get the unemployment we have now down to a more normal historic level in the United States. At the same time, job participation, labor force participation is at a record low. Not since the 1970s, when not many women were working, have we gone that low. People are giving up on looking for work.

It was 2 months ago that we had 88,000 jobs created in this country in 1 month--88,000 people got employment--while 486,000 left the workforce. Imagine that. In 1 month we only created 88,000 jobs, while 486,000 left the workforce. We checked those numbers, and about one- fifth of those were retirements--I am sure some early, or at least earlier than they wanted, and they started drawing Social Security earlier than they intended to draw it because they couldn't find work-- but a little less than 400,000, one-fifth, dropped out, gave up, couldn't find work. So that is troubling, and it is pulling down wages of American citizens who have lost their jobs and can't find good work.

The Labor Department reported earlier this month that 4.4 million Americans have been out of work for more than 27 weeks and that the broadest measure of unemployment--that includes part-time employment and other things--stands at 13.9 percent, which is very high.

So first, I would say, do we want to tell somebody to come to America, but we don't have a job for them or it will only be temporary, and then they will be laid off? We can't expect to be able to maintain a workforce.

There is no doubt that those who want large and ready supplies of labor and who don't want to have to pay more money or provide more benefits to get that labor are happy with the steady, large flow coming into the country. It might even make them have a little better profit. But Professor Borjas at Harvard makes clear that by maybe $1,600 a year--low-income people making $20,000 or so a year will have their wages brought down that much as a result of an influx of large amounts of low-skilled labor.

So it is not helpful to immigrants who came lawfully and who are looking for work and having their wages pulled down, and it is not helpful for our native born who are looking for work and can't get on that ladder of success where someone starts working as a carpenter's helper and one day ends up as a carpenter and then a foreman, and they have saved a little money and have a retirement plan and health care for their family. That is what we would like to see happen in America. So I am worried about those numbers.

Mr. President, we had a hearing--kind of hard to keep up with this, but I believe this was the hearing on high-tech workers--and I would like to highlight the testimony of Professor Ron Hira. He has written for the Economic Policy Institute, which is a liberal think tank. He has done an op-ed at BusinessWeek and has presented at the Brookings Institution and printed academic papers on this subject. He testified before our committee that he has been studying our high-skilled immigration policy for more than a decade.

Most of the people entering the country under the Gang of 8 bill will not be highly skilled. Most of them will not enter through the more merit-based point system we have heard about. It looks pretty clear that those entering on the point-based system, where there is some sort of competitive process--although an individual gets extra points if they have family connections--represent less than 10 percent of those who would be admitted under the legislation.

So this is what Mr. Hira says about the way our high-skilled immigration policy is being operated. He says the U.S. policy, as currently designed and administered, does more harm than good. To meet the needs of the U.S. economy and U.S. workers, our guest worker and permanent resident programs need immediate and substantial overhaul, and we don't have that kind of reform in this legislation. The principal goal of these programs is to bring in foreign workers who are supposed to complement American workers, making American workers more effective. But loopholes have made it too easy to bring in cheaper, foreign workers with ordinary skills who directly substitute rather than complement workers already in America.

We have all heard of this complementary idea--that we bring in foreign labor, and that helps American workers be more efficient and it will make everybody better. But according to Mr. Hira, the workers who are being brought in under the H-1B and similar programs--J-1, L-1--are not doing that. They are bringing in people through a loophole where they actually compete with Americans for jobs. He says many of these individuals have ordinary skills, and they substitute for American workers.

He also said that loopholes in these programs provide an unfair competitive advantage to companies that are specializing in offshore outsourcing, speeding up the process of shipping high-wage, high-tech American jobs overseas, which has disadvantaged companies in the United States that hire mainly American workers.

Essentially, as I understood his testimony, people would come from a foreign country. They live here and train and work here. Then they go back to

their foreign country and set up a plant or business and the company, U.S. company, outsources the work, costing American jobs. He has done studies on this. This is not just a theory he came up with.

He further testified that the actual H-1B and L-1 visa use has become antithetical to policymakers' goals due to four fundamental flaws: The work permits are held by the employer, so basically these individuals come as indentured servants and are able to be controlled in a way that gives the employer the advantage over an American worker. No. 2, he says that the visa period is far too long for them to come and, in addition to the inherent design flaws, there is little oversight or enforcement on these programs. Nobody is watching them. According to Professor Hira, by closing H-1B and L-1 loopholes, Congress would create and retain tens of thousands of high-wage American jobs and ensure our labor market works fairly for American and foreign workers alike.

I am summarizing now. In his opinion, the following needs to be done: institute an effective labor market test--make sure we actually need these workers, pay workers true market wages--he asserts they are not being paid true market wages; limit the visa to a maximum of 3 years-- for a lot of reasons I suggest that is very important--with no renewal. If they come for longer periods of time and they can renew and renew, then we end up with somebody who is married here, their children are in junior high school, maybe they are American citizens by now--and we are going to ask them to leave even though the law says for them to leave? It is not likely.

That is how 40 percent of the people here illegally have come to America. They have come legally but overstayed the visa they had.

We should eliminate access to additional H-1B and L-1 visas for any dependent firm. Those that are dependent on these programs to maintain their basic workforce, those are the ones who should get their numbers reduced, rather than getting more visas. We should shine a light on the process, institute sensible oversight, establish a clear single objective for the programs. Also other programs, he notes, are badly in need of an overhaul and are being used to circumvent the annual numerical limit on H-1Bs and the regulatory controls on the L-1 program.

Given the widespread use of H-1B and L-1 visas by offshore outsourcing firms--people who are truly moving jobs out of the United States--Congress should take affirmative steps to make clear that most guest worker programs and permanent residents are immigration issues, not trade and policy issues.

Finally, we heard over and over again from our good friends in Silicon Valley all the great things they have done. We are proud of them and they have been great for America. He talks about some of that. He contested the assertion by Mr. Brad Smith of Microsoft. Microsoft has been aggressive in pushing this program. He pushes back and contests the assertion that the United States does not have enough high-skilled workers. We have heard we don't have enough high-skilled workers. He says no. He studied it. According to Professor Hira, the unemployment rate for STEM graduates--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--is higher than that of regular college graduates.

Goodness. He noted that in the petroleum engineering field things have gone better. Wages have increased prompting an increase in the enrollment in such programs by American college students who almost exclusively have filled the petroleum engineering jobs. That is the way the system is supposed to work. Wages start going up, there is a shortage of petroleum engineers and workers, people start majoring in that, and they go out and find jobs. That is the way the system is supposed to work. This example, he says, shows that markets do work when they are allowed to work. But he said H-1B and L-1 programs are intervening in labor markets. With that privilege should come accountability.

I will conclude by saying I urge my colleagues, before we rush out and sign on to an immigration proposal that has all kinds of special interests and political interests, somebody has to question what it is doing to recent college graduates as well as low-skilled workers. The actual statistical data from experts indicate these workers are struggling today and many are unemployed and in much need of work.

The Civil Rights Commissioner, Abigail Thernstrom, also wrote a letter to the Commission and the Congress that said we don't have a shortage of low-skilled workers in America. We have a glut of them. We have more low-skilled workers looking for jobs than we have jobs. But to read the papers, one would think just the opposite; that we have this crisis with high unemployment, high numbers of people dropped out of the labor force, and we have to bring in more workers to do basic American work.

All I am saying is that immigration policy needs to allow the right flow to come into America. It needs to be faithfully enforced. It needs to serve the national interest, not the special interest. It needs to remember the dutiful workers out there who lawfully entered the country through immigration or native born, and their interests need to be protected in this process. I do not believe they are being protected properly.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, we have an attempt to move and rush through the Senate an immigration bill before the American people can absorb what is in it. I think this is a very bad policy. The bill was introduced at 2 a.m. 8 days ago. It was set for markup in the committee today. Our diligent staff has been trying to read it and absorb it, and they are having a great deal of difficulty sifting through this complicated 844-page bill.

Senator Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, has asked for the bill to be put over for 1 week. Next week is a recess, so now it will come up in 2 weeks to be presented and passed out of committee.

On Monday, we had a hearing. I will not say it was a circus, but it was impossible to absorb all the information. Twenty-three witnesses testified, one right after the other, 5 or so minutes each. The Senators who were here on Monday--not a lot--had 5 minutes of questioning and not much was resolved. They did not know what was in the bill either. They were just testifying about policy, basically. Nobody could explain exactly how the bill is going to work.

So people say: You should be able to handle a bill like that. You should be able to read an 844-page bill.

So I just want to show why this is a pretty complicated process and why a piece of legislation such as this has to be carefully read. It is not easy to do so.

So this is page 65 of the bill that I will show you. It deals with an issue I talked about yesterday. Secretary Napolitano issued a prosecutorial directive and guidance to ICE officers that was so upsetting to the ICE officers that they sued her and their Director, Mr. Morton, in Federal court, saying she is directing them not to follow plain U.S. law.

I brought it up in the hearing, and Chairman Leahy said: Well, a lot of people file lawsuits. Very few win. Well, yesterday or the day before yesterday, the Federal judge basically ruled in favor of the officers and said a Secretary of DHS has no authority to issue guidelines that counteract plain mandatory Federal law. So, basically, the Secretary was saying: Do not remove certain people from the country that current law says must be removed. She was refusing to do what the law of the United States says. This is one of the reasons we have such a problem reforming and fixing immigration law. It is because the American people have little or no confidence in the willingness of our officials to even follow present law, much less new law.

They have planned to fix this in the bill so now the Secretary would have even more power. In the legislation we have already found maybe 200 references to waivers and discretion of the Secretary. But look at page 65:

(B) Waiver.--

(i) In general.--The Secretary may waive the application of

subparagraph (A)(i)(III) or any provision of section 212(a)

that is not listed in clause (ii) on behalf of an alien for

humanitarian purposes, to ensure family unity, or if such

waiver is otherwise in the public interest. Any discretionary

authority to waive grounds of inadmissibility under section

212(a) conferred under any other provision of this Act shall

apply equally to aliens seeking registered provisional status

under this section.

(ii) Exceptions.--

Exceptions to that.

The discretionary authority under clause (i) may not be used

to waive--

(I) subparagraph (B), (C), (D)(ii), (E), (G), (H), or (I)

of section 212(a)(2);

(II) section 212(a)(3);

(III) subparagraph (A), (C), (D), or (E) of section

212(a)(10). . . .

So if I am a Senator, and I am trying to protect the interests of the people of the United States to understand what a piece of legislation means, I have to go back and read every one of those subparagraph exceptions.

This is gobbledygook. My staff tells me every time they go back and read it, they see more difficulty. I have not even had a chance to look at this. Oh, but do not worry about it, we have set up a vision. We have a vision of this great immigration bill that is going to be comprehensive and fix all our problems. Trust us. Do not worry about it. You will find out what is in it later. Right? Just like health care, I guess.

This is not a way to do business. The immigration policy of the United States is just as important as the health care policy of the United States.

I am not going to consent to this bill. We ought to find out what is in it. It goes on more and more and more, this kind of gobbledygook.

Continuing:

(IV) with respect to misrepresentations relating to the

application for registered provisional immigrant status,

section 212(a)(6)(C)(i).

And it goes on.

It is not right to say that people who are concerned about the legislation are

obstructing the process. We are trying to find out what the bill does.

A headline yesterday in the Christian Science Monitor said: How many people will be made legal under this bill? It then quoted one of the supporters of the bill as saying: We don't know.

So I asked at the Judiciary Committee this morning--one of the sponsors was there, Senator Schumer--I asked: Do you want to tell us how many people are going to be legalized under the bill? Oh, we don't know.

So we do not know that. We do not know answers to other questions, such as: How much will the bill cost the Treasury of the United States? What kind of expenses will be incurred? What is the total number of people who will be admitted?

What we have discovered has revealed that the legislation fails to live up to virtually all the promises that have been made about it so far. I hate to say that, but that is the truth.

Let me list a few instances. These are promises we have been told are taken care of or will be effectuated by the legislation if we just vote for this good bill. Just vote for it. It is 844 pages. Just vote for it. Here are some of the things:

We were told the bill would be enforcement first. But the plan confers immediate legalization in exchange for future promises of plans for enforcement, many of which will likely never occur. We have plain law now that requires removal in lots of cases that the Secretary is failing to follow.

In fact, a major loophole that jeopardizes the entire border security section commands that the Secretary of DHS grant current illegal immigrants permanent legal status and, therefore, a guaranteed path to eventual citizenship after 10 years if just one of the so-called triggers that is supposed to ensure enforcement is prevented from occurring by a lawsuit. So all they have to do is to keep an enforcement trigger tied up in court for ten years, and then the people are not going to be deported if the enforcement does not occur.

We were told the Secretary would be required to build a fence at the border. We passed a law in 2007 that required 700 miles of double- strength fencing at the border--not the whole border but 700 miles. How many miles have been built since then? Thirty. Congress passed a law that said we would do this enforcement in the future, but it has not occurred.

We were told the bill would reduce the deficit. We have been told it will reduce the deficit and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. But the effect will be to legalize large numbers of low-skilled immigrants. Over half of those illegally here today do not have a high school diploma and will add trillions to the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security, and the President's new ObamaCare health care bill.

We are talking about trillions of dollars when Social Security and Medicare need to be strengthened, not weakened; and the numbers are not going to be disputed. It is not going to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, as many advocates say. It is going to weaken it, and it is also going to weaken the financial stability of the ObamaCare legislation.

We were told illegal immigrants would not have access to public benefits, but the bill ensures that millions of illegal immigrants will immediately be eligible for State and local public assistance. If people need something, need health care, they are going to get it somewhere. Some will get formal benefits in as short as 5 years and will be eligible for all Federal welfare programs at the time of the grant of citizenship.

We were told there was a 10-year path to green cards or permanent legal residence and a 13-year path before one could become a citizen. But 2 to 3 million of those who are in the country illegally are expected to assert that they came into the country as younger people and, therefore, would be eligible for citizenship in 5 years under this remarkably broad DREAM Act provision that removes any age cap on the persons who can assert that they came as a youth. Even those who had been removed from the country can come back and claim the benefits of this bill.

Illegal agriculture workers will also get green cards in 5 years. Individuals working illegally in agriculture today would be able to get legal permanent resident status in just 5 years. This would enable them to receive benefits of some kind. We were told this legislation was for illegal immigrants who have deep roots in the country. But the amnesty is extended to recent arrivals, including those who may have come here alone just over a year ago.

Millions would be legalized who overstayed their visas. People who are not even living in the country anymore could return and receive benefits and legal status. Those who have been deported multiple times could receive benefits under this legislation. That is just what is in this complex 844-page bill.

We were told the legislation would curtail the administration's aggressive undermining of Federal law. That somehow the law was going to be enforced more. But it provides the Secretary of Homeland Security with even more discretion than she has today. It is filled with grants of waiver power and discretionary power. The American people are very dubious of the willingness of our government to do anything that would consistently and effectively enforce laws.

I believe the American people's heart is right about the issue of immigration. I believe the American people should be respected and their opinions valued. What are they saying? They say: We need a lawful system of immigration. People should be treated fairly. They believe in immigration. Right now we are bringing in 1 million people a year legally. The American people say that is about right, although a recent poll showed that over half of the American people believe that number is too high. They would like to see it brought down some at this time of unemployment and falling wages.

They still strongly favor immigration for America. They are not mad at immigrants. They do not hate immigrants. They do not dislike them. They respect people who want to come to America. They understand the desire of good people around the world who would like to come to America. But what they are angry about is people in high office flatly telling them time and time again: We are going to fix this system, we are going to make it lawful, and we will make it one that you can be proud of. Then they do not do it. They say they are going to build a fence, and it does not get built. They say they passed a law that requires removal of certain people who violate the law; they do not get removed. The American people are right about this. It is Congress and the President who have not been fulfilling the right standard.

We were told there would be strict standards for amnesty, but the bill grants amnesty for those who have been convicted of multiple crimes. There are a whole host of exceptions to ineligibility. We were told the bill would make us safer. But Mr. Chris Crane, the head of the ICE association, said it will not; that immigration officers have been undermined. They have voted--the 7,000-member association voted no confidence in Mr. Morton, their supervisor. They filed a lawsuit for the failure of their officials to allow them to enforce the law, basically complaining about their supervisors directing them to violate the law.

That is what they complained about. That is what the judge seemed to take very seriously. We were told this would move us toward a merit- based, high-skilled immigration system with a responsible future flow that would be more effective in identifying people who could be successful in America. This might be the biggest and most dangerous flaw of all. It does not look like it is going to move our numbers in any way in that direction.

The bill would remove limitations on the number of visas for spouses and children of green card holders. That would apply to both those here illegally and all current and future legal immigrants. It would clear the 4.5 million illegal immigration backlog of people who filed to come under chain migration, family migration. Only so many were supposed to be admitted per year. You file and wait until your time comes up, then you get admitted. So, apparently, the drafters of the bill felt bad because people said: You are giving people who came illegally advantage over those who have been waiting their time.

So how did they solve that? That is a pretty brilliant way to solve it. They

agreed to let everybody who has filed to come in immediately and exempt from them from the caps. That would solve the problem all right.

Those who are approved under the DREAM Act, persons who came as younger individuals, can obtain green cards on an expedited status for their spouses and children. We have to be careful that we do not create a system that allows aging parents to be brought to the country in large numbers. That will be a burden on us. Truly, we have to be thoughtful about that. We have to be responsible. As a member of the Budget Committee, we are looking at these numbers. We have to reduce our costs, not add to it wherever possible.

The agriculture worker program is expanded, giving the Secretary of Homeland Security almost unchecked authority to increase the visas to whatever number he or she sees fit. Think about this: The Christian Science Monitor asked: How many will be illegal immigrants will be admitted?

I asked the bill sponsors and supporters today in committee: How many would be admitted over the next 10 years?

Under current law, we should be admitting about 1 million people a year, the largest number any Nation in the world allows, to come into our country legally. That would be 10 million over 10 years. Under this bill, we believe the number would be 30 million-plus.

Let me say to my colleagues, I respect their work and their efforts. I know we have always valued immigration in our country, but it is time to create a system that serves the national interest, a lawful system where those who violate the law are not rewarded, those who do not violate the law are validated, a system that brings in the kind of person that has the best chance to be successful and not be a ward of the State or charge of the State.

There are a lot of things that we really need to do: protect our national security, have a system and a policy that we are proud of, that is morally defensible. I am afraid this bill is not there. That is why I am concerned about it. I look forward to doing the best I can to examine it carefully.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I want to share a few remarks on the nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I suspect she will be confirmed momentarily. She was raised in a small town in West Virginia and seems to have some good West Virginia values. She is smart, able, and has a winning personality for sure.

This is, perhaps, properly utilized, the toughest, most important job in the U.S. Government. The primary responsibility of OMB is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the budget, but also to help formulate spending plans to deal with agency programs, policies, and positions in setting funding priorities to make tough choices that are necessary to keep our financial house in order. It is a tough position.

We could have elected a President such as Governor Romney, who was a manager, a tough, proven executive. That was his strength. President Obama's strength is in message, traveling the country and advocating his positions, leaving it even more critically important than normal, it would seem to me, to have a very strong Office of Management and Budget leader. Ms. Burwell certainly seems to have the integrity to do the job.

I am worried about her lack of experience. She served as the president of the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She served as the head of the Walmart Charitable Foundation, she served in the Office of Management and Budget for a time--Chief of Staff, I believe, to the Secretary of Treasury--and at the National Economic Council. Her most recent experience has not been in directly trying to rein in a government that is out of control.

The Web site of OMB says as part of its mission:

It reports directly to the President and helps a wide range

of executive departments and agencies across the Federal

Government to implement the commitments and priorities of the

President.

It is a big job.

I would say that in failing to nominate someone like a proven executive, a proven Governor, or a former Cabinet member who can look these Cabinet members in the eye and say: No, Secretary, this is not going to be within our budget; this isn't within our plans--you are going to have to see if you can do this. We have a nominee

who will really have to rise to the occasion to be able to defend common sense and spending because our Cabinet people get ideas and visions. They want to do all kinds of things, particularly in this administration. Sometimes you have to say: We don't have the money. We would like to do that, but we do not have the money.

The President's budget that OMB is required to produce and that he has submitted so far has not been impressive. That is an understatement. They have not exemplified the leadership and management that we would expect in a President.

For instance, the 2013 budget, the one that was introduced last year, increased spending by $1.5 trillion above the Budget Control Act spending levels to which we all agreed. That is not good.

The President signed the Budget Control Act. It limited spending from increasing from $37 trillion at current law baseline. He was going to $47 trillion. The Budget Control Act reduced the increase to just $45 trillion instead of going up to $47 trillion. It imposed the 2012 budget limits. Yet the President's budget proposed a deficit of $2.7 trillion above the agreed-upon baseline, so we had a good number of problems with that budget. Of course, the budget, those two budgets, failed in the Senate 99 to 0 and 97 to 0. It got not a single vote, and it didn't get a single vote in the House because it's an irresponsible budget. Ms. Burwell will be replacing the OMB Director who put together those budgets.

I see my colleague and able chair of the Budget Committee here. I thought I would have 10 minutes. What is the agreement at this point?

The Republican time has expired.

I will say I intend to support Ms. Burwell's nomination. We will give her a chance. I hope she will rise to the occasion. I think she has the ability. She certainly is a delightful person with whom to meet.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

I would further ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, we have had a long-standing problem in the enforcement of immigration laws in the United States. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Napolitano, has regularly and sophisticatedly issued policy directives that have adversely impacted the ability of law enforcement officers to do the job that is required of them by law. It has caused quite a bit of a problem.

The ICE officers association, the union, voted a couple of years ago unanimously no confidence in John Morton, the Director of that agency. He should already have been removed, in my opinion. In addition, morale, according to a government survey in the ICE officers department, is one of the very lowest in the government.

I asked Secretary Napolitano in 2011 had she met with these officers and discussed the problems. The answer was no. I asked her Tuesday, yesterday, had she met with them. She said no.

I raised the point that these ICE officers are not complaining about pay, not complaining about working conditions, and not complaining about things that often enter into employment disputes. What they are saying is that the Secretary and Mr. Morton are denying them the right to follow the law of the United States, denying them the right to enforce the law they are required to enforce, and they charged that they are refused the right to carry out plain directives from the Congress that said under certain circumstances they shall commence, for example, removal proceedings against someone. The Secretary just says: No, we are not going to do that anymore.

Well, here is a very unusual development, I would suggest. I started out as a young Federal prosecutor in 1977, and I have never heard of this occurring. The ICE officers sued Secretary Napolitano and Mr. Morton, and they raised the suggestion they were placed in an untenable position where the law required them to do one thing and they were told by their superiors to do something contrary to law. The case was heard in Federal Court.

In the hearing yesterday, I raised this with the Secretary. And my friend, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, laughed. He said: Well, a lot of people file lawsuits, but it is another thing to win one of these lawsuits.

That is true. It is unusual to see some of these lawsuits that are filed actually reach a situation in which Federal officials are directed to do something. But it appears that is exactly what the Federal judge did yesterday. He said the Secretary doesn't have the ability to direct agents not to do what Congress has explicitly required them to do. They have a right to have certain policies and procedures--although those are pretty dangerous as it is because setting prosecutorial guidelines and procedures can create a circumstance in which effective law enforcement is neutered. But to go forward and actually dictate that mandated statutory requirements not be enforced, this Federal judge suggested, was not acceptable.

One ICE agent testified at the hearing that agents have witnessed large numbers of criminal aliens in jails telling each other how to evade immigration laws because word has gotten around that ICE agents are required to take their verbal claims at face value. If they say they have been here and came here as a child, that must be taken at face value, without verification, and ICE agents must then release them instead of putting them on a path to removal.

Another officer, Chris Crane, the president of the 7,600-member association, testified in court the administration's policies put officers in the untenable position of releasing illegal aliens from custody who have been identified as a result of their criminal behavior simply because word has gotten around they do not have to be deported if they claim to qualify for the President's administrative amnesty.

It is a remarkable development, that a Federal judge has concluded that law enforcement officers in America are being directed not to follow plain law.

With regard to the proposed legislation produced by the Gang of 8 that is going to be brought up tomorrow in the Judiciary Committee. It has hardly been read yet, but we know that law greatly expands the discretion given to the Secretary of Homeland Security. In many different places it gives the Secretary the power to do that and waive some of what would appear to be plain policy goals of the act, at least according to the people who sponsored it.

This has far-reaching implications for the debate on the reform of immigration. The bill gives the Secretary an unprecedented amount of discretion and waiver authority. By some estimates, there are over 200 mentions in this nearly 900-page bill of giving more power to the Secretary. Five times in the bill it affirms the Secretary's ``unreviewable discretion'' to waive or alter provisions of the legislation as she sees fit. In fact, the bill essentially codifies the flawed policies that are now being challenged in this lawsuit. It gives statutory power to the Secretary to do what she has been doing.

Indeed, illegal immigrants apprehended after the new law goes into effect would not enter deportation proceedings. Instead, the Secretary ``shall provide the alien with a reasonable opportunity to file an application'' for provisional legal status provided the immigrant ``appears prima facie eligible, to the satisfaction of the Secretary.'' The bill emphasizes that it is not designed to ``require the Secretary to commence removal proceedings'' against any illegal immigrant.

We have a Secretary of Homeland Security who is issuing policies that require sworn law officers not to enforce actions specifically required by congressional law. A Federal judge just yesterday found that is not proper, and stated in effect the Secretary is not above the law, which I think most Americans would certainly agree with. Now we have a proposed new law that would give more authority to the Secretary to continue to waive policies in the future and would grant the Secretary additional discretion in many areas.

This is the problem, colleagues: Congress tells America we are going to give legal status--amnesty--immediately to some 11 million people who have entered the country illegally. By definition, that is to whom this applies. And we say: Trust us, we are going to have the toughest laws you have ever heard of in the future. Well, first, these laws aren't that tough. Secondly, it provides multiple waiver authorities to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and this Secretary has proven she is not willing to have the laws of this country enforced. She has even been sued by her own law enforcement officers, who have just won at least an initial victory in a lawsuit in Federal Court.

This is a dramatic example of the problems I have been hearing from Federal law officers. They need to be respected and affirmed in their duties. On a daily basis they are out confronting people who are in this country unlawfully and violating various laws. They are trying to remove them from the country, as we have always done--and as every country does when people violate their laws--and they have been undermined in that. Their morale has plummeted, and the Secretary hasn't even talked to them.

I will tell you who else hasn't talked to them--the people who wrote this bill. Chris Crane, the head of the association, wrote, called, publicly asked for the opportunity to participate in these discussions and at least tell them what the real world is like. But, no, they had the chamber of commerce, they had the agriculture people, they had certain union officials, they had La Raza. They have all been meeting and talking but not the people out there struggling every day trying to make sure we have a lawful system.

That is what the American people are asking for. The American people are not angry at people who want to come to America. We believe in immigration. We are going to see immigration continue. No one is suggesting that is going to end. But the American people are upset with their politicians and their government leaders who say one thing, promise one thing, and do the exact opposite. They have been promising for 30 years that we are going to have a lawful system of immigration. It hasn't occurred.

We passed a law to have 700 miles of fencing, and everybody applauded--some of them grudgingly. Yet only 30 miles of a double fencing, as required by law, has ever been built.

Twenty years ago there was a law mandating an effective entry-exit visa system. Some of the foreign terrorists came in on 9/11 under the visa system. Forty percent of the people here illegally, it now appears, come to this country through the visa system. It hasn't been fixed yet, but we continue to promise we will do it sometime. Even this bill, as I look at it, won't close the gaps in the entry-exit visa system. It will not fix that problem.

So I think the American people are pleading with Congress to do the right thing, to actually make sure we have a system that serves the national interest and is fair. No system is fair if people who do the right thing have to wait and wait and wait and people who do the wrong thing get rewarded. That is so obvious as to be unmistakable.

So I look forward to going forward with a discussion of what we can do to improve this system. We certainly need improvement. I certainly respect my colleagues who worked on it. I think their hearts are right. I know their hearts are right. We can do some good things. But I do believe the American people are right to be dubious. The American people are right to watch this very carefully, and they should not affirm another one of these situations in which a promise occurs, such as an immediate grant of legality, with a vague promise of enforcement in the future. This court case is dramatic proof that enforcement has not been happening.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

I think 10 minutes would be sufficient.

If I were allowed to go first, I would do 5 minutes.

Madam President, the proposal of my friend the majority leader--and I know he has a tough job--is how the Nation goes broke, how the Nation loses the confidence of the people we serve.

In August of 2011, this Nation agreed to the Budget Control Act. My friend Senator Reid said the Budget Control Act was as good as a budget. It is not, but it has some teeth to it. What it did that is indisputable, it limited the growth in spending.

We said we would raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion immediately, which has already almost been spent--we have run up that much debt since August 2011, another $2 trillion--but in addition, we would reduce spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion.

The sequester involved $1.1 trillion of that if the committee didn't reach an agreement that would have specified cuts across the board. They are not wise cuts. We shouldn't have done it that way, but it was a reasonable amount of money for sure. So in the Budget Control Act that was passed, spending would have gone up from a flat $37 trillion over 10 years to $45 trillion over 10 years instead of going up to $47 trillion over 10 years. So the growth would be from 37 to 45 and not 37 to 47. That is not a real cut in spending. It is a reduction in the growth in spending.

