Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank Senator Isakson and appreciate his eloquent remarks on one of the great American public leaders, Richard Russell. I am honored to be in the Russell Office Building myself.

Budget Crisis

Mr. President, I am deeply concerned about where we stand now with the budget crisis we are facing. We have no budget action that has been undertaken in the Senate. We have not done our bit. The House has passed a budget, a 10-year budget that is historic. It is honest. It will actually change the debt trajectory of America. But the Senate has not done anything.

Secret meetings are occurring. We are not told what is going on in those meetings. The deficit is clearly the largest issue facing our country at this time, I believe. Except for matters of war, it is the biggest issue, clearly, in the 14 years I have been here.

We are on an unsustainable path. It cannot continue. Every expert has told us that. But we remain not focused in any public way on how to solve it. Just meetings and leaks are occurring. Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that the debt is the greatest threat to our national security. So this extraordinary fiscal crisis is facing us. Yet this Chamber has done nothing about it. We are borrowing 40 cents of every $1 we spend. In 3 months our gross debt will be larger than our entire economy. Our Nation's staggering debt is already costing millions of jobs because when you have a debt that is equivalent to 90 percent of your economy, it reduces growth by 1 percent. We are now at roughly 95 percent, going to 100 percent before the year is out.

More than 22 million Americans are out of work. A majority of Americans now fear the next generation will be worse off than theirs has been. In just 5 weeks, we are told we will reach the firm deadline on our Nation's $14.3 trillion debt. Then major reductions occur unless action is taken.

The Republican House has set forth their plan, but the Democratic Senate has not done so. This year the Senate has not produced a budget, has not met to work on a budget, and has not passed a budget in 791 days. We have not had a budget in 791 days. During that time we have increased the debt of the United States by $3.2 trillion and have spent over $7 trillion.

On the Senate floor we spend week after week on bills that have little or nothing to do with this increasing danger to our economy. We name courthouses and post offices, but we do not deal with the gathering financial storm. Now the Senate is scheduled to take a week off, to go into recess to celebrate the Fourth of July, Independence Day. We unite as a nation on that day to celebrate our heritage and way of life--a way that has been earned through hard work, responsibility, and sacrifice.

Before the Memorial Day recess, I presented to the majority leader a letter signed by 46 Republican Senators stating that we should not recess for the Memorial Day week but remain to do the work we need to do on our budget and financial plan.

Rather than face a vote on adjournment the leader opted for a series of pro forma sessions where the Senate gavels in, only to gavel out moments later, having once again not done any work. Rather than vote on it, that is what they decided to do.

So I renew today my request in that letter. We also owe the American people an honest, open debate on the debt limit, the debt ceiling we have. This should not be talks behind closed doors by only a few Senators, Congressmen, maybe the Speaker, the Vice President, or now maybe the President. Are they the ones to decides this? Aren't we all elected to do so?

Then should we be faced with a situation in which this small group, having produced what they consider the perfect deal, brings it to the Congress and demands, in a period of panic and fear, that it must be passed without any significant amendment or the country would have a crisis?

We have seen that before. Is that good business? I do not think so.

It is astonishing that we are so close now to the deadline we have been given without the Nation's President, our Chief Executive, having set forth a proposal on what he thinks we should do and should be included in a debt limit bill. Shouldn't the President tell us

that? He presides over the executive branch. All of the Cabinet people work for him. He has a 500-person Office of Management and Budget. We have a small staff on the Budget Committee where I am ranking member. Shouldn't he be providing some leadership, like Governor Christie, Governor Cuomo, Governor Brown, Governor Bentley in Alabama? Shouldn't we expect that?

The only concrete fiscal plan we have from the President is his February budget, which proved to be the emptiest promise of all, the most disappointing document. We were told by the President that his plan would not add more to the debt. In reality, it would grow the debt, if passed, by $13 trillion, doubling the entire debt of the United States again in the next 10 years. It would spend more than current spending projections. It would tax more and run up the debt more than current expected expenditures. It is an irresponsible budget.

So it is this kind of rhetoric that makes those of us in the Senate who are working on these issues concerned. We would need to see what the proposal is and have time to evaluate it. So I am calling on the President and the Vice President to make public the proposals they discuss during these secret meetings, including the tax hikes they have proposed. If they believe in these tax hikes, let the American people see them. Let's count up what it really means and let's evaluate them. Maybe there will be enough votes to pass that. I doubt it. Let the Congressional Budget Office provide an estimate of what the spending alterations and the tax alterations will be. Let the Budget Committee meet to address the impact of these proposals. It is time to remove the blindfold.

Since the election in November, the Congress, divided between a Democratic Senate and Republican House, has seen an increasing reliance on closed-door meetings to resolve our greatest public challenges. In so doing, I think Congress has once again ignored the public will. Ultimately, our challenges can only be solved through the Democratic process. Let's hold votes--dozens if necessary. Let's hold hearings. Let's have an open debate. Democracy may be messy. It may be contentious. But it is the best system we have and the only system that works.

The House Republican budget cuts $6 trillion in Federal spending over the next 10 years--$6 trillion. Let's hold votes to see whether the Democratic Senate is willing to reduce the spending that much. If not $6 trillion, than what about $5 trillion or $4 trillion?

The simple reality is that the American people expect us to reduce spending the way their cities, counties, and States are doing this very minute. They do not expect us to raise taxes to bail out Washington for reckless spending by raising taxes on the American people. Economic studies show again and again that spending cuts, not tax hikes, will result in greater growth and more successful debt reduction to make America competitive in the 21st century. We need a smaller, leaner, efficient government, not a heavy, more burdensome Tax Code.

So let's have the debate. Let's have it out here in the open. And let's allow the American people to participate and help decide. But until we work on a budget, until we work on the debt limit, until we work on the people's business, we do not have a right to go home and adjourn with a looming deadline--supposedly August 2--by which decisions have to be made. I believe to do so would be to fail the public.

This debt is the largest challenge of our generation. We have to meet that challenge. I don't believe it can be met by a small group of people meeting in secret. We need a national discussion about the threats we face. I have seen the studies in China, New Zealand. New Zealand had 22 years of deficits. They have had 16 years of surpluses since they made a national decision to get their finances in order, and the economy has grown far above the world average. That is what we need to be doing here. That is what our States, cities, and counties are doing.

I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. We have to rise to the occasion and face the defining issue of our time and put our Nation on a path to growth and prosperity and job creation, not a path to decline.

I yield the floor.

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

I thank the Chair.

The assistant bill clerk continued with the call of the roll, and the following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:

[Quorum No. 2]

Alexander

Begich

Bennet

Casey

Collins

Johnson (WI)

Reid

Mr. President, it is with great pride that I recognize racing legend Robert ``Bobby'' Arthur Allison upon his induction into the second class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Bobby is a founding member of the ``Alabama Gang'' and one of the greatest drivers of NASCAR's modern era.

NASCAR is the most popular and competitive racing organization in the United States, and its premier league, the Sprint Cup Series, draws thousands of fans to each of its 36 races. Last year, NASCAR opened the NASCAR Hall of Fame to honor the sport's greatest contributors, inducting Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Junior Johnson, Bill France, Sr., and Bill France, Jr. In the second class of inductees, Bobby, along with racing greats Ned Jarrett, David Pearson, and Lee Petty, and team owner Bud Moore, joined these elite racers in receiving one of the sport's highest honors.

Bobby Allison entered his first race while he was still a high school student in southern Florida, needing written permission from his mother to compete. Seizing the opportunity to race

competitively, he and his brother, Donnie, left Florida along with fellow racer Red Farmer, and settled in Hueytown, AL. These three young men became known as the ``Alabama Gang,'' a racing fraternity that would later include Bobby's son Davey Allison and NASCAR star Neil Bonnett.

After his relocation to Alabama, Bobby garnered tremendous success on the track, winning NASCAR Modified Special Division titles in 1962 and 1963. He followed this success with consecutive NASCAR Modified Division championships in 1964 and 1965. Bobby competed in his first Sprint Cup Series race at the 1961 Daytona 500, and achieved his first Sprint Cup win 5 years later, at Oxford Plains Speedway in Maine in 1966. In his 25-year Sprint Cup career, Bobby won 83 additional races, including three Daytona 500 triumphs and four victories at Talladega Superspeedway. He is tied with Darrell Waltrip for the third most wins in Sprint Cup history. Mr. Allison is also a five-time Sprint Cup Series runner-up, winning the Cup once in 1983, when it was still known as the Winston Cup. His final win was a thrilling father-son performance at the 1988 Daytona 500, where he and his son Davey finished first and second place, respectively.

