Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I appreciate the vote we just concluded. I think what the vote said is that we want the bill on the floor to be in compliance with the Budget Control Act that was passed 15 months ago. This bill, even though it was not a lot of money, violated that. Senators have voted not to waive the budget and spend the money anyway. They decided we should comply with the budget.

I talked with Senator Tester and Majority Leader Reid and assured them that the fundamentals of this bill are good. I like what they have been trying to do with the Sportsmen's Act and I have been supportive of so many of the provisions in it.

We had several little problems. First and foremost, it attempted to spend more than the EKW Committee was entitled to spend under the Budget Control Act. Second, we have a blue slip problem with it. Thirdly, we have given the Interior Department Secretary the power to raise taxes unilaterally without a vote of Congress, and I think that is bad policy. All of those, however, compared to the many other provisions in the legislation are small, and we should be able to work them out. So I hope we can, and I will be working in that regard.

However, I do wish to say to my colleagues, this is the second bill that has had a lot of support on both sides of the aisle but has failed because they violated the Budget Control Act agreement on spending. Some on the other side might think they can simply say Republicans are obstructionists, they are killing bills just because they want to kill them and they don't like them. That is not correct. Republicans want to deal with many of the issues before us, such as veterans jobs, such as issues important to sportsmen, and we are supportive of them, but we want them to be done according to the agreement we reached on spending limits last year, and that can easily be done. We spend almost $3700 billion a year. We ought to be able to find $14 million from waste, fraud, duplication--savings that can be utilized to pay for this new program.

What the bill suggests by the way it is written is that we have looked at all of the spending in the entire U.S. Government and we can't find $14 million less valuable than to spend it on migratory bird conservation. I think that is not true. Of course we can find waste, fraud, and abuse right there. We can find other ways to consolidate programs to fund this. We have to honor the agreement we reached, because it looks to me as though we will soon be headed to some sort of late-night, end-of-the-session monumental bill, and it will be like what we had 15 months ago when the debt ceiling was increased and spending was limited and we promised to raise the debt ceiling but limit spending growth, basically. We voted on that. The majority voted for it. The President supported it. He signed it. It became law. Here we are now 15 months later, having had four bills brought to this floor that violated that spending limit. So we have to be careful. The American people are not going to be very confident, if we reach some sort of other spending limit agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, that we won't, before the ink is dry, start violating it. After all, it only takes 60 votes.

I think it is a very important issue. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. When we make an agreement, I think we ought to adhere to it, and this is why we had difficulty with the bill.

I enjoyed working with Senator Tester on it. I have had a good conversation with Senate Majority Leader Reid. Hopefully, something can be worked out to fix this problem.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the Reid substitute, S. 3525, the Sportsmen's Act of 2012, is legislation that has a lot of very good things in it. Senator Reid attempted--although outside the normal committee process--to put together a package of bills that could do some good things. I generally am supportive of the package. I think it has some very good qualities to it, and I very much want to support it. But there is a problem with it. It is a small but important problem, and it needs to be fixed.

That is that, once again, after the Budget Control Act agreement reached in August, 15 months ago, the majority has brought forth a bill that violates the Budget Control Act, in which we agreed to a deemed budget as part of that process, and we are now spending more than we agreed to spend.

Fifteen months ago, we agreed to limit spending each year for the next 10 years and to stay within a limited amount of spending. Because we are borrowing virtually 40 percent of every dollar we spend, this country has a debt crisis staring us in the eye. Without any doubt, the most obvious threat to America's future is the surging debt: $4 trillion-plus increased debt in just 4 years, and the end is not in sight.

So we agreed, as part of raising the debt ceiling, to limit spending. This bill violates that agreement, and we need not do that. This is not the first one; it is the fourth one. That irresponsibility is one of the things that has placed us into this fix.

We looked the American people in the eye 15 months ago and said, Okay, we will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion--because the administration had reached the limit of borrowing that the United States can incur--but we will reduce our projected spending increases over 10 years by $2.1 trillion. Part of the agreement in the Budget Control Act limited spending in various accounts, and this violates it.

You might say, Jeff, that is your opinion. No, it is not my opinion. I raised this with Chairman Conrad of the Budget Committee, of which I am ranking member. He and his staff have looked at it, and they certify that this budget violation actually occurs; therefore, the legislation is subject to a budget point of order. It cannot go forward because it violates the deemed budget that we agreed to.

If the budget point of order is raised, which will happen, then my colleagues will have a choice: They can either place the bill on a sound financial path that does not violate the Budget Control Act; or, they can say, Well, we won't pay any attention to that objection. We will waive the budget and just spend more than the budget allowed, because this is really important. It is really important that we raise revenue and spend more on the duck program.

I have been supportive, and the duck stamp is important. But this is not the right way to do this. If you are going to spend more money, you need to reduce spending somewhere else.

Also, I would point out the legislation was changed from the time it came out of committee. Part of the legislation at least when it was proposed in the Committee on Environment and Public Works of which I am a member, we observed that the proposal was to give bureaucrats-- government officials, unelected--the power to meet with special interests, or whoever they chose to meet with or not meet with, and set the amount of fees--taxes, you might call it--that would be required of Americans before they could hunt ducks. That has never been so. Previously, the Congress set how much you could charge for a duck stamp.

So this was raised in committee, and our able chairwoman Senator Barbara Boxer agreed and by a voice vote it was accepted that Congress would set the limit on how much you could raise for duck stamps and burden duck hunters with. That is an important principle, in my opinion. That is violated by the bill that was brought up--not the one that passed committee, but the one brought up by the leader.

I grew up in the country. When I go back home, I love to be in the woods. I don't hunt anymore, but I have been a big supporter. Many of my friends are hunters and fishermen and conservationists. So it is sad that we are having a dispute over this legislation, because we are so close to being able to work out the problems. My request to Senator Reid and to our colleagues would be: Let's fix this. Now it looks as though the bill will not be brought up until Monday when we come back, and I hope there will be ample opportunity for us to fix this problem so we are not passing a bill that violates the budget.

Under the bill, it would authorize $142 million in new direct spending over the next 10 years. Some may say that is not a lot, but if that is so, they have been in Washington too long. Mr. President, $142 million is a lot of money, and it is a very important principle because this is not the first time we violated the Budget Control Act.

If we stay with our agreement that we made with each other, that we made with the American people 15 months ago when the Budget Control Act was agreed to, we will at least save $2.1 trillion over 10 years. But if we keep nibbling away at it and eroding what we agreed to, we not only undermine our own credibility, but we weaken our ability to balance the budget. And if we reach a new agreement--which we need to do as we deal with the fiscal cliff then don't the American people need to know we will stand by the agreement we make? Don't they need to know an agreement is something more than a momentary event to get past a crisis and then the next year we can just ignore it? There is too much of this attitude in this Congress. That is one reason this country is in such a dire financial condition. The Reid amendment would violate the committee spending allocations in the deemed budget and would do it not only next year but every year over the next 10 years. This violation does not need to happen.

You say: This is technical. It is technical because it is paid for. We raise the revenue and we spend the revenue, but new spending is paid for by revenue--the tax increase on duck hunting--and therefore what are you worried about, Sessions?

What are we worried about? The agreement was that this whole area of spending would be capped at a certain level. The way to do this is, if you are going to spend more on the duck program, then reductions ought to be made somewhere else in this vast spending program or else you tax and spend. That is what we are doing. It is just tax-and-spend.

They say: We cannot cut anything else in the budget in dealing with interior, environment, and those issues. There is no way we can save another dime. We can't save $14 million a year over ten years anywhere.

Of course we can. There are plenty of places to save it there and in any of the other items of this government that waste money. What are they really saying? What they are saying is that of all the money we are currently spending, all of that is more important than finding $14 million to spend on more duck preservation programs. I am not sure that is correct. I am a believer in the duck stamp program, and I would like to see if we can figure out a way to do more to make sure we preserve those migratory bird habitats and the duck population in America, and I am prepared to be pretty aggressive as a Member of the Senate in developing

policies to do that. But you do not have to tax and spend more. That is the point.

If you look at it and say that we cannot cut any other spending in the entire Federal Government to find $142 million for the duck program, I will just say to my colleagues, that is what we are paid to do. We are paid to make those tough choices. I don't like them sometimes, but it should not be hard in this instance to find this kind of payment. The idea that we can just up a fee and spend more money and violate the budget and nothing is going to happen and we are going to just go along and do that without objection, that time is over because we are in a debt crisis.

We have run up trillion-plus deficits for the last 4 years. President Bush's last deficit was huge. It was one of the largest we had in-- maybe ever, $470 billion. We have averaged about $1,300 billion the last 4 years. The year before he left office, there was a $160 billion deficit. So we have $160 billion, $470 billion, a trillion-plus, 4 consecutive years. We are on the road in just a few years to double the debt of the United States again. This cannot be sustained. That is all I am saying. We have had similar budget problems on the postal reform bill, the highway bill, and the veterans jobs corp bill. We have had problems with spending violations on those bills too.

I really hope we will use this period of time to work out some language that fixes this problem. My budget staff can provide a long list of things that would save us this much money and have no real impact on the productivity of our government.

The Migratory Bird Habitat Investment and Enhancement Act--that is a good name, sounds like something we should be for--would actually give the Interior Department a blank check to increase the price of the duck stamp. It gives the Interior Department--unelected bureaucrats--the power to set how much we pay. Currently, it is $15. They could make it whatever figure the Secretary decides it should be, without any limit whatsoever. We discussed this in committee. The committee said: No, this is not the way we want to go. We have not done this before. Congress has stepped up to the plate and been responsible and decided how much we are going to extract from the American people before we allow them to go duck hunting. Granting that power to the Secretary is a significant change from what the committee voted on.

The duck stamp is purchased by all duck hunters in the United States. It was established in 1934. Since its beginning, it has always been set by Congress, not somebody in the bureaucracy. This is an unchecked power. I think it is a delegation of power to a person not accountable to the people, and it might violate the Constitution because only Congress can appropriate money and raise taxes. If it doesn't violate the Constitution explicitly, it violates the spirit of the Constitution. Moreover, by increasing the price of the duck stamp, if you think about it, in this amendment--it is an amendment, a revenue- raising amendment to an S. numbered bill. Senator Reid, therefore, by doing that, has put up a revenue enhancement bill originating in the Senate. The Constitution says revenue bills have to originate in the House. That places the bill in jeopardy. The House is very jealous-- rightly so--of their constitutional prerogative of commencing all tax revenue bills in the House. The Congressional Budget Office, our objective analysis team, scores the duck stamp provision as an increase in revenue. If the House exerted its privilege under the Constitution, this bill would be subject to a blue slip, a rejection based on the revenue clause.

Also, amazingly, we have no amendments. There is no process to even bring up amendments to vote. So we are stuck with the position of either supporting the bill as is in all its complexity or not. If we fixed this matter, I would be supportive of the bill. We tried to study it. I think it is OK and pretty good, actually. It is a positive step in the right direction if we simply fix this. So the proper remedy for this situation is to allow amendments or send the bill back to committee and figure out how to pass legislation that is within the budget limit.

I will not mention all the good things about this bill. There are a lot of them: the National Fish and Wildlife Act; the North American Wetlands Conservation Act has some good provisions in it. A number of the other pieces of legislation are excellent. I do not think that is in dispute. It is supported by a lot of great wildlife organizations. I support that.

On September 22 the Senate voted 84 to 7 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed, with the full expectation that when the Senate returned this month, an opportunity would be provided to address the budget concerns and to improve the bill. But now we see that my friend the majority leader has decided to move forward without confronting these issues.

I hope we can figure out a way to avoid this situation. Maybe people did not think about it clearly. Maybe they just thought it is paid for, therefore it cannot be a problem with the budget. But even though it is paid for, it really is a problem with the budget, and we do not need to delegate to some unelected official, even if it is constitutional-- about which I have doubts--the ability without limit to raise fees for a normal historic right of Americans to go hunting ducks. I believe that has to be fixed, too, and we should do that.

Finally, I understand the intent is to recess for the rest of the day and all next week. However, in the Armed Services Committee yesterday, we were told we can get the armed services authorization, the Defense authorization bill up for a vote. We can actually bring it up and we can have a vote, and this is great news, and we have to do it in 3 days and very limited amendments, but if you Republicans will agree with that, we can get the bill up.

This is the first time in 50 years we have not passed a Defense bill prior to the September 30 fiscal year end. We are already into the new fiscal year. It should have been passed long ago. More than that, we could have spent 3 weeks on the Defense bill. We did nothing in September. We are doing nothing next week.

What is this about? It is about the management of the Senate defeating the historic ability of Members of the Senate to actually participate in the great issues of our time. One of them is the Defense Department budget and policy. The Defense authorization bill came out of the Armed Services Committee unanimously, but several of us in committee said that we have amendments we want to bring up on the floor. Other Members not on the Armed Services Committee have a right to talk about this $540-some-odd billion expenditure, the largest single expenditure outside of Social Security and Medicare in the entire budget. We are supposed to be thankful we did nothing in September, we are going to do nothing next week, but you now only have 3 days and just a very few amendments, and Senator Reid will pick and choose which ones you Republicans get to offer. That is why we are having problems.

Senator Reid continues to assert that Republicans are filibustering. What Republicans are saying is we are prepared to move to these bills, but we would like the leader to tell us how many amendments we can get. He has figured out a way to fill the tree--what we call the amendment tree--to a degree that has never been done before, and that allows him to pass legislation without any amendment.

So we say we would like to have amendments, Mr. Leader. This is the Senate.

OK. Submit a list of them to me. You can have two, and it can't be this amendment, it can't be this amendment, and it can't be this amendment. It can only be these kinds of amendments. We will be nice to you. Well, maybe three. Ok, you get three--on a $540 billion defense bill that sets the policy for our military, that decides what weapons systems we are going to invest in with billions of dollars?

Some people in this Senate have opinions about it and they want to come to the floor. Maybe when they were campaigning they said: I am against such and such in the Defense bill, and they want to come here-- and it is in the bill and they are against it and they want to offer an amendment and explain why it shouldn't be in the bill. They want to offer an amendment to take it out.

Sorry. We don't have time.

I think this is a dangerous trend. I believe we shouldn't be recessing

today. I believe we should be working. We have the fiscal cliff. We have the defense sequester. We have monumental tax increases about to occur. We have the death tax going to 55 percent of virtually anything somebody has. All these things are going to happen if we don't take some action. We have all these people talking, secretly planning and talking and working, and so about Christmas Eve I suspect they will walk in here with a plan we will be told we have to support or else we will work through Christmas or on January 1 we will be here, and we will have a catastrophe if all these bad things happen.

The President will not even say what he is for. He will not even lay out a plan. Congressman Ryan laid out a plan. He has defended it all over the country and is prepared to discuss it and explain it. What is the President's plan? What is Senator Reid's plan? Does the majority leader have any plan to confront our pension programs for Social Security and Medicare that are going broke? Does he have any plan to fix them? What is it? Isn't this important? Does he have any plan to get us off this trillion-dollar debt course? What are we going to do?

Growth is going down. We were at 2.4 percent in 2010; we had that much GDP growth. We have had a very slow recovery from the 2007-2008 recession. But then did it go up in 2011? No; it dropped to 1.8. What about the first three quarters of this year? It was 1.77. The growth is not occurring. We are borrowing and spending, but we are not creating growth. I think we need to deal with this crisis we face and the uncertainty of policies is hurting America's economy also.

I am disappointed we are not dealing with these important issues. I am disappointed we are recessing, and we need to do better.

