Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we began a markup on the budget today. It is the first time in 3 years the Budget Committee has actually met to begin to mark up a bill. We had opening statements today. We made opening statements before we saw the chairman's mark, and the mark was produced later after the opening statements were completed.

Tomorrow we will have a markup on the budget and it will be 1 day, and amendments will all be completed tomorrow. There will be several interruptions, but the determination is to finish, which, of course, is contrary to what we would like to have happen. The Republican members of the committee asked that we have a week set aside and we do opening statements beginning Monday or Tuesday and that we actually have amendments up during a normal process and be able to actually engage in the kind of debate I think would be helpful for the financial future of our country. The chair and the Democratic majority decided we would just do opening statements this afternoon and we would do all the amendments tomorrow and we will complete tomorrow regardless. So that is where we are.

I am glad we do have a budget being brought forward. If it is brought to the floor, it will be the first time in 4 years the Democratic majority has brought a budget to the floor. This is in violation of plain law, statutory code of the United States, 1974, requiring a budget be passed every year and brought forward. They refused to do so. The majority leader said it was foolish to bring a budget. What he meant was it was foolish politically. Surely he wouldn't contend it is foolish for America that the Democratic leadership in the Senate bring up a budget. Surely it would be good for the country to do this every year, as the law requires. But that is where we have been. So we are glad.

The House passed earlier this year a bill that said no budget, then no pay. It said, Congress, if you don't pass a budget, at least out of your own House, then you don't get paid. So that picked up the pace, apparently, and we have a budget, although the President has not submitted his budget. Amazingly, I think it is the first time in 90 years, somebody said--the first time certainly in my memory--the President of the United States, who is required by law to have the budget in by February 4, has waited for the House, which is marking up a budget today, and the Senate to do their budget first. That goes against what mayors and city councils do and Governors do. But that is where we are.

I will tell you one thing that we have learned in the short time we have had the budget that I think defines a lot about where our majority wants the country to go. Over 10 years, this budget--at a time of a dangerous fiscal crisis--spends more--$640-some-odd billion more--than the current law we passed about 20 months ago in August of 2011. We agreed to the Budget Control Act. We agreed to a certain amount of money that we would spend and no more. The President signed it and both parties in the House and Senate agreed to it. But what happens? Here we are with their proposing a budget that will spend more money than we agreed to spend just a few months ago.

The worst thing about this is that the Budget Control Act did not go far

enough. We should have reduced spending more. In addition to that, it looks as though there will be about $1 trillion in new taxes in this budget. So it is tax more and spend more. It is the wrong direction for America.

People say: Well, that is just politics; what is the matter with you guys. Why can't you reach an agreement? It is hard to reach an agreement when the country is on an unsustainable debt path that puts us in danger of financial crisis; a path that is already slowing growth down in our country. Agreeing to a budget that continues down this path is not the right thing to do. So I am deeply disappointed that we are in this fix.

I wish we had had an opportunity in committee to really have a lot of discussion about it back and forth, because there are good Democratic members of our committee, talented members, good Republican members, talented members, who bring so much to the discussion. But it was just both sides talking today. Some good statements were made but not the kind of engagement we would like to have had. So that is a disappointment.

Under the current baseline we are on, according to the Congressional Budget Office, in the tenth year of this budget we are dealing with right now--the Budget Control Act--interest on our debt will be $850 billion--$850 billion in interest payments for 1 year on the money we have borrowed--the almost $17 trillion we have borrowed. This is why it is such a dangerous thing. The highway bill is $40 billion or $50 billion a year, aid to education may be $100 billion.

I am saying that in just a few years, because we have run up unnecessarily so much debt, that interest will be $900 billion. That will be more than the Defense Department by far. The Defense Department's base budget is about $540 billion, and it is actually being cut. Interest will be the largest growing item in the budget.

Food stamps went from $20 billion a decade ago to $80 billion. I just left my farmers, who came up from Alabama, and we were talking about that. The farm bill is about $100 billion a year. Of that farm bill, $80 billion of it is the food stamp budget. It has gone up four times. The $20 billion that goes to farmers, in aid and insurance, actually was cut this year, but nothing was cut out of food stamps. They resisted that, and rejected even a modest amendment I offered to end a clear abuse which wouldn't have hurt anybody. I guess what I am saying is we are in serious business here and we have to get off the debt course we are on.

Erskine Bowles, who was appointed by President Obama to head the fiscal commission, along with Alan Simpson--the Simpson-Bowles Commission--said this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. What he was saying was, if we don't get off the debt path we are on, we are going to have a financial collapse. They didn't say exactly what, but something like Greece, something like we had in 2007, throwing our country back into a recession, which would be a very dangerous thing. It was a bipartisan warning to us that we needed to act, and we haven't acted since then, and that was over 2 years ago.

We haven't done anything. So a lot of people are saying and you have heard it said that we have to act because we are worried about our children and our grandchildren. And we should be worried about the debt that is out there for our children and grandchildren.

Senator Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire put a picture up in our Budget Committee today of her two children, ages 5 and 8, and she had one with $1,100,000 on that child's picture, and the younger one had $1,300,000 on her picture. That is what was calculated will be the share of the Nation's debt that they will carry when they are adults. This is wrong. We should not--must not--do this to our children and grandchildren. It was not done to us. Our parents left us with a country much more responsibly managed than this.

We have never, ever had a situation in which we have had four consecutive years of deficits amounting to $1.2 trillion a year. Never. Oh, President Bush spent too much. Yes, he did. He deserves some criticism. I think he does deserve some criticism. The year before he left office, his deficit was $161 billion; his last year was $470 billion. For the last 4 years, we have averaged $1.2 trillion, and it is systemic and it is deep and it has to be changed.

Now, there is one more thing I really would like for my colleagues to focus on, and I will wrap up with this point, but it is really important. The question is: When you have debt equal to $17 trillion, does it impact the economy now? Yes. It puts us at risk for some sort of fiscal crisis. If there is a collapse in Europe, a collapse in Japan, a collapse in China, it could kick us off into a major financial disaster in the United States. It is a very fragile situation.

But the question is: Does the debt we have now slow growth today? I think that is a really important issue, and so we have done the research.

The issue was originally raised by Rogoff and Reinhart. They have done a number of studies and wrote a big book about all the nations that have gone into default and have had a debt crisis over the last 200 years. It is a thoroughly respected work of two highly competent and proven, respected economists. What they concluded was that when debt reaches 90 percent of the size of your economy, you slow economic growth by 1 to 2 percent.

Where are we now? A lot of people have been using the ``public debt of the United States.'' That is one way to calculate it, and our public debt represents about 76 percent of our gross domestic product. But the other debt that we use, the one you have seen most often, is the $16 trillion figure that has the numbers spinning on it--$16 trillion is what is called the gross debt. A lot of people seem to think we are not in danger because Rogoff and Reinhart were talking about the public debt. That is not so. We have examined their work, and we have examined their footnotes and their reports and analysis. It is the gross debt. That is what they were using; that is what they calculated. We are at 104 percent gross debt, so we are well over the 90.

I would contend that the reason our economy has failed to meet, for the last 3 years, the growth expectations that were out there is because our debt is dragging us down now. And there are hundreds of thousands--millions of Americans who are probably out of work today because of the debt drag.

We need to get off this path, and the budget the majority moves in our committee gets us nowhere off this path. It never brings our gross debt below 90 percent or 94 percent of GDP, and we haven't finished the analysis of it.

In addition, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the International Settlements Bank--all three have done similar studies with a little different approach, and they all reach the same conclusion. What they have concluded is that however you calculate the debt, the United States is already above the line where growth is slowed.

I think it was 2 years ago that the Congressional Budget Office--our nonpartisan group who makes projections for our debt and finances in the future--calculated that this year, 2013, we would have 4.6 percent growth. They predicted a much higher growth last year than the 2.2 percent we got the year before that, and they missed the previous year. They missed 3 consecutive years, predicting higher growth than occurred. And growth means a lot.

White House economic expert Christina Romer has estimated that a 1- percent growth in the economy--a difference between 2 and 3 percent-- means you would create 1 million jobs to have 3 percent growth rather than 2 percent growth. That is what growth does to job creation, to wages, the possibility of getting raises, getting more wages, more overtime, perhaps, more bonuses, because the economy is growing. And if it is not growing, our workers are hurting.

So in our vision--I think the members of the Republican side of this Budget Committee--we are united in the belief that we can bring this budget under control and we can balance it.

Now, I have to tell you, the budget Chairman Murray produced tonight does not balance ever. It never balances. They say it is a balanced approach. They even said a couple times that it is a balanced budget, in our hearing. All they were trying to do was use the word ``balance,'' I think maybe--surely not but perhaps--they were hoping people would hear them

say they have a balanced budget, which comes nowhere close to balance. With $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion of deficit out there for years and years, it never balances. Congressman Ryan made his budget public, openly, a day before he commenced his hearing, and it balances in 10 years.

This is the deal. There is good and bad news in what I am saying. The good news is that we can increase spending every year by 3.4 percent and the budget will balance. The path we are on, the CBO current baseline projects us increasing spending each year at 5.4 or 5.6 percent. So if you reduce that growth instead of growing at that level, you grow at 3.4 percent, the budget will balance. And 3.4 percent is higher than what the Congressional Budget Office says inflation will be. They say it is about 2.2 percent; it will be about 25 percent over 10 years. So you can increase spending over 10 years by 40 percent above the inflation rate, and the budget will balance. You just can't keep increasing it by 5.4 or 5.6 percent.

It is critical for America that we get on the right course. So this is deeply troubling to me. I know we can do this. It is not that hard.

But here is the bad news and why it is painful a bit to get there; that is, because more than half of our budget now is the entitlement programs and interest. As I said, interest on the debt--you have to pay it. You really can't cut the interest except by reducing your debt. And there is no balanced budget in the short-term future, so the interest is going up at a solid rate.

Then you have our big entitlement programs. You have Medicare, you have Social Security, and then you have some large ones--Medicaid, which is a surging program growing at 8 percent a year, projected to increase by 117 percent over 10 years, and then food stamps is considered to be an entitlement. You put all those entitlements together and you have a problem. Those are in law. And ``entitlement'' means that if your income is at a certain level, your age is a certain age, you are entitled to the benefit that the law gives you whether the government has any money or not. Congress doesn't have to appropriate it. The government has to go out and borrow the money if they don't change the law.

So we need a plan to change Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and some of the other entitlement programs in a way that saves them from the financial disaster they are headed toward, puts them on a sound path, and actually begin to restore the finances of America.

There is still waste, fraud, and abuse in the remaining part of the government. There are still programs that don't do any good for the money they get. There is still money spent on projects that should never have money spent on them from Washington, DC, and they ought to be eliminated. But to slow growth from 5.4 percent a year to 3.4 percent a year, we need to touch a little bit of everything. And spending will still go up. That is the good news. We can still spend more, but we just can't spend it quite at the increased rate we are on.

Some people say: Why don't you balance it now? Why are you talking about waiting 10 years?

We probably should do it sooner than 10 years. But I think it is a realistic appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike--let's get on this path, this path that is not too hard to achieve what would be fabulous for America.

Two things. First, I believe that if we were to pass a budget that would be on the path to balance in 10 years, we would feel some economic growth that we have never felt before. Investors worldwide, investors in the United States, and businesses would feel so much better about our country. I really think that is true. Second, we would reduce the huge debt hanging over us that is already slowing down growth. Those two things we can accomplish.

I don't know where we will go. We will pass a budget out of committee, I am sure, on a party-line vote. Maybe it will pass here on the Senate floor by a party-line vote, and then it will go to conference. I don't know, maybe Speaker Boehner or Chairman Ryan's budget will match up with the Democratic budget out of the Senate, and maybe something good will happen for America and we can reach some sort of agreement. But we cannot tax our way out of this. We can't keep increasing spending, for heaven's sake. We need to reduce the growth of spending to a level that is reasonable and can put us on a path to balance.

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

Mr. President, I rise to express my opposition to the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to be a judge for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That is an important court, one of the most important courts, one step below the Supreme Court.

I would note that the Senate has already once rejected proceeding with consideration of this nomination and, in my opinion, for good reason. We do not do that lightly. We should not do that lightly. But it is an important question, and nominees do have to clear the Senate, and the Senate is not a rubber stamp.

Ms. Halligan has a well-documented record of advocating extreme positions on constitutional issues, pushing legal arguments beyond what I think is reasonable, including in cases involving Second Amendment gun rights, abortion, the death penalty, and others.

But one of the most troubling of her views pertains to the war on terror and the detention of enemy combatants. This is alarming not only because the arguments she has advanced in this regard are contrary to well-settled law, but because the court she seeks to join the D.C. Circuit has a critical role in national security matters, including deciding habeas petitions of terrorist detainees.

As a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's Committee on the Federal Courts, she joined a 2004 report, the self- described purpose of which was specifically to ``address, in particular, the role the federal courts should play in striking [the] balance [between, in this case, national security and civil liberties concerns] with respect to the detention and trial of suspected terrorists or their accomplices designated as `enemy combatants' by the executive branch.''

The report comes to the untenable conclusion that the congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force does not authorize the indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

These are prisoners of war. Not only did the Supreme Court hold that it does, in fact, authorize indefinite detention in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, but the Obama administration has argued for a broad construction of that authority itself. And, in a series of rulings joined by judges across the ideological spectrum, the D.C. Circuit has adopted, itself, that broad definition.

The report also adopts--this is the bar association report. And I have to say, lawyers and bar association committees, they sign on reports dealing with the national security of the United States of America. They sign on reports dealing with how prisoners of war are to be determined and handled. At a time of national crisis, when we are in a national debate about that, they should know what they are talking about, and this bar association did not.

The report also adopts the unsupported view that the war on terrorism ``seems closer to a law enforcement effort than to a military campaign.''

But I would say to that, the Congress voted and declared it to be a military effort. Tell that to the soldiers in Afghanistan chasing down al-Qaida operatives, that it was not a war.

The report goes on. But this was part of the attempt at the time to undermine President Bush's ability to effectively manage the war effort. The report argues vigorously against the use of military commissions--that is where you try prisoners of war for violations of the rules of war, in military commissions--and maintains that the preferred place to try them are Article III civilian courts, normal civilian courts, except in ``exceptional circumstances.''

They say, of course, to try them in a civilian court would provide the terrorists--enemies of the United States, participating in a war against the United States--with all the same constitutional rights that a person who defrauded the IRS or robbed a bank would have. But it is a different situation. You do not give those kind of rights to people at war with the United States, whose goal is to destroy the United States and to replace the government. That has never been the position in our country, nor in any other nation in the world that I am aware of. But that is the position she signed on.

While Obama surrogates and supporters during the campaign often attacked Bush and made these kinds of allegations, the Obama administration, after taking office, has been forced to abandon those positions. They are untenable.

One of the report's flawed arguments of why you should try unlawful enemy combatants--that is people at war against the United States in Article III civilian courts is as follows: ``It seems self-evident that the same [constitutional] protections [afforded ordinary criminals] should presumptively extend to those individuals whom the government has seized and proposes to detain for an extended, and perhaps indefinite, period of time because they are suspected of having engaged in conduct intended to further terrorist aims, thus violating applicable criminal laws.''

Well, applicable criminal laws were violated, but it was an attack on the United States, not a normal crime. And the Nation made a very clear decision on which I thought all of us were in agreement that we had moved from a time of criminal activity to a time of war, and we acted in that fashion. So there is nothing self-evident about the position in the report that an unlawful enemy combatant whose only connection with the United States is his acts of war against it should be afforded the constitutional due process rights of an American citizen who committed an crime.

Andy McCarthy, a former longtime Department of Justice veteran prosecutor, who tried the Blind Sheik case, said this:

The only thing the framers might have found more appalling

is the notion that the Constitution licenses lawfare--i.e.,

that it permits the American people's courts (which, other

than the Supreme Court, are creatures of statute not required

by the Constitution) to be used by foreign enemies to put on

trial the armed forces of the American people over the manner

in which they conduct wartime combat operations that have

been authorized by the American people's representatives.

