Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we are looking at a FEMA emergency supplemental. There is no doubt this country has sustained a series of disasters that will require Federal support and funding. We have seen them in Alabama, my home State, where we had the worst series of tornadoes in history, and some of the most powerful, that completely demolished two-story brick homes with nothing but foundations left. Lives were lost to an extraordinary degree, and people were injured.

We have had floods. We have had fires and droughts around the country. We have some of that every year, and some of this is unusual. So it is incumbent upon us in Congress to wrestle with that and to try to figure out what should be done and how we can best supplement the insurance and State actions and local people's abilities to respond and share a bit of the pain throughout the country.

Since I have been interested in the emergency bill and I have some ideas, I was surprised we were told it was going to be added to the Burma sanctions bill, and it was going to be $6.9 billion. I hadn't had a chance to know and review and see what those numbers were and whether they were justified. But Majority Leader Reid said we want to move to that. That is what we want to do.

Some said--and surely it is not true--that Senator Reid was setting a trap for the Republicans; that he would offer this bill, throw it out there, and he would have extra money in it and we would complain. Then he would say: The Republicans don't love people who have suffered with a disaster as I love people who have suffered with a disaster. You don't care. You don't want to help people who are hurting. You are not good people. I am a good person. I love them more than you do.

I hope that is not true. I do not believe it is true. Surely, it is not true. But I will just point this out: that President Obama's funding request for this supplemental that we have seen was for $500 million in 2011, $4.6 billion for next year, totaling $5.1 billion. That is what the President proposed. But the Senate Democrats' proposal that Senator Reid has moved forward has $804 million in 2011, $6.1 billion in 2012, for a total of $6.9 billion. That is about almost a $2 billion difference.

You know they say: That is not much money, just $2 billion. We spend a lot more money than that around here on all kinds of things, and we shouldn't worry about it, Sessions. You are just slowing down the emergency bill. It has to go through right now.

I just pointed out previously that $2 billion is a lot of money. We have an education budget in my State that is pretty sizable, but the basic general fund budget of Alabama is about $2 billion. We are an average-sized State. We are about one-fiftieth--4 million people--of the United States. So $2 billion is $2 billion. A billion here and a billion there, you are talking about real money. I am just raising a question. I suggest that this kind of rapid spending, emotional, political movement of money through this body is why this country has gotten into financial trouble. We just increase the pricetag for a bill by $2 billion and rush it through and attack anybody who has the gumption to stand, such as Senator Tom Coburn, and raise some real questions about it. How much of this can we pay for? Can we pay for it all--we probably could and probably should--or pay for part of it so it is not borrowed? You see, an emergency in general is debt. When we declare something an emergency, we are adding to the debt. It means it is not under the budget. We have a budget limit, and all spending is supposed to be under our budgetary limit, although we have not had a budget in 2 years. But when we do a supplemental, it does not count that way.

I have seen the Presiding Officer be pretty sophisticated in these things. I remember, I was talking to a senior Congressman about an emergency bill years ago that was not truly an emergency, and he said: Well, Jeff, we need to put it on the emergency supplemental.

I said: Why?

He said: It doesn't count against the deficit.

I said: Why?

He said: I don't know. It just doesn't count.

What he meant was it was not part of the budgetary numbers. It was on top of it. It added to the debt in general.

We have to be careful about that. We are borrowing now 40 cents of every $1 we spend. That is not a misprint. I am not speaking erroneously. Forty cents of every $1 that is spent this year is borrowed.

Responsible senatorial management requires us to examine the legislation. When we have a bill that is about 40 percent more than the President asked for, maybe that ought to throw up a red flag around here. Maybe we ought to examine it more closely because every single penny that is spent should be spent wisely. There are two areas: Are we spending money that is not needed at all--and we have had some of that under emergency spending--or are we spending money that could be spent better on other problems that arose from the emergency than the problems we are spending it on?

I have been to hurricane damages, I have been to flood damages, I have been to tornado damages, drought damages. It is hard to get the money to the people who truly need it and whom you can justify. This is not just throwing money at something.

So we can do a better job of that. Congress needs to be more involved. I think $2 billion is a lot. We ought to be careful before we do that. Most of the money is not going to get spent until next year, by far. Overwhelmingly, 80 percent of it is to be spent next year. I believe we ought to be taking time to do this right.

I would also like to take the opportunity, while I have the floor, to address this morning's hearing in the Budget Committee, on which I am the ranking member. At today's hearing, I emphasized the economic danger our country is facing as a result of the increasing deficit. We had three economists testify. Two of them were selected by our Democratic majority colleagues. We asked whether they agreed that it would be wise to pursue policies that create jobs without creating debt. They all acknowledge that increasing debt is a dangerous thing.

We discussed whether we should seek ways to create jobs and growth in America without adding to the debt. Wouldn't that be smart? They all agreed it would--things such as producing more American energy, reducing costly bureaucratic regulations, and instituting growth- oriented tax reform. All three witnesses said those are good things to do for America.

I would say, if we are going to spend $7 billion or $5 billion on an emergency, it helps Americans' growth, productivity, and competitiveness if that money is spent the best possible way, every penny of it to help people truly in need and to help increase our national productivity.

Those are some of the concerns I have. I just wanted to share those thoughts because I think we would have been better off had this bill come through the regular process, we had full testimony from the administration witnesses, from FEMA, which will be handling the money, setting forth in detail where they expect to spend the money, how it is needed, and how they are going to do it in a way that is fair and helps the people in the right way. I do not believe the way this bill is moving is careful enough, and I believe it places at risk the treasury of the United States.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, in recent days the President has repeatedly told Congress to pass the stimulus package immediately. This began during his joint address to Congress last week when he said at one point:

I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass

right away. You should pass this jobs plan right away. Pass

this jobs bill--pass this jobs bill.

Immediately following the President's joint address to the Congress, Press Secretary Jay Carney declared:

The President will submit a bill early next week, the

American Jobs Act, which will specify how he proposes paying

for the American Jobs Act.

As ranking Republican on the Budget Committee and wrestling with these difficult issues--I know Senator Cardin is a member of the committee--we tried to figure out what this means and how much money the spending will be. But the bill that was transmitted to Congress Monday afternoon does not contain any fiscal tables, costs for any of his provisions, actually how those provisions will be paid for and when the pay-for will occur, or even an overall pricetag for the bill.

How can the President call on Congress to ``pass this bill immediately'' when no one even knows how much it will cost or where the money is coming from?

I sent a letter yesterday to the President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jack Lew, asking that this information be provided to the Congress at once. But so far we have had no response. Part of the reason we need this information is that the total cost of the President's bill may be much higher than advertised. That has been the pattern around here. No one should be surprised. When the President said his plan would be ``paid for,'' he did not specify if he meant the total cost--to include increased interest resulting from the borrowed money to be spent immediately--or just the cost of the jobs provisions alone, actually how much goes out the door. Depending on whether the money is spent out and when it is paid back--assuming it is ever paid back--interest costs resulting from just this bill's borrowing could top $100 billion. In other words, the interest on the money over the 10-year window, the 10-year budget we are talking about--if we spend $450 billion now, we pay interest on that money. It is borrowed money. People loan us the money and we pay interest. Interest rates alone now--CBO projects them to go up, our Congressional Budget Office. Certainly they will. They are extraordinarily low today. But, at any rate, we could easily see the interest on this money over 10 years reaching $100 billion.

The problem with looking at it as a 10-year scenario is that the debt is probably not going to be paid off in 10 years. Most of the debts we run up will be part of our deficit. If we want to raise taxes to fund a new program, maybe we ought to raise taxes to pay off the debt we have instead of spending it on a new program. The debt we have distributes American wealth to people who hold our debt all over the world.

In my letter to OMB, I request tables showing the year-by-year data for this bill's budgetary impact, including projected changes to the deficit for each of the next 10 years. In other words, how will it play out? If we spend $450 billion in 1, 2, or 3 years, how much does that run up the debt? When does the repayment begin? How will it be paid, and at what rate? If the President wants to advocate for a sharp, near- term increase in the deficit in exchange for the possibility of some undefined economic future, with the possibility of a

stimulus, he ought to make that argument clearly to the American people.

I believe the President also needs to be honest in admitting that the bill's short-term costs would wipe out--obliterate--the $7 billion in savings next year resulting from the debt limit deal. In other words, we went through this long, painful exercise that resulted in an agreement in the eleventh hour and the 59th minute to save $900 billion, and then, hopefully, form a committee that would save another $1.1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, only a fraction of this $2.1 billion in savings, of the $13 trillion the Congressional Budget Office tells us will be added to the debt in the next 10 years. So it would save a little over $2 trillion over 10 years but, at the same time, we are running up over $10 trillion in debt. So it is not a big enough step. It is a step. There is progress. I certainly respect that, but it wasn't much.

To show us how small it is, next year we are projected, under the agreement Congress ratified, to reduce spending by $7 billion. That is all. That is all it would be reduced from this year to next year in actual spending levels. So I ask my colleagues: Don't we need to be careful? After all the effort we took to achieve that much savings, shouldn't we think very carefully about a new stimulus plan that would spend $450 billion, obliterating that savings? I think we should. But, at any rate, we do need to know precisely how much it is going to cost and precisely how the money would be spent.

Let's flash back to February. The Office of Management and Budget Director, Jack Lew, said this. This was when the President submitted his budget for the next 10 years. It was brought up here on the floor of the Senate. In fact, I brought it up. It was voted down 97 to nothing. But this is what Mr. Lew said about that budget:

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

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

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

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

bringing down the national debt.

We all know there is a certain amount of political license people get to utilize in the political world, and exaggeration sometimes is forgiven. But let me tell my colleagues, this is the Office of Management and Budget talking about the President's budget that he had just submitted to Congress. He said:

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

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

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

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

bringing down our national debt.

What is the truth? The Congressional Budget Office scored this budgetary plan and this is what they concluded: that over a 10-year period there would be huge deficits every single year. In about year 6 or 7, the lowest deficit would occur--$750 billion would be the lowest annual deficit that would occur--and by the 10th year we would be back up to $1 trillion. President Bush's largest deficit he ever had was $450 billion and he was criticized for that. So we are going to have the lowest--and he says this is going to pay down the debt and wouldn't be adding more to the debt if we passed his budget, when his budget spent more, taxed more, and ran up more debt. I believe this is the most irresponsible budget ever submitted to the Congress of the United States, at a time of national crisis, when all experts are telling us the greatest threat to our national security is our debt.

Forgive me if I want to see the fine print on this legislation, when an administration tells us that--and the President said very similar things; the President himself said very similar things--we would not be adding more to the debt.

We in Congress raised the legal debt limit--I did not vote for that particular bill--but we have breached, I am afraid, our economic debt limit. America's $14.5 trillion gross debt is now 100 percent of our GDP, our economy. Experts tell us we have already crossed a dangerous threshold. Our debt is pulling down growth and putting a damper on job creation right now.

We have to ask ourselves: Can we continue to borrow, running up even more debt in the hope that we can spend it today in a sugar-high type stimulus to create jobs in the short run? The Congressional Budget Office scored the first stimulus package 2 years ago that has come nowhere near achieving what was promised for it. They said, OK, if you spend $825 billion now, you will get some short-term economic benefit, but scored over a decade, we would have an economic decline. The net growth of the United States would be less over 10 years than if we didn't pass a stimulus package at all. When we get up to 100 percent of GDP, I submit it is even more dangerous to keep running up debt.