Senator Wicker just talked for a minute about this. What does the Senator think? Would it be great to have the chairman of the Finance Committee be named Senator Orrin Hatch?

It is amazing. We do not have a defense bill. The Senator serves on the Armed Services Committee, as I do. It came out of committee unanimously, bipartisan vote, and for some reason, the Democratic leadership has failed to bring the bill up to the floor for the first time in 50 years. Is that not amazing?

Senator Wicker asked a very good question, and every American needs to be thinking about that. I have given a lot of thought to it. We have not had a budget in 3 years--1,241 days. We have not had a budget passed on the floor of this Senate. They did not even report one from committee this year.

If we are blessed by the American people--we the Republican Senators--and have a majority in this body and if I am honored to have the opportunity to lead the Budget Committee, we will have a budget. Failure is not an option. It cannot be that we will not comply with the law. But more than that, Senator Wicker, we have to have a plan to get us off the course to financial disaster, and the budget is the way you lay out that plan.

Does the Senator not agree that the difficulty our Democratic colleagues had is that anything they thought they could agree on and bring forth would not be popular with the American people? And they did not want to subject themselves to having it debated on the floor and having a vote on amendments, as the Budget Act allows, even though you can pass a budget with a simple majority, cannot be filibustered?

I guess what I will ask the Senator, when you do not write a budget because you cannot agree or are unwilling to step forward with a plan, what you are really doing is failing to provide leadership. We were elected to lead, to have a plan that we are willing to announce to try to get us on the right course, a budget. Would the Senator not agree to sort of have a plan to deal with the crisis we are facing? We have not seen one in this body.

Well, it is a challenge we have to face, and it is not easy. It will be a challenge and it will be difficult and it will force us to make difficult choices. But I feel very frustrated. We are from small towns in America. Where we grew up, if you had a tough choice to make, if somebody came up with an idea and defended it, you respected them, even if you didn't agree with it. If you didn't have a better plan, and all you did was criticize their plan, people wouldn't think much of you, would they?

So what we did in this body, when the budgets were brought up--they brought up the House budget--called the Ryan budget-- and we brought up the President's budget, and Senator Toomey and others had a budget, and every one of them was brought up--our Democratic colleagues voted against every one of them. And not in one instance did they set out before the people what they believed in, what they would advocate for, what they would fight for, what they believed would fix the American economy and put us on the right track. But they have invested a tremendous amount of effort in attacking Congressman Ryan and the House budget.

Let me say this about that budget. Any budget is going to be subject to some complaint here and there, but it was historic. It would change the debt course of America. It would reduce our deficit by $3.5 trillion and it would create economic growth. It was designed not just to be a budget-cutting, frugal budget, but also to try to create growth and prosperity in this country and get this country moving again and get businesses hiring again.

It was a historic and good budget that would change the debt course of America and put us on the right path, yet all we have heard from our colleagues, without offering anything

themselves, is criticism of him. And I believe the House, as the Senator said, fulfilled their duty.

I thank Senator Wicker for raising this point because we need to discuss this, and the American people need to ask themselves who is telling the truth about this and who is accurate about this.

A group of us spoke--40 or more Republicans--and we expressed frustration with the lack of action in this body, the likes of which we have never seen perhaps in our history, with regard to not passing an appropriations bill. Historic research has been done, and we have not passed a single appropriations bill only two times: 2010 and this year, both under this Democratic leadership. Those are the only times in history that no appropriations bill has passed.

Yesterday, however, Senator Reid used this language. It kind of hurt my feelings, because I said we didn't have a budget, and I am the ranking member of the Budget Committee. Maybe 10 or 15 Republicans talked about our not having a budget, and Senator Reid said: ``It is a lie to say we don't have a budget.''

I don't know if that violates the rules of the Senate about personal attacks, but I try not to use that word--lie. I try not to say a colleague is lying. Even if I ever would say something like that, I would want to be sure I had absolute proof to back it up. And that is a responsibility.

You know, we like Harry Reid. I consider him a friend, I really do. He has always treated me fairly on the floor. But I have to say, the majority leader shouldn't have said that. First of all, it is not accurate. For example, Senator Reid announced unequivocally that he had no intention of passing a budget. This is what he said last year. He said: ``There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion.''

It is a statutory requirement. Unfortunately, it doesn't say you go to jail if you don't pass one. The people are crying out for a plan to get out of the financial condition we are in, but he said there is no need to have one, in his opinion.

He said at another time, ``It would be foolish for us to do a budget.'' Foolish for us to do a budget. And they did not do one. There is no budget. So for him to say it is a lie when we say we don't have a budget, well, that is inaccurate.

I will point out, as Senator Wicker knows, the Budget Act, the United States Code, defines what a budget is. It lays out some of the things that have to be a part of the budget and the process by which one is produced. It has to be reported by the Budget Committee by April 1. It sets out the date as April 1. Then we have to have a floor vote by April 15. And when it comes to the floor, the rule says we have unlimited amendments, with 50 hours of debate, and it can't be filibustered. So 50 hours would mean about 1 week. It can be done in 6, 7 days at most.

Absolutely. The party with the majority, 53 Senators, ought to be able to pass a budget. We passed a budget with 51 senators one time. A budget allows us to control everything but Social Security. We can't touch Social Security but we can deal with Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, pensions, as well as the discretionary accounts. So that was all avoided.

My friend has been around here and in the House for a number of years, but it seems to me it would have been a healthy thing indeed for the Democrats to have brought to the floor a budget, even if I didn't agree with it. We then could have had a national public debate about these difficult choices the Nation faces and Senators would have to vote as to whether they believed that balancing the budget was worth cutting some spending here, and how much they believed in taxes we ought to raise, and how much would they be cutting in spending. We could read the fine print and ask how much we are cutting and actually debate and vote on these things. But that is what the majority leader and his colleagues wanted to avoid.

I couldn't agree more. In my hometown of Mobile, AL, they fell one vote short of raising the sales tax because of the financial challenges they were facing, and they had a big debate about it, but they didn't duck the vote. They had the vote and they decided they didn't need to raise the taxes. But it wasn't a question of the city council being able to avoid a vote.

We in the great United States Senate, we travel the whole of our States over and over and over again and we ask for this tough job. My wife has a good phrase for it when I complain. She says: Don't blame me. You asked for the job. Well, we asked for this job. Nobody said it was going to be easy, and this is not easy because we have never faced a more fundamental financial crisis. Because of demographics and history and trends that are going on in our population, the situation is such that it is going to be difficult to meet these challenges.

Exactly.

My colleague is so right. We are not going to have to cancel these programs.

We can save these programs. It is just going to require us to confront reality and make some changes in how we do business.

I wish to say one more thing about this budget, before I forget. My Democratic colleagues claim the Budget Control Act was a budget, but it only dealt with discretionary spending. It didn't deal with all the other spending. It only set limits on expenditures and it didn't have any debate on the floor. It was a secret agreement. There was a budget limitation placed on spending as a result of Republicans insisting we had to reduce some spending before we would allow the President to raise the debt limit. That went on into the wee hours of the morning and they put together a horrible deal and now we are paying the price for it. It did cut some spending, and it limited how much spending we could do, but it didn't go through the budget process, it didn't cover all the government programs, and it doesn't have anything like the indices of a budget.

An attempt was made--and successfully--to bring up the President's budget for a vote. The motion was believed

to be legitimate because there was no budget, and we were going to have a vote on it. Our Democratic colleagues ran to the Parliamentarian to try to argue that this cap on spending that was agreed to last August was a budget. They picked the Parliamentarian. The majority hires the Parliamentarian. And very courageously and properly the Parliamentarian said: No, it is not a budget. So there was no budget in the Senate, and President Obama's budget was brought up and got zero votes.

I wanted to share that.

Mr. President, Senator Olympia Snowe, who is not running again, is frustrated with this body and pointed out yesterday on the Senate floor that we voted in this body a few years ago up until November 1. We act like we have to be out by the middle of September. We aren't going to do any work during October, and we will come back maybe after the election in a lameduck circumstance and see how much junk can be shoved through here without real votes.

Isn't it true that we have had plenty of time since September to bring up the Defense authorization bill, to bring up a budget, to bring up some of the appropriations bills, at least some of them?

We have heard it said that 40 percent of what we spend every day is borrowed. Really, $4 billion a day is what we borrow. People probably think that can't be true, that 40 cents of every dollar we spend and put out the door has to be borrowed from countries around the world and from others who will loan us the money, and we pay interest on it.

In a recent interview in July on CNBC, Mr. Erskine Bowles--President Clinton's Chief of Staff, appointed by President Obama to head the debt commission--said this about the state of our finances:

If you take last year, 100 percent of our revenue that came

into the country, every nickel, every single dollar that came

into the country last year was spent on our--what's called

mandatory spending and interest on the debt. Mandatory

spending is principally the entitlement programs, Medicare,

Medicaid, and Social Security.

What that means is every single dollar we spent last year

on these two wars, national defense, homeland security,

education, infrastructure, high-value-added research, every

single dollar was borrowed. And half of it was borrowed from

foreign countries. That is crazy. Crazy. It's a formula for

failure in any organization.

That is the man President Obama chose to head the debt commission, a businessman who understands the threat this Nation faces.

We can get off this path. Congressman Ryan laid out a plan that would get us off this path. We have to get off this path.

As we head out from this Senate to return to our States and visit with our constituents, and as we head into an election, I would just like to ask, Is there one Senator on the other side of the aisle who can defend to the good people of this country the decision of this body to withhold a budget, withhold a financial plan from the country? Can you defend that? Can you defend not even attempting to do the fundamental requirement of Congress, which is to appropriate the money to run the government--not even bring up a single bill--for the second time in the history of the Republic?

What about the Defense authorization bill? It came out of our Armed Services Committee unanimously. The leadership has refused to bring it up on the Senate floor. Can you defend that?

Really, can you defend failing to deal with the fiscal cliff, the deep defense cuts and huge tax increases that will occur January 1? Wouldn't the economy be better if that uncertainty had been removed? We could have already brought up those bills and voted on them.

Instead, you know how they are going to do it: The leadership will meet over here, and it will be December 23. The majority leader said we may be here until December 23. That is when they will bring it all up. That is when the health care bill was passed. Christmas Eve is when the health care bill was passed.

So that is the plan: Bring it up at the end. Everybody will have to vote for it, or the government will shut down and it will be a disaster. That is the kind of thing we should be avoiding.

I believe the complaints that have been made today are not just political rhetoric, not just talk, but represent a legitimate, honest criticism of the leadership of the Senate. I think the American people should weigh that as they go to the polls.

Mr. President, as the Chairs of the debt commission-- Simpson and Bowles--told the Budget Committee, this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. I would say this Nation has never faced a more difficult financial challenge. We have deep, systemic demographic problems. They need to be addressed. Yet today marks the 1,240th day since the Democratic leadership in the Senate adopted a budget. For 3 years, in a time of financial crisis, the Senate's Democratic majority has failed to comply with the U.S. Code that requires us to bring up a budget and bring it to the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Politico observed on May 15:

Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their

own vision for how to deal with federal debt and spending.

I believe that is a colossal failure of leadership, a failure of fundamental responsibility, and puts them in a position, in my opinion, of being unable to ask to be returned to leadership in this Senate.

Madam President, Senator Reid was, I think, stung this morning when remarks were made about the failure of the Senate to pass a budget or to move a single appropriations bill. For the first time in over 100 years, I understand, not a single appropriations bill was brought to the floor. This was a decision made by the Democratic leadership, to not bring up even a single bill, so that we end up with a big omnibus CR. The leadership also didn't bring up the Defense authorization bill for the first time in 51 years.

Senator McCain explained that yesterday and the day before and he expressed his frustration about it. I was disappointed this morning to hear comments from our budget chairman, Kent Conrad, about this frustration and, I believe, truth-telling from Republicans. Senator Reid said: ``It's a big lie for the Republicans to come here and say we haven't passed a budget.''

Let's look at the facts. The law requires the Senate majority to produce a budget, a financial plan, every single year. It is in the code of the United States--a plan that covers taxes, entitlement spending, and debt. It is fundamental to the future of our country, and that is why it is required by law, because people saw the need for it. That plan must be produced and voted on in committee and brought to the Senate floor.

The Republican House put together such a plan. They moved it and passed it, but Senate Democrats have no plan. They have proposed nothing, offered nothing, put nothing on paper.

Senator Reid, our Nation is facing a debt crisis. Surely you agree. What is your plan? Where is your budget? What is your proposal to rescue the finances of this Nation? I haven't seen it, but I am just the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. The American people haven't seen it. It doesn't exist. The House has a plan. Where is your proposal? Have you forgotten that you canceled our Budget Committee markup on this spring and refused to bring up a budget to the floor last year? What do you plan to do on taxes, on entitlements, on welfare, on spending, on debt? How does your majority plan to balance the budget of this Nation? Do you have a plan? Surely you know the spending caps in the Budget Control Act are not a financial plan for America.

As the magazine Politico put it: ``Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their own vision for how to deal with Federal debt and spending.''

Let me say that again. Is there any problem greater for America today than debt and spending? This is what Politico reported not too long ago. ``Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their own version of how to deal with Federal debt and spending.''

That is exactly right. It is indisputable. We have had the worst performance of a Senate on financial matters in the history of the country, in my opinion. I can't imagine any Congress being less fulfilling of its duty.

Speaking on FOX News earlier this year, Chairman Conrad said:

What we need, I believe, is at least a 10-year plan. That's

why I am going to mark up a budget resolution the first week

we are back in session.

That was in April. That markup never happened.

This is what The Washington Free Beacon reported:

Conrad stunned observers Tuesday when he announced that he

would not follow through on his expressed intention to offer,

mark up and pass a Democratic budget resolution. Many suspect

that Conrad's plan was derailed at the last minute by Senator

Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats who did

not wish to cast politically difficult votes.

I haven't heard that disputed. There is no dispute that Senator Reid decided, along with the Democratic conference, frankly, we are not going to bring up a budget. We would have to vote. We would have to lay out our plan and then people can look at it and say what is wrong with it. We would rather just spend our time attacking their plan. We don't want to show our cards, provide any leadership.

That is what happened. Here is what the New York Times reported regarding Senator Conrad's canceling of the markup:

Mr. Conrad's announcement surprised Republicans and

Democrats who were expecting him to produce a Democratic

budget that, if passed by the committee, would have been the

first detailed deficit reduction plan in three years.

That is the way the New York Times reported it, and I say they are accurate. That is the way I saw it.

Senator Joe Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats and he said he was ``disappointed by the party's refusal to confront the issue,'' and said further, ``I don't think the Democrats will offer their own budget, and I'm disappointed in that.''

Senator Mark Pryor admitted: ``We've had three years with President Obama where we're not able to get a budget resolution passed.''

But it gets worse. Not only have Democratic colleagues failed to do their duty, they have savagely attacked the House for producing a budget and laying out a plan. Here is what Senator Conrad said today. Senator Conrad is a good friend, but give me a break, Senator Conrad. He said the House plan ``fails any moral test of government.'' He said the House plan failed the ``moral test,'' and he repeated that several times.

These comments are outrageous. They are inaccurate, but they are also hypocritical. I ask: What is the morality of the majority party in this Senate that has violated the law purposely and deliberately in order to avoid presenting a plan to save this Nation from financial disaster? They have deliberately refused to go forward. What about the families who will be impacted by a debt crisis? What about our military? What about our future as a nation? Where is our duty during this defining hour of our Republic--America's hour of need? Is there no response and no leadership?