I think Andy McCarthy is right about that. I think that is basically what happened. I do not dispute it is fully acceptable for lawyers to defend unpopular clients. However, it is curious to me that while this Nation has hundreds of thousands of fine lawyers and thousands of proven prosecutors, the ones who seem to have a leg up--I am saying this carefully because I have observed this now for 4 years. I think it is significant. The ones who seem to have a leg up in this administration's nomination process are those who have challenged the legal policies of the former President of the United States as he attempted to conduct a war to defend the United States against an enemy dedicated to its destruction.

Time and time again, these are the people who have been nominated for high Department of Justice offices and to the courts. The lifetime appointment to which Ms. Halligan has been nominated demands independence and a commitment to the rule of law and not to a political agenda.

At her hearing, she did attempt to distance herself from the report, variously claiming she had not seen it until just before the hearing and that she had not attended all the meetings at which the report was discussed. She admitted, however, that she could have requested that her name not be on the report, as did four other members of the committee, but she did not. She signed it.

In fact, according to her own testimony, she never took any action to repudiate the report or its contents before her nomination or even before her hearing. The first time she expressed any disagreement with the report, it seems, was at her confirmation hearing. Some call that a confirmation conversion. A serious attorney would have

taken swift action to either remove their name from the report or to repudiate it. No serious attorney would affix their name to a report on such important matters in a time of war without studying it carefully, surely.

It can only be assumed the report represented her views on the role of a civilian Article III court with respect to detention and trial of enemy combatants. It would have done more for her credibility to own up to that fact, rather than paying lip service to what might be more helpful during the confirmation process.

The report continues its irresponsible description of the al-Qaeda supporter and convicted terrorist Ali al-Marri as a ``civilian in this country legally, [who] seems suspected of providing logistical support for al-Qaeda sleeper cells: presumably criminal activity, if proven, but not `combatant' activity under any likely definition of the term.'' Al-Marri eventually pleaded guilty to providing material support to al- Qaeda and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. In his guilty plea, he admitted that he attended terrorist training camps in the years prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks; that he was instructed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, to enter the U.S. just prior to 9/11 and await further instruction from al-Qaeda; and that while here, he researched chemical weapons and communicated with al- Qaeda members. Investigators also discovered that he had made several phone calls to Mustafa al-Hawasawi who had wired money to the 9/11 hijackers.

When al-Marri's case came before the Supreme Court, Ms. Halligan, as a private practitioner, donated her legal services pro bono to co- author an amicus brief on his behalf. The brief argued the United States lacked the authority to detain al-Marri as an enemy combatant, and that the AUMF did not authorize his seizure and indefinite military detention, without criminal trial. At the hearing, Ms. Halligan claimed--unconvincingly in my view--that the brief did not represent her personal views. But the fact remains that she chose to donate her professional legal services to defend a radical Islamic terrorist instead of the millions of Americans who need legal representation, or victims of terrorism in this country and all over the world, or women in Afghanistan fighting for equal rights, or those suffering from religious persecution in Islamic countries. The fact that she would sign her name to the Bar report, and her decision to co-author and file an amicus brief in the al-Marri case, is a very serious matter. And those actions cast doubt on her testimony that she was not aware of the contents of the Bar report.

Much of Ms. Halligan's testimony did not match up with her record as an attorney both in private practice and public service. During her testimony, she attempted to evade the activist views she spent her career advancing, claiming, for example, that she now embraces original intent as the preferred method of Constitutional interpretation. At the same time, however, she was forced to admit that, prior to her ``confirmation conversion,'' she had never once espoused such views. That is not surprising, given her well-documented record over the course of many years of advocating for the restriction of Second Amendment rights, including in favor of liability for gun manufacturers, for same sex marriage, for limiting the death penalty, for back pay for unauthorized illegal alien workers, and for affirmative action. All positions utterly unsupportable by an original intent approach to constitutional interpretation.

Her attempts to distance herself from her record were simply unconvincing. There is no question where she stands on these issues. She herself has said that the ``courts are the special friend of liberty . . . the dynamics of our rule of law enables enviable social progress and mobility.''

Her testimony did nothing to convince me that her written record does not paint the accurate picture of what her tenure on the bench would look like if she were confirmed. We have judges who follow their oaths to serve under the Constitution and the laws of this country. They are never above it. They are never free to alter the meaning of words to advance a personal agenda.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

I will try to not utilize the 30 seconds the Senator used in agreeing to this. But I would point out there are other different complaints that we have about the circumstances of this nomination. I do think it is an extraordinary circumstance. I take that decision seriously. There have not been many that I found that to have occurred.

Therefore, I will oppose the motion for cloture and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we have heard a lot of discussions recently about the author Bob Woodward and his comments about spending and the sequester. It is important for us to understand this. This is not an easy matter. We have a lot of confusion, I think, as to what has been happening in the Senate. So from my perspective, as ranking member on the Budget Committee, I wish for all of us to understand the issue that is at stake.

Here is what Bob Woodward said in his Washington Post Op-Ed earlier this week:

So when the President asked that a substitute for the

sequester include not just spending cuts but also new

revenue, he's moving the goalpost.

And when the President talks of spending cuts, he's referring to some other spending cuts somewhere in the government so that they do not fall so hard on defense, for example.

But Bob Woodward goes on to say--referring to the President's request for a substitute--that was not the deal he made.

So we need to all remember what happened was that in August of 2011, after the American people were aroused and spoke strongly in the 2010 election, the debt ceiling was reached. We couldn't borrow any more money. Since we are borrowing almost 40 cents out of every dollar, it amounted to a 40-percent cut in spending, had we not raised the debt ceiling. So it was important to raise the debt ceiling, but it was also important to do something about the surging debt. So a bipartisan agreement was reached, and the agreement essentially said we will reduce spending $2.1 trillion, and we will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion.

The good news, for those who wanted to keep spending, was that we spread

the spending cuts over 10 years. But we have already reached the debt ceiling again. We have already spent $2 trillion more than we took in. We have to deal with that again very soon.

I would like to say this to my colleagues: That agreement called for no tax increases; it called for a modest reduction in the growth of spending. Instead of going up $10 trillion, it would go up $8 trillion. Instead of adding $9 trillion to the debt of the United States, we would add $7 trillion to the debt of America by simply constraining the rate of growth in spending. It was not cutting spending. Except the way the sequester part of that agreement was reached, the cuts fell disproportionately on defense and maybe a few other programs. And over 10 years, defense would take a real cut. This isn't war costs. This is a fundamental problem.

What I would say to my colleagues is this: Please don't come in and say, there are loopholes we can close or we can tax the rich more here and we can do this, that, and the other in order to bring in more revenue and to spend more. You see? But we agreed to a new baseline in spending. It passed the House and the Senate and the President signed it into law. He agreed to it. And he was the one who insisted on the sequester, even though he has denied it since. He got that, he and his budget director, Mr. Lew, whom he just promoted to Secretary of the Treasury. So he agreed to that. And closing loopholes is simply a tax increase, of course.

So if we agree at some point to close loopholes, it ought to be part of tax reform and it ought to be part of reducing the deficit, not funding new spending. Because, you see, we have agreed to this new baseline. When the President says don't do the sequester, the sequester amounts to $1.1 trillion out of the $2.1 trillion in reduced spending. So he is talking about increasing spending over the amount he just agreed to 19 months ago. He is talking about increasing spending at a time this Nation has never faced a more serious systemic financial debt crisis. And his excuse is that we will close loopholes.

But you see, reducing the amount of new debt we incur over 10 years from $9 trillion in to $7 trillion is not enough. The budget commission, experts, everybody knows--ask anyone in this Senate, liberals and conservatives, and I don't think a single one would say that increasing the debt by $7 trillion over 10 years is good. Our current debt is $16 trillion. This is not a healthy trend.

We know we can't give away the cuts we just agreed to. What would we tell the American people? We already told them: We know you are unhappy that we are raising the debt ceiling, we know you are mad at us for putting the country in this situation, but we are going to cut spending, trust us. Trust us. And then here we waltz in, less than 2 years later, with the President saying that we cannot cut as much as we promised, as agreed to and signed into law. He says that is too much. He tells us that he is not going to help us find a smarter, more effective way to do the cuts.

I don't think that is good policy. What I urge my colleagues to do, and I believe it is the right thing, is to make the decision--and we have no choice but to make it--that we are not going to give up the little bit of spending cuts we achieved in 2011, which are not spending cuts but a small reduction in growth in spending. We should advise the President that we stand ready--and I am confident I can speak for the Republicans in this Chamber that we stand ready--to try and spread those cuts out in a way that is smarter and is less painful, because everybody should tighten their belt to help get this country on a sound path. We are willing to do that, but we should state we are not willing to allow the President to breach his agreement--as Mr. Woodward said, the deal he made--that he signed, that is in law and that has created a new spending baseline. We should not give up on that 19 months after we agreed to it. What a mockery that makes of the integrity of our government and the commitment to fiscal responsibility.

Let's work together on this. We had a big tax increase in January and a spending agreement in August of 2011. So now let's get on with it and operate in the world we are in. I don't believe we will avoid the sequester by raising taxes and increasing spending over the level to which we agreed. It won't happen. So we might as well get serious and figure out a way to help make this work in a more rational way.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have made it clear that I oppose the confirmation of Jack Lew to the most serious Cabinet position of Secretary of the Treasury. The President's Cabinet nominees should be given substantial deference; that is not in doubt. But our Constitution makes clear that appointments to high government office may only be made by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Certainly, the Senate is not a rubberstamp or a potted plant.

I believe a decent respect for the seriousness of this occasion, for my colleagues and for their opinions, for the President and for the nominee, requires, in this case, that I set forth my objections to the appointment. They are serious, and I believe what I say is important; important for the institution of the Senate and important for our country.

I have not had a personal relationship or extended meetings with Mr. Lew. My objections arise primarily and first from his performance as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. It is, in many ways, a key position in our government. That is the office through which the President controls all the departments and Agencies of our government which he is required to supervise.

Normally and necessarily, the OMB Director is the single office that drives efficiency and demands accountability on behalf of the President and the American people throughout our great

bureaucracy. In that aspect of his job I have seen little leadership, and at this time of surging debt, I would rate that performance as an F. I have never seen a consistent, determined effort from Director Lew to reform and make more productive the government of the U.S. Indeed, his primary effort consistently has seemed to be to defend any program under attack, scrutiny, or question rather than examining vigorously to save every single dollar that can be saved for the taxpayers of the country.

If the OMB Director will not insist on efficiency and good government, who will? The Secretary of Energy, pushing out failed Solyndra programs? Is that whom we look to? Or the GSA leaders who host hot tub parties in Las Vegas? This government of ours has never been more poorly managed. It has never had, for a number of years, the serious oversight and management from the top supervisory agencies.

Congress is not empowered to daily manage the agencies of America. That is the Chief Executive's job, and the primary person in his administration, President Obama's administration, charged with this duty is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. At least, historically, that has been the case.

But, my concerns go even deeper. I believe every public official in this Nation owes an absolute loyalty to the United States, to the betterment of this country and its government, and to the institutional processes that lead to the governing of America. There can be no doubt that every government official, from the President on down, is accountable to the institutions of our government and to the people ultimately.

Without doubt, the Director of OMB has such a duty. He is required to meet that duty with honor, honesty, efficiency, and responsiveness. He serves us; we don't serve him. He serves the American people.

The American people send their money to Washington, and they expect it will be honestly and openly managed--accountable. They have every right to demand high performance from all officials, but particularly the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Surely, there can be no higher duty for such an important official than to periodically report to the people truthfully on the important affairs of state--specifically to report the financial condition of the Nation and to produce a budget plan that will fix it. Without doubt, the great challenge of our time is how to confront effectively the unsustainable debt course we are now on. That is clearly the greatest threat to our Republic.

Admiral Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said debt is the greatest threat to our national security. We are heading toward a financial crisis if we do not change. All have told us that, including Simpson and Bowles of the President's debt commission. They said this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. They jointly gave that statement to us in the Budget Committee.

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, when asked to make comments about some of the long, great projections of debt out into the future, said: That will never happen. You will never get that. In effect he said: You will have a crisis before that ever happens. We are on an unsustainable debt path.

Even the most current Secretary of Treasury, Secretary Geithner, made the same comments about Director Lew's budget. He acknowledged that that budget left the country on an unsustainable financial path. Therefore, the report of the Nation's top management official on budget and management to Congress on these issues must be absolutely accurate. It must be true. His budget that he would set forth as director of the budget each year, as required by law--the President submits a budget-- must put the Nation on a sound and sustainable course, not keep us on an unsustainable course.

If changes in the operating methods of the country are needed, he should say so and help lead that reform effort. He is the one who keeps the books. He is the one who must, along with the President, rally the Nation, as mayors and county commissioners and Governors have done all over America to rein in reckless spending and unacceptable debt in their jurisdictions. Why is it not happening here, now, at this time of national crisis?

In February 2011, as Director of OMB, Mr. Lew produced a budget for the President, and he presented it to the people and to the Congress. That was February, 2 years ago. He was the budget director.

The budget he prepared utterly failed to meet the needs of the Nation. It just did. As Mr. Bowles said right after the budget was announced by Mr. Lew--he said with great disappointment, the White House budget request ``goes nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.'' This is the man President Obama appointed to head the debt commission, and he said this budget came nowhere near where they will have to go to avoid our fiscal nightmare. This budget was a disaster.

Instead of making our debt problem better, it made it worse. It taxed more and spent more. I was shocked and amazed.

Please remember, this was in February 2011, not long after the midterm congressional elections in which the American people rose up and shellacked a lot of big spenders and demanded that we get our financial house in order. The American people were shocked by the explosion of debt and the surge of big government, and they demanded more accountability. They insisted on it. Presenting a budget that did not do what the public demanded, control spending and debt, would not have been popular.

Imagine what went on in the White House. I am just a Member of the Senate. I observe these things like all of us. The question was, Would the President of the United States now, after the midterm elections that gave the majority to the House of Representatives--would at that point a policy, a budget, set forth a sound, sustainable path for America that could lead the country out of this fix?

I know they discussed it. Surely, they did. It was the most important issue they faced. Would they back down from spending and investment and taxes? Would they opt for a more limited growth in spending in America?

They made their decision. Actually, it is pretty clear two decisions were made. I do not think this is unfair to analyze it in this way. First, they decided that despite the election, they would not curtail spending or lay out a plan that would alter the debt course of America; that they would not fix and save and strengthen our entitlement programs, such as Social Security; and they would lie in wait, I guess, for anybody in the House of Representatives, particularly, and criticize their plan. They would not lay out any plan in their budget, which is the time that you would normally lay out your plan. They would set up a method to attack the Republicans when they produced their budget, as required by law, and their budget would have to deal with these things and propose real cuts in spending, and they would criticize that. Apparently, that is a decision they made.

But this presented a problem. To announce a budget that did not do what the public had just demanded--control spending and control debt-- would not be popular. So what do you do then? It is pretty clear to me how the conundrum was decided.

Mr. Lew would go before the American people and Congress and just declare that the budget he had put forth did put the Nation on a sound financial course; that it would end deficits and put us in a position to pay down our debt. They just decided that Mr. Lew would go out, despite what was in the budget, and declare that it would do those things. Thus, the statements of Mr. Lew amounted to what I have called--and will explain--the greatest financial misrepresentation concerning the finances of this Nation ever made.

If somebody has something different, I would like to see it. I would like to see somebody say, when we finish talking about this, that they have other examples of this kind of misrepresentation.

These statements were made carefully and deliberately calculated and for the political purpose, I have to say, of misleading the public. You may say: Surely not, Jeff. You are exaggerating this situation. Surely, he wouldn't do that.