This is a dilemma. We are in a fix. The economy is not growing the way we wish it to grow. CBO was projecting in January of this year that economic growth for the first 6 months would be about 2.9 percent. We were hoping that would be true. But what happened? The first quarter of this fiscal year it was .4 percent--not 2 percent, not 2.9 percent--and the second quarter was extremely low also. We have averaged about 1 percent growth the first half of this year.

We want to do something to help this economy grow. I submit we should do everything we can that would help our economy grow now that does not run up the debt. What are some of those things? Producing more energy at home, creating jobs here; pumping more energy supply which could bring down the cost of energy. We can bring down the cost of energy, create jobs, create tax revenue, and create growth that way. We should eliminate every regulation that is not beneficial to this economy, and there are a lot of them. Some regulations are good. Many of them add costs to the entire economy for little or no benefit. We need to have the kind of tax reform of a permanent nature that creates confidence in our economy--the kind of tax reform that advances economic growth rather than increasing taxes to give Washington more money.

Those are my suggestions about how to deal with this. First and foremost, we are going to look at this proposal. We certainly are worried about the status of the economy today. We are deeply disappointed in the job numbers that continue to fall and, hopefully, we will find the key to changing that. But fundamentally the economy will come back and jobs will come back when growth occurs and growth will occur not in the public sector but in the private sector. We need to ask ourselves what it is we can do to create a better climate for growth and job creation. We need to be rigorous in analyzing the President's proposal, and to look at the details of it and how much it is going to cost and how we plan to pay it back. I think at a very minimum, we are entitled to that.

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, our country is in a very serious economic crisis. We are told by Mr. Erskine Bowles and Senator Alan Simpson--Erskine Bowles was chosen by President Obama to head his debt commission. They gave a statement to the Budget Committee, on which I am ranking member, that this Nation has never faced a more predictable economic crisis based on the size of our debt. All of us know that.

The American people are angry with us. They cannot believe it is possible we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. We are spending $3.7 trillion this fiscal year ending September 30. We will take in $2.2 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion. This is not acceptable. We cannot continue.

How did it happen? How is it possible we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that goes out the door, increasing the permanent debt of the United States? Well, one way is what is happening now before us on the bill that is being moved today by Majority Leader Reid. It would add $6.9 billion to the FEMA account for emergencies. We just saw the legislation less than an hour ago, maybe 30 minutes ago. Has anybody given any serious thought to that? Seven billion dollars? The general fund budget of the State of Alabama is $2 billion.

Mr. President, $7 billion is a lot of money, and we have not looked at it, we have not thought about it. It is above the budget, I guess above our budget numbers. We do not have a budget. Senator Reid said earlier this year it would be foolish to have a budget--foolish to have a budget. We are now well over 860 days in this Senate without having passed a budget. Is that another reason we are spending the country into bankruptcy?

Well, I do not think this is an appropriate thing. I strongly oppose adding another emergency debt spending bill where we have not carefully examined every penny of it to make sure it is all necessary and appropriate. No one has seen those numbers and the analysis that would justify it.

I come from a State that was hammered with the worst series of tornadoes we have ever suffered in Alabama. I have been to those communities and towns and seen those families who have lost all they had, who have lost loved ones and have injured family members. I know we are going to need to have emergency spending for those programs. We have fires in Texas and we also have flooding. We know that.

We have certain money set aside for emergencies already. How much more do we need to spend? I do not know yet.

I wish to have some very careful expert analysis done before we announce another $7 billion.

Forgive me if I am frustrated. I think the American people are frustrated. We went through a continual battle for weeks, months, really, over the debt ceiling. I did not like the way that bill was written. I know we had to face up to it, though, and do some things. So we finally reached an agreement. I did not vote for it in the end. But it was supposed to save $2.1 trillion to $2.5 trillion--$2,500 billion, $2,000 billion--over 10 years.

Next year--the fiscal year beginning October 1--it would reduce the spending for next year by $7 billion--the very same amount now the majority leader wants us to throw in on top of that as emergency spending, not within our spending limits, not controlled by our spending limits, wiping out that entire saving for next year.

Add on top of that, the President has now announced he wants to spend $450 billion more. And do not worry, it will be paid for, he told us in the speech Thursday night. How would it be paid for? Well, we will have this debt committee--I will send them a note and say: You cut another $450 billion over 10 years. Just promise that you will cut another $450 billion over 10 years, and I will spend $450 billion now. That is the way we are heading down the road to uncontrollable debt.

I understand the President has announced he wants to raise taxes on businesses and all by $450 billion, and we may get a proposal on how to do that today. I do not know. We will see how it turns out. I expect to read it. I would expect the President, if he is serious, would tell us precisely what taxes he intends to increase and how much they will bring in. We have to pass it now, we are told, but we have not seen the legislation, to my knowledge, yet. They promised it today.

This is not, in my humble opinion, sound management. The President of the United States has an Office of Management and Budget. Four hundred, five hundred people work there. He is the superintendent of every Cabinet department in our country. They all work at his pleasure. The subcabinet people work for him. He has the entire agencies he can call on to help produce proposals--the Commerce Department, the Treasury Department--on what taxes to raise and what taxes not to, how much should be brought in.

We have opportunities. The President has the staff to send us a detailed proposal about what kind of emergency spending we ought to be undertaking. I do not know if Senator Reid conjured this up among his staff or whether he has gotten a detailed proposal from the House, from the President.

Suffice it to say, I hope my colleagues will not move forward to a bill that contains $7 billion in new spending above our statutory limits that were passed in this debt ceiling--why? Basically to obviate the need of having a budget.

We need not to be moving to legislation and rushing through that kind of new spending program because that is precisely how it is that day after day, week after week, we have increased spending in this country to the point that it cannot be sustained.

Every witness before the Budget Committee has told us we are on an unsustainable path. I just had occasion to go over the food stamp numbers. I knew the food stamp numbers had been going up. When President Bush left office, we were spending $31 billion, I believe it was, on food stamps. This year we will spend $79 billion. President Obama will have doubled spending on food stamps--doubled it--in 3 years, not 4. His first year in office, food stamp spending increased 46 percent.

We need to look under the hood of the engine of this program. We want to be sure poor people have food. We are willing to do that. Everybody is. But at a time of fiscal challenge for our Nation, a time of the largest debt we have ever seen, we have to examine all of our programs. Can we justify those kinds of increases? Can we justify emergency spending that is unthought out and not carefully accounted for? I do not think so. I think we should not go to legislation that seeks to do that, and I would oppose cloture on this legislation if that is what is happening, as I believe it is.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment No. 600, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, the amendment that I have offered is a very important amendment. It is one that I believe is important to the integrity of the U.S. legal system and to the integrity of the Senate. It is a matter that I have been wrestling with and objecting to for over a decade. I thought the matter had been settled, frankly, but it has not because it has been driven by one of the most ferocious lobbying efforts the Congress maybe has seen.

The House patent bill as originally passed out of committee and taken to the floor of the House did not include a bailout for Medco, the WilmerHale law firm, or the insurance carrier for that firm, all of whom were in financial jeopardy as a result of a failure to file a patent appeal timely.

I have practiced law hard in my life. I have been in court many times. I spent 12 years as a U.S. Attorney and tried cases. I am well aware of how the system works. The way the system works in America, you file lawsuits and you are entitled to your day in court. But if you do not file your lawsuit in time, within the statute of limitations, you are out.

When a defendant raises a legal point of order--a motion to dismiss-- based on the failure of the complaining party to file their lawsuit timely, they are out. That happens every day to poor people, widow ladies. And it does not make any difference what your excuse is, why you think you have a good lawsuit, why you had this idea or that idea. Everyone is required to meet the same deadlines.

In Alabama they had a situation in which a lady asked a probate judge when she had to file her appeal by, and the judge said: You can file it on Monday. As it turned out, Monday was too late. They went to the Alabama Supreme Court, and who ruled: The probate judge--who does not have to be a lawyer--does not have the power to amend the statute of limitations. Sorry, lady. You are out.

Nobody filed a bill in the Congress to give her relief, or the thousands of others like her every day. So Medco and WilmerHale seeking this kind of relief is a big deal. To whom much has been given, much is required. This is a big-time law firm, one of the biggest law firms in America. Medco is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the country. And presumably the law firm has insurance that they pay to insure them if they make an error. So it appears that they are not willing to accept the court's ruling.

One time an individual was asking me: Oh, Jeff, you let this go. Give in and let this go. I sort of as a joke said to the individual: Well, if WilmerHale will agree not to raise the statute of limitations against anybody who sues their clients if they file a lawsuit late, maybe I will reconsider. He thought I was serious. Of course WilmerHale is not going to do that. If some poor person files a lawsuit against someone they are representing, and they file it one hour late, WilmerHale will file a motion to dismiss it. And they will not ask why they filed it late. This is law. It has to be objective. It has to be fair.

You are not entitled to waltz into the U.S. Congress--well connected--and start lobbying for special relief.

There is nothing more complicated about that than this. So a couple of things have been raised. Well, they suggest, we should not amend the House patent bill, and that if we do, it somehow will kill the legislation. That is not so. Chairman Leahy has said he supports the amendment, but he doesn't want to vote for it because it would keep the bill from being passed somehow.

It would not keep it from being passed. Indeed, the bill that was

brought to the House floor didn't have this language in it. The first vote rejected the attempt to put this language in it. It failed. For some reason, in some way, a second vote was held, and it was passed by a few votes. So they are not going to reject the legislation if we were to amend it.

What kind of system are we now involved in in the Senate if we can't undo an amendment? What kind of argument is it to say: Jeff, I agree with your amendment, and I agree it is right that they should not get this special relief, but I can't vote for it because it might cause a problem? It will not cause a problem. The bill will pass. It should never have been put in there in the first place.

Another point of great significance is the fact that this issue is on appeal. The law firm asserted they thought--and it is a bit unusual-- that because it came in late Friday they had until Monday. We can count the days to Monday--the 60 days or whatever they had to file the answer. I don't know if that is good law, but they won. The district court has ruled for them. It is on appeal now to the court of appeals.

This Congress has no business interfering in a lawsuit that is ongoing and is before an appeals court. If they are so confident their district court ruling is correct, why are they continuing to push for this special relief bill, when the court of appeals will soon, within a matter of months, rule?

Another point: We have in the Congress a procedure to deal with special relief. If this relief is necessary at all, it should go through as a special relief bill. I can tell you one reason it is not going there now: you can't ask for special relief while the matter is still in litigation, it is still on appeal. Special relief also has procedures that one has to go through and justify in an objective way, which I believe would be very healthy in this situation.

For a decade, virtually--I think it has been 10 years--I have been objecting to this amendment. Now we are here, I thought it was out, and all of a sudden it is slipped in by a second vote in the House, and we are told we just can't make an amendment to the bill. Why? The Senate set up the legislation to be brought forward, and we can offer amendments and people can vote for them or not.