Every Senate Democrat in every State, I think, will have to explain why they have not stood up to Senator Reid and his proposal. Presumably, they are all in it together. None have actually come to the floor and opposed him and said they would vote to bring up a budget.

I know the Senator was stung a bit this morning, but it is not a lie to say we didn't have a budget this year, and I know it was painful to listen to the litany of failures of this Congress. First, no budget in over 3 years--1,240 days; no appropriations bills this year--not one. We failed to bring up the Defense authorization bill for the first time in 50 years. We have failed to confront the sequester and debate how to fix it. We know we are going to have to do that. Yet we are going to let it wait until the end of the year, causing great turmoil at the Department of Defense. We have not dealt with the fiscal cliff.

All of those are fundamental things this Senate should have done and we haven't done any of them. We don't even bring up the bills. We should have had a great historic debate for the last 2 years over the future financial status of America because it is clearly the greatest threat facing our Nation. Yet we haven't had it. We have had little groups meet in secret--gangs and groups and secret committees and special committees.

But this is what I would say about this budget. If I were prosecuting a case--as I used to when I was a Federal prosecutor--I would say the defendant has confessed. This is what Senator Reid said back in May of 2011: ``There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion.''

It is not a question of his opinion. It is the law of the United States. Nobody asked his opinion. He has a duty to follow the law, I would think.

How about this. He goes on to state: ``It would be foolish for us to do a budget.''

Senator Reid, I think, has moved into this modern world--postmodern world--where words mean about anything we want them to mean. We can just say it is a lie that we don't have a budget; that we produced a budget and refer to the Budget Control Act, which was simply a part of the compromise to raise the debt ceiling and set some spending limits on spending in the discretionary accounts only--not all the accounts of the United States. That is not a budget, and the Parliamentarian has already ruled that is not a budget.

There is no question we don't have a budget, and we haven't had leadership. It has been very disappointing. And I was disappointed to have my good friend Senator Conrad attack the House for having the gumption to lay out a plan that would change the debt course of America and put us on a path to prosperity. I am sorry Senator Reid has overreacted and declared that it is not true what we, the Republicans, have asserted, that we don't have a budget, because we don't have a budget. It is true.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I know my colleague, the Democratic assistant leader, is here, and I will make a budget point of order now because I understand he would be objecting.

Madam President, the pending amendment, No. 2789, offered by the Senator from Washington, would cause the underlying legislation to exceed the authorizing committee's section 302(a) allocation of new budget authority and outlays. Therefore, it violates the budget and I raise a point of order against this measure pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Madam President, I will say to my colleague, I appreciate his eloquence and his advocacy. He gave us a real partisan speech this morning. I will just ask a few things of one of our leaders in the Senate, Mr. Durbin.

What about the responsibility of this body to pass a budget? We have not had one in over 1,200 days. What about the responsibility of this body to move appropriations bills? Not one single appropriations bill has been advanced. And while we are working on legislation that could help veterans find jobs--it will cost about $200 million a year--why has this body not brought up the defense appropriations bill that funds the Defense Department at over $500 billion? We have not even brought it up for a vote, even though the House has passed one.

Why have we not brought up the defense authorization bill that passed the Armed Services Committee unanimously? I am a member of it. It has been sitting here for months and not been brought up. Why? Because we would have a debate, actually have some votes around here?

So that is a problem I think we have in this Senate, and I believe it is a serious matter.

I was going to make some comments about the bill before us.

Madam President, I thank my eloquent colleague. But we do not have a budget. The law requires us to have a budget--passed decades ago. The Senate Democratic leadership, of which he is a part, said it was foolish to have a budget. They were not going to have one. We have not had one for 3 years. So it resulted last year in a debate over raising the debt ceiling because we had run up more debt than any time in the history of this Republic. And there was an agreement to limit spending. It is not a budget. It

sets a limit on spending--only on discretionary spending, not on the 60 percent of the government otherwise on which we spend money. It is inadequate and insufficient, and before the ink is dry on it, we are back in here with a Democratic majority advocating legislation that violates that cap. There is no dispute about it. This is the eighth time we have raised budget points of order for violation of the agreement setting a cap on spending limits. So here we go again.

Public opinion of Congress is lower today than at almost any time in history. According to the most recent Gallup Poll, only 13 percent of the public approves of Congress's actions. Americans do not trust us. Why should Americans trust us when we keep using gimmicks and budget slights of hand to hide more spending and drive this country further into debt when we make a promise by passing a law that limits spending and then promptly violate that law within months of passage? And, now, the Democrats will attempt again today to violate that law? Why should the American people respect an institution, such as this one, that cannot adhere to a sound financial course for America?

On August 28, our country's gross debt reached $16 trillion--$16 trillion--over 100 percent of the entire gross domestic product of this Nation. It is a danger zone, according to every expert who has testified.

According to the Office of Management and Budget's latest mid-session review of our fiscal condition, our Nation's debt will increase $4.4 trillion over the next 4 years, rising to over $20 trillion. And in that period of time, we will virtually have doubled the entire debt of the United States since the Democrats took the majority in the Senate and President Obama was elected--double the entire debt. And the course we remain on does not get better. These are their budget numbers. This is a course America is on, and we are not getting off of it. It is $1 trillion a year in deficits. The U.S. debt per household is now $137,000 per household--up $80,000 since just 2002. While Americans have tightened their budgets to make ends meet, Congress has not passed a budget in 1,239 days.

Erskine Bowles, whom President Obama asked to chair the debt commission, noted recently--I saw him in a CNBC interview at a conference on July 12. He said:

If you take last year, 100 percent of our revenue came into

the country . . . was spent on our--what's called mandatory

spending and interest on the debt. Mandatary spending is

principally the entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and

Social Security.

That is what the tax revenue pays for. Everything above that is funded by borrowed money. That is what he said. Is he correct? Absolutely. We are now borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. That is not sustainable. At that conference, Mr. Bowles repeated what he said before the Budget Committee, on which I am ranking member. Mr. Bowles said this Nation has never been on a more predictable financial crisis path. That is what he said. If we continue at this rate, we are going to have a financial crisis like 2007. Hopefully not if we can avoid it, but if we do not change what we are doing, we are going to have one. He is absolutely confident about it. He has repeated it. So has the Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. Bernanke. He said: These numbers are not going to continue. If you do not change, we will have a crisis before we get there.

At the debt debate last summer--most Americans remember that; Congress should certainly remember it--we finally reached an agreement that is now being violated. We passed the Budget Control Act last August at the last minute, if you remember, to set strict spending limits over the next 10 years. It created a super committee to solve all of our problems, we hoped, or if the committee failed, which it did, to enact $1.2 trillion, at least, in cuts through sequestration. That would raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. We would have a net cut in spending of $2.1 trillion. The debt ceiling money gets spent now. We have almost added another $2.1 trillion to the debt since last August. We are getting close to the debt limit again. But the cuts were promised to be over 10 years. We will spend now, but we promise you we have got a plan. We have a law that will keep us on the right path over the next 10 years. So the questions are: Are we spending at that limit? Will we stay there?

Secondly, let me note parenthetically that the $2.1 trillion is not enough in reduced spending projections. We are talking about reducing projected spending rates--the increase--not cutting spending $2.1 trillion. We are talking about cutting the projected increase in spending. So at the current rate of spending--$3.7, $3.8 trillion this year--if you carry that out for 10 years, that would be $38 trillion. Under the projections, we are to spend $47 trillion over the next 10 years--almost $10 trillion more. All the Budget Control act says is: We are going to spend $45 trillion rather than $47 trillion, that our spending would increase from $37 trillion to $45 trillion. Can the Republic sustain that? Is that going to throw us into the ocean? Will we collapse as a nation? Will children starve and people not get their Social Security? Of course not. We will still be spending more money. That is all the budget agreement called for, and we are already waffling on that commitment that occurred last summer.

So here we are. While our colleagues have offered well-meaning legislation and something that we should work on to try to deal with the unfortunate increase in unemployment for our veterans--and we can help them, I truly believe--they have refused to go by the promises made under the Budget Control Act last summer--flatly refused.

So I am worried about unemployment. I am worried about it especially among veterans. And there are things we can do. In an effort to find common ground, Senator Burr from North Carolina, representing Fort Bragg, where I spent a summer, offered an alternative bill, the Careers for Veterans Act, which would help our veterans find jobs while keeping the Federal budget under control and honoring the commitment we made last summer. It can be done. This is not hard to do if you want to do it.

Since the Senate majority will not even allow a vote on any bill that abides by the budget--Senator Reid is obstructing the right of Members to offer amendments to the bill--I have raised a budget point of order against Senator Murray's substitute amendment. Sustaining this point of order will allow us to keep the promises made in the Budget Control Act that Senator Durbin talked about so proudly--just stay within those promises. It will allow us to continue to work on this bill in a way that helps our veterans without adding more to our children's debt. It does not kill the legislation; it simply tells the sponsors: We are not going to do this until you get it within the budget limits to which we agreed. And it can be done. Senator Burr's bill does it. It certainly can be done.

The Senate majority had the opportunity to write legislation complying with the spending limits set in the Budget Control Act. Instead, they bypassed the committee process. We have not had any committee hearings on this legislation. And they have offered a substitute amendment that violates the Congressional Budget Act by increasing mandatory spending $700 million over the Veterans' Affairs Committee's 302(a) allocation.

Under the Budget Act, the committee is given a certain amount of money to spend for veterans, and this amendment would violate that agreement. Specifically, the Murray amendment violates Section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act by spending $61 million above the committee's allocation for 2013 and $480 million above the committee's allocation for 2013 through 2017. It would also spend $666 million above the committee's allocation for 2013 through 2022.

Surely, out of a budget that spends $47 trillion over 10 years, we can find $700 million in savings to pay for this bill. That is all that needs to be done to ensure that the bill complies with the Budget Act. As a result of exceeding the Veterans' Affairs Committee's allocation, the Murray substitute amendment violates Section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act. That has been discussed with Chairman Conrad, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee. He acknowledges that it does, and so does his staff. I am very confident that the Parliamentarian agrees and will rule that it violates the Budget Act.

Now the Senate majority plans to have a vote to waive--to waive the promise they made to the American people to control spending just over a year ago. So that is the issue before us today. Do we take the bill and fix it so it complies with the budget--which can easily be done because the substitute Senator Burr has drafted does it--or will we once again waive the promises we made last August and so proudly touted that we were going to cut $2.1 trillion in spending.

In effect, there is a tax increase, argued with some validity, to pay for this bill. The bill uses a tax enforcement measure to stop abuses by people who don't fully pay their taxes. This will raise revenue, and, therefore, the bill is offset, and so we shouldn't worry about it. So here we have a new idea for helping veterans: We will raise taxes and revenue and we pay for it.

But this is what is called tax and spend. Tax and spend. We agreed to a limit on what we would spend. If we have discovered a method to collect more taxes or raise taxes to get more revenue, that money, under our budget agreement last summer, is to be used to pay down the debt, not to take more money to spend on a new program today because we have more revenue to spend. So that is a fundamental issue. Just because it is paid for does not mean we are not spending more than we agreed to spend. We very precisely are.

Not only does the Murray amendment violate the Budget Act by spending above agreed-to levels, but it also uses budget gimmicks-- extraordinarily really--to make the bill appear to be offset. This budget sleight of hand is called a timing shift. What about this offset or pay-for idea? Let me discuss that a moment.

This is one of the issues that, if the American people fully understood it, would outrage them. As a matter of fact, it is probably part of why they are not happy with us now because they have seen so much of this. This is a recurring gimmick. If a CEO offered stock based on this kind of promise of financial solvency they would go to jail. It is as bogus as a three-dollar bill. This is what it is. It shifts the payment of corporate income taxes 2 to 3 months sooner so we can count it in this fiscal year. Specifically, this gimmick would collect additional revenue over the 2013 through 2017 budget window, which is the budget window they were trying to deal with since it violates the Budget Act over that 5 year period. So this was designed to cover up more spending.

But think about it. It is exactly the same amount of less revenue that will occur in the 2014 through 2018 budget window. If we ask someone to pay their taxes earlier, they do not owe it the next year when we would otherwise expect to receive it.

The height of this gimmick was demonstrated years ago when I first came to the Senate. I was shocked. This is what they did: They moved a Social Security check from this fiscal year to the next fiscal year. What was the result? It resulted in having a lot of money to spend this fiscal year; right? The CBO said we have more money because we didn't pay a Social Security payment. They moved--delayed--it by 1 day. That is what they wanted to do, to move it 1 day. But what happens to the next fiscal year? Is this really a gain or a gimmick? It is a gimmick because the next fiscal year we would need to make an additional Social Security payment in that budget year.

It is just a way to spend more today and push off the cost until tomorrow. That is what they did then, and that is exactly what this is today. It is a smoke-and-mirror scheme used to avoid the rules in the Budget Act and the scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office. It being used to manipulate the scoring for short-term gain. It simply speeds up the payments in the first 5 years so it appears we have more money to spend. In reality, the gimmick merely creates a hole in the budget next year because the money that was expected to come in next year--now coming in this year--is not coming in next year.

So this point of order is not a technical issue, it is an issue of whether this body will uphold its commitment to the American people on how much money we are going to spend. Congress agreed to certain spending levels in the Budget Control Act. We voted on those spending levels, and we should stick with those spending levels today. There is no reason for us to violate that agreement. The point of order exists so that Congress cannot raise taxes and spend money over the agreed-to amount. The point of order requires 60 votes to waive, and it exists so the Senate does not succumb to political pressure to spend beyond our means. Really, it is meant to try to stop spending beyond our means.

The Senate majority was aware of the budget rules when they wrote this bill. They were aware of it. Instead of writing a bill that complied with the Budget Act, they decided to go above the agreed-upon spending levels. Senator Burr--a fine Senator--was also aware of the rules under the Budget Act and the spending levels set under the Budget Control Act. He drafted alternative legislation that complied with the budget rules and that would fund a veterans jobs program through discretionary spending.

Unfortunately, the Senate majority took most of Senator Burr's policy suggestions but did not keep the fiscal discipline found in his bill. They will not allow us to have a vote to aid veterans within the spending agreement.

Contrary to what my friends on the other side of the aisle claim, this point of order will not kill the bill. It only returns the bill to the legislative calendar. It will remain right there on the calendar, but it will allow the people who support it, if they want it passed-- and they do--to propose changes so that the bill complies with the Budget Act.

We can still fix and pass this bill before we leave this week. It wouldn't take much time at all to fix this matter. A vote in support of the point of order will protect the integrity of the budget process. Supporting this point of order will allow us to change the underlying bill so that it is fiscally sound and complies with the spending levels we have agreed to.

Unfortunately, while the Senate majority refuses to allow a vote on a reasonable veterans bill that complies with the Budget Act, they are neglecting the looming cuts that face our military men and women on January 2, 2013--the sequester. Given the events happening around the world today, we need to be very careful not to allow these kinds of cuts to take place in the first part of next year. There are various ways we could easily fix that, in my opinion, but we will not even confront the issue. The Senate majority has refused to address sequestration, which the Secretary of Defense--President Obama's Secretary of Defense--said would be catastrophic. Defense people have said it would hollow out the military. It is too rapid a bite, according to the experts in the Obama administration and others, but no effort has been brought forward to confront that problem--to bring it up on the Senate floor and have a full debate about it.

We can do a $200 million a year bill that we spent a week or more on, but we have no time on the Senate floor dedicated to dealing with the sequester, which would take $500 billion out of the defense budget. This bill on the floor today would spend nearly $1 billion over 5 years above the budget.