Let me tell you what happened. The day before the budget was to be released, on a Monday, Mr. Lew went on

the Sunday news programs to report on the budget that the President would be submitting to explain what was in it. This is what he said on CNN on a Sunday morning program.

I will put this up because the words should live in infamy. This is how he described the budget he laid out:

Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the

point where we can look the American people in the eye and

say, we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending

money that we have each year, and then we can work on

bringing down our national debt.

That is exactly what the American people want to hear. There was no qualification placed on this statement, none whatsoever. He was speaking directly to the American people on a Sunday morning news programs. He said other things on several of the other programs that he participated in on February 12, 2011.

There were no qualifications. How could it be heard other than the way those plain words would suggest? It suggests that we had a plan, that the President had a plan, and that Mr. Lew was producing a budget--which his office produced--that would make sure we were on a sustainable financial course and we would not be adding to the debt anymore. ``We're not adding to the debt anymore.''

What else did that suggest? It suggested we can relax. We didn't need to talk about real spending reductions because we had a plan. Just follow the President's plan. Everything is going to be okay; relax. Don't get too excited as they did in this last election because we have everything under control. Our plan fixes it.

That is essentially what happened, but the budget documents Mr. Lew submitted revealed the opposite. The question is: Did his own documents confirm this analysis? Did it come close to it? Well, these documents will reveal the truth. Actually, his documents revealed a rosy scenario of the truth. The numbers I am going to give of what his documents reveal turned out to be less positive than even they predicted.

In his own accounting table, Mr. Lew's 10-year budget got nowhere close to the point where we could not say we are adding to the debt anymore or that we were in a position to pay down the debt. To anybody who has the slightest concern for the meaning of words--or who believes in the most basic concept of an objective truth--this statement must be condemned. Even though the Lew budget documents made calculations more favorable than the rosy projections of CBO, it still unequivocally showed that over the 10-year budget window there was never a year--not one year--when we would be able to pay down the debt or balance the budget or not add more debt.

Indeed, over the 10-year period his budget covered, which he was referring to in this document, we would add $13 trillion to the total debt of the United States. It would almost double it. It would be $9 trillion to the public debt and $13 trillion to the gross debt. The year with the single lowest deficit out of 10 years was $600 billion in debt. In other words, the lowest single annual deficit in 10 years was $600 billion. President Bush's highest deficit was less than $500 billion over 8 years. This is a huge debt, $600 billion, but would average almost $1 trillion a year. On average it would be $1,000 billion a year, which clearly leaves us on the same unsustainable path we had been on.

On Tuesday Mr. Lew appeared before the Budget Committee. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. I was amazed at what he was saying on television. After we scrambled around and looked at the documents, it became clear this was not close to correct. How could the Budget Director of the United States of America go on national TV and make these kinds of statements? How can we have any expectation of the truth in Washington when the Budget Director tells us we are on a sound path when it didn't appear to be so? And, indeed, it wasn't so.

He came before the Budget Committee, and I quoted this CNN statement to him. I read it back to him and directly asked whether his statement was accurate, and this is what he replied:

It's an accurate statement that our current spending will

not be increasing the debt . . . We've stopped spending money

we don't have.

Further, let me note that outside the 10-year window--based on the financial plan that that budget set forth--the deficits got worse. They were going up in the outyears. The lowest year was $600 billion, but they were going up every single year, by his own accounting. CBO's numbers were much higher as far as the debt that would be added to the country.

For me this was a most stunning development. I don't believe it could be explained away. It is obvious he determined that he was going to stand pat with his story, which was a political narrative that they wanted to spin. They wanted to spin a political narrative, but it was not accurate, and that is important for us. The chief budget person in America needs to tell the American people and the Budget Committee of the U.S. Senate the absolute truth about the financial condition of this country. He is not entitled to sugarcoat it, and he is absolutely not entitled to totally misrepresent it.

I examined him. He said we are going to have a primary debt. We are going to have a primary deficit. So what is this, a primary debt? Well, we don't count interest. I kid you not. The Budget Director of the United States of America said the statement--as I interpret it, and it was not inaccurate--that he was not counting the interest on the debt. Did he qualify that when he told the American people that? No, he did not. Did he make any kind of representations as to that? No. I would suggest the numbers clearly show that even if we have the kind of bogus accounting where we don't count our interest, who could possibly write a household budget, a city budget, or a State budget that didn't account for the interest they have to pay every year? How ridiculous is that? That is the kind of phony, gimmicky accounting that puts this country on a path to financial crisis. But that is what he said. Even by that definition it was not true, and this would not be true, and it is false. Well, phony accounting procedures, budget manipulations, and gimmicks such as this primary balanced idea are the way politicians have maneuvered us into a situation where our path is so dangerous.

The American people are not happy about it, and they should not be happy. There is no reason we have placed this country at such risk because of debt and spending--no reason we should do that. They sent us here to this Congress for a lot of reasons, but the primary reason is to properly manage their money.

I see my colleague from Vermont, and I think we might get there a different way, but I think we may share some of the views about this nomination. I respect his independence and gumption, as we would say in Alabama, to express his views openly and directly.

I will talk some more because this is an important matter, and I don't intend to let it go lightly. I believe this Congress and the American people are entitled to honest, sober, serious commentary and information from our leaders, and we are not getting it. It makes it hard to get the American people together to figure out how to tighten our belts and how to handle the financial crisis we are in if we have top officials who say: We don't have a crisis, don't worry about it, we have a plan that fixes it.

I don't see any reason to extend for a longer period of time the Lew nomination. He has come out of committee and he has bipartisan support. He is going to be in a position to be confirmed, but I am not going to vote for him. I wish to talk some more about some of the additional problems we have with his nomination but will do so later. I believe it is my responsibility to do so, and I intend to fulfill it.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Madam President, would the Senator yield?

With regard to the Senator's views, I am concerned that working Americans are not being fairly recompensed for their work on the American debt. We have gone a long time with no real net improvement in the income, inflation has been higher than wages, and Wall Street is doing fine. It seems as though they win whether things go up or down. I don't have any brief for that crowd. I think the Senator is right to be skeptical about how things are handled on Wall Street, and I salute my friend for being aggressive in that pursuit.

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

Madam President, just to follow up further on the situation we face, I talked earlier about the critical importance of having honest numbers. We can disagree on certain numbers. Mr. Lew predicted that under

his budget, last year's deficit in the 10th year would be about $800 billion. The Congressional Budget Office, using the same numbers, the same analysis, says it would be 50 percent higher. They said it would be $1.2 trillion. He was using rosy scenarios. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office came out with greater debt numbers and more danger for America.

I am not so much complaining about that, although I think they deliberately tried to make their numbers look rosy. What I am complaining about is a fundamental mischaracterization of the budget he presented and what it would do according to his own analysis contained in the budget documents he submitted with his budget.

This is a very important matter. People say: Why don't you get together in Congress? Why don't you all reach an agreement? Well, it is kind of hard to reach an agreement when the lead negotiator for the President, Mr. Lew--some call him Dr. No--goes around saying:

We don't need to do anything; our budget we submitted will

get us over the next several years to the point where we can

look the American people in the eye and say, We're not adding

to the debt anymore; we're spending money that we have each

year, and then we can work on bringing down our debt.

He implies bringing down our total debt because we are going to have surpluses, enough money to pay down the debt. However, according to his own numbers, the lowest deficit he had was over $600 billion, and they were going upward the last 6 years, getting worse, and the Congressional Budget Office said the last deficit would be $1.2 billion. Unbelievable. So I wanted to continue to discuss that.

According to the budget numbers he put out, his plan would add $13 trillion in new gross debt to the United States in 10 years, by 2021. That was in 2011. Single-year deficits will never drop below $600 billion. In 2015 they would start climbing back up to $774 billion. Over the 10 years total spending would increase--not be reduced at all, of course, but increase--by nearly 50 percent, with mandatory spending alone--not in any way controlled or reformed or fixed by the Lew budget--mandatory spending would increase by more than 80 percent. And mandatory spending makes up more than half of all the spending in our government. So on his track, by his own budget, by his own projections, by what he believes should happen, it increased by 80 percent. In fact, entitlements are growing at about three times the rate of GDP growth, the rate of the growth in the economy. That is unsustainable.

Do we ever hear that from the President or his chief budget guy, Mr. Lew, who is now expecting to be the Secretary of the Treasury, the primary, premier economic leader for America? If one can't be honest about what the situation is, one ought not to be promoted. That is the way I feel about it, and I feel strongly about it. I have never seen anything like that in my entire time in the Senate, to have this kind of statement made that is so utterly unconnected to reality.

It wasn't long after Mr. Lew came to the committee--2 days or 3 days after this statement--when I asked him about that. I asked him if that was accurate, and he said:

It's an accurate statement that our current spending will

not be increasing the debt . . . We've stopped spending money

that we don't have.

And the lowest deficit is $600 billion.

But Mr. Geithner came after this exchange, and I am sure Mr. Geithner was well aware of what happened in the Budget Committee. Mr. Lew dug his heels in and insisted this statement was true. What did the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, say at that point? I think this is the difference between Mr. Lew and Mr. Geithner. Mr. Geithner was former head of the Federal Reserve in New York, a man of some seriousness and gravitas, and he wasn't going to go in there and say something that wasn't true before the Budget Committee, although he didn't give it up easily. I had to use all the skills I had to pin him down, but when I did, this is what Mr. Geithner said. Even if the budget Mr. Lew put forward were passed and enacted, Mr. Geithner said that ``we would still be left with a very large interest burden and unsustainable obligations over time.'' In effect, he said we would be left with an unsustainable debt path, when Mr. Lew says: Don't worry, my budget fixes it. And Geithner was talking about this very budget.

Writing in the New York Times, writing an article, an op-ed in the New York Times, Mr. Lew said:

The President's budget is a comprehensive and responsible

plan that will put us on a path toward fiscal sustainability

in the next few years.

He wrote that in the New York Times--totally inaccurate. Does he not respect the American people? Does he think he can just go and make CNN statements and write in the New York Times and say anything he pleases about the financial condition of our country--a financial condition that represents the greatest threat to our national security, more than any other threat we have in this world today?

That same month, Mr. Lew stated in an interview with National Public Radio:

If we're able to reduce the deficit to the point where we

can pay for our spending and invest in the future, that is an

enormous accomplishment. This budget has . . . proposals that

would do that.

And it did not. The budget did not have anything in it that would have had us pay for our spending. We are borrowing 36 cents out of every $1 we spend today. We are adding debt to our Nation every single hour--and to say we are going to be paying down the debt.

At no point did Mr. Lew's own estimate show that the President's 2012 budget was coming close to a point where we could pay for our spending. Excluding interest payments on the national debt--excluding the interest--the plan would have resulted in $1.5 trillion in deficits over 10 years, and even more than that when you consider the full interest cost of $7.2 trillion. The long-term outlook, with annual interest payments approaching $1 trillion and mandatory spending consuming over three-quarters of the budget after 10 years, and growing--entitlement and mandatory spending absorbing three-quarters of the budgets--Mr. Lew's comments were not merely misleading, but I believe qualify to be described as the greatest financial misrepresentation in the history of the American Republic. If someone has a better analysis of it, I would like to hear it. If somebody comes down and says this is a true statement, I would like to hear them say it. I invite all my colleagues--members of the Finance Committee; lots of them voted for Mr. Lew--do you think it is OK to say this? Do you think this is accurate? And if it is not accurate, do you want to promote him anyway? Why would you want to do that? I do not understand it. I am not going to support that. Mr. Lew made these representations over and over again.

The President's next year's budget in 2012, for the 2013 fiscal year, was formulated while Mr. Lew was still the President's Budget Director and delivered while he was the President's Chief of Staff. It similarly was extreme and irresponsible, and it was part of a continued campaign to mislead the American people about how it operated, to say it was so much better than it really was.

Although the White House claimed $4 trillion in savings, according to the Office of Management and Budget's own data, the 2013 budget would only have reduced the deficit by $197 billion over 10 years. They claimed they saved $4,000 billion--$4 trillion--but, in fact, it would only have reduced the budget by $197 billion over 10 years--virtually not changing the debt course of America. And all of those savings-- virtually every one--were from tax increases. The spending was not reduced.

The White House also pushed the idea that the budget contained $2.50 in budget cuts for every $1 in tax hikes, while in reality there was a net spending increase above the policy baseline we were operating under. It spent more, not less. They claimed there were $2.50 in cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. That is not true. Overall, from current budget levels, spending would have increased by more than $2 trillion.

The net result of the proposals contained in the 2013 budget was to bring the Federal debt up to $26 trillion by 2022--an increase of $11 trillion. The proposed $4 trillion in savings simply did not exist. It was a complete fabrication. Mr. Lew understood that. He helped write that budget. He was the Chief of Staff at the White House when it actually came to the Senate.

Once again, a Lew-designed budget was presented to the American people in false terms designed to create the impression that we were putting America on a sound financial path, while we were doing the opposite--if it had passed.

And, of course, you say: Well, Sessions, that is your view. You are the one who is mischaracterizing the President's budget. This is all partisan. Maybe you would think that. I hope not. But let's see what some of the other observers around the country said about it when it was released. I am not talking about the budget that was described by Mr. Lew in these wonderful terms. If we had a budget that would do that, the American people would jump up and down and shout hallelujah. We are not close to it, however, as independent observers noted.

Look what these honest observers said about it.

The Washington Post, the largest paper here in Washington, said this:

The larger problem with the budget is the administration's

refusal to confront the hard choices that Mr. Obama is so

fond of saying must be faced.

The title of that editorial: ``President Obama's budget kicks the hard choices further down the road.''

What about USA Today, a nationwide paper?

President Obama likes to talk about those ``Sputnik

moments'' when the nation rises to difficult challenges like

the one posed by the Soviet space program in the 1950s. On

Monday--

The day this budget was released--

he had a chance to turn his . . . budget proposal into his

own such moment. He whiffed.

The title of that editorial: ``Obama's budget ducks tough choices.''

What about the Financial Times?

President Barack Obama has unveiled a hugely disappointing

budget, cutting only a few percentage points . . . in

projected US federal deficits over the remainder of this

century. . . . If Mr. Obama will not make this case, who

will?

The title of that editorial: ``Obama's budget shows failure of leadership.'' That is absolutely true. It was a failure of leadership.

Another from the Washington Post:

White House budget director Jacob J. Lew has told advocates

of reform that the White House thinks any significant plan

offered by the president would simply become a target for

partisan attack.

Then it goes on to quote Alice Rivlin:

``I would have preferred to see the administration get out

front on addressing the entitlements and the tax reform that

we need to reduce long-run deficits,'' said Alice Rivlin, a

commission member [on the deficit commission] who served as

budget director in the Clinton White House.

That was Alice Rivlin, a wise commentator, a Democrat, but a wise commentator. She went on to say:

But they clearly made a tactical decision.

She meant a political decision.

That was the Washington Post. The title of that was: ``Obama spending plan criticized for avoiding deficit commission's major proposals.''

Another from the Washington Post:

Erskine Bowles, the Democratic chairman of the fiscal

commission, said the White House budget request goes

``nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our

fiscal nightmare.''

He is referring to this. This was on February 14--2 days after Mr. Lew made those ridiculous statements.

This is Mr. Erskine Bowles, a man chosen by President Obama to head the fiscal commission and spent a year studying our debt problem.

How about Investor's Business Daily, a prominent business publication?

The White House's new budget is far worse than merely bad.

By not attacking the underlying cause of our debt explosion

and by raising taxes, it will lead inevitably to a weaker

economy and perhaps even default.

The title of that editorial: ``Obama's Gutless Budget Proposal''--a proposal written by Mr. Jack Lew.

What about the Wall Street Journal? This is entitled: ``The Cee Lo Green Budget.''

After three years of historic deficits that have added

almost $4.5 trillion to the national debt, President Obama

was finally going to get serious about fiscal discipline.