This matter has gotten a lot of attention. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both wrote about it in editorials today. This is what the New York Times said today about it:

But critics who have labeled the provision ``The Dog Ate My

Homework Act'' say it is really a special fix for one drug

manufacturer, the Medicines Company, and its powerful law

firm, WilmerHale. The company and its law firm, with hundreds

of millions of dollars in drug sales at stake, lobbied

Congress heavily for several years to get the patent laws

changed.

That is what the Wall Street Journal said in their editorial. The Wall Street Journal understands business reality and litigation reality. They are a critic of the legal system at times and a supporter at times. I think they take a principled position in this instance. The Wall Street Journal editorial stated:

We take no pleasure in seeing the Medicine Company and

WilmerHale suffer for their mistakes, but they are run by

highly paid professionals who know the rules and know that

consistency of enforcement is critical to their businesses.

Asking Congress to break the rules as a special favor

corrupts the law.

I think that is exactly right. It is exactly right. Businesses, when they are sued by somebody, use the statute of limitations every day. This law firm makes hundreds of millions of dollars in income a year. Their partners average over $1 million a year, according to the New York Times. That is pretty good. They ought to be able to pay a decent malpractice insurance premium. The New York Times said WilmerHale reported revenues of $962 million in 2010, with a profit of $1.33 million per partner.

Average people have to suffer when they miss the statute of limitations. Poor people suffer when they miss the statute of limitations. But we are undertaking, at great expense to the taxpayers, to move a special interest piece of legislation that I don't believe can be justified as a matter of principle. I agree with the Wall Street Journal that the adoption of it corrupts the system. We ought not be a part of that.

I love the American legal system. It is a great system, I know. I have seen judges time and time again enter rulings based on law and fact even if they didn't like it. That is the genius and reliability and integrity of the American legal system. I do not believe we can justify, while this matter is still in litigation, passing a special act to give a wealthy law firm, an insurance company, and a health care company special relief. I just don't believe we should do that. I oppose it, and I hope my colleagues will join us.

I think we have a real chance to turn this back. Our Congress and our Senate will be better for it; we really will. The Citizens Against Government Waste have taken an interest in this matter for some time. They said:

Congress has no right to rescue a company from its own

mistakes.

Companies have a right to assert the law. Companies have a right to assert the law against individuals. But when the time comes for the hammer to fall on them for their mistake, they want Congress to pass a special relief bill. I don't think it is the right thing to do.

Mr. President, let's boil it down to several things. First, if the company is right and the law firm is right that they did not miss the statute of limitations, I am confident the court of appeals will rule in their favor, and it will not be necessary for this Senate to act. If they do not prevail in the court of appeals and don't win their argument, then there is a provision for private relief in the Congress, and they ought to pursue that. There are special procedures. The litigation will be over, and they can bring that action at that time.

That is the basic position we ought to be in. A bill that comes out of the Judiciary Committee ought to be sensitive to the legal system, to the importance of ensuring that the poor are treated as well as the rich. The oath judges take is to do equal justice to the poor and the rich.

How many other people in this country are getting special attention today on the floor of the Senate? How many? I truly believe this is not good policy. I have had to spend far more hours fighting this than I have ever wanted to when I decided 10 years ago that this was not a good way to go forward. Many battle this issue, and I hope and trust that the Members of the Senate who will be voting on this will allow it to follow the legitimate process. Let the litigation work its way through the system.

If they do not prevail in the litigation, let a private relief bill be sought and debated openly and publicly to see if it is justified. That would be the right way to do it--not slipping through this amendment and then not voting to remove it on the basis that we should not be amending a bill before us. We have every right to amend the bill, and we should amend the bill. I know Senator Grassley, years ago, was on my side. I think it was just the two of us who took this position.

I guess I have more than expressed my opinion. I thank the chairman for his leadership. I thank him and Senator Grassley for their great work on this important patent bill. I support that bill. I believe they have moved it forward in a fair way.

The chairman did not put this language into the bill; it was put in over in the House. I know he would like to see the bill go forward without amendments. I urge him to think it through and see if he cannot be willing to support this amendment. I am confident it will not block final passage of the legislation.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the oath that judges take is to do equal justice, and it says for the poor and the rich.

Every day statutes of limitations require that a litigant file a lawsuit within so many days and file petitions in so many days. I see Senator Cornyn, a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court and attorney general of Texas. He fully understands that. I know he supports my view of this issue; that is, that the rules have to be equally applied.

It is just not right to the little widow lady, it is not right that somebody

with a poor lawyer, or whatever, misses a deadline and a judge throws the case out. And they do. Big law firms such as WilmerHale file motions every day to dismiss cases based on delay in filing those cases. Big insurance companies file lawsuits, file motions to dismiss every day against individuals who file their claims too late--and they win. So when this big one has a good bit of risk, presumably they have a good errors and omissions policy--that is what they are supposed to do.

One reason they get paid the big bucks--and the average partner makes $1 million-plus a year--is because they have high responsibilities, and they are required to meet those responsibilities and be responsible.

So I believe it is improper for us, while this matter is on appeal and in litigation, to take action driven by this continual lobbying pressure that would exempt one company. They can say it is others involved, but, look, this is always about one company. I have been here for 10 years. I know how it is played out. I have seen it. I have talked to the advocates on their behalf. I just haven't been able to agree to it because I see the average person not getting the benefit they are due.

So I urge my colleagues to join in support of this amendment. The Wall Street Journal and others have editorialized in favor of it, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Madam President, the debt crisis has become a jobs crisis. There is no doubt in my mind that the debt we have now incurred is already weakening our economy. The gross Federal debt has increased by almost $5 trillion since President Obama took office, surging past 100 percent of our gross domestic product--100 percent of the size of the economy.

Academic research shows this level of debt is already costing us 1 million jobs a year. Our debt is destroying growth and confidence in the economy. More borrowing--more borrowing--will only make matters worse. But according to the Associated Press in an article today, the President's job plan will add another $300 billion to the debt.

This is the article by David Espo:

The economy weak and the public seething, President Obama

is expected to propose $300 billion in tax cuts and Federal

spending Thursday night to get Americans working again.

I would say that is what he says will get the American people working again. But we have already borrowed all we can borrow without damaging the economy. It has come to a point where we can't keep borrowing in a futile attempt to stimulate the economy when the increased debt itself is weakening the economy.

The article goes on to say this:

According to people familiar with White House

deliberations, two of the biggest measures in the proposal

for 2012--

that begins October 1 of this year, fiscal year 2012--

are expected to be a one-year extension of the payroll tax

for workers and an extension of expiring jobless benefits.

Together those two would total about $170 billion.

It goes on:

The White House is also considering a tax credit for

businesses that hire the unemployed. That could cost about

$30 billion. Obama has also called for public works projects,

such as school construction. Advocates of that plan have

called for spending of $50 billion . . .

on school construction. I don't think school buildings are the problem with our education right now, and when we don't have any money, we have to be careful about borrowing more to spend.

It goes on to say--and this is significant:

Though Obama has said he intends to propose long-term

deficit reduction measures to cover the up-front costs of his

jobs plan, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would

not lay out a wholesale deficit reduction plan in his speech.

In other words, he won't lay out a plan that would pay for it.

So this is where we are heading, it seems to me.

Remember the big debate we had over the debt ceiling that ended just before our August recess at the eleventh hour and the 59th minute. We remember how much spending reductions it would call for in the next fiscal year: $7 billion. That is how much we would actually cut spending next fiscal year: $7 billion. And this plan has called for over $300 billion in spending anew, not paid for. We are already in debt. We are already borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, and we are going to add another $300 billion in spending, not paid for, borrowed, every penny of it. At some point, this country gets to a position where we cannot continue to borrow without damaging the economy. It is that simple. Americans understand it. As one man told me in Evergreen, AL: you can't borrow your way out of debt. You cannot borrow your way out of debt. We have reached and gone past that limit, in my opinion.

In order to have the kind of robust growth we desperately need, we must remove the looming threat of a Greek-like debt crisis. We must do so. This debt has a chilling effect throughout our economy. Indeed, a European banker just a few days ago said this feels like 2008, and that gained quite a bit of traction because people were feeling that, but nobody was saying it, and he was quoted all over the business channels about 2008 and the crisis we might be facing.

But the President has refused to do anything to actually reduce the surge in spending that he has engineered, nor have our Senate Democratic colleagues here in the Senate. The House proposed a sound budget plan that would reduce spending over the next 10 years and change the debt trajectory of America, but we spent almost $8 trillion here in the Congress since the Senate Democratic majority has passed a budget--861 days. In fact, the Lewis and Clark expedition lasted 860 days. We have passed that now, without having a budget. That is a do- nothing record. It just is.

At a time of national crisis, we have a failure of leadership in the Senate and in the Presidency, in my opinion. President Obama has never once looked the American people in the eye and told them the bitter truth about the economic dangers we are facing and how much work must be done to get us back on a sound, secure path. It is hard to ask a people to sacrifice. It is hard to ask the American public to make tough choices if the President, our

leader, will not affirm that we need to make these choices because it is a serious threat to America. Admiral Mullen, who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has stated that the greatest threat to our security is the national debt. Every expert tells us that the greatest threat to our country is the debt. In my opinion, it dwarfs any other threat this Nation faces. Yet according to the Associated Press, the President's speech is going to talk about spending and nothing about how to deal with the debt, or nothing significant about that.

So the rhetoric needs to confront reality. The President has given a number of speeches about creating jobs and reducing the deficit. But a speech is no substitute for a budget or for a detailed plan. The only plan the President has ever put on paper--the only plan that can be reviewed by the press, the public, and Congress--is his February budget. He reaffirmed that plan last week, sending Congress a midsession review that made no policy changes in his budget he submitted earlier. He had the 500-person Office of Management and Budget staff working for him. Is it too much to ask for a real plan? Whatever he may say on Thursday night, on paper--officially--he remains committed to this budget plan that grows the debt by about $12 trillion and raises taxes by about $2 trillion. What it does is it increases spending and increases taxes significantly, but the increase in spending is greater than the increase in taxes. So the net result is that the President's plan makes the budget projections we have from the Congressional Budget Office worse than they would be if we didn't have this budget plan.

America needs the confidence that only a concrete plan can provide. The constant threat of more Federal taxing, borrowing, and regulating undermines confidence, certainty, and predictability in our economy, that which our economy so desperately needs.

This isn't a question simply of ideology; it is a question of leadership. We need and have to grow the economy, not the government. We need to grow the economy. America needs a budget plan that recognizes a core truth. Our Nation's strength does not lie in the size of our government, but in the scope of our freedoms and in the creativity of our people. We need to focus on policies that unleash the enormous productive potential of the private sector. We need to focus on policies that remove instability fostered by the President's refusal to put forward a coherent economic plan that will actually reduce debt, not make it worse, and that would end the threat of high taxes and improve conditions for our job creators. Instead of the failed tax-and- spend approach the voters rejected in the last election, we need to focus on policies that create jobs--not more bureaucracy--helping to steady the economy in these difficult, uncertain times. That would include such things as energy production. We have definitely damaged and delayed significantly the production of energy in the gulf far beyond what was necessary. Only now is it beginning to come back. We are having incredibly increased regulations of every kind on our economy, and we have failed to undertake the kind of serious tax reform that could help create growth and productivity. So these are very dangerous things.