What about the $500 billion in cuts that are looming right now in January? We need to wrestle with that and decide how we are going to confront that. It is not going to be easy. Maybe defense can sustain some more cuts, but I don't think this much. They have already taken $500 billion in cuts, and this would be an additional $500 billion in cuts.

The Defense Department, under the plan today, which represents one- sixth of Federal Government spending, would get half the cuts, and the remaining five-sixths of the Federal Government would get the other half of the cuts. This is disproportionate. It should not have been part of the Budget Act. But they slipped it in the dead of night, and it came to the floor and people went along with it so we would not hit the debt ceiling. But it is not good, and we need to fix that, in my opinion.

House Republicans have confronted this matter. They realized this was a problem, and they proposed a budget and a plan to replace and undo the sequester and to do it in a way that made sense without violating spending levels we agreed to last August. How many proposals to fix this problem have we

received from Senator Durbin and Senator Reid? Zero. Nothing. They are not doing anything but blocking any attempt to bring up legislation that would fix it.

That is why we don't have a Defense authorization bill, which came out of my committee unanimously, the Armed Services Committee. It has been sitting here and not being brought up. Why? Because if we do, we will have a discussion about the sequester and the Defense Department and the future of America, and they do not want that. The House passed the Defense authorization bill in May, and they passed the Defense appropriations bill in June. We have passed none of them, not even brought them to the floor.

They want to attack Republicans as not caring about our men and women who serve our country. Yet we are trying to fix the sequester, trying to bring up a Defense bill that will actually do some good and give a pay raise to our men and women in uniform--a small one, but a pay raise. So I am really disappointed we haven't brought up the Defense authorization bill, which came out of my committee.

A few days ago--last week--Senator McCain spoke about this. He said: Shame, shame, shame. Imagine that for 51 years, every year, this Senate has passed the Defense authorization bill. This will be the first time in 51 years we haven't passed the Defense authorization bill, and we have so many important issues related to our Defense Department today. Nothing is more important than that. Yet we spent a whole week, or the last few days, discussing a bill that could have been agreed to just like that, with the suggestions of Senator Burr, because we can't wait to get out of this place. This could have already passed, and we could have been dealing with these important issues. I find it breathtaking, frankly.

Let me just point out the bill is not going to go through the House since it violates the Constitution. There are revenue proposals in this bill. It will not see the light of day in the House because the Constitution says revenue bills must be generated in the House. So we have wasted all this time producing a bill that cannot and will not be received by the House.

Article 1, Section 7 of the United States Constitution says:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House

of Representatives. . . .

This is a revenue bill.

So what has happened? Is it just an idea? Let's see, we don't want to talk about the Defense appropriations bill. We don't want to talk about the Defense authorization bill; it involves hundreds of billions of dollars. We don't want to talk about those, so let's bring up this veterans bill. We will bring it up even though it violates the Budget Act. And do you know what those stupid Republicans will do? They will object and say it violates the Budget Act. And do you know what we can say? We can say: You don't like veterans. You don't believe in honoring those who served our country. Do you want to know the truth? That is what has happened right here today, and it is irresponsible.

So let's vote for Senator Burr's bill. Let's pass legislation that will help veterans right now, or we are going to send this bill back--I am confident--to see if they come up with some other plan that would be helpful to our veterans and their employment prospects without violating the Budget Act.

I want to mention one more thing because I think it is important. The two largest veterans groups, the VFW and the American Legion, have said these things. Steve Gonzalez, assistant director of the American Legion, said both bills, the Burr and Murray bills ``have ideas on how to get veterans quality jobs,'' and added that Burr's version stands a better chance of passing.

What about the VFW? In the Washington Post today:

``VFW supports concepts behind the Veterans Job Corps bill,

but we have some concerns about the budgetary implications,''

said Ryan Gallucci, deputy director of national legislative

affairs for the VFW.

We don't have to do it the way this bill has come up. Senator Burr has offered a very fine proposal that the VFW and the American Legion seem to support. Let's do that. Let's do it that way and not violate our commitment to the American people to live within our means.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, before the Senator leaves, I would ask him a question. And the reason I am asking Senator Coburn about this is because there is no one of these 100 Senators here today who has spent more hours, effort and time in dealing with the duplicative programs of the Federal Government than Senator Coburn. He has brought up these issues time and again.

I just ask, according to the GAO, in 2009, Senator Coburn, I understand that 9 Federal agencies spent $18 billion to administer 47 job training programs. The Senator has looked into that. I know I have heard him speak on that specifically. I was surprised the Senator brought out that there are already six programs for veterans now, and this would be a new one added to it.

What is the Senator's view of what a responsible Congress should do when we learn we are spending this much money on these programs with their own bureaucrats and so forth? Can we do better?

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma. He served on the debt commission. He is steeped in the challenges facing our country and he is working hard to fix our problems.

I salute Senator Burr for coming forward with a proposal that helps veterans while abiding by the rules set forth in the Budget Act. Regretfully, I think we will end this matter today, the legislation that is coming forward, through the budget point of order.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think we should listen to Senator McCain. Senator McCain made a point that I think he understands. He is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. He has served his Nation with a career in the military. And we have a Commander in Chief who is not leading. We have a majority leader in the U.S. Senate who is not leading. We are about to have no Defense authorization bill this year for the first time in 50 years.

I would also note that this will be the first time since I have been in the Senate in maybe--I do not know how long--that we have passed not a single appropriations bill, zero, including a defense appropriations bill. It is going to be part of some massive, ominous CR for 6 months without any real oversight or thought as to how that money will be spent.

I am a member of the Armed Services Committee and ranking member of the Budget Committee. I would like to point out how these cuts that, as Senator Thune established, were driven by the White House when they set up this committee last August--and we committed to reducing spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. Instead of spending $47 trillion, they would reduce it to $45 trillion. We are spending now at the rate of $36 trillion over 10. We are still increasing spending over current rates, but it would not be quite as much.

But the way this fell is remarkable. I wanted to show this chart. Under the fallback sequester, the defense budget shrinks while nondefense spending soars. Under the budget as proposed and in law today, the Defense Department, unless we take action to fix this sequestration, would have a reduction of 11 percent over 10 years in its programs, while the remaining five-sixths of the Federal Government--defense is only one-sixth--would get a 35-percent increase. This is the kind of poor management we ought to not allow to happen. The Secretary of Defense said it would be ``catastrophic.'' The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said it would be ``catastrophic.'' Yet that is where we are heading.

We need leadership now. It will take place in January. We need to fix it now because defense contractors and military budget people in the Department of Defense are right now trying to wrestle with what to do about it.

This is not acceptable. So you say--they might say: The Defense Department has received dramatic increases. It ought to take more cuts.

We have heard that said. It is really not so. Let me show you some things about spending. From 2008 through 2011, these are the increases in spending by department or major program. Food stamps has gone up 100 percent--double. Medicaid went up 37 percent from 2008 through 2011. The Defense Department has increased 10 percent and basically last year had very little increase. The perception is that the Defense Department is the one that is driving the increases in spending. That is not accurate. Let me point out that under the Budget Control Act agreement of August 1 year ago, they totally exempted food stamps from any reduction, they totally exempted Medicaid from any reduction--not a dime--and that is why the cuts fall disproportionately on defense, and Social Security has no reduction. So these are things we need to understand as we wrestle with how to manage the people's money.

I thank Senator Thune for his leadership. To Senator McCain, I just would say this is not a good way to do business. I don't believe it will eventually become law. But right now it is causing disruption in the Defense Department, in our procurement for the Defense Department. We need to do something about it sooner rather than later. It is very disappointing the Commander in Chief, the Chief Executive, doesn't see this problem and begin to provide leadership right now to fix it.

I see my colleague from New Hampshire, a fabulous new addition to both the Budget Committee and the Armed Services Committee, has come to the floor. I am so pleased with her grasp of defense issues and her passion about it. Senator Ayotte.

The Congressional Budget Office and others, as Senator Thune indicated, have said if the tax increases are imposed and the sequester cuts are done, we could go back into another recession. The last thing we need to get this budget under control and our finances under control is another recession. It would be unthinkable for us to take action that would put us in that kind of context.

As Senator McCain knows, there are requirements the defense contractors--any government contractor--has when they know they are not going to be able, under the law, to keep the number of people employed. They have to send them a notice they are going to be laid off in advance so they have an opportunity to find other work. They are preparing to send out those notices now, and that has a depressing effect on the economy as well, I think. It is a very serious matter for the economy.

But most important to me is, when we start playing games with production and procurement of weapon systems and things, it costs the government more money. Wouldn't the Senator agree? If a contractor is producing 100 widgets and then they go to 50 widgets, then back to 100, doesn't the government often have to pay penalties and doesn't it drive up cost?

Absolutely; that is correct. Under the law, these cuts will take place in January. That will happen unless we pass a law to change it--unless we take action to change it. What, are we going to wait until December 31? Is that when we are going to deal with this?

As Senator Ayotte suggests, we should do it now because it is the responsible thing to do to fix this problem and not leave the Defense Department in turmoil. They will not even send an answer to our request--Senator Thune, myself, Senator McCain--on where the cuts are going to occur, I guess because they do not want to or they do not know yet. But this is turmoil within the Department.

We are going to have a lot more unemployed veterans if we don't fix this sequester because it is clearly going to cause the Defense Department to reduce personnel in a significant number; wouldn't the Senator agree?

Senator Thune mentioned the Ryan budget, a historic budget which changes the debt course of America and puts us on a path to prosperity and not decline. It is an honest budget, and it fixes this sequester.

I would ask Senator Thune, doesn't the budget passed by the House do that? Isn't that proof that if we put our heads together, we can develop a way of dealing with this sequester; that it is not impossible to do?

Mr. President, I do believe we are at a point in history that this Congress has the responsibility. Sequester cannot be carried out in the way it is written today. It will do severe damage to the Defense Department. We are going to fix it at some point. It only makes good sense and good business for us to fix it now, to avoid the disruptions that are ongoing in our Department of Defense.

Now I say we will fix it. I know there are a number of friends of the President who have long desired severe cuts in the Defense Department. He said he doesn't, but he at this point is taking action that I can only conclude indicates he favors these reductions to occur. The only way he might not do it is if we have the tax increase he wishes to see occur.

The Senator from New Hampshire has campaigned on this and talked about these issues. I guess it has been frustrating to serve on the Budget Committee and the Armed Services Committee and to see as much dysfunction as has occurred.

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

Madam President, the Veterans Jobs Corps bill creates a new mandatory program that would cost $1 billion over 5 years. As the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee and someone who is committed to ensuring that we honor our commitments as part of our process in the Senate, I am concerned about the cost of the bill and the fact that it violates our budget agreement entered into last year.

The spending on this new program is to be offset by, we are told, $119 million in direct spending reductions and $1.132 billion in new taxes. So it is a tax-and-spend bill.

My staff on the Senate Budget Committee has confirmed that there is a 302(f) Budget Act point of order against the Veterans Jobs Corps Act with the managers' amendment as it is presently. So that is the situation. So when I say we have confirmed that, what I mean is that we have talked to the Budget Committee chairman, Senator Conrad, and his staff, and they have

confirmed our conclusion that this violates the Budget Control Act.

The 302(f) point of order lies against this bill because the Veterans Jobs Corps bill, as amended, would cause an increase in the budget authority and outlays above the Veterans' Affairs Committee's allocation that was deemed by the Budget Control Act. The Veterans Jobs Corps bill would specifically cause an increase in budget authority and outlays above the Veterans' Affairs Committee's allocation by $61 million in 2013 and $480 million between the 5 years of 2013 and 2017. So the budget gimmicks in the Veterans Jobs Corps Act are significant and very troubling.

The CBO accounting procedures don't catch this, but it is very real. They don't catch it because the people who wrote the legislation wrote it in a way so they could avoid the proper score from the CBO in this process.

The bill shifts the timing of corporate income tax payments so that it appears to collect $135 million in additional revenue in 2013. What does that mean? A month or so before these payments are due, they accelerate the receipt of those payments. The payments fall in this year, and bingo, we say we have another $135 million we can spend. Isn't that wonderful. We just accelerate the date and the time that it would be paid. However, this is simply a smoke-and-mirrors scheme since the timing shift in payments will lead to exactly $135 million less in taxes collected in 2014. In other words, if we were planning on collecting $135 million next year and we collect it this year, the people who owed the money next year don't owe it anymore; they have already paid it. So there is a hole in next year. I have offered under the Honest Budget Act, along with Senator Olympia Snowe and other colleagues, legislation that would end this pernicious gimmick. It is worse than a gimmick.

This bill uses the exact same mechanism in 2017 and in 2018. The bill collects $392 million more in tax payments in 2017, but--and I have the chart from the Congressional Budget Office--it collects $392 million less in 2018. Do my colleagues follow me? We just accelerate the money, we spend the money, we get it this year, but we don't get it the next year. So over a period of time, this is a gimmick. It creates no new real money, but it creates the appearance of having real money and it is the appearance of money that is being spent, not real money. This is just one of the examples of how this country is going broke.

If this gimmick was not included, the Veterans Jobs Corps bill would increase the deficit by $38 million in 2013 and by $324 million over the period of 2013 through 2017. About one-third of the total expenditure of the bill is based on this gimmick. Our Democratic colleagues have used this budget gimmick to claim that it decreases the deficit by $97 million in 2013 and by $68 million in 2013 through 2017, a 5-year period.

I believe these points about the Federal budget process are indisputable. I know what CBO says about it. If we look at their numbers and we examine it over a period of 6 years, we see clearly that the money is not there. I invite any member who wants to suggest that this is real money the U.S. Treasury is receiving to come to the floor and explain how they think they are correct. I don't believe that I am in error.

To put it simply, the money my Democratic colleagues claim in the bill as revenue isn't there. It appears to be there on paper, but that is not the truth. The American people need to know the truth.

We simply spend more money on the Veterans' Affairs Committee allocations than was agreed to in the Budget Control Act. We are already violating that. We have done it already this year. As a result, we have eroded the small, but significant steps we took to bring some spending under control.

The Budget Control Act would have reduced spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years for the entire U.S. budget. Well, how much is that? We know that $2.1 trillion is a lot. It is a lot, but we plan to spend $47 trillion over that 10 years. So we would be reducing our projected spending from $47 trillion to $45 trillion over 10 years. Surely we can do that. That is not a cut, because if we spend for 10 years at the current level of spending, we would be spending $37 trillion, so we are still increasing spending from $37 trillion to $45 trillion, just not $47 trillion. And the Republic is not going to sink into the ocean with those kinds of cuts, but it would begin to put us on a path of honesty and responsibility and end the unsustainable debt course we are now on.

I am not happy about this. I will make this budget point of order formally when we get back on the bill. I don't know when that will be because for right now we have gotten off of it. But I want my colleagues to know what the situation is, because it may be at 1 o'clock tomorrow morning when we have that done.

I wish to say this: This Congress has had the worst record in decades, maybe in 100 years. We haven't had a budget for over 3 years. We haven't dealt with the sequester that has to be dealt with before the end of the year.

This Senate--not the House but this Senate--has not passed a single appropriations bill. To my knowledge, I say to my colleague Senator Hatch, I don't believe we have ever failed to have a single bill, although several times we have only had a few. But now we have none, and they have made it a policy of the majority party not to bring up a single bill so we can cobble it all together in some big omnibus CR and pass it in the dead of night, maybe on Christmas Eve, after the election is over. We should have been doing that all year long.

We haven't dealt with the tax increases that are going to hammer the economy in January, and we haven't passed a budget in over 1,000 days. The House has passed a good budget which would change the debt course of America and put us on a sound path. They sent over a Defense authorization bill. They sent over a Defense appropriations bill, and most of the appropriations bills, until it became clear Senator Reid said we are not going to pass them anymore. They sent over other good legislation that is dying in the Senate.