Despite his great successes, Bobby's life has included tragedy. His racing career was cut short by injuries sustained during a severe crash at Pocono Raceway months after his final win at Daytona. In 1992, his youngest son Clifford was killed while practicing for a race at Michigan International Speedway. A few months later, his older son Davey Allison was killed in a helicopter crash at Talladega.

Through both success and sorrow, Bobby has displayed remarkable perseverance and resilience. He is known and respected all around the world and many of my fellow Senators have been generous in their praise in this indomitable racer. Senator John McCain, a friend and admirer, said, ``I couldn't be prouder of Bobby. He is an inspiration for all of us.'' Senator Jon Kyl, a NASCAR enthusiast, noted that the Phoenix International Raceway named a grandstand for Bobby and declared, ``The Hall of Fame did well to recognize Bobby in its second class. He is a NASCAR legend.''

Bobby and his wife Judy still reside in Hueytown, AL, and his two daughters, Bonnie Allison-Farr, and Carrie Allison, live with their families nearby. Selected as one of ``The 50 Greatest NASCAR Drivers of All Time,'' Bobby remains one of NASCAR's most respected competitors. A truly great Alabamian, Bobby has never forgotten his roots, and he will always be remembered not just as a racer, but as a beloved citizen of our State. It truly is a privilege to honor Bobby Allison not only for his tremendous success in racing's most competitive league, but also for his contributions to both NASCAR and the State of Alabama.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to honor a woman whose sparkling personality and literary voice truly captured the essence of Alabama. Kathryn Tucker Windham, a beloved storyteller, popular author, renowned photographer, and proud citizen of Alabama, passed away on June 12, 2011, at the age of 93. She lived a rich, full life, true to the highest ideals of our State. I knew her well and followed her career. In my opinion, her qualities of character, professional accomplishments, and simple decency place her at the top of all who have been products of our State.

Ms. Windham authored over two dozen books in her lifetime, giving an endearing and insightful voice to Southern culture and folklore. Her books related everything from ghost stories and memories to delicious recipes, and she developed a devoted audience in Alabama and around the United States. Ms. Windham also became a celebrated radio personality, appearing on Alabama Public Radio for over 20 years and commentating on NPR's ``All Things Considered'' from 1985-1987. She treated listeners nationwide to evocative tales of the South, with such titles as ``Grits Is a Singular Delicacy'' and ``Honeysuckle Blossoms Smell Wonderful,'' all with a Southern accent that remained true to the highest level of culture and grammar. In addition, she was a positive force for good, constant in her efforts to promote racial reconciliation in her hometown of Selma and in her State.

Ms. Windham spent her childhood in Thomasville, AL, not too far across the river from where I grew up, and later attended Huntingdon College, my alma mater. After graduation, she began work as a police reporter for a Montgomery paper, an impressive and unusual job for a female reporter at that time. Ms. Windham developed a distinguished journalistic career, working for the Birmingham News and winning several Associated Press awards for her work with the Selma Times Journal, where she made her home for many years. Some of her best known books are Alabama: One Big Front Porch and Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffery.

Ms. Windham was also a noted photographer, and her images provide a stirring portrait of the people and places of her home State. Her photography was included in the Huntsville Museum of Art's 1989 traveling exhibit, ``Alabama Landscape Photographs,'' and in a later show, ``Encounters 24. Kathryn Tucker Windham.''

Among many honors and awards, Ms. Windham was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor. This organization celebrates Alabama's best and brightest, and Ms. Windham's membership reflects her status as one of the State's beloved cultural figures and influential personalities. Ms. Windham was indeed a great Alabamian, and her work showcases the best of Alabama's values in a way that should make every Alabamian proud.

I recently watched a video of her in her small rocking chair, telling stories. They were told superbly, with perfect timing, and I burst out laughing. She was much like my great aunts, her contemporaries, who lived not far away. The stories of this generation provided humor, history, family affection, and education to listeners. It is a time pretty much gone. Someone once said that the purest examples of a period's ideals are curiously often found in its last days. It may be Ms. Windham was the last and best practitioner of those humorous and revealing stories that are indeed works of art.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Windham's family--her son, Ben, retired as editor of the Tuscaloosa News, her daughter Dilcy, and other family and friends as they mourn the loss of their beloved mother, relative, and friend. As her Senator and as her friend, I am grateful for the extraordinary life that Kathryn Tucker Windham led, and I am honored to serve as her Senator so as to be able to pay tribute to her life as the State and the Nation mark her passing. She will be dearly missed, but her legacy will live on in the stories, artwork, and memories she left behind.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to honor an exceptional group of law enforcement officers.

I recently met with Sheriff James Kelly of Catahoula Parish, LA, who informed me that a member of his department was conferred the 2011 National Missing Children's Special Recognition award by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Deputy Toney Edwards, of the Catahoula Parish Sheriff's Office in Harrisonburg, LA, was honored along with three others involved for their outstanding work resolving the tragic case of the 12-year-old Lexis Kaye Roberts. On October 8, 2010, two hunters found the partial remains of Lexis Roberts in Catahoula Parish, LA. Deputy Edwards, along with a team dedicated to the case, was able to identify her remains. The investigation into her disappearance and death focused on a man who was last known to be in the company of the girl and her mother, who was also missing. Information about the man was distributed to truck stops throughout the country and 2 days later he was arrested in Mississippi. The man has been indicted on Federal charges of kidnapping resulting in the death of the young girl.

Others honored for their working the case were Special Agent Benjamin Walsh, Supervisory Senior Resident Agent Robert King, and Senior Special Agent Janice Mertz of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Alexandria, VA.

In 1984, John Walsh cofounded the private, nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC. This center serves as a focal point in providing assistance to parents, children, law enforcement, schools, and communities in recovering missing children and raising public awareness about ways to help prevent child abduction, molestation, and sexual exploitation. NCMEC has worked on more than 73,000 cases of missing and exploited children, helped recover more than 48,000 children, and raised its recovery rate from 60 percent in the 1980s to 91 percent today.

I truly enjoyed talking to Sheriff James Kelley about the work being done by both NCMEC and his own police force in Louisiana. While I have worked closely with and seen the success of the many excellent Alabama law enforcement officers, I am glad to hear of the fine work of these officers.

On behalf of my colleagues in the Senate, it is an honor to recognize them for their exemplary service.

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

Mr. President, we heard an announcement today that the so-called ``Biden talks'' have broken down. It is not something that surprises me terribly. I have always said that I didn't think this was the right approach--to negotiate in secret some of the most important decisions this Nation has to make.

In truth, we have never been in a more severe financial condition than we are today. Many remember the government shutdown in the 1990s and the fact the Nation ended up, out of that difficult contentious time, balancing the budget in 3 years. Well, I serve on the Budget Committee--the Presiding Officer is an able member of the Budget Committee--and we know it is not going to be easy. It is going to be very difficult to get this country on the right financial course. So I think the decision of the House majority leader and Senator Kyl to withdraw from the negotiations over the debt ceiling underscores the inherent problems with this kind of nonpublic meetings, designed to come up with some global, comprehensive settlement of apparently all our financial difficulties. It is just not easy.

I think it underscores additionally a very important fact: that a President cannot lead from behind in dealing with the most pressing crisis our Nation faces--our exploding debt and the increasing damage that the debt is doing to the American economy right now. It is taking too long for a proposal to be presented to the Congress, and it is clear now that optimistic statements about progress have been too generous. It will be unacceptable for the White House talks, or any talks, to produce a controversial agreement at the eleventh hour and to then come before Congress in a panic and say: You have to enact this solution we came up with in secret, or the country will have a serious debt crisis.

That is the path we are heading down, just as we did with the CR--the continuing resolution--that was passed. That is not what the American people want; that is not what they deserve. They want regular order. They want Congress to have the opportunity to debate and vote. If it takes weeks--and it should take weeks for us to work through a challenge as serious as this one--then so be it. It just takes weeks. If it takes hundreds of votes, with people going on record and being criticized back home by one group or another for the vote they cast, so be it. That is what we are paid to do, and we are not guaranteed reelection. That seems basic to me.