I wish to remind our colleagues that the debt problem can't all be blamed on President Bush. I was a critic of some of his spending programs. But, for example, in the last 3 years of President Bush's plans compared to the first 3 years of President Obama's, he has increased spending for education 67 percent. His budget for the next fiscal year beginning October 1, which was defended a few weeks ago in the Appropriations Committee, calls for a 13.5-percent increase in the Education Department. His budget plan calls for a 10.5-percent increase in the Energy Department. I affectionately call them the Department of Anti-Energy, the Anti-Energy Department. The State Department is looking at a 10.5-percent increase. At a time when we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, how can this be reality? Now we are talking about $300 billion which will be thrown in on top of this to stimulate the economy again. I hope and trust there are some things the government can do to improve the economy, but I am afraid we are at a point where borrowing more money is not one of them.

Look what the Europeans have done. They are facing a similar crisis. Do they think they should borrow more and spend more? Is that what they are doing? No. They are taking their medicine. Italy is attempting to pass a $65 billion austerity plan that would balance their budget by 2013. The budget the President submitted to us does not even come close to balancing in 10 years. In fact, the projected annual 1-year deficit under the President's plan for the tenth year of his 10-year budget is $1 trillion plus. The highest budget deficit President Bush ever had was $450 billion. He will average almost $1 trillion a year--$1,000 billion average--over 10 years. The interest payment last year was $240 billion. The CBO projects in the tenth year after President Obama has doubled the deficit based on his budget, interest in 1 year will be $840 billion, crowding out things such as aid to education, which is $100 billion, Federal aid to highways, $40 billion.

We cannot continue on this path. Italy is making a change. What about Spain? These are three of the so-called ``PIGS'' in Europe, the ones that are in financial trouble. Spain is planning a constitutional amendment and complementary law that will require close to balanced budgets at the Federal and State levels and to limit Federal debt to 60 percent of their economy. The enacted austerity plan reduces salaries of public sector workers and cuts public sector spending.

Portugal has a 4-year consolidation plan that will reduce Federal spending by 7 percent of GDP and would balance the budget by 2015. We have no plan to balance the budget, nothing close to it. Indeed, the plan the President has submitted to us--and I am not exaggerating. This is in the record books. We have the two-volume budget he sent to us, and it has been analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office. It will average $1 trillion a year in deficits, which I suppose is why, when I brought it up, the Senate voted 97 to 0 to reject the budget. We do not have one. That is the only one that is pending.

Our Democratic colleagues cancelled the budget markup in the Budget Committee in which I am the ranking Republican--we never even pretended to produce a budget this year. Senator Reid, the majority leader, said it would be ``foolish'' to do so.

So we are now looking at a crisis that involves millions of Americans, the jobs they, hopefully, have now and hope to continue, and those who have lost their jobs. Unemployment has almost doubled. So we are facing a difficult time. I know the pressure is on to just do something so we can politically say we did something. But that is not sufficient now. We need mature, strong, detailed leadership, a detailed plan that will put us on a path to a sound economy.

We need a plan. I hope the President will do more than the article in the newspaper says and provide the kind of specific leadership that can help us move forward from the economic difficulties we face.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we just passed legislation that would raise the debt ceiling. Part of that was an effort to reverse the debt trajectory we are on, but it can only be called, at best, a first step. We can all agree on that.

Indeed, there is an article in the Financial Times, written by Professors Rogoff and Reinhart, who wrote a book that has gotten a great deal of attention and is widely respected, describing and analyzing sovereign debt and countries that have gone bankrupt around the world. They commented that much of what occurred in our debate occurred in those other nations. The other nations scramble around when the pressure is on with something like a debt ceiling, and they don't really change anything significantly, but they meet the crisis and tell everybody everything is OK.

They say in this article in the Financial Times that everything is not OK. Indeed, the debt will increase over the

next 10 years by approximately $13 trillion, and this package would reduce the increase in our debt by $2.1 trillion to $2.4 trillion. That is not much.

In addition to that, Larry Lindsey, a former economic adviser to President Bush, has done some analysis of the Congressional Budget Office score of what the budget would look like over 10 years. He points out that they were predicting nearly 3 percent growth the first and second quarter of this year.

So now we have re-analyzed first quarter growth. Economic growth wasn't 3 percent, it was 2.4 percent. And the second quarter initially was scored at 1.3--not 3 percent or 2.7 but 1.3 percent. Dr. Lindsey said that loss in GDP alone will mean less economic growth, less tax revenue for the government, and over 10 years it puts the government on a trajectory to lose $750 billion--it would collect $750 billion less, which is about one-third of the savings that were to occur in the bill. Dr. Lindsey says the second, third, and fourth quarters of this year will also be well below that. We may be looking at, in this year alone, enough decline in GDP to wipe out half--maybe more--of the savings estimated in the bill we just passed.

I wanted to point out that I believe many in Congress and in the Senate are in denial about how serious the debt threat is and that we are too often, as Rogoff and Reinhart noted, saying the same things other nations said before their economic crises hit. Indeed, the name of their book, ``This Time Is Different,'' refers to what government leaders said in those countries--those other countries that went into default and into debt crises--up until the last minute. They were saying: We have it under control. It is not so bad. This time, they say, it is different.

Immediately, there was a crisis, which resulted in a loss of confidence, and they had a serious problem--similar to when people lost confidence in the housing market several years ago, which helped put us in this recession.

This is worrisome. We are not facing a little problem; we are facing a problem that will require our steadfast attention for a decade to get this country on the right course.

I note that the President had a press conference today. In a way, it rejected everything we have been talking about in this debate. It really did not talk about the nature of the crisis as Rogoff and Reinhart described. He didn't tell the American people that the real problem is spending that is surging out of control. He didn't say we can't continue, as a nation, borrowing 42 cents of every dollar we spend or that we can't continue spending $3.7 trillion when we take in $2.2 trillion. He did not talk to us honestly about that. He did not send a signal; he has not sounded the alarm. Therefore, I think a lot of people--even some in Congress and some outside of Congress--sort of think it must not be so bad. The President hasn't told us it is.

More and more people are expressing concerns. There is a growing unease nationwide, as demonstrated in consumer confidence and business investment, and in some bad manufacturing numbers we received yesterday. So things are not looking good. We have to be honest with ourselves that this is a difficult time.

He did, however, make repeated statements in his press conference about raising taxes. I don't think that is a good thing to do when the economy is in a fix the way it is. He flatly--and erroneously, I believe--stated that you can't balance the budget with spending cuts. Well, you certainly can. You can argue that you would rather have tax increases and fewer spending cuts, but we can and must balance our budget. It can be done with spending reductions. Quite a number of plans are out there proposing to do just that.

The President continues to talk as if the problem was the debt ceiling, but the debt ceiling is really a signal that we have spent too much, and we borrowed all Congress has allowed the President to borrow, and you can't borrow any more unless Congress agrees to raise the debt ceiling. But that is not the problem. The problem, as Rogoff and Reinhart said, is our debt. That is the real problem. It is not going to be easy to fix. I wish it was. If we work together as a nation, we can do it. This country can rise to meet the challenge. I am totally convinced of that.

The President said:

And since you can't close the deficits with just spending

cuts, we'll need a balanced approach.

That means we need to balance a cut with tax increases. That is what that means.

He went on to say:

We can't make it tougher for young people to go to college

or ask seniors to pay more for health care.

But at some point, when you don't have the money, we might not be able to be as generous as we were just a few years ago when we were in better financial condition. Isn't that common sense? What do you mean you can't make any changes in how we do business? We are going to have to make changes in how we do business.

He goes on to talk about investments, as he has often done. This is a quote from the press conference:

Yet, it also allows us to keep making key investments in

things like education and research. . . .

Continuing to make investments in education? Does that mean we will continue our current level in education and that we will try not to cut it if we have to make reductions in spending? Is that what the President means? No.

Just last week we saw the spectacle of the Secretary of Education appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee asking for a 13.5- percent increase in education funding. Also last week, the President talked about investments--more, more, more--including 13.5 percent more for education. You know, 90 percent of education is funded by States, cities, and counties anyway. It is not the Federal Government. It is not our primary role and never has been. We only provide approximately 10 percent of the money that gets spent on education in America.

We can't have double-digit increases when we are borrowing 42 cents of every dollar. Every penny of that increase will be borrowed money-- every penny. Doesn't common sense tell us we might not be able to increase spending this year even if we would like to?

I point out that before the Budget Committee, on which I am the ranking Republican, we had the Secretary of Energy testify that he wanted a 9.5-percent increase for the Department of Energy--the Department that does more to block energy than create energy. The State Department was asking for 10.5 percent increase in the President's budget, the President's request to us. The Department of Transportation was to get a 60-percent increase in spending in the President's Budget. Last year, it was about $40 billion.

I note that this year, interest on our debt will be $240 billion.

I say to my colleagues that we are not dealing with reality. Americans know--maybe they are lucky enough to have two wage earners in the family when one loses their job, but do they not change the way they do business? Do they just think they can continue to spend twice as much as their income as if they were both still working? People don't do that. All over, Americans are making tough decisions. No wonder they are upset at us for pursuing this idea that we don't have to make any changes in what we do. It is very, very distressing to me.

The President said this about employment:

That's part of the reason that people are so frustrated

with what's been going on in this town. In the last few

months, the economy has already had to absorb an earthquake

in Japan, the economic headwinds coming from Europe, the Arab

spring, and the [increases] in oil prices, all of which have

been very challenging to the recovery. But these are things

we couldn't control.

I don't know that those are the big problems here. Rising oil prices are. Today, oil prices are just about double--a little more--than what they were when President Obama took office. We have shut down new exploration in the gulf, and we are blocking the production of natural gas and shale formations, which has so much promise for us. We are doing a lot of things to drive up the cost of energy.

Then he goes on to say this, which is surprising. He is the one who said the crisis was so large, it was a national problem.

Our economy didn't need Washington to come along with a

manufactured crisis to make things worse.

We had a serious debate over what to do about the debt ceiling that we have

reached, and Congress--the Republican House--yielded from $6 trillion in cuts over 10 years, as they proposed in their budget, to taking $1 trillion in cuts up front as part of this debt deal. The President wanted less cuts than that, apparently, and that is not enough. Of course, it could be $2.4 trillion, if the committee functions correctly, and we hope it will.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for an additional 5 minutes.

What I wanted to point out is in this chart. It gives some indication of how we are operating in the Senate and the Congress, driven in substantial part by the President's desires. It is a chart showing the growth in certain programs that are exempt from the automatic cuts that would occur if a budget agreement is not reached as part of the legislation we just passed.

These are all programs that we like and wish we could continue to allow to grow every year. Unfortunately, we are not going to have the money to do that. We are going to have to deal with these programs and all spending--Defense and non-Defense programs, no doubt about it.

We have first over here the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. The average annual percentage increase of that fund's cost has been 4.9 percent. The average annual increase in that fund each year-- 2005 through 2010--was 4.9 percent. The average inflation rate during this time was 2.5 percent. So that is about twice the inflation rate.

The next fund here--a fund all of us value--is the Military Retirement Fund. It has increased at the average annual rate of 5.4 percent. Inflation is 2.5. Medicaid--a program that is administered by States but has recently been as much as 66 percent funded by the Federal Government--has been increasing at 8.5 percent each year.