There are ways to help veterans get jobs. There are already six jobs programs for veterans now--six of them now. Maybe they could be improved or fixed, and if we do it right, we could create a bill that helps veterans get jobs without violating the budget.

Before I yield the floor, I am pleased to see my colleague Senator Hatch, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. His leadership on the Judiciary Committee and Finance Committee is well- known in this body and I am honored to serve with him.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Ayotte. She is a great member of the Budget Committee and a very active and aggressive member of the Armed Services Committee. She is the wife of an Iraq veteran, and knows and cares about these issues and contributes greatly. She and some of our other new Members have been flabbergasted to see how little has been accomplished in the 2 years they have been here. In my experience, Senator Ayotte, this is the worst performance in the 16 years I have ever seen in the Senate. It may be the worst performance in 100 years.

As the Senator mentioned, the House passed the Defense authorization act in May. They passed a Defense appropriations bill in July. We have had all summer and done nothing. The Senator is so correct. We had some intense and good debate in the Armed Services Committee over that bill. Yet when it finished, we had a unanimous vote. I thought that was special. So why did the bill not get brought up? I do not know. I feel as if we have missed an opportunity to do our duty. Not only have we not had a budget, not only have we not had a Defense Authorization bill or a Defense appropriations bill, we have not had 1 of the 12 appropriation bills brought to the floor, not 1. I believe that has never happened perhaps ever before, at least in maybe a century. The decision that was made by the Democratic leader was supported by his conference. He cannot just do things that his conference does not support, so they have decided not to do this. We end up at the end of the year with this massive CR with multiple changes. They say it will be a clean continuing resolution to fund the government for 6 months at the same level of funding. That is not exactly accurate. There are some things in it. But it is not the way to do business--to have every one of the bills cobbled together, all 12 appropriations bills cobbled together, in one 6-month, half-year, appropriations bill. Because, you see, as of September 30, if we don't pass the appropriations bills, the government shuts down. Under the law and the Constitution this government cannot spend a dime that Congress has not appropriated. That is the way the government works. We have to appropriate money before some bureaucrat can spend it.

The House has done their duty but not the Senate. We have not passed a single one. So what will happen to avoid the entire government being shut down, the entire Defense Department being hammered? What will we do? We will pass a continuing resolution that continues to fund the government. For now, we understand it will be 6 months, and that would be a substitute for doing what we should have done. What will we do 6 months from now? Will we have another 6-month CR or will we actually pass appropriations bills?

I appreciate the leadership of Senator Ayotte and her participation. I have heard her express her frustration as a new member of the Budget Committee that we haven't had a budget and didn't bring one up in the Budget Committee and didn't vote on it. As the ranking member of the Budget Committee, it was a deeply disappointing thing for me. That was a decision made by the majority leader, Senator Reid, who said it would be foolish to have a budget. Now we have gone about 1,233 days without a budget in this country and it has created this kind of dysfunction in our government. I don't think it is acceptable. I don't believe there is an excuse for it. I believe it has been done purely for politics, and that is not good, not when the men and women in uniform are serving us, at risk of their lives, losing life and limb on behalf of this Congress because we sent them there and asked them to undertake a

dangerous job. Yet we can't even get together and get a bill to the floor.

I would say we worked hard in the Armed Services Committee. A bill Senator Levin and Senator McCain led us to pass was passed unanimously. It was bipartisan. There were some things I would have liked to have seen done differently, and Senator McCain and Senator Levin may have had different ideas, but we couldn't get everyone to agree with everything we liked. We did, however, get a pretty good bill and it was within the budget and it was the kind of legislation we need to pass.

So the House has passed their authorization bill, within the budget, and similar to our bill. We should be able to conference and produce legislation in a reasonable amount of time. But when a bill such as that comes to the floor, people are entitled to have amendments. They are entitled to offer an amendment, as Senator Paul wants, to cut off funding for some foreign aid we have been putting out. But some people don't want to vote on that. It might not be an easy vote, but this is the Senate. People are entitled to offer amendments, they are entitled to have votes on issues they believe in and they campaigned on and they advocate and they are entitled to get their vote. But if it is a tough vote, it seems around here the leadership on the other side doesn't want us to talk about it. They do not want to be on record as voting. So that is a disappointment to us.

I think Senator McCain spoke with clarity. He spoke as a man who served his country, who has been in harm's way, who suffered on behalf of our country, who understands foreign policy, who understands the Defense Department, and understands Congress. His comments were solid, on point and correct, and I hope all Americans listen to him.

I appreciate the opportunity of sharing my disappointment at this point and just want to make one last point before I yield the floor.

Senator McCain, earlier today, and I and others, talked about the sequester. That has to be fixed by the beginning of next year. It needs to be fixed now. We can fix it now. We will fix it, in my opinion, sometime between now and the end of the year. It would be so much better if we brought it up, confronted the difficulties of the sequester and fixed it now rather than leaving a cloud over the Defense Department.

If we somehow fail to alter this sequester, this bill that is currently on the floor--the Veterans Jobs Corps Act--becomes very insignificant because we are going to be laying off so many members of our military who maybe just recently got back from a deployment overseas, in harm's way, who would like to make a career in the U.S. military. Maybe that is their plan and they all of a sudden get a blue slip. All of a sudden they hear Congress couldn't confront the sequester, we don't have money, and we are going to have to lay them off.

Don't think that is not possible. Because if this sequester goes in place, we are going to have to reduce personnel numbers in our military significantly. We have already taken almost $500 billion out of the Defense Department over 10 years. The sequester would take even more-- an additional $492 billion in this sequester--and it cannot be done without more personnel reductions.

We have already assumed a decline of military personnel with the overseas deployments going down--some decline. But this would be a rapid, dramatic decline to meet the demands of the cuts of the sequester that are unwisely being imposed at this point, and it would cause substantial layoffs as well as substantial procurement problems.

So I hope we will think about that as we go forward. If we can't get it done before we recess, it needs to be done promptly. It should have been done this summer, and I feel like the leadership of the Senate should have been active in that. I think the President of the United States should have talked to his Secretary of Defense, who said the sequester would be catastrophic, would hollow out the military. He should have talked to Secretary Panetta, and he should be over here with Congress providing some leadership, saying: Mr. Reid, fix this sequester. We cannot allow it to happen. I am the Chief Executive of the U.S. Government, I am the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, and you are going to do damage to the military of the United States. It is my responsibility as President to insist that you and Congress get this thing done. I am prepared to provide leadership and suggestions and help to get it done.

Has the President done that? No. He has not said one word about our advancing or putting any effort into leadership that would lead us to fix this problem. I think that is disappointing. I have to say it is. Maybe others think it is all right for him to lead from behind, to sit in the White House and go make speeches and not worry about the sequester and not worry about the fact we haven't passed a Defense bill. I don't think so. I think you are still President of the United States, even when you are running for reelection. I think a phone call or two to the Senate leadership would get the ball moving. That is about all it takes, frankly.

It seems to me the White House is perfectly happy with inaction. That is the bottom line, in my opinion. They are perfectly happy. They want to tell the Republicans: If you don't raise taxes, like we want taxes to be raised, we are going to hammer the Defense Department. But he is Commander in Chief. He has a moral obligation to those men and women, to make sure we are safe and they are treated fairly. I don't think that is responsible.

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

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

Mr. President, earlier our colleague, Senator Murray, complained that objections to the Veterans Jobs Corps bill was political--I think that was the thrust of part of her remarks--and that we should just pass it and move on.

My sole problem with the legislation--and Senator Murray, as a member of the Budget Committee understands this--is it violates the budget and is subject to a budget point of order. It would spend more money on this legislation than the veterans committee is authorized to spend. If we do that, we are supposed to vote on it, and a budget point of order would lie, and those who want to waive the budget would move to waive the budget and we would vote. It takes 60 votes to waive the duly agreed upon spending limits we have in that regard. That was part of the Budget Control Act in which we raised the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. We agreed to put some limits on spending--not much but some. Here we are already, after several different prior violations of the budget, back at it again. So that is the concern.

Senator Burr has offered legislation that would help solve the problem of unemployment among veterans, and his doesn't violate the budget. We could support it. I would note that the veterans committee never had a hearing on this. Therefore, nobody ever: studied it, called expert witnesses, had hearings in public, or examined witnesses to find out if this plan is the best way to help veterans who are unemployed. We have six programs already that do this. Maybe it would be better to consolidate some of them and add a little to it. Maybe some of them ought to be eliminated and a new program that is outlined in the Murray

amendment could be utilized to do that. But we have had no real opportunity to do that.

So what is the politics? I would say the politics is that the majority party and the majority leader, do not want to talk about real issues of great importance, so this bill is brought up and utilized to fill up the whole week. So we are not going to take up several other pieces of legislation that are important.

It was suggested that those Republicans who don't favor this way of dealing with unemployment of veterans--if we don't do that, we don't like veterans and we don't like people who have served our country and we are insensitive about that. Let me ask a question. If those on the other side care about veterans--if they say this bill, which would cost $900 million, which is a lot of money but not that much in terms of what we deal with--so if we don't support this bill, they say we don't care about veterans. So let me pose this question: If my democratic colleagues care about our men and women in uniform who serve our country and veterans, how could they oppose authorizing the Defense bill?

Senator Reid, the majority leader, blocked bringing up the bipartisan-approved Defense authorization bill. It has been passed every year for over 50 years. That amounts to $631 billion. If we don't pass that, we are not taking care of the pay raise for military men and women and a lot of other initiatives that are in there. I would just point out to my colleagues that it passed the Senate Armed Services Committee on a bipartisan basis--not just on a bipartisan basis, unanimously. Yet Senator Reid will not bring it up. The House has passed the Defense authorization bill. They passed it in May. We have never brought it to the floor. The leader has refused to bring it to the floor.

I suggest if my colleagues have a question about the jobs bill for veterans for us, why don't we ask this question: What do they think of the military if they will not bring up a military authorization bill? Do they care about them?

What about the Defense appropriations bill? The House has passed the Defense appropriations bill. The Appropriations Committee of the Senate has passed the Defense appropriations bill. It is on the Senate floor waiting to be called up and voted on. It is not being voted on, and we are, again, talking about $600 billion. But this $900 million bill is taking up the whole week and the other bill will not even be brought up.

One more question: If my Democratic colleagues are concerned about veterans and jobs, what about the sequester? We are on track to hammer the Defense Department with half of the budget cuts. The Defense Department makes up about one-sixth of the Federal Government spending. It is going to take half of the cuts. It has already taken almost $500 billion in cuts. This would be another $492 billion in cuts to the Defense Department. Secretary Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, has told the President and the whole world this would be catastrophic. It would hollow out the military. It would endanger our ability to fulfill our mission, but we are on track to have that go into effect--those cuts take place in January--and we are going to have military officials reduce dramatically, if that occurs, the number of men and women in uniform. We are going to have people coming off the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places wanting to make a career out of the military, thinking they could make a career out of the military, and all of a sudden, because of this sequester, they are going to walk in and they will get a pink slip. ``Sorry, we don't need you anymore. Good luck.''

We have plans under the cuts that are in place in the Defense Department to draw down the number of personnel. This would be dramatically more. Where are they going to get jobs? Many of the people who would also lose their jobs in that process work for defense contractors or civilian employees of the Department of Defense who also are veterans, who got jobs as civilian employees in the Department of Defense. They will be laid off.

Why aren't we dealing with the sequester? Earlier today Senator McCain said it was a shame that we are not dealing with these issues. ``Shame, shame, shame,'' Senator McCain said. I think that is right. Yet we are having the spectacle of the majority party in this Congress attacking the Republicans for not liking the military because we don't agree to a budget-busting bill on how to create jobs. That has never been through the committee for veterans, jobs for veterans--neve been through the committee and never had a proper process.

I do not agree with that. We have a serious problem in this Senate. We have a majority party in this Senate that is refusing to undertake the basic requirements of the U.S. Senate. We have not passed a budget. We have not passed a single appropriations bill. We certainly did not pass a Defense appropriations bill. The Defense authorization bill, as has been noted, was passed for 50-plus years. It will not be even brought up to have debate on, and it passed the committee unanimously.

What is this? This is a fear, it seems to me, a political fear. And the political fear is, if you bring up these bills, Democrats might have to vote on amendments and things, and they do not want to vote. If you get to bring a budget to the floor, well, you have a right to offer amendments about the future financial course of America, and we get to have full debate about it, and talk about it, and offer amendments and be on record as to what we believe in, how much debt we think we can sustain in this country.

They do not want to do that. Senator Reid said it is foolish to have a budget. It is not foolish to have a budget, of course. That is why we are in such a fix today, I would suggest.

So can we do more for veterans? I think we can do more, and I think we can help them with their employment circumstances. I served 10 years in the Army Reserve. One of my duties was to be the representative for the employer support of the Guard and Reserve, and that was to ensure that people who were called up for our National Guard or our Army Reserve or go on active duty--to make sure when they come back they get the job they had, they will not lose their employment position as a result of serving their country. That is one of the things we did.

When I was a U.S. attorney, I prosecuted some cases--and we won-- where I felt people had lost their job as a result of being called up to military service. That is not acceptable. We need to protect our men and women. I have a history of that.

But this bill does not guarantee that we are going to use the money wisely that is being spent. So I am amazed we are using our last hours here to move forward a bill that violates the budget when we do not have to. Senator Burr's bill does not violate the budget, and it will, I am confident, do the job, do the same kind of job for helping veterans get jobs. This is very odd, to suggest that somehow those of us on this side are using politics to block a benefit to veterans. Give me a break. That is kind of an odd charge, isn't it?

I would say that people on our side are standing and asking principled questions. Yes, we want to do more for veterans. Yes, we hope to help them find jobs. But we agreed just last August to spending limits. We agreed just last August, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling $2 trillion, to reduce some spending--not a lot, but some spending. Here we are, just over a year later, and we are already busting those limits we agreed to. It is not right, and it cannot be the kind of thing we should be doing.

One more thing, and it is obvious to those of us in the Senate, if we take a minute to think about it; and that is, sustaining the budget point of order, not waiving the budget, does not kill the Murray bill or the Burr bill. It simply says, go back to committee, have a real hearing, bring a bill forward that actually stays within the budget. That is all it says do.

If we continue this process--and we have done it several times already this year--of violating the budget, pretty soon the budget numbers we have are going to be worthless. That would be my concern. Let's send the legislation back to committee, let's have a hearing, let's let a bill come forward, let's consider the six jobs programs for veterans that are already in place, see if they need to be improved, expanded, consolidated, how this bill should be passed to complement those programs, and see if we do not get the maximum benefit for veterans for every dollar the taxpayers have sent to us.

To the extent to which we spend a dime above the budget, it is either borrowed or paid for by new taxes. There is no doubt about it. There are new taxes in this bill, new revenue that is in this bill. Some of it is gimmicky, I have to tell you, and it is not the way we should do business, in my view.

I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts. I believe the budget point of order should not be waived. We should not spend more than the deemed budget allocations allow. We should send this bill back to committee, tell them to get busy on a thorough review of the jobs situation of veterans, and come forward and produce a bill we can pass that does the job and does not violate the budget. We spend $3,700 billion. We ought to be able to find $900 million somewhere in that budget to meet this challenge.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, the Veterans Jobs Corps bill, properly written, could be a positive piece of legislation. And I am not speaking about the intent of the bill, whether it can be done effectively, but as ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, I have to point out that this bill violates the budget. It violates the principles of common sense and good management, and it is the typical reason this government is on an unsustainable financial path. It is the typical reason of why we are going broke.