Congress and the American people deserve an opportunity to fully review and consider any debt limit deal that is struck behind closed doors.

It has also been reported--in one publication at least--that in order to make the numbers look better, we are going to resort to certain budget gimmicks. In other words, let's say we eliminate a $100 million program. Well, we have been talking about how much that would save over 10 years, whether it would save $100 million over 10 years. That would be $1 billion. One of the gimmicks that was floated around, and was in fact used in the President's debt plan, was to say that we are going to do it over 12 years instead of 10 years as the deficit commission recommended. So we haven't actually cut any more; we have just added a couple of years to the timeframe that we are considering to make it seem like we reached the goal.

We have had gimmicks in which a big military payment to soldiers or a Social Security payment falling near the end of the month is pushed over to the next fiscal year--so it is due on September 30, and they make it payable October 1--and the numbers look better. We don't show the expenditure, but it is still there. The money is still going to be spent. Nothing has been changed except the date when the money is paid. These so gimmicks are unacceptable. Any plan that is presented on this floor, however it comes forward, must be free of gimmicks and accounting tricks. It must be an honest, fact-based budget. Additionally, raising the debt ceiling should not be accomplished by tax hikes. A punishing tax increase would not only threaten the growth we have to have in our economy, but it would also give a free pass to the egregious overspending of Washington. It would bail out the big spending excesses that have been put in place here. This overspending behavior is morally and economically culpable for our current crisis.

Federal Government spending already controls nearly 25 percent of our economy. It amounts to that much--the highest we have ever had. Some of that is because the economy is down. Some of it is because spending is up. But 25 percent of the economy is now driven by the Federal Government, with tax money and borrowed money. Sixty percent of what they spend is tax money; 40 percent-plus is borrowed. We take in $2.2 trillion, and we spend $3.7 trillion. That is why all the experts tell us this is unsustainable--and we know it is true. That is why we cannot do business as usual. That is why we have to do something. And that is why the House of Representatives produced a budget that cut spending. Some people didn't like it, but unless we have massive tax increases-- tax increase that will damage the economy--we have to reduce spending; right? Certainly this is correct. So that is where we are.

The difficulty is the spending and the resulting debt that is projected by the Congressional Budget Office--at least as they have analyzed the budget presented by the President. The current spending path, if it is just continued, is very dangerous. They are setting us on an even worse path.

Now, the President did submit a budget to the Congress. I offered it, and it was voted down 97 to 0. It made the already unacceptable debt path we were on much worse. Indeed, it would have doubled the country's debt, from $13 trillion to $27 trillion in 10 years. That is the path they projected, and the debt in the out years would be increasing, not decreasing; an unsustainable path.

So, ultimately, the numbers we have been hearing--like $2 trillion in cuts--are not sufficient. It is only a part of what we would have to do to get our country on a sound fiscal path. We hear this figure--that we need $2 trillion in cuts. A lot of people don't realize that the House budget reduces spending by $6 trillion over the next 12 years. By the way, over the next 12 years we are projected to add $13 trillion to the national debt, doubling it. So cutting $6 trillion is pretty significant. It requires us to take firm action.

This makes some people uneasy. They think we can't cut that much. But many of our States and cities and

counties have been cutting more than that on a percentage basis, and they are going to survive. They know they have to live within their means, but Washington has not gotten that message.

It is rumored that an unseen draft of the Senate Democratic budget proposes only $1.5 trillion in cuts. This is according to reports. They have tried to make the number bigger by counting interest savings, including those from tax hikes. This is a gimmick, because $1 in spending cuts is not equivalent to $1 in tax hikes. It just simply is not.

Cutting spending restores economic confidence and makes room for private sector growth. Studies show that this approach results in more significant deficit reduction. Cutting spending allows us to pursue a more competitive Tax Code. Hiking taxes is a less successful way to trim the deficit. That is the reality. Hiking taxes punishes families for the waste of Washington, and it enables a bloated government that needs to be trimmed and whipped into shape.

Raising taxes to pay for excessive government spending is a refusal to recognize there are limits to how much we can spend and how much we can tax. There is a limit to how much we can spend and how much we can tax if we want to be a government of democratic ideals, freedom, and free markets; and limited government is what our Founders intended.

A plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion and only cut $2 trillion in actual spending contains only a fraction of the savings we can and must achieve. That is my firm view, and I think we have many people in Washington, including, I have to say, our President, who are in denial about the challenges and difficulties we face.

This is not a situation in which a few little cuts here and there can put us on the path to fiscal solvency and get us off the path to fiscal destruction. It is going to take stronger steps, the kind of steps they are taking in New York State, the kind of steps Governor Christie is taking in New Jersey. We are not even reaching the level of cuts Governor Brown has achieved in California or what the English are doing in the U.K. We have to wise up. We cannot continue down this path.

Let me share a few other thoughts about debt because debt is a dangerous thing. It hurts us right now. Most of us have gotten into the habit of saying we are worried about our children and our grandchildren, and certainly we are worried about their future because of the debt burden we are placing on their shoulders. But the truth is, the debt threatens us right now. It is a danger to our economy. It is a danger and it is a drag on the economy. Let me explain how debt destroys jobs and why this Senate should pass a budget.

The House of Representatives has passed a budget; they have made it public and they have defended it and explained it. Let's see what the Senate Democratic majority will do about a budget.

Higher debt leads to slower economic growth. Empirical studies show that high levels of government debt inhibit economic growth by creating uncertainty, displacing needed private investment and placing upward pressure on interest rates and raising burden on the government itself through interest payments on the debt.

For example, the very well-respected and much commented-on study by Reinhart and Rogoff, Harvard and University of Maryland economists, found that in advanced economies with gross government debt above 90 percent of GDP--in other words, a total debt equal to 90 percent or above the size of the American economy--median economic growth tends to be between 1 and 2 percent lower, depending on the time period analyzed, when compared to countries with lower debt-to-GDP ratios.

What do we mean by 1 percent to 2 percent lower? In the first quarter of this year, we were expecting almost 3 percent growth. In reality, it was shockingly lower. It adversely impacted the stock market. What did it come in at? 1.8 percent. The second quarter may not be so good either. We are already above 90 percent of debt to GDP; so presumably, if this study is accurate, we should have been at 2.8 percent growth. In a sense, it is not a 1-percent reduction; it is 36 percent less than the growth we need to have.

Another study has shown that 1 percent growth in the gross domestic product, 1 percent growth in our economy, creates 1 million jobs.

When asked about this Reinhart-Rogoff study, President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, told the Budget Committee he considered it an excellent study--not only that, he told us in the committee he thought it underestimated the problem. Because when you get debt the size of 90 to 100 percent of GDP--and we are projected to reach 100 percent of GDP as our debt by the end of this year--he said it creates the danger of an economic crisis, some sort of spasm like we had when we had the financial crisis or even something similar to Greece. Something that could put us into another recession, which would be the worst thing that could happen to our economy.

That is why this is serious business. We are feeling the impact of this debt right now. It is pulling down economic growth. It is costing us jobs. It is creating uncertainty and fear in the marketplace. We have to get off of it.

President Obama appointed the fiscal commission, cochaired by Alan Simpson, a former Senator, and Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Clinton. Erskine Bowles and Senator Simpson told the Budget Committee we are facing the most predictable debt crisis in this Nation's history--the most predictable economic crisis in our Nation's history.

In other words, they explained that the debt trajectory we are on guarantees an economic crisis. The question is when.

So that is why we have to change. We don't want to have to cut any spending. The last thing politicians want to do is cut spending. The reason we are talking about this is because we have to. I do believe President Obama deserves severe criticism for not being out front leading on this, not telling the American people what his own experts are telling him. This was his expert, Mr. Bowles, and his Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner, telling us we have to change the debt path we are on. He needs to help explain to the American people why this is necessary, while it will be painful in the short run, but it can put us on the road to prosperity and not on the road to decline.

Other studies, including Caner, Grennes, and Koehler-Geib's 2010 study of 99 countries between 1980 and 2008, reached a similar conclusion about debt.