Instead, what landed on Congress's doorstep on Monday was a

White House budget that increases deficits above the spending

baseline for the next two years. Hosni Mubarak was more in

touch with reality last Thursday night.

The Wall Street Journal, the premier business publication in America.

The Orlando Sentinel:

Count us deeply disappointed by the $3.7 trillion budget

that President Obama unveiled Monday. . . . To really tackle

the national debt, Mr. Obama needs to get off the sidelines,

and start leading.

The title of that: ``President Obama's budget plan falls short''-- Jack Lew's budget plan.

The New York Daily News:

But the bottom line is that [President Obama is] figuring

on reducing the deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years while

his blue-ribbon commission said cutting four times that

amount is critically necessary.

The title of that editorial: ``Deficit of courage.''

This is another one:

President Barack Obama rolled out a $3.7 trillion budget

Monday that promises $90 billion in reduced spending for

fiscal 2012, but it would still produce a whopping $1.1

trillion deficit. The best that can be said is that we've

started to frame the national debate.

So said the Chicago Tribune.

The Indianapolis Star:

Obama has all but ignored the recommendations of his own

deficit reduction commission.

The headline of that editorial: ``We ignore `red menace' at our peril.''

How about the Los Angeles Times, a major western newspaper of liberal political views:

President Obama's budget for fiscal year 2012 landed with a

thud Monday, laying out short- and long-term tax and spending

plans that disappointed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The proposal was a remarkably tame response to Washington's

fiscal problems, not the bold statement about belt-tightening

that the White House had suggested was coming.

The Denver Post, another large and liberal newspaper, states:

Obama called the proposal one of the ``tough choices and

sacrifices,'' yet it does not confront entitlements and

continues to act as if government spending is the way to

prosperity.

That is true for sure.

The San Francisco Chronicle, an important newspaper:

In a crucial way, it lacks honesty.

The Dallas Morning News, a big newspaper:

But taken as a whole, his proposals represent the third

time in 2 months he has walked up to the challenge of curbing

the deficit and more troubling long-term debt and turned away

on leading the Nation back from an impending fiscal

nightmare.

The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The shortcoming in Obama's spending proposal is its lack of

strategy for sustained, long-term deficit reduction.

That is correct. It had none of that in it. It goes on to say:

Cutting deficits by $1.1 trillion over a decade might sound

significant. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office

has projected deficits rising $12 trillion over that time.

The title of that editorial is ``Still missing the mark.''

The Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The flurry of deficit-reduction plans released late last

year were supposed to kick off a national ``adult

conversation'' about the Nation's metastasizing long-term

debt problem.

When is that conversation going to begin? It certainly didn't happen on Monday when President Obama released his $3.7 trillion budget request for 2012. The title of that editorial is ``Slinking away from U.S. budget reality,'' written by Mr. Jack Lew, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who declared it was a wonderful budget, totally misrepresenting what it would do.

The Washington Post, Dana Milbank:

Obama's budget proposal is a remarkably weak and timid

document. . . . The President makes no serious attempt at

cutting entitlement programs that threaten to drive the

government into insolvency.

What about Senator Conrad, who was the chairman of the Budget Committee at that time, a distinguished Democratic Senator who retired from Congress and is no longer in the Senate. This is what Kent Conrad said, my friend, with whom I served on the committee:

But we need a much more robust package of deficit and debt

reduction over the medium- and long-term.

Well, our Democratic leadership in the Senate refused to bring up a budget. Today marks the 1,400th day this Senate has violated the law of the United States and not produced a budget. It is unthinkable at a time when the debt represents the greatest threat to our country.

The House has passed a budget each year. That was part of the strategy.

That was part of the gimmick. Senator Reid, the Democratic leader, says we don't need a budget; it is foolish to have a budget. That was his comment: It is foolish to have a budget even though the law explicitly requires the Senate to produce a budget.

What did he mean, ``foolish''? He meant if you pass a budget, somebody could criticize you. Somebody could look at your spending and taxes, evaluate it, and say: We don't like that. He doesn't fix the debt. It raises taxes too much. It doesn't cut spending. Or it increases the spending too much. Why do that? It is foolish. Let's don't pass one, and we will criticize Paul Ryan, the young, dynamic chairman of the House Budget Committee who wrote a budget that passed the House and would have fixed our debt problem and put us on a sustainable course.

This was a budget that was complimented by Alice Rivlin and Erskine Bowles. They may not have agreed to everything that was in it, but they complimented him on having integrity and doing what it said in laying out a plan for the future of America. The House passed it.

What did the Senate do? Nada, nothing. It was one of the greatest acts of irresponsibility, I submit, in Senate history. There are a lot of them out there. This is one in the top group, in my opinion. How could you possibly, at a time of crisis, not bring up the budget? The President submitted a budget, as he is required to do by law, and every President always has. The Senate just decided not to even move one. They say: We will have one this year. I am looking forward to that. It is behind time, as was the President's submission of a budget. He was late, according to the law, in submitting that.

As time went on and the tension rose over the budget and our future spending program, the Democratic leader in the Senate thought he would be clever and would bring up Congressman Ryan's budget and make all the Republicans vote for it--virtually all did; maybe two or three didn't-- and then they would attack them because it had cuts in spending. They are going to say: You don't like old people. You don't like children. You don't like education. You don't like this in health care, and this will be great.

As I said, most Republicans, virtually all, voted for it.

Senator McConnell said: All right, let's bring up the Obama budget. Let's bring up the budget Jack Lew prepared to the floor.

He forced a vote on the Lew budget. How many votes do you think it received? Zero. Every Democrat voted against it and every Republican voted against it. It was brought up in the House of Representatives. Every Democratic Member of the House voted against it and every Republican voted against it. It happened the next year in the 2013 budget.

Not a single person voted for this budget because it wasn't worthy of a single vote. It would not do anything to change the debt course of America, and they were totally misrepresenting what it would do. It was a sad moment. That is where we are.

My question simply would be, Where was Mr. Lew in this? He was the architect. He was the architect of the budget, but he was deeply involved in the political activities that were going on at this time. It fell to his lot--I am not sure if he asked for it--to come and testify before the Budget Committee and say these kinds of things about it, these words that will live in infamy. Did he just volunteer to do it? Was he so much a part of the Obama political interest he would say whatever it takes to promote a budget that wouldn't work?

Secretary Geithner, President Obama's own Secretary of the Treasury, would not say so. He wouldn't say these kinds of things. He tried not to embarrass the administration, tried not to embarrass Mr. Lew. When I pinned him down, he said this still leaves us on an unsustainable debt course; not fixing our problem as was represented.

Now we want to replace Mr. Geithner, a man who was frank in his testimony about the dangers we faced, with a man who stood by this kind of testimony and statements.

I do believe our country is a bit confused. I believe we are to the point where in politics people think they can say almost anything and nobody cares. Just say this or say that; if it is not true, well, so what. I guess it is just politics.

If we continue in that way, this is a very dangerous trend. It places the entire democratic Republic of America at risk. The whole concept of American Government is based on finding the truth. This is why you have debate in the Senate; open, public debate. The truth, the theory is that it will somehow rise to the top, and it normally will when you have honest debate. You have negotiations on issues, you advocate for your side, and you may begin to reach consensus, sometimes at least.

How can you reach consensus when the person you are negotiating with is insisting his budget does things it absolutely does not do? He is doing that for political reasons, not for the interests of America. How are you able to deal with that?

I think this Senate--as a matter of its own integrity to defend the integrity of the Senate, and, perhaps, more importantly, to defend the integrity of the American people--has a firm and clear duty to insist that high public officials tell the truth when they come before Congress or when they go on national television. He is being paid by the American people. Was he paid to misrepresent the budget or to tell the truth about the budget?

He didn't tell the truth about the budget. Is there a consequence? We just promote him to some other high office because he helped the President win his election by spinning the debt situation in America in a way that is not correct.

Make no mistake, I don't have proof of this. And maybe it is wrong. But it seems to me this was a campaign decision made in early 2011 that they were going to say their budget fixed our debt problems. Why do I state this? Because it was continued periodically off and on and was repeated again in a national television ad by the President of the United States in September 2012 to win reelection. ``Our plan pays down the debt,'' I believe, was the phrase they used in that television ad.

That wasn't true. He didn't have a plan that paid down the debt or didn't add to the debt or put us in a position to pay down the debt. He never had a plan to do that. He didn't.

You say: That is not correct. I will ask my Democratic colleagues-- this is a free country, a free Senate--you come down and say if I am incorrect on this. Show me if I am wrong. If I am wrong, I will apologize; but I don't think I am wrong. I have looked at it hard, and I don't think anybody is going to come down and dispute what I have said fundamentally on the details of this budget document.

I thank the Chair for indulging me.

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

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

Madam President, the Lew nomination has not received an enthusiastic response in many quarters, that is for sure--maybe from the hard left, where he has been an advocate of some very hard left views and some inflexibility when it comes to dealing with some of our entitlement programs and welfare programs that have been surging out of control. But this is what some others have said about the nomination.

Larry Kudlow, a commentator on CNBC--who was an economist for the Federal Reserve System of the United States and a former chief economist at Bear Stearns and an employee at the Office of Management and Budget, where he was a chief economist--said this on the radio not too long ago. I guess this was written about by Jeff Poor, a reporter for the Daily Caller.

Larry Kudlow explained why President Obama's nomination of

Jack Lew as Timothy Geithner's replacement to head the

Treasury Department was a ``nutty appointment.''

If you keep up with business issues and stuff, you will see Mr. Kudlow on TV regularly, and he, like a lot of our commentators, enjoys stirring the pot sometimes, but, as I say, he was a chief economist at Bear Stearns and at the Office of Management and Budget and

an economist at the Federal Reserve. He knows a great deal about the economy. His instinct is what led him to call this a ``nutty appointment.''

Continuing Mr. Poor's quote:

Kudlow pointed to Lew as part of the problem.

Part of the problem as to why we don't have a budget. He said he is part of the problem.

Once again citing the Poor article:

Kudlow cited Lew's lack of qualifications as another reason

that President Obama's appointment was ``completely

irresponsible.''

Quoting Mr. Kudlow, the article went on to say this:

``You know, this whole thing is kind of centered around the

Senate, which hasn't done a budget in 1,351 days--so whatever

that is, four years,'' Mr. Kudlow said.

And I will just add that today is the 1,400th day.

Continuing the quote:

``Now the White House might not even submit a budget, and

now the White House had taken the budget director and chief

of staff and put him over the Treasury, where Jack Lew is

completely--and I mean completely unqualified to be Treasury

Secretary.''

He is talking about Lew, and sending him to be Secretary of Treasury.

Mr. Poor goes on quoting Mr. Kudlow, who explains:

``He has no financial experience. He has no international

experience. He has no currency experience. He ripped off

Citibank for a couple million dollars. He was there for one

year. I mean, there's about a million people--give me a phone

book, and I'll find somebody more qualified for Treasury

Secretary than former OMB director Jack Lew. This is all of a

piece. It is completely irresponsible.''

Well, that is pretty clear, what he expresses there, what he believes. And I think that is valuable insight.

Are we just making this up? This staffer for Tip O'Neill, the Budget Director of OMB before and now Chief of Staff at the White House, is he really qualified to lead the United States of America in addressing the challenges of our time?

What about the Secretary of the Treasury position? Is that a matter of great importance? The Treasury is one of the four great senior Cabinet positions we have--Attorney General, Defense Secretary, State, and Treasury. The credibility of the Treasury Secretary is his greatest asset, and, as I have said, this statement raises the most grievous doubts about his credibility.

We have had great Secretaries. Albert Gallatin early on, who was a Swiss immigrant, helped create the House Ways and Means Committee and instituted the development of the Treasury. Simon Chase from Ohio stood as one of Lincoln's top aides and was responsible for the civil system of federally chartered banks. William McAdoo, a distinguished businessman, helped create the Federal Reserve System. Andrew Mellon, a brilliant Pennsylvania businessman, served as Secretary of Treasury. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., served as FDR's Secretary from 1934 through 1945. William Simon, a successful businessman, served as Secretary under Nixon and Ford. He supervised the Nation's economic policies in crisis times.

So this nominee doesn't have the kind of background one would normally look for in a Secretary of Treasury, particularly when we are doing so poorly economically. We had a big recession, and we are coming out of it at a slower rate than we perhaps have ever seen other than the Great Depression.

Mr. Malpass testified at the Budget Committee yesterday about the Lew-Obama-Paul Krugman theory of borrowing money and spending money to stimulate the economy and get us out of the recession. All you have to do is look at it and see it didn't work. How much more evidence do you need?

So that is the advice we have been getting there. And this good staffer quality is what our Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Baucus, seemed to see in Jack Lew during his recent confirmation hearings. He seemed to call into question the necessary stature the position requires and whether Jack Lew met those standards. This is what Senator Baucus said to Mr. Lew:

I'm going to ask you--it's clear you'd be a great staffer.

I'm not talking about being a great, courageous staffer and

telling the President what you think and don't think. I'm

talking about something else. I'm talking about the public

perception, the public demeanor, representing the United

States across the country and around the world, be able to

influence policy in a way that makes sense--most of us would

tend to agree with. We may differ along the edges, but most

everybody in this room agrees that needs to be done.

So even the chairman of the Finance Committee, a Democratic chairman, Senator Baucus, with great experience, certainly raised some questions about the nomination.

Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak, and I look forward to Senator Kaine's remarks.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to continue to share my concerns about the appointment of Mr. Jack Lew to be the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, one of the four senior Cabinet positions that are so important to America.

I have delineated how he proposed the budget in 2011. He announced on CNN and several other Sunday morning shows--this is when he was going to introduce the budget the next day, and he was giving a preview of it.

``Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to

the point where we can look the American people in the eye

and say, we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending

money that we have each year, and then we can work on

bringing down our national debt.''

Now, that would be a thing to celebrate. But I am convinced that he and the White House officials had met and they decided they weren't going to change the tax-and-spend and deficit policies of the United States, but they knew that wasn't going to be popular after 2010's shellacking of big-spending politicians. So what did they decide to do? They decided to prepare a budget that made no real change in the spending trajectory of America, continuing us on, as Secretary Geithner said just a few weeks later, an unsustainable course, while telling the American people they did what they wanted.

As I indicated earlier, this budget he presented never had a single year in the 10 years of that budget in which the deficit fell below $600 billion. That is larger than any deficit President Bush ever had in his 8 years, and it was going up during the last 5 years.

They said the deficit would go up $740-some-odd billion in the 10th year. The Congressional Budget Office took their very same proposals-- the independent CBO--and concluded that it would be $1.2 trillion in the 10th year, in debt--a totally unsustainable debt course and getting worse in the outer years.

So I am very much of the belief that this Senate should not accept a man for the Secretary of the Treasury, to promote him to that august position, who makes this kind of representation about the budget he prepared as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The budget got zero votes in the House twice and zero votes in the Senate twice. It has been panned by editorial boards all over America. He has been at the center of the political financial maneuvers of the Obama Administration from the beginning.

A lot of people are wondering why an agreement hasn't been reached around here: Why don't you agree? It is hard to agree if the man you are negotiating with is as out of contact with reality as the Wall Street Journal said of Hosni Mubarak shortly before he fell in Egypt. So I am baffled by it.

I wish to share now a few more thoughts about how this sequester we are talking about so much now happened, how it came about, and Mr. Lew's role in it. In fact, he designed it. He proposed a budget later in February 2012 that would eliminate it, and now he denies ever creating it in the first place. From Bob Woodward's book--he studied this carefully and talked to people, and I saw him on television this morning being quite firm about this. He has written a recent op-ed piece explaining the situation.

This is what Bob Woodward said in his book ``The Price of Politics'':

Lew, Nabors, Sperling and Bruce Reed, Biden's chief of

staff, had finally decided to propose using language from the

1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction law as the model

for the trigger . . . It would require a sequester with half

the cuts from Defense, and the other half from domestic

programs.