Now the sequester comes along, and we have proposed many solutions where we could alter these cuts and give flexibility to the cuts so they are not as sharp and as unwise as the sequester called for, so long as the spending stays within that level.

We also agreed--and the President signed it and it was passed by both Houses and Democrats and Republicans and the leader voted for it--it had no tax increases. It was simply an agreement that would reduce spending a little bit over 10 years and that we would raise the debt ceiling by an equal amount. There were no tax increases in that.

Then the President submits a budget, and he wants to do away with the sequester and pay for it with tax increases. That is what the Democratic Senate budget did also. It had increases in taxes and increases in spending and a chunk of that was wiping out the sequester we just agreed to.

We told the American people: Look, we made a little reduction in the growth of spending, American people. Forgive us for raising the debt ceiling. A lot of people didn't want to raise the debt ceiling at all. But we promised we had done something good. We were proud of ourselves.

Before the ink was dry, the President in January submitted his budget on 2012 that wiped out those cuts and spent more money, and his budget and the Senate Democratic budget this year does the same thing.

How can we possibly ever get spending under control if we don't comply with what we promised?

The majority leader has said: The war costs are coming down in the future. We will just score that as savings and, therefore, we don't have to raise taxes. We will not have the sequester take effect. We will just spend all that money, and we will pretend we saved it by not fighting a war 10 years from now.

Let me tell you what experts have said about this gimmick.

Maya MacGuineas, with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget--and they worked very hard in a bipartisan way to deal with these issues--said this: ``This is such a glaring gimmick at such a serious moment.''

Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition out of New Hampshire, a long- time respected bipartisan group, said this: ``The mother of all budget gimmicks.''

To pretend we are saving money because we are not spending emergency money on a war that ends, we could still be saving money on World War I at that rate.

Washington Post reporter Lori Montgomery said:

``Counting money not spent on wars that the nation is already planning to end is widely viewed as a budget gimmick.'' And it certainly is.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional moment.

Basically our colleagues say: We cannot even reduce spending growth, even that much. We cannot stand any of that. We refuse to lay out alternatives to make the cuts less painful. We want them to be as painful as possible so we can attack those and oppose even modest reductions in the growth of spending, and we are going to punish the American people because they dared to reduce the growth of spending.

They basically say, the Government is saying: It is not our fault we have a problem. It is yours, American people. You didn't send enough money. You send more money. You send more money. We refuse to reduce the growth of spending.

I yield the floor and thank Senator Coburn for objecting to the proposal of the majority leader.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss S. Res. 85. I am pleased that the Senate has unanimously declared April as National Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Month. I would like to thank my friend and able colleague, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, for joining me in this legislation. This Resolution is very important to me and my family, as my grandson, Jim Beau, is a CDH survivor.

CDH is a birth defect that occurs when the fetal diaphragm fails to fully develop. The lungs develop at the same time as the diaphragm and the digestive system. When a diaphragmatic hernia occurs, the abdominal organs move into and develop in the chest instead of remaining in the abdomen. With the heart, lungs, and abdominal organs all taking up space in the chest, the lungs do not have space to develop properly. This may cause the lungs to be small and underdeveloped.

A diaphragmatic hernia is a life-threatening condition. When the lungs do not develop properly during pregnancy, it can be difficult for the baby to breathe after birth or the baby is unable to take in enough oxygen to stay healthy.

CDH will normally be diagnosed by prenatal ultrasound, as early as the 16th week of pregnancy. If undiagnosed before birth, the baby may be born in a facility that is not equipped to treat its compromised system because many CDH babies will need to be placed on a heart-lung bypass machine, which is not available in many hospitals. All babies born with CDH will need to be cared for in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, NICU.

Babies born with CDH will have difficulty breathing as their lungs are often too small, biochemically and structurally immature. As a result, the babies are intubated as soon as they are born, and parents are often unable to hold their babies for weeks or even months at a time.

Most diaphragmatic hernias are repaired with surgery 1 to 5 days after birth, usually with a GORE-TEX patch. The abdominal organs that have migrated into the chest are put back

where they are supposed to be and the hole in the diaphragm is closed, hopefully allowing the affected lungs to expand. Hospitalization often ranges from 3 to 10 weeks following the procedure, depending on the severity of the condition.

Survivors often have difficulty feeding, some require a second surgery to control reflux, others require a feeding tube, and a few will reherniate and require additional repair.

Awareness, good prenatal care, early diagnosis, and skilled treatment are the keys to a greater survival rate in these babies. That is why this resolution is so important.

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia is a birth defect that occurs in 1 out of every 2,500 live births. Every 10 minutes a baby is born with CDH, adding up to more than 600,000 babies with CDH since just 2000. CDH is a severe, sometimes fatal defect that occurs as often as cystic fibrosis and spina bifida. Yet, most people have never heard of CDH.

The cause of CDH is unknown. Most cases of diaphragmatic hernia are believed to be multi-factorial in origin, meaning both genetic and environmental are involved. It is thought that multiple genes from both parents, as well as a number of environmental factors that scientists do not yet fully understand, contribute to the development of a diaphragmatic hernia.

Up to 20 percent of cases of CDH have a genetic cause due to a chromosome defect or genetic syndrome.

Approximately 40 percent of babies born with CDH will have other birth defects, in addition to CDH. The most common is a congenital heart defect.

In 2009, my grandson Jim Beau was diagnosed with CDH during my daughter Mary Abigail's 34th week of pregnancy. Although she had both a 20-week and a 30-week ultrasound, the nurses and doctors did not catch the disease on the baby's heartbeat monitor.

Thankfully, when Mary Abigail, her husband Paul, and daughter Jane Ritchie moved to southeast Georgia, the baby's irregular heartbeat was heard at her first appointment with her new OB. She was sent to Jacksonville for a fetal echo.

The technician there told her that she wasn't going to do the echo because there was something else wrong with the baby. She asked my daughter if she had ever heard of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Of course, she had not, and at that time our family did not know the extent of our grandson's birth defect.

My daughter and her family moved to Gainesville, FL, on November 16 and Jim Beau was born 2 weeks later on November 30. They heard their son cry out twice after he was born, right before they intubated him, but they were not allowed to hold him.

The doctors let his little lungs get strong before they did the surgery to correct the hernia when he was 4 days old. Unfortunately, it turned out that the hernia was worse than they expected. The hole in his diaphragm was very large, and he had almost no posterior diaphragm. His intestines, spleen, and one kidney were up in his chest.

Thankfully, Jim Beau did not have to go on a heart-lung bypass machine, but he was on a ventilator for 12 days and on oxygen for 36 days. In total, he was in the NICU for 43 days before he was able to go home.

Fortunately for my family, and thousands of similar families across the United States, a number of physicians are doing incredible work to combat CDH.

The CDH survival rate at Shands Children's Hospital in Gainesville, FL, where my grandson was treated, is unprecedented. The survival rate of CDH babies born at Shands is between 80 percent and 90 percent, while the nationwide average is significantly lower.

Dr. David Kays, who was the physician for my grandson's surgeries, uses gentle ventilation therapy as opposed to hyperventilation. Gentle ventilation therapy is less aggressive and therefore protects the underdeveloped lungs. My family was very lucky that Jim Beau's defect was caught before he was born, and that they were in the right place to seek excellent care for his CDH.

The resolution Senator Cardin and I introduced is important because it will bring awareness to this birth defect, and this awareness will save lives. Although hundreds of thousands of babies have been diagnosed with this defect, the causes are unknown and more research is needed. Every year more is learned and there are more successes. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation to bring awareness to CDH.

Tomorrow, April 19, is the International Day of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness. In commemoration of this day, a march, the Parade of Cherubs, will take place tomorrow here in Washington, DC. We will be joined in our efforts by multiple cities across the Nation, all of which are hosting their own Parade of Cherubs. Events like these will help increase awareness of this devastating birth defect.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business.

Mr. President, the President submitted his budget today. It is very late. It was due February 4. It is the first time since the Budget Act was passed in 1974 that a President submitted a budget after the Senate has voted on one and after the House has voted on one and both passed budget resolutions. That was a disappointing event. The President, as the Chief Executive, as any mayor, as any Governor normally that I have ever heard of, wants to be the one who lays out a financial plan for his city or State to advocate for what would make the State and city better and then encourage the members of the board of directors--the Senate and the House--to evaluate his plan and support it so they can put the country and the State and the city on a sound financial path. Once again, we have had a very irresponsible approach from the President on the question of budgeting.

A few weeks ago, this Senate passed a budget for the first time in 4 years. The law requires that the Senate bring up a budget in committee by April 1. It requires that it be brought to the floor and passed by April 15. This is the first time in 4 years that process has been completed; whereas, every year the House of Representatives has produced a budget, a responsible budget that would put America on a sound financial course.

This year the Senate passed a budget that was irresponsible, did not change the debt course of America, left an annual deficit virtually the same as if we had no budget at all. It did not improve current law. The Senate budget left us with a very substantial budget deficit in the 10th year of the budget.

On the other hand, the House, Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee, produced a budget that balances in 10 years. We have heard great complaints that his plan cuts spending too much. Do you know that plan did not cut spending? It allows spending to increase every year for 10 years. It allowed spending to increase at the rate of 3.4 percent a year, which is higher than the inflation rate is expected to be in America. Yet it balances.

The Senate budget, on the other hand, has a 5-percent-plus increase in spending every year, leaving us on an unsustainable debt path, leaving us increasing deficits every year, nowhere close to balancing the budget. That is not the right path.

What happened today when the President produced his budget? It is no better, maybe even worse, than the Senate bill. For example, in his budget it would add, over the 10-year period, $8.2 trillion in new debt to the Nation. We now have already $17 trillion in gross debt. This would add another $8.2 trillion to it; over $25 trillion will then be the debt of the United States. The 1-year interest in 2023, under the President's budget, would amount to $763 billion.

The base defense budget is about $540 billion; $763 billion exceeds Social Security--which is the largest expenditure. It exceeds Medicare in spending. It would be the largest single item in the budget and the fastest growing. It is still assuming relatively low interest rates, which are extraordinarily low at this moment but could surge in the future and would hurt us substantially.

How much is that? We now spend about $3.7 trillion, so $763 billion is a lot of money just to pay the interest. The Federal highway bill today is about $40 billion, a little over $40 billion. Interest on the debt would be $763 billion in 1 year.

Young people, we are indeed borrowing from their future to spend and live high today on the theory somehow it will be paid back in the future by the people there. How will it be paid back, interest of $763 billion in 1 year? This is not responsible. It is an unsustainable course.

Erskine Bowles, who was chosen by President Obama to head the fiscal commission, former President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, a successful businessman, he told us in the Budget Committee a couple years ago this Nation is on an unsustainable course. This Nation ``has never faced a more predictable financial crisis.''

What he is saying is that if we do not change the course we are on, it is guaranteed we are going to have a financial crisis and we should avoid that. We have the opportunity to avoid that. We do not have to slash spending, as Congressman Ryan has made clear in his budget. You can allow spending to increase faster than the growth of inflation and still balance the budget. But, oh no, not here, not the President of the United States, not the Members of this Senate, the majority. They say we cannot live with a 3.4-percent increase in spending every year. We will run the risk.

The President said recently he was not setting a balanced budget as a goal. That is absolutely true because his budget does not balance. It never comes close to balancing, has no intention of it balancing ever. They use the words ``sustainable balance,'' but it is not a responsible approach to the business of America. I will talk a minute about some of the dangers of this debt beyond just the fact that interest is going to suck huge amounts of money out of our annual budget that we ought to be using to invest in America.

How do they do it? When you eliminate the accounting gimmicks and honestly look at the budget presented by the President today, over 10 years, the net deficit reduction is only $119 billion. Each year that is about $12 billion in deficit reduction. The deficit last year, 2012, was 1,080 billion--1,000-plus billion, and we are going to average an $12 billion reduction in the deficit under this budget? That is virtually nothing. Properly accounted for, properly analyzed, based on the current law, I am correct in giving you those numbers. It is not an unfair number.

What about this year that we are in, 2013, that will end September 30? Does he cut anything from our spending level this year? No. Spending and debt increases. The debt is projected to increase, between now and September 30, by $61 billion, more than where it would be under current. So it increases the debt this year.

What about next year? Does it increase or reduce the deficit? It increases the deficit again by approximately $100 billion-plus--$100 billion. I believe that figure is correct. I might be incorrect on that figure, but it definitely increases the deficit this year by $61 billion.

Taxes go up by $1.1 trillion--$1,100 billion--in new taxes. So taxes go up

$1.1 trillion, on top of the $650 billion in new taxes that were passed in January of this year and on top of the $1 trillion in new taxes passed as part of ObamaCare, the health care reform.

That is another huge tax increase. But we are told not to worry because this is a balanced plan. As we talked about the budget plan that was on the floor--and we had 50 hours of debate, a lot of amendments, a lot of discussion--our colleagues kept using the word ``balanced.'' They refer to their budget, the majority's--Democratic budget that they laid forward, they used ``balanced'' over and over again. I put up a chart. The numbers kept running up. We got to 100, 200 times the word ``balanced'' was used in 15 or 18 hours of debate on their side; ``balanced,'' over 200 times.

My staff went back and reviewed the numbers and it was 230 times. What do they mean by the word ``balanced''? Why did they use the word ``balanced''? Because some pollster somewhere, some political consultant, said people like to hear that. They want a balanced budget.

Their budget didn't balance, nowhere close. So they had several spins on it,--first, they wanted a lot of people who were not following closely to hear the word ``balanced'' and believed they had a balanced budget when they didn't come close to having a budget that balanced. They never said the budget balanced because they knew that was not true. They had deficits every year, $400 billion-plus every year. So a balanced approach was what I think people who kind of kept up with things believed--that we would raise taxes by $1 trillion, we would cut spending by $1 trillion, and this would be a balanced approach. This is the way to reduce our debt and deficit: raise taxes and cut spending. That is the responsible balanced approach to getting our fiscal house in order.

But that is not what the budget did. The budget increased taxes by $1.1 trillion--$1,100 billion--but it increased spending by $964 billion. It did not cut spending at all. It increased spending. Basically, we ended up with only $119 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years--zero, basically, an insignificant amount. So it increases taxes and increases spending. It is the classic Democratic weakness, I have to say: Tax; spend. Tax more; spend more. Don't worry about the deficit.

But somebody needs to be worrying about the deficit because it is a very important matter and we have to deal with it. This morning at the Budget Committee we had a new nominee, Ms. Sylvia Burwell, for the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of the most important positions in the entire government. She is a delightful lady and I know she wants to do well. She held a position in that office some time ago under President Clinton, a deputy position, and she had some experience in it, but it is a tough job. We need somebody who can whip these agencies and departments into shape. The OMB is the one who answers to the President. The OMB is the one who says: Mr. Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Secretary of Defense, we don't have that much money. You can't spend that much money. I send your budget back to you. Take another $10 billion, take another $5 billion out of it. They are the heavies. So she is asking for a tough job, no doubt about it.

At that hearing, I talked a little bit about a great concern of mine. My concern is that our debt is so large now that it is pulling down economic growth in America. Let me repeat that. Our debt is so high it is pulling down economic growth, and slow growth means fewer jobs created. The difference between 2 percent growth and 3 percent growth is 1 million jobs, according to Christina Romer, who served President Obama in the White House: So the more growth we have, the more jobs are created. The less growth we have, fewer jobs are created.

We had a disastrous jobs report last Friday. It was terrible and deeply disappointing. What it said was we added 88,000 jobs when they were predicting we would add about 200,000. But more significantly, 486,000 people dropped out of the labor force, had given up finding work--almost one-half million, and less than 100,000 got a job. That was a very dangerous trend.

It comes around to this question: Is our debt so high that it adversely impacts economic growth? Let me explain it this way. The Rogoff-Reinhart study and book that they wrote analyzes debt in America and it calculated it and over the world. They examined economies worldwide. What they found was that when debt reaches 90 percent of the size of your economy, 90 percent of GDP, growth begins to slow. It slows a median amount of 1 percent, on average much more, as much as 2 percent. Growth--GDP growth begins to slow when debt reaches that high a level.

What kind of debt level is it we are dealing with? Many people think, and the President keeps saying, our debt-to-GDP ratio is 77 percent.

We have examined the Rogoff and Reinhart study. Rogoff and Reinhart used a higher figure because they compared countries from around the world, and those were the numbers they had. When the gross debt reaches 90 percent of GDP, we begin to have an economic decline. Our percentage of gross debt to GDP is 104 percent.

I contend and I believe that the projections for growth for the last 4 years have all been higher than the growth we have actually seen. In fact, it has been much lower than projected--even by the President and the Congressional Budget Office. It appears to me that the gross debt figure being over 100 percent is indicative of a slowing growth.

Rogoff and Reinhart are not the only ones who have done studies. Others have done studies as well. Europe has high debt rates. Per capita, we have more debt than any country in Europe and even more than Greece.

There have been studies in Europe. The International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements all have economists, and they are concerned about high debt in Europe. They have also been analyzing these figures. All three of those, through an independent process of analyzing the impact of high debt on economic growth--studies indicated that high debt slows growth. Well, how much? Looking at each one of those three studies, the U.S. debt is in the range that pulls down growth.

I say to my colleagues today, please be aware that there is a cost to borrowing and spending and adding debt.

The budget the President submitted today would add $8.2 trillion in debt. It would take us from $17 trillion to $25 trillion in debt. Even with a growing economy, we would still remain well over 90 percent GDP to debt, and that is an unacceptable figure.

It is deeply disappointing that we do not have leadership in the White House that would lead us to get off of this path.

Mr. President, I see the majority leader is here. I know he has extraordinary duties and challenges in his busy life, and I will just wrap up and say that I am disappointed in the President's budget. It does not change the debt course of America in any way. It is not a responsible plan for the future. It does not balance the budget ever and has no intention of ever balancing the budget. All he talks about is some sort of sustainable debt course. We cannot continue on that course, as Mr. Erskine Bowles, his own fiscal commission chairman, has told us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Pryor and myself, I ask unanimous consent that the transcript of the 61th Annual National Prayer Breakfast be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I have enjoyed working with Senator Murray. She is a strong leader. She makes clear decisions and sticks by them and executes them. I respect that. She has stayed within the rules as the chair of the committee. We disagreed on a number of things. Our vision for the financial future of America is quite different.

I understand how difficult it is to produce a budget. That is not an easy thing to accomplish. When there is a divergent caucus, it is particularly difficult.

Politico said the budget was written by the left of the Democratic caucus to the left of President Obama. I think that is probably correct. It is a very big spending, big tax budget. It is the wrong thing for America. It is the wrong thing for economic stability. It is the wrong kind of plan if made into law to help us grow our economy, create jobs, create wealth, get people overtime and bonuses and pay raises, the kind of thing we have when the economy is growing.

This budget is the wrong medicine. I have to say I strongly believe it takes us in the wrong direction. What does it do at the bottom? It raises taxes. It raises taxes, according to the chairman, by $1 trillion--$985 billion. That is almost $1 trillion. We think it raises it $1.5 trillion. There is a reserve fund to make it easy to raise more taxes. I asked the chair to close that so it could not be used to raise taxes easily, but she declined, which continued to cause me to believe that is an additional part. Regardless, $1 trillion in new taxes is a huge tax increase.

In January of this year, the President got a $600 billion tax increase on the rich. Plus there is $1 trillion in tax increase in the President's health care bill. So we are already at $1.6 trillion in new taxes, and there is a proposal in this budget for at least another $1 trillion. That is not healthy for the economy.

We all know when we extract more wealth out of the economy, it does have effects. One of them is it weakens the economy and strengthens the central government. The central government is not managing the people's money well. We have no interest, it appears from this budget, in listening to the American people and running their government better, leaner, more productive, get more bang for the buck. What do we do? We ask for more money. We haven't done anything wrong; send us more money.

I have to urge my colleagues to honestly examine what the budget does. In addition to raising taxes, we would think that would help us. They say they have a balanced approach. We started counting how many times my Democratic colleagues used the word ``balance.'' I think it suggests a guilty conscience myself because the budget in no way comes close to balancing a

budget. It doesn't pretend to. It explicitly rejects it. There is not an arbitrary date. There is not a date proposed to balance the budget. In fact, because it makes no changes in the drivers of our debt, the big entitlement programs, the big welfare programs, the interest on the debt, none of those are constrained by this budget. We know the next 10 years that are outside the budget window will be even worse. They will be on an unsustainable course, accelerating even off the course we are on today, which is unsustainable. So I am very disappointed.

Everybody who has been involved or who has participated--whether it is the Gang of 6 or the committee of 12, as our chairman did, the super committee--knows that nearly 60 percent of the money the government is now spending, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, food stamps, those programs are out of control. They are entitlements, which means we set up legal standards that if those standards are met, anyone can walk into a government office and demand the money. They have to give it to them. If they don't, they can sue the government. I am 68 years old, I want my Social Security check. We can't say we don't have any money.

So this is the kind of thing that needs to be fixed now. It needs to be discussed now. Every expert who is an independent adviser to the government has said: You guys need to get together and fix this.

So what the budget before us today says is, no, we are not going to fix any of that. We have no plans to construct any of that. And any of our Republican colleagues who suggest that these programs have to be changed, we say they don't like old people. We say they don't like poor people. We say they don't want people to have food.

That is what we say--attack, attack, attack, when everybody knows change must occur. We know that. It is not in this budget--nothing in the budget. So they don't change the programs within the budget. I suggest that is not responsible. I suggest that is not a budget worthy of a party that says they want to lead America. The great Democratic Party is absolutely refusing to confront the great financial issues of our time. No, we won't talk about it, and if our Republican colleagues do, we are going to attack Paul Ryan because he has a creative, insightful way to preserve Medicare and make it more healthy in the future and put it on a sound path. We are going to say he is trying to destroy Medicare.

Paul Ryan has a plan to save Medicare, bring it into the 21st century, and make things better. It ought to be discussed openly and fairly, not demonized. That is the level of debate we are in here.

In private when we talk to our colleagues, they say: Yes, we need to make changes. We really do.

Well, when? And when the paper is printed, when the budget is printed, it is not there. It is not there. So there is no reform of the fundamental drivers of our debt.

We also know that last year we spent $750 billion on 83 government welfare programs, means-tested programs; that is, if a person's income is below a certain level, the government deems that person worthy of some subsidy of some kind. Many of these 83 programs are duplicative. There is not a coherent focus on them that endeavors to help the people, really, other than giving them money, giving them aid. There is not a sufficient focus in all of these programs in actually helping that struggling mother with children who is out of work, who lost her job, who can no longer get overtime or bonus pay, and young people who are struggling to get up on the ladder of work and prosperity. This is not helping them. And these programs are just temporary. We have billions going out for unemployment insurance, food stamps, temporary assistance to needy families, earned-income tax credit, all of these programs.

It is time for us to begin a massive overhaul, review all of these programs, and several things can happen. One thing that can happen is we can make them better, and we can actually create programs that allow each person in their time of need to get temporary assistance, to be able to refocus their life, to move into the workforce, help them find the training they need to get into areas that need jobs right now, and help them move forward. But do my colleagues know what we have in our Senate and among a lot of the Members of the House? We have a goal to see how many more workers we can bring in without effectively helping American workers who are unemployed.

We have an immigration policy that says we have jobs but we don't have enough workers. That is what the businesses are telling us. We don't have enough workers. They all ought to add--when they send us that message, they ought to say: And by the way, you need to give more welfare and more aid to people who don't have jobs. Now, what is the disconnect there?

We need to be protecting American citizens who are here, out of work, and hurting today--minorities, Blacks and Whites and all colors and races that are hurting today with high unemployment, but we seem to be more focused on how we can ram through this Senate a bill that would legalize millions and create an even more robust guest worker program. There are not enough jobs now. Give me a break.

So we are talking about $750 billion going out now for these 83 programs, projected to go up 80 percent in the next decade--the total of those programs--go up 80 percent in the next decade. We have calculated those numbers, and if it went up 60 percent, it would save $1 trillion. I think we can make those programs more effective, more helpful, and organized in a way that really advances the needs of poor people and save $1 trillion. That ought to be our goal. We will let it grow as much as we have to allow it grow to take care of people in need. We are going to make sure people have their needs met in America who are struggling out there, but at the same time, it can be done better, and every American knows it. They will talk to us when we ask them about it. They are uneasy about the easy money and the feeling that this system isn't working when it comes to government assistance, and I think they are right. I would ask my colleagues if they think they are right. I really think so. So what does that mean? That means we should be having hearings and doing work to fix it, which we are not doing.

The challenge of our time is the unsustainable debt course this country is on. The challenge of our time is for us to demonstrate that we made the changes necessary to place this economy on a sound footing.

I believe the great minds of our time are not as smart as they think they are. In 2001 Chairman Greenspan of the Fed came before the Budget Committee and talked about what we were going to do when the entire debt of the United States was paid down, and he worried we wouldn't know what to do with the money. Of course, we were in a recession within a few months, and now we see demographically that we are on an unsustainable debt course. The new Fed Chairman, Mr. Bernanke, as the Wall Street Journal documented, at the time was promoting Mr. Greenspan to spend more money and keep losing money before the housing crisis-- just exactly the wrong advice. He didn't see it coming. So we are not so smart around here.

I am worried about the future. What do I think responsible government policymakers should do? They should provide a good, solid framework for the vibrant, free market economy in this country to flourish. We can't be the kind of off and on again faucet for money and taxes and spending and not spending and bouncing around here trying to pass laws every few months to meet what is perceived as the financial goal of somebody on Wall Street at that moment. We are not able to do that.

What we should do is lay out a strong, clear policy, adhere to it, and let the businesspeople risk their money with some ability to ascertain what those risks are, not expecting the government to come in and alter the situation and the rules of the game a few months down the road. That is what we should do--create a sound framework. We are not doing that. I am concerned about it.

Finally, this budget increases spending. It increases spending very dramatically at a time when we don't need to be increasing spending at this rate. We are increasing spending above the rate we are currently set to operate by--the Budget Control Act line--

which allows for increasing spending every year. But this budget spends more than that, and it raises $1 trillion in taxes, at least, and it expends all of those new taxes, eats that up with new spending. If it called for us to stay on the current baseline of spending, growth that is going up, and we raised $1 trillion in taxes, we would have $1 trillion in reduced deficit over the next 10 years. But it spends more money, and it eats up the new taxes with new spending. It really does.

This is a failed plan that has been produced by the majority party in the Senate. When people heard this--this is what is being said to the American people, and we all know it: The Democratic leadership is saying, we have a budget that is balanced. What does that mean? It means we are going to pay down the debt, but it is not all going to be cutting spending. We are going to pay down the debt by raising taxes and cutting spending--raise taxes $1 trillion, cut spending $1 trillion, so we have a $2 trillion reduction in the deficit. Doesn't that sound good? That is the kind of thing the American people would like to hear. It is not enough. We could do more, and we don't have to do a lot more, and we will have a balanced budget.

But it doesn't do that, I say to my colleagues. It doesn't. It raises taxes $1 trillion, but it raises spending $1 trillion. It doesn't cut spending by $1 trillion, it raises spending. Therefore, we have no deficit reduction at all, but we have a new $1 trillion tax.

The government is saying to the American people: We need more money. We don't have any way to cut any spending, and if anybody proposes there are abuses in the food stamp program or there are abuses in other programs out there or that we are wasting money on energy loans by the billions--Solyndra and A123s and those kinds of companies--they are saying all of that, but we can't save any money. There is no money to be saved. You just send us more money, and then we will pass it around, and this will stimulate the economy.

I will conclude. I see we have some colleagues who are here. I would just say this: The debt we have today I have become absolutely convinced is too high. The gross debt of the United States is 104 percent of our economy. It is above our GDP, which is almost $17 trillion--that debt is almost $17 trillion now.

What we have seen from the Rogoff and Reinhart study and from recent reports by the International Monetary Fund and a report by the European Central Bank and a report by the Bank for International Settlements-- they all say that when debt is as high as it is today in the United States, that begins to pull down growth.

So my colleagues claim they have a budget that will help create jobs. I would say with all respect that we have a disagreement. Democrats believe they can tax more and spend more and borrow more and that will somehow create growth and prosperity. I believe we have had 4 years of that experiment, which I fundamentally doubted and opposed from the beginning, and it hasn't worked. We can't take a bucket of water from one end of the pool and pour it in the other and gain from it, especially when the bucket is going to leak--a good bit of it--in the process.

So what I would say is that the debt now is so high--according to all of those reports, the debt of the United States is in the zone that they craft, that they have analyzed--when debt gets into that zone, we lose growth. All of those reports--Rogoff and Reinhart, IMF, European Central Bank, the Bank of International Settlements--say we are in that zone.

So if we want to have growth, we are going to have to make our government leaner. We are going to have to begin to get our budget under control and balanced. And if we balance it by allowing growth to occur at 3.4 percent, without having to cut over 10 years--but if we allow our growth to increase at 3.4 percent instead of 5.4 percent, the budget balances. So we don't have to slash and burn, but we do have to get off the course we are on. It isn't easy, but that is what we are paid to do--to be responsible.

So if we get off that course and begin to see our debt-to-GDP go down, which a balanced budget--even over a 10-year, responsible period--would do, then we will be able to actually honestly say we have strengthened America, we have put us on a sound path, and we have allowed the economy to grow again.