Successful debt-reduction measures relying on spending cuts, not tax increases, have consistently resulted in stronger economic growth. Research from Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, as well as a Goldman Sachs report, found that fiscal consolidations--reductions in spending--that focused on cutting government spending, including on subsidies, transfer payments, and government worker pensions, were successful in cutting fiscal imbalances, typically boosted economic growth, and were followed by improved equity--that is the stock market--and bond market performance. That is what their study found, an empirical study by Goldman Sachs and a professor from Harvard, economist Alberto Alesina--not Jeff Sessions. These are independent analyses.

Examples of successful spending reductions include Canada, which is in some ways doing far better than we are. We are at 9.1 percent unemployment and our unemployment numbers still seem to be going up; whereas, Canada is at about 7.1 percent and going down.

New Zealand had a dramatic turnaround in the early 1990s. They went from 22 consecutive years of deficit spending to now 16 years of surpluses. It was a deliberate, systematic decision by the people of New Zealand through their government to change what they were doing. They reduced spending. They created ways to make sure the government was productive and saved money. They privatized a lot of activities the government had taken over that didn't need to be government functions, and the country has been progressing solidly ever since.

Financial markets have issued dire warnings about the consequences of our inaction. Against the backdrop of a spreading euro zone debt crisis, the International Monetary Fund--certainly not a rightwing organization--the International Monetary Fund recently urged the United States to act

swiftly to address its soaring budget deficits saying: ``You cannot afford to have a world economy where these important decisions are postponed.''

The credit rating agencies Moody's and S&P have warned that they may place the U.S. Government's AAA bond rating under review for a possible downgrade within months.

Bill Gross, the head of PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars invested, has ceased buying U.S. Government Treasurys. None of that is in his portfolio. He said recently that what we are doing with our economy through the Fed, with this quantitative easing, and the government with its worthless stimulus package, is what he called a sugar high, not real, a temporary surge that has not changed the circumstances we are in. He is a man who deals every day with investments, and he has ceased to invest in U.S. Treasurys.

Yet the Nation has operated without a budget now for 785 days. The Democratically led Senate, even when they had a huge majority last year, perhaps the biggest majority in my lifetime--I can't remember a party having 60 votes in the Senate, when that last occurred--didn't pass a budget. You can pass a budget with just 50 votes. It was given priority. We know we need a budget. So we set up a Budget Act that allows even a bare majority of Senators to pass a budget, and set a plan for our Congress.

The Senate has not even allowed the Budget Committee to meet this year to mark up a budget resolution. The Budget Act calls for the Budget Committee to hold a markup by April 1. It calls for the Congress to pass a budget by April 15. The House passed their budget by April 15. We have not yet even had a markup to work on a budget resolution, and the leadership in the Senate has refused to pass a budget since April 29, 2009, 785 days ago. We wonder why this country is in a financial crisis when we will not even get together to pass a budget, as every city, county, and State has. I don't know of a single one that hasn't.

Over this time that we haven't passed a budget, the Nation has spent $7.1 trillion and added $3.2 trillion to the gross Federal debt.

The majority leader, my friend, Harry Reid--I know he has a tough job, but he made a big mistake. He recently said it would be foolish for the Democrats to produce a budget.

Foolish to produce a budget? Is this the kind of leadership the American people expect out of Washington, that the No. 1 Senator, the leader of the majority party, who has the power to control the flow of legislation in this body, says he is not about to produce a budget? Indeed, he says it is foolish to produce one, and he has basically sent word to the Budget Committee we are not to even have committee hearings.

I think nothing could be more foolish than refusing to provide the Nation's job creators, investors, and taxpayers with a solid blueprint for our fiscal future. A blueprint in which the American people can see we have gotten it, we understand the debt course we are on is unsustainable, and now we have a plan to get us on the right track.

Why wouldn't the people who wanted to be in the majority, who asked to lead, step forward and lead? Why will they not lay forth a plan that can be analyzed and shown to the American people? Why aren't they proud to present their vision for what America should be like and how we should handle their future?

I will say in conclusion that the breakdown of the talks does not surprise me. The Gang of Six tried. Those talks seem to have fallen apart. Then we went to the Biden talks. Once again, people said that we were about to reach an agreement any minute, that all the rest of us Senators could relax and all we needed to do is walk up and sign our name to what these wise few have decided our financial future should be like.

I think most of us realize we were elected. We are Senators. We are not rubberstamps for Vice President Biden and some of our fine colleagues. The Presiding Officer is an independent American citizen. He is going to make up his own mind. So am I. But when you are talking about a budget, a financial plan, a program to raise the debt ceiling in this Congress, we ought to read it, we ought to know what is in it. Not only us, the American people should know what is in it. They need to have time to absorb what it means for them and their future, that there will be no gimmicks or tricks, and it will be honestly presented. That takes some time.

I am worried and have been worried if they reach an agreement, even if it is a somewhat good agreement--I don't expect it to be a great one, but if a decent agreement is made, it is going to be brought forward and we will have to pass it within days because of a panic that we will have an economic problem if we do not raise the debt limit and we cannot spend so much money. I don't think we should head that way.

I don't know what is going to happen now. It is late, I will acknowledge, for us to go back to the regular order and have Budget Committee hearings and amendments in the Budget Committee and have people stand up before the world and explain their view and offer amendments. I don't think it is necessarily too late. I do not know where it will go. But this has not been a shining hour for the Senate, and after this last election in which Senators and House Members took a shellacking by the American people, who were very unhappy with us, the House I think appears to at least have gotten the message. They put forth an honest budget that changes the debt trajectory and they put it forth and explained it and defended it.

What do we have in the Senate? We have the majority leader saying it is foolish for us to produce a budget. We are not going to produce a budget. Did he mean it is foolish for America? No, he meant it is foolish for political reasons. He meant it was foolish for us as Democrats to step forward and lay out an honest plan because, wow, that plan may include tax increases. It might include spending reductions. It may not reduce the deficit very much, and we would have to defend that to the American people and we might not be able to defend it and people might be unhappy with us, as they were in the last election. So let's be clever, let's not produce a budget, let's let Mr. Ryan and the House lead with their chin, let them come out and make a plan and we will attack it. That is the Democratic leadership we have seen in this Senate.

It is not legitimate, it is not justified leadership. It is irresponsible and the President has not been engaged. He does not want to talk about it. He has not explained it in his State of the Union Address. He has not talked to the American people consistently about why his own debt commission chairman, Mr. Erskine Bowles, says we are facing the most predictable economic crisis in our history. No, he doesn't want to talk about that. Why? Because once you talk about it, it becomes obvious that spending needs to be cut and because it is obvious that you cannot fix your way out of this by raising taxes. If you are a tax and spender, you don't want to deal with that reality, in my view.

I am worried about it. I don't know where we are heading today. Senator Reid is a good man. Senator McConnell is a good leader on our side. I don't know what Speaker Boehner is going to do, what Vice President Biden will do. But the time, as old Snuffy Smith, the mountaineer, used to say, ``Time's a-wastin'.'' The deadline is coming closer and closer. We are going to have to figure out something to help secure the future of this country and I hope we can do it sooner rather than later.

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

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

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Paul, I call up amendments Nos. 502 and 503, and ask unanimous consent that they be reported by number.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his courtesy in allowing us to proceed and discuss issues at this point in time and wanted to recall for my colleagues that we are now at 776 days since the Senate has agreed to a budget. We have not passed a budget in 776 days. This is not responsible at a time in which we are having the largest deficits this country has ever seen.

This year it is projected our deficit, as of September 30, when the fiscal year ends, will have been $1.5 trillion. I think this is a big issue.

Last year the Budget Committee moved a budget out to the floor of the Senate, and Senator Reid chose not to bring it up, the majority leader. This year he declared that it would be foolish to bring up a budget to the floor even though he has a majority in the Senate. We can pass a budget with a simple majority. It is a priority item. He has apparently asked, and the Budget Committee has not even had a markup.

The Budget Act requires a markup to begin by April 1 and a budget to be passed by April 15 so we can go about the business of funding next year's government. We need a budget. States have budgets, cities have budgets, counties have budgets. No city, county, or state that I am aware of is anything close to borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend as this Congress is doing. We are spending $3.7 trillion. We are taking in $2.2 trillion. That is a stunning number.