I think most of us know the rule of seven, where if you have money in the bank and it draws 7 percent interest, that money will double in 10 years. So this means in about 8 or 9 years the entire Medicaid Program will double at that kind of rate of increase. And, remember, inflation is 2.5 percent.

The Children's Health Insurance Program--the CHIP program--has been increasing at 9 percent a year, and the SNAP program--the food stamp program--has been increasing at 16.6 percent a year for the last 5 years. It has been increasing at 16.6 percent.

So I ask, is this sustainable? We are borrowing 42 cents out of every dollar. The economy is not growing as much as we hoped and expected, and it is not going to bail us out of this so we can sustain these kinds of spending levels.

We look at all these programs we value--and we hate to talk about it; we don't want to mention it--and the odd thing about the agreement that was passed earlier today, at the insistence of our Democratic colleagues, is that these programs would receive no reductions if an agreement to cut spending is not reached by the committee. Under the rule, if the committee can't reach an agreement, there will be automatic across the board cuts, except it is not evenly cut across the board because these programs are untouched. They are untouchable because our Democratic colleagues say we can't deal with them.

Well, it is time for us to look under the hood of the food stamps program, I have to tell you. How could it be increasing at 16.6 percent a year for 5 years? How could that happen? Don't we need to examine it, take a good look at it? We have had no hearings. We have done nothing this year to confront the surging cost. And what about Medicaid and CHIP? Those are also surging. Maybe we could even save a little on some of those programs that are growing faster than inflation.

I would point out that the military is in line, under the bill that passed, if an agreement isn't reached, to take a 10-percent cut. That is from the baseline military budget. It does not include Iraq and Afghanistan, which are coming down and projected to come down dramatically.

Forgive me if I am a little bit taken aback here about our priorities and about the unwillingness of Congress to deal with out-of-control spending. That is a good deal of money we are talking about--the Medicaid Program at $270 billion a year. Food stamps have more than doubled. It is now $78 billion a year. By comparison, Alabama's general fund budget is about $2 billion.

I thank the Chair. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

As I notice no one else is here.

Oh, I am sorry. I didn't see that. Well, I should long ago have yielded the floor, because he has something worthwhile to say, I am sure.

I close by saying we are not dealing honestly with the crisis we are in. The President is in denial. He is not looking the American people in the eye and telling us what a serious fix we are in, or challenging us all to deal with the reality that we are going to have to change the way we do business. I hate to say it, but I believe that it is true. We have to do better.

I thank the Chair and I would be pleased to yield the floor to one of our more talented, insightful new Members, Senator Rubio of Florida.

Mr. President, we do have a financial crisis in our country. The debt limit we will be considering tomorrow is the thermometer, the canary in the coal mine that tells us we are at a dangerous level. For example, we have reached it faster and at higher levels than we ever have, the result of which is that our debt rise is telling us we have to raise our debt limit. Those things happen periodically, but this one would be the largest debt limit increase in our history. We have never had such a surge.

The deficit for this single fiscal year ending is expected to be $1.5 trillion. The largest deficit President Bush ever had, and it was large, was $450 billion. The last 2 years have been $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and this year it is expected to be $1.5 trillion. Under the President's budget, we will go from interest on our debt this year of $240 billion to $940 billion in the tenth year. That is for a single year.

For example, our education and transportation budgets have greatly expanded. Spending $940 billion on interest will crowd out tremendous portions of the good things we would like to do with taxpayers' money. Instead of being able to improve our infrastructure or do other things we think could be good, we will be sending that money to debtholders abroad to pay them back for the money they have loaned us that we have been spending now. As I speak, 42 cents of every dollar we spend will be borrowed.

This is a very real situation. I have always felt that we have a responsibility to be honest with our constituents, and we are going to need to raise the debt limit. It places too much risk on our economy not to raise it. But I want to share some thoughts about why I am uneasy about the legislation that is before us and why I will not be able to support it.

I have been warning for months now that we are heading to a situation in which we will have a last-minute, eleventh-hour bill; that the Senate will be asked to pass it without adequate time to review it; that other bad items could be included in this debt limit increase. Additionally, it is not the kind of process we need to pursue.

Our Democratic leadership decided they did not want to bring up a budget. They instructed the Budget Committee chairman--of which I am the ranking member--not to bring up a budget. When asked about it, the majority leader said it would be foolish to have a budget.

We have gone now 824 days without a budget under the Democratic majority in the Senate at a time when we have had the largest deficits in American history. At this extremely important time we do not have a budget. They said it would be foolish to have a budget. My questions is, Why would it be foolish? Because, if you pass a budget--and one can be passed with a mere 50 votes. It is given an expedited procedure. It cannot be filibustered, it is guaranteed a vote in 50 hours, but you have a right to file amendments. When you file and get a vote on amendments, then people are held accountable for their yea or nay.

We have had a lot of people say we would like to do more. Maybe if we had a budget we would have had a chance to vote on spending.

The problem is a decision was made that it would be too difficult to execute the normal, regular order in the Senate, to bring forth a budget and actually have amendments filed and Senators do what they are paid to do. I think that is particularly problematic in light of what happened in the last election. The American people are not happy with us. They rightly believe that Congress cannot justify a situation in which 42 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed. Congress cannot justify a $1.5 trillion deficit this year. People are not happy about that. I have been to town meetings and people say: You work for me. I am not happy.

You have seen that on television in the last election. It was a shellacking for those who thought that business as usual ought to continue in the United States of America; that money could just be borrowed, borrowed and spent, and when the problems hit we would just raise taxes on the American people and they would have to pay for our spending binge. People are not happy with this.

They were demanding, among other things, accountability. They were demanding that we in Congress be responsible for what we do. We should be transparent and willing to answer at home for what we had done. That is a fair request in a great Republic such as ours. I have been critical of the absence of a budget. We will not vote on one.

We had the Reid proposal and the Boehner proposal and finally this compromise proposal. Our colleagues, the Democratic majority, brought up the House budget so they could vote it down. It was a historic budget. They did it publicly. They voted on the floor. There were amendments. The House plan reduced spending by as much as $6 trillion. They changed the debt course of America. I would have liked to have seen them go further because even that plan to alter the debt trajectory of America, bringing down our deficits, still did not balance in the 10th year.

People say the House was radical and they did strange things. Not so. Read that budget. It was an honest budget based on good numbers. It changed the debt course of America. But even that,

as I said, did not go as far as we really need to go.

The House did its bit and we did nothing in return. Now we get to the point where the debt limit, August 2, is upon us and we are supposed to vote. This morning at 3 a.m., apparently, legislation was finally put together. It was brought forth to the floor of the Senate. We will vote on it tomorrow morning, maybe noon, after a couple of hours of debate tomorrow. I am really uneasy about that. I am uneasy about what is contained in it.

What does it do? The good part is it reduces our spending by about $2.1 trillion, maybe $2.4 trillion. A more solid belief is we will reduce spending if Congress adheres to the guidelines. Over a period of years we tend to figure ways around the limits and constraints that are put on spending, but the plan is to reduce spending by $2.1 trillion.

It is a step. It is better than more spending like we have been doing. In the last 2 years under President Obama, when the Democratic majority had 60 Senators in the Senate, nondefense discretionary spending went up 24 percent. The budget that the President submitted this year calls for a 13.5 percent increase in education for next year. Beginning October 1, fiscal year 2012, when we are in the worst financial shape ever, a 13.5 percent increase in spending? Is that common sense? Does that make reasonable judgment? Is that a reasonable judgment for America, when we are in a situation such as this?

It proposes a 9.5 percent increase in the Energy Department. It proposes a 10.5 percent increase in the State Department. It proposes a 60-percent increase in the Highway Department. And I'm told there will be a tax. I ask them: Mr. Secretary, what tax?

It will not be a gas tax.

I say: OK, we agree, it is not a gas tax. What is the tax?

We will talk about that.

The Congressional Budget Office said that is no income. You cannot say you have income to offset a big increase in high-speed rail and things like that if you do not have a source of revenue.

That is the situation in which we find ourselves. We have a deep, philosophical disagreement. The majority in this Senate and the President believe in spending. When I said 24 percent increase, that did not include the almost $1 trillion in the stimulus package. It did not include that, all of which, every penny, was borrowed because we are in debt. When you spend this extra money, you borrow the money. We do not have it to spend.

However, we have a disagreement about where we are heading in our country. We should have had a full, glorious debate in the Senate. The Finance Committee should be looking at how to deal with taxes. The Appropriations Committee should be asking how can we reduce expenditures. Every authorizing committee needs to be looking at what they can do to do the job better with less cost and more efficiently. The Budget Committee should be producing a budget that can be adhered to and passed, and that would bind the Senate to change the spending trajectory we have been on. But none of that has happened.

Instead, we have a bill to raise the debt limit. We are here because we spent so much money. We are up at the limit and if we do not raise the debt limit there will be substantial reductions in spending occurring pretty quickly. That is where we are.

I believe this bill raises serious questions about the Senate and how we do business. As I said, I warned that we would be at the eleventh hour when it all came forward.

One thing particularly concerning to me as the ranking member of the Budget Committee is that this bill deems certain budget numbers and in a way gets around, again, the budget process. It is going to give my colleagues, the Democratic majority, additional avenues to avoid producing a budget for the third consecutive year. I do not believe that is a healthy process.

Second, I ask my colleagues to think about this, and I will wrap up. I don't need to go into great detail about it. We are being asked to allow our leaders to select up to 12 people, 12 people who will be on a special committee and will have almost complete jurisdiction to work on any issue they choose. After they reach an agreement, if they do, that agreement will be presented to both Houses of Congress. There will be only 30 hours of debate, no opportunity to amend it, and there will be an up-or-down vote. I have to say the chance of an up-or-down vote being successful is very high, because the product that will come out of that committee will be in harmony with what the leaders who appointed the members of the committee desire, because the power to appoint is the power to control.

The committee will come back with this leadership proposal. It will be on the floor and it will be for an up-or-down vote and it is very likely to pass. Hopefully, it will have some good things in it. But it is unlikely that it would go past $1.5 trillion in reduced spending over 10 years. That is roughly what they have been given. That on top of the $900 billion that would go into effect immediately with the passage of the legislation would result in about a $2.4 trillion total.

I believe that is an insufficient number. It is not close to what we have to do given our expected debt. Over 10 years the debt of the United States will increase an additional $13 trillion. Reducing it $2 trillion is not enough. We have heard the economists and others testify before the Budget Committee. Republicans and Democrats, say those reductions are not sufficient. Many economists said the absolute minimum was $4 trillion, and this will be half that.

That legislation will then come before us. We will have an up-or-down vote and presumably it will pass. The great traditions of the Senate, full, free, open debate will not occur to the degree that it ought to occur. The regular order will not be followed. Committees will have only an ability to send over advice if they so desire. As a result, I think we as Members of the Senate need to ask ourselves if we are getting pretty far away from the traditions of this body when you do not have public debate on a budget, you create a committee of limited numbers of people to produce legislation that cannot be amended and will only be up-or-down and no ability to have a supermajority vote, but a 50-vote, contrary to the normal process of this body.

For those reasons I believe, as a Senator and a ranking member on the Budget Committee who has wrestled with this for some time, I will not be able to support the legislation, although I truly believe it is a step forward, and I respect my colleagues who worked hard to try to bring it forward.