There is no doubt in my mind, I say to my colleagues--and I doubt in theirs--that if the world were to see that the United States was on a path to a balanced budget, wow, they would say: Really? This debt spiral the United States and all of these big, fat Western nations have been on--maybe others can do this too. Maybe this is the place to invest our money.

I believe it would help growth, help investment, help put the country on a sound path. I am disappointed that this budget doesn't do it.

I respect my colleagues. We had a great time in the committee. We have had a good time on the floor. Senator Murray is a good chair. But I guess the left of the Democratic caucus has produced a budget that won't work. It does not meet the challenge of our time. It is deeply disappointing. I guess there is still some chance something might happen in conference. But from the looks of this budget, the chances are not very great, I have to say.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for this opportunity and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am pleased to yield up to 10 minutes to Senator Cruz of Texas.

As we consider the budget which is before us today, I would call my colleagues' attention to the fact that the Democratic budget, the Murray budget, was voted down in the House of Representatives 2 days ago by 107 votes. One-fifth of the Democrats, one out of five, 20 percent, voted against this budget. No Republicans voted for it.

This may be because, as Politico said, ``to win over her caucus, Murray begins from the left of Obama himself.'' With regard to independent evaluations of the budget, the United States USA Today editorial on March 15 said this:

The plan produced by the Senate Budget Committee Chair,

Patty Murray, D-Wash, is a disappointing document. It is a

namby-pamby plan that underwhelms at every turn.

The Murray budget neither balances the budget nor reigns in

entitlements.

It would help the Nation's Democrats if they were to embrace the goal of a Ryan budget.

This is the view of USA Today, the largest print in the country.

The Washington Post said on March 15: ``This document, gives voters no reason to believe that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a responsible public assessment of--the country's long-term fiscal predicament.''

The Wall Street Journal, Investment Business Daily, The Hill, all of these have comments in somewhat the same vein.

What is our problem? Our problem is spending.

People say: Sessions, this is just what Republicans say, and we say it is not taxing the rich enough.

There is a fundamental issue about spending. I dealt with and asked questions of Mr. Elmendorf, our CBO Director, on this very subject. It went to this point: Colleagues, we need to understand it. The American people need to understand it. Taxes, whatever rate they are, tend to grow with the economy. If the economy is going up 2 percent, more people make a little more money and taxes tend to go up 2 percent.

If the economy is growing at 2 percent and your spending is going up 5.4 percent, then you have a problem. You could raise taxes.

I asked Mr. Elmendorf about this. Even though we had a trillion- dollar deficit last year, a 1,000-plus billion-dollar deficit last year--unbelievable debt--almost 35 percent of the money we spent last year was borrowed. We will pay interest on that for decades to come. There is no plan to pay it down in any significant way.

I asked Mr. Elmendorf, if we raise taxes, instead of $650 billion as we did in January, if we raised them enough to balance the budget, would we stay in balance.

He acknowledged, if the economy continues to grow at 2 percent and growth of spending is at 5 percent, we will immediately be back into a problem area.

In one sense, this is the very definition of unsustainability. This is the very definition of the problem we have that spending is growing faster than the economy. It cannot maintain itself at that rate.

We can spend, and we can say we have a balanced plan, a balanced program, a balanced approach, as my colleagues have done. They know this budget never balances, not in 1 year, not in 10 years, not in 50 years. It will become worse in the second 10 years. It absolutely will be worse.

This is the path which, as Senator Cruz just indicated, Greece, Spain, and Italy have followed. This is why they are in trouble.

My colleagues say the economy isn't growing well, and it is not. We had virtually zero growth last quarter, zero. We are supposed to be moving out of the recession. As I pointed out last night, the CBO, for the last several years, has been predicting 4 percent growth but not this year. After missing about 2 percentage points for the last several years, they are predicting low growth this year.

What do our colleagues say? They say they have a balanced approach. They keep stating this.

I grew up in the country, where I went to a great little school. There were 30 in my senior class. I am proud of my classmates. My classmate is now president of the University of Alabama--out of our little class.

I know what a balanced approach means. It means nothing. A balanced approach is an unaccountable statement. It provides no ability for the American people to ascertain whether we are doing anything they promise because they don't promise anything. We promised a balanced approach. What does that mean?

Does it mean we raise taxes and cut spending by the same amount, $1 trillion each or does it mean we raise taxes by $1 trillion and raise spending by $1 trillion? They want us to believe they raise taxes by $1 trillion, they cut spending $1 trillion, and reduce the deficit $2 trillion. That is what they are suggesting to the American people. They are using the word ``balance'' and they hope people will hear it and think this means we have a balanced budget. They know they do not have a balanced budget. They won't tell the American people they do not have one, they just use the word. But it is not in their document.

Where and when do we hold people accountable in this Senate for an accurate statement of legislation? It is wrong. We have counted so far--this is pretty incredible--I think they have used the word ``balance'' 191 times. Does that reflect a guilty conscience or something, that they want people to think we have a balanced budget? We think we have a plan to get to a balanced budget. Oh, we have a balanced approach. But what does that mean? It means zero. The American people need to know this plan has no vision for America and it misrepresents what it does.

I know it is hard to write a budget with the Democratic Conference, which Politico says is being written from the left--by President Obama himself. I think that is probably accurate. The President's plan is irresponsible also. He has no real plan to do any of this, and he has publicly stated he does not think a balanced budget is important.

May I ask the Chair--we are moving along here, and I know there are other speakers coming, probably on both sides--to clarify our time situation and what the status is?

All right, fair enough.

I yield the floor.

I do have some remarks, and we will be having some speakers, who I think are on the way.

Well, the Ryan budget is not going to get rid of Pell grants. Is that the level of debate we have degenerated to here? The Ryan budget says we are not going to try to balance the budget too quickly. We are going to do it over 10 years. We will reach a balance.

We have calculated--and it is not disputed--that you can increase spending every year 3.4 percent and the budget will balance. You don't have to cut spending. When they talk about cuts, they are talking about reducing the projected rate of growth, and that is why we are going broke. That is why this country is losing its moorings. We have defined cutting spending as reducing the rate of growth.

You cannot sustain 5-percent growth--5.4-percent growth--when your economy is growing at 2 percent. And the experts tell us we are at a new normal and we are not going to see 5-percent growth in the future-- not likely. We might have a year or two of it. Bill Gross and his group at PIMCO, the great bond company, coined the phrase ``the new normal,'' and the new normal is that a mature economy such as ours, with an aging population, is not going to sustain some of the 9- and 10-percent growth rates that new and developing nations that are down here can achieve. I think that is probably something we have to accommodate, but we need to have policies that create as much growth as possible. That is absolutely true.

We had no growth last quarter--zero. The Congressional Budget Office has been predicting 3- and 4-percent growth the last 3 years. It is not there. It is not happening. The reason it is not happening is we have too much debt. The studies of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of International Settlements, and the magnificent ``This Time It's Different'' by Rogoff and Reinhart demonstrate that statistically, empirically, when nations have this high a debt--we are at 104 percent of GDP, and Rogoff and Reinhart used the gross debt of America, which is almost $17 trillion now, comparing the gross debt to the size of our economy--that the debt we are carrying is larger than our economy and we have to pay interest on that.

There are a lot of other ramifications and instabilities and concerns that ripple through businesses and foreign investors who are going to create jobs in America, but all sorts of people lose confidence in the country when the debt reaches that high. They say, from their studies of over 200 years of every country that has gone into fiscal crisis, that the debt began to pull them down. They conclude--these Harvard professors--that we could lose 1 to 2 percent of growth.

We are not growing. This is the slowest recovery from a recession since World War II, and I don't think this debt has been recognized in and of itself as a detriment to the economy. But what do our colleagues say the answer is? Tax more on the economy and borrow more. Don't reduce our debt. Get the sugar high now, as Mr. Gross at PIMCO said. All this borrowing and spending creates a sugar high and you have a hangover later.

This is so simple. You can't create something from nothing. You know, Julie Andrews had that great, great song in the ``Sound of Music,'' ``Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.''

I met a man in Evergreen, AL, in a townhall meeting, who said: My daddy always said that you cannot borrow your way out of debt.

We need to listen to that kind of logic. I don't know who these people are who say that Paul Krugman said we can borrow, borrow, borrow. The other day, he said he didn't care--even if the Defense Department had a wasteful program. He said that we should not cut those programs. How ridiculous is that? I think that kind of thinking is the drive behind this budget, that we have to keep spending even if we keep running up the debt and somehow that is going to make America better and create economic growth.

I am worried about our working people. They are not doing well. Wages have not gone up in a decade. They are slipping below inflation. It is an absolute fact that has happened. The smart people in high-tech companies are doing well. A lot of them are making money. There are certain sectors of the economy that are doing well, but the economy itself is not moving, and I believe the net reason is revealed in the Rogoff-Reinhart analysis, which says that higher debt pulls down growth. So we have to do what families do and States have done and cities have done, and that is to tighten our belts a little bit.

We are proud of the food stamp program, also known as the SNAP program, but we find that it has all kinds of fraud and abuse in it, and it needs to be tightened up. I reject the idea that it is bad for the economy or will hurt people who are legitimately in need of food. We have not done anything like that since the 1996 welfare reform. We need to be doing that throughout the government.

One of the ways to create economic growth is to make American Government more productive and lean. Wouldn't that help? Let's ask this question: Is Mr. Krugman right? Should the government just spend regardless of whether the program is any good? Shouldn't we say to ourselves: Isn't it clear without any real dispute that if our government spent its money on things that are productive for America, this would make America stronger? We have to eliminate every single wasteful program. We don't have a single dollar to waste.

Our colleagues here are saying to the American people that there is nothing wrong. Our government is fine. We cannot cut any program. If we do, we will deny kids the right to go to college.

There is no reason Pell grants have to be salvaged, but maybe they need to be constricted a little bit. Maybe there are some abuses in those programs.

The growth of spending can increase every year at 3.4 percent. We are not required to damage, savage, or devastate the American economy to get the budget balanced. I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. I really believe the budget process is a bit messy and frustrating, but it is a good one. It has allowed us all to talk honestly about the great choices we face.

I am pleased to see Senator Thune, a supporter of the leadership on the Republican side, an outstanding Senator and longtime member of the Budget Committee who has been engaged in the financial issues of our time for quite a number of years.

I yield to Senator Thune at this time.

That is correct. We probably missed a few.

Mr. President, I would suggest we take this amendment by voice vote.

Mr. President, I yield to the distinguished Budget Committee member Senator Toomey.

Mr. President, we can accept it on a voice vote.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the number of Budget Committee staff for the minority granted access to the floor at one time be increased by two.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize Senator Coburn for 22 minutes. I also have on our schedule of Members, Senator Collins for 10 minutes, Senator Cornyn for 10 minutes, Senator Inhofe for 10 minutes, and Senator Sessions for 8 minutes.

At this time I yield to Senator Coburn for 22 minutes. First, I would note that Senator Coburn is doing something that every Member of this body should be inspired by. He is actually working hard every day to identify the problems we face with duplication and waste in our government. We do far too little of that, and this budget does virtually nothing about it. So I would like to thank Senator Coburn for being unparalleled in his commitment to financial responsibility, and I yield to the Senator 22 minutes.

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to Senator Collins. I would note that she has been a leader in governmental reform through the committee that she chaired and has been ranking member on. I would value her insight at this time.

I believe that would be appropriate.

Mr. President, I yield to my colleague and friend Senator Inhofe. I think Senator Inhofe was told he had 8 minutes but this says 5.

All right. There is 5 minutes, and if the Senator needs to go over that a little bit, I will understand.

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

I would recognize Senator Cornyn for up to 6 minutes.

I thank Senator Cornyn for his remarks. I think it is a cautionary tale that when you pass a bill with the very stated idea from the Democratic leader in the House that ``We will find out what is in it after we pass it'' then you know we are in trouble.

ObamaCare is a monstrosity of a bill that has 1,700 references that say we will execute this legislation pursuant to regulations to be issued by some nameless, faceless government operative somewhere. It will bind and affect the very health care of millions of Americans. I have become more and more convinced it will not work.

The budget that has been presented to us today fails to meet the challenge of our time. It does not alter, confront, or reform and put on a safe path our important Social Security and Medicare Programs, both of which are heading to deficit and disaster. They need to be fixed now. The sooner we fix them, the better off we will all be. And it can be done. It just requires some willingness to stand up and be counted and do the right thing.

There is no reform of the wasteful government duplicative spending that goes on. Senator Coburn just went through a whole litany of duplicative programs: 47 job-training programs, many education programs, huge duplication in highway programs throughout different agencies and departments of the government. We know those exist, and nothing has been done about it. It does not alter the debt course we are on and, in fact, keeps it at the same rate.

It says we are going to raise $1 trillion in taxes and we are going to cut spending $1 trillion, and this is the balanced approach. We have been told that over and over: This is a balanced approach.

But that is not what the budget does. It does indeed raise taxes--at least $1 trillion actually--and it increases spending. So the net result of this budget over 10 years is to have no effect on the deficit even though it raises taxes $1 trillion. A balanced approach, in the terms of my Democratic colleagues, is to raise taxes $1 trillion and raise spending $1 trillion. This is irresponsible.

I am baffled by the willingness of my colleagues to proceed in that fashion, representing the budget to be something it is not. I think they have a guilty conscience, perhaps. We have been trying to keep up with how many times they have used the word ``balanced.'' How many times in the last 2 days have the Democratic speakers all across the board--who have their poll-tested language used the word ``balanced,'' when in fact they have an unbalanced budget that does not change the debt course and leaves us on a financial path that the CBO Director said is unsustainable. But you know the American people want a balanced budget, so you say: We have got a balanced approach, a balanced plan, a balanced priority, and you use that word over and over, with the idea that it sinks into somebody's mind and they begin to believe that you have a balanced budget. I can hear an ad agency explaining how this works.

But we don't have a balanced budget. It never balances. It has no goal of balancing. It is no closer to balancing than the current baseline and current law we are spending on.

So we have calculated--and the numbers have gone up every hour--201 references on the floor of the Senate to ``balanced.'' It just now begins to highlight the fact of how unbalanced this is, how unbalanced this budget is, how it does not do what we need it to do.

Back when I opposed the nomination of Jack Lew, who was Chief of Staff and OMB Director, to be Secretary of the Treasury, we talked about his first budget. It was the same way. They decided in early 2011, after the 2010 shellacking, to produce a budget that did not come close to balance. They had a little problem because the American people had just whacked the big spenders in the 2000 election. So what did they decide to do? They just said it would balance. They said we are only spending money we have. We have a budget that does not add to the debt. We have a budget that begins to pay down the debt. All three of those things were utterly false. The lowest single deficit, in his own numbers he submitted to us, was $600 billion. That was the least that he had in his entire 10-year budget of what the deficit would be that year--$600 billion deficit. Yet he said we have a budget that pays down the debt, we have a budget that only spends money we have, and a budget you can be proud of.

That is what we have here. I hate to say it. My colleagues have produced a budget that utterly fails to alter the

debt course we are on. It raises taxes, but it does not use the taxes to reduce the deficit. It uses the taxes to fund new spending. It truly does.

That is the concern we have today. We will head now into the votes. I thank Senator Murray for allowing us to have free ability to speak and debate. We do not agree on these issues, but we will head into an afternoon that hopefully will allow our Members a full opportunity to get a vote on amendments, if they believe strongly in them. We hope we do not have needless amendments, that Members are looking and understand the needs of our time.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank Senator Murray. She has been a great person to work with. She is firm, clear, and tough, and has moved us forward. I always felt that when she made a decision, it was justified. She kept us under control and let us fuss and complain a bit. The content of the plan that the majority has moved forward I think explains why they have had difficulty revealing it from the beginning. It is because it is not the kind of budget that can be defended effectively. Honest people can disagree on policy, but there can be no disagreement, I believe, on the need to change our Nation's debt course. A singular truth that no one can escape is that the House budget changes our debt course while the Senate budget does not.

The Senate budget increases taxes, increases spending, and during that 10-year period another $7.3 trillion will be added to the debt. There will be no real deficit reduction, and it never balances. Republicans have given opportunity after opportunity, through votes, to produce a balanced budget, but that has been rejected.

The massive debt we racked up to finance our wasteful government is pulling down economic growth today. This is so important for us to understand. Gross debt--over 90 percent of GDP--weakens growth; not tomorrow, it is weakening growth today. In other words, continuing to borrow to bail out the government, and keep checks flowing, creates debt that pulls down wages, jobs, and job creation. It is time to stop shielding the government bureaucracy, which is hurting people today.

There is nothing virtuous about defending a broken welfare state that is trapping millions in poverty. Every time our colleagues raise taxes instead of reforming the government, they are enriching that bureaucracy at the expense of the people. When they demand more money, they are saying that reform is not important, just send us more money; we are not at fault.

I will conclude and say, we have to move away from a budget and a plan that enriches the bureaucracy at the expense of the American people.

I thank Senator Murray for her courtesy.

Madam President, I suggest we do this by voice vote.

Reserving the right to object, I think this is a good list. I look forward to moving on. I will try to work with Senator Murray and others. Perhaps we may avoid the gaps we have been experiencing. We have a lot of Senators here, a lot of things to do. There is an anxiousness we shouldn't be having so much downtime, and we will be working toward that.

I thank the Chair and would not object.

I request Senators be recognized to speak at this moment.

Mr. President, I believe, as I indicated last night, Mr. Lomborg of Europe, who has done a lot of research on these issues--energy research is preferable to mandating requirements which would utilize inefficient sources and oversubsidizing. Breakthroughs might happen. This is a paid-for amendment. I would suggest we take it by voice vote.

Mr. President, unless there are any Senators who wish to speak in opposition to this amendment, I know we are all in very strong support of veterans. This amendment would make it easier to pass legislation, but that legislation would be required to be deficit neutral. I think we have to know that nothing comes from nothing. If we start new programs, they have to be paid for. But we certainly support the goal of this amendment. I suggest we could take it by voice vote.

Mr. President, I believe this is a good list, and I support this list. I would advise that a number of Senators have amendments that they have waited patiently on and that they are entitled to get votes on, so we need to move forward. The more effectively we can do so, the sooner we can finish. There are some very serious matters that have not yet been put on this list that will need to be voted on.

With that, I withdraw my objection.

We look forward to working hard as we go forward and take up new amendments. It is unfortunate that we are coming to the end of the week as we have. We still would have a week when we come back-- the week of April 8--but I know the majority leader wants to finish. So we are going to try to cooperate, and I know he will cooperate with us as we seek to get as many amendments done and as many people satisfied with the issues they are concerned about as is possible.

I thank the Senator and his cosponsors for their work on this amendment. I note it would double the budget number for the weatherization program. Also, the Recovery Act of a few years ago, the stimulus bill, provided $5 billion for the weatherization program. While I am dubious about the wisdom of the doubling of this program, it is offset. Therefore, I would accept a voice vote.

Mr. President, I believe Senator Coburn wished to speak on this amendment.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 247

Mr. President, I understand there have been discussions about this, and it is on the agreed list for a voice vote. I would have no objection unless others do.

This is a budget-neutral reserve fund, and it essentially says, using that language, if the authorizing committee can pay for this bill, it will not be subject to a budget point of order. It should be offset to avoid that. This is certainly a worthy goal. We would like to see if this can be done. It would be a challenge for the authorizers because nothing comes from nothing. It could well end up cutting other veterans benefits. But I think this is a worthy goal. I think the Senator would suggest we take it by a voice vote.

Madam President, I hope all of us begin to think a little bit here. We have a lot of votes that have gone forward. Each one seems to be an attempt to spend more money. It sets deficit-neutral reserve funds that require offsets. In my view, we are really thinking too much with a mindset that we have money, and I believe we are in denial about the financial condition of our country. Truly, we should be looking to have more amendments that save some money and use that money to pay down the debt rather than fund some new spending program.

This country is on an unsustainable debt path. We have to get off of it, and it cannot be done all by tax increases. Trust me, we have to have some spending reductions. Our spending rate of growth is more than two times the rate of economic growth, and that really--

I suggest a voice vote. I appreciate my colleague's work on this amendment.

Madam President, I thank Senator Cardin for his hard work. He is correct that oral care for children is important. It does require that it be paid for if a new program is advanced.

I suggest a voice vote.

Mr. President, I agree that the Senator's amendment restates current law. I have no objection to that. I would accept that. But the question is and what has been suggested in the paper from what I have seen is that if a person is in our country illegally and they are rewarded with some legal status, do they then immediately become eligible for Federal health care benefits? It is a different situation than somebody who came legally and has legal status.

So I would say I would accept a voice vote on this.

My amendment will deal with the next question.

Mr. President, under current law, if a person is here unlawfully and becomes ``lawfulized,'' in some fashion, they then become qualified for this program. That is what we are talking about. So the question is, Should they then become qualified for ObamaCare or Medicaid? I think the answer is no. I think that is what people have said they believe.

My amendment would simply say that if you are here illegally, did not enter legally, and you get a lawful status in the United States, you then do not qualify for the Federal programs of ObamaCare and Medicaid.

How much time?

Twenty seconds.

Mr. President, there may be someone else here, but I have prosecuted banks before and big institutions and put some people in jail. But we have--this is serious. I don't think the deficit reserve fund is the way to go about it, frankly, but it is an issue worthy of discussion. It should be brought up in the authorizing committee--the Judiciary Committee--and considered. And I am very inclined to believe we have had too little prosecution in these cases. But I think the right thing to do is to take this by voice vote. People can decide how they want to vote on it.

I think we can accept this by a voice vote.

I would note that the House has nonreserved funds. The Senate now has about 50 we have adopted already. We have reserve funds adopted for education, clean energy, infrastructure, farm payments, food stamps, health care, pensions, housing, tooth decay, and now homeowners. So these create 50 ways to pass taxes more easily. It turns the budget discipline, if we don't watch it, into mush and makes it difficult to maintain the integrity of the Budget Act and avoids really in some ways the hard work of setting priorities.

So I think we should do this by voice vote, but I did want to call the attention of my colleagues to the fact that reserve funds too readily used can undermine the integrity of the budget process.

Mr. President, I thank Chairman Murray for her leadership and for her fairness in helping us move a lot of amendments fairly and equitably tonight. We are in a situation where--no need to debate it into the night--I wish we had not been in a position where the majority leader was determined to finish this weekend. I wish we could have started earlier in the week or to come back on April 8, but that is not possible.

We have gone 4 years without a budget, and Members have been constricted in the filing of amendments this year more than any other time in probably the history of the Senate. One has to ask or beg permission to be allowed to have an amendment. Senator Ayotte is one of those. Senator Moran and others had amendments. So they are frustrated, and they want their votes.

So I would just say, let's keep going. Let's keep in good humor. Let's try to get as many of these votes in as possible. I have had several Members suggest that we might vote from our chairs and not leave the Chamber and cut these rollcall votes down to a much shorter period of time. Maybe we could discuss that. But I think the list needs to be continued to be produced. A number of Senators haven't had amendments, and they really feel as though they have a right to. And this may be their only opportunity, the way things are going this year, to even get a vote on something they care about.

So that is my observation.

Mr. President, will the Senator from Washington yield for a question?

If the Senator will yield for a question with regard to the possibility of us starting one of the votes that will probably be a rollcall vote, and let's get started on that while we work out the further details.

Madam President, I thank the leader. I think it has real potential. There still would be some votes that could go by voice vote, we would hope. But if we do this pressure in this way I think it would speed up things. I thank the leader for that suggestion. I have heard it from our side for a while. I think it is a good idea.

Mr. President, I have so enjoyed working with the chairman. She has done a great job. She has managed this group as we needed to be managed.

I am disappointed in the budget. It does not do the job for our times.

I thank the Chair and look forward to the vote.

Madam President, I also would like to thank the staff. My group is here. And I say to Senator Murray, your team is fabulous.

We work hard on bills that come through the Senate, and there are a lot of challenges. But few are bigger than this, with all these amendments--hundreds of them that came through--and it was a real challenge.

I congratulate the staff, I congratulate the Senator's team, and I hope we can continue to have good relations as we go forward and work together.

I would mention Marcus Peacock, my staff director, who was fabulous. He enjoyed every minute of this. I asked him how he was doing, and he said: I am going to be sorry tomorrow when it is over. But maybe that is a sign of sickness. I do not know.

I want to express my appreciation to my staff: Dan Kowalski, Bill Beach, Greg D'Angelo, Gene Emmans, George Everly, Matt Giroux, Brittany Godwin, Tori Gorman, Graham Hixon, Andrew Herther, Chris Jackson, Cari Kelly, Joseph McCormack, Greg McNeill, Carlton Milsap, Marcus Peacock, Kim Proctor, John Selden, William Smith, Paul Winfree, Stephen Miller, Andrew Logan, Garrett Murch, and Katie Moses. I think that is everybody. Tori Gorman has been back there in the center of that zoo and did a great job for us trying to work on these amendments.

So, again, I would like to thank Senator Murray for her leadership, helping us get through this difficult time, and it is good to say that as of this time, 5 a.m., there has not been a day without a budget being passed in the Senate.

(Laughter.)

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privileges of the floor be granted to the following member of my staff: George Everly.

I thank the Chair and express my appreciation to Senator Murray for her leadership, her courtesy, and her skill in managing the bill through the committee and on the floor. She is an experienced legislator who has strong convictions, but she is easy to work with, courteous, and effective in what she does every day. I thank Senator Murray, and I enjoy working with her.

Well, our Chair says this is a pro-growth, pro-middle-class budget. I say it is a pro-tax, pro-spend, and pro-debt budget. It is a budget of deep disappointment. It is a budget that comes nowhere near doing the things necessary to put America on a sound path. It is a budget that does, indeed, reflect the stark differences between our parties. It is rather remarkable to me, the extent to which our majority party in the Senate has no interest in producing a budget that actually balances and actually puts America on the right path.

They say they care about growth, and I know they do. I know they would like to see the economy grow more and more jobs being created because we have had the slowest recovery during this recession since anytime after World War II, at least. It has been very, very slow. But we have done something to a degree we have never done before; that is, borrow and spend to stimulate the economy.

Someone has compared borrowing and spending to stimulate the economy to the idea of someone taking a bucket and scooping up water in one end of the swimming pool and pouring it into the other. We have no net gain. The truth is that we lose some of the water out of the bucket as we walk along the shore. In this case, what we lose is interest on the debt indefinitely because there is no plan to pay down the debt.

So this budget that is before us today does not balance, it does not put us on a sound path, it does not create confidence among the American citizens that the future is going to be sound, that we have gotten this country reoriented in a way that is going to produce long- term growth. Indeed, it is going to do exactly the opposite. It is going to do exactly the opposite. It says, once again, that this Senate is not willing to do the things necessary to put America on a sound course. And it is not that hard. We can do this. It is within our grasp. But our leadership in this Senate, contrary to the House, is not willing to take those good, solid but achievable steps necessary to put this country on a sound path. I just feel that very deeply.

Hopefully, in the context of our debate and a budget being moved through here on a party-line vote, I suppose, as it was in committee, maybe some connection will be made amongst ourselves and our Members and our brains about the real issues facing the country and what we need to do to get on the right path. And maybe even in conference, if not here on the floor, we can have some miraculous agreement that would create the kind of long-term confidence businesspeople and the American people are looking for from the U.S. Congress and the government.

Senator Reid indicated he would like to finish. I would like to finish too. We were under the impression that we could have started this voting process on the budget as early as Monday, if not Tuesday. That could have happened. Apparently, the leadership decided to block amendments. That created, on this side, a number of Senators who felt very strongly that they, in fact, had relevant amendments and they wanted them voted on, and they would not agree to time limits until the majority agreed to give them a vote. Whether I was for or against the amendments is not relevant. I thought they should have been given a vote. They are Senators. A big bill moving forward, several appropriations bills cobbled together to fund the government, and we only have four or five amendments. Serious amendments, such as the Moran amendment with 28 cosponsors, Republicans and Democrats, was blocked. He couldn't get an amendment on a relevant issue involving the health and safety of America.

So that has put us behind in the schedule, not anything we have done. There was not a problem on this side. If they had been given amendments, they would have been done in very short order and could have been completed Monday or early Tuesday.

So here we are. We have under the law 50 hours of debate on the budget, 25 to a side, and an unlimited number of amendments can be offered. So that is going to take time, as it always does, and I am sorry it is getting pushed into the weekend.

I would also just say briefly that as time has gone by, I have been more and more convinced of what I believed from the beginning, which is that this Congress is not capable of producing a massive overhaul of the Federal health care program. I remember the night Senator Reid refers to when the final passage, I guess, occurred or the day that it occurred. But what I remember most is being here Christmas Eve--my birthday--when the bill cleared the Senate on a straight party-line vote, 60 to 40. Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts was elected on a promise to block and kill the legislation. The American people were consistently opposing the legislation. They were able to ram it through before he could take office and cast the deciding vote. They got the absolute minimum number of votes--60--to pass this monstrosity.

I am told now the regulations in the bill are 6 feet high when stacked. We still haven't seen them. That legislation has 1,700 references to this section to be effectuated by regulations to be issued by the department. Regulations continue to pour out in record numbers to try to clarify the hundreds and thousands of ambiguities in the bill.