One reason we are so out of control is we do not have a budget. I have been harping away at that, and I have been talking about its impact on jobs. The Rogoff and Reinhart study makes it clear from nations around the world they have studied that when the debt reaches 90 percent of the economy, the entire economy of the country equal to that much debt, median growth drops 1 percent. Really the average is above that, I believe, but at any rate, 1 percent.

We had 1.8 percent growth the first quarter. Could we have had 2.8 percent? We are talking about more than 30 percent reduction in our growth and 1 percent in growth in our economy equals the creation of 1 million jobs. So that is the kind of thing I have been talking about and going into some detail about and have been unhappy and disappointed that my majority leader would have the gall to attack the House Members.

I have a chart. We do not want to forget this number. It is a pretty big number. It is 776. That is how long it has been since we had a budget. So I complained about that. My friend, Senator Reid, has the toughest job in Washington, being the majority leader in the Senate. I do not know how he does it, but he has to lead.

As my wife says to me: Don't blame me. You asked for the job. Well, he asked for the job to be the leader, and he announced it was foolish for us to have a budget just a few weeks ago. When will we ever have one presumably?

Just today, earlier this morning, I guess he got a little tired of my harping, and he said: I heard our friend, the ranking member on the Budget Committee--that is me--come here and talk for hours, and he keeps talking about things that really have no bearing on what I think is important to the country today, and that is we know that the Republicans have put forward a budget that destroys Medicare.

Republicans did not destroy Medicare. Give me a break--and that is not the only problem we have facing the country. Medicare is going broke and we need to do something to save it, that is true. There are big issues. One of them is the surging debt that Erskine Bowles, appointed by President Obama to head the fiscal commission, testified about before the Budget Committee just a few weeks ago. He said we are facing the most predictable economic crisis in our Nation's history. This has the potential to put us into another doubledip recession. The economy is not doing well.

The things I have been talking about do have bearing on the future of our country, and I am disappointed my good friend, the Democratic leader, does not agree.

Housing prices continue to drop. They are expected to go down another 5 percent or 6 percent this year. We thought we had hit the bottom on housing. Gasoline is still close to $4 a gallon. Unemployment just went up. We had a meager increase in 54,000 jobs last month. We need to have about 200,000 to actually reduce unemployment. As a result, unemployment went up. It is the lowest and worst job numbers we have had in some time.

The debt, the economy, gasoline prices, jobs--those are matters that have no bearing on what is important to our country? I think they have a bearing on what is important. What does the majority leader believe? What does he think we should be doing?

This bill we have been fiddling with for weeks has no monumental or significant ability to alter the debt trajectory which is taking us on the most predictable course to fiscal disaster, that is what we need to be addressing. It is the most important issue facing our country. Of that I have no doubt. I do not think anybody has any doubt.

Listen to the news programs. Listen to the business channels. Read your newspaper. The debt we are facing is critical to our country.

The instability of our entitlement programs, such as Medicare, is an issue we have to talk about. We cannot deny that. We have opposition here to doing things that make sense, such as producing more oil and gas. We have a permitorium, a blocking of permits on drilling for oil and gas off our shore presumably so we can buy more oil and gas produced offshore in Brazil or Nigeria or Venezuela but not off our shores, transferring our wealth abroad that could be creating jobs and tax revenue for the United States Government.

What about this Medicare problem? Let me talk about it because it is a part of the problem. It is one of the difficulties we have to deal with, although certainly not the only one. The biggest problem we have now is discretionary spending that is out of control, not Medicare right now, not Social Security right now. In the last 2 years, under President Obama, nondefense--not defense--nondefense discretionary spending--not Social Security, not Medicare--went up 24 percent at a time when the deficits have been $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and this year $1.5 trillion, perhaps. We have never had deficits that large. The problem is, it is systemic. We have never had this kind of challenge.

I know there was a big fight in the mid-1990s, and the government was shut down, and Newt Gingrich and his team fought and said they wanted to balance the budget, and they balanced the budget. The country didn't sink into the ocean as that little shutdown occurred, but they balanced the budget. Now we are in a much deeper hole, I am telling my colleagues. I have looked at the numbers. I am the ranking member of the Budget Committee. It is not easy for us to get out of this fix, not easy at all. It is going to take some real effort and leadership.

The President submitted a budget that came before the Congress and was voted down 97 to nothing in the Senate. Not a single Member voted for his budget, which would have doubled the debt over the next 10 years. He made it worse than the baseline we were already on, which was utterly unsustainable.

So is Medicare something that absolutely cannot be discussed even though it is going into default? Let me tell my colleagues what some of our Democratic leaders have said about Medicare.

Steny Hoyer, the House whip, one of the top Democratic leaders in the House, said this:

Do I believe that there are other things we can do related

to Medicare? The answer is I do. I am not going to get into

articulating each one, but my expectation is they will be

under discussion by the Biden group.

They have a little secret group down there meeting with the White House--some Republicans and Democrats--and we are supposed to all relax now because they are going to solve our problems and put it on a silver platter for us, and we are just going to vote for it, and it will be good for the country. Well, I am a little dubious about it, but I am anxious to hear about what they are going to produce. The longer they wait, the more critical our situation is.

What about the House minority leader, the former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi? She was on Larry Kudlow, CNBC business channel. Mr. Kudlow is a very articulate moderator, and he asked this question of former Speaker Pelosi: Is Medicare on the table or entitlements on the table?

Answer: Yes. I think Medicare is on the table.

What about President Obama and his health care summit on February 25 of last year?

Almost all of the long-term deficit and debt that we face

relates to the exploding costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

That is his direct quote, the President of the United States.

He goes on:

Almost all of it. That is the single biggest driver of our

Federal debt, and if we don't get control over that, we can't

get control of our Federal budget.

Our former President, Bill Clinton, I guess maybe the spiritual head of the Democratic Party, one of the most respected Democrats, said:

I am afraid that the Democrats will draw the conclusion . .

. that we shouldn't do anything. I completely disagree with

that. The Democrats may have to give up some short-term

political gain by whipping up fear, if it's a reasonable

Social Security program, if it's a reasonable Medicare

proposal. You cannot have health care devour the economy.

Well, that is the truth. Of course we have to talk about it because it is on an unsustainable path.

Let me talk a little bit more about that because Congressman Ryan and I wrote a letter to the President today asking him to do his duty with regard to Medicare on a matter that just came up.

On May 13, the Medicare trustees issued their annual report on the financial status of the Medicare Program. Medicare has a trust fund. They have trustees who are committed to preserving the program, trying to make sure they can pay the recipients what they have been promised in the years to come and make sure the money is well handled. They do annual reports on this massive program. The Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund--that is the HI trust fund--ran an annual cash-flow deficit of $32.3 billion last year, in 2010, and will continue to run deficits throughout the decade. That is what the trustees say about Medicare.

They went on to say this: The Medicare trust fund will become insolvent in 2024--5 years earlier than last year's date of exhaustion. Can we imagine that? They redid the numbers and have concluded it is going to be in default, become insolvent, 5 years sooner than they were predicting just last year.

They went on to say: If current law remains unchanged, Medicare's unfunded obligation is $24.4 trillion over the next 75 years. In other words, to put this on a sound basis, investing today, you need $24.4 trillion.

Like last year, the nonpartisan Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Richard Foster, used his statement of actuarial opinion at the end of the report to warn that:

The financial projections shown in this report for Medicare

do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program

operations in either the short range (as a result of the

unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or in

the long range (because of the strong likelihood that

statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of

Medicare provider services will not be viable).

On May 20, a week after the trustees' report was released, the Chief Actuary, Mr. Foster, produced his ``illustrative alternative'' projections based on ``more sustainable assumptions.'' Those estimates indicate that under a more likely scenario for future spending, Medicare's unfunded obligations are $36.8 trillion over the next 75 years--a figure that is far larger than the official trustees' estimate of $24.4 trillion.

Mr. Foster has been there a long time. He is a very serious person. He understands his responsibility to tell us the truth. He understands the responsibility to Medicare recipients. He is telling us we need to do something about Medicare.

It goes on: The trustees projected that total Medicare spending will draw more than 45 percent of its funding out of the Treasury's general fund in 2011.