I yield the floor.

I would ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the discussion has boiled down to a desire by the President to have the largest debt increase in the history of America at a time when our spending is out of control, and this debt ceiling limit that we have now reached is at a point where it does need to be raised.

I thought we had a national consensus that as part of raising the debt ceiling we would begin to change our habits around here; we would do things better; we would not be running up so much debt because every witness who has testified before our Budget Committee has said we are on an unsustainable path. They mean that. We cannot sustain the debt path we are on. We have never been in a deeper fix.

The President wants this huge debt increase, but he only wants to have a very modest decrease in spending. The bill that is before us would decrease spending about $927 billion. It might sound like a lot, but over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, we will increase the debt of America by $10 trillion--$10,000 billion, not $927 billion. That will not change the debt trajectory. We have to have more than $927 billion in spending reductions.

It appears we are not going to be able to get that. The Democratic majority in the Senate will not allow it and say they are prepared to let the country default if we try to cut any more. So we have to continue the dialogue and the debate about the course we are on.

Why is it so important to get a bigger debt ceiling increase? I thought and believed we had an agreement that the debt ceiling should not be increased more than spending is decreased, that spending is decreased over 10 years. We cut it $1 trillion, we raise the debt ceiling $1 trillion. We give 10 years of spending cuts, but immediately we get a $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.

Why are we in this fix? I hate to say it, but this is why, there is no doubt about it: The President said last week:

The only bottom line that I have is that we extend this

debt ceiling through the next election, until 2013.

Through the next election. It is all about him. It is about politics. It is about his desires, what he wants. That is not correct. This is about America, what is good for our country.

The House of Representatives submitted a fabulous budget earlier this year. It reduced spending by as much as $6 trillion over 10 years. This bill would only reduce it $1 trillion. Why would the House of Representatives, after much debate, pleading, hard work, why would they agree to send a bill over here that only does $1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years? The reason is they love our country. They know this is a dangerous time. They know at this point in history we don't need to create more uncertainty on top of the tremendously dangerous debt path we are on.

By not raising the debt limit we don't know for sure what will happen. Bad things could happen, so they have made a tremendous compromise in what they proposed and sent it over here. It seems the only thing the President cares about is not having to talk about this again until after he gets reelected.

I think we need to understand something. This is not enough reduction in spending. It will not change the debt trajectory we are on now, which is on a path to do $9 trillion to $13 trillion more in debt added to our Nation's books in 10 years. It is just not enough.

We raise the debt ceiling, and we get out of this immediate crisis, and in doing so we send a message to the world, the American people and the financial markets that we are still working on it. We are still going to bring down the numbers. We know we cannot continue on this rate of spending. We know that so we are going to work to get the numbers down, and we are not going to wait 2 years after some convenient or inconvenient election. We are going to start early next year or late this year, and we will stay on it until we make the kind of changes that put us on a path to growth and prosperity. I feel strongly about that.

I know people don't want to hear us talking about this bill or that bill or who is for this and how many votes it has. They are tired of hearing that. They want us to make changes. I do not think the American people just want a deal. That is how the media spins it and politicians spin it: Is there a deal? Is there not a deal? The American people want us to change our debt course. They want us to get off the path that is taking us to financial destruction. It really is. I don't know when it will happen, but everybody says we cannot continue, and in a period of years we will be in a situation like Greece, and the numbers are pretty clear in that regard. There is no doubt about it. It doesn't have to happen, so we can do something about it.

Republicans have passed a good budget that would reduce the debt and put us on a path to prosperity. That was rejected by our Democratic leaders. Indeed, they brought it up and mocked it. President Obama called for a conference at the White House. He put Congressman Ryan, the brilliant young budget chairman in the House right in front of him, and then he mocked and attacked the budget that the House did that would actually do something for America and make us better. I don't appreciate that. We have to do something. I am prepared to compromise. I feel deeply that we need to cut more spending than this, but we are at a point in history where we need to pass a debt ceiling increase. We just have to. We don't need to quit talking about the problem. We need to continue the dialogue, continue the debate, and continue to look for and find ways to reduce spending.

The House passed a cap-and-balance bill that would have capped spending and created a permanent constitutional amendment to balance the budget, and then they passed the Boehner legislation that was voted down last night. That legislation would have cut all spending at just about the amount that Senator Reid wants, the $900-or-so billion. Speaker Boehner didn't exaggerate how much it was. He agreed to that amount and agreed to raise the debt ceiling immediately by an amount equal to the amount of spending we reduced over 10 years. It was a very generous, significant compromise from the position they believed was correct and that they took openly and publicly through the normal legislative process when they passed their budget.

Now our Democrats in the Senate have not passed anything. They didn't even bring up a budget. Now it has been 822 days since Congress has passed a budget. A budget was not passed here when my Democratic colleagues had 60 Democratic Senators.

Senator Reid said it would be foolish to pass a budget. Why is that? Well, he meant it would be foolish to have his Members actually have to vote.

When you move a budget, it has priority. It cannot be filibustered. It can be passed with a 50-vote margin, but people get to offer amendments and people would have to vote on amendments. The people who produced the budget would have to say how much taxes they were increasing, how much spending they were cutting, and how much debt was still going to be out there, and they did not want to expose themselves. They did not want to come before the American people and show where they stood. They preferred to bring up the House budget and vote it down and mock it while the leadership didn't have the courage or the responsibility to pass a budget themselves. They would show where they wanted to go with the future of America. It is just that simple.

We need to go back to the regular order in the Senate, and that means presenting a budget, bringing up bills, having votes, having amendments, having people be accountable to their constituents. If you were sitting back home, you would want to see government reduce some of this reckless spending. Wouldn't you want to know how your elected officials, the people representing you, voted? Well, we have had no votes, and that has been the plan--to shield the Members from votes so their constituents could not hold them accountable.

For heaven's sake, we don't want to have a vote in January or February when we have an election in November. Why, that is too close. People would see what we did. They might remember it when election day came up. They might not like it that they don't have a plan to do a better job of changing the unconscionable debt course this country is on.

That is the way they think in Washington, and it is not acceptable. We are borrowing 40 cents of everything we spend.

Mr. President, do we have a time agreement at this point?

I thank the Chair.

Well, it is a big deal, and we need to get this done. There are just not enough votes to pass the Reid bill, and there are not enough votes to pass the Boehner bill. That is just obvious, even though Speaker Boehner drew down dramatically the amount of spending cuts the House believes should be achieved.

We have to get our folks busy while we are continuing to debate into the night instead of actually recognizing that the Reid bill doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate, and it absolutely doesn't have the votes to pass the House. It just doesn't. At this last desperate moment, hopefully, our leaders will get busy, quit worrying about those things, and actually begin to suggest something we can work on. We really should not be in this position.

As I have explained at some length--and I will not repeat it--but I don't like it. I do not like it. I don't think it is right that we have a couple of Senators and a couple of House Members, our leaders, go off and somehow plop down on the Senate their solution to our problem, and if we don't pass it, the government is damaged and the economy is damaged because they have waited until the absolute eleventh hour-plus to produce it.

It should have never happened that way. It is irresponsible, and it undermines the integrity of the entire congressional process. We have seen this coming all year long. We should not have allowed it to happen in this way.

Well, let me talk a bit more technically about the Reid bill. It purports to reduce spending and savings by $2.4 trillion. That is not correct. Actually, it reduces the debt that would be increasing by only $927 billion, and we have done our best with the Budget Committee staff to be honest and fair about it.

That is about the same number Speaker Boehner has in his, but Majority Leader Reid insists his saves $2.4 trillion. Why? Because if it is $2.4 trillion, he can justify that the next time we address this, which will be after the next election, will be 2 years away.

He doesn't cut that much. What he claims is not accurate. Why? Well, they are working into the night to see how they can make the accounting look better. They didn't like the 927 figure, so what do they do? They look at the budget projections where it was projected war costs would be coming down. Actually, we will have a $40 billion reduction this year in the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan. Those costs are coming down. The President had projected they would come down to $50 billion soon and would stay at that for the rest of the year, which would mean $1 trillion less spending. Remember, we are going to increase the debt by $9 to $13 trillion, but $1 trillion would have been--by reducing the war cost, we save $1 trillion. But that was already in the books. That is already accounted for.

So how did they do it? Well, they came in and they put in a bill that mandated the come-down because, oddly enough, the Congressional Budget Office doesn't assume war costs will come down. The Congressional Budget Office assumes that it will stay up and we will spend this $1 trillion more on the war when there is no intent to do that. Therefore, they put it in the legislation and require it to come down, these numbers, and all of a sudden CBO scores $1 trillion in extra savings without any change in spending projections or reality at all.

Speaker Boehner didn't count his bill as reducing spending by that $1 trillion when he took the same numbers, same assumptions that spending on the war would come down. But they did that to try to make it look as though they were reducing spending more; therefore, they could extend the debt limit more, they would make it past the election, and they could get the political result they want. That is really what it is.

Another way they get another $300 billion gimmick is that if we assume a $1 trillion reduction in the war, then we are not paying interest on that money because we would have to borrow it because we are already in debt, and every amount we can reduce means we borrow less money. Every less-spending provision saves money, and it also saves interest on that money. Well, it would be $300 billion in interest saved under the theory--the gimmick--that is being used here. So that really amounts to $1.3 trillion in overestimating right there on the amount of savings in the Reid plan.

I thank the Chair. I hope we will reject the Reid proposal, and I hope our leaders can achieve in short order a change in our plans for managing our money, raise the debt ceiling, and begin to put this country on a sound path.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think it has become very clear that our Democratic colleagues want to raise taxes. They use the phrase revenues--revenues--and we need a shared sacrifice. That means people need to pay more taxes, as if that doesn't have an impact on the economy.

We have had a recent study by one of the international groups which found the United States has the most progressive tax system in the world--among the developed nations. This is all the European nations. The wealthy pay more in the United States than in those countries, according to an independent, international study. We have heard the numbers. A substantial percentage of the income taxes are paid by the top 10 percent in America. How much more do you do this?

I thought we had an agreement last December with the President in which we agreed that raising taxes at a time of economic danger is not the right thing to do. Not doing something to fix this debt limit now is not a good thing. We need to raise the debt limit. I don't know what would happen if we don't. I don't think it would be good. I think we run a risk. But the real danger we have is not the debt limit; the real danger we have is the extraordinary surging debt this Nation has, which is unlike anything we have ever had before.

It is systemic. It is part of the structure of the American economy right now that we are spending 42 percent more than we take in. We cannot keep doing that. The projections for the future are not better. So it is a very dangerous trend, and we have to get off of it.

We had a talk about that in the last election. The American people were engaged in that. They weren't happy with their Congress. They didn't think Congress was managing their affairs very well. They believed they weren't listening to them when they were asking questions such as: How can you keep doing this? You are putting our grandchildren in the poorhouse. You are risking the economy of the United States. All you want to do is spend money, buy votes, and say you are spreading the wealth around and that is going to make things better.

So we had an election, and it was a shellacking for the big spenders. Wasn't that what it was all about? Was there a single candidate I know of who won last time--at least a new candidate who was elected for the first time--who didn't talk about the need to constrain spending in Washington? That was the theme throughout the election. That was the meaning of the election.