We were told that people's health insurance premiums would go down, that this was going to bend the cost curve to bring health care costs down. We warned that would not happen. Who was correct 3 years ago? Health care costs are surging. They are not through surging yet. We are going to have more increases as the health care bill takes effect in January of next year. The average person's premium has already gone up $2,000-plus a year. Small businesses all over America are telling us they are not hiring because of the health care bill. This has clearly been a deficit and a detriment to job creation.

We had no ability to write this health care law. We didn't know enough about it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: Well, we have to write it to see what is in it. What she meant was that we are just going to pass some vision of health care reform and the bureaucrats will take care of it. Well, they are not taking care of it well. We are not capable of managing it.

We are endangering the greatest health care system the world has ever known. We are going to see fewer and fewer top-quality young people go into medicine. I am hearing that over and over again. Doctors are telling me they don't know what to tell their children about going into medicine.

This is just one example of what happens in this country when people in Washington take on the arrogant view that they know how to fix the health care system--one of the most massive, complex, marvelous systems the world has ever known.

You can go to Alabama and see some of the best doctors in the entire world in our State. People go there from all over the world. Dr. Andrews treated RG3 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, his private practice in Birmingham. People can go to top-quality surgeons in Mobile, Montgomery--throughout the State--Auburn-Opelika, Tuscaloosa, Huntsville. This is true for every State in America.

For people to say our health care is not the best in the world--why do people come here from all over the world? That is one of the most horrible things I have ever heard, really, around here, suggesting we don't. So we have people who die sooner than in some other countries. We have a lot of causes. We have more obesity. We have more smoking. We have fewer people taking care of themselves sometimes. We have a lot of individual problems. We have a higher murder rate. We have high accident rates in automobiles. So we have things that pull down our lifespan, but that doesn't mean our health care isn't good. It doesn't mean our health care is not the best in the world. All of us have seen that.

Mr. President, I wish to ask Chairman Murray where we are now on going through the business of the day. I appreciate the chairman's leadership and suggestions as to going forward.

I would like to start with a motion, yes, and I am prepared to do that, and I thank the chairman.

I offer a motion to recommit this budget that is on the floor today to the committee with instructions that it be altered to produce a balanced budget.

That is what I think this Nation needs. I think that is what the American people want, and that is what we are determined to fight for because it is the right thing for the country, not because it is some green eyeshade goal. I have heard that argument, and that is not what is on our minds when we say: Let's balance the budget. It is not what the American people have on their minds when they say: Why don't you guys balance our budget?

What is it that is necessary here? We believe that if we alter our debt course in a responsible way and we begin to reduce the deficits regularly and steadily in an effective way, we can reach a balanced budget and we can keep on that balanced budget without cutting expenditures. The facts are quite clear that we can increase spending every year, just not as much as we are increasing spending today and just not as much as our Democratic budget increases spending. That is what we believe we should do. I will explain as we go forward how that can create jobs, create growth, will make this country healthier, will create confidence in the world financial community, will see more money come to the United States, and will allow businesses that are sitting on cash to begin to invest and hire people. That is the direction in which we should be going. That is what would be good for America.

But first and foremost, as I explained last night, the Democratic budget on the floor today comes nowhere close to that. It is nowhere close to setting forth a plan that would actually balance the budget. Indeed, the budget never balances under their plan, and it won't balance in the future. Things are only going to get worse. They are going to get worse because it deals in no way with the fundamental, driving forces of the debt this country faces. It does not deal with that. If we don't deal with those issues, then we are not going to get the debt under control. But we can do it. We can do it in a number of ways.

Now, the President has sent a very clear message. Recently on ABC, with George Stephanopoulos, the President said: And so, you know, my goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance.

Who said we are trying to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance? That is not what we are doing. We are trying to put America on a sound debt path. We are trying to put America on a sound financial path that will create confidence and avoid the danger of a fiscal crisis.

We started counting last night. My colleagues, yesterday and last night--I think we stopped counting--used the phrase ``balance'' 24 times: This is a balanced approach. It is a balanced plan. We are seeking primary balance. We are going to have a responsible, balanced plan.

Pretty soon, they will say they have a balanced budget. Well, they don't have a balanced budget. We need to understand that fully.

Secondly, the budget that has been produced does not even put us any closer to a balanced budget than we are today. When we add up the taxes that are being increased, when we add the new spending that is in this bill, it doesn't change the debt course at all.

Earlier this year, Mr. Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before our Budget Committee. Mr. Elmendorf is an excellent scholar and a man who has managed the money of the budget well. Mr. Elmendorf is--Mr. President, I am having a little trouble concentrating with the roar going on in my background. I would appreciate it if we could keep it down a little bit.

So Mr. Elmendorf told us at the Budget Committee that we are on an unsustainable path. OK. This is after the Budget Control Act, after we reduced the growth of spending $2.1 trillion, and that includes the sequester. After we did all that, this year he told us we are on an unsustainable debt course. He said this is a danger to America and we have to get off it and we need to make further changes to get on the right course.

So we have looked at this budget, and we thought the committee, which called him, would listen to him, and we wanted to see if the budget that is on the floor now actually helps us get toward a sound financial future. I have to say it does not. It does not change the course we are on. It raises taxes dramatically, but it raises spending and eats up all the new taxes, not altering the amount of debt that will be raised over 10 years.

Isn't that a failed budget plan? Isn't that a failure of leadership? I hate to say that. But the challenge of our time is to deal with our financial crisis. The challenge of our time is to alter the debt course we are on and put us on a sound path, and it has not been met by this budget.

The House budget--we all may have different ideas about some of the things in it--provides for increased spending every single year, but it balances the budget, totally balances the budget, in 10 years. It would balance in 10 years and does it by increasing spending every year, on an average of 3.4 percent a year. So we can increase spending at 3.4 percent a year--increase spending--and balance the budget.

But the problem is the budget the majority sends forth would increase spending at 5.4 percent a year. That does not sound like a lot, but the difference is trillions of dollars. The difference is a plan that puts us on a sound financial path to the future and a plan that leads us on the unsustainable debt course we are now on.

My Democratic colleagues need to look at this. We saw, I guess, in Politico--I had the quote here yesterday that said fundamentally the majority's plan was written by the left of the Democratic conference-- the left--and it said explicitly to the left of President Obama. That makes sense if we look at what is in the budget. Look how much they spend, how much they tax, and how they do not reduce the debt we are adding every single year. So that is what we have.

As Chairman Murray said, budgets present a contrast. Budgets lay out your vision for the future. A budget defines who you are because it says how much you want to tax in the next 10 years, it says how much you want to spend in the next 10 years, and it requires you to state how much debt you are going to accumulate for America over the next 10 years.

This plan will add another $7.3 trillion to the debt of America. We are already at almost $17 trillion. That will take us to about $24 trillion in 10 years. Interest on that debt is huge. By their own numbers, interest on their debt would amount to approximately $800 billion in 1 year. Interest on the debt, under their budget, would rise to the point of $800 billion in 1 year. We spend about $100 billion on education. We spend about $40 billion-plus--a little over--on highways, roads, and bridges. That is just an example. We are now surging from $200 billion, $250 billion in interest to $800 billion in interest. As a result of the accounting CBO has provided us, if we follow this path, it is going to crowd out spending for research, it is going to crowd out spending for children, education, health care, and any other program this government wishes to undertake, including defense.

Mr. President, what kind of time limit is there, might I inquire? Is there 30 minutes on this side on this motion?

The first question would be how much time is left on my half of that hour.

Mr. President, I call up the motion.

This motion would simply say this to our colleagues--it will be a defining vote for our Members; and Members need to understand the meaning of this vote--the question will be: Do you favor a balanced budget? Is it important to you? Have you said: I am going to vote for a balanced budget amendment. Have you said in your townhall meetings and in your campaigns and in your debates: I believe in a balanced budget amendment or I believe in a balanced budget, period.

What we are saying is that this country can balance its budget. We can balance the budget in America today if we set forth a plan that allows the spending levels to increase by 3.4 percent a year for the next 10 years. Isn't that great news? We can spend 3.4 percent more each year. According to the data the Congressional Budget Office gives us and we rely on, we can do that and still increase spending over the next decade.

Inflation is going to increase about 2 percent or a little over, according to CBO. Inflation will increase about 25 percent over the next 10 years and about 40 percent if we increase spending each year at 3.4 percent. That puts us on a path to balance. It begins to reduce the debt overhang for our country. It brings down the amount of debt we have in our country and puts us on a sound path. It does all the things we need. It sends a message to the world that we have our financial house in order. I believe good Members of this body--Democrats and Republicans alike--have told their constituents and are sincerely of the belief that we can and should balance our budget. When I say ``balance,'' I mean honest balance, not some balanced approach, not some primary balance, none of that; that when the revenue comes in and the money goes out, it is the same. We are not sending more money out than we are bringing in, in revenue, having to borrow the difference and pay interest on it. Because that is what we have been doing to a degree we have never, ever done before in this country. We have never, ever done before what we are doing now. We have never, ever had 4 consecutive years of trillion-dollar deficits--nothing close to it.

People say President Bush was irresponsible. He should have been more wary of the grand promises that the economy would never have a recession and that things are going to go great. He should have. The next to the last

year he was in office, the budget deficit was $167 billion. It had dropped from a higher figure in his time in office. His last year, it was $450 billion or $460 billion.

President Obama has been in office 4 full years, starting his fifth, and his deficits have been averaging $1,200 billion a year. We have never, ever, ever seen anything like this before. The debt of the United States of America has surged, and our Democratic colleagues do not have a plan that will put us on a sustainable path in the future.

If we come back out of the economy and we restrain the spending growth just a little bit, we can balance the budget. That is what we ought to do. Again, the goal of balancing the budget is not some frivolous goal for political reasons. The goal of a balanced budget is that we would put us on a sound financial course. It will mean we have confronted the challenges of our time. It means we know we cannot continue to spend systemically more than we bring in, that a debt crisis could occur and we could have a decline in wealth in America.

So when we say we want to recommit to the committee, colleagues, you need to know what this means. It simply means this: We are directing the committee, the majority of whom are Democrats--and they can write the budget as they choose, using whatever tax changes they want to make and whatever spending changes they want to make--but the budget that hits this floor would be a budget that balances, that creates growth, confidence, and prosperity for America. That is what we are asking you to cast a vote for, and I believe you should break ranks on this. I believe you should vote your conscience. I believe every Senator should vote the beliefs of their constituents. Poll after poll after poll shows that the American people prefer a balanced budget. They know we cannot continue to do what we are doing.

I think it has potential. We are willing to work with the majority. We may disagree with the results, but, my goodness, wouldn't it be great if the Senate produced a budget that balances--and it has one vision of how to balance the budget, the House produced a budget that balances and they have their vision about how to balance the budget-- and we go to conference and we could actually reach some sort of a compromise that would fix the financial future of America? The whole world would be amazed. They would say: My goodness, the United States-- look at this--they have gotten themselves together. We thought they were going goofy. We thought they had completely sold out to spending and borrowing and look at this.

There would be more investment. American businesses would feel better. American workers would feel better. We would begin to have more growth that way.

That is the way we believe jobs and growth are best created, not by the sugar high that comes from borrowing and spending money.

Back when we did the stimulus bill--I would like to share this with my colleagues because a very important concept was explained us to by Mr. Elmendorf, the CBO Director. Back when we did the stimulus bill, the $800 billion-and-something that President Obama passed that was going to reduce the unemployment rate dramatically, put the country on a sound path, and stimulate the economy, we asked how were we going to do it? We were going to borrow money--every penny of the $830 billion-- now $1 trillion with interest--was borrowed and we spent it.

This is what the Director of the Congressional Budget Office said about that. He said: Yes, it will create growth in the short term. It will enhance the growth in the short term. One financial expert called it a sugar high. We will get that. But once that is over and we have the burden of the debt, it begins to cost us every year and it will cost us as long as that money has been spent, as long as we pay interest on that money, and we are going to pay interest--young people, American people--indefinitely because we have no plan to pay down this debt that we have accumulated. We will be paying interest on that indefinitely.

This is what CBO said back in 2009 when the stimulus bill was passed. They said: Yes, you get a short-term benefit. But CBO said that over 10 years, you will have less net growth than if you did not have the stimulus package at all. Think about that.

So we took the sugar high. We voted to borrow the money. I did not. I opposed it. But it passed to borrow more money, to spend now to try to create a sugar high, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, pour one bucket of water from the pool into another, and this is going to somehow permanently fix our economy.

There were some things that I think would have been legitimate for us to do at that time. I supported a more restrained package that had more infrastructure and actual benefits in it. But, fundamentally, we are almost now at the point where the benefits of that spending have been gone and the detriment is already here. Multiply that. Multiply that by the fact that we now have a total of $17 trillion borrowed from around the world, and we are paying interest on that every day. But we are paying extraordinarily low interest rates, unlike any we have seen in the history of the world, and those low interest rates are not expected to remain.

This is why they project that with this budget we will have a $24 trillion debt by 2022, resulting in $800 billion a year in interest. This would be more than the Defense Department, more than we pay on Social Security today, and more than we pay on Medicare today. This is a huge item.

I would say we want growth. We want prosperity. We want to unleash the natural, inherent, entrepreneurial power of the American spirit, economy, and culture. It is a wonderful thing we have. Our free market infrastructure is magnificent, but it is being handicapped by poor economic financial policies of this country. We need to exit this path and return to a path for a balanced budget amendment.

I thank you for the opportunity to make this motion and hope it will be considered. It would provide the committee with full freedom to produce a balanced budget through any way you choose, through any mix of tax-and-spend policies which would be chosen by the committee. It would then come back to the floor. If we were to vote for it, then it would go to conference and put us in an extraordinarily better position to achieve a bipartisan agreement this year, which could help pull us out of the economic doldrums. This would put us on a path to economic prosperity to eliminate the debt drag which international studies, the IMF, European Central Bank, Bank of International Settlements, and Professor Rogoff and Professor Reinhart have all shown pulls down growth. They are saying our debt is so high it is lowering economic growth right now.

We would change all of this through a balanced budget coming out of committee. It would put us on the right path without having to reduce spending, actually. We could still increase spending every single year.

I submit my motion, and I yield to the Chair.

Mr. President, was the time used there time against the motion?

Mr. President, we understand what is happening here. The budget produced by the majority does not balance, doesn't come close to balancing, does not change in any measurable way the debt course we are on that the Congressional Budget Office Director said is unsustainable.

This budget taxes more, it spends more, and does not change the debt course we are on; therefore, it is a budget about to bankrupt America because, as Mr. Elmendorf said, our current deficit plan endangers our future.

They have used--we have counted--now over 30 times the word ``balanced.'' We have heard a balanced approach, a balanced plan; a balanced approach, a balanced plan. But it does not balance.

Senator Coons, a great Senator, was a county commissioner. He balanced his budget and gained acclaim for it, and it wasn't a balanced approach--it was a balanced budget.

The Presiding Officer has been a Governor and balanced his budget. All former Governors in this body balanced budgets--real balance.

A balanced approach means nothing, nada, zero. A balanced approach means nothing. It is an excuse to tax and spend and not change the debt course of America. At some point, every Senator is going to have a moral responsibility to decide whether they want to stay on that course.

The Ryan budget is not before us. This motion that I have does not require the committee to have a Ryan budget. This motion would simply say: Committee, go back and look at this budget. Committee, do a budget that balances, and if you want to tax oil companies, if you want to tax rich people more, lay it out. If you want to cut spending in some other area than Ryan wants to cut spending, do so. But remember, Ryan does not cut spending.

We see the chart up here. How much does Ryan cut spending? Ryan's budget doesn't cut spending. Our proposal is not to cut spending. It increases spending every single year. One of the ways this country is going broke is, when they reduce the growth of spending, they say it is a cut. That kind of logic is why we are going broke.

If we change the growth rate from 5.4 percent that we are on now to 3.4 percent, this budget would balance. We can grow spending every year and balance the budget--no net cuts. Some programs ought to be eliminated but no net cuts.

We are glad to have Senator Thune, who has served so ably on the Budget Committee for many years, is thoroughly knowledgeable about these issues and is part of the leadership in

our conference and I yield to him on the resolution.

How much time remains on the resolution?

Mr. President, I yield to Senator Thune.

Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from South Dakota such time as he and Senator Johanns would utilize.

Mr. President, if you would, that would be from the resolution.

Madam President, I have enjoyed listening to our colleagues discuss the issues, particularly

the sequester. I know Senator Kaine and I talked about this previously. I would just like to make a few points that are so important for every Member of this body to understand.

Senator Kaine just said additional deficit reduction is needed. He is exactly correct. But this budget has no additional deficit reduction.

They claim they have a balanced approach. They have used that word now 40-some-odd times, ``balance.'' This budget never balances. It does not balance in 10 years, 15 years, and has no vision that would even lead to balance. It remains unsustainable in terms of adding to the debt every single year, resulting in a 1-year interest payment in 2023 of $800 billion--well more than the defense budget; surging interest from around $250 billion now to $800 billion a year--forever, I suppose. And it would go up with the debt rising and with interest rates that could rise even more.

So we don't have additional deficit reduction in the budget that we are being asked to vote on. Senator Kaine said can we make cuts? Yes. Well, I would say we can make more cuts, but we don't. Yes, there is some reduction in some programs, but, on net, no deficit reduction in the budget. So it doesn't change the debt course. You can't deny that.

What we are saying is, go back to the committee. Write the budget like you want. If you think there ought to be more taxes than I think, that is OK. Bring it up. Let's vote on it. But let's have this budget do what you say, be balanced. They have used this word ``balance''-- balance, balance, balance--40 more times. We have been keeping up with it. It is so ridiculous. It is utterly unbalanced. It never balances.

By their own admission, the deficits in 1 year are never lower than $400 billion. So it never balances.

A balanced approach. A balanced plan. Why? Are they guilty of confusing the issue? Do they think the American people will hear their message and think, oh, they have a balanced budget? I suspect that is what they think. Twice I have observed my Democratic colleagues at the committee slip and say they have a balanced budget. They have this in their heads so much, but a balanced plan is what they are really saying.

So what is a balanced plan? The way it has been promoted: $1 trillion in tax increases, $1 trillion in spending cuts, a net $2 trillion in deficit reduction. Not so. It is not so. The tax increases are offset by spending increases.

That is just the way it is. You can spin it any way you want to, but I want to make that point.

One thing I will share about the sequester--and I am so pleased that Senator Rubio is here, and I look forward to yielding to him. I truly think this is an unwise mechanism to reduce spending. It should not happen. It should be fixed.

I totally agree with my colleagues that this is unfairly and disproportionately falling on the military. I know Senator Rubio has military bases in Florida. I have them in Alabama and they have them in Virginia, we almost all do. These are patriotic Americans, and these furloughs are in effect 1 day a week, a 20-percent pay cut out of the blue. It is not necessary, and there are other things that have happened.

So how did it happen? Well, it was proposed by the White House, who said: OK, if this special committee doesn't reach agreement on the details of spending cuts, then we will have a sequester across the board. So it originated from the White House. The political theater we have down here is not correct, and we need to be honest about this.

The Republicans agreed to it. It was part of the Budget Control Act. That is the legislation. And who signed the legislation in blue ink right on the back? The President of the United States, Barack Obama.

So he signed it, it is his document, and we agreed to raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion, and we agreed to reduce spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion.

Before the ink was dry, the President was proposing to eliminate the cuts he agreed to. He has been fighting to eliminate those cuts from the beginning, and they are not really cuts. If they were properly applied, it would reduce the growth of spending and not cut spending at all.

So the committee that was supposed to find other cuts failed. The sequester went into effect. And it is an antimilitary provision. It was designed by Jack Lew, a very liberal member of the President's Cabinet, who was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget at the time.

The President, in my opinion, seemed to be quite happy to see these cuts fall on the Defense Department. He seemed to be happy to have this happen.

Why do I say that? Because he has done nothing to fix it except demand something that he has no right to demand, and that is to violate this agreement to reduce spending and instead raise taxes and spend more. That is not going to happen. Congress is not going to vote to violate the agreement they made with the American people less than 2 years ago. If we give in on that, we might as well quit.

Our colleagues say they want to have a balanced approach to this budget, and they are going to raise taxes. Most people who hear that think the taxes would be used to reduce the deficit, but they are not. The taxes are going to be used to fund more spending over the agreement we have had in place now for about 20 months under the Budget Control Act. They want to increase spending above these levels, and they want to use all the new tax increases they are now proposing to fund it.

It does not change the debt course of America, which Mr. Elmendorf, the CBO Director, told us in committee is an unsustainable path that we are on even after the Budget Control Act was passed in August 2011. So we need to work on it.

I am prepared to offer solutions. The House of Representatives has twice passed legislation that would alter the Budget Control Act so that the cuts don't fall so hard on defense. In fact, they eliminated the additional defense cuts, the second phase of defense cuts, and found cuts elsewhere in the budget and smoothed it out fairly. That is what should happen, and that is where we need to be.

So I would encourage all our citizens, all our Members of Congress, all our military leaders by saying if you want to fix the sequester then address your request to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Address your request to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, who has an absolute duty--a responsibility--to ensure that these reductions are done in a fair way.

We have voted and fought for flexibility on this side of the aisle, and we believe in finding, and will vote for, other reductions in spending to prevent this happening the way it is set to occur under current law.

It seems to me they wanted it to happen this way, so they could come to the floor and make a point somehow that we are dramatically and disastrously hammering the budget, when it is not necessary for it to be done this way. That is the way I see it, and I believe we can reach agreement on this. I think somehow we will because it is not right the way the military--representing one-sixth of all Federal spending--is taking half of the cuts. That is the way it falls right now. It is not right and it is too damaging.

It is great to see Senator Rubio. I believe he is next up. I yield to him and thank him for his contribution to our discussion.

Madam President, I ask that time be counted against the resolution.

Madam President, I will be yielding to Senator Thune, one of the experienced former members of the Budget Committee. He will be sharing his thoughts. I would say to my colleagues, we have been hearing that the Democratic plan is a balanced approach. It is balanced, but it is not a balanced budget. What we need is a balanced budget. That means the amount of money that comes in is the same as the amount of money that goes out.

We can do that and increase spending every single year by 3.4 percent. This is very doable. It does not require the slashing of spending on every important account that we care about in Washington. That is what we are here for, and the administration, the Cabinet Secretaries and so forth, they will make sure the limited amount of money any government has is wisely spent. Therefore, we are not talking about devastating cuts. We are talking about better management and working with how to grow spending over the next 10 years--growing spending over the next 10 years by 3.4 percent, not at 5.4 percent. That balances the budget even under the assumption of 2.5 percent inflation. It can be done. That is what the experts tell us, and that is the best estimate we have today.

The motion to recommit the budget is now on the floor--recommit to the committee, with instructions that they decide what to do to alter it so that when it comes back it is balanced, a real balanced budget-- not a balanced plan, not a balanced approach, not some balanced theory--but a real balanced budget. Presumably our colleagues think balance is important because they have mentioned the word about 40 times. We have been counting them since we have been on the floor. I think when we get to that vote we will be asking our colleagues: Do you really want to achieve a balanced budget?

Senator Sanders said: We think you do not tax the rich enough. You need to tax the rich more and more--as if taxing and punishing them will fix the problem of growth in this economy that is truly too slow. We are having the slowest recovery in our Nation's history, at least since World War II. So we do not have a good recovery coming on. We need to be talking about that.

But I guess my final statement is we do not need a balanced approach, we need a balanced budget. There is a gulf of difference between the two.

The plan before us today raises taxes $1 trillion. They claim it cuts spending nearly $1 trillion and that it is a balanced approach: tax increases, spending cuts, and deficit reduction. That is the message that has been coming from the other side. Except it is not accurate. This budget increases taxes by $1.5 trillion. It also increases spending. That is what it does.

We are concerned about that. The net result is there is no change, it seems to me--no change, a good analysis shows, in the debt course we are on.

I see my colleague, Senator Thune. It is now time to yield to him. I yield to Senator Thune.

I thank the Chair. It will be yielding off the resolution.

Madam President, I see we have Senator Vitter of Louisiana ready to speak. I ask unanimous consent that their time be taken off the budget resolution.

Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Senator Portman is such a valuable member of the Budget Committee. He served as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He knows how this situation works.

But that dotted line on the chart, it is just spending, isn't it? It is spending as a percentage of the American economy. So in some sense that surging upward line of spending is even worse than at first glance it might appear.

Madam President, I think we will proceed now to the other side. Then there will be back and forth on the Internet Fairness Act; is that correct?

All right.

For the information of my colleagues--and I guess this will not be in concrete--I will recognize Senator Enzi for 10 minutes, Senator Alexander for 10 minutes, and Senators Blunt and Ayotte for 5 minutes each.

Senator Enzi, I know, has worked hard on this legislation, and I yield to him.

Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to Senator Cochran.

Mr. President, what is our agreement at this point?

You are into it?

OK.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I appreciated Senator Tester's remarks and his belief that Montanans believe they should live within their means, and he supports a plan to reduce the deficit. But I just want to share with my colleagues that the budget that is before us today is not balanced. It does not reduce the deficit. It taxes a lot more, but its spending increases at the same level, and there is no net change in the unsustainable debt course we are on.

He said it reduces the deficit by $2 trillion. I want you to know that is what the Budget Committee claims for that budget, but it is not accurate. It does not reduce the deficit $2 trillion. It does not. It keeps us on the same path.

It is not a balanced deficit reduction plan, because it doesn't reduce the deficit. It increases taxes and increases spending, if you call that balance. It is not the right kind of plan. I wish we could get together on fundamentals of numbers in that budget.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question? I will not insist on an answer but I wish to raise something.

You have the time. That will be fine. Thank you.

Mr. President, my colleague, Senator Murray, has questioned the $1.5 trillion in tax increases that we have contended in this legislation. I think it is there because there are two separate reserve funds that would allow taxes to be increased by $500 billion without legislation and would go through without a supermajority, to be passed on a simple vote.

But our colleagues say that is not there, so I would offer into the Record, Mr. President, a number of documents that support our view that it is $1.5 trillion. Others can agree, disagree about it, as it is presently written. I would offer that for the Record and our explanation and why we think that is accurate. I ask unanimous consent to have that material printed in the Record.

I would like to say this to my chairman: I am willing to concede the point if the chair would agree to amend the two reserve funds so that they cannot be used to advance tax increases, and I would cease making that argument and accept the fact that you have already almost $1 trillion in new taxes.

So I would ask through the chair, is the Senator willing to amend those two reserve fund languages so they cannot be used to add another $500 billion in new taxes?

Mr. President, I thank the chair, and I assume, then, that she refuses to clarify the ambiguity, the certain option to increase taxes by another $500 billion. That could be eliminated simply by making the suggestion I just announced. She is rejecting that. So I think it is legitimate to assume that the intent of this reserve fund is to raise taxes another $500 billion.

Secondly, with regard to the situation we have been discussing concerning the sequester, I know the Senator said just a few moments ago that the sequester is not deficit reduction. We can disagree about that, but that was her opinion, apparently. I think it is inaccurate.

But my question to the Senator is, does your budget as now presented on the floor eliminate the spending limits that are in current law under the Budget Control Act and specifically the sequester portion?

Well, I wouldn't misconstrue it. So it does eliminate the sequester.

So then the next question would be, did you score the allowed increase in spending of $1.2 trillion in your budget as increased spending?

Well, your staff indicated that you could not double- count that money, and if you eliminated the $1.2 trillion in sequester limit and allowed $1.2 trillion more to be spent, you would not save $1.85 trillion but approximately $700 billion on that decision alone. Do you agree with your staff in their analysis?

One more question, then. Do you still stand by the promotional material that went with the budget--and in the budget document itself--that you have reduced the deficit over current law by $1.85 trillion or isn't it a fact that eliminating the sequester reduces that to approximately $700 billion in savings?

Mr. President, I would just say that the Associated Press disagrees. It is plainly inaccurate. Plainly, I asked that question, over current law, did they count the sequester increase in spending? And the staff admitted in our Budget Committee mark up that it did not--that increased spending--and therefore we reduce the deficit savings from $1.85 trillion to about $700 billion. There is another $700 billion in gimmicks, so there is no reduction in the deficit in this budget.

The AP reported:

. . . because Democrats want to restore $1.2 trillion in

automatic spending cuts . . .--cuts imposed by [the] failure

to strike a . . . budget pact--Murray's blueprint increases

spending slightly when compared with current policies.

The Hill says:

The Murray budget does not contain net spending cuts with

the sequester turned off.

So I will say this is a serious issue. We need to understand that the sequester is law. It is not just a policy, it is in law. It is taking effect right now. The deficit reduction proposed by this bill is not $1.8 trillion but, in fact, zero.

I thank the Chair and would now recognize Senator Barrasso for 10 minutes, I believe, and Senator Alexander for 10 minutes. I thank them for their patience.

Mr. President, I think we have confusion on the time limits. I had reserved 10 minutes; I have 17 on the motion. I think there has been some confusion about it. What is the status of the time?

I ask unanimous consent for 10 minutes.

Does that include-- The PRESIDING OFFICER. But it cannot be used before 8:10.

So that time could be used after 8:10?

After the votes?

Well, my colleague Senator Hatch is here. The 8 minutes, as I understand, that exist--he wishes to speak. If he spoke, would that count against my time?

I ask unanimous consent that the vote be delayed until 8:15.