This bill will cost $1 billion over 5 years in spending on a new program. It claims to be offset by new taxes and new revenue sources, but my staff has worked on it and has confirmed there is a 302(f) Budget Act point of order against this Veterans Jobs Corps Act and the managers' amendment, and I am confident that if and when it is raised, the Parliamentarian will agree. There is a budget point of order against this bill because it violates the Veterans Affairs Committee's allocation for budget authority and outlays for what was agreed to in the Budget Control Act.

There was a limit to how much we would spend on the Veterans Affairs Committee. They had a limit on the number of dollars they got. It was part of the August agreement--the Budget Control Act--of a little over a year ago this past August. This is serious. We told the American people we would raise the debt ceiling by about $2.1 trillion but we were going to cut spending. We would immediately raise the debt ceiling and allow $2.1 trillion more in spending, but we promised we would reduce spending over the next 10 years by that same amount. That was the agreement. The President signed it, our Democratic colleagues supported it, and it passed. The debt ceiling was raised, so the government continued to go forward. We were borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spent in the U.S. Government. If we had not raised the amount of money we could borrow in this country, the entirety of government expenditures would have been reduced immediately by 40 percent. So that is how big a hole we are in.

What this new bill does, with good purpose, is it spends $1 billion more than we agreed to spend. So then what occurs? What occurs is, if a person objects to that and raises the budget point of order, the Senate has to waive it openly, publicly, before the American people. We have to say we can't find money within our budget to spend $1 billion more, but we are going to spend it anyway, and every penny of it either has to be borrowed or will be paid for by increased revenues somewhere. So that's what we are going to vote on. I intend to raise the Budget Point of Order.

But it is even worse than that. Some say, ``Well, over 10 years we promise to raise enough money to pay for this, that over the 10-year period we will raise the $1 billion. Don't worry about it. These tax increases and revenue enhancements will pay for it. Count on us.''

I hate to say it, but it is not so. We have in this bill at least one-third the amount of money that would be spent by the jobs corps bill coming from a well-known gimmick, a manipulation of an accounting system around here that allows us to spend more money than we have, and it scores not as an expenditure but as being a proper, valid pay-for. And it is as bogus as a three-dollar bill. I say without danger of contradiction that this is a gimmick. If a private company were to do this and utilize this method to manipulate and mislead stockholders, they would have a lawsuit against the officers of the corporation. They would. It is totally bogus.

Let me explain how this is done. This has been done before. I have offered a bill called the Honest Budget Act. Senator Olympia Snowe joined me in that, and that would have eliminated a number of misleading gimmicks and fraudulent activities, including this one. Now, to explain, there is a certain corporate tax revenue we get from corporations, and the drafters of this bill cleverly got the idea that they could just accelerate the amount of money from fiscal year 2014 into fiscal year 2013. They would bring that money back into 2013 and collect it just a little bit earlier, and they could then say: We have another $135 million in revenue in 2013, so we can spend that money, and it doesn't cost anything because we have this new money and it is paid for.

So this new Veterans Jobs Corps bill will be partially paid for. About one-third of its total cost will be paid for by collecting corporate revenue taxes sooner. But think about that, if the corporation pays its taxes a few months earlier--it pays it in fiscal year 2013--then it won't owe them in 2014, will it? If they were planning on paying them in 2014, now, they don't have to pay them in 2014. So the hole has moved from 2013 to 2014. We moved the money over here, but we won't have the revenue the next year that we would normally have had. And that is to be done over 5 years.

In the fifth year--which is where our colleagues wanted the number to fall--it shows as if we had a $392 million total increase in revenue. The money, added up each year over 5 years, plus increases, totals $392 million. Isn't that great? We didn't raise taxes. All we did

is call in a little money a little earlier, and we have netted $392 million, right? Wrong. Year 6 is where the revenue doesn't come in, and in year 6 it shows that we will bring into the U.S. Treasury $392 million less because that money was collected early in the previous year--$392 million less in year 6. It never is a net increase to the U.S. Treasury, although it might appear to be, according to the conventions of accounting the CBO uses around here. And CBO knows this is true. They would tell anyone the same thing if they were to ask about this. They know exactly what this system is. But they follow their rules, and in the fifth year it suggests we have a $392 million surplus from this advance collection of corporate taxes, and that is not so.

So, my colleagues, this is a problem for us. We do not need to continue down this pathway. We need to be honest with the American people. The President of the United States should be objecting to this kind of stuff. He should say: No, you can't play that game. The majority leader, Senator Reid, should be saying: No, that is a manipulation. The budget chairman, Senator Conrad, ought to say: No, it violates the Budget Act. This isn't the way to do it.

Now, the alternative bill authored by Senator Burr is an honest piece of legislation and would do much of the same thing; however, it does not violate the Budget Act and is therefore not subject to a budget point of order.

This legislation could have been crafted that way, too. But being as greedy as I guess we are, rather than having to face up to a little bit of the difficulty of finding a couple of hundred million dollars, out of $3.7 trillion we will spend next year, we would rather manipulate it this way.

So what did we mean in August a year ago when we said we were going to cut spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years? Was that just a joke? Is this the kind of thing we are going to do every time a bill comes along that has some appeal to it and we wish to support? Are we not willing to stand up and pay for the legislation? Is there no waste, fraud, and abuse in this government that we couldn't work on? There certainly is.

This government is mismanaged, it is out of control, and the Chief Executive spends his days getting on an airplane going somewhere to make a speech. What we need is somebody in the shop managing the taxpayers' money. And when Congress tries to play these gimmicks, we need a President that says, No. That is what this country needs. Until we get that, we are never going to bring spending under control.

What do my President and my Democratic colleagues in the Senate say? Send more money. We can't cut anything. We have no ability to find savings. We need more money, American people. Send more to Washington, private sector. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference in an economic sense where it comes from. It is all a further drain out of the private sector, so the public sector can spread the money around and maybe solicit some votes in the process.

This is how we got into this fix. I am concerned about it. I do not think we should go forward with the legislation as drafted. Perhaps some compromise can be reached. Senator Burr has worked hard on it. Maybe our Democratic colleagues can get together and put up a veterans jobs bill that is honestly paid for. I know they could. And if it is worth it and we can find ways to make the tough choices that we are paid to do and set priorities, and help veterans find jobs through some sort of mechanism such as this, then let's do it. But let's pay for it, and let's don't use these gimmicks. Let's don't go about it in a way that misleads the American people about how much the legislation is truly costing.

I feel strongly about it. I am getting frustrated about it. It is always: Well, it is just a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there, and the bill needs to pass, and don't raise these problems now, we are slowing down the machine, we have a lot of things to do. It doesn't look as if we are so busy right now, but people think we have things to do and they don't want to have to wrestle with the minutiae of a few hundred million dollars a year. But we should do that. If we do that every day and if we stay within the budget amount we agreed to last August, we will have made some improvement in the overall debt course of America.

To make clear, the Budget Control Act agreement called for a reduction of $2.1 trillion in spending over 10 years. During that time, we were projected to spend $47 trillion. So the net reduction would be from $47 trillion to $45 trillion. Surely the Republic is not going to sink into the ocean if we reduce our spending from $47 trillion to $45 trillion. Surely we can find that. It is not enough. We need to do about three times that much at a minimum, and we can do that, too. This is still a substantial increase in spending. This is not a cut in spending over 10 years. At the current rate of spending, we spend about $37 trillion. So we are going from $47 trillion to $45 trillion over 10 years instead of $37 trillion over 10 years. It is still a major increase in spending over 10 years, but we are told that is impossible; all we can possibly do is $2.1 trillion in reductions.

The President was claiming credit for reaching this agreement, but the budget he submitted this year wiped out the entire $2.1 trillion. It wiped out the entire sequester and raised taxes by $1.5 trillion in increased spending and about $1.8 trillion in increased taxes; no cuts at all under his budget; actually a spending increase over the trajectory we were already on, which is an unsustainable trajectory.

I know I am being frank about this. Some can say this is a political argument. Well, we are in a political season, and I believe what I have said is accurate. I believe what I have said is true. I believe a budget point of order lies against this bill because it spends more than the Veterans' Affairs is allocated to spend, and we need to vote on it. It is this kind of breaking the budget and spending more than we agreed that has helped put us in this fix, and we need somebody to help bring order out of chaos.

We are on an unsustainable path. This Nation is on the wrong track. We are on the track to decline and debt and financial crisis, not the road to prosperity. We cannot continue in this path.

Erskine Bowles and Senator Simpson before the Budget Committee told us that we have never faced in this country a more predictable debt crisis. That was their joint statement, ``never faced a more predictable financial crisis.'' What they told us was: We are on an unsustainable path. If we stay on this path, we will have some sort of debt crisis, another 2008 or 2007 recession caused by a financial bubble. And for the U.S. Government, what a disaster that would be if, as we are struggling to get people back to work and get the economy on the rise, we have a financial crisis again putting us back into recession. We need to avoid that. We have got to be mature and honest about our money. We have got to get our debt under control.

This bill violates the deemed allocations included in the Budget Control Act. It violates sound principles of financial policy. It contains a major gimmick, really a bogus allocation of over $300 million that claims to exist that does not exist at all. We need to fix that.

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, it was reported today that Iraq has denied the request of the United States to extradite senior Hezbollah field commander and confessed terrorist Ali Mussa Daqduq, who was recently ordered released by the Iraqi court after our government turned him over to Iraqi custody when our troops left the country.

The administration had years to transfer Daqduq to our detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but because the President seemed to lack the political will to do so--I think because of campaign promises he improvidently made--one of the most dangerous, reprehensible terrorists ever in our custody will likely be allowed to go free. We should never have been in this position.

I and others saw this coming and we pleaded with the administration not to allow it to happen. Sadly, our warnings fell on deaf ears and, sadly, we were proven correct. Daqduq is responsible for the torture and murder of five American servicemen in Karbala, Iraq, including PVT Jonathan Millican of Locust Fork, AL, who was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action as he attempted to protect his comrades from Daqduq's terrorist actions outside the rules of war. Daqduq and his followers wore American uniforms--an action that he directed. His actions were clearly against the laws of war and he can be held not only as a prisoner of war but as a violator of the rules of war and can be tried and should have been tried before an American military commission.

When U.S. forces captured Daqduq, then the most senior Hezbollah figure in U.S. custody, he provided detailed testimony about the support and training provided by Iran to Iraqi insurgents and admitted to violating the laws of war. He is not a criminal defendant. He is not a member of an organized crime syndicate or some drug dealer. He is a confessed terrorist who committed atrocities against American soldiers during a war duly authorized by Congress. That makes him an unlawful enemy combatant who may be detained until the conclusion of the war or subjected to trial by a military commission. He could be imprisoned for up to life or he could be executed.

Once the military determined he was no longer of use for intelligence purposes when he was in Iraq, he should have been brought to Guantanamo Bay. That was the perfect place for him to be detained. This should have been an open-and-shut case. But President Obama and Attorney General Holder have obstinately clung to the failed law enforcement approach to counterterrorism. They just have. It has been a dispute all the way through the campaign and since they took office. They believe in treating foreign enemy combatants as normal criminal defendants entitled to U.S. constitutional protections and civilian trials. This is contrary to history and contrary to the laws of war. It is contrary to our treaty obligations. Other nations don't do this.

The problem began when, upon taking office, the President decided to ban any new additions to the prisoner population at Guantanamo Bay. We remember that. He didn't like Guantanamo Bay. He thought that was some bad place. So if he transferred Daqduq, or anyone else, for that matter, to Gitmo, he would anger certain of his supporters and violate some of his improvident campaign promises, one of which was to the effect that Gitmo was a cause of terrorism, not a way to prevent terrorism and prevent terrorists from murdering innocent civilians and attacking our military.

So when the report surfaced that the administration planned to transfer Daqduq to the United States for a civilian trial--that was the first report, that he would be brought here for a civilian trial--my colleagues and I wrote to the Attorney General urging him to reconsider and try him before a military commission. For a time, the Attorney General appeared to have relented. But a few months later, it was reported that instead of transferring him to Gitmo, the administration decided to release Daqduq to Iraqi custody.

This time, we wrote to Secretary of Defense Panetta asking him to reconsider that decision. We warned that the Iraqi Government previously had released terrorists who later returned to the battlefield to kill American servicemen. Yet as the deadline for the United States withdrawal from Iraq approached, it became clear the President had no intention of removing Daqduq from Iraq.

The President then struck a deal with Prime Minister al-Maliki to charge Daqduq before an Iraqi criminal court for his acts of terrorism, forgery, and illegal entry, and other offenses.

Now the Iraqi court has had a trial and ordered him released, in spite of the volume of evidence turned over by the United States to be used in the trial, including his uncoerced confessions detailing his role in training the insurgents and his role in the Karbala massacre that I referred to. It appears that it is only a matter of time before he will now be set free.

Recent press reports indicate that the Iraqi authorities are trying to find a way to release Daqduq without angering the White House or embarrassing the President ahead of the election. Well, no one should be surprised that Iraq will not turn him over. We were concerned from the beginning that this would happen.

The administration knew well before it handed over Daqduq that its decision was an abdication of its responsibility to prosecute a terrorist for war crimes against American soldiers--the murder of American soldiers. The administration knew if the Iraqi courts failed to bring him to justice, we may never get a second chance. That was known. And they knew that Iraq would not agree to an extradition request. That has been their policy. So the fact of the matter is we wouldn't be in this position if we had prosecuted Daqduq when we had the opportunity. But now, not only is justice perverted, but he could be returned to the battlefield to kill more Americans, Iraqis, and others.

Unfortunately, Daqduq was not the first, nor will he be the last, example of this administration's unwillingness to confront dangerous terrorists effectively and to process them effectively.

In July of 2009, Senator Jon Kyl and I wrote President Obama urging him to adhere to this Nation's longstanding policy of not negotiating with terrorists and not to release the Khazali brothers--two of the top Iraqi terrorists trained by Daqduq who were complicit in the Karbala massacre in 2009; but they went forward--in exchange for the release of British hostages held by the terrorist organization called the League of the Righteous.

President Obama authorized the Khazalis' release as part of what the Iraqi Government called its ``reconciliation efforts'' with insurgent groups.

But in reality, this release was a thinly veiled ploy to use Iraq as a middleman in a terrorist-for-hostage exchange in direct violation of President Reagan's policy not to negotiate with terrorists. In fact, there was an Executive order he issued to that effect.

When Iraq released the Khazalis to the League of the Righteous, the terrorist group responded by releasing five British hostages, but, sadly, four of them had already been executed. Qais Khazali immediately, upon his release, resumed his position as leader of the terrorist group and orchestrated the kidnapping of a U.S. civilian contractor in Baghdad less than a month after his release, and Abdul Reza Shahlai, an Iranian Quds Force officer now in Iraq--the Quds Force is one of the most loyal and vicious parts of the Iranian regime-- helped Khazali and Daqduq plan the Karbala massacre and helped coordinate the attempt to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States on U.S. soil. Do you remember that? That is the same guy.

Despite this alarming track record and the obvious lessons to be learned from its previous mistakes, the administration recently insisted on engaging in negotiations with the Taliban to release five terrorist detainees from Guantanamo Bay--detainees who were categorized previously as ``too dangerous to transfer'' by the administration's own Guantanamo Review Task Force--and they were to be released in exchange for the Taliban's promise in Afghanistan to ``begin'' talks with the Afghan Government.