So now my colleagues are saying: Oh, we can't. Oh, you want to cut spending? Oh, they say, they have these extremists in the House. Oh, they do not want to play ball. They haven't served in the Congress long enough. They do not know better. They think we can actually cut spending. Of course, we can't cut spending. Oh, that is not the way you do it. No, you just reduce growth a little bit and spending and say you are cutting spending, even though it is still going up. That is what has been going on here. That is why we are increasing the debt at the most extraordinary rate and over a systemic period of time to the degree that every economist who has appeared before the Budget Committee--and I am the ranking Republican on that committee--has testified that we have to stop; that this is unsustainable-- unsustainable. They have said: You cannot keep doing this.

Do you know, colleagues, that in the last 2 years, when the Democratic majority in this Senate had 60 votes, that spending for nondefense discretionary spending, not counting the stimulus, just the basic budgetary spending on all our accounts--nonwar, nondefense, nonSocial Security--went up 24 percent? This at a time when we are running the biggest deficits in history; 24 percent increases? We can't cut spending?

There was an article in the Washington Times yesterday or the day before where my colleague, Senator Shelby from Alabama, asked the Secretary of Education how he could explain that the Secretary of Education and the President were proposing the Department of Education get a 13\1/2\-percent increase for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1--13\1/2\ percent. But he defended that. He said it was justified; that it was an investment.

But when you don't have money, you have to change business. You can't continue to be in denial and pretend this is normal; that we can just continue to increase the Education Department by 13.5 percent.

By the way, the Department of Energy, the President, and their Secretary of Defense proposes a 9.5-percent increase for the Department of Energy,

which does more to restrict the production of energy than produce the source of energy in America; the Department of State, 10.5 percent. I am talking about their proposal for next year, beginning October 1 of this year, the fiscal year. Sixty percent they propose for transportation, and they propose a tax for that but will not say what it is. When I asked, they will not say it is a gas tax because that is not popular.

So I asked Secretary LaHood. So it is a not-gas-tax tax. Is that right, Mr. Secretary? Well, we will talk with Congress about what that tax is. But I can just tell you, Mr. LaHood, Congress is not going to pass a big fat tax so you can increase spending on your budget 60 percent because we don't have that kind of money. We don't need to be hammering this fragile economy with another big tax increase. Besides, what we need to do first and foremost is rein in this surging spending spree we have been on. That is what we need to do. That is just a fact. That is what the American people understand.

I am offended, frankly, by the suggestion that the people in the House, who swept out a lot of the buddies of the big spenders in the Senate--a lot of the big spenders in the House are back home figuratively pushing up daisies because they were held to account, finally, many of them, after many years in the Congress. They were voted out of office. So the people who beat them are extremists, you see. That is what they like to say: They will not negotiate. They will not deal. They are irresponsible. They actually think they can come up here and change the trajectory of debt in this country.

So they passed a budget in the House of Representatives. A brilliant, fine, young Congressman, Paul Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee in the House, the Republican majority in the House passed a budget that cut spending $5 trillion, and it would change the debt trajectory of America. It didn't quite pass, even at 10 years that I would like to have seen, but we are in such a hole it is hard to get out, and it would have made a big change in the way we are going and put us on the right path.

Senator Reid called it up, mocked it, had his members all vote against it.

So we said: What about your budget, Mr. Reid?

Well, we don't have one.

Well, what about your budget? You have the majority in the Senate. You can pass a budget with just 50 votes. Why don't you pass a budget?

It is foolish to pass a budget, he said. Foolish to pass a budget.

At a time when this country has never, ever, ever been in a more serious financial condition than we are today, we are borrowing 42 cents out of every dollar we spend. That is a deep hole, and it is not the war. We spent $150 billion-plus on the war this year. Next year it will be $118 billion. The deficit this year will be $1,500 billion. It is about 10 percent.

If we put every bit of the war costs as part of our debt, it is only 10 percent. It is other spending that is putting us in this hole.

We do have long-term problems with our entitlement programs. Shouldn't we talk about them or should we do as the President did: bring Congressman Ryan over to the White House for a speech, sit him right down there in front of him and then launch into an attack on what he and his Members of the House have tried to do to make America a better place.

So they say: Those new guys and women over there who were elected, they are not reasonable enough. They will not work with us. Well, let me tell you. They proposed a $6 trillion reduction. Even that didn't balance it in 10 years, but it sure was a big step forward.

Do you know what they have done now. The House passed a bill at the insistence of the Senate and the President to try to pass a bill--and they passed it--that would raise the debt ceiling and cut spending only $1 trillion. Is that an extremist thing to do? They sent it over here, much of it very similar to what Senator Reid has proposed, and they called it up within minutes and tabled it--without debate, without discussion.

Then they continued to say, as if nothing happened: These are extremists over there. They won't listen to reason. These tea party people are not good for America.

Well, I am going to tell you one thing. The tea party people understand an important fact. This Congress is spending too much money. They are exactly correct in that regard.

No Member of the United States Congress can, with a clear conscience, look their constituents in the eye and say we have managed their money wisely. We are in such a shape we can't even see when we will balance the budget because we have mismanaged their economy so badly. The only idea that anybody seems to have around here is, spend more money and stimulate the economy. If we spend more money, where does it come from? It is borrowed. We are already in debt, and every new dime we spend is borrowed.

There is only one way to move out of this; that is, to reduce spending. It just is. The American people understand that.

I recently had the honor to be in Estonia near Russia, one of the Baltic nations that is so proud to be free and independent. When the recession hit, they suffered more than we. They had a 15-percent reduction in their economy. Do you know what they did. The Cabinet members took a 40-percent pay cut. Every employee in Estonia took a 10- to 20-percent pay cut.

One of the members told me: I will tell you who is really mad is my wife. She is a doctor, and the medical system got cut.

Do you know what. They had 5 percent growth the first quarter, and their debt-to-GDP is 7 percent. Our debt-to-GDP is 95 percent. They are going to come out of this, and they are not going to have a debt so heavy that it pulls down the economy.

Mr. President, I don't know what the agreement timewise is at this point. Can the Chair advise me?

I see my colleague from California, and I will yield. I would just note that the idea that the Republicans don't want to vote is not correct. We are prepared to vote. We are prepared to vote on the standard procedural manner in the Senate of 60 votes that is done on every significant matter around here, and that is perfectly normal. I am rather amazed, surprised, and almost amused that my colleagues would feign such great pain and anguish that this would occur. They would do exactly the same. That is the way the Senate operates. That is the way they have operated when they were in the minority, and that is the way we operate today. On matters of significance it takes 60 votes.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak and raise some political points. We have been jousting politically, some of which is good and some of which is not. I do say we need to reach an agreement soon and pass legislation that will raise the debt limit and will reduce our spending trajectory so we can get this country on a sound path.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the challenges we face are difficult. I am proud of the work the House of Representatives has done. I do not appreciate it being suggested that somehow they are unreasonable because I don't believe that is fair to say about them. They worked very hard. They complied with the congressionally mandated statutory requirement to pass a budget. They passed a 10-year budget that was honest and open. It was publicly debated in the House of Representatives. They passed it, and it would have fundamentally altered the debt trajectory of America. It would put us on a sound path. It could have gone a little farther, frankly, but it goes farther than anything else we have seen and puts us on the path to a sound economic future.

What happened in the Senate? I am ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. We are required to mark up a budget in the Senate by law. It doesn't say you go to jail if you don't follow the law. It doesn't have any penalty, I will acknowledge. It is a law, but we don't have to follow it, except we certainly have an obligation to do so. Certainly we would want, I think, to have a budget in the Senate. We have not had one now for over 800 days, over 2 years. We were within a week--less than that--of commencing hearings to mark up a budget that would be moved by the Democratic majority. When they do so, it is not even subject to a filibuster. It can be passed with 50 votes, and there are 53 Democrats in the Senate. The majority party always has that obligation to move a budget. Senator Reid, the Democratic leadership, decided they wouldn't do it. He said it would be foolish to have a budget so we haven't passed a budget.

The House has said it would reduce spending by up to $5 trillion or $6 trillion. Because of the Senate's objection and the President's objection, they have agreed to raise the debt limit by $1 trillion, and they have agreed to cut spending in America by $1 trillion. They have tried to reach an agreement so we wouldn't have a shutdown. Then, all of a sudden, my Democratic colleagues now come forward and say they don't want to accept that. They want the Reid amendment.

The Reid amendment has the same actual savings. We have looked at the numbers and we have seen how they have done it. There is about a $1 trillion savings in the Reid bill with a reduction in spending of about $1 trillion. He claims it is $2.7 trillion. That is almost three times what it actually achieves. Therefore, they want to continue to raise the debt limit by almost $3 trillion, the largest amount it has ever been raised. Why? Because the President said so. This is what the President said a week ago:

The only bottom line that I have is that we extend this

debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.

The President thinks this is about him. It is all about him. This is about America and what is good for this country. It is not about the President. It is not about politics. If it were about politics, I wouldn't vote for the Boehner amendment and neither would a lot of those patriotic Members of the House because it is not enough. It does not do what we need to do. We need to do $4 trillion, $5 trillion, $6 trillion over 10 years. The debt is going to increase over the next 10 years from $9 trillion to $13 trillion, and $1 trillion is not enough. It can only be seen as a step in the right direction. So forgive me if I am a little frustrated about that.

I want to talk about something that is problematic and needs to be known. It is not being focused on, and this is Senator Reid's amendment and his solution to the deficit problem. He wants to raise the debt ceiling so we can keep borrowing money and spending more than we take in. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. The President this morning said he liked the Reid amendment and is what he wishes to see. He doesn't like the House version. I think there are some things we all ought to think about and know that are in the Reid amendment.

As I have said, we have gone 821 days without a budget. The law requires us to have a budget. A lack of a congressional budget contributes to our fiscal nightmare. Since we last passed a budget, we have spent $7 trillion. The reason we don't have a budget is because it is carefully and deliberately orchestrated that we not have one by the leadership of this Senate. They have planned for just the eventuality that is occurring. I have warned for weeks and months on the floor of the Senate that we would be at the eleventh hour with people scurrying around in secret, plotting deals to try to figure out how to deal with the crisis this Nation faces. That is exactly what is happening.

Today it was announced that the second quarter economic growth was 1.3 percent. That is anemic and well below what we were hoping to see and thought we might. We have had expert testimony that the debt we have pulls down economic growth. Had the Senate adopted a budget in a timely manner this year, as the House did, we would not be at this last-minute crisis. It was deliberately orchestrated because it gives maximum leverage to the President and the press. The question becomes not what is in the deal, but do you have a deal? Just do anything. We

are going to be in a crisis if you don't pass something. We want a deal. The House has come up with a very reasonable compromise. It looks as though some people want to have this fuss and put us through the crisis even when they get basically what they have asked for.

The Reid amendment to increase the debt limit deems two consecutive budget resolutions for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. In other words, it basically takes over the budget process and sets the basic spending numbers. Does the President think the Senate should go 2 more years without crafting or passing a budget? We have already gone 2 years. The Reid amendment sets spending allocations for most Senate committees at the Congressional Budget Office's rising baseline. These are bureaucratic members. They work hard, but they are not elected. They are not constitutionally accountable. It says we are going to deem the amount we spend by what CBO has projected our growth in spending to be, and CBO projects growth in spending. They don't set that as right for America, but they project that is what will occur under the current circumstances. This deems those higher growing numbers as what should be.