Well, reclaiming the floor, I ask unanimous consent that the vote start at 8:12, and I will be happy, and we will make it all happen. Senator Hatch can have 1 minute.

I will do my best.

I yield to Senator Hatch for 30 seconds.

Mr. President, it is good to be considering a budget again. It has been 4 years since one has been brought to the floor. It is important that we do so because the Nation has never, ever faced a more systemic debt threat to our country.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson both told us before the Budget Committee that this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. What they meant was that if we don't change course, we are going to have a crisis.

I would say one of the things that would make our economy grow better, create jobs, confidence, and productivity gains would be for this Nation to commit itself in a responsible way over a decade of effort to balance the budget. We can do that with increasing spending every year by 3.4 percent. It does not even require a net reduction in spending each year. It will be hard. It will require us to change some course because we are on a path now to increase spending 5.4 percent a year, and that is the difference in an unsustainable path and a sustainable path.

We have the budget of the majority before us, Senator Murray's budget. It is not the kind of budget we should pass. It is the kind of budget--it requires alteration, in my view, and it needs to be placed on a path to balance. I think my Democratic colleagues implicitly agree with that, because they have been talking about balance all week. We started keeping a tally on it.

Look at this chart. We made this chart not too long ago. We determined the word ``balance'' had been mentioned by the Democrats 120 times. We kept on counting and now it is up to 165 times. Maybe that indicates they believe a balanced budget is important. They say, however, that when they say balance they mean we balance deficit- reduction spending cuts with deficit-reduction tax increases, and that totals $1.9 trillion in net deficit reduction. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I hate to say that. It is unbelievable to me that in the Senate we have legislation on the floor that is being counted $1 trillion--really $2 trillion off--and fundamentally, indisputably, that is correct.

At the Budget Committee hearing last week, I asked a staffer for the Democratic majority:

Can you honestly say that under this budget you can achieve

$1.85 trillion in deficit reduction and eliminate the

sequester with only $975 billion in new taxes?

The answer: ``No.''

When I pressed him: Well, what does that mean? He said it would be $700 billion. And what he was talking about was $700 billion under current law.

The way the confusion has occurred is our colleagues are switching around in the way they compare spending cuts.

This is the true situation: Under current law--that is the Budget Control Act and the tax increases we had in January--that is current law--we are projecting to continue deficits throughout the entire 10- year period and increase interest charges by dramatic amounts, placing this country in a very serious predicament.

So what do we say about it? Mr. Elmendorf, the Director of CBO, testified a couple of weeks ago before the Budget Committee and I asked him: Under the current law that we are operating under, including the full cuts in the sequester, including the tax increases in January, were we still on an unsustainable course? He said we were.

What I want my colleagues to know with every fiber in my being is: Please know that if you take out the sequester, you increase spending. You do not have $1.9 trillion in deficit reduction. You have only $700 billion. And then if you add other gimmicks in the budget, including not scoring the doc fix, misscoring war costs, and misscoring the stimulus spending, we end up with hardly any deficit reduction at all.

We raise taxes in this budget almost $1 trillion. We have no deficit reduction because we increase spending as much as we increase taxes. So, apparently, my colleagues should know and think about this: A ``balanced'' plan that has been mentioned 165 times means we raise taxes $1 trillion and we increase spending $1 trillion, and there is no net deficit reduction in the course of this 10-year budget.

So we are asking that this budget go back to the committee and give them full authority to produce a balanced budget in any way they wish to. They can raise taxes, they can cut spending, but we are saying we have to get off the unsustainable debt course. The choice is to have a balanced budget because it will create confidence, it will create business certainty, it will electrify the world, it will help people see that we are on a sound path and not on a dangerous path that could lead to fiscal crisis.

It is so important for my colleagues to know one more thing, and that is experts have told us--Carmen Reinhart with the Reinhart-Rogoff study has told us that when debt reaches 90 percent of the value of our GDP, growth begins to decline in the country. We are now at 104 percent, and the debt factor is the gross debt of the United States is what they used in that study. This is confirmed by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements, all of which have done studies of developed nations with high debt, and they say it cuts growth. Reinhart and Rogoff says 1 to 2 percent. A 1-percent reduction in growth amounts to a million jobs. For the last 3 years, our growth has substantially

fallen below what CBO projected. I believe the debt is already pulling down our growth.

I ask my colleagues one more thing: All of us have traveled our States. We have talked to our constituents. We have answered their questions. They ask: Are you going to do anything about the budget? Are you going to balance the budget? Why aren't you bringing up a budget? Don't you, colleagues, say we should have a balanced budget? Don't you say we should be moving toward a balanced budget, at least?

Many of you--at least half of our Democratic colleagues--have said they favor a balanced budget constitutional amendment so we have this country on a right path. You validated your promises back home. You should support moving this bill back to conference and letting the chairman write a budget that balances. It would make this economy much better.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Amendments Nos. 433, 297, 432, 156, 431, 158, 202, 439, 222, and 438 En

Bloc

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to recommit.

There are a lot of problems with the country and the way we manage business. Frankly, President Bush became engaged in a war which used up so much of his time and effort. President Obama is not trained as a manager. He has never been a manager, Governor or managed a business. He has too little tough, serious management of the taxpayer's money in this country. It is time for us to get

under control the spending which goes on.

In my humble opinion, the American people are tired of sending more money to Washington just because we run out. We say it is not our fault; it is the way things are. We can't have any reduction in spending. There are people who are hurt and in pain, hungry, women, elderly, singles, and married. They need to have more money. Any change in our policy whatsoever means somebody is not getting something they are entitled to.

The truth is many of our programs serve many good people in need, but almost all those programs have serious management problems which could be run effectively and efficiently, and the program would cost substantially less without any significant diminishment of the effective aid which is rendered by that program. I believe the American people understand this absolutely and fully.

As we have done, as an amendment or idea comes forward to confront wasteful spending, somebody in this body, particularly in the Senate, always objects. They raise the specter of meanness and unkindness and that sort of thing. In truth, we all ought to identify serious problems and fix them.

For example, in our energy policy, we have had some of the most amazing failures and losses of Federal money I can imagine, beyond anything which is logical and absolutely should not have happened.

Most people have heard of the Solyndra company. They had political connections to the White House and received $528 million in Federal loans, went bankrupt and left Uncle Sam holding the bag.

There was another company, Abound Solar. It declared bankruptcy after receiving $400 million in Federal loan guarantees. Failing to deliver on the promises they made, somebody at the Department of Energy, apparently, was not checking very well. Maybe they were more interested in a press release, a big announcement, going to some solar factory and saying how we are going to create jobs, grow the economy and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into a program which sank.

Beacon Power received $43 million in Federal loan guarantees before it shut down.

Fisker, an electric car maker, is not making any cars now due to production problems. It received more than $190 million from the Department of Energy.

A123 Systems, a battery maker, also received substantial Federal loans. It is bankrupt.

The President emulates the failing energy programs of Europe. His policies were designed to promote an energy theory which is not ready economically. It is one thing to invest in research to try to create a new battery; it is another thing to try to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to a company to produce a product which is not competitive and not ready for prime time. This is the mistake we made.

Mr. Lomborg, from Europe, who wrote the book ``Cool It'' and is, in my opinion, an expert on these issues, pointed out a number of years ago in his book the best way to handle this is for the government to subsidize where it can and direct money to try to reach technological breakthroughs, but you should not mandate the people of the United States, or use any kind of program which will not work, cost a lot more money, and have little benefit on the environment.

Back in 2008, President Obama made this statement: ``Will America watch as the clean energy jobs and industry of the future flourish in countries like Spain, Japan, or Germany?''

That is what he said. We need to emulate Spain, Japan, and Germany.

Spain right now is having to cut back dramatically on its forward- leaning green mandates. They went probably further or as far as any country in Europe. It has been a total disappointment. They are reducing their subsidies. Their economy is in shambles, and they are not doing well.

The Financial Times in February of this year wrote:

The Spanish government's latest bid to cut its growing

debts to the country's energy sector is expected to slash

profits at renewable energy companies as Madrid continues to

grapple with a $37 billion deficit built up through years of

subsidies.

They continue:

Shares in Acciona, Spain's largest wind power operator,

have tumbled almost 20 percent, with Analysts expecting

Acciona's earnings per share to drop by 40 percent, while

Abengoa's EPS are forecast to drop by 12 percent.

Germany is also cutting back. According to Reuters in January of this year:

[The German energy company] RWE is delaying investments.

SIAG filed for insolvency. REpower Systems is cutting

temporary staff. All show how German Chancellor Angela

Merkel's $734 billion plan to replace nuclear reactors with

renewable sources is stalling.

Former Secretary of Treasury, under President Obama, Larry Summers said this: ``Government is a crappy venture capitalist.''

This is exactly correct. We have no business trying to pick and throw American taxpayers' money into risky ventures. We are not good at it. Spain and Germany are not good at it--governments aren't.

When it is your money and you are putting up $100 million, then you are at a point where you need to be very serious about that investment.

These are some points I wanted to make because I think the American people are tired of hearing Washington say send more money.

No, we are not going to cut spending in Washington. We can't do that in the budget which is on the floor. It does not cut spending, actually does not reduce the deficit. It increases spending, increases the deficit, and increases taxes by $1 trillion.

What did they say in the budget? We are not going to cut spending. There is nothing we can cut. The government is working. Every dollar we receive, every dollar we distribute is absolutely critical and cannot be contained. Send more money. Just send more money and don't complain, American people.

I think people are getting tired of that. They have a right to be tired of that. They should not send another dime until we are on the right path.

I see my friend Senator Enzi, and I would be pleased to yield the floor.

I would note Senator Enzi is the senior member of the Budget Committee and is a successful businessman who has a proven record in his State. He understands these issues, and he is trained as an accountant. I am sure when he sees what we do in the budget process around here, he must wonder what world we are connected to.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, we talked about a number of challenges our Nation faces and the debt course we are on. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Elmendorf, testified just a few weeks ago before our Budget Committee and declared that we remain on an unsustainable financial course even after the Budget Control Act that reduced spending and even after the tax increase in January, and that this does not get us out of the danger zone.

We have hundreds of billions of dollars in deficits every year, and he is projecting that interest on our debt in the 10th year will rise to $800 billion, which is about what the score of the Murray budget that is on the floor today would add to our debt.

Fundamentally, this budget that is before us today did not

change the debt course we are on. It does not have $2

trillion in spending reductions, and it leaves us on the same

dangerous course as Mr. Elmendorf said we are on, so we have

to get off of it.

I want to share a few things that drive home the danger we are in. Now, we have a strong economy. We have a great entrepreneurial spirit. We have a tremendous infrastructure compared to most places. We have a rule of law that helps us tremendously in terms of managerial efficiency and contracts and complex documents that can be entered into. If there is a dispute over it, you can go to a Federal or State court and have a pretty good chance of a fair decision being reached even in the most complex matters involving high finance. That is not true in most places in the world, so it gives us an advantage.

We have an educated workforce. We have a lot of people who are willing to work and hustle. So we have some advantages. We have a history of trade and freedom. But I want to show this chart, because we may not be doing as well as we think we are, and the debt that we are facing may be more serious than a lot of people will acknowledge.

This is a chart that shows the debt per person in the Eurozone compared to the United States. It is a stunning chart. Some people have explained it somewhat by saying, well, our economy in the United States is bigger than other economies in the world. Therefore, individual Americans normally make more money and, therefore, they can carry more debt. But anybody who sees this chart has to begin to understand and worry that the needle of our debt is in the red zone--the danger zone.

Look at this. This includes spending for Federal, State, and local government. These are 2012 projections of general government expenditures in nominally U.S. dollars--all converted to U.S. dollars by the International Monetary Fund. This is not the United States. This is the world's economic outlook according to the International Monetary Fund. This is the way they score our debt compared to the rest of the world in comparable U.S. dollars.

Look at this: In dollars, Spain's debt per person is $24,000. Spain is in serious financial difficulty now. Its debt has caused the interest on their debt to surge. They are paying a large amount. They have tried to bring that under control, but their unemployment is high, and the net result has been the economy is stagnating dangerously. It is a sad thing.

Italy has more, with $26,000; Portugal, $39,000 per person; Greece, $42,000 per person; but the debt per person in the United States, according to the International Monetary Fund, is $53,400--higher than all those countries.

I would say to my colleagues, we are not in a position of safety. I would say to my colleagues that this is a kind of debtload that we need not to underestimate. We might find that this economy is more unpredictable than we think.

As I said last night, I remember Alan Greenspan being before the Budget Committee in 2001 and telling us we had to worry. And the worry was that we had so much money that we would pay down all the debt in the United States and then--he worried--what we would do with the extra money when we paid the whole debt down. This is the maestro, Alan Greenspan.

I say that just to indicate that if he misses it that badly, maybe Mr. Bernanke will miss it. Actually, the Wall Street Journal documented that when Mr. Bernanke was advising Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman, about the bank mortgage situation in the mid-2000s--2003, 2004, 2005--he was advising Mr. Greenspan to keep pouring the low money out, keep encouraging banks to lend, lend, lend, and he rejected the idea we were in danger. Then, whammo, we had this horrible recession of 2007.

So I would just say this chart shows us that we need to get our house in order. The American people know that. They tell me that everywhere I go. So why won't Congress respond?

Well, the House has responded. I know my Democratic friends don't like to hear that, but this budget that Paul Ryan produced, while not a perfect document, it changes the debt course of America. It balances the budget, and we could do the same thing if we wanted to, and do it in a different way. Let's do it a different way, but we should have a balanced budget. And we don't, and there is no plan to get there--not even close.

One of the things that is happening in America today is the growth in our economy is not where it should be. This chart is a vivid indicator that the Congressional Budget Office, our top adviser, has been consistently wrong about its projections in the last several years. This is CBO forecasts 2 years before an event. OK? So in 2008, what was CBO projecting the growth rate to be in 2010?

They projected it would be 3.1 percent, but it came in at 2.4 percent. In 2009, what did they project we would have as growth in 2011? They projected we would have 4 percent growth in 2011.

We had less than half of that--1.8 percent. That is a huge difference.

Now Christina Romer, who served President Obama as his top adviser on economic matters, has estimated that the difference in 1 and 2 percent growth is 1 million jobs. So what do we have here? We have more than 2 million less jobs being created in 2011 than were projected by the experts that we relied on in 2009.

And look at this. It is even worse in 2012. They projected back in 2010 that growth in 2012--just 2 years in advance--would be at 4.4 percent, and it came in at 2.2 percent. So these 1.8 and 2.2 percent growth figures are really not growth. That is not a job-creating factor. You need to have more growth than that to create real jobs and hiring and wage improvements and raises.

So I just would ask my colleagues: What is causing that? What is causing that? Professors Rogoff and Reinhart did the fabulous book, ``This Time It's Different,'' and they did an empirical actual study of the economies of over 200 years of nations who ran up too much debt.

They studied what happened and the ones that had debt crises. What did they conclude? And not based on theory, not some ideal formula reached in academic situations, but what actually happened in these countries? What they concluded was that when the gross debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP, 90 percent of the size of the economy, then growth begins to slow. They found that the growth was slowed by 1 to 2 percent.

In 2010, the gross debt of the United States exceeded 90 percent of the economy and CBO's forecast was off. The next year, we were still way above 90 percent. In 2012, we were way above 90 percent of GDP. The debt is so high that it impacts economic growth, it would appear to me. I think this is a fact not being fully considered by CBO and it is impacting our economy, and it argues against any idea that we have no responsibility to start confronting our debt situation now.

In addition to Rogoff and Reinhart--perhaps stimulated by Rogoff and Reinhart, in the last couple of years, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements have studied these very issues because it is a big deal in Europe. Many of the countries in Europe are deeply in debt, their economies are stagnating, and they have studied this issue. And what did they conclude? They concluded basically the same thing. Every one of those studies shows that when a country reaches a high level of debt--in the range of the 90 percent--they begin to suffer economic growth reduction. One of the studies went as low as 60 percent of your GDP in debt begins to slow the economy.

They have various factors in how it is done and the studies are constructed in different ways, but the net result is that when our debt situation is applied to each of those three studies, our economy is projected to be suffering as a result of the high debt we have. So I would say those three studies validate the concerns of Rogoff and Reinhart. Those three studies indicate we are already in America suffering growth loss because of the debt we have.

As we wrestle with how to deal with our economy, I would challenge all of our Members and challenge commentators in the media to ask tough questions: Can we continue to borrow more, run up more debt, and attempt to create a stimulus effect in our economy today? How much can we do that?

The Congressional Budget Office early this year concluded in a thorough report that if we were to balance the budget and bring our debt down to the level--as Congressman Ryan proposed and as we proposed in the committee, and as I proposed in my amendment tonight--and balanced the budget, what would happen? They predict this economy in 10 years would be stronger than it is if we hadn't done that, if we used two other scenarios that had less reduction and allowed more debt to accumulate.

Did you hear that? The economy over the long term will be healthier in this country, according to our own CBO, if we get our debt under control and balance our budget. It is in their report in January of this year. We need to listen to that. The American people know you can't get something for nothing. They know you can't borrow your way out of debt. As one of my citizens in Evergreen told me several years ago at a town meeting, My daddy said you can't borrow your way out of debt. Isn't that true? That is what we have been doing. We are going to borrow somehow and create a false high, a sugar high, and that is going to fix our problems. It has proven not to be the case.

What do we need to do? We need to do the same thing responsible people all over the world do. We need to do the same thing families do, the same thing States do that are well managed--and many are very well managed--and that counties and cities do; that is, operate within our means. Let's have a budget that actually balances, and all of the other factors will come into play. Debt as a percentage of GDP and these arguments about primary debt, and debt as a percentage of the economy, that is not where we need to be.

If we balance the budget over a period of time--carefully, so it doesn't do damage to the economy--and do this in the right way, we will make this economy better, and we will have people working who are now on unemployment. We will have people working and bringing home paychecks who are now on food stamps and TANF and other welfare programs. They will have jobs and they will be able to get pay raises and they will be able to work longer hours and get some overtime, and be able to pay down the house payment or the car payment. People are hurting out there. We have fewer people working today than we did in 2000. The average wage has declined--not increased--in the last 10 years. This economy is not growing. My Democratic colleagues are correct about that. People are hurting.

So how do you fix it? Do you borrow more so we can spend more? Is the government going to lift people out of poverty by giving them more checks that we taxed more and passed out more money? Is that compassion? I don't think so.

I have worked with working people. I have worked construction. I grew up in the country. I know people who didn't have money and how they can live and take care of their families on modest means, and they were independent, with pride and self-respect. We have an award being given in North Carolina to a food stamp office employee who talked people into taking food stamps who said they didn't need them. The award was given to her for overcoming mountain pride. So is this the status of the American economy today, that we are talking people into not being independent, we encourage them to take benefits from the government when they say they don't need them? That is what they gave her the award for.

We have got food stamp promoters in foreign embassies, in the consulate offices all over. They are meeting and promoting new residents to America--legal, presumably--to get on food stamps and other benefits programs. But you are not supposed to be admitted to the United States if you are going to be a charge on the State, so we checked on that. Do you know what we found? That about two-tenths of 1 percent--not 1 percent, but two-tenths of 1 percent of the people who apply to enter the United States are turned down because they might not be financially able to support themselves. One study said at least 36 percent of lawful immigrants in our country today are on some sort of welfare benefit program.

If they have to have health care to survive and go to the hospital, they need to get it, and we want to help people who are in need. But doesn't anybody follow common sense? Doesn't anybody understand we have a reasonable law that says, If you are going to come to America, we need to know you are going to be able to take care of yourself? You shouldn't be coming to America to get on a benefit program. We are not checking. Nobody is checking. Nobody is worried.

So what will they do? They will get Uncle Sam to ask the taxpayers to send more money, and we will keep spending more. It is a bottomless pit, you know. We will just tax the rich. How about that? Because shouldn't the rich pay more because somebody immigrated to America and their income was low? And so we will just give them money.

Do you know they did the same thing, the Department of Agriculture,

with people who entered the country? They had a soap opera series of videos, and this is what they did: A lady speaks to another lady and she says something about food stamps. The other lady says, Well, my husband has a good job. I don't need food stamps. That is the first scene. The first lady says, Well, you don't understand.

After two or three of these videos, the first lady convinces the second lady that she should ask for these benefits when she said she didn't want them. She was a lady of pride and dignity. She didn't think she had to have this and wasn't asking for it. But our government overcame her resistance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was promoting this and paid money to buy these ads: Don't worry, we will ask the American people to send more money. But we won't ask you to send more, we will ask the rich to send more money.

I remember years ago George Wallace used to want to tax the power company. He always wanted to tax the power companies. I was looking at my electric bill the other day and they list your charges, and one of them is the State tax. So they taxed the power company, and the power company passes it on to the person who buys the electricity. Give me a break. A tax on the economy is a tax on the economy. It is a weak argument that you can have an unlimited amount of money by taxing the rich. At some point it becomes not correct, not fair, and not right if the money is being thrown away on Solyndras and A-123 battery companies that go bankrupt. But nobody worries about it: Send more money.

We are having abuses in the SNAP program, and I proposed an amendment that would eliminate an abusive part of the food stamp program a year ago. In 2001, we spent $20 billion a year on SNAP. Last year, we spent $80 billion. It has gone up, from 20 to 80, four times. We identified a categorical eligibility gimmick that was allowing people to get food stamps who did not qualify and should not have received them. I said, Let's close that loophole. Over 10 years we were projected to spend $800 billion on the food stamp program. This would have reduced it by 11, so we would have been spending $789 billion instead of $800 billion. And do you know what they said? Sessions wants to take food out of the mouths of babies. People are going to starve. He is uncompassionate. He is unkind. He wants to chop the budget so we can hurt people. It was voted down. And we had reports showing that this was an abusive practice that should have been fixed.

Now we want to ask the American people, Send more money. We want to tax you more. Well, what about the abuse in the food stamp program? There is no abuse. The Department of Agriculture said we have less fraud than we have ever had in history. And I used to prosecute that as a Federal prosecutor. I know there is fraud in there. We established without any doubt that their claim that they have minimal fraud is only in the computer part of the program.

Nobody is checking to see if somebody who qualified for any of these government programs later gets a job and doesn't meet the qualifications. They still are getting benefits all over the country, unless they self-report. All kinds of things such as this are going on. No one is checking to see if somebody goes into two food stamp offices, two other benefit offices of various kinds and asks for them under different names at each place and produces some sort of ID. There is all kinds of abuse in this system and I hear it all the time.

Most people who get food stamps need it, they qualify for it, and they would get it under any kind of reasonable reform that would occur. But to suggest that we aren't wasting money through practices that allow unqualified individuals to gain access to multiple programs of this kind is a mistake. It absolutely happens every day.

I tried cases to a jury of stores selling food stamps, manipulating the program, dealing with corrupt individuals who brought the food stamps in to sell because they had obtained them fraudulently and never needed the food at all. This idea that there is no fraud in this program is ludicrous. That is what the leaders of the Department of Agriculture are saying: We have no problem. It is OK. Just send us more money. We will keep expanding and growing every year--maybe double the thing again, I guess.

These are the kinds of things that I believe this budget does not address. This budget allows spending to continue at its current rate, it allows the debt to continue at its current rate. Spending goes up and taxes go up. That is what this budget does. Spending goes up and taxes go up and the deficit is not reduced.

I hope that somehow we will come to our senses, go back home, and talk to our constituents. We will listen to them when they plead with us to do something about the debt course we are on. They tell us they are disgusted with the way things are going in Washington, and we say: We cannot do anything about it. They said there is not a problem. You don't understand the challenge we face. We really have to have more money. That is what we have to have. We can't get by on the money we have been having. We have to increase the money you give us.

Do you know that if we increase spending every year 3.4 percent--and these figures are not disputed--if we increase spending each year 3.4 percent, we could balance the budget? The problem is that our spending is increasing at 5.4 percent. It is hard to believe that difference would cause as many billion dollars in debt as it does, but it does. Each year, we add hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt. In fact, the last 4 years we have averaged adding $1,100 billion to the debt each year. As those dollars are added to the debt, we pay interest on them, and interest is surging.

We are going to find, according to the CBO, on the course we are on and on the course we would stay on if this budget passes, that we would not do anything different than where we are today, which means we would be paying about $800 billion in 1 year in interest. The road bill is $40 billion, education is about $100 billion--it is going to crowd out spending for every agency in our government. For research and development--we are just going to keep raising taxes now?

When we talk about a $650 billion tax increase in January this year on the rich, that passed. That went through. That will be $65 billion a year in extra revenue. I am saying to you that the Congressional Budget Office tells us that in 10 years from now, we will be paying $800 billion a year in interest. You are not going to tax the rich out of that. It is just not going to happen.

We are at a point where the debate today and the last week in the Budget Committee has put us in a position to confront the choices we have. Forgive me if I am passionate about this. We have waited 4 years to even see a budget brought to the floor when the law of the United States of America says a budget should be brought every year to the floor and every year before the committee and the President is required to produce a budget every year. For the first time since the Budget Act has been passed, the President has not produced a budget this year. But the Senate has begun to act, so I guess we are supposed to be happy for that. And I am happy for that, but I think we would be a lot better off, the country would be a lot better off--we may be in a better position to reach some sort of compromise on some of the great issues had we been publicly wrestling with these issues for the last 4 years instead of sweeping them under the table.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I just would briefly say that I believe Senator Moran, Senator Ayotte, and maybe others have good amendments on which they are seeking to vote. I am aware that Senator Moran's amendment, I believe, has 28 cosponsors--a large number of Democratic cosponsors. Virtually no one seems to be opposed to it, but somehow a decision has been made by the majority leader to not let him have a vote.

I believe we need to understand something very fundamental in the Senate, and we are heading to a crisis on this issue; that is, a duly elected Senator who serves in this body should be able to bring up an amendment that is reasonable, that is germane, and get a vote on it. It is amazing to me that it seems to be now accepted that the majority leader picks and chooses the people who get their amendments.

I think the Moran amendment, from what I have seen and heard about it, would pass. So it is not going to pass. It is going to fail because someone, presumably the leader, has decided they will not get a vote, and it has been killed in that fashion. That is not the tradition of the Senate. I am worried about that. We cannot continue that way.

To our new Senators--Republicans and Democrats--you need to understand that as a Senator, you have a right to have votes that are legitimate on bills that are legitimately amended. That is where we are, and I am disappointed those votes have not been allowed.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I withhold my suggestion of the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank Chairman Murray for her good work. It has been 4 years since we have had a budget in the Senate. This is her first year as chair of the committee, and we have gotten a budget moved forward to the Senate floor. I congratulate her on that.

I note Senator Conrad, her predecessor, would have loved to have moved a budget forward, but the leadership somehow decided that was not the right thing to do. Indeed, they said it would be foolish to have a budget. So this is progress, and although we would have liked to have had more time in committee, Chairman Murray set up this system in a way that she was clear about, and gave us full time all day Thursday of last week to debate and make the points we believed were important, and so did our Democratic colleagues. They got to speak out. I thank her for having an open hearing and being respectful of those of us who had different views and were anxious to share them.

My colleague uses the phrase ``responsible and balanced.'' But what you have to know, I say to colleagues and

friends and Americans, is that this budget is anything but balanced. It never comes close to balancing. It never balances over the entire lifetime. It does not put us on a trajectory that would ever balance. It is not a budget that in any sense balances the amount of money coming in with the amount of money going out. It just does not. And we need to talk about that.

I think the American people want a balanced budget. I believe they asked for that. I think they expect that of us, and will be disappointed to find out that the leadership in the Senate, unlike the leadership in the House, does not produce a budget that is balanced.

Today we begin debate on the budget resolution. This is the first budget resolution on the Senate floor in 4 years, crafted by our Democratic majority. We are required to produce a budget, but over the last 4 years, in violation of plain statutory law in the United States Code that requires the passage of a budget by April 15--by April 1 it should be produced in committee, we have not acted. It has been disappointing. I have had many of my constituents say: How can they not produce a budget when the law says you should have one?

Senator Reid said it would be foolish to have a budget. That was his excuse or reason for not bringing up one--foolish to have a budget when we have the largest deficit this Nation has ever seen, and we face the greatest systemic debt threat we have ever seen.

I do not think we can have a greater symbol of an arrogance of power than the refusal to produce a budget resolution over the last 4 years. It was a decision to place--as I have said before, and I have been clear on this--political ideas and values over the American interests.

Our friends in the majority speak of their deep concern for struggling Americans. Yet year after year there has been no plan produced that will actually help them. America has never been in a more perilous fiscal condition, never needed a sound budget plan more than today. So what has changed? Why are we moving forward? The answer is a simple one. The House of Representatives passed legislation. It said: No budget, no pay. So now we have a budget. Hopefully, we would have had one anyway, but I am glad that one is moving. Our colleagues probably like to get paid.

Today we know the Senate majority resisted offering a plan for these years. The budget before us today is a bankrupt vision that will bankrupt the country. It is a jaded tax-and-spend budget that surges the Nation's debt and achieves no reduction in our annual deficits. It is a budget that never balances--never.

I think this quote sums it up well:

In short, this document gives the voters no reason to

believe that the Democrats have a viable plan for or even a

responsible public assessment of the country's long-term

fiscal predicament.

That is not my analysis but I agree with it. That comes from an editorial of the Washington Post after this budget was produced.