A lot of people think Medicare is funded by the Medicare tax deduction we see on our paycheck, the withholding tax we pay, and that is a significant amount of money, no doubt about it. But the Medicare trustees just reported to us that of the total money Medicare spends, 45 percent is funded directly out of the general fund--general tax revenues--not the payroll withholding. As a consequence, for the sixth year in a row, they say--2006 through 2011--the trustees made an ``excess general revenue Medicare funding'' determination. Two consecutive ``excess general revenue Medicare funding'' determinations trigger a ``Medicare funding warning.'' This Medicare warning requires that the President submit a legislative proposal to address this crisis within 15 days of his next budget. So for 5 years in a row there has been a Medicare funding warning issued. President Bush submitted a proposal when he was President to deal with the shortfall in Medicare, but the Democratic majority in both Houses at the time failed to act on it, or do anything about the crisis. But now we have gone further and deeper into debt and the trustees issued a Medicare funding warning for the fifth consecutive time in their report this year, 2007 through 2011. But President Obama is not responding.

So who cares about Medicare? I think all of us do. But does anyone dispute that the trustees, the people who are statutorily required by law to superintend this fund, don't care about it, aren't worried about the recipients? They have a lawful obligation to try to ensure that the program is on a sound basis.

Under the Medicare prescription drug bill that was passed here, Public Law 108-173, Congress established the Medicare ``trigger'' to call attention to the program's growing fiscal imbalance. If, in their report, the Medicare trustees project that Medicare will draw more than 45 percent of its funding out of the Treasury's general fund within a 7-year period, the trustees must make an excess general revenue Medicare funding determination. By law, two consecutive excess general revenue Medicare funding determinations produce a Medicare funding warning, triggering action by the President. Under the public law, U.S. Code, the President is required to submit legislation--submit legislation to whom? To the Congress, us--in response to a funding warning within 15 days of the next budget, and the proposal would then receive expedited consideration in Congress.

So when we have this 45-percent level breached, the President is supposed to submit to us a plan, and we are supposed to give it expedited attention. Why? Because Medicare is important. That is why. And when it is not on a sound financial basis, Congress has a responsibility to do something about it--not do nothing, not criticize somebody such as Congressman Ryan who proposed a sound, well-thought- out, long-term approach to Medicare. It may not be the one I would agree with or other Members would agree with, but no one can doubt, in my opinion, that it was a serious, thoughtful effort that would have put Medicare on a sound footing. But if it is not the plan we want, let's have another.

What is the President's plan? That is the one that is required by law. The President is required to submit a plan. While a Medicare funding warning has been issued each year since he has taken office, President Obama has failed to submit a single proposal to Congress in response to these warnings.

So today I joined with Congressman Paul Ryan, the young chairman of the House Budget Committee to write a letter to the President. Nobody has worked harder. Nobody is smarter. Nobody loves this country more. Nobody is prepared to stand before the American people and explain what he thinks is best for the country and be prepared to defend it with facts, with integrity, and with responsibility. What a refreshing face he is. I have come to have the greatest admiration for him.

So what happened to Congressman Ryan? He helped write a budget, and in part of the budget, after 10 years, he proposed some changes to Medicare that would put it on a sound footing over the long term. When it came over to the Senate it was attacked by Democrats--but where is the Senate budget? The House has produced a budget. It reduces spending in the short run. It had a responsible approach to dealing with some of the long-term entitlement issues that threaten us in the long term.

It was a sound program the Congressman had, and I thought--but we could disagree. So we are looking forward to what would happen over here. Well, the majority leader said: We think it is foolish to have a budget. We are not having a budget. Do not let the Budget Committee commence its hearings. We have not even begun a markup in Budget Committee. We do not have a budget. So instead we are having secret talks. In a committee, you have to stand up before the world, offer amendments, debate the issues, express your views. You cannot hide. It is on the record; they take down your words. But secret meetings with the White House are off the record, and talk occurs behind closed doors. So I do not know what is going to happen out of this. I am nervous about it, frankly. I would rather do it by the regular order. Maybe something good will come out of it. I am not going to prejudge it. If it is good, I am going to celebrate. If it is not good, I am going to oppose it.

We wrote to the President today, and we called on him to show some leadership. We noted that the trustees have projected general revenues would account for more than 45 percent of Medicare spending for the sixth consecutive year. The Trustees have issued another funding warning that requires the President to submit a legislative proposal to Congress. He knew this was coming. The numbers have been there for several years. They knew it was coming. He is supposed to submit a legislative proposal to get Medicare on the right track. Does he plan to raise taxes? Cut benefits? Ration care? Or is he going to create a more competitive system that does the job with a little less money. What are you going to do? What is your answer? We wrote: As chairman and ranking member of the House and the Senate committees, respectively, we are deeply disappointed that the administration continues to ignore this legal obligation. In 2008, the previous administration submitted a proposal to Congress that took steps to address Medicare's fiscal imbalance. By contrast, your administration has not provided a response to the annual Medicare trigger, ignoring the law in each of the past 3 years. This year, your budget did not even acknowledge the existence of the Medicare funding warning.

I have the Medicare trustees report right here. Far from saying no changes are necessary in Medicare, the trustees have pleaded with us in their reports. The trustees' chief actuary has noted that in his official reports to us. He says: Do something.

This cannot continue. So here we are. We are going down the road with debt the likes of which this Nation has never seen before. At the end of last fiscal year, the gross debt of our country was 93 percent of GDP. By the end of this fiscal year it will be over 100 percent of GDP. I mentioned when you get to that level of debt, your growth goes down, and lower growth means a loss of jobs, and that you are not creating the jobs you should have.

How serious is our debt situation? Well, look at the chart for those around the world. Greece in this critical crisis is above 100 percent. They are at 142 percent. Their debt equals 142 percent of their economy, and they are in a state of virtual collapse. Expert after expert says they will default on their debt. They are not going to be able to work their way out of it. I hope that is not true, but that is what they are saying.

What about Ireland? You have heard Ireland. The ``PIGS'' as they call them, these countries and others in debt, what is theirs? It is now 96 percent, 2 or 3 percent higher than ours--only. They are second in the European Union. We are next at 93. Portugal is next. You have heard about Portugal being in financial trouble. Their debt to GDP is 83 percent. Spain, you have heard them talked about as being in trouble financially. Their debt to GDP--gross debt is 60 percent. So we are well above that. I am worried about the country. What is critical is we need a budget that contains spending now. We need to demonstrate a commitment to reform the unsustainable path of entitlement spending, and we need to do it in a way that focuses on creating economic growth and jobs in this country.

Growth and jobs, that is what our future should be focused on. I am confident this country has not seen its best days, but we are on a path of decline now. I truly believe it. I hate to say it. But our policies, if they are not changed, will lead inevitably to economic decline as witness after witness has told us in testimony.

How do we get out of it? We send a message through ourselves and the world: We have got the message. We are reducing spending. We are putting ourselves on a path to a balanced budget. We also know that it is not just the short term, it is long term. Many of these unsustainable programs need to be changed and strengthened, and the way to do that is to make the changes now, and you will have massive impacts in the years to come. Modest changes now will be good.

Those are the things that I think are important. Those are the things I think should be talked about. Those are the things I think my good friend Mr. Reid apparently thinks are not important. Because he said-- he has come down here and talked for hours, and he keeps talking about things that have no bearing on what I think is important for our country today.

I submit to my colleagues and to the American people, are the things I am talking about important, or are they

not? He wanted to talk about how the Republicans have put forth a plan that he says will destroy Medicare. That is what the majority leader wants to talk about. He wants to change the subject. Well, I wish it were not so. I wish Medicare were healthy. I wish it had the money to continue to honor the commitments we have made in the years to come. But it does not. It is just does not. We do not have the money to continue at this rate. It is not impossible, though, to fix it and it is even more possible to fix Social Security. Medicare is a little harder than Social Security. But both of these can be fixed and made permanent and sound. We need to talk to the Medicare trustees. We need to be honest with one another and see how we can make those plans solvent.

But that is just one part of the problem. In the immediate time, we have got to reduce discretionary spending, across the board. I think we have to. I wish that were not so, but it is. Countries around the world are doing it. Cities are doing it. Governors are doing it. This Congress has done nothing of the sort. Indeed, as I mentioned, last year--the last 2 years--discretionary spending--nondefense--has gone up 24 percent. Defense went up. We hear a lot of complaints about defense. It was up 2 or 3 percent a year for the last 2 years. Other nondefense went up 24 percent.