Negotiating, I suggest, with terrorists is not a profitable enterprise, and in effect that is what that was. Three of the five have ties to al-Qaida. Another met with Iranian officials on behalf of the Taliban immediately following 9/11 to discuss Iran's offer of weapons and support to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Another detainee then under consideration, Mohammad Fazl, is a close friend of the supreme Taliban commander, Mullah Omar, who is accused of killing thousands of Afghan Shiites, and who was responsible for the prison revolt that claimed the life of CIA Officer Johnny Michael Spann, the first American killed in Afghanistan and, incidentally, another brave Alabamian.

As time has passed, it has become clear that the policy of not negotiating with terrorists is sound and essential, and the administration's actions in violation of that policy have failed and they are dangerous.

Indeed, the administration's failed terrorist detention policies appear to have led to a policy that favors killing rather than capture and interrogation of enemy combatants. It is an odd event, but it does appear to have some truth to it.

So today we face a situation in Afghanistan that is similar to that which we faced in Iraq in 2009. Parwan Prison currently houses roughly 2,000 to 3,000 individuals, including high-value detainees.

In August 2011, the Washington Post--last August--reported:

U.S. officials say that giving Afghans control over the

fates of suspected insurgents would allow dangerous Taliban

fighters to slip through the cracks of an undeveloped legal

system.

I will tell you what that means. It means they will not be able to keep them in those jails. History shows that. They will get their way out of there--through violence, through bribery, through threats, or some other mechanism, and that is what is continuing to happen. It is a big concern of the military. As a Federal prosecutor, who observed this particular issue over the years in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been a source of concern to me.

In March of this year, the administration agreed to a gradual transfer of control of the prison to the Afghan Government over a period of 6 months, with the United States holding veto power over the release of certain prisoners. However, the Washington Post reported in May--just May of this year--that the administration has been secretly releasing high-value detainees held in Afghanistan in exchange for certain ``promises of support'' from leaders of insurgent groups.

Now, how long do you think that will last? Once we release the prisoner, they are out, but the promises by some Taliban or some terrorists are not going to be honored. Not only do some of these prisoners have ties to Iran or al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that continue to attack our troops, but their release is not even conditioned on them severing their contact with the insurgent groups.

According to the Washington Post, the administration has approved these releases in part because they do not require congressional approval. That is what they report. It also has been reported that the administration is attempting to repatriate some of the 50 most dangerous militants over which the United States currently retains custody to Pakistan and other Arab countries--this in the face of reports from the Director of National Intelligence that nearly 28 percent of former Gitmo detainees are either confirmed or suspected to have returned to the battlefield to attack America and our allies. That is 28 percent. How many are doing so and we have not yet proven that they have been in the game? I suspect many more than that 28 percent.

So the question inevitably arises: When American detention operations in Afghanistan come to an end, where will the administration take those 50 or so dangerous prisoners, assuming it has not already negotiated with other insurgent groups for their release? If they are not going to release them, what are they going to do with them?

Once again, the administration has kicked the can down the road, just as it did in Iraq, which eventually culminated in the Daqduq mess.

The country cannot afford to continue down this dangerous path, especially in light of the impending withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan and the administration's agreement to transfer detainees in U.S. custody to the Kabul Government. The same unacceptable result will surely occur.

The President is the Commander in Chief. He has serious responsibilities, and one is to defend the honor, the dignity, and the credibility of the United States. I do not believe we are doing so when we are dealing with terrorists who double-cross us at every turn. He has a duty to those magnificent troops who have answered his call to go into harm's way to execute U.S. policy.

Part of that duty is not to give away what they have fought and bled for, not to give it away after they fought and bled for it, and captured these people. That includes not giving up prisoners whom these soldiers, at great risk and effort, have captured--terrorists who seek to destroy what we have, terrorists we have worked so hard to capture, terrorists who may return to kill more Americans and more Afghans.

This policy cannot be defended. It has to end. So I urge the President and his team to act forcefully now. It may not be too late. With strong action we may be able to ensure that Daqduq is not released, that he is able to be tried for the murders he committed and the American soldiers he killed.

I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to a dedicated individual in Alabama, Mayor Ted Jennings of Brewton, AL. Ted has been a successful businessman, pharmacist, and community, State, and national leader.

When he retires this year, he will have served as the mayor of Brewton for 24 years. During that time, he has grown Brewton both economically and technologically. But in addition to his success as a mayor, he has been a successful business owner and pharmacist. He is also well known in Alabama as former president and an active officer of the Alabama League of Municipalities and nationally has served on the board and in many other positions in the National League of Cities. He has, in both capacities, represented Brewton and Alabama as a strong advocate on matters of economic development. On a personal level, I want to express my appreciation to Ted for his friendship, advice, and counsel on matters critical to the area.

All of us who have come to know him over the years have observed his dedication to public service, his hard work, and his effective leadership. He has a host of friends and admirers--this Senator is one. I thank him for his service and know that, even in retirement, he will be a strong advocate for rural economic development and Alabama. I extend my best wishes to Ted and family as you begin your next adventure.

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

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

Would the Senator yield for a question?

From the Senator's perspective--as the Senator has been on this committee a long time, he has served in the military, and he is the ranking Republican on the committee--in the Senator's judgment, based on the obligations we have--and I know the Senator has openly and aggressively condemned waste and abuse in the Defense Department--but does the Senator think the Defense Department can maintain its responsibilities with this cut?

Mr. President, I value Senator McCain's judgment because he has been engaged in these debates for many years.

Mr. President, I want to yield to Senator Inhofe because I know he wants to share his thoughts at this time.

Mr. President, Senator Inhofe referred to this chart and I have now had it brought over at his request. This is something we prepared, and it dispels the myth that the reason this government is running such huge deficits is surges in military spending. That is an inaccurate event.

The base defense budget from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 increased about 10 percent. Medicaid, during the same time, increased 37 percent; and food stamps, during this same 4-year period, doubled--a 100-percent increase. Under the sequester, food stamps get not a dime of cuts; Medicaid gets not a dime worth of cuts. These cuts are disproportionately targeted at the Defense Department.

The Defense Department, as the Senator says, has already taken a $487 billion reduction under the BCA, and due to sequestration it would be another $492 billion. That is why, I believe, it has gone from belt tightening, waste reducing, and efficiency to producing the damage to the Defense Department.

Yes. Senator McCain asks we look at this chart. This again shows what would happen under the sequester. Our budget staff has worked hard to correctly do these numbers. Under the sequester, the additional $492 billion in cuts, adjusted for inflation, the defense budget over 10 years would be reduced by a real 11 percent. That is, one-sixth of the Federal Government's spending is defense. The remaining five-sixths of the Federal Government would increase 35 percent under the sequestration and current

BCA policies. So again, I think that is clear proof the Defense Department is disproportionately being asked to reduce.

Senator McCain suggests another chart. He likes my charts.

How about the 50-year switch? It is so dramatic. And the American people have to know this. I wish it were not so. I wish I could be more optimistic about our financial future and the ease with which we can get ourselves on the right track, but it is not going to be easy, and this chart indicates that.

In 1963, defense made up 48 percent of the outlays of the United States--48 percent in 1963. This was not at the height of Vietnam or the Korean war or anything. The entitlements of America amounted to 26 percent of the budget. What has happened in the past 50 years? Entitlements have now reached 60 percent of the budget and the Defense Department is 19 percent of the budget.

This is a dramatic alteration of where we are. Some of this is normal and natural. But I think what Senator McCain is saying is that defending America is a core function of government and we need to be sure this alteration does not put us in the position where America is not properly defended.

I thank the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be allowed to proceed as in a colloquy so we can address one another directly.

Senator Thune is in the leadership on the Republican side and he is in the Budget Committee and the Defense Committee and is aware of how this all happened. So we are at a point where it appears to me the Defense Department is being asked to take unacceptable, disproportionate reductions in spending that go so far as to create damage rather than improving its efficiency.

Isn't it true the Secretary of Defense and all the top officials under the Secretary of Defense are appointed by the President and serve at his pleasure?

The Secretary of Defense now has said this would be a disaster to the Defense Department for these cuts to take effect. Isn't it true that the President is the Commander in Chief of all our military forces?

Isn't it true that we are at a situation at this point in history where we are heading toward a sequester, and the Commander in Chief is utterly silent on how to fix the problem?

I thank the Senator from South Dakota for his leadership, and I was proud to join with him on similar legislation to that in the House. But isn't it true that we agreed last August with the Budget Control Act to reduce spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion; that is, reduce $47 trillion to $45 trillion, and there are no tax increases involved in that? Now we are discovering that late- minute deal has disproportionately impacted the Defense Department, as the President's own Secretary of Defense acknowledged.

Should we not be able to expect that the President would enter into discussions about how to deal with this? Does it not seem to the Senator, as an experienced part of the leadership in this Senate, that the President is saying: You Republicans care about the Defense Department. You Republicans care about preserving America. But I am not going to do it unless you agree to my tax increases. I am not going to do, as Commander in Chief, what I ought to be doing and providing the leadership on this because I am going to use this as leverage against you guys to force you to agree to a tax increase; is that the bottom line? I hate to be so frank about it, but that is the way I feel it is sort of developing; am I wrong about that?

I think so. I would just say this--and I am so glad our colleague Senator Ayotte is here.

One thing more I would say about it is the agreement last August was to raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion and to reduce spending over 10 years $2.1 trillion. It did not include a tax increase.

What we are saying is we need to simply reorganize how all those cuts fell so they are more realistic and the government is not so damaged, and we don't need to have agency after agency totally exempt from any cuts.

We are glad to have Senator Ayotte here. She is a new member of the Armed Services Committee and the Budget Committee. She is a fabulous new addition to the Senate. Her husband is a military officer. She has contributed greatly to our discussion.

I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. She made a great series of points. One of the most dramatic, is that we should not be waiting.

This is going to cost the Defense Department tremendous amounts of money. Private contractors may well assess against the Department of Defense costs for confusion and delays.

I just want to wrap up with these three charts.

One of the myths is the reason the United States is running the largest deficit in its history is the wars, the Afghan and Iraqi wars. We ran the numbers on that. The war outlays represent only 4 percent of defense spending. That is a lot, but it is only 4 percent. It is not the biggest part of it. In 2001-2011 it totaled $1.1 trillion during that time; 2001 through 2011 we spent $1.1 trillion on both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During that same time--this represents the rest. The red represents the remaining expenditures of the U.S. Government, 96 percent. It is not so that defense and the war have caused the deficit we are in. Indeed, last year our deficit was about $1.3 trillion. The entire 10 years of the war effort amount to less than 1 year's deficit last year. In fact, we have averaged over $1.2 trillion for the last 4 years in deficits. For one year, you could eliminate the entire Defense Department, all $540 billion of it, and you would not cut the deficit in half. You can add the war costs to it, which is a little over $100 billion, and it is still less than half. It is not so that the reason this country is in financial trouble is that defense and the war have caused the deficit.

There are other factors going on. From 2008 through 2010, this shows the growth in spending as a percentage of those budgets. Defense spending, through those 3 years, increased 11 percent. The non-defense discretionary spending increased 24 percent. That is a rate of more than twice as fast. So it is not surging defense spending that is driving up the cost of government as much as the increase in the non- defense spending.

One more chart that should make us all nervous. This is a Congressional Budget Office estimate of interest costs on the debt we are now accumulating. We are now at $16 trillion in debt. Every penny of that is borrowed money. We have to pay interest on that $16 trillion. We are adding $1 trillion a year to it. We have added $1.2- plus trillion for each year for the last 4 years. According to the CBO, in 2019, just 7 years from now, interest will exceed the Defense expenditures. The amount of money we spend servicing the debt that we have run up will exceed the Defense Department and surge past it.

If we have a situation that could happen as is now happening in Europe, and the interest rates surge faster, that number could be a devastating number to the economy. It is a matter of great concern to us.

That is why we have to contain spending. The Defense Department has to reduce spending. We support the $487 billion in cuts they are working on today, but the additional $492 billion is so large that it does damage to the Defense Department and actually will cost us money by making rapid reductions in spending in such a way that cannot be accommodated in any rational way.

I believe if we work together, get this thing on the right path, be honest with ourselves about how much we can reduce the defense budget without hurting our security, I believe we can work out something before the end of the year. But I tell you, the President is going to have to get engaged. He cannot just sit back and think he is going to use this for leverage to raise taxes as it appears to me he is doing. I know others want to speak.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation, along with my friend and able colleague, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, that would create a national campaign at the Department of Health and Human Services to bring attention to congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

What is CDH? It is a birth defect that occurs when the fetal diaphragm fails to fully develop, allowing abdominal organs to migrate up into the chest.

This invasion of organs--including the bowel, stomach, spleen, and liver--may severely limit the growth of a baby's lungs.

Regrettably, some have recommended terminating the pregnancy when a woman learns that her unborn child has CDH.

This is an important issue, and makes promoting awareness of this birth defect and the positive outcomes of good treatment especially important.

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

The lungs of a baby with CDH are often too small, biochemically immature, structurally immature, and the flow in the blood vessels may be constricted, resulting in pulmonary hypertension.

As a result, the babies are intubated as soon as they are born, and parents are often unable to hold their babies for weeks or even months at a time.

Most babies are repaired with surgery 1 to 5 days after birth, usually with a GORE-TEX patch. The abdominal organs that have migrated into the chest are put back where they are supposed to be and the hole in the diaphragm is closed, hopefully allowing the affected lungs to expand. However, hospitalization often ranges from 3 to 10 weeks, depending on the severity of the condition.

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

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

In my opinion, awareness and early diagnosis and skilled treatment are the keys to a greater survival rate in these babies. Fifty percent of the babies born with CDH do not to survive.

In 2009, my grandson, Jim Beau, now 2\1/2\ years old, was diagnosed with CDH during my daughter Mary Abigail's 34th week of pregnancy. Although she had both a 20-week and a 30-week ultrasound, the nurses and doctors did not catch the disease on the baby's heartbeat monitor. Thankfully, when Mary Abigail and her Navy officer husband Paul and daughter Jane Ritchie moved to southeast Georgia, the baby's irregular heartbeat was heard at her first appointment with her new OB.

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

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

The doctors let his little lungs get strong before they did the surgery to correct the hernia, when he was 4 days old. As it turned out, the hole in his diaphragm was large, and his intestines, spleen, and one kidney had moved up into his chest cavity. Thankfully, Jim Beau did not have to go on a heart-lung bypass machine, but he was on a ventilator for 12 days and on oxygen for 36. In total, he was in the NICU--the neonatal intensive care unit--for 43 days before he was able to go home, all under the constant watch of his angel mother. I could not have been prouder of her. She and Paul were wonderful during this time.

This country has superb health care--the world's best. Without even our knowledge, this young Navy family had their unborn child diagnosed and sent to a university hospital three hours away the University of Florida's Shands Hospital.

Fortunately for my family, and for thousands of other similar families across the United States, there are a number of physicians doing incredible work to combat CDH. By chance, the University of Florida's Shands Children's Hospital is surely one of the world's best--maybe the best. The CDH survival rate at Shands in Gainesville is unprecedented. The survival rate of CDH babies born at Shands is being reported at 80 to 90 percent, while the nationwide average is 50 percent.

Dr. David Kays, who directs the CDH program and who was the physician for my grandson's surgery, is a magnificent surgeon and physician. He uses gentle ventilation therapy as opposed to hyperventilation. Gentle ventilation therapy, he has discovered over the years, is less aggressive and therefore protects the underdeveloped lungs. Jim Beau, I have to say, is a wonderful little boy, full of energy and enthusiasm. He is active and happy--one of the most happy young children I have ever seen--and so quick to smile.