Without hearings or debates on these allocations, this provision would provide a further excuse for avoiding a budget and increase the likelihood that the Congressional Budget Act will be violated for the third straight year. This is an abrogation of the responsibilities of the Senate and of the Budget Committee of the Senate. We are not elected to the Senate and chosen to sit on the Budget Committee to see most of the budget levels automatically raised based on a set of spending growth projections by the CBO. They are not empowered to do that. They don't claim to, actually. I should not demean them. They do what their duty is. It is this kind of process that has placed the country in a financial crisis.

We keep locking in spending levels that are going up. When we reduce the growth in spending a little bit, you know what we say we are doing? We are cutting spending, and it is spending more. That is the way the budget is. When they say we are going to save $1 trillion through the House plan----

I would ask for 2 additional minutes to wrap up.

The provision that takes over that and sets us on an automatic growth course is not the right one. Both the Reid amendment and the House bill say we save about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. I would note that the difference between the two is how long or how much is achieved by that. Senator Reid wants almost 2 years and the House Members would do it based on a dollar-per-dollar manner. That $1 trillion in the Reid amendment does not reduce spending. It only reduces the growth in spending, and that is one of the reasons Congress is able to hide the amount of money we are spending every year. That is one reason debt is so high.

The Budget Committee should be allowed to fulfill its duties. The Budget Committee should be allowed to mark up in fiscal year 2012. It will begin October 1 of this year. We need a budget now. We are past due. Once a budget is adopted by the committee, it should be taken to the full Senate and allowed to be amended as the law provides. I am disappointed that the President doesn't seem to agree with that. He seems to have bought into the idea that the regular processes of the Senate should not be followed. He agrees with Senator Reid, apparently, that if they can keep it all bottled up to an end and we come up on a crisis, they can all maneuver in secret and cut a deal. They feel that is the way we serve the American people.

I feel strongly that we are undermining the great power and responsibility of the Senate as that place where the great issues are discussed publicly and openly and where we are accountable and cast votes. Let me say again, the reason the majority leader did not want a budget to come up is because when you bring a budget up, you have to vote, people have alternatives, they offer amendments, and the Members go on record. He is protecting his Members from having to do the primary responsibility of Senators who are before the world to cast their vote and to be accountable to the people who sent them there.

It is not good for this body. This body should be engaged in a historic debate about the threat the debt poses to our future, and we have been unengaged. The discussions are being taken in secret without the American people being able to hold their representatives accountable. I object.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

I thank the Senator for recalling that event. I know the Senator continued working across the aisle on another proposal that has the potential to be more effective than even the one we worked on together last year. So I thank the Senator for being willing to work in a way that could be effective to do better.

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

Mr. President, there are currently two bills headed for a vote to raise the debt ceiling and to reduce spending. One of those two bills from the House, Speaker Boehner's, cuts about $1 trillion in spending and raises the debt ceiling by $1 trillion until the end of the year, approximately. That is about how long it would take to run up another $1 trillion in debt. The other bill from Senate Majority Leader Reid cuts about $1 trillion and raises the debt ceiling about $3 trillion--or past the 2012 election. This is because the President said emphatically just a few days ago at a press conference:

The only bottom line I have is that we have to extend this

debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.

So it is really quite simple. Speaker Boehner's bill lives up to the principle that I thought we had all agreed to: that every $1 in debt ceiling increase should be tied to a $1 reduction in spending. The spenders get an advantage since the spending reductions occur over 10 years, whereas the debt ceiling would increase immediately. But that is the principle on which we have been operating.

Senator Reid's bill is a hoax. It uses Washington gimmicks designed to make it look three times as large as it is. In reality, it hikes the debt ceiling $3 for every $1 in spending cuts over 10 years. The House bill is 1 to 1, the Senate bill is 3 to 1. We have demonstrated this exhaustively in a Budget Committee analysis that I don't think people would dispute. And the House approach--one of the primary ways this is accomplished is to count the reduction in spending over the war in Iraq and Afghanistan that is projected to occur and has already been projected to occur and count that as a spending cut. Speaker Boehner didn't do that. His would look $1 trillion better also if he used those numbers.

The House approach is honest, it is straightforward, and it achieves $1 in cuts for every $1 in debt ceiling increase. It allows us to return to the table in a few months to assess our progress, see what is happening in the economy, and begin working toward the greater cuts that are needed.

Senator Reid's bill relies on accounting tricks, takes the debt limit off the table until after the election, and exchanges a record $3 trillion in debt hike for only one-third as much in debt cuts.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle signed a letter vowing to defeat the Boehner plan. I find this a little shocking, frankly, and surprising. Is it the position of the Senate Democratic majority that $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years is all we need to achieve between now and 2013? Is it their view that $1 in cuts for every $1 in debt limit increase is too steep or is it a political effort to protect the President by pushing the debt limit ceiling past the next election, creating the highest increase in debt ceiling, I think, in history, except for perhaps the one that the super Democratic majority in the Senate slipped through during the passage of the health care bill? Is it this election issue that Democrats would turn down an agreement on and put us at risk of financial disruption of our economy?

So let's step back for a moment and look at the wider context. Washington is often consumed by political fights and blame games. It can be hard to differentiate between facts and talking points. But I would like to provide as honest an assessment as I can as to why we find ourselves in this unfortunate situation at the eleventh hour.

We have a process, a statutory and legal process to arrive at a budget deal every single year. It is written into the law of the United States. The President is required to submit a budget, by law, each year, and each Chamber is required to pass one separately and then agree on one together.

If the year had begun with a serious budget proposal from the President, we wouldn't be in this mess today. But he submitted a budget that would double our debt in 10 years, while he claimed it would not add to the debt and he claimed it would cause us to live within our means. Indeed, he had a substantial tax increase, very real tax increases of significant amounts, but his spending increased even more than that. So the net total of the President's budget was to make the debt trajectory we are on not better but worse, even with the tax increase. Indeed, his budget next year that he submitted proposed increases for the Education Department, the Energy Department, the State Department, and the

Transportation Department--those double-digit increases at a time when we are running the biggest deficit the Nation has ever sustained.

Senate Democrats have refused to pass, meanwhile, in this body--pass or bring up a budget for 820 days, 2 years. The majority leader said it would be foolish to pass a budget. Foolish to not pass a budget?

So these are facts. Our colleagues who run the Senate here have defied the law and sound policy all year long, and now we are paying the price--a last-minute, take-it-or-leave-it, panic vote. Nobody yet knows what is going to be in the legislation finally because of the rejection of any bill that seems to be out there at this time.

If the White House or Senate Democrats had taken the budget process seriously last year and if they had presented a single credible plan to cut spending, we wouldn't be here at this eleventh hour. Indeed, our Democratic colleagues have insisted on secret meetings that shielded them from making any of their budget plans public, that shielded them from any real votes on spending and debt, and it appears those meetings have failed.

Democrats have campaigned and sought control and a majority in the Senate, and they chose, in this time of fiscal crisis, not to engage in the budget process in a serious way. In fact, they are apparently so determined to avoid the public budget process that the Reid bill even includes language designed to circumvent the process for 2 more years.

So you will forgive me if I am a little concerned by all these attacks on the tea party. They didn't start this fire; they sounded the alarm. Before the last election, when Democrats controlled both Chambers of Congress by substantial majorities, every conversation was about increasing spending, more, more, more. Congress passed a stimulus bill--the largest single onetime expenditure ever passed by any Congress or any nation in history, every penny of that borrowed. We were already hugely in debt. We are now borrowing 40 cents of every dollar. It passed. The Congress also passed the President's massive new health care entitlement. It passed the President's request for extraordinary increases in discretionary spending. Nondefense discretionary spending has gone up 24 percent at a time of record deficits in the last 2 years. We have added $4 trillion to our gross debt since the President took office. Just in the time since the Senate Democrats last passed a budget, we have spent more than $7 trillion without a budget. These are the facts.

But after the 2010 election and the emergence of the tea party and commonsense American people who knew better about what is going on in Washington, we have finally begun to look at Washington's spending problems. Now, instead of just raising the debt ceiling with no spending cuts, as the White House initially and repeatedly demanded, we are talking about how to cut some spending.

People in the tea party and those who share their concerns should not be the ones vilified. They are good, decent, patriotic Americans whose only crime is rightly fearing for the future of their Nation. Are they wrong to be concerned when this Congress spends money willy-nilly every day, 40 cents of it borrowed? They know this is not right, and that is the kind of message they have sent to us. We need to listen to the heart of America speaking.

The last point I would like to make is about the issue of compromise. There have been suggestions that the Republicans have simply been unwilling to budge from their position. But the Boehner proposal represents only a small portion of the cuts the Republicans have advocated and that they believe should be achieved. This is truly a critical point and one the White House will not acknowledge. The House budget that they passed, a long-term 10-year budget that would change the debt trajectory of America and put us on a sound financial course in a responsible way, cuts $6 trillion in comparison to the President's request. The Toomey budget the Senate voted on cuts about $8 trillion. The House passed a plan, which I cosponsored, that not only cuts and caps spending but that requires the passage of a constitutional balanced budget amendment. In fact, all 47 Republican Senators have cosponsored a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

The $1 trillion in cuts Speaker Boehner is asking for would be, indeed, a modest first step, an effort to compromise and reach a number that had a realistic chance of passing this body. But under his plan we will return to the table after that $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling has been used. This is far from the level of savings I wish to see, or the Republican House wishes to see. One trillion dollars is a bitter pill for a lot of those Members who know it is not enough. The economists and others and bondholders are telling us we need at least $4 trillion. That just reduces the crisis nature we are in. That would not come close to putting us on a path to a balanced budget over 10 years. Reducing deficits by $4 trillion over 10 years when our deficits are going to increase by $9 trillion to $13 trillion over 10 years obviously does not solve our debt crisis. But $1 trillion is even much smaller. That was a figure that was believed that this Senate might accept, so the House Members, in order to avoid a debt crisis and a financial crisis over the debt ceiling, are apparently working hard and maybe they will send it over here, I don't know. They are working hard to try to do that. I think that is a reasonable compromise and a fair approach to this Congress.

We are going to spend around $45 trillion over the next 10 years. That will add as much as $13 trillion to the gross debt. It is clear we have a lot more work to do. We are going to be fighting for cuts in spending bills, omnibus bills, continuing resolutions, and in every other place we can to impose fiscal discipline on this country. We must control spending. We must control and conquer the debt.

The President said he wants a balanced approach to the deficit--a balanced approach. But a balance is not a tax hike that bails out the big spenders who surged our spending with stimulus bills and surging 24-percent increases in discretionary spending. He is going to bail them out by raising taxes. We should never have run up that kind of spending. But balance is not a tax hike of that kind. Creating real balance, the right balance, means shifting power away from Washington, placing it in the safe hands of the American people. That is what the voters said last year when they gave a shellacking to the big spenders and that is what we should do now, and that is what I will be working for and I believe a lot of other people in the Congress on both sides of the aisle will be working for.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.