I cannot tell you how deeply I believe our Nation is on a perilous course that needs to change. I want to say again, I have great affection for my friend Senator Reid. He has got a tough job. But he asked for it. He asked for it. And when the country is in financial crisis, we expect the majority leader of the Senate to effectively lead, and not to attack people who are trying to do the right thing, and to bring this country onto a sound path.

To say it is foolish to have a budget, what he meant was, it is foolish politically, of course. He was saying it is foolish politically to have a budget. It is not foolish for America to have a budget. It is foolish for America not to have one. Certainly it is not foolish to attempt to have a budget.

I feel that we, in this Congress, have not quite assimilated the severity of the situation in which we find ourselves. We remain in denial about how seriously we are being impacted and what substantial changes are going to be necessary. We are going to have to do like the Brits who are turning their country around. We might have to do as they did in Estonia. Talk to the Estonian people. The cabinet members took a 40-percent pay cut. I wonder what would happen around here if we talked about taking a 40-percent pay cut? But their debt to GDP is 7 percent, not 93. They intend to keep it that way. And their growth is coming back already. They are showing about 6-percent growth. Our growth is 1.8 percent in the first quarter. Coming out of a recession, it should be higher.

If we do the right thing, we get this country on the right path, we reduce our spending, we watch every dollar we spend, and we make our country more productive, we eliminate unnecessary regulation, we focus on creating jobs and growth, the natural capabilities, work ethic, integrity, the legal system of America will allow us to continue to be the most prosperous Nation in the world.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter I referred to earlier to the President.

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

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

Mr. President, I had the opportunity this morning to catch the CNBC program that had Jack Welch, former CEO of GE on, and I thought he made a number of valuable points. He is very worried about our economy. He believes we are facing serious troubles, and we need to take action to do something about it. As a corporate leader of great renown, one of the more respected corporate leaders in America at this time, he evidenced a real frustration at the lack of leadership this administration is showing with regard to our financial crisis.

He said a number of things. One of them was classic leadership, classic thought by a manager, a man who has managed a very large corporation worldwide with many moving parts. He said we have to have a strategy, and we have no strategy. I think that is correct. I do not believe the American people sense that this country is able to articulate a serious strategy to confront the difficulties with which we are now dealing.

He said everything needs to go through a screen, and in his opinion the screen should be what our strategy is and our strategy should be, in general, to create an economy that is productive, innovative, and growing; creating jobs, creating wealth, creating prosperity, and everything ought to be judged by that.

One of the points he mentioned was drilling for oil and gas in America. We have all kinds of government agencies here, all kinds of regulations and a permitorium, a blocking of the giving of permits, that has substantially reduced the ability of this Nation to produce oil and gas at home, a critical factor if we are going to be competitive and economically prosperous.

We need to quit buying so much abroad, sending wealth abroad, and keep it at home. He just threw that out as one of the things that would never get through a screen. Instead of helping this country to be more prosperous and create jobs and growth, it does just the opposite. Yet in this massive government, we take contradictory actions, and as a result we are muddling along at a very unhealthy rate, and the American people are worried about it.

Last week was the sixth consecutive week that the stock market fell. We were told in January, when things were progressing, that everything was just doing great and that we are creating a lot of jobs; we are creating jobs, and the market is doing better. But in fact it is not moving very well. If we read the financial pages, we see that the people who spend their lives dealing with the economic threats we face are uneasy about our future.

Just read those articles in Barron's that just came out over the weekend about the roundtable of worldwide economic experts. It was very troubling to me. Many of them had serious concerns about the future. Would we have a doubledip? Some seem to say yes. The Presiding Officer, Mr. Coons, is on the Budget Committee and knows the numbers we are dealing with and has heard the testimony that Mr. Bowles, former Chief of Staff for President Clinton, and Alan Simpson, in their Fiscal Commission Report, said we are facing the most predictable crisis in our history, and it could cause economic difficulties for us soon. Mr. Bowles said 2 years, give or take. Not just for our grandchildren, but soon.

This is why the experts say we have a problem. I do not believe we have from the White House any call to the kind of action necessary to alter the unsustainable debt trajectory we are on.

I do not think the American people fully understand, but they understood enough to punish the Congress in this last election. I am afraid they are going to punish us again because no Congress can defend itself from the criticism that we have presided over a government that is borrowing 40 cents

of every dollar and spending $3.7 billion and taking in only $2.2 billion and borrowing the rest. We are on a path that does not alter that. The President's budget is the most irresponsible ever submitted and would make our debt path worse rather than better, so I am worried about it. So the majority leader announces: Well, it would be foolish to have a budget. Senator Reid said it would be foolish to have a budget, at a time when we have never faced a greater threat to the integrity of our economic system than we face today.

Let me repeat that. We have never been in a position in which the economy could do as much harm to our Nation as it can today. We are heading to the wall at warp speed. It is a dangerous circumstance. But we can get off this path. We have to do some things that are not very pleasant, but not impossible, that are being done by mayors and county commissioners and Governors all over America and in countries around the world. The British made some very substantial cuts to their overall spending program, far more than we are discussing, and some people pushed back and said, We are cutting too much. That debate will happen here, if we cut spending here.

The International Monetary Fund, certainly no bastion of conservative economic thought, said, No, U.K., stay the course. Don't weaken now. You set a good, tough path for constraining and reducing spending, and if you stay the course you will be more successful than if you give up and quit under the pressure that you might be under today.

So how do we get there? How do we get to the point where we deal with these issues? Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, drawing from his and others' research on large fiscal adjustments across multiple nations, said this:

Spending cuts are far more effective than tax increases in

stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns. In

fact, in several episodes, spending cuts adopted to reduce

deficits have been associated with government expansions

rather than recessions.

Goldman Sachs has also done a study that indicates that. We have empirical evidence that countries that have taken firm steps to get their financial house in order have found that, maybe almost to their surprise, they have had economic growth quicker than many had projected.

So where are we today? Apparently, we are not going to have any kind of regular budget process in the Senate, to my great disappointment. I believe Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee--I am the ranking Republican on that committee--was prepared to have a markup, but the Democratic leadership has decided not to. Senators can't call a Budget Committee markup; only the chairman and the leaders can do those kinds of things. They have decided not to. Under the Congressional Budget Act, the Budget Committee should have marked up and passed a budget resolution by April 1 of this year, and Congress should have passed it by April 15. We are now getting close to July 4 and we have had no real public discussion, no national debate, about the challenges this Nation faces.

First we had the Gang of Six. They have been meeting in secret, and I don't know who advised them. I don't think average Americans, in their struggles--maybe they have lost their job or haven't seen their pay increase or have seen their overtime eliminated--were in the room with them. They are good people. I was kind of getting anxious for a month or so to hear something from them. Maybe it would be a good deal. Maybe it would be something to get us moving. I don't know. I had my doubts about it, and I expressed that, but I expressed my support to see what they could produce. Maybe it would be worthwhile. I am withholding judgment. So now we are not hearing from them, although they apparently have enough work product--maybe even a plan--that they met with 10 other Senators, I understand, to discuss what they are planning on. They haven't let anybody else in on the deal.

But now we hear, Don't worry about the Gang of Six. If that doesn't work, we have the Vice President. President Obama has asked him to have meetings with a very small group of Senate and House leaders, and they are going to write us a budget. There are some good people meeting in that group, I don't have any doubt about that. But weeks have gone by. We had a week recess and apparently it was over 2 weeks that they didn't even meet.

The President is traveling around the world making speeches, raising money, and this country has not had a budget in 775 days. This Senate has not passed a budget in 775 days. The Budget Act requires us to pass a budget. It can't be filibustered. It can be passed with a simple majority. If it is going to be a partisan effort--and sometimes it is a purely partisan vote--53 Democratic Senators here ought to be able to pass a budget. We passed a budget when Republicans had a one-vote majority. Sometimes you can get a bipartisan agreement on a budget. That is the best thing. Sometimes it is done with a simple majority. So we have the potential to do that.