Later in the negotiations, Obama adviser David Plouffe

reportedly said that he couldn't believe that Republicans

were going to agree to any deal with sequester as a trigger.

Who started this? According to Mr. Woodward, no doubt about it, it was Mr. Lew.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Bob Woodward quoted Lew in saying this:

There was an insistence on the part of the Republicans in

Congress for there to be some automatic trigger . . . [it]

was very much rooted in the Republican congressional

insistence that there be an automatic measure.

Woodward went on to say:

The president and Lew had this wrong.

That is what I just read about him saying the Republicans insisted on it. Mr. Woodward said in his piece:

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive

reporting for my book ``The Price of Politics'' shows the

automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and

were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional

relations chief Rob Nabors.

Was Mr. Lew correct in insisting somebody else did it, or he and the White House?

Furthermore, on Senator Burr's questioning of Lew at the February Finance Committee confirmation hearing, Woodward says:

[Senator] Burr asked about the president's statement during

the debate, that the Republicans originated it.

That is, the sequester.

Mr. Woodward writes this:

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser,

then shifted to denial mode:

``Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.''

That is how he handled that in the committee. Did he give a straight answer? No.

Then, during the negotiations for compromise that people had been hoping would happen for really the first 4 years of President Obama's administration because we are on an unsustainable path, and it is not going to be fixed without leadership from the President--if he opposes it, the Democratic majority in the Senate will not pass it. You can put that down. They have not bucked him one time and won't buck him on a comprehensive financial settlement to put America on a sound path. We have seen that the whole time. We have Senators meeting and talking and indicating they might agree, but fundamentally they are looking over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They don't want to break rank with the President. That is just the way it is.

So Lew was now the top negotiator for President Obama. He has been called an ``obstructer of compromise.'' Reportedly, more than any other person in the room, Lew sabotaged agreement. Jack Lew has a long history of showing a failure to compromise on the drivers of the debt, the kinds of spending programs that are out of control, and we have to look at them. We can't have fundamental, large programs growing at three times the rate of the GDP, three times the rate of the economy.

Going back a long time ago, when Speaker Gingrich and now-Ohio Governor John Kasich--Kasich chaired the Budget Committee, and Mr. Lew was a deputy in President Obama's OMB office. Mr. Kasich reportedly told President Obama's economic adviser Gene Sperling at the White House that Lew ``did not know how to get to yes.'' That is Kasich's view of it.

A recent National Journal article on Lew quotes former Senator Judd Gregg, who chaired and was ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, of which I am ranking member today. Judd Gregg, a highly respected Senator who didn't seek reelection and remains a very valuable contributor to the national discussion on debt and spending, said this:

``He's like a labor-union negotiator. He's not going to

give you an inch if he doesn't have to . . . He's a true

believer in the causes.''

Well, that is apparently what we have been having because we can't ever get to an agreement that would do something significant.

The same National Journal article went on to say:

By causes, Gregg means Medicare and the rest of the social

safety-net. These are the progressive ideals close to Lew's

heart, friends and former colleagues say . . .

So Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps have been growing at very rapid rates, and they are very large programs. And all of them, every program, can be examined, looked at, and we will find waste, abuse, fraud, mismanagement, and they can be reduced. But Mr. Lew said no.

When it came to the sequester, let me remind my colleagues that food stamps, which have gone from $20 billion in 2001 to $80 billion in 2012--11 years--went up four times. There is no way to make that program better? We have the inspector general finding fraud in some of these programs. Medicaid has been rising well above the economy's growth rate, and it definitely has the potential to be reformed and made more efficient. Not a dime was cut from food stamps. Not a dime was cut from Medicaid. Only 2 percent was obtained from Medicare, but it was taken in a way that just cut the payments to doctors and hospitals, which is not going to be able to be maintained much longer, experts tell us.

What kinds of examples do we have from Bob Woodward's book ``The Price of Politics''? This is what he says:

[Brett] Loper [House Speaker John Boehner's policy

director] found Lew obnoxious. The budget director was doing

75 percent of the talking, lecturing everyone not only about

what Obama's policy was, but also why it was superior to the

Republicans'.

That is Woodward's take. He goes on to say:

[Barry] Jackson [Boehner's chief of staff] found Lew's tone

disrespectful and dismissive.

He goes on to say:

Lew was incredulous when he considered the Republican

proposal as a whole. The changes they were considering

sounded simple. But the speaker's office was laying down

general principles and looking to apply them to extremely

complex programs. The devil was always in the details.

Boehner was sick of the White House meetings. It was still

mostly the president lecturing, he reported to his senior

staff.

The other annoying factor was Jack Lew, who tried to

explain why the Democrats' view of the world was right and

the Republicans' wrong.

Look, when you are in a negotiation, it is not the time to have an argument over what your world view and my world view is. What you have to try to do is find out: Aren't there some things we can agree on that are consistent with both our world views and get us in a position so we can reach an agreement to save the Republic from financial disaster.

Why would not the Office of Management and Budget Director, unless he believed this bogus, phony statement--which he does not; he knew it was not accurate--why would he not want to do something historic and try to get America on a sound course? It was within the grasp.

So Mr. Woodward goes on:

``Always trying to protect the sacred cows of the left,''

Barry Jackson said of Lew, going through Medicare and

Medicaid almost line by line while Boehner was just trying to

reach some top-line agreement [on what they could do].

It was a very unsatisfactory situation. An agreement that could have been reached, I think, was not reached. And you keep looking around for fingerprints about how it fell apart, and it looks as though Jack Lew was the person doing that.

Mr. Lew is ideologically driven very strongly. That has become more clear as I have looked at the data and researched his background.

During the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations, Lew reportedly would not entertain even an idea by Senate Republicans that included any reforms to Medicaid. Everybody knows Medicaid has to be reformed. This is a health care system for poor people. Governors all over America are up in arms about Federal regulations and restrictions. The program had been surging in cost. It needs to be evaluated and improved. It has to be. It had no changes whatsoever in sequester because Jack Lew said no.

The publication Politico reported that ``Democrats and progressives''--progressives are, apparently, not liberals. Progressives are folks who--I do not know. One of the things progressives do is they tend to be postmodern and they pretend not to pay much attention to the meaning of words. They have an agenda, in my observation, and they interpret the Constitution or the laws of the United States--well, they are more flexible. What do you want it to mean today? They are not into the plain meaning of words so we can have a common understanding of what people mean when they sign an agreement or pass a law.

Anyway, Politico reported that ``Democrats and progressives'' were ``cheering Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew's promotion to White House chief of staff, saying he has a decades-long history of protecting entitlement programs--especially Medicaid--

It goes on. Politico reported that:

Lew played a crucial role in protecting Medicaid from the

across-the-board cuts that would take place if the

supercommittee didn't get a deficit deal--which it didn't.

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's aides pressed

for including Medicaid as part of the sequester during a

last-minute conference call, Lew shouted, ``The answer is . .

. No, no, no!''

So this has not been a healthy situation. This country is now in a fix. We have the sequester that is hammering us and disproportionately and unwisely mandating cuts on the Defense Department.

We can do better than that. Mr. Lew wanted that. He got that. Maybe he knew all along the White House was not going to agree to the things that would make this system work better and maybe, therefore, put us on a sound path and, he was quite happy to have the Defense Department-- one-sixth of the government--get half the cuts and happy to protect huge segments of the government from any cuts.

Well, you cannot cut our interest payment. We do not want to cut Social Security, but need real reform that puts the program on a sound basis.

So that is how we got into this fix.

I would say to my colleagues, if you believe the President's budget that Mr. Lew submitted on CNN on February 12, 2011--if you believe he was correct to say: ``Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt,'' then you should vote for him. If you think that is a true statement, I would like to have somebody explain to me how it is true. And if it is not a true statement, should not the Congress of the United States, the U.S. Senate, stand up and say we cannot accept high government officials giving us this kind of answer?

With his budget, the lowest deficit we would have had is $600 billion. We would have added $13 trillion to the national debt over 10 years and maintained, as Secretary Geithner said, this Nation on an unsustainable debt course.

Mr. President, I see my colleague, the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin, and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, as we review the Lew nomination--I think all of us should ask a number of questions about any nominee. One of them deals with their professional competence, their proven integrity, and their good judgment.

Senator Grassley has invested a good deal of time working on and understanding some of the things that happened when Mr. Lew was at Citigroup, the bank that apparently had the largest losses of any of the Wall Street banks, and it was not a good tenure there. He was a financial adviser; and it shows that, to the extent he has had any real banking experience, his experience has proven not to be successful. It is like the football player who might have played some games but he lost.

In early 2008, Mr. Lew became a top executive in the Citigroup Alternative Investment Unit, which houses hedge funds and private equity investments. News reports indicate that massive losses in this department played a role in leading to a Federal bailout of Citigroup-- his department.

One troubling aspect of Mr. Lew's department was that he was betting against the taxpayers. That is what the experts conclude: Citigroup, under Mr. Lew's leadership, was betting on the collapse of the housing market.

Simon Johnson, an economist at MIT and a liberal, testified before our Budget Committee and said this about the crisis:

This mismanagement of risk was comprehensive in that

organization.

He was talking about Citigroup, their mismanagement of risk was comprehensive. On January 16, 2009, Citigroup announced a loss of $18.7 billion, the same day that taxpayers bailed out Citigroup with $301 billion in loan guarantees. What a dramatic event that is, and was.

Mr. Lew's previous experience as an adviser at Citigroup provides a pretty good indication that he was in the wrong place and didn't perform well under these circumstances.

The day before the taxpayers came to Citigroup's rescue, Mr. Lew received a bonus. The President has been vigorous in attacking those who received Wall Street bonuses. He said it was wrong and it shouldn't happen. And in this case, he is exactly right: Mr. Lew should not have gotten this bonus. But it doesn't seem to bother the President to promote this man to Secretary of Treasury.

Here is what happened: Mr. Lew received a bonus, for the mismanagement that occurred there, in an amount exceeding $940,000. Almost a $1 million bonus. How many people do you know who get a $1 million bonus? The bonus was in addition to the $1.1 million salary he was paid for his work at Citigroup.

One news account of this event, citing that Securities and Exchange Commission filing, states this:

His unit lost billions of dollars in 2008 as its bets

turned sour. In the first quarter of 2008 alone, the unit

lost $509 million. The company stopped publicly disclosing

the unit's individual numbers thereafter, but the part of the

company that absorbed alternative investments lost $20.1

billion in 2008.

We should be concerned about Mr. Lew assuming the role as America's top financial adviser and economic advocate. He has told us to be concerned about this, if we would listen to him. During his confirmation hearings before the Budget Committee in 2010 to be Director of Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Lew was asked his views on the Wall Street financial collapse which he was smack dab in the middle of. What did he say about that?

Well, he said, Senator, when we discussed it, I mentioned to you I do not consider myself an expert on some of these aspects of the financial industry. My experience in the financial industry had been as a manager, not as an investment adviser. I would defer to others who were more expert in the industry and parse it better than that.

In other words, he disclaimed any real knowledge of the business. If so, how did he get the No. 1 job? Was it because of his political connections to the Clinton administration? And when he got a bonus to leave Citigroup, he only got that bonus if he was going to the Federal Government--the kind of crony capitalism that Larry Kudlow has so raised questions about.

Mr. Kudlow's question: Why did Citigroup allow him to have a bonus when he departed the bank, when he led one of the worst divisions in the history of any banking department--any bank, ever--and he only got that if he was going to work for the government?

And Mr. Kudlow knows Wall Street. He knows people all through Wall Street. You have seen him on television nightly. He was an economist for the Federal Reserve, an economist for the chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee at one time, and worked for the Office of Management and Budget. He raises the question of crony capitalism. Why?

Maybe Citibank, and the Wall Street financial community in desperate straits, thought: Wouldn't it be nice to have our guy move over to the White House, be right in the President's office and be Director of Office of Management and Budget? We are glad to see him go over there and we are glad to pay him $1 million. Maybe he will take our phone calls.

That is what Mr. Kudlow was talking about. And the Wall Street Journal--the Wall Street Journal believes in a free market. They are not opposed to people making a bonus. The Wall Street Journal sensed in his maneuverings an unhealthy crony capitalism deal, where people move back and forth from businesses and they use their government connections to advantage the business they left or they might return to. It is unhealthy. It is not free market capitalism; it is crony capitalism. It is not good.

The President was against all these bonuses and he is against a lot of this, and we are going to have an open administration, but he doesn't seem to worry about that.

So, such experience as Mr. Lew had demonstrates a lack of financial success, dramatic failures, in effect, $20 billion in losses in 2008 alone; but yet he got a $1 million bonus.

There is another matter of great importance. I remember when it happened. Judd Gregg from New Hampshire, former chairman of the Budget Committee, former ranking member of the Budget Committee--long-time member of that committee--worried about the future debt and unsustainable financial path of America and came up with an idea. In 2003, he proposed legislation, which was enacted, that placed a legal requirement that the President of the United States submit legislation if Medicare trustees--the people who run the Medicare Program--issue a funding warning for the program as part of their annual report. If America's trustees see they are on a funding path that is unsustainable and dangerous for Medicare, they shall formally notify the President of the United States. This would require the President to analyze the problem and submit legislation to Congress to see if we can't put Medicare on a sound path.

That is a simple event. Shouldn't we thank Judd Gregg for that? This provision has been commonly referred to as the Medicare trigger, and it is intended to ensure that steps are taken to shore

up the program's finances before it is too late.

President Bush was the first one to receive that warning when he was in office, and he submitted legislation to deal with the Medicare crisis. He complied with the law.

The law states this:

If there is a Medicare funding warning made in a year . . .

the President shall submit to Congress, within the 15-day

period beginning on the date of the budget submission to

Congress under subsection (a) for the succeeding year,

proposed legislation to respond to such warning.

This is in the United States Code. When I say it is in law, it is in the United States Code. It requires that to occur. And it makes ever so much sense, does it not? Shouldn't we be worried about a program as important to Americans as Medicare? Shouldn't we be honestly dealing with it? Wouldn't Congress want to know what the President's plan is to fix it? He doesn't get to dictate that, but he gets an opportunity to lay out a vision to how to place it on a sound path.

Why wouldn't he want to do that? What objection should he ever have to that? He ``shall'' submit this, according to the law. President Bush did. But by contrast 2012--last year--marked the fourth consecutive year the Obama administration failed to submit such a legislative proposal despite the clear and unambiguous legal obligation to do so.

They say: We think we offered something with our Patient Protection Act--ObamaCare--and we do not have to do it.

They don't get to decide. The question is Medicare trustees--they said the warning is in effect. They sent the notice to the White House. And this is when the President's action is triggered. Mr. Lew, if he is confirmed, will be chairman of the Medicare trustees, as Secretary of Treasury of the United States. That is one of his top responsibilities.

So for 2 of those 4 years, 2010 through 2011, Jack Lew was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He also served in that office in part of 2012. As Director, he was the person responsible for drafting and submitting fiscal proposals and complying with budget law under 31 U.S. Code, section 1105. That is his duty, legally.

The House and Senate Budget Committees as well as a strong majority of the Senate Republican conference have written letters asking the Obama administration to respond to the Medicare trigger, the Medicare warning, and submit legislation to Congress dealing with Medicare's funding shortfall, as the law requires. But to this day they have not complied, just refused, just as the Senate majority here refused to produce a budget in 4 years even though the U.S. Code calls for a budget to be submitted.

Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Medicare Actuary, who is a person who is really good with the numbers on Medicare and has great respect in the Congress, projects that on its current course, Medicare faces a $36.9 trillion unfunded obligation over a 75-year period. Yet the President's most recent budget submission would actually increase Medicare spending relative to the current law, putting the program in an even more unsustainable position.