Senate Democrats have made no attempt to make the government leaner or more productive. Their proposal goes to extraordinary lengths to shield failing government programs from reform. Just add more money. It grows the government at the expense of growing the economy. It enriches the bureaucracy at the expense of the people. It has no plan to help discouraged workers move from dependency on the government to independence. Its surging debt and taxes will crush American workers, close American factories, and depress American wages.

I ask the American people to answer this question: Do you believe the government is wasteful; that it needs to do a better job of saving your money? If your answer to that question is yes, then consider this: The Democratic budget does not achieve a single penny in net savings. After 4 years they have failed to identify any way to save money through real reform of government spending, not a solitary cent.

So any Senator who votes for this budget apparently believes the budget is perfect and needs no reform. Any Senator who votes for this budget is saying to the American people: Washington is not the problem, you are the problem. They are saying: We have managed your money well, we have done it all right, we did nothing wrong. The problem, see, is you. You have not sent us enough money. In fact, this budget says: Send us another $1.5 trillion in more taxes. Send more money.

They also say: But don't worry, you will not have to pay those taxes. We are just closing loopholes. But closing loopholes does not come close to getting this many taxpayer dollars--it just does not. When they talk about the closing of loopholes, what that really means is it is slashing popular deductions to pay for more Washington spending-- charitable deductions, home mortgage, or other exemptions. That is where the money is in the deductions. You will not raise much money with loopholes.

Let's take a moment to look at the numbers in this budget and what it claims to do. First, I would like to examine the claim that this budget reduces the deficit by $1.85 trillion. That is a significant sum of money. It is not nearly enough to balance our budget, but it is a significant sum of money--over 10 years, the claim is. When many Americans hear this they might think it means the budget authors are proposing to reduce America's debt by $1.85 trillion. Not so.

According to their own budget tables our Nation's debt will climb another $7.3 trillion over 10 years, passing the $24 trillion in total Federal gross debt that our Nation has accumulated. It does not reduce the debt, not even close. The Nation's debt grows by $7.3 trillion.

Their promotional materials, however, claim $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction--they claim that. This claim refers to an alleged reduction in the size of the projected debt increase. So the debt is going to increase, but we are going to reduce the increased rate of the debt-- that is what we are going to do--by almost $2 trillion. But even that $1.85 trillion claim is totally false. It just is. It is a fabrication. It is not so. Several accounting tricks are used to create this number.

The biggest of these tricks is that their budget completely eliminates the savings that have been placed in law by the sequester, but it fails to count the elimination of the reduction in spending in the sequester as a spending increase. We voted 20 months ago--Congress did, August 2011--to reduce the growth of spending $2.1 trillion in order to obtain a raising of the debt limit by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. That is what it would be. And 60 percent of that $2.1 trillion-- $1.2 trillion--is the sequester. They would eliminate the sequester but not count the fact that they have increased spending of the current law that is in place, and it is not going to be changed except to be modified so it is more rational in where the cuts fall. But they would wipe it out and not count that as increasing spending.

This is how the country goes broke. This is how America confuses what it is doing--I would say deliberately--to try to convince the American people they are acting responsibly when we are acting irresponsibly.

I asked Chairman Murray's fine staff about this at the hearing. They didn't want to talk about it, I have to say. But when pressed, like good staff people do, and the question was put to them plainly, they gave an answer--the correct answer, I think.

Sessions: Relative to current law, under your plan if it is

enacted, how much deficit reduction will occur?

The staff answer:

Again, if you want to go straight to CBO baseline that we

started when I was talking to Mr. Johnson it would be about

$1.75 trillion. If you want to make the adjustments and take

out the sequester--

And of course we should--and the disaster, yes, obviously it's much less. I think the total deficit reduction is about $700 billion in the plan.

Mr. President, $1.85 trillion claimed in reduction. If you count the sequester you are at $700 billion. $1.2 from $1.9 leaves $700 billion. But there are more gimmicks than that which take us down to zero deficit reduction, really.

So I asked this question again to the staff of the majority in the committee:

Can you honestly say that under this budget you can achieve

$1.85 trillion in deficit reduction and eliminate the

sequester with only $975 billion [you claim] in new taxes?

And the answer was, ``No.''

Of course you cannot, but that is basically what they were saying. That is what they said in their promotion of this budget, that it achieves $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction. Any American

who heard that would assume it means we are going to reduce the amount of deficit being added by $1.85 trillion, relative to current law.

Once again, we have this obsession, it seems, in Congress. We are trying to maneuver numbers around so we can spend more money while claiming we are not. They claim they are reducing the growth in our debt by almost $2 trillion, but it is not so. It does not happen under this budget. If anyone wishes to know more details, we will share those as time goes by.

There are other gimmicks in this budget too. The budget fails to account for the cost of continuing the stimulus tax credits and fails to offset the doc fix, as well as the physician payment fix, which we have to do just like we do every year. It should be scored. We know we are going to have to make that expenditure.

Chairman Murray's budget, which the committee voted on and passed, only includes $75 billion to fund the war on terror for 10 years. How much did President Obama say the War on Terror, when he submitted his last budget, would cost over 10 years? He said it would cost $494 billion. So they just waltz in and say: We will spend $75 billion in the first 2 years and zero on the War on Terror over the next 10 years.

The Ambassador was in my office this week. He negotiated an agreement for a reduction of forces in Afghanistan. We are planning to be there for years. We have drone attacks going on. We have special forces around the world fighting al-Qaida, with whom we are at war, and that is what has been funding that--this account--and they assume it is going to end. It is not going to end. But if we assume it is going to end, we save, according to the President's projection, some $400 billion. They can claim to save $400 billion by assuming we are not going to spend money that we are going to spend.

So if we add up all of these items--not scoring the sequester, the doc fix, the new stimulus money, the manipulation of the war costs-- then there is zero deficit reduction. We raise $1.5 trillion in new taxes, and there is a zero-deficit reduction because spending has increased. So this budget also means there is a net spending increase above the projected growth of spending. We are on track to increase spending every year even with the Budget Control Act and the sequester--that is going up every year--but they want to spend even more than that. They want to increase the unsustainable debt course we are on now more than the current law calls for.

This budget breaks the spending limits we just signed into law with the Budget Control Act. We told the American people, who were reluctant to raise the debt ceiling--and a lot of Members of Congress were reluctant to raise the debt ceiling--because we were so irresponsible around this place. But an agreement was reached recognizing that it would be disruptive, to a significant degree, to raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion, that we would reduce spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion.

We have already run up another $2.1 trillion in debt. We already hit that. In his budget last January, the President--less than 6 months after he signed the Budget Control Act and eliminated a little bit of the growth in spending--is proposing to eliminate the sequester part of it, which is $1.2 trillion, or 60 percent.

Here are some other figures the American people should know about this budget. It has a 60-percent spending increase over 10 years, which would increase spending by over 60 percent. It has over a $162 billion increase in spending next year--another stimulus bill. There will be $7.3 trillion in new Federal debt that will be added under this budget over the next 10 years; a $1.5 trillion tax increase; an 80-percent increase in Federal welfare and means-tested poverty spending. All the poverty programs--means-tested programs--would increase 80 percent. There is no reform for those programs, but a big increase.

So the question of whether to balance the budget is one of the central features of this debate that we are having now. If the American people take nothing else away from this debate, it should be that the party running the Senate--the Democratic Party--is spending taxpayers' dollars and refusing to ever balance the Federal budget.

By contrast, the Republican-led House, with Senator Paul Ryan and his team, has a plan that they will vote on today which will balance the budget. They have passed a budget every year. Our colleagues in the Senate, while refusing to pass a budget, have delighted in complaining about the leadership and the responsible action of the House by blaming everything they can think of, and more, on unkind Paul Ryan who wants to push the old folks off the cliff, and that is not true. He has good plans; he has growth plans. What I would say to everyone is: This Senate has done nothing by being critical of everyone else. We have had several budgets come up, and I voted for several of them. My Democratic colleagues have voted for not one. They voted against the Ryan budget, they voted against the President's budget, they voted against the Toomey budget, and they voted against the Rand Paul budget. They voted against them all. Yet, they don't seem to be the least bit hesitant to attack everybody else.

I think we have a moral duty to balance the budget. It is not right to continue to spend and enjoy borrowed money today that someone else will have to repay tomorrow. We also have an economic duty to balance the budget, and I wish to talk about that. We need to balance the budget to prevent a future financial crisis, as Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson told the Budget Committee a couple of years ago. We are facing the most predictable financial crisis in our Nation's history if we don't get off this debt path. We need to act now to deal with the present danger that is occurring to our economy.

Our massive public gross debt is hurting growth today. Our economy today is being damaged by it. It is destroying jobs today. Massive Federal debt is creating poverty and joblessness right now. The debt is pulling down economic growth right now--not tomorrow, now. People are not getting jobs today because of this debt. People are not getting promotions, bonuses, and wage increases as a result of this debt that is hanging over the country.

Well, some might say: How do you prove that? The famed economists Rogoff and Reinhart testified before the Budget Committee a year or two ago. They released a paper last April that concludes when gross debt-- not public debt, which is somewhat less--the $16-plus trillion that we see on the debt clock in public--reaches 90 percent of GDP, then the economy slows between 1 percent and 2 percent. The economy begins to slow. Our gross debt is now 103 percent of GDP. Some may not be aware-- and my colleagues need to know this--that the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, and the European Central Bank have all independently done studies of this kind and reached very similar conclusions.

The other studies with different approaches all find that our current debt load in the United States--which is now almost $17 trillion--is causing a drag on our economy. A 1-percent decline in growth costs 1 million jobs, according to Christina Romer, who worked in the Obama White House as a top economic adviser.

We know that for the past 3 years, growth in America has fallen well below what our experts, the Congressional Budget Office, have predicted. These studies show our debt is hurting the economy now and that increased spending and more debt must end now. It cannot be contended any longer that it is good for America to borrow more and spend more. We cannot borrow more to spend more. Somebody compared that to taking a bucket in the deep end of the swimming pool, filling it up, and going to the shallow end and pouring it in. If truth be known, when you borrow to spend, you drop some along the way. We must grow the economy, not keep growing the government, and certainly not keep growing the debt.

I believe we all know this. I think the American people know it, and we in Congress have a responsibility to honestly confront this challenge and put our country on the right path. As we learned, we actually don't have to cut spending. All we really need to do is allow the spending to increase, but allow it to increase each year at 3.4 percent and not 5.4 percent. If we increase it at 3.4 percent, as Congressman Ryan has done in his budget, the

budget balances in 10 years. We don't have to slash spending. We can even allow spending to increase, but we have to manage the growth of it. We can do this.

The recovery we are seeing from the 2007 recession is the slowest since the end of World War II and slow growth is expected to continue. The Commerce Department reported last month that the economy barely grew in the fourth quarter of 2012. We had virtually zero growth in the fourth quarter. That was a surprise. CBO expects the U.S. economy to limp along in 2013 at about 1.4 percent after inflation is taken out. That is a muddled, slow-growth, economy well below what they were predicting 2 years ago, which was a growth of about 4.6 percent, as I recall, for 2013. So no one disputes that this is the slowest recovery since 1945.

Why is it so slow? It certainly is not because the government has spent too little of the taxpayers' money. It is certainly not because we borrowed too little and spent too little. Total Federal spending has gone up 30 percent since 2007, and our annual deficit today is 7 times greater than the annual deficit was just 5 years ago. So as a consequence of huge annual deficits, our debt has grown by 73 percent since the beginning of the recession, over which time we added $6.6 trillion in new debt.

It seems quite clear that a substantial reason our recovery is slow is because of the depressing effect of high debt, big spending, a burdensome tax code, and regulations that are unnecessary. But every time Republicans have tried to reform the government, they meet the same response from our Democratic leaders--from the President to Senator Reid to Chairman Murray--attack the reformers.

Majority Leader Reid said of one Republican reform effort that it was ``a mean-spirited bill that would cut the heart out of the recovery we have in America today . . . it goes after little children, poor little boys and girls.''

I think that is an unkind thing to say. I don't think anybody proposed any legislation that would have that effect or ability or intent to do anything like that.

Chairman Murray said:

I will not agree to a deal that throws middle-class

families under the bus . . .

Well, we are not throwing middle-class families under the bus. We want economic growth. We want prosperity. The real truth is that the debt increases borrowing, and spending has not worked. The debt is already so high and we have irresponsibly run up so much that it is pulling down the economy because it is over 100 percent of GDP. We don't need to be attacking people who disagree over solutions in harsh personal terms, but we do need people to focus honestly on the disagreements and the challenges we face.

The real victims we are seeing here today are the millions of people trapped in poverty by failed government programs. The real victims are Americans who are being denied help by those who would defend the Washington establishment at all costs and won't reform. The real victims of the left's rhetorical assaults are the communities out there that are thirsting for growth and opportunity but denied any policies that would create more jobs and actually create better and rising wages. The real victims are the millions who lost or can't get jobs, and they are out there--we have fewer working today than we had in 2000--or those who didn't get a pay raise because the debt has pulled down economic growth.

So I think this budget shows no really effective concern for Americans living in poverty, struggling to work, trapped in a stale bureaucratic welfare state. There is no reform that will actually work to help them. That is what I am concerned about.

Look at a city such as Detroit, governed by liberal policies for decades--a city once rich with business and commerce and opportunity. More than half of all Detroit children now live in poverty. Look at our Nation's Capital, another major city locally governed for decades by very liberal policies, a city filled with finance and deep-pocketed businesses. Washington, DC, is flowing with Federal funds. No city gets more from the Federal Government than Washington. Yet, despite this cash, one in three youths in our Nation's Capital lives in poverty. Two in three live in single-parent homes--two in three.

So this budget perpetuates the misguided policies that are causing social and economic harm in every State, in every region, in every part of this country. That is my view. Others may disagree, but I am prepared to defend it, and I think that empirical data and observations show it is correct. Compassion, if we care about people who are hurting, demands that we change, does it not?

We need to grow the economy, not the government, and do it for all Americans in every State and city.

We need to create rising wages and better jobs without just borrowing money and handing it out through some government check. That is not working. It is over. We need to understand that. We need an economic policy that provides our children with more jobs, not more debt. We need jobs. We don't need to be burdening our children for the rest of their lives with an unconscionable debt so we can live high today.

We need to reform and improve ineffective government programs so they help more Americans actually achieve their financial goals. How can we do this without running up the debt? Is there something we can do? Don't we have to have government investments? Don't we have to borrow more money? We don't have any. Any new money we spend is all borrowed. We are in debt. Aren't there some things we can do? Absolutely there is, and they are things that do not cost money. How about this: create a new tax reform system that creates growth, revenue-neutral but simpler, more pro growth-oriented and fairer. Can we do that? Yes.

What about more domestic American energy production? Produce more energy here instead of sending our money abroad, creating jobs here, creating tax revenue for our States, cities, and counties.

Let's make the welfare office--which gets from the Federal Government today hundreds of billions of dollars in spending--a place that restarts lives, that helps people rejoin the workforce, not trapping them in government benefit programs year after year.

Let's defend American workers from unfair foreign trade practices-- and there are a lot of them. It is time we stood up to it.

Let's make government leaner and more productive. A leaner government, a more productive government is good for America. I don't see any reform effort there.

Let's eliminate every burdensome Federal regulation that isn't needed. Those are job-killers. If a regulation promotes safety and is economically viable, that is OK, but if it is not--and many are not-- let's eliminate it. It is a drag on growth and prosperity.

Let's enforce Federal immigration laws, and let's protect American workers and legal immigrants from those who care only about importing more and more cheap labor.

Let's balance the Federal budget. As I said, balancing the budget and reducing the debt of America over time will get our debt down so it won't be a drag on the economy.

The American people have heard a lot of rhetoric from their elected officials and a lot of buzzwords about financial discipline this week. Rhetoric will be matched against reality. Every Senator will have to stand and be counted. I encourage the American people to tune in to C- SPAN and see where their Senator stands on the great issues of our time: Do we balance the Federal budget? Do we reform the bureaucracy or just keep spending more money? Do we keep sending even more money to Washington through more taxes? Do we embrace our great constitutional inheritance of freedom or do we let it slip away? These are questions of our time.

The budgets reflect where we stand on these issues. I would say the Democratic budget represents more government and less commitment to efficiency--not the kind of change and progress we need. We need to have a budget that balances, that is oriented toward growth and prosperity.

I look forward to the debate today. It will be an interesting challenge throughout the next couple of days. I have been very passionate here today, very frank here today, but I know we have great colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

In our debate in the Budget Committee, we had some great Senators on

both sides of the aisle who have different views and expressed them ably. Chairman Murray is so articulate and wonderful to work with, but we do disagree.

It is time for change in this country. It is time to understand that our goal must be to promote prosperity and job creation and higher wages, not more government. That is what the debate is about. I urge my colleagues to be engaged in it, and let's begin to change the direction of our country and put it on the road to prosperity.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to be with our colleague, Senator Stabenow, who serves on the Budget Committee.

Just briefly, and then I would yield to Senator Roberts, President Obama, on March 13 of this year, said:

And so--you know, my goal is not to chase a balanced budget

for the sake of balance.

Now, my colleagues--and we have been counting--so far have used the word ``balanced'' at least 14, maybe 15 times already. They use the word ``balance,'' but their budget comes nowhere close to balancing. It never balances. It has no potential to balance. It is focused on spending and more taxes, not balancing the budget.

Senator Reid said: We want to pay down the debt. There is no plan whatsoever to get our deficit to zero so we can begin to pay down debt.

I believe Senator Stabenow used the phrase, ``a commonsense way to balance a budget.'' There is no plan to balance the budget. Let's be honest. Those words can be said repeatedly, over and over, but I really can't hear them. What I hear is the budget document itself, and it says: I am not balanced, I will never balance, and that is a fact.

It is great to have Senator Roberts of Kansas here, and I yield to Senator Roberts.

I thank the Senator from Kansas. He is an excellent member of the Finance Committee and he is experienced on these issues. I appreciate his insight. I would like to ask him a question.

He has noted this budget never ever balances. It doesn't come close to balancing. It has no intention of balancing. But we have been counting, I say to Senator Roberts, and our Democratic colleagues who have been promoting this budget have, I said earlier, about 14 times used the word ``balanced.'' Actually, already tonight they have used the word ``balanced'' 23 times in reference to a budget that never balances and never intends to balance.

I wonder if you thought that might reflect a guilty conscience on the part of those promoting this budget?

I am glad you will not be arrested for that device on the floor.

But I think it is pretty sad that we have such a use of that word.

I thank the Senator. I note again the President said to George Stephanopoulos, live, on March 13, ``And, so--you know, my goal is not to chase--a balanced budget just for the sake of balance.''

I am also pleased the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee, senior, actually, member of the Budget Committee on the Republican side, Senator Chuck Grassley, who has been involved in these issues for many years and been a leader for many years, is with us.

I yield to Senator Grassley of Iowa.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee. That was a very fine presentation. I believe he is absolutely accurate. It is easy to say we are going to close loopholes and we are going to raise a trillion dollars-plus from closing loopholes. But the Senator just showed, based on the votes of our Democratic colleagues, and others too that it is much harder to harvest money from legitimate tax deductions and credits than a lot of people think.

Would that be fair to say?

I thank Senator Grassley so much for his insight on that.

We also have Senator Enzi here, who is a member of the Finance Committee, and is a senior member of the Budget Committee also. He understands these issues deeply.

I yield to Senator Enzi.

I thank Senator Enzi. Senator Enzi is an accountant, a businessman. I do not believe any Member of this body has traveled his State more on the ground than he in the last number of years. As a matter of fact, I will say with certainty that is so. He travels constantly, talks to people all over the State.

I just have one question of the Senator. When you talk to people in Wyoming, real people in gas stations----

I would be pleased to yield.

Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 933

So I guess the President here has said: Well, so you know my goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. But when our colleagues talk about a balanced approach and they have a budget that does not actually balance--I guess what I am saying is that the Senator talks to his constituents more than any Senator here, I am sure. Does the Senator think they really believe we should have a balanced budget, revenue equaling outgo? I ask an accountant that question.

The Senator mentioned--which it does seem to me we are doing here by this budget--if it were to pass, we don't have any plans to change what we are doing. The problem is that you haven't sent us enough money. As the Senator indicated, send us more money, and we will all be happy in Washington. That is not what my constituents are telling me they think we should do. What are yours saying?

Here is the GAO report I think the Senator referred to, the 2012 annual report: ``Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue.'' I think my constituents would say this is exactly what you should do. Do yours?

It is. It lists here on page 51 specific examples. The Senator mentioned duplication. This one is employment of people with disabilities--a very good goal. This is something we would like to see if we can facilitate and help them work. It states: ``Better coordination among 50 programs in nine Federal agencies that support employment of people with disabilities.'' There are 50 programs in 9 agencies. Does the Senator believe we could get more help for the disabled if those programs were consolidated and brought together in a single or a few programs?

That is common sense. I thank the Senator so much for his contributions. I do believe the American people have a right to say to us: You fix the duplication. You fix some of this waste. You quit throwing money at Solyndras and hot tubs in Las Vegas before you ask us for any more money.

We haven't done it.

I know fundamentally it is fair to say the Chief Executive of the United States is the person responsible for managing this bureaucracy. We are sort of like an active board of directors that monitors this.

Would the Senator not expect that a really committed President, Chief Executive of the United States, should be sending to us proposals on a regular basis that are based on reports of his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet people to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse? Wouldn't that help us if we had more support from the President's side?

If we reduce by 1 percent, one penny out of every dollar of spending for 3 years, the budget would balance in 3 years, 4 years?

I thank the Senator for sharing that and thank him for sharing his thoughts with us tonight.

I thank the Senator.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, another thing that I think is important and that we do agree on is the concept that our plan should be to create growth, jobs, and prosperity. A budget-balancing exercise must be a part of that whole vision of how we make America a better, more prosperous place. What we are learning is that we can't borrow our way to prosperity.

I will never forget being in Evergreen, AL, a few years ago at a townhall meeting when a nice African-American gentleman stood up. He said, ``My daddy always told me you can't borrow your way out of debt.''

If you think about it, that is basically what we are saying we are going to do. We are saying it is not a spending problem. This is not the problem we have. The problem we have is that we don't have enough money.

We have two solutions: One is to borrow more money, and the other is to tax more, taking money from people who otherwise would use it in the economy to invest, expand businesses and the like, or raise--increase spending or borrow the money, adding to our debt.

Debt accumulates over time. Each billion dollars, trillion dollars that is added to the debt, we pay interest on. People lend us that money. A lot of people haven't thought about it much, but we have to pay interest on it. It is projected by the budget before us today that in 10 years we will be paying $800 billion--virtually $800 billion a year in interest. Think about this. Interest on our debt will be almost $800 billion a year. Under the CBO current baseline it is a similar number. The Defense Department budget, which is actually being reduced--one of our largest--is $500 billion, Social Security is about $750 billion, and Medicare is about the same or a little smaller. It would exceed every other budget item in our budget--interest on the debt--every year.

We have been wrestling, nickeling and diming, cobbling together money for a budget for our highways--$40 billion or so we could put together and have a program that doesn't cut our highway funding. We have more efficient cars, people are not buying as much gas, and taxes aren't as much as we projected they would be a number of years ago. It is getting to be a tight budget. We spend about $40 billion--maybe a little more now--on the highway budget every year. This is maybe 1.1 percent of the total Federal Government budget.

We will be spending $800 billion on interest each year. The money we spend on interest produces us nothing. All it does is help remind us of the good old high time we had back in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, when we were spending and borrowing. We can think back: Wasn't that a great time when interest rates were unbelievably, artificially low. They will not stay at that rate; they are going up. We have had a great time, but the piper is going to demand his due as the years go by. It is just a fact.

This is how countries get in trouble. Greece and all of those countries in trouble in Europe, their debt became so high, their interest rates started going up. People were afraid to lend them money, and they wouldn't lend them more money unless there was more interest. All of a sudden, their interest payments were so large that their whole economy and governments were threatened. I think this is a big deal.

We keep hearing that spending is not the problem. I would like to talk about this a little bit because it is very important.

Nancy Pelosi, minority leader in the House, said this earlier this year: ``So

it is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem.''

We don't have a spending problem. The American people need to send us more money, I guess is what she would say. No, don't look at these duplicative programs; don't look where we are wasting money. It is important. You can't have austerity and actually cancel a worthless government program. They somehow might lose their job and the country will sink into the ocean. America will be better, our economy will be stronger, if we are leaner and more productive as a government. Surely, we can agree on that. Surely, we can't maintain, as Paul Krugman did the other day--unless he is advising the Democratic majority in the Senate--that even wasteful Defense Department spending shouldn't be cut because we want to stimulate the economy with borrowed money, throwing money at programs that are no good. That is no way to do business.

Steny Hoyer, one of the Democratic leaders in the House, says: Does the country have a spending problem? The country has a paying-for problem. We don't pay enough, Mr. Hoyer says. Mr. Hoyer says we need to pay more to Washington so Washington can keep spending.

We are not changing. It is the American people's fault. Don't you know, we are investing for you. Give us more money so we can invest. Don't you think all these programs work? Aren't they doing great? No, we are not going to reform them. We can't cut a single one--children will be thrown into the streets; old people won't have drugs for their health care. And all of this because of a modest reduction in the growth of spending?

Congressman Ryan has demonstrated, and the numbers are absolutely clear, that we can increase spending by 3.4 percent a year, and the budget will balance in 10 years. We don't even have to cut spending. We have to reduce the rate of growth in spending from around 5.4 percent to 3.4 percent and the budget balances. But President Obama says he is not interested in balancing the budget. My goal is not to chase a balanced budget, he says.

I know my colleagues have used the word ``balanced.'' I said earlier they used the word ``balanced'' tonight 14 times, but I have been corrected. It is 24 times already tonight that my colleagues have used the word ``balanced'' in relation to this budget that never balances and never will balance because they are not concerned about balancing the budget. That is not what it is about with them. They think bringing the budget into balance, as most States have to do, as all cities and counties have to do, is austerity. Oh, we can't have austerity. That might hurt the government. Somebody might lose their job. They no longer would be paid to do some worthless job that doesn't produce anything. We have to keep paying them anyway because it would be austere to cut that out.

Senator Harkin said in February: We have the richest Nation in the world. If we are so rich, why are we so broke? Is it a spending problem? No, it's because we have a misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth. If we are so rich, why are we broke, he says. Is it a spending problem? No, it is because we have a misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth.

What he means is the government hasn't taken enough wealth from the American people who worked hard and earned it, so they can distribute it around. That is what he means; that we are entitled to more of it from the economy, and we can extract more of it and then we can pass it out and we can tell all the people who get our checks how much we did for them. By the way, we ask them to vote for us while we are at it. See what I sent you? I need your vote now. By the way, these awful Republicans, they are talking about taking those checks away. You might not get all that money now, or you might get $98 instead of $100, and I am going to protect you.

So this is the politics of this thing. It is clear we have a mentality around here that is not healthy, and the mentality is that it is not a spending problem and we don't have to cut spending and the Democratic budget increases spending over the baseline we are on. It raises taxes. We will submit a document for the record that we think shows we have $1.5 trillion in tax increases in this bill. But whether it is $1.5 trillion or $1 trillion, the deal is that spending goes up, and there is virtually no alteration in the debt course of America over the next 10 years.

So why is it that it is a spending problem? Let me explain it. It actually came to me more clearly during a hearing recently where Mr. Elmendorf, who is the Director of CBO, the Congressional Budget Office--and a very smart man and a decent individual--was talking about the growth in spending and taxes and the tax increases that just occurred and that sort of thing. This is the story.

I asked him this: If we raised enough taxes to balance the budget today, and if the economy is growing at 2 percent, would the taxes grow at about 2 percent a year?

He said: Yes. They work hard to figure out what kind of tax growth it is, but taxes basically grow with the economy. As more people are working, the economy grows, and they pay more taxes. If they grow at 4 percent, the government takes in more money than if it grows at 2 percent.

But the question was, What if spending is growing at 5 percent? Even if we raise enough money today to close the $1.2 billion deficit we had last year to zero, and the economy is growing at 2 percent, and spending is growing at 5 percent, we will immediately start off on an unsustainable debt course.

So I asked him: Well, then, that is the definition of an unsustainable course, isn't it; that you are on a path to raise spending more than you are on a path to have revenue come up?

And that is where we are. We can't keep raising taxes and keep allowing our spending rate to increase beyond what the economy will sustain. This economy, this government, this America that has produced the greatest wealth, the greatest freedom, the greatest prosperity, the greatest growth, the greatest innovation the world has ever known was not built on a state-dominated economy. It is not a socialist government state; it is not a European economy. It is a growth economy. We will make a mistake that we will regret, and it will be a colossal error for the future of this country if we alter that great characteristic of this fabulous country of which we are a part.

We are a government of limited powers, a constitutionally controlled government. It does not dominate our economy. It does not dominate the people's lives. People are free, and they should be encouraged to be independent and resourceful and to take care of themselves and their families. When they have a hard time, we need to help them. We have programs that spend $750 billion a year. I kid you not.

If you cobble together all the means-tested welfare programs that go to some--well, Medicaid. Medicaid is a free program for people whose income is below a certain level. Medicaid is a means-tested welfare social program, and there are a lot of them. It is the biggest. But you put all those together and it amounts to $750 billion a year in expenses or outflow. There are at least 83 of these programs, which are not brought together. They have independence, an independent management, different and independent departments of our government. They are not coordinated.