This weekend, he attended his big sister Jane Ritchie's 5 year birthday party and he was totally happy and running around, climbing over all the playground equipment, with the older children just as though he was one of them. He thought he was in high cotton to be playing with these big boys and girls.

While the challenges are many, so are the successes with this condition. Every year more is learned and there are more successes. My family has been very lucky that Jim Beau's defect was caught before he was born and that he was able to go to the right place--a first-rate place--to seek excellent care for his CDH.

The bill Senator Cardin and I are introducing today is important because a national campaign for CDH will help bring awareness to this birth defect and save lives, I am convinced of it. Although hundreds of thousands of babies have been diagnosed with this defect, the causes are unknown and more research is needed. The thousands of happy, growing children who have overcome this condition validates what

has been accomplished to date and encourages us to do even more.

I hope my colleagues will join me and my friend and colleague Senator Cardin in supporting this bill to bring awareness of CDH to the world. I think it will create many more happy and healthy young people in the years to come.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation, along with my friend and able colleague, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, that would create a national campaign at the Department of Health and Human Services to bring attention to congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

What is CDH? It is a birth defect that occurs when the fetal diaphragm fails to fully develop, allowing abdominal organs to migrate up into the chest.

This invasion of organs--including the bowel, stomach, spleen, and liver--may severely limit the growth of a baby's lungs.

Regrettably, some have recommended terminating the pregnancy when a woman learns that her unborn child has CDH.

This is an important issue, and makes promoting awareness of this birth defect and the positive outcomes of good treatment especially important.

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

The lungs of a baby with CDH are often too small, biochemically immature, structurally immature, and the flow in the blood vessels may be constricted, resulting in pulmonary hypertension.

As a result, the babies are intubated as soon as they are born, and parents are often unable to hold their babies for weeks or even months at a time.

Most babies are repaired with surgery 1 to 5 days after birth, usually with a GORE-TEX patch. The abdominal organs that have migrated into the chest are put back where they are supposed to be and the hole in the diaphragm is closed, hopefully allowing the affected lungs to expand. However, hospitalization often ranges from 3 to 10 weeks, depending on the severity of the condition.

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

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

In my opinion, awareness and early diagnosis and skilled treatment are the keys to a greater survival rate in these babies. Fifty percent of the babies born with CDH do not to survive.

In 2009, my grandson, Jim Beau, now 2\1/2\ years old, was diagnosed with CDH during my daughter Mary Abigail's 34th week of pregnancy. Although she had both a 20-week and a 30-week ultrasound, the nurses and doctors did not catch the disease on the baby's heartbeat monitor. Thankfully, when Mary Abigail and her Navy officer husband Paul and daughter Jane Ritchie moved to southeast Georgia, the baby's irregular heartbeat was heard at her first appointment with her new OB.

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

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

The doctors let his little lungs get strong before they did the surgery to correct the hernia, when he was 4 days old. As it turned out, the hole in his diaphragm was large, and his intestines, spleen, and one kidney had moved up into his chest cavity. Thankfully, Jim Beau did not have to go on a heart-lung bypass machine, but he was on a ventilator for 12 days and on oxygen for 36. In total, he was in the NICU--the neonatal intensive care unit--for 43 days before he was able to go home, all under the constant watch of his angel mother. I could not have been prouder of her. She and Paul were wonderful during this time.

This country has superb health care--the world's best. Without even our knowledge, this young Navy family had their unborn child diagnosed and sent to a university hospital three hours away the University of Florida's Shands Hospital.

Fortunately for my family, and for thousands of other similar families across the United States, there are a number of physicians doing incredible work to combat CDH. By chance, the University of Florida's Shands Children's Hospital is surely one of the world's best--maybe the best. The CDH survival rate at Shands in Gainesville is unprecedented. The survival rate of CDH babies born at Shands is being reported at 80 to 90 percent, while the nationwide average is 50 percent.

Dr. David Kays, who directs the CDH program and who was the physician for my grandson's surgery, is a magnificent surgeon and physician. He uses gentle ventilation therapy as opposed to hyperventilation. Gentle ventilation therapy, he has discovered over the years, is less aggressive and therefore protects the underdeveloped lungs. Jim Beau, I have to say, is a wonderful little boy, full of energy and enthusiasm. He is active and happy--one of the most happy young children I have ever seen--and so quick to smile.

This weekend, he attended his big sister Jane Ritchie's 5 year birthday party and he was totally happy and running around, climbing over all the playground equipment, with the older children just as though he was one of them. He thought he was in high cotton to be playing with these big boys and girls.

While the challenges are many, so are the successes with this condition. Every year more is learned and there are more successes. My family has been very lucky that Jim Beau's defect was caught before he was born and that he was able to go to the right place--a first-rate place--to seek excellent care for his CDH.

The bill Senator Cardin and I are introducing today is important because a national campaign for CDH will help bring awareness to this birth defect and save lives, I am convinced of it. Although hundreds of thousands of babies have been diagnosed with this defect, the causes are unknown and more research is needed. The thousands of happy, growing children who have overcome this condition validates what

has been accomplished to date and encourages us to do even more.

I hope my colleagues will join me and my friend and colleague Senator Cardin in supporting this bill to bring awareness of CDH to the world. I think it will create many more happy and healthy young people in the years to come.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my Defense fellow, CDR Jeff Bennett, be granted the privilege of the floor for debate on sequestration and consideration of the Defense authorization bill and the Defense appropriations bill.

Mr. President, I would like to thank Senator McConnell for his remarks and the fundamental truth of those remarks that this administration and the majority in this Senate want to raise taxes. They think that raising taxes and spending more through the government will somehow lift the economy. We have been shown that is not so.

Our Democratic colleagues stayed here last night talking about an issue that doesn't have the support to pass, and they should have been talking about the fundamental threat to our economy: not having a budget. Why aren't we moving forward with a budget? Why aren't we moving forward with the appropriations bills that are necessary to fund the government come October 1? The majority leader, Senator Reid, has announced he has no intention to pass a single one, not even to bring them up.

So we will end up, in late September, passing a continuing resolution to fund the government--there is no telling what else will be tied up in that--which will create instability and uncertainty because this Democratic-led Senate has refused to pass a budget, refused to lay out a plan for the future, and refused to move the appropriations bills.

I have been here 15 years. This is the first time I have ever seen us not move a single appropriations bill. When I first came here, we would move almost every 1 of the appropriations bills before September 30. It is hard work. We have to bring up the bill, decide how much we want for the Department of Defense, or the Department of Agriculture, or the Department of Education, and members offer amendments and debate and do their work. That is what we are supposed to be doing, but we are not.

Today I want to talk about and call attention to another serious-- scandalous, really--development in the way the Democratic leadership in this Senate is systemically dismantling the statutorily required budget process. It is a tale of how we are going broke.

Let me begin with a review of the situation. Last summer, Congress and the President faced a serious crisis as a result of the fact that surging government spending had driven our debt to the highest level allowed--the debt ceiling. We were hitting the debt ceiling. Do you remember that? A deal was struck then to raise the debt ceiling.

That is what the President wanted. He didn't want to cut spending 40 percent. We were borrowing--and we still borrow--almost 40 cents of every dollar we spend. All government programs would have had to have been cut 40 percent if we didn't raise the debt ceiling. Amazing as that sounds, this is undisputable.

Republicans prevailed in their insistence that spending should be reduced over 10 years by an amount equal to the increase in the debt ceiling last August. The legislation this deal produced, the Budget Control Act, set certain spending limits in the absence of a budget resolution that we should have passed in the Senate as required by law. So these spending limits came into effect when the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, filed the allocation numbers into the Congressional Record, telling every Senate committee how much it was allowed to spend. That is the power given to the Budget Committee chairman. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, and Senator Conrad chairs the Budget Committee.

So the Budget Control Act plainly dictates that beginning on October 1 of this year, spending limits would be derived from the Congressional Budget Office's baseline. This is crucial because the CBO baseline contains the $2.1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years--really, reductions in spending growth, and not so much cuts--that the deal was supposed to implement in exchange for the immediate $2.1 trillion raising of the debt ceiling.

Herein lies the scandal. Although it was buried in the spending allocation that Senator Conrad sent out, my staff on the Senate Budget Committee discovered that Senator Conrad did not file an outlay limit based on the CBO baseline. Instead, the outlay total he filed was $14 billion higher--curiously matching exactly the spending levels that President Obama had requested in the budget he submitted to Congress in February.

Although this discovery was not readily apparent, Chairman Conrad, to his credit--he is an honorable man--does not dispute it. He simply asserts that it is within his discretion to unilaterally set a higher total.

Again, because the CBO baseline reflects the spending reductions passed by Congress and signed into law, an increase above the baseline--as the allocation that he submitted allows--is an abrogation of the bipartisan agreement we reached last August.

We told the American people: OK, we raised the debt ceiling. A lot of people didn't want to do it. A lot of Americans were hot about it. We said: But we are going to cut spending by that amount over 10 years.

As reported by the publication, CQ:

Conrad did not counter Sessions' claim that the elevated

outlay limit would allow higher spending in fiscal year 2013.

But let me emphasize, this is not just the fault of Senator Conrad. This large violation of the Budget Control Act is without doubt the decision of Senator Reid, the Democratic leader, his leadership team, and the members of the Democratic caucus who support him.

Remember, outlays are the spending figures which directly register on the debt. Mr. President, $14 billion in higher outlays in 2013 means $14 billion added to the debt. It is just that simple. In fact, the higher debt that will accrue next year as a result of the higher spending level means the amount of interest we pay on the debt we accrue will be greater and will also exceed CBO baseline limits.

As a result, the chairman had to also boost spending authority for the Finance Committee by $79 million to compensate for the higher interest payments on the $14 billion added to the debt. This shows that the debt deal legislation has been violated not only in spirit but in letter. Why? Because if we increase discretionary outlays, we increase the debt, and therefore increase the interest needed to service the debt.

It is crystal clear that the legislation provides no flexibility whatsoever to inflate spending authority for this interest payment. It is a direct violation of the Budget Control Act, but he had to do that to justify and account for the $14 billion increase over the level that was agreed to last August.

I sent two letters to Chairman Conrad urging him to correct and re- file the proper numbers, but it is evident that the chairman does not intend to do so. So we will be looking for an alternative course. This is a matter that ought to be considered by the full Senate, so I plan to pursue a vote on the inflated spending levels. Each Senator will therefore have to examine their own conscience and consider their duty to their constituents, to the Nation, and to the financial future of our country.

Plainly, this action violates the spirit and the terms of the 10-year Budget Control Act agreement that was made last August, just 11 months ago. At that time, Congress declared that we would exercise some spending restraint. And $2.1 trillion in reduced spending is really a reduction in the growth of spending and not an elimination of all growth in spending. We would go from something like $37 trillion being spent over 10 years to $35 trillion. It is not going to break America. But to hear the wails that come about, you would think it would.

So the test will be, in this first year since the passage of the debt deal will we adhere to its modest restrictions or will we blink?

We have Members of Congress--and I have raised this issue over the years--who seem to take it as a personal challenge to see how they can spend more money than they are allocated. It happens every year. This is how a country goes broke. The consequences of the annual manipulations and gimmicks have great impact over time. These are not small matters. Think about it.

This is a chart I put together. This year we are adding $14 billion more to the baseline spending in our country than agreed to, and this gimmick adds $14 billion to the baseline next year. One may think: It is only $14 billion, Jeff. Calm down.

Alabama's general fund budget, not including education, is less than $2 billion. To us $14 billion is a lot of money, and we are an average- sized State. This is how we need to think about these manipulations because it is very significant as time goes by.

If we violate the baseline next year, in 2013, by $14 billion, that goes into the spending level for the next year. Then if next year we violate it again, it is not just $14 billion, we are adding $14 billion on top of the $14 billion gimmick in the spending level this year. It is $28 billion next year. Added to the $14 billion we ripped off the taxpayers the previous year, it is $42 billion.

Do you see how that goes up? Each year is adding to it, and we have been doing this kind of thing consistently.

If we gimmick the budget $14 billion a year--and I remember doing a chart similar to this about 10 years ago, and we gimmicked the budget $18 billion that year and there are probably other gimmicks we are not including--this $14 billion gimmick puts us on a track to add $770 billion to the debt of the United States over 10 years.

We have to adhere to the agreements we make. If we do not stand with those agreements, then we make a mockery of law, we make a mockery of the Senate, we undermine the respect and trust the American people have in us. If we run up $770 billion more, we pay interest on that, estimated at $112 billion, that $14 billion gimmicked-up spending adds $900 billion to the debt.

Remember, we are in debt today. Every $1 we spend more than what we agree to is borrowed. Any more spending is borrowed because we are in debt now--nearly 40 percent of the money we spend is borrowed. We spend about $3.7 trillion and we take in about $2.4 trillion and we borrow the rest. It is unsustainable.

Meanwhile, the President continues his call for higher taxes, saying that taxing more will reduce the deficit. But his plan for the new taxes he has proposed is to fund more spending, more gimmicks and more fraud and waste in government. I know you think that is not so--surely, that is not so. That is not what the President is proposing. But, unlike the Democratic Senate, the President did comply with the law and submitted a budget as every President has done since the Congressional Budget Act was passed. He submitted a budget. What did his budget call for? It called for new taxes all right. It called for $1.8 trillion in new taxes over 10 years. But it also increased spending by $1.6 trillion. Do you see what is happening there? The President's proposal calls for $1.6 trillion in new spending, above the Budget Control Act level we agreed to in August. He proposes to wipe out the cuts. He proposes to spend $1.6 trillion more than we agreed to in August, and he pays for it with $1.8 trillion in new taxes.

He didn't use his new taxes to pay down the debt. He used the new taxes to fund more government, more spending. That is not what we need to be doing at this point in history. We should have stayed here last night talking about the debt threat to America and not some controversial issue on campaign finance.

For 3 consecutive years, this Senate Democratic majority has refused to bring forth a budget plan as required by common sense and law. They refuse even to write a budget and bring it to the floor for consideration. They have no financial plan for the future of America.

Senator Reid, what is your plan? He blocked Senator Conrad, who was willing and prepared to lay out a budget plan for the Democrats. He called on him not to do so. For 3 years they have not had a budget. We did not even bring one up this year.

They treat any effort to rein in waste and abuse as evidencing a hatred for those who are suffering and truly in need. We want to help people in need. But anybody who knows these programs, such as some of the stuff that is coming out now on food stamps, knows there is waste, fraud and abuse and we can clean them up and save money and not hurt people truly in need. From the IRS checks sent to illegal aliens that the inspector general of the U.S. Treasury Department said has to end, to lavish GSA parties in Las Vegas, reckless abuse in the food stamp program, and now this surreptitious 14 billion debt increase, there is no financial accountability in Washington.

I will be working to erase this $14 billion spending increase. It is important. I urge my colleagues to join me so our actions will be consistent with our promises to the American people made last August; otherwise we are breaching this agreement the first year. It is always a gimmick and a danger to spend today and promise to pay for it in the future--spend more today than the agreement called for, but we are going to pay for it in the future. It is the first year in our agreement and it has already been breached.

The best avenue may be to raise a point of order, and we will look at that to see how to bring this matter before the Senate. I will be looking for that opportunity. But I truly believe it is a defining moment for us if we cannot adhere 1 full year to the agreement we reached last August and that we told the American people we would abide by. I think the distrust and lack of confidence by the American people, already felt in Congress, will continue to further erode.

I yield the floor.