Yesterday I joined with Senator Cornyn and 20 other Republican Senators in sending another letter to the President on this matter. We wrote this:

During his testimony before the Finance Committee, Mr. Lew

was asked about your administration's failure to abide by

federal law while he served as OMB Director. Mr. Lew stated

that the decision not to comply with the law was made prior

to his service at OMB. We find it stunning and noteworthy

that so far Mr. Lew has not provided adequate responses to

congressional inquiries on the matter. Congress needs a

clearer understanding about his role in the violation of this

law, including exactly when Mr. Lew became aware of this

legal requirement and what counsel, if any, he provided the

Administration on whether it should comply with the law.

That is what was written, and of course they have not responded. I suspect they have no intention of responding. They have not responded before. I ask, should we not consider this before we advance him from the position of chief of staff to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Medicare, who has a duty to protect the program? And he will not even respond to the legal mandate that they lay out a proposal to fix Medicare when it is in a dangerous, unsustainable path, as it is today.

There are other matters I would mention, but I see my good colleague Senator Sanders here.

I will be pleased to yield at this time.

Mr. President, I will just say that I share some of the views of Senator Sanders. I believe he said we need to stand up to the oligarchy that controls our economy and is involved in depressing wages. I would say most businesses like to pay their employees all they can, but it is better to not pay them more and they look for good workers at lower wages and that is the way they work and that is their interest. We can't look at the big corporations for objective analysis on how to create an economy that serves working Americans. If one thinks that, one is not truly a free market person as I like to see myself. I guess Senator Sanders sees more of a government-dominated economy and would have the same skepticism about how it works.

So I think we do need to ask ourselves a good deal about what is happening when working Americans have not seen their wages increase. Their wage increases, if at all, have been short of inflation. This has gone on for a decade and something is unhealthy and we need to do better. Mr. Lew did come from that crowd and, apparently, for what he knows about it is a part of it, and I think skepticism is certainly warranted, as I have indicated.

I believe unemployment is high, and higher than people think, and we need to work together. Senator Sanders talks about trade deals. The Presiding Officer and I have worked together. We got a bipartisan piece of legislation passed that tried to equalize currency differences between the United States and China which would begin to level the playing field rather significantly in favor of American workers who are now being unfairly competed against via currency manipulation by China. That has to be confronted, and I am prepared to do that.

I also hope my colleagues will give some thought to the problem of immigration. There is no doubt that large amounts of immigration, low- skilled, medium-skilled workers pull down the

wages of American working people. So we need to have an honest, effective, lawful system of immigration that serves the American interests as a whole and part of that is to ask ourselves: Is it pulling wages down? In one sense, I would say immigration is the other side of the coin of trade. It is one thing to take a plant and move it to a country and place it down and they work for less; it is another thing to bring the workers from that same country to the United States to work for less, and then the manufacturer may not be hiring American people, may not be able to do so at wages they would need to work. So I would just make that point.

With regard to Mr. Lew, he has made a number of very serious false representations. I am going to put this up one more time. These are words that should live in infamy. They should be an example to anyone in the future who thinks they can come before the Congress and make false representations or make them to the American people. The budget Mr. Lew produced as Office of Management and Budget Director in 2011-- he brought it out in February. The day before he produced it, he made this statement on CNN. He also made similar statements on other television programs that Sunday morning. The budget was officially to be produced on Monday. This is what he said:

Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the

point where we can look the American people in the eye and

say we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending

money that we have each year, and then we can work on

bringing down our national debt.

That was Candy Crowley on CNN that morning. Was that true? Should we consider a man to be Secretary of Treasury, an august position that requires great credibility and integrity, knowledge about how to manage a government and a business and the world economy, if he is not correct on that?

I have asked my colleagues throughout the day: Does anybody defend this? Will anybody come forward and say this is an honest statement of the condition of America at this time when he made that statement, that we are not going to be adding to the debt anymore?

When Mr. Lew submitted that budget the next morning, Monday morning, he made press statements, but he submitted a stack of documents that came with the budget; it was 6 to 8 inches high, and it had tables and accounting from his office. They are his numbers from the Office of Management and Budget where he was a Director. Those numbers show this: They show that there was never a single year in 10 years in which there was a budget surplus. The lowest single deficit in that 10-year period was $600 billion, in 1 year; the lowest, $600 billion. The highest deficit President Bush had in his whole 8 years was under $500 billion. This is the lowest in 10. The 5 years, according to his own numbers, the deficits went up to $740 billion, $750 billion in the 10th year, going up. Truthfully, they were going up even more so in the next 10 years.

The Congressional Budget Office came in and they analyzed the same numbers and they take assumptions and policies. They use the same framework and the same policies, but they traditionally make more realistic assumptions. They concluded that in the 10th year, the deficit wouldn't be $744 billion but 1,200 billion, 1.2 trillion. They say Mr. Lew's assumptions were too rosy. He projected more growth than was likely to occur and got better numbers than were likely to occur.

But, regardless, I am not basing my complaint on the fact he had too rosy a scenario; I am basing my concern on the fact that Mr. Lew misstated what was in his own report, even his rosy numbers. How can he say we are spending only money we have each year, when the lowest deficit is $600 billion?

He came before the Budget Committee and I asked him about it. I was flabbergasted. How could he say that? We looked at the budget he submitted and had a full--as much time as we liked, but the numbers were clearly not sustaining what he was saying publicly. So I asked him: Is it an accurate statement? Is this an accurate statement? I read it right back to him. This is what he said:

It's an accurate statement that our current spending will

not be increasing the debt.

He went on to say:

We have stopped spending money we don't have.

I would just say if we are going to have a compromise around here, if we are going to discuss rationally how to get this country on a sound path, we can't have the budget director saying basically he has a surplus when he doesn't come close to having a surplus. Erskine Bowles, the man President Obama appointed to head the debt commission, said a few days after this, I think the 13th or the 14th: This budget goes nowhere close to where they will have to go to avoid a fiscal nightmare. That is President Obama's expert who spent a year heading, cochairing the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission--nowhere near. Yet what did Mr. Lew say about it? Don't worry, American people. You don't have to tighten your belt. No agencies have to make cuts. If those mean Republicans make any suggestions of reducing spending, we will just attack them because they are hurting old people, children, schools, and so forth.

That is the game that was played. I don't appreciate it. It is not right. We do not need to have high-ranking officials coming before this government misrepresenting the most fundamental facts about our future on the most critical issue of our time.

Admiral Mullen said the debt is the greatest threat to this Nation's national security. If the Office of Management and Budget Director can't tell the truth, he doesn't need to be promoted to be the Secretary of Treasury, one of the great Cabinet positions in the United States; the top, primary economic position in our country--and the world, for that matter.

What does this prove? It proves he has a political staff mentality, not an august, independent personality of leadership. I hate to say that. I don't know Mr. Lew personally. I have met him, but that is about it. I haven't been involved in these negotiations where he has been the ``heavy'' according to Mr. Bob Woodward in his book, and the people who were in there whom he obstructed and refused to allow compromises to go forward. He was the point man for the failure of the discussions that had been going on for several years between the White House and the Congress to try to reach a plan that would put America on a sound course.

What is particularly amazing is that at the same time he was announcing the President's budget--later on that year Congressman Ryan and the House Republicans passed a 10-year budget that would change the debt course of America, tighten spending across the board, alter tax rates in a way to create economic growth, reduce the deficit dramatically, and put us on a sustainable, long-term path. I wouldn't agree with everything in it, but it was a very solid effort. Erskine Bowles praised the effort. Alice Rivlin, President Clinton's OMB Director, also complimented the effort. But President Obama and Jack Lew trashed it and politically spent 2 years campaigning against it while the Members of this body refused to bring forth a budget at all-- not the Senate Democrats, oh no. Senator Reid said it would be foolish for us to bring forth a budget. Today marks the 1,400th day since this body has passed a budget. Passing a budget in the Congress is required by the United States Code. Unfortunately, it does not put people in jail if they do not do their duty. But it is in there, and it was not done.

So Mr. Lew has been very loose, made statements that are not justifiable. They are just not justifiable.

For example, on February 15--2 days after this--being interviewed by National Public Radio, he said:

If we're able to reduce the deficit to the point where we

can pay for our spending and invest in the future, that is an

enormous accomplishment. This budget has specific proposals

that would do that.

It does not. It does not bring us to the point where we can pay for our spending and invest in the future. We have nothing but unsustainable deficits each year.

He goes on to say, in a different CNN interview: It takes real actions now so that between now and five years from now, we can get our deficit under control so that we can stabilize things so that we're not adding to the debt anymore.

Again, there is not a single year in Mr. Lew's budget that the deficit was lower than $600 billion.

Oh, later, at ABC, he said:

This budget has a lot of pain--

It did not have much cuts, that is for sure.

[But] it does the job, it cuts the deficit in half by the end

of the president's first term.

Give me a break.

The fourth year in President Obama's term, the deficit was $1,200 billion. That is what it averaged all 4 years. President Bush's average deficits were probably $250 billion, $300 billion maybe. The highest he ever had was $450 billion.

So when he says he is going to cut the deficit in half--no, not so. He did not come close to cutting the deficit in half. He went on the say:

It's going to take a lot of hard work just to take us to

the point where we're not adding to the debt.

He did a White House blog on February 13--the same day as this:

Like every family, we have to tighten our belts--

That is true--

and live within our means while we are investing in the

things that we need to have a strong and secure future. . . .

We know that you have to stabilize where we are going before

you can move on and solve the rest of the problem. This

budget does that.

So I think those descriptions of his budget are stunningly erroneous, and I do not believe it was a mistake. He served in the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton. He was not the boss, but he was one of the top ones. He knew the budget continued to add to the debt every single year in an unprecedented and unsustainable amount.

He produced a budget that made no change in America's debt course of any significance--virtually none--and then announced it solved all our problems. He basically told the American people: Well, don't you worry. Stick with us. We have a plan. You do not have to have all those cuts. You do not have to have those cuts. These people just want to get your money. Follow us. Relax. Cool it. It is OK. We have a plan. Our plan will solve this problem.

It was not true, and I am very unhappy with that. I think we cannot allow that to continue.

He did other things. He served as one of the top people in the OMB during President Clinton's term for a period of time. He knows how the budget process works. He, in my opinion, was totally on board with the majority leader in the Senate, Senator Reid, in his decision not to bring up a budget. They did this jointly. They talked about it. There is no doubt about that. This was all a planned strategy not to expose Senate Democrats to any real reduction in spending but to attack anybody who had the gumption to lay out a real plan that might change the spending in America. That was the campaign strategy. So he worked on that. That is where he was.

So we began--and I was the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee--we had all these young Senators who got elected in 2010. They wanted to be on the Budget Committee. They wanted to be involved in fixing this country's financial problem. They campaigned on it. They talked about it all over their States. It was the most competitive committee here. We had a long list of people who wanted to get on the committee. They all could not get on. But we got some very good, talented people to join the committee and we do not have a budget. We have not had a budget in 1,400 days.

So Mr. Lew was asked: Why doesn't the Senate do a budget? Do you know what he said? This is a quote on CNN.

. . . we . . . need to be honest. You can't pass a budget

in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes. . . .

Yes, we do need to be honest. Let me read the quote again:

. . . we . . . need to be honest. You can't pass a budget

in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes. . . .

Surely, he knows we cannot filibuster a budget. Surely, he knows a budget is passed by a simple majority. That is why a budget is so important. That is what the Budget Act did. It said the country needs a budget. It should not be filibustered. You should be able to pass a budget with 51 votes, and it cannot be filibustered. It has been that way since 1974. It is in the United States Code--the Budget Act.

He said that twice. Mr. Lew has to know better than that. Everybody knows that. We cannot filibuster a budget. And yet he was defending the inaction in the Senate and did not seem to care whether his words were true, I would suggest, and that is not good.

So we get into problems with integrity as it comes to spending in America. Time and time again, we have estimates that underestimate the cost of a program and at the same time overestimating the revenue for the program.

Just 2 days ago, I asked for and received--actually, 1 day ago, yesterday--from the Government Accountability Office an accounting of the President's health care proposal. As you remember, the President said: I will not sign a bill that adds one dime to the national debt-- not one dime. Everybody said: How are you going to add all these people into government health care and it not cost money? Oh, we are sure this is not going to happen. Trust us. Trust us. Do it. But we just got back a report. They conclude that there are several parts of the bill that project savings that will not occur, resulting in a shortfall of revenue over the life of the bill. They indicate it would add more than $6.2 trillion to the primary debt of the United States. In other words, with an unfunded liability of that much, it would take $6.2 trillion being deposited today and paying out over 75 years to supplement this program to keep it from failing. It will cost more than a dime. It will cost $6.2 trillion. It is another unsustainable program. It does not have dedicated revenue. It is going to cost more than this, frankly. But this is the latest report that hammers this idea that it is not.

So I guess what I am saying is, this is truly serious. Our total budget today is less than $4 trillion. This is going to add $6 trillion. Our budget this year is about $3.5 trillion. That is how much we spend. We take in about $2.5 trillion. We spend $3.5 trillion. Thirty-six percent of what we spent last year was borrowed money because we do not bring in enough money to pay for our current expenses.

We just got a report yesterday from the Government Accountability Office--an independent group that does good work--saying it is going to add $6.2 trillion to the deficits. That is why we have to have integrity here. This is how we go broke. This is how we are getting this country in a position we do not need to be in.

During my remarks today, I have exhaustively documented the case against the confirmation of Mr. Lew. I do not do it for personal reasons. I do it simply because I think it is the right thing for our country. I have detailed his disastrous budget plans that were rebuked by editorial boards across this country and unanimously rejected by Congress. Remember, his budget was brought up in the House. It got not a single Republican or Democratic vote. It was brought up in the Senate--not a single Republican or Democrat voted for the budget. What a rejection. This is the man we are going to promote to Secretary of Treasury?

I have discussed his repeated, knowing, and deliberate false statements about those budget plans--most notoriously his claim that ``our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we're not adding to the debt anymore. . . . ''

I have discussed his curiously enriching time at a failed division of Citigroup, the bank that had the greatest difficulties, perhaps, of any bank, and he headed the division where some of the worst problems were. He got a big bonus just about the time they got a $310 billion bailout loan guarantee--$310 billion.

As I close my remarks, I would appeal to my colleagues to oppose Mr. Lew. I would appeal to my colleagues to defend the integrity of the Senate, to defend the right of our constituents to hear the truth from government officials through CNN or whatever program they are hearing, and to defend the idea--the very concept--of truth itself as an objective matter.

I would also like to place this in a wider context. Today is the 1,400th day since Senate Democrats have passed a budget. They say we will have one this year. Maybe we will. Why has this gone on so long? Because they decided it would be better to offer no solution, no plan, to help struggling Americans and,

instead, tear down anyone who dared offer a plan to solve our Nation's economic problems. This is the heart of the problem in Washington right now. We have one political party that sees the budget debate as an exercise in political warfare, to advance power, not problem solving.

At the center of this strategy is the White House, and at the center of the White House is Mr. Lew. In his campaign for reelection, President Obama repeatedly said he had a plan to ``pay down our debt.'' If he did, he never submitted it to Congress. He did not have one. He even ran a campaign ad, late in the campaign, saying:

I believe the only way to create an economy built to last,

is to strengthen the middle class--asking the wealthy to pay

a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way.

So we can afford to invest--

More, I guess--

in education, manufacturing, and home-grown American energy,

and for good middle class jobs.

But did he have such a plan? Not Mr. Lew's plan, at that point his Chief of Staff, supervising the OMB Director, who followed him. Again, this was the strategy: offer a plan that does nothing to alter our dangerous debt course while pretending it does just the opposite. Then, once you have done that, attack anyone who dares to propose to reduce the size of the bureaucracy, attack anyone who suggests Washington is too powerful--attack, attack, attack, while never offering anything that would actually work to help Americans who are struggling every day. After the White House budget was submitted in 2011, this budget I have referred to that he announced, President Obama, if you remember, spoke at George Washington University in your area, with Congressman Paul Ryan, the House Budget chairman in attendance, sitting right before us.