What we need to do when a person is hurting and they have lost their job and they need food stamps and TANF and unemployment compensation and other benefits that they are entitled to, and will get--and will continue to get, at least that kind of compensation--we need to be producing a system where these programs are brought together. We need to meet with that person--perhaps a single mom who has lost her job, maybe a young person who hasn't been able to find work--and we need to use some of those monies instead of just sending aid out and a person comes in every month and signs up and gets a benefit to help that person. What kind of skills do they need? Do they need an automobile to go to work? How can we help them move from dependency to independence? How can we help them create a healthy life for themselves, their family and their future? That is where we need to focus, and we are not doing that. We are not even close to that.

The 1996 welfare reform accomplished a lot of that. The number of children in poverty dropped dramatically. They

did a lot of reform. The welfare office became an employment office in many areas of the country. It helped people move into an advanced lifestyle and away from dependency. But we have gradually drifted through the Bush years and into the Obama years to where those qualities of that program have been undermined, and President Obama is overtly advocating relaxing some of the rules that mandate work requirements for some of the people involved. He is retreating, too, and that is the wrong way to go.

We have a group of our excellent Senators--fine people--meeting in secret. Maybe they are down the hall now. I don't know where they are, but they are plotting right now on how to pass an immigration plan. We just can't wait to see what it is so we can just vote for whatever they decide we ought to have. You know what they tell us? We can't get workers. We have to have foreign workers. Yet we have never had more people on welfare, never had more people on food stamps.

In 2001 we spent $20 billion on food stamps. Last year we spent $80 billion on food stamps. It has gone up fourfold, but we are told there are not enough Americans to do work. Somehow this welfare office needs to be dealing with this problem, and we need to have a consolidated program. But there is no plan in this budget, and no plan that has been offered on the floor.

Any time anybody makes a suggestion that we make reform, they get attacked. I have been attacked. I offered an amendment when the Agriculture bill was moving last year and we were on track to spend $800 billion over 10 years on food stamps. We found there was a categorical eligibility provision that was being abused substantially, allowing people who basically did not qualify for food stamps under the program to get the food stamps. So I proposed to close it. It would have saved $10 billion. We would spend $790 billion over 10 years rather than $800 billion. And I was attacked. I was kind of shocked, really. It was said that I was trying to balance the budget on the backs of hungry people. I wasn't trying to balance the budget on hungry people, I was trying to close an abuse of the program and, actually, thankfully, would have saved $10 billion--$1 billion a year over 10 years.

So this is where we are. We have a firm resistance to reform throughout the system, and it is not a little bit of money. These 80- some-odd welfare programs--hold your hat--over the next 10 years are supposed to grow, as predicted by the Congressional Budget Office, by 80 percent--80 percent.

My fine budget staff has looked at those numbers and they have concluded if we could improve those 83 programs and let them grow at 60 percent instead of 80 percent, we could save the taxpayers $1 trillion over 10 years.

I kid you not, $1 trillion. This goes a long way toward balancing our budget and helps us in a lot of different ways. If it is done right, it will be better for the people who need help than the present 83 disjointed programs that have no coherence and no focus on helping poor people actually improve their lives.

I grew up in the country. I grew up with poor people. I was poor. We didn't have central heating. I have no doubt our income was below the poverty line most of the time I was growing up. We had a garden. My daddy had a country store. We got by. But we didn't have any money. I remember when we got our first air conditioner--and it gets hot in Alabama. We moved from one room to the other when you turned it off. You didn't want to pay for electricity you didn't need. We had a fireplace in the living room. That was the only heat we had. The fireplace burned in the winter all the time. We cut our own wood. I worked construction in the summers both summers I was going to college, saving a few bucks being a carpenter's helper and working out in the Alabama heat. It didn't hurt me. And this idea that people aren't willing to work and we have to import foreign labor and we have to give people welfare because we can't find them a job, while businesses say we don't have enough workers, is somehow a messed-up idea. This is not helping. We have got to confront this problem. There is no plan to confront this problem or talk about it in any realistic way. It is time for us to be honest about this country's problems.

We do have a spending problem. Spending is going up faster than the economy is growing, and it will always create a deficit. You can't create something out of nothing. Julie Andrews sang, ``Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.'' That is so true. So we need to have a government that is leaner, that is more productive, that does more for the American people than it is doing now for less money.

My office has been spending less than we are allocated every year. I believe this year the Senate has reduced its budget about 10 percent over the last couple of years. I am down about 20 percent. This idea that you can't cut spending throughout this government is one of the most ridiculous ideas that has ever been raised.

I was a U.S. Attorney. I managed an office of lawyers and staff. When Ronald Reagan came in and we didn't have any money, we watched every dime we spent. The former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Larry Thompson, was from Atlanta and I was U.S. Attorney in Alabama. We were such dyed-in-the-wool frugal Reagan hawks, when we were made U.S. Attorney we came to a conference and we roomed together, in separate beds, but we thought it was cheaper and saved money for the taxpayers. This is the kind of mentality that needs to get back into what we are doing, and I would say that it is time for us to confront this.

The vision of the Members of this side, and I think a lot of Members of that side, is not that far apart. But I want to be clear about a couple things. This budget needs to be put on a path to balance. It can be done without cutting spending in any dramatic way. All you have to do is reduce the rate of growth in spending. The budget will balance in 10 years. We need to do that. We need to plan to do that. As I explained before, the debt is already pulling down economic growth in America. It is pulling down the growth we have. The debt has reached such a level, 104 percent of GDP, that it is above the limit and the level that the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, the European Central Bank, and the Rogoff-Reinhart study say begins to pull down growth. We are losing jobs, we are losing promotions, we are losing pay raises as a result of this debt right now.

We share the view on both sides of the aisle that we need to be looking to create growth. Our colleagues say, Let's keep doing what we have been doing the last number of years. We have another stimulus package, we have another $100 billion, and we are going to borrow this money because we are already in debt, and to spend an additional $100 billion requires borrowing an additional $100 billion, so we are going to borrow $100 billion and we are going to spend it, and this is going to make the economy stronger. Sorry. We have been there, done that. We say no. We have got to end this mentality. We need to make this government leaner and more productive. We need to have this government do things that create growth and jobs that do not add to the debt.

What are some of those things? Simplified taxes, eliminate unnecessary regulations, more American energy. Those are the kinds of things we can do that don't cost money that create jobs. Complete the Keystone Pipeline. Don't keep sending money to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. Create jobs in America. Ask the people in North Dakota; they have got growth and prosperity as a result of energy production. These are the kinds of things we can do and we believe in and will continue to work for.

I would say that maybe, even though we have a big difference--and this budget will be quite different from the House budget--I don't say it is impossible that in conference some sort of more global agreement could be reached to put America on a sound path. We will have to deal with the entitlements. Entitlements represent half of the spending-- and, with interest, more than half of the spending. Medicare, Social Security, those are growing well above the inflation rate and their growth level needs to be contained a little bit. We can make them sound, and people can retire and know that Medicare will be there for them, it won't fail, and that Social Security

will be there for them, it won't fail. And we are going to stop adding to our debt until it reaches such a level that it could not only slow growth but could cause a financial crisis, as we had in 2007, and as they are having now in some of the European countries and that so many countries have had over the years.

We are excited to have a budget on the floor for the first time in 4 years. It does provide an opportunity for the American people--as our chair, Senator Murray, said--to compare the visions for America. It also provides an opportunity for our Members to learn about what things cost, how much you can get through tax increases, what kind of spending cuts are required, whether we have to cut or how much we can grow spending and still balance the budget. These kinds of things are learned when a bill actually goes to the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, President Obama, being interviewed on ABC by George Stephanopoulos, not only said ``my goal is not to chase-- a balanced budget'' but he also said, ``we don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,'' and ``in fact, for the next 10 years, it's gonna be in a sustainable place.''

I would say two things about that. He appointed Mr. Erskine Bowles to be chairman of the fiscal commission. They spent quite a lot of time working on this debt question. They took testimony from experts, they examined documents, and they did what a good, public, spirited group would do. Mr. Bowles was Chief of Staff for President Clinton and a very successful businessman. Alan Simpson, his Cochair, was a former Republican Senator from Wyoming.

That is not what they told us. In the committee, 2 years ago, in the Budget Committee--maybe a little over 2 years now--they gave a joint statement in which they said this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis.

What they were saying was the level of debt we are operating on, the unsustainability of the debt path, was so great that we will have some sort of fiscal crisis.

I remember about that same time, the Chairman of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke, testified that we have all these outyears and we talk about the debt numbers and all that, but we don't have to worry about them. I am paraphrasing, but this was pretty close to what he said. I think these were his exact words: But it will never happen.

What he basically told us was there would be a fiscal crisis before we get this far down the road--the demographics, the aging population, fewer workers, greater debt every year--mushrooming in the outyears.

I am troubled the President thinks that as a matter of fact, the next 10 years is going to be in a sustainable place. I don't believe he knows that. I will tell my colleagues a couple reasons why. Senator Stabenow had a chart about how great the economy or the fiscal situation of the country looked about the time President Bush took office. The last month of President Clinton's term in office was negative growth. I think that was the first month of negative growth in maybe 8 years. In fact, when President Clinton took office, he didn't inherit a recession, regardless of what the myth is around here. Former President Bush did have a recession in his second year or so of his term and he took action and the economy bounced back. About the time President Clinton took office, the economy was growing and it continued to grow through the decade. We don't know all the forces. We talk about it. We play politics about it. But nobody knows precisely what moves an economy, whether it was something 10 years ago or something 10 months ago that caused the difficulty. We make guesses and we do our best judgment.

So here we go. In early 2000, I am on the Budget Committee and Mr. Greenspan testified--the maestro, the guru, the Federal Reserve Chairman, the greatest we had ever had; the economy had long years of growth. He told the committee we are going to have surpluses as far as the eye can see. He discussed with the Budget Committee what would happen when we had all these surpluses and we would pay down the entire debt of the United States of America. Then he asked us what we would do. What is the Federal Government going to do with the extra money? Are they going to buy the bonds of Venezuela? Does it buy British bonds? What does it do with its money? Does it buy property? This was the mindset in early 2000, and he was the Federal Reserve Chairman. Didn't he see the demographics? Didn't he recognize--there was a little caution in his statement, but he was very positive.

I went back and read it again recently, because it teaches me that this man, at the peak of his powers--one of the greatest economic minds in history; at least it was so felt at that time--completely missed it, I have to tell my colleagues. He didn't think we had a problem in the future with debt. He didn't say by 2009 we are going to be running trillion-dollar deficits, right? So this makes me a bit humble about our ability to predict.

Mr. Bowles said we are on a path to a debt crisis. That is what he told us in the committee. I believe Chairman Conrad or ranking member Judd Gregg asked him: When?

He said: I think about 2 years.

Two years came and we didn't have a debt crisis. So now the President of the United States is saying we can continue for 10 years, no problem, no worries. I am happy. You are happy. We don't have to cut spending. We need to keep borrowing. We need to keep running up debt because we absolutely don't want to have austerity. We don't want to have austerity. We want to be happy and spend. So that is the deal.

I am telling my colleagues, nobody knows. It can happen just that quick. Kent Conrad told me--we were standing right over there--he said the rate we are heading is coming off that wall like a rubber ball at warp speed. He was on the debt commission, the fiscal commission. He was worried about the fact of our unsustainability on the debt course.

Things look good. The Sun is shining out there today. We don't want to talk about that. Who wants to be negative? Who wants to be Dr. Doom? Do my colleagues remember Dr. Doom or Nouriel Roubini, who said: We were going to have a debt crisis in 2005 or 2006. I am not sure when he predicted that. He said: The banks are borrowing too much money. It is unsustainable. We are going to have a crisis.

Months went by and we didn't have a crisis. One year went by, we didn't have a crisis. They mocked him. They called him Dr. Gloom. After 2007, when the bottom fell out and we had the worst recession since World War II, the reasons it happened were just what Mr. Roubini said. People said: Dr. Gloom wasn't so wrong after all. Maybe we should have listened to him.

I am just telling my colleagues, I believe we have a responsibility as men and women of public service, managing the finances of the United States of America, and we have a President who is in denial.

I think it is time for this Congress to assert itself and say we are not going to risk this country. I believe our debt is already too high. I believe it without a doubt. It is a fact. The Rogoff and Reinhart study was based on public debt, and our public debt is now over 100 percent of GDP. It is greater than the entire economy. That means we pull down and we place our country at risk because we are slowing growth, as I indicated earlier.

But this is what Secretary Geithner said in 2011 before the Budget Committee. I asked him what did he think about the Rogoff and Reinhart study, because it was troubling to the committee. Everybody on the committee knew about it. The fiscal commission people had consulted about it. We had Carmen Reinhart testify before the committee and then again a little later. So I asked him about it. This was his answer to my question to him, as I recall:

It's an excellent study. And you could say in some ways

what you summarize from it, understates the risks, because

it's not just that governments or countries that live with

very high debt-to-GDP ratios are consigned to weaker growth.

As I have been contending throughout the day--

They're consigned to the damage that comes from periodic

financial crises as well.

February 17, 2011, Secretary Geithner, President Obama's own Secretary.

So he was warning us that when the debt gets this high, we are in a danger zone.

We know there are some countries that have more difficult problems than we. There was an article recently from the CATO Institute talking about some of the countries in the world. Japan is one of the most dangerous. What if the third, fourth largest economy in the world, Japan--one of our key trading partners--was to have an economic collapse such as Greece? Do my colleagues think it can't happen? I don't think it can't happen. I don't know. They are running way too high a debt-to-GDP ratio. Their population is aging even more quickly than ours.

Then we have France and Spain and Italy. Any one of those countries had an economy so large they can't be bailed out like Greece. What would happen if Europe were to go into turmoil? I am not predicting that to happen, but I am telling my colleagues we are on a path where I don't believe any responsible person can say it couldn't happen to us, and we could be embroiled in this too. The worst thing that could happen to us is we have to face a fiscal crisis where we get our debt under control at a time when the country is in a recession as a result of financial mismanagement. It would make it be an utter nightmare. As many experts have said, we have shifted a lot of debt from the private sector to the government. The government picked up liabilities it had no business picking up and the result is it has increased its debt substantially.

I am very concerned that we not treat this lightly. I am very unhappy the President of the United States who, to my knowledge, never had an economics course in his entire life--a community organizer--is going on national television when the needle of our debt is in the red zone, by any estimation, and he blithely says: We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it is going to be in a sustainable place.

I don't believe he is correct to say that. I have not heard any economists say that with full authority, certainly not a lot of them, and I am worried about where we are.

There is another chart I wanted to show about the question of taxes. This is a chart that I saw in Barron's magazine just a few weeks ago. Gene Epstein did this chart. On the cover of Barron's was a picture of the President, having made his State of the Union Address, and the caption on the front of the newspaper was ``The way to Greece'' or something like that, and it was a very serious analysis of the deep, systemic debt problems this Nation has, and a plea for us to act, to move forward and avoid the risks we are now undertaking.

One part of what they did was to actually analyze what we could do with more taxes, particularly taxes on upper income people, and they ran the numbers. I believe this is an accurate run of the numbers. On the left side, it has the public debt as a percentage of the GDP and on the right at the bottom are the years over time. Mr. Epstein ran it based on increasing taxes and increasing taxes a lot.

His first run was the purple line, how much the debt would go up; how much the debt would go up if the current tax rate stayed in effect. This is the purple line. It grows a little faster than the green line and the red line. It grows a little faster because the taxes are a little lower than his next two estimates.

Then he estimated for the wealthy people who were raised from 35 to 40 percent, what if they were raised to 50 percent? In Alabama, it is about average. We have a 5-percent income tax in our State. So for the wealthy, making it 50 percent, plus paying 5 percent to the State, he is paying a pretty big chunk of his money right off the top. But let's assume it went up there. It has almost no impact on the debt course of America according to the Barron's analysis.

The third one, the red one is based on raising the tax rate of upper income people to 50 percent and then rolling back all the tax cuts President Bush had for the lower income people, the middle-class people who got substantial reductions in their rates and we have been operating that for about 13 years now and we made those permanent.

President Bush was attacked for having tax cuts, but I am pleased to see my Democratic colleagues are joining with the Republicans to make 99 percent of those tax rates permanent. It must not have been so evil if everybody overwhelmingly voted to make them permanent. So if we raised all those rates and had a 50-percent tax increase on the wealthy, we still hadn't changed the debt course of America.

What does that say? It says the debt problem in America is a spending problem, and a big part of that spending problem is the huge mandatory programs we have.

I am a lawyer. What is a mandatory program? It means when you reach 66, 67, you walk in and ask for your Social Security check and they have to pay you whether there is any money in the bank or not, whether the government has any money or not. The government has to borrow the money and pay your check because you are entitled to it as a matter of law at a certain age you qualify. Many of our entitlement programs are based on income. If your income is below a certain level, you are entitled to the money whether Uncle Sam has it or not, and that is based on law. That is based on legislation Congress passed that entitled people under certain circumstances to obtain Federal money and get it as a matter of entitlement.

When those programs are surging at 6 percent a year--Medicaid, the poor person's insurance program is projected to grow 8 percent a year over the next decade, 117 percent over the next 10 years--when those programs are growing at that rate and the economy is growing at 2 percent, you have a problem. You do not have to go to the Harvard Business School to know that. You really do not have to go to Harvard to know that.

When I talk to the American people, they understand it fully. They expect that we are going to have to make tough choices in this country to get the country on the right path, and they are girding themselves to support such tough choices, but they want them fair. They are willing to tighten their belt, but they do not want somebody who never works and lays around and watches TV all day, the soap operas, to have an advantage over people who are out working hard every day. But, anyway, people are prepared for that. The good news is, that as the economy grows, we do not have to cut spending, we just have to reduce the rate of growth in spending. This is not a myth I am talking about. This is absolute fact. You can spend more. This government can spend more every year. We can spend more at the rate of 3.4 percent, instead of increasing it at 5.4 percent, and the budget balances over 10 years. How much better is that? Most people think we have to have cuts across the board.

Now some programs are going to have to be cut. And let's be frank. What is the real challenge for us? Social Security and Medicare are great programs that our seniors depend on, and can grow steadily, can grow more than 3.4 percent, really. But those programs have a double problem. Not only do we want to see a cost of living occur for our seniors, but we have more seniors on the program every year. So this makes the numbers harder to deal with.

So you can say: Well, Social Security is just going to grow 4 percent instead of 5.5 percent and people will not lose much money. They will get a $4 increase instead of a $5.5 increase. No, no, it is more complicated than that because since you have more people on Social Security and Medicare, because of the age of the population that we have, it will be a larger impact than that--not disastrous, sustainable.

And we can do other things. We can say: Well, we want to work a little longer. We want to change the rate of the increase, the inflation index that most experts tell us should be altered under a new system that would save some money on the inflation index. So that is the kind of thing people have been talking about. The Gang of 6 talked about it. The President talked about it. Vice President Biden talked about it. The debt commission talked about it. The gang, the 12 people, in the

Budget Control Act, tried to talk about a serious alteration of our spending path in which we fix Social Security and put it on a sound path, we fix Medicare and put it on a sound path, and we fix the entire budget of the United States in a way that is sustainable.

I would say people I talk to in the business community, people I talk to who testify before the committee, experts and just common people, tell me repeatedly: If you guys put this country on a sound path, so we knew we could see what the future is, we could plan for the future, and we would know our finances are getting better and moving to a balanced budget instead of getting worse. We believe people would not lose money, they would spend more money. We would have more growth. More people would be working and not drawing welfare and unemployment insurance, and the budget of the United States would start improving right there because more people would pay taxes and fewer people would need help from the government.

That is the spiral we need to be on. We are now still muddling through with exceedingly low growth, and they are still predicting low inflation. So you consider Social Security, maybe increasing it 6 percent a year, and inflation is just 2 percent. The Congressional Budget Office is predicting that inflation will be 2.2 percent, I think, a year, equaling almost 25 percent over 10 years. That is how much inflation will add over 10 years. Who knows? But we have kept low rates longer than anybody thought. The economy is not moving. If the economy actually jumped 4 percent or 5 percent growth for 2 or 3 years, you probably would have a jump in inflation. Obviously, CBO is not expecting that. They are expecting only slow growth over the next 10 years, and I think that is consistent with the consensus of independent analysts. So I wanted to share that thought.

The question before the House is--and all our colleagues need to confront it honestly--is this budget the kind of budget that puts America on a sound path? Is it what we need to do at this moment in history to change the debt course of America, to create confidence, to create the kind of growth that will increase that 2-percent growth, to get it to 3, 3.5, 4 percent?

Just 2 years ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected growth for 2013--the year we are in--would be 4.6 percent. The year before that, they predicted, last year, 2012, that we would have over 3 percent, 3.6 percent, something like that, growth. We have fallen way below that both years. I think the reason is the debt is pulling down growth, at least that is part of the reason. But regardless, the truth is, we are having to adjust ourselves to what Bill Gross at PIMCO, the largest bond group in the world, would call a new normal. The new normal is, we are not likely to see 5, 6-percent growth even in really great times in the next 10 or 15 years--maybe the next 20 or 30 years. We are just not likely to, for a lot of reasons. Of course, nobody knows. Mr. Greenspan thought we were going to have surpluses, and we did not. And we could have growth we are not expecting. Nobody knows. But we just have to make the best judgment we have, and the best judgment we have is that we are not on a sound path.

So we are responsible leaders, and we have to ask ourselves, is the budget here going to do the right thing? We must remember and can never forget who will suffer the most if we have a fiscal crisis. Won't it be the poor? Won't it be the people in the most fragile working environments? Won't it be the people with less skills? Won't they be the ones who would suffer the most? Don't we have an obligation as a Senate to reach out to the House and say: We get it. This is dangerous. We do not know for sure where we are going. But we know. Shame on us if we allow decent, hard-working people--struggling to get by right now-- to get hammered by another fiscal crisis that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson virtually guaranteed was on the way?

I think we have a duty. I think we have a responsibility. I think when the American people find out it is not going to take massive slashing of spending, as our colleagues say--a lot of the programs can be more efficient than they have ever been, and we get just as much benefit, even if they do not get as much money. There has not been any reform, any management improvements in this government in decades.

I will just say politically, I thought that was the greatest offer Governor Romney had. He was a very good manager. In my opinion, we have had enough speechmakers, we have had enough war Presidents, we have had enough grand and glorious stuff. We need somebody to run this government, like the Presiding Officer ran the State of Virginia. It takes hard work, and you have to stay on top of it. It would have been great for us to have had a real top management, so that every Cabinet person, when they are hired, understands they have a duty to produce more for less for the American people, and every subcabinet and subcabinet and subcabinet person, and every department head gets the message, from top leadership on down: You are expected--as Larry Thompson and I did--to share a hotel room if need be to save running up debt in the U.S. Government.

This budget does not do it. I think we quoted earlier what the Washington Post said on March 15:

In short, this [budget] document gives voters no reason to

believe that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a

responsible public assessment of--the country's long-term

fiscal predicament.

That is a serious condemnation.

What about USA Today, I guess maybe the widest read publication of its kind in the country? A USA Today editorial:

The plan produced by the Senate Budget Committee Chairman

Patty Murray . . . is a disappointing document. It is a

namby-pamby plan that underwhelms at every turn. The Murray

budget neither balances the budget nor reins in entitlements

. . . the nation would be helped if Democrats were to embrace

Ryan's goal of a balanced budget.

That is USA Today. They are not a rightwing publication, but they have written some good material on the budget. So has the Washington Post. Both of those have covered the budget situation more than most publications--both of them--and they have been trying to say to the Congress and to the President: You guys need to get together and do something. So both these editorials reflect a very informed judgment by two independent publications of national repute that the Senate--which they have been watching--has failed to produce a budget that puts the country on a sound path. I just have to tell you, I think they are totally correct. I wish it were not so.

Investor's Business Daily:

[An] IBD review of the budget data shows that the Senate

vastly overstates the size of its spending cuts.

Boy, that is correct. They vastly overstate how much spending is cut in this bill. It goes on to say:

In fact, it could be that the Senate [budget] would, if

enacted, increase federal spending by hundreds of billions of

dollars.

Was Investor's Business Daily correct? Yes. Spending increases under this budget. Spending is not decreased at all under this budget, although we are told that it does. And we are told 20-some-odd times it is a balanced plan. They even go so far as to say it is a balanced budget. They have said it is a balanced plan so much, they started saying it is a balanced budget. It is nothing nowhere close to being a balanced budget. What they mean by ``balanced'' is, they promised that there will be $1 trillion in tax increases and $1 trillion in spending reductions. And it increases spending. Give me a break. There is not a one-to-one. It increases spending. There is no cut in spending off the current law we are now on.

They tried to claim credit for the Budget Control Act almost 2 years ago. President Obama resisted that. You remember how he just threatened the whole government was going to sink into the ocean? Why? Because we would not raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans said: We have to have some cuts, Mr. President. We have to do something about the debt course. We cannot continue. We are not going to allow you to continue running with the credit card of the people of America if you do not show that you are changing your habits and you are containing some of your lust to spend.

So, finally, an agreement. He hated it worse than anything. Finally, an agreement was done. He signed it. I agree if you will raise my debt ceiling right now, for $2.1 trillion, I promise in

the future that I will cut spending $2.1 trillion. Over 10 years. If you let me do it over 10 years, OK, I will sign it. But I have to have my debt ceiling now.

Less than 2 years later we have already increased the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. We are right up there again having to raise the debt ceiling again. It will be a matter of weeks that this has to be confronted again. Well, what about the spending cuts?

Before the ink was dry on that agreement signed by the President himself--I have the document right here. In blue ink, ``Barack Obama'' right there, agree to cut $2.1 trillion in spending over 10 years. This was not a big cut. If spending were flat for 10 years, we would have spent $37 trillion. As I recall, if under the baseline then in effect we were expected to grow to $49 trillion over 10 years--$49 trillion. This would have reduced it to $47 trillion.

So we reduced the growth of spending from $37 trillion to $47 trillion instead of $49 trillion. You would have thought we were throwing the sink in the country into the ocean. But in January, 6 months later, he proposes a budget which wipes out 60 percent of that agreement, those savings. So I am just going to tell you the way I felt. I have talked to my Republican colleagues. You know, we all--none of us are perfect. Sometimes we make improvident promises. We cannot just fulfill them. We cannot honor them. I try not to do that, but I have done it. Any person who is honest knows they have had to face those choices. But I am not voting to change the sequester. I am prepared to change it, and I support totally the spreading out of the cuts. They are too much on the Defense Department. I can explain how much it hammers the Defense Department. It is not acceptable.

But I am going to tell you, I told the American people that the Congress of the United States agreed to cut $2.1 trillion in exchange for raising the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. And 6 months later, I am not changing; 18 months later, I am not changing. If we give up on that, we have no credibility whatsoever. The American people should never trust this Congress again. They ought to vote all of us out of office.

That was a solemn promise made before the whole world that we would sustain these cuts. President Obama has not stopped trying to eliminate them. This budget does just that. It eliminates 60 percent of the Budget Control Act cuts. It eliminates the sequester entirely. It is absolutely unacceptable. It will not happen. I do not know why anybody would want to vote for the budget. A vote for this budget is a vote to go back on a promise that was made in August 2011 to act a little bit responsibly when the debt ceiling of the country was raised.

The Wall Street Journal, March 15, right after the budget comes out. They have been very critical. This is just one of them. Well, first, Politico, March 17. A Washington beltway publication, Politico--they like to dig up stuff. This is what they said, ``To win over her caucus, Murray begins from the left of Obama himself.''

Apparently, Politico's conclusion is that the budget that came through committee was driven by people to the left of President Obama. I know this: Last year the chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent Conrad, was prepared to bring a budget to the floor. My staff and I spent weeks preparing for the markup. They met in a Democratic conference. Some of the more liberal members hollered they could not accept Kent Conrad's budget, the Democratic budget he was going to set forth. So they, basically, refused to let him mark up a budget in the Budget Committee and refused to bring it to the floor of the Senate even though U.S. law called for the Budget Committee to have hearings and called for a bill to be brought to the floor. They just refused to do it in violation of plain law.

So the Wall Street Journal said: The bill manages the unique achievement of offering no net nondefense spending cuts and no entitlement reform worth the name, while proposing to raise $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue in such a way that would ruin the prospects for bipartisan tax reform.

Let me stop right there. Our colleagues keep saying we are going to close loopholes and we are going to raise revenue and nobody is going to have to pay more. Well, these loopholes, as Senator Grassley showed us from the Finance Committee chart, these are real serious deductions. They are programs that are deeply entrenched, and many of them our Democratic colleagues have protected and expanded with great tenacity. They will never vote to give them up probably unless some epiphany occurs around here. So how are we going to get tax reform?

Last week at the Budget Committee hearing the chief Democratic witness testified that he believes the corporate tax rate in America was unacceptably high, that we now have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, and that 35 percent is not acceptable. He said it needs to be the mid-twenties. This is not the Republican witness, but the Republican witness agreed with him. Most Republicans agreed with this approach. Many of the Democrats did.

So he said: You close loopholes on corporations, make the tax simpler, more growth oriented, you can bring the tax rate down to 25 percent without in any way losing revenue. You can make it revenue neutral. So that was an interesting thing.