Congressman Ryan, as you remember, had laid out a plan which would fix the financial future of America, if adopted, and put us on a sound course.

President Obama responded:

One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House

of Representatives. . . . It's a plan that aims to reduce our

deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. . . . But the

way this plan achieves [that goal] would lead to a

fundamentally different America than the one we've known

throughout most of our history. . . . This is a vision that

says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health

insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are

those 50 million Americans? Many are someone's grandparents

who wouldn't be able to afford nursing home care without

Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class

families who have children with autism or Down's syndrome. .

. . These are the Americans we'd be telling to fend for

themselves.

This is our level of debate in Washington: when Congressman Ryan deals honestly with the challenges we face to tighten the belts across the board, create mechanisms to enhance American growth and job creation, this is what the President said--with him sitting right there.

Senator Reid produces nothing, brings out no budget, because he says it is foolish to do so? He meant foolish politically. He didn't mean foolish for America not to bring forth a budget. How could it possibly be foolish for America, the United States Senate, to comply with U.S. law that says we should bring up a budget?

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 that we have in America today. It goes after little children, poor little boys and girls. We want them to learn to read.''

This is the level of debate we have in this country. This is why we have a sequester that can't be fixed, this kind of ridiculous talk. Somebody needs to stand up and say we are tired of it.

My plan, my view for America, is to help poor people be prosperous, rise out of poverty. We don't judge that by how many checks we send out, how much deficit we run up, and leave our country in danger. The Republicans, candidly, have not done enough to stand up to these egregious attacks. We need to defend ourselves more effectively and aggressively. Voting against Jack Lew would be a vote against dishonest tactics, misrepresentation of facts.

Every Republican ought to ask themselves, should I vote to advance a man to a top position he is not really qualified for, who is loyal to the President's political agenda, and places that above telling the truth?

The painful truth is to some extent this political strategy has been successful up to now. President Obama and his Senate majority have blocked fiscal reform and continued on our path to fiscal disaster. It is time we pointed out that the establishment they are shielding from cuts, the big government apparatus they continually defend, is hurting people every day. It is bloated, it is inefficient, it is duplicative, and fraud occurs every day.

Their policies, their endless support of the bureaucracy has created poverty, joblessness, and dependency. It has created low wages, low growth.

In cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago, governed almost exclusively by Democrats and Democratic policy at every level, the good, hard-working people are hurt every day by these leftist policies. They do not work.

In the city of Baltimore, one in three children live in poverty. One in three Baltimore residents are on food stamps. Imagine that, the great city of Baltimore.

In Chicago, where roughly 500 homicides occurred in 2012, 51 percent of the city's children live in a single-parent home.

In Detroit, almost one in three households had not a single person working at any time in the last 12 months. Almost one-third of them hadn't had a single person working. The city's violent crime rate is among the worst in the country. More than one-half of all Detroit children live in poverty.

This should not happen. What is the response? Borrow more money and send out more checks. This is not the way to help people. These are the consequences of leftist policies. We are opposed to those policies. They do not work. They hurt the people, they pretend and assert that they are helping.

We are fighting for policies that create jobs, create rising wages, create opportunity, help more people earn a good living and care for themselves, be independent and prosperous and get on the road to higher wages, supervisory positions, health care and retirement benefits. This can be possible in this country. We are trying to lift people out of poverty and strengthen family and community. We are trying to protect the good and decent people of this country from a debt crisis.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson told us this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. They said if we don't get off this course, this unsustainable path, we may have another one, and it may be worse than the 2007 one.

Where does Mr. Lew stand? Where does the White House stand? They did everything they could to defend the bureaucracy, no matter the cost in wasted dollars or lost jobs. Mr. Lew submitted an indefensible budget plan that would have caused further social and economic devastation. They deliberately misled the Nation about that plan, deliberately misled the country about it. He knew this wasn't true, and then he participated in a strategy that shot down any efforts from the Republican side to reform the situation.

I urge my colleagues to reject these tactics from the White House. I urge them to stand up for the good and decent people of this country who work hard every day, try to do the right thing, want to get ahead, and want to see their wages rise instead of stagnate. I urge them to vote to hold high government officials accountable by putting politics ahead of policy or sacrificing truth for political gain. I urge them to oppose Mr. Lew.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will wrap up here with a few thoughts before we vote. I spent a good deal of time today delineating a series of serious, deep problems with this nomination, why I truly believe he should not be confirmed. I suppose maybe there are votes to confirm him. We will see as that goes forward. I do not see any need to delay any further, but it is time for the American people and the Members of this Senate to consider where we are with this nomination.

On February 13 of 2011, a day before the President submitted the budget, the budget Jack Lew wrote, he went on CNN and other TV stations and said these words, words that will live in infamy if we care anything in this body about respectful treatment from the executive branch, if we have any commitment to the plain truth. He said:

Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the

point where we can look the American people in the eye and

say we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending

money that we have each year, and then we can work on

bringing down our national debt.

How unbelievable a statement could that be, since his own numbers-- not somebody else's, his own numbers when he submitted the budget on Monday, the next day--showed that the lowest single deficit in any one of the 10 years was $600 billion. He would have added $13 trillion to the gross debt of the United States over 10 years and the numbers, the deficits were going up in the last 5 years--a totally unsustainable course.

Erskine Bowles, the head of the fiscal commission, was in shock, I think, when he saw this. He was appointed by President Obama to head the commission. He said this will take them nowhere near where they have to go to avoid the Nation's fiscal nightmare--nowhere near. And he was absolutely right about that.

Then he also said, on CNN on a different day, another interview, the budget ``takes real actions now so that between now and 5 years from now, we can get our deficit under control so that we can stabilize things so we're not adding to the debt anymore.''

It had never come close to that. It is a horrible thing. He said this. I asked him about it before the committee. I read that very quote to him before the committee 3 days later and this is what he said. I asked him, is it an accurate statement, this statement right here? And he said:

It's an accurate statement that our current spending will

not be increasing the debt. . . .

He went on to add:

We've stopped spending money that we don't have.

First of all, this Senate, this Congress, should defend the integrity of our process. We should not have high government officials come before our committees and before the American people and misrepresent in such a dramatic way the financial condition of our country. I called it then and I repeat now that this, I believe, was the greatest financial misrepresentation in the history of this Republic. If anybody has one that is bigger, let me hear it, but I don't think they will. I said that earlier today. You tell me--$13 trillion added to the debt and they say we are not going to be adding to the debt anymore.

The budget was a terrible budget. It was a terrible budget. Editorial board after editorial board--the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post, the Dallas Morning News--there must have been 40 editorial boards that hammered this budget for failing to lead--the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily--they all hammered this budget because this was early in 2011, after the 2010 elections, after the shellacking of the big spenders, and there was a hope somehow that we would be able then to get the administration to come around and change some things. But they stayed right with their big spending policies. They stayed right with it and they decided not to tell the truth, that we are not backing down, we are going to continue to spend, we are not going to cut spending. They would not say that. This is what they said. Whereas their budget did just the opposite.

I feel strongly about this. This is not right. We in Congress should not have this kind of misrepresentation before us and we should not reward people who participate in such misrepresentation. He is the architect of the administration's calculated plan to misrepresent the budget, to not have a budget in the Senate, to not expose themselves any more than possible, to attack Republicans such as Paul Ryan in the House, who actually laid out a plan that would change the debt course of America. That is what the plan was, and Mr. Lew was the architect of it and he executed it. Boy, what was it like, do you think, for him to be in the Senate, in the White House, and have to be told or asked: Would you go out and say this?

Mr. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury--I ask consent to have 1 additional minute.

Mr. Geithner--and this is important, colleagues-- Treasury Secretary Geithner came before the committee. He would not repeat these words. I questioned him. Of course he tried to avoid it but eventually when asked directly he honestly said: Senator, this budget will not put us on a sustainable path, exactly opposite of what Mr. Lew was saying.

I ask my colleagues to consider this. I ask them not to award the person who participated in so calculated a plan to misrepresent the financial condition of America and cause the American people to believe we had some sort of time that had the country on a sound path when we remain to this day on an unsustainable path that endangers working Americans.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, last week, about the time Congress recessed, the President's immigration plan was leaked to the press and was commented on generally. A group of Senators here have been trying to work on a comprehensive plan and expressed dismay at what it contained and said it was not acceptable.

A brief review of the enforcement section of the President's immigration plan confirms, I think, what my concern has been all along. It is a smoking gun, in truth, that demonstrates this President is not serious about enforcement. That is where we are. Any immigration plan this Nation implements has to be founded on the simple legal principle that people can come to our country in generous numbers, as they always have done, but they should wait their turn. There should be a lawful system. You can't have a lawful system if you are not prepared, not willing, and not committed to ensuring that the laws are enforced.

What we have seen for the last several years is very dramatic. In point after point, I, formerly a Federal prosecutor for almost 15 years, can tell you it effectively neutralized the ability of our current laws to be enforced.

This bill is confirmation the President hasn't had a change of heart. He hasn't had a change of heart. They are continuing to talk as if they expect and plan to establish a lawful system of immigration. When you get down to it and read the language of the legislation, it is not there.

Here are some examples of what the President thinks amounts to enforcement. This is so sad. I will say, with absolute confidence, if the President of the United States had done what he sort of said he was going to do in 2008 when he was running for office, he would make this legal system work. If he had invested time, effort, leadership, moral authority, and maybe a little more money--but it won't take a whole lot of money--and begin to show the kind of progress we need to have, show a commitment he would work to enforce the law in the future, he would be in a much better position to ask for a large reform of law.

Let's look at what his plan reveals. It explicitly, openly, and directly prohibits State and local governments from enforcing immigration laws and from even asking someone for their immigration status.

We have former Governors here in the Senate, former State police superintendents--and I have dealt with this issue for a very long time--that is a stunning development. There are only about maybe 20,000 Federal agents dealing with immigration. There are 600,000 State and local law enforcement officers, in every county, city, hamlet, and town in America who are the ones who come in contact every single day with people in their areas for drunkenness, fighting, burglaries, and drugs. When they find somebody in the course of doing their duties, they discover people who are here illegally.

We want to have a relationship with them and to utilize their capabilities. The Federal Government can then respond, identify the person, and see

what the truth is about their background. This eliminates that and steps backward from some of the progress we have slowly made, some at my insistence, over the last several years.

The proposal the President put forth eliminates the congressional requirement that the Department of Homeland Security put in place a biometric exit system for those who enter the country legally but overstay their visas. People come into the country on a visa and don't ever leave. Experts are telling us as many as 40 percent of the people who are here illegally today overstayed their visas. They need to clock in when they come in, but there is no clocking out. We have no real idea who came and overstayed their visas.

The President's plan eliminates a legal requirement that has been in place for approximately 17-plus years, which required a biometric exit system to clock out people when they come in. It is not hard to require them to pay a few dollars to purchase a card, and when you exit, it will be read like your credit card. You exit and you are clocked out. We have some control over that.

The proposal from the President restricts the ability of Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to obtain information regarding whether a person is illegally present in the United States. Think about this. It would prohibit Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies, particularly law enforcement agencies that need to know something about a person they may have come in contact with in the course of their public safety duties, to know whether they are legally in the country.

This means if a law enforcement agency is holding an illegal immigrant for a criminal offense not deemed serious enough--a criminal offense, but somebody in Washington and Homeland Security said is not serious enough--the law enforcement agency cannot contact Federal authorities.

This also means States with laws that require a determination of immigration status will no longer be able to use Federal databases to determine if a person is eligible for a driver's license, for example. You need to be able to turn somebody down for a driver's license if you can't check to see if they are lawfully in the country.

This is something I have worked hard on over the years, for a decade. It puts the final nail in the coffin of the 287(g) Program. That program states that State and local law enforcement officers are no longer allowed to function as immigration officers.

We had a program the Federal Government did not want, really, the politicians did not want to see happen. The law enforcement officers wanted it, and this was a program which would allow Federal immigration officials to train State and local law officers--some of them at the prisons, some of them in State offices, some of them in regional offices--how to deal with people who are in the country illegally.

The average 19-year-old police officer in Middleburg, VA, or in Monroeville, AL, may arrest a mayor for fraud or assault, but needs to take 2 weeks of training before he can be certified to arrest somebody illegally in the country, not even a citizen. This is the way it is working in the real world. It had some beneficial aspects. It is something I supported and thought we should expand nationwide.

There are highly trained people within State law enforcement, officers who are trying to cooperate with the Federal agents to try to create a system that will actually work. The President's plan would apparently eliminate that.

The President's plan would allow private individuals to hire border patrol agents to protect them and their property, when it is the federal government should be fulfilling its duty to protect them itself.

Is this a capitulation? You have a situation in which you are being basically invaded, the sovereign territory of the United States. It is not just a private individual's farm, ranch, property, it is U.S. territory. It should be protected from those unlawfully able to go there. They shouldn't have to hire their own police officers.

It includes a feel-good measure such as giving illegal immigrants free legal representation and creating border community liaison officers, in part to receive complaints about Border Patrol agents.

It allows the Attorney General to cancel deportation of criminal aliens convicted of aggravated felonies if they do not serve a sentence of 5 or more years. The law says if you are convicted of offenses and you are apprehended here illegally, you should be deported. It states this is only for serious offenses and you received time in jail, Federal felony offenses.

The President's plan goes even farther than that. It says to the Attorney General, if they served less than 5 years, he may waive that and not follow the law and deport people who violated the law. It gives the Attorney General authority to waive other legal requirements as well.

The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is directed to provide appropriate training to agents enforcing laws and goes into a great deal of training of civil rights and that sort of thing that is required.

There is no mention of interior enforcement. There are no measures to secure our borders.

As I have stated, I have just begun to review this plan. What I have read causes me great concern and confirms the suspicions I have had all along, which means when this legislation goes from some sort of outline that sounds good in theory, the actual legislation is not going to be what it is promised to be. Why did I say that? Because it happened in 2006 and 2007.

The bill did not fulfill the promises their sponsors made of it when it was carefully examined. When we saw that, the American people spoke out, and it went away.

If you don't have a lawful system that effectively requires enforcement of the law, you are not serious about protecting people in this country from illegal workers who would take their jobs and have the net effect of pulling down their wages.

We already have the problem that the President is suing States that want to help the Federal Government enforce their laws. He has had his own United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sue him, the Director of ICE, and the Secretary of Homeland Security for blocking them from being able to do their legal duty to enforce the law. That is going forward. They voted unanimously no confidence in Mr. Morton, the head of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. And there are a lot of other problems.

I want to say, in sum, we have just begun to review the President's leaked plan and there are massive holes in it. It reveals a continued agenda to simply not allow a lawful system of immigration to be established in America and, therefore, it is unacceptable. I believe and am afraid that same mentality will impact the negotiations. We will end up, no matter how hard people try, with an inability to reach an agreement on a kind of plan that will actually work.

What needs to happen is we need to continue our generous, historic affirmation of immigration where we welcome people to our country in numbers that are very large, but we believe people should come lawfully. People who aren't entitled to come should not be allowed to enter. The people who come here should serve the national interest, not some group's special interests. If we do that, we could be proud of that system. I am so deeply disappointed that the President fails to meet those qualifications.

I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are facing a very serious problem with the sequester that will impact our Defense Department and other government agencies. It is a very serious matter. It has been out there for well over a year. We have known this is coming, and it is time-- long past time--for the Democratic Senate and the President of the United States to provide some leadership on the issue.

I was pleased with Senator McConnell this morning when he raised this matter, suggesting we are in a pattern here of how business is being done in the Senate. It goes something like this, Senator McConnell said: Phase 1, Republicans identify a challenge and propose a solution; phase 2, the liberals sit on their hands until the last minute; phase 3, they then offer some gimmicky tax hike designed to fail and then blame everybody when it does.