I asked him as a followup: But if you close the loopholes on corporations, if you close the loopholes on corporations and raise revenue, do you not need that money so you can reduce the rate from 35 to 25?

He said: Yes. All of it should be dedicated to rate reduction. We have Senator Ron Wyden, a Democratic Senator, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, all believe this needs to be done.

A lot of work has been done on this for several years. The President has even indicated that this is the kind of approach that is worthwhile. But our colleagues, claiming they are going to close loopholes, do not save the money for tax reduction. They want to take the new revenue raised from closing loopholes and spend it. Then it is not available for the bipartisan tax reform to which the Wall Street Journal made a reference.

That is when I asked the witness: Do you not have to save this money to reduce rates at the end of the year?

He said: Yes, you have to save these loopholes, these deductions-- really most of them are perfectly legitimate deductions that businesses use. But they are going to take them away from them, in effect raising the amount of taxes they pay. But they were going to bring the rates down.

That is the bipartisan plan that was in the works for a long time. Mr. Kleinbard is our witness. This is what he said: Corporate income tax statutory rate of 35 percent is today far outside world norms. The rate needs to come down. I, therefore, conceive of corporate tax reform as a roughly revenue-neutral undertaking in which the corporate tax base will be broadened through closing business tax expenditures and loopholes and the resulting revenues used to pay down the corporate rate.

That was March 5 in our committee. I know a lot of Senators, Democrats on the committee, agreed with that. If we look at the budget, the new revenue obtained from closing loopholes, really closing deductions and some tax expenditures--liberals have started calling deductions tax expenditures. So if you have a charitable deduction or you have an interest deduction or you have some sort of depreciation as a business, those are not deductions anymore. They have become tax expenditures. So it is like the United States Government is mad at you because you did not send enough money.

But the truth is, it is the corporate person's money or the corporation's money or the private individual's money. When you eliminate his deductions, you make him or her pay more taxes. So Mr. Kleinbard was crystal clear. This is what the bipartisan discussions have been. The Wall Street Journal is exactly right. If you spend that money that you raised from closing loopholes, expenditures, and deductions, you do not have it to reduce rates. You cannot fix the tax reform.

The Wall Street Journal goes on to say:

As a statement of governing principles, the Senate

Democratic budget shows that if they get the chance, they

would govern like they did in 2009 and 2010. Much higher

taxes to fund much higher spending to finance a much bigger

government. It is the status quo only more so.

I have to say, I think that is correct. Hard for me to understand how anybody can dispute that. Next. I have

been saying--I have not heard much pushback--that the sequester elimination which allows the expenditure of $1.2 trillion more than we are presently on a path to extend, that this elimination of the sequester was not scored in the Democratic budget.

When I asked the staff members, he said: Well, you know, we never did intend to make that permanent. It was always temporary. Then he said: Well, we got billions of dollars in Paul Ryan's budgets over here.

I said: No, no. I am talking about this budget. You claim you are not scoring, as an increase in spending, $1.2 trillion, which you allowed to occur by eliminating the reduction in spending required in current law that is part of the law of the United States today and will not be changed?

This is baloney. Surely, Congress will never change this. Surely, we will not go back on the promise we made in 2011 when we raised the debt ceiling. But, anyway, this is what the Associated Press said about it: Because the Democrats want to restore $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over the same period, cuts imposed by Washington's failure to reach a broader budget pact--the committee did not reach an agreement, so these automatic cuts occurred--Murray's blueprint increases spending slightly when compared with current policy.

So you take the $1.2 trillion there, and you have tax increases over here, but the increases in spending are greater than the taxes. They conclude that it increases spending overall, increases spending overall.

The chairman, and probably the Budget Committee Members who support this, want to assert somehow this is a one-for-one budget, a balanced plan, a balanced budget amendment. You have $1 trillion in tax increases and $1 trillion in spending cuts, but they are not there.

This chart is a very important chart on the subject I am talking about. It is, I believe, pretty much not disputable. I don't like to raise this, but I am not going to take it.

Mr. Lew came before our committee, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and he said our budget will not add to the debt, spends only money we have and puts us on a path to pay down the deficit.

I asked Mr. Lew--he said it on national television, CNN with Candy Crowley. He said it with other networks too when he announced his budget. Three days later, he was at the Budget Committee. I asked him was that accurate. He said it was accurate.

It absolutely was not accurate. His budget never produced a single year in which the deficit fell below $600 billion. Yet he told the American people squarely in the eye his budget would stop adding to the debt, spend only money we have, and allow us to pay down the debt.

This is one of the greatest misrepresentations in history. We are never going to have bipartisan agreement in this Congress until we learn to be honest about numbers. This budget is not honest about numbers, I need to tell you.

They claim a big savings and big reduction in spending and totally overlook this. Where is the deficit? They claim they reduce the deficit by $ 1.85 trillion, $1.850 billion. Let's look at that number. What about the sequester I have been talking about? They eliminate sequester and spending goes up $1.223 trillion.

Was this scored in their number? No. They tell us we have 1.85, and we have to take off 1.2 because they didn't score the obvious increase in spending that their budget plan for the next 10 years includes. Take that off. We have looked at it more carefully. It took us a while to find this and took a while to get these in the budget numbers, but we have a good staff.

They found out, unlike what we thought at first, there was no pay-for for the doctors. For the last number of years, we found the payment schedule for doctors is totally inadequate based on a law passed in the nineties which has cut their payment to a degree that if we cut them another 20-some-odd percent, they would quit taking patients. They couldn't operate.

We put the money in every year because we need to put the money in or else they will not treat our patients. They can't afford to. Everybody, Republicans and Democrats, we hate it. We wish it weren't so, but it is every year we need to confront this thing which should have long been made a permanent fix. Every year it hasn't been, so every year we need to find the money.

We also found the 2009 stimulus extension in the bill which continued more borrowing and spending for a stimulus was not accounted for. You add those, and there is another $348 billion which ought to be scored. It leaves us with a subtotal of $279 billion. That sounds nice, but that is not correct.

Where are we next? Is there anything in this budget we have found that is not sound, gimmicky, which misrepresents the facts? Yes, there is, a big one. That is the war spending.

President Obama has long been very late in producing his budget. It should have been here in the Senate February 4, and it still hasn't been produced. It is one of the oddest things I have ever seen. He basically punted to the Congress and refused to lay out the budget the law requires him to submit. He violates it all the time.

People ask me all the time, why does the President not follow the law? It is a very bad thing. He should follow the law. He sets a bad example. Children around this country, adults around this country, when they find out the President ignores law, the Senate ignores law, it is not good for America. We are a nation of laws.

The President, the last budget he sent, last January of 1 year ago, he laid out what he projected the costs would be for the war on terror. He is bringing those costs down dramatically, some say too fast, some say not fast enough, but they are coming down dramatically. He projects, however, we are still going to have military efforts against our enemy with whom we are at war, al-Qaida, for the next 10 years.

That costs money. He projected the cost over 10 years for the war on terror would be $467 billion. I think that is pretty close to accurate. You could give or take a little bit, but apparently we are not stopping drone attacks.

I just met with our Ambassador who is negotiating an agreement with Afghanistan. We are projecting to have troops over there for a long time. More and more are in the support role, but it is an expense to maintain the war against terror.

We are free to attack al-Qaida wherever they are. We have people in Iraq, Yemen, Mali, and different places throughout the world where our interests have been threatened, and that costs money.

What did our good friends on the Senate Budget Committee do? They needed more money in savings. They wanted to say they cut spending. They came up with a clever idea; we will just cut all the war spending and pretend we will not spend it. That is it. OK. We will just pretend we are not going to spend that much.

One year from that, the total amount they say we are going to spend over 10 years is not $467 billion, it is 75. The last 8 years will be zero, so we spend 75 over 2 years, and we will not spend any more money. There will be peace in the world, we will not have to chase al- Qaida, we will not need drones, troops, and special forces operating around the world. We will be completely out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Won't that be great? Let's just play it that way.

I have to tell you, they know that is not going to happen. Even President Obama is projecting substantial reductions.

If you take that down, what we find is the budget doesn't reduce the deficit at all. The budget increases the deficit based on the course we are on today, apples to apples, oranges to oranges.

We are not playing around with different baselines to gimmick it up. This is the right way to analyze the situation.

I just have to say, the American people need to know the budget before us does not do what it says it will do. Even what it says it will do is insufficient, but it doesn't come close to doing what it says, and it is not close to doing what is needed. It will never balance the budget, not in 10 years, not in any time. It makes no changes, none, to the deeply troubling surging growth of our entitlement programs, welfare programs, of Medicaid; the 83 means- tested welfare programs which are expected to grow 80 percent over the next 10 years, there are no changes.

There is no reform there we believe in. I am disappointed. Presumably, we

may see it pass out of the Senate on a party-line vote, go to the House, and we will see what happens in conference. Could anything come out of conference? It is possible. I am not overconfident, particularly if we can't get Members of the Senate to lay out good numbers.

How can we negotiate with a person such as Paul Ryan, who absolutely knows what is up and what is down? There is not a person in America who knows the numbers better than Paul Ryan.

He has integrity. He works hard. He has dedicated himself to mastering this subject. He has mastered it, and he has laid out a plan. I am not saying I agree with everything in his plan. It is not before us. He has laid out a plan. He is prepared to negotiate, to discuss with people who are willing to discuss how to reach some compromise and some consensus on some of the things we need to do. It is very hard to do that if you are putting up bogus numbers such as this.

What about The Hill, another one of the inside Washington publications. On March 13, The Hill reported:

Murray argues that her budget cuts $1.85 trillion from

deficits over 10 years. But once the sequester cuts are

turned off, Murray's budget appears to reduce deficits by

about $800 billion, using the Congressional Budget Office's

baseline. The Murray budget does not contain net spending

cuts with the sequester turned off.

We score here about 700 after you take that--645. They estimated 8, but essentially they are making the same point. The budget the Democrats produced did not score the sequester.

As we wrestle with these issues, talking about spending and how we create growth in our economy--and all of us want growth--we just contend growth is better achieved through progrowth policies than by borrowing and spending.

I wish to say there is academic research which validates that opinion. Senator Murray's budget, the Democratic budget, proposes yet more stimulus and proposes a 60-percent increase in spending over the next 10 years, a $162 billion increase over next year alone.

This is an increase in spending next year, not a reduction, of 162 next year. It is a fair criticism around here that the only budget that counts is the next year. It does tend to control next year, but it often normally gets altered before the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, but it doesn't tell us a plan.

I contend reducing excessive spending without increasing taxes makes the economy stronger, not weaker. Let's look at this. Real evidence supports this. It shows reducing spending can help an economy which has too much debt. A Harvard University study which I think all of us have seen, the OECD, developed nations, looked at 107 different periods of fiscal adjustments in these nations.

This is what they have found:

Spending cuts are much more effective than tax increases in

stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturn.

I believe that is accurate. If it is, that is very important for us to know. Many countries have reduced spending and had large increases in job growth thereafter.

You would hear our Members say: Oh, you can't cut spending; it will hurt job growth. You could have something in the short term, but these countries have had substantial increases in job growth after cutting spending--Austria, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden. This chart gives some of that insight: ``Job Gains 5 years After Successful Spending Reductions.'' Look at these again. Japan in 1987 had an 8.6-percent growth; Canada in 1997 had 11.1 percent; Netherlands in 1997, 9.5 percent; United States in 1997, after spending reductions, 5.2 percent. That is when we were on the path to balance the budget. That was when Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans met with President Clinton and negotiated and fought and wrestled and shut the government down and cut spending and the economy grew. And then Sweden, in 1998, had 6.5 percent growth. The average job growth over these five countries was 8 percent after cutting spending.

One I noticed on here is really something we should consider; that is, the small country of Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union, dominated by Russia and the Communists. It is a great little country in the Baltics. I was there 2 years ago. Senator Jon Kyl took us there. They had just suffered through the same financial catastrophe in 2007 to 2008 that we had, but it hit them worse. They had a larger drop in GDP than we did, and it was very damaging. They had to decide what to do about it, so they began to consider what to do about it, and they didn't go for this idea that they had to borrow, borrow, borrow so they could keep spending because the revenue had dropped so much and they were going to keep spending at the same level. That isn't what the Estonians decided to do. This new democracy, this free enterprise, this free country, so excited about their future, do you know what they did? They cut spending. They cut spending big time--big time.

This is what a Cabinet member told me. We had dinner, a group of us, and he said Cabinet people had their pay cut 40 percent. He said their pay was cut 40 percent, and he said: But I can tell you who is really mad and giving me a hard time.

I said: Who is that?

He said: My wife. She is a doctor. We hammered them too.

So Estonia hardly had a debt increase at all. Now Estonia has been showing some of the fastest growth of any country in Europe, maybe any country in the developed world. So cutting spending, making their government leaner, more productive, and people taking pay cuts did not destroy their economy. It allowed them to bounce back quite successfully. I am so proud to see their numbers continue to be great economically because they were courageous. The first thing their leaders did was take pay cuts themselves.

Other countries have not followed this path. Other countries haven't tightened their belts or they have relied too heavily on tax increases to reduce deficits. These countries have not fared as well. Greece, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Spain all have had big tax increases as part of their deficit reduction plans, and these results are confirmed by studies at the International Monetary Fund, the University of Chicago, and the University of California.

So we spent $830 billion on stimulus in early 2009. That passed through here without my vote, and I opposed it at the time vigorously. But it was passed, and every dime of it was borrowed. We didn't have the money. We were in debt. But the geniuses said we have to stimulate the economy. Oh, if we don't borrow money and spend it, we will sink into oblivion. It wasn't what Estonia did, but we did that. We spent the money, and we haven't seen the growth we needed. We helped surge our debt.

We continue to spend substantially. We continue to run up debt the likes of which we have never seen before. I believe that debt right now is slowing economic growth and that debt right now could be a threat to our financial security in the future. It is sad to see us go in that direction.

Spending reductions are doable. We can do this. A lot of people think it is not possible. They get depressed, and every time someone talks about spending reductions, people start whining: It can't be done. It can't be done. We will hurt the Defense Department because the cuts on the Defense Department were too great.

But the Defense Department will still be there if we don't fix it the way these cuts are imposed. It will still be there--and who knows, it could be stronger.

I am worried about it. In fact, the way the sequester was crafted, at the request of the President, one-half of all the cuts in the entire $1.2 trillion in cuts fell on the Defense Department, which makes up one-sixth of the Federal Government. So these cuts fell on the Defense Department disproportionately. Medicaid was increasing at 8 percent a year, no cuts; food stamps had gone up from $20 billion to $80 billion in 11 years--fourfold--but got no cuts; and, of course, Social Security had no cuts. There was a 2-percent maximum reduction trim on Medicare providers, which are the doctors and hospitals. They had a minor cut. So a huge portion of the budget had none, but the Defense Department took a huge, huge cut. It was not smart the way we did it, but the amount of cuts, if properly allocated across the entire government's spending, would have little impact on

reducing growth but would really begin to solidify public confidence that we have a smart plan to get out of this debt.

If we just slow the spending growth to 3.4 percent a year over the next 10 years, we could balance this budget without raising taxes. You have heard that said. It is true. This is true. We do not have to have substantial spending cuts; we can do it and still have growth.

Some programs need to be cut. Some programs have to be cut. Some programs are growing much faster than 3.4 percent. Medicaid is growing at 8 percent. It needs to be reformed. We can't sustain that kind of increase year after year after year.

Most Americans know the old story about the rule of seven. If you increase something at 7 percent a year on your savings account, it doubles in 10 years. So if you have 8 percent, you are seeing a 117- percent increase in spending over 10 years.

So if we allow 3.4 percent a year in spending growth, that means we would spend $11,000 per person in 2022, 10 years out--$11,000 per person by the Federal Government. That is a higher rate of spending per person than we had in 2007. Yet we are going broke.

We can reduce spending without affecting services. We can. Federal programs--many of them--are very wasteful, very inefficient, duplicative, and subject to fraud. I just held up the GAO 2012 report that listed a pile--page after page--of programs that are wasteful, duplicative, and so forth. We have social service, domestic disaster assistance, Internal Revenue Service enforcement efforts that all have duplicative gaps and are not properly managed. They talk about how the programs are duplicative, how the programs are mismanaged, how they need to be tightened up, and there is a whole list of these things. There are about 50 different major programs--51--that need reform. We haven't done any of that.

What does Congress say to the American people? Well, we don't have time to execute, carry out, or study GAO's report. That is too much work. Just send us more money. No, we don't have time to do this. You don't understand--these little programs, they do not save much money. They do not make any difference. We don't have to focus on them. Send us more money. You have to send us more money.

I think the American people may be getting tired of this.

Nine different agencies, according to GAO, run over 50 job-training programs for people with disabilities. This budget proposes to create more. We had an amendment offered at the Budget Committee that would create another job program. I mean, we have them all over the place. It sounded like a good idea. Something good happened in some State, so we have a plan to offer Federal legislation to do it here or expand it.

Last year alone, Washington paid out $44 billion to people who, through deceit or error, did not deserve Medicare payments. Let me repeat. Forty-four billion dollars was paid out to people who, through deceit or error, did not deserve Medicare payments. That is more money than we spend running our national parks, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers' civil works projects, and the Internal Revenue Service combined. Forty-four billion is a lot. That is just about what the Federal highway budget is--$44 billion. Fraud, deceit, and error out the door in Medicare alone.

Well, Mr. President, we have been at it a long time. I am very unhappy that the budget process has been shifted to the end of the week. I am very unhappy that we are at a point where we are not going to have as full a debate because people are going to be stressed, they are going to be here at night and maybe into the weekend. Somebody may say: Well, Sessions, it is your fault. Why don't you just yield back this time? But it would take every Senator here to yield back the time. And if I did, I am sure somebody would object. And I am not yielding back time now.

We have problems. We can yield, we can work through the night, we can compromise tonight and maybe save a few hours, or we can work to be as accommodating to our colleagues as we can. I am willing to do that. But I just have to say that this budget should have been up earlier. We should have reached an agreement with Senators Moran and Ayotte and given them amendments early in the week or last week, and we could have had the budget up Monday. We wouldn't have had all this fuss. We would have had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we would have had a full day, completed all amendments, and been out of here. But, oh no, I think there is something to the fact that it was considered to be a good idea just to carry this budget over to the end of the week and that Senators would want to leave and we would just wrap it all up, do it in the dead of night so the American people wouldn't see, perhaps, what is going to be done, wouldn't pay much attention to the votes, and we could get out of here and do the least possible public discussion of this bad budget that we can.

Now, some might say: Well, that is really not so.

I think it is so. We haven't had a budget on the floor for 4 years. Why? Senator Reid said publicly that it is foolish to have a budget. Why did he say that? He meant it was foolish politically. I have said this before. He knows how I feel about it.

He said it was foolish--politically, basically--to have a budget. Why? Because writing a budget requires a party to lay out their vision for the future, to be prepared to defend it in public debate, and to have amendments on it. He has been controlling this Senate to a degree no majority leader has ever controlled the Senate, and the one thing he is not able to control is the budget process: You have 50 hours and virtually unlimited amendments. He didn't want to do that. So he was willing to violate the law of the United States and not bring up a budget so he wouldn't have to do this.

Finally, this year the House got fed up. They have been passing an honest budget that lays out a future plan for America. They have defended it publicly. They have taken unfair attacks and abuse for doing their duty every year--like they are supposed to do.

So they sent over a bill this year. It said: No budget, no pay, Congress. If you don't bring up your budget, you don't get paid. So now we have a budget for the first time in 4 years. Maybe the House should be given a medal for that.

But I am not happy. I don't believe we are doing this right. I was disappointed that for the first time in 3 years, when a budget was brought up in the Senate committee, we had statements made one afternoon for a few hours before we even saw the chairman's mark. It was produced after that, and we had 1 day--the next day--to offer amendments. That wasn't a very good process, in my view.

If we really want to deal with the debt--the greatest danger of our time--and deal with it properly, why wouldn't we want to have an open public hearing? Why wouldn't we have had expert witnesses all year to help talk to us? We had a few hearings, but we could have had a lot more because this has complex questions for us to decide. We should have had more time in committee, and we should have had full time on the floor of the Senate. So I don't make any bones about it. I wish we had done it differently.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, we were originally looking today to begin the presentation of the budget that came out of the Budget Committee, produced by the Democratic majority. It passed on a party- line vote. It was drafted by the majority in secret. It was produced and brought to the floor.

I see the distinguished floor manager of the bill is on the floor today. I certainly have no intention of interrupting the Senator's debate, but I was using the opportunity to speak in morning business, if that is all right.

Under the Congressional Budget Act, we need to produce a budget by April 15. There are 50 hours allowed for debate and an ability to offer unlimited amendments to that most important document. That is where we are. I had hoped we would start today. Now it looks as though we have floor disputes and things are dragging out.

I want to say how this can be handled. If the floor debate is not shortened, I would suggest we could come back the week of April 8 and complete our work by April 15 easily. That would be my suggested way to deal with the most important issue we face as a Nation, our financial future and the debt course we are on. That would be the right thing to do. If the majority leader is determined to move forward even into the weekend, we will be here. We are not going to concede any of the time that is set aside for debate, because this is the first budget that has been to the floor of the Senate in almost 1,500 days, over 1,400 days-- 4 years. We need to talk about where we are, where we are going as a Nation. So I want to say there will be no yielding of time on this side with regard to the opportunity to discuss the financial future of America.

The American people need to know about this. It should be done publicly. They need to know the choices we are dealing with, how tough they are, but what an opportunity we do have to get the country on a sound path without doing damage to the programs we value in America. We need an open process. The American people need to be engaged with it. But I have to say, it has absolutely been the policy of the majority in the Senate to do just the opposite. Senator Reid said it would be ``foolish'' to have a budget. He has held that view for 4 years now.

The law requires us to have a budget by April 15. He has refused to do so because he did not want to be responsible for laying out a financial path for America. Those are the facts.

The House passed legislation that said: No budget, no pay. Now the Senate is moving forward with a budget, at least to get it out of the Senate and pass it out of the Senate, and then probably we will get paid.

It is important that the budget be moved. It should not be a pro forma act but a very serious evaluation of where we are. I want to say this to my colleagues as we confront the difficult choices facing our country: This is so important to me. I believe, based on a series of important studies in recent months, all of which having come to the same conclusion, that the debt level the United States has today is already pulling down economic growth. It is one of the reasons--maybe even the largest reason--that we have had such little economic growth.

Our debt to GDP ratio--the gross debt to GDP ratio--is over 100 percent. According to the Rogoff-Reinhart study that has been out there for a number of years, which was widely praised, which Secretary of Treasury Geithner told us was a very important study, and which maybe underestimated the risk our Nation faces, but has been universally praised--they say, when debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP, based on their studies of economies all over the world that have gotten into financial trouble, the result is a 1, maybe 2-percent drop in growth. The lack of growth of 1 percent represents 1 million jobs in America. So the difference between 2-percent growth and 3-percent growth is 1 million jobs. The difference of 2-percent growth and 4-percent growth is 2 million jobs, people unemployed, not getting work. Why? Because of the debt overhang that is out there, for a whole lot of factors too complex for us to discuss at this moment, but which are out there that begin to pull down growth.

So one of the reasons we need to decrease deficits in America and balance the budget is to create growth, create jobs, and create prosperity, whereas my Democratic colleagues contend the way to create jobs and create growth is to borrow more money and spend it on a stimulus package. In fact, they have got another stimulus package in the bill they passed out of the Budget Committee, another tax, another borrow-and-spend plan, $100-plus billion.

This is a big difference in where we are. We cannot keep borrowing, to spend, to create some temporary sugar high. It all rubs off in the end. There are the studies out there. I mentioned Rogoff-Reinhart. That has been out several years and has been a topic of great discussion among economists and throughout the field. But in recent months, the International Monetary Fund, certainly not controlled by frugal Republicans, the European Central Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements, all have independently done studies. And those studies say that debt begins to slow growth. That is what they conclude--that debt slows growth.

Now if that is true, we have a problem, because they say you can carry a certain amount of debt and it does not slow growth, but if your debt reaches 90 percent of your economy, at least according to Rogoff and Reinhart and the numbers they were using--and, by the way, they were using gross debt, it is absolutely clear in their papers, and not the public debt--then you have slow economic growth.

Let us take a minute to discuss growth in public debt. The public debt is external debt of the United States and it is about 76 percent of our economy. The size of our growth of public debt amounts to almost the size of the economy--three-fourths of it. But if you take the gross debt of the United States, including borrowing from Social Security and Medicare and things like that, it is over 100 percent. What I want to say to you is that people have misinterpreted the Rogoff-Reinhart study over the last several years. They thought the debt figure they were referring to was the public debt.

The $16 trillion we see on the debt clocks that show how it is increasing every year--the $16 trillion, almost $17 trillion now in debt--that is the gross debt, and it is over 100 percent of the economy. And they say growth slows every time--it slows relentlessly-- we as a Nation run up too much debt and it gets that high. So the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlements may come at it slightly differently, but they all conclude that when debt levels reach as high as we have in the United States, growth slows.

Jobs are lost when growth slows, tax revenue is lost when growth slows, and people are not going to pay taxes if they are not working. Businesses that are not making profits are not going to pay taxes. If businesses are not expanding, not growing, not investing, not hiring, the economy is hampered and the tax revenue to the Federal Government is less, as a matter of fact. But most importantly, people are not working, jobs are not being created, and more people are on welfare. More people are dependent on the government--unemployment insurance-- and that is not good.

Are we making some progress? Yes, we are making some progress. The economy had virtually no growth in the fourth quarter of last year--a stunning development. They are predicting

a slow growth the first quarter of this year. Last year we were well below predictions. Last year our growth, I believe, was about 2.2 percent. Two years before that, the Congressional Budget Office predicted growth for last year would be around 4 percent. They were predicting 2 years ago that growth for 2013 would be over 4 percent, maybe 4.6 percent. That is what the prediction was. But now, as we enter 2013, it looks as if we will be lucky to get much over 2 percent growth.

I am not saying I know with an absolute certainty that the debt is the factor they have to consider when they calculate our growth out of this recession. I don't know for sure. But I am telling you that Rogoff-Reinhart, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlements--all of those--have concluded when debt is as high as we have in the United States it will slow growth. So I ask: What should we do to get America on a sound path to increase growth at a time we are discussing the budget? We should balance the budget and get on a course to reduce the debt significantly, and we should do it now. If we get that back down, which we can do, we will see more growth. We will see more jobs.

The idea that we should keep borrowing from the future to spend today in order to create growth only has to be said to understand how bogus it is, how irresponsible it is. Why don't we borrow three times as much and spend three times as much if this puts us on a sound path? It doesn't. It weakens us.

The Congressional Budget Office said--when this Congress, and not with my vote, voted for $787 billion for the stimulus package--yes, if you borrow $787 billion from the future and spend it today, you will get economic growth for a few years, but it quickly goes away. The money has been spent. The little lift in the economy is over very quickly. What is left then? CBO now estimates that we are carrying a total of $830 billion, plus interest, from the stimulus, so now we are at $1 trillion in new debt that we have to pay interest on every year and the growth benefit is long gone.

Now hear this, colleagues: Back when the President took office and he pushed through the stimulus package, they said over a 10-year period we would have less growth if we had a stimulus package than if we didn't have a stimulus package. Did you hear that, my colleagues? That is so important for us to understand. You cannot get something from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could, as Julie Andrews sang in the ``Sound of Music.'' Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.

So we borrow the money and spend it today and it is always with us unless we have a plan to pay down the debt, and we have no plan. So already we are about at the point where all the benefits of that stimulus of 3 years ago are gone and we are beginning to have the burden of carrying the debt indefinitely. I think the American people understand that. The people who don't understand that are the Paul Krugmans and the people who have been driving the agenda in the Senate and in this Congress to borrow and spend. We have to get our heads together on that subject.

Finally, I will point out that the budget that has been produced is totally promoted improperly. This budget came out of the committee, and it claims it reduces the deficit by $1.85 trillion, but that is not accurate. It took me a long time, and I had to stay on the staff people for the Democratic majority, but eventually, when confronted with the facts, they had to tell the truth and they told the truth. The sequester cuts--that 60 percent of the Budget Control Act we agreed to 18, 20 months ago--is wiped out. Those cuts are eliminated. But they were really not cuts. They were reductions in growth of spending. But that reduction saved us about $2.1 trillion, and the sequester part is $1.2 trillion. So that is the $1.2 trillion that is wiped out. That means we are going to increase spending $1.2 trillion, and it is not scored in their budget as an increase in spending to offset the $1 trillion in tax increases they have.

When you consider all of that, you will find this budget, with other gimmicks included in it, barely reduces the deficit at all--at best, maybe by $300 billion. And over 10 years that amounts to about $30 billion or $40 billion in deficit reduction a year, when last year our deficit was $1.2 trillion.

So this budget plan increases taxes, it increases spending over our current rate, and it does nothing to change the debt course of America. We need a plan that can balance the budget. We can do that and still increase spending every year. It will balance in 10 years if we stay disciplined, but that is not the plan on the floor right now. Our colleagues need to study this budget and should not be voting for a plan that makes no change in our debt course, that does not create growth, but simply borrows more.

I see my colleague, the Democratic whip, I will call him, on the floor, but I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks.

I yield the floor.