This is essentially, I am afraid, where we are. We are now at the time where they are about to sweep in with some gimmicky solution that won't be successful. I don't know where they are in that. We have seen a 1-page outline that suggests there is a plan out there, but we haven't seen legislative language, I don't believe, unless it was produced in the last few hours. So we are 2 weeks away from a sequester that will include cuts that I believe will be too damaging to the U.S. military and can be avoided and should be avoided.

The sequester, remember, was part of an agreement that was reached in August a year ago--August 2011--between the President of the United States, the Democratic leadership in the Senate, and the leadership in the House of Representatives. It was designed to raise the debt ceiling because we had borrowed all the money that could legally be borrowed and the administration wanted to spend more and borrow more money. We were borrowing well over 35 cents out of every dollar we spent at that time--and still are--and the President wanted to raise the debt ceiling. The people holding the credit card--the U.S. Congress--said: Wait a minute. You have run up too much debt. You have to lay out a plan that, at least over 10 years, would equal the amount you want to raise the debt ceiling. The Administration could spend that money now-- and it was spent in 18 months, because we have already hit the debt ceiling again--and we will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion.

So an agreement was reached to reduce spending over the next 10 years by $2.1 trillion. That was the agreement. The President signed that, the Democratic leader in the Senate agreed to that, the Speaker of the House, the Republican, agreed to that, and that became the law.

These are numbers we live with every day. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, and it is a constant item in our face out there. We were then spending $3.7 trillion a year. So if you extend that for 10 years, we would spend $37 trillion over 10 years. But the budget was expected to grow. It was expected to grow so that we spent $47 trillion over 10 years. At the end of that time we would have increased spending by almost $10 trillion over 10 years. This deal would have said that we wouldn't spend $47 trillion but $45 trillion, therefore reducing the increase by a modest amount.

These were the first significant cuts we have had in the Congress in a long time. It is the first time we have actually made some alteration in the growth of spending. And really, it is not a cut in spending; it is reduction to the growth of spending. But the President not only agreed to the sequester, he actually proposed the sequester as part of the deal.

The sequester came about under the theory this would be a stopgap emergency measure if the committee of 12 didn't reach some long-term fiscal plan to alter the debt course of America, and the committee didn't reach that agreement.

The agreement fell apart and the sequester happened. The sequester was put in the bill at the last minute, according to Bob Woodward in his book, at the request of the President and the White House. It was put in there, and nobody knew what it meant. That is the reason primarily that I voted against it. I didn't like this situation that looked to me as though it would be a meat-axe cut that would fall disproportionately on the Defense Department. At any rate, good people disagreed, the bill passed, and it became law. So that is how the sequester came to be, and it is set up in a way that disrupts the Defense Department.

If you cut the Defense Department as much as is presently scheduled to be done now, it would hurt under any circumstances. But if it is done the way the sequester says, everybody agrees it will be far more damaging than it needs to be because it gives the Defense Department very little control over how to manage their money in a way that has the least adverse circumstances, and that is why we should not let the sequester go forward.

The sequester needs to be reevaluated for a lot of reasons. One-sixth of the federal budget is the Defense Department. One-sixth of the amount of money we spend is by the Defense Department. One-half of all the cuts in the sequester falls on the Defense Department. It is disproportionate.

Some people are under the impression that it is the war costs that are being cut. This is not what we are talking about. The war costs are funded in a separate account. All of these cuts fall on the base defense budget of the United States of America.

It means too rapid and severe a reduction in our military and civilian personnel, and it endangers the smart management of the war, while entire portions of our government--almost one-half of our government--have no cuts at all. Amazingly, there is no reduction in the growth of the spending of one-half of our government; and defense spending increases are less than half of what you see in many of the other major spending programs in our government.

The base defense budget has not been surging out of control. It has been increasing at about the rate of inflation in the last several years. But defense has already reduced its budget as part of the first part of the Budget Control Act agreement last August. That was $487 billion. So this sequester would be an additional $500 billion, should it go through. It would be a cumulative reduction of almost $1 trillion over 10 years. That is a big reduction. It alters the ability of the military to function in the way they have been functioning, and it threatens the ability for them to carry out the missions they have been assigned to carry out today.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dempsey, said this week:

If sequestration occurs, it will severely limit our ability

to implement our defense strategy. It will put the nation at

a greater risk of coercion, and it will break faith with the

men and women in uniform.

That is a serious statement and we should respect it. I know right now they are threatening all kinds of draconian cuts, and probably when the dust settles it won't be quite as draconian as they tell us. But the fundamental truth is, this is disproportionate and dangerous to the Defense Department, and it is not necessary.

Remember how we got here. We saw this coming. The defense authorization bill was not brought up before the election maybe for the first time in 50 years. Why was it not brought up in July, August, September, or October? Why was it not?

One of the reasons I think was that everybody knew the sequester was out there. It needed to be fixed, and this would have been the opportunity to fix it when that bill moved through the Senate. And so Senator Reid wouldn't bring up the defense bill. He refused to bring it to the floor.

Senator McCain came to the floor and said, shame, shame, shame, as ranking Republican on the committee, pointing out this failure was the first time I believe in 50 years that the defense bill had not moved. No other appropriations bill had moved, either; not a single one. But not passing the defense authorization bill was historic--again, I think in big part because they didn't want to talk about the sequester.

In the debate, I believe last October, with Governor Romney, the sequester came up. What did President Obama say? It will not happen. The sequester will not happen. And here we are, with no plan to fix it from the White House, no plan to fix it from the Democratic majority-- which apparently wants to lead this country, wants to be in the majority, wants to justify their leadership position. Senator Reid has not brought forth--unless it is today, until

this late, late minute--a plan to fix the sequester, an alternative. We have seen the one-page outline, but that is it.

I would note, I think I indicated, the House has already twice passed legislation months ago that would fix the sequester and not allow this event to occur in the way that it is. They have done their duty.

So what is the Senate going to do? What are we going to have from the Senate? Another do nothing, no budget, no fix to the economic threats of America? Now no fix to the sequester? The only thing we have to do now is raise taxes?

The truth is, the way to fix this and the way to do this is to have all the departments and agencies of the government be evaluated, not just a small portion of them, and have all of them tighten their belts, and we could easily avoid the draconian cuts that are lurking out there right now.

Over half the government spending was not touched in the 2011 Budget Control Act deal. It just wasn't, including some of the fastest growing items such as food stamps, which have gone from $20 billion in 2001 to $80 billion last year. It has gone up four times in 10 years and not a dime was reduced from it. Medicaid is at 6- to 7-percent-a-year increases. These programs alone add $300 billion to government spending each year. They aren't having any review at all.

I am disappointed we don't have a legislative plan on the floor that we could actually evaluate to see what it means, and then begin to debate it and discuss it. It should long since have been brought up in this Senate. We should already be aware of it.

But there is a game played around here, as Senator McConnell said. There is a game around here to wait until the last minute. And the President, using the power of the Presidency and his skill as an orator, feels he can once again dominate the media and be able to extract the kind of legislation he wants in the end, and somehow gain political advantage, I guess.

I don't think it is going to work this time. I am worried about it. I am afraid we are not going to have an agreement. I am afraid cuts are going to take place in a way that shouldn't occur, and that they could be done smarter and more effectively with less damage than we have.

So we are told that in this Democratic plan, in this outline that is floating around, after we passed just a few weeks ago a $600 billion tax increase, that now we want to have another tax increase. I have to say this with clarity: Any plan that attempts to replace the cuts in the Budget Control Act with tax increases will not happen. They cannot happen. It will be a fundamental breach of the commitment we made to the American people in August of 2011. We told them, We have an agreement. We will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. A lot of people did not want that to happen. A lot of people are fed up with borrowing in Washington. A lot of people said, Don't raise the debt ceiling a dime.

We said, OK, we are going to raise the debt ceiling, but we are going to promise you, American people, that we will contain the growth of spending by $2.1 trillion, so the increase in spending over 10 years will be about $8 trillion instead of $10 trillion. Surely, that is not going to break America. Surely, that is not going to destroy this Republic. It could be exceedingly damaging if we do as the sequester says, though, and target the Defense Department far more severely than any other area of government.

But, fundamentally, reducing the growth in spending from $10 trillion in expected increases to $8 trillion is not going to damage America. And it can be done. In fact, it must be done.

What we have to understand is that the President of the United States and Senator Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, agreed in August of 2011 that we would raise the debt ceiling, we would cut spending, and we would not increase taxes. We would not increase taxes. It was a simple, small, but significant, noticeable reduction in the growth and spending, and that was the agreement. Before the ink was dry on it, we had people wanting to weasel out of it, to change it.

What would the American people think of us if less than 2 years after this agreement, this promise to them, we capitulated, we couldn't follow through, and we couldn't maintain those growth reductions we promised the American people we would do?

The plan I am hearing that is being floated now is a direct contradiction of the promise we made to the American people. I don't believe it will pass. I don't believe it will pass the House and I don't believe it will pass the Senate.

And remember, this is current baseline law now.

The Budget Director of the Congressional Budget Office testified before the Budget Committee this week, and he showed us what the projected deficits will be over the next 10 years. The good news was that deficits would be reduced some--less than half of what they are today--by 2015. And a big part of that was the sequester, because it is in law. The law says: These reductions will occur. He scored them as we passed it. And now we are saying, We want to give that back and we don't want to follow through on that.

The only way you can not follow through on the reductions that were in the Budget Control Act would be to increase spending--to increase spending above what we are currently projected to have the government grow over the next 10 years. We would have to increase spending.

So make no mistake about it, the plan that is being proposed is to tax and spend--to spend more and tax more. That is not where this country should be going. I reject that as the right approach. Particularly, it is contrary to the steps we took in August.

One reason the agreement was reached on the fiscal cliff in early January of this year was that we had spending cuts last August and they got some tax increases in January, but not more. And those tax increases should have been for the purpose of reducing debt, not funding new spending.

So to sum up the matter, in August 2011 Congress and the President agreed and passed legislation to reduce by a small amount Federal spending from $47 trillion to $45 trillion over 10 years. The spending of the United States would increase approximately $8 trillion instead of $10 trillion. That would not damage the American Government. We certainly should be able to function as a nation with that kind of substantial increase in spending, and it is happening every day in cities, counties, and States throughout America. They are dealing with far worse reductions than that.

There was no tax increase agreed to at all--not one penny of tax increases. Those reductions in spending are in law. They are in the new baseline on which we are now operating. To alter that and give back that spending without finding reductions in spending elsewhere would be to increase spending above that agreed to in the Budget Control Act, and that is what the Democratic outline we have seen would do. It increases spending and it increases taxes. They say: Don't worry about the increased spending. We have taken care of it. We have raised taxes. So that is the deal. They raised taxes to pay for the increase. That is in clear violation of the terms of the agreement and the moral agreement we had with the American people. It is in violation of what was told to the American people a little over 18 months ago, and to that extent it is not acceptable.

I urge my colleagues not to proceed with this approach.

Let's find ways to spread out the spending cuts so that more government agencies tighten their belts--and not so disproportionately on the Defense Department--and we can resolve this matter going forward.

I am worried because we have had no response from our Democratic partners, no response from our President of the United States, who is the Commander in Chief of American forces. To my knowledge they have not laid out a detailed plan yet. We are going to reach that deadline, and it looks as though it is going to take place. I hope it can be avoided. It should be avoided, and I am willing to work to avoid that.

I call on my colleagues to not continue to delay. Let's move forward to an effective agreement that preserves the legislative intent of the Budget Control Act and the promises that we made to the American people.

I thank the Chair, yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.

I thank the Senator for his leadership and in-depth study and knowledge about how these laws are working--and really not working--in America today.

I just left a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. The chairman of that committee, Senator Leahy, basically said--referring perhaps to me--they want enforcement first, but it seems they don't have any interest in amnesty--or words to that effect. I would say the American people's view is exactly the opposite. What the American people have been asking for and what they are afraid of is that we will have a deal like 1986 where the amnesty provisions become law and were immediately applied, but the promises of enforcement never occurs. So I believe that is a danger again.

It feels to me so much like 2007 when I, Senator Vitter, and others engaged and asked tough questions about the legislation which really resulted in its failure because it would not have done what the authors of it said it would do. So for 30 or 40 years the American people have said: End the lawlessness. That is what they have asked of us first. They will work a way to be compassionate if the lawlessness has ended, but that has not happened.

In fact, in a number of ways we have gone in the opposite direction. Improvement has occurred at the border in real numbers because over the last several years--before President Obama took office--we agreed to increase the number of Border Patrol agents. With the help of Senator Vitter, I forced through legislation to build a fence. I am sure Senator Vitter remembers that debate.

Now everybody talks about how we have a fence, and they are bragging about it. It is only 36 miles of the real fence we asked for. I am sure the Senator from Louisiana remembers how they opposed every foot of it and how they resisted it in every way possible. They didn't favor adding border agents. There was a vote for border agents--and I remember speaking about it--but they never produced the money. So we authorized border agents. People said they were for border agents, but they would not vote for the money to support that. We had a big discussion and debate about that, and eventually we added some border agents. That has helped, but the problem is not fixed.

Internally, this administration has systematically dismantled enforcement inside the United States. Chris Crane, who is head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Union, is a marine and a great guy. The ICE union has unanimously voted no confidence in John Morton, the head of the ICE Department. They have sued the ICE Department because Morton blocked them from doing their sworn duty to enforce the law.

Today I asked Crane if he had ever met with Secretary Napolitano. Chris testified about the bad morale that ICE agents have. A little over a year ago I asked Secretary Napolitano about the bad morale that ICE agents have. Crane said he had never met her and has never shaken hands with her. At this point, we don't have the kind of commitment in law enforcement that I think gives the American people confidence that we are moving forward on the right path.

Finally, I would just share with the Senator that I do think that means this is no sure thing. People are awfully confident that as long as some big names are on the bill, it is just going to pass. I am not confident that is so.

Would the Senator from Mississippi say the enforcement of immigration laws is an area--based on the Senator's experience in Congress, in the House and in the Senate--where the difference between the promises of what is going to happen and what actually happens is greater than almost any other issue we have dealt with, where people are promising this and only delivering something else?

According to some news reports--to follow up on the point the Senator made about sending two messages, one promising the people one thing and the other telling special-interest groups another thing--one report said Democratic Senators have assured immigration activists that the so-called enforcement trigger is just a ``talking point'' to give Republicans, who are supporting this scheme, this plan, as cover and there will not ever be an impediment to the achievement of amnesty. Does that make the Senator from Mississippi uneasy, that people who are supposed to be speaking in good faith, telling their Republican colleagues and the American people they have a plan that is going to guarantee enforcement while they are telling, apparently, the activists something quite different?

In other words--well, the words Senator Schumer is saying are quite plain. I have a great deal of respect for him. I know he wants to accomplish something valuable here. But it does seem to me he is saying, Well, if enforcement doesn't occur, we promise there will be a trigger and there will be no amnesty unless enforcement occurs; but if we get there and enforcement doesn't occur, you are still going to get your amnesty.

I will conclude and yield to my esteemed colleague to lay out some ideas he has to actually improve enforcement so that if we get to the point where we can achieve a legal system that operates effectively in America, we will know it when it happens. We can get there. Without some of these provisions Senator Vitter will recommend, I am confident we will not get there. If people won't support these kinds of provisions, then it raises questions about whether they are serious about their promises to end the lawlessness.

I just left a Judiciary Committee hearing. Mr. Vargas testified, who was here apparently illegally, came at the age of 12. I asked him: Should a good Nation have a legal system that has clear laws, clear policies, and those laws are in force? And he said yes. So there is nothing wrong, nothing immoral, nothing unconstitutional for the American people to say we should have a lawful system of immigration. Everybody is not able to come. You have to wait in line and wait your turn and meet the qualifications before you come. And if you try to enter illegally, there will be consequences. There is nothing immoral about that. It is only common sense. It is only the right thing to do.

I thank the Senator from Mississippi for his work on this and the ideas he will be presenting to us.

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

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I understand I might be recognized for up to 15 minutes.

I ask I be notified after 12 minutes.