But, oh, no. Weeks have gone by and we are waiting on these meetings at the White House. Nobody knows exactly what is happening there. It is supposed to be secret. Normally a budget is brought up, it is brought before the Budget Committee, the chairman lays down the chairman's mark, everybody gets to offer complete substitutes, gets to offer their whole budget or technical amendments or significant amendments to that budget, and they get voted on, and the matter is discussed. The American people can get a copy of the chairman's mark and the amendments offered by the other members of the committee. That is how we do business in a democracy, the last I heard, and then we are accountable, right? By how much do you think we ought to raise taxes on the American people? By how much do you think we are going to cut spending? Are you going to dare to make any changes in Medicare? I will not vote for it if you make any change in Medicare. Or: You have to do something about these entitlements. You didn't do anything about the Medicare entitlements? You are going to let them go broke? Those are the kinds of good discussions we would be having, and the American people could see it. Then it comes to the floor of the Senate. It has an expedited process, but there is a real opportunity to have amendments--even hundreds of amendments--to offer to the Budget Act, and we then have something that at least is seen by the American people and at least they will know if their representatives voted for or against it. But I think this idea of doing it in some other order, not the regular order, is an unhealthy process, and I hope we can do better.

I wish to conclude by saying that in 775 days, I don't believe we have fulfilled our responsibility. We obviously have not fulfilled our statutory responsibility under the Budget Act, which says we should have a budget by April 15. It also says we should have held a markup by April 1. Well, it is tough business, standing before the American people in this crisis we are in, and proposing the kinds of severe actions that are going to be necessary to put our country on the right path--not the path to decline, not the path to debt crisis, but the path to prosperity. It is going to take some effort. It is going to be painful in some ways. But we are not moving in that direction at all.

What about the House of Representatives? They passed a budget. They passed a bold budget--a budget that goes 10 years and then even further, and it laid out a historic plan. It confronted the growth in entitlement programs that is a threat to their very viability. It encouraged economic growth. It reduced spending, which has surged in the last several years. Indeed, in the last two cycles, we have increased nondefense discretionary spending 25 percent. People act as though if we cut spending, we are going to sink in the ocean. That growth could be eliminated and we would be no worse off than we were 3 years ago.

So the House did their duty. And what happened? Our Democratic leader over here in the Senate, instead of producing his own budget, calls up the House budget and he wants to talk about how horrible it is and then vote on it. It got quite a number of votes in the Senate--certainly not enough to pass. We got a lot of votes. So I offered the President's budget, the one he submitted a couple months ago and that I call the most irresponsible budget ever to be presented to this Nation--and I

stand by that. We are in a systemic crisis that has to be confronted with serious decision making, and the President's budget comes nowhere close to doing that. So I offered it. The President's budget failed 97 to 0. Not one Member of this Senate, Republican or Democrat, voted for that budget.

I think this is irresponsible. We have seen 775 days pass. We didn't have a budget last year. We didn't pass a single appropriations bill last year. Everything was cobbled together in this monumental CR we heard about, the continuing resolution. It is a totally ineffective method of governing this country and spending money. Congress ought to do its 12 appropriations bills properly every year. First, they should have a budget that tells all the committees how much money they have to spend and then they should pass the 12 appropriations bills. Each one should be brought up subject to amendment and voted on.

We have been in this irresponsible circumstance. My request is to our colleagues who are working either in the White House with the Vice President or whatever they are doing over there, the Gang of Six or Five or whatever--whatever they are doing--how about getting busy. How about let's see some numbers so we can get to work. I don't think it is going to be well received by Members of the Senate to have plopped down in our lap, on the eve of some important matter such as the debt ceiling, a budget proposal that nobody has had a chance to study and that the American people don't know the details of. I thought that was one of the things we learned in the last election. I thought we learned the American people want transparency. They want accountability. They want to know what their representatives are doing, and they want to see them working in the light of day, not the dark of night. I think that is reasonable. That is the way our Congress was set up to work. That is what I wish to see.

I think it is time for these meetings to start wrapping up. I think it is time for us to start seeing some numbers. What are they going to do, wait for the last possible day to raise the debt ceiling and then waltz in here with some sort of agreement we are all supposed to rubberstamp in a state of panic? I don't appreciate that. I don't think the American people will either. It is not good government. If they have a plan, let's start seeing what it is. Let's bring it up and let's start having a public discussion on it and vote on it. I think that is the right way to go about our business.

I am very concerned that we have gotten away from the regular order. I believe we have gotten away from our august responsibility to pass a budget, to decide openly and publicly how much we think we can spend, how much we are going to tax, how much debt we are going to have. We ought to do that publicly and openly. I believe that will be held before the public and it will help the American people understand how deep a hole we are in. It is far deeper than most of us realize. I have looked at the numbers. They are very grim indeed. We need to get started sooner rather than later.

I thank the Chair.

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

Madam President, I appreciate my colleague's remarks about the agricultural community. I am certainly hearing that, and one of the very real factors in our inability to create jobs in America is the surging regulations that burden the private sector including the agricultural community. Mr. Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, was asked about that yesterday. He said no study had been done about it, talking about the banking regulation primarily. We need to do more about that and face the reality that that is so. Last week's economic numbers were not good. They were very troubling. We saw an increase in unemployment. We saw a decline in consumer confidence. We saw a decline in manufacturing in the Midwest--a key area of our country for manufacturing. A number of factors were noted during that period which were not good. I guess it is part of an accelerated decline in the stock market, which is down 5 percent, maybe 6 percent, after 5 consecutive weeks of decline, and the Senate has gone 770 days without passing a budget. It is a fundamental responsibility of this body, required by statute, that we pass a budget. The date is April 15--and April 1 to commence hearings in the Senate--and we have not met that responsibility. In fact, we haven't even had a markup in the Budget Committee to commence considering a budget. Our Democratic leader, Senator Reid, the majority leader in the Senate, has stated it would be foolish to pass a budget. By that he means politically foolish for the Democrats because they are enjoying trying to attack the House Members who passed a responsible, long-term budget that changes the debt trajectory of America. Instead of trying to do the same thing, they just attack the House budget and produce nothing of their own.

The American people are rightly worried about our debt. They are worried about our economy. They are worried about overregulation. They are worried about the lack of jobs.

This week, Austan Goolsbee, the senior economic adviser to the President, announced he would be resigning his post this summer. His departure is just the latest in a trend of top economic advisers abandoning the administration over the course of the 2-plus years since the passage of the failed $820 billion stimulus package, every penny of which was borrowed. The idea was to send out money and somehow artificially create a stronger economy. It

failed, and many predicted it would fail.

The President's first Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, left in July of last year. Christina Romer, the President's first Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, left last September. Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, former Director of the National Economic Council for the President, left last December after less than 2 years.

As a result of the failed stimulus and other debt we have accrued, we are in much deeper debt, but Americans know it has not made them better off. In fact, increased debt has further eroded the economic confidence that is necessary for a spirited recovery and has made our situation worse. Many say we have to borrow money to spend it and that is how we get the economy on a sound footing. Thoughtful economists and others have said that this not so. I believe history has proven them to be correct; that borrowing to spend does not make us better off.

The last deficit before the President took office was $450 billion-- far too high. The year before that, the deficit was $162 billion. This year, the deficit will be $1.5 trillion, the third consecutive trillion-dollar deficit. Yet the President and some on his economic team have promised that their spending program would keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent, but more than 2 years later unemployment now stands at 9.1 percent, after having increased again last week.

The economic numbers released Friday show this to be the most disappointing economic recovery in 70 years. Only 54,000 jobs were created in May, marking the worst jobs report in 8 months. The President asserts he is responsible for adding 2 million jobs since he took office. But the percentage of our working age population that is employed--and we have had an increase in the working age population-- has declined to 58.4 percent. We have to go back to October of 1983 to find such a low number.

Nearly half the unemployed--45.1 percent--are now classified as long- term unemployed, meaning they have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. While the official unemployment rate increased from 9 percent to 9.1 percent, adding those who are underemployed--meaning those who can't find full-time work or those who are so discouraged by the job market they have given up trying to find work--would boost the unemployment rate to 16.1 percent.

But perhaps most alarming of all, as pointed out in the June 4 lead editorial by Alan Abelson in Barrons, is that actual private sector employment today is now 2 percent below where it stood 10 years ago. Two percent fewer people are working today than were working 10 years ago.

Citing Philippa Dunne and Doug Henwood of the Liscio Report, Mr. Abelson notes:

Job losses over a 10-year period is unprecedented since the

advent of something resembling reliable tallies began in

1890. So far, they point out somewhat grimly--

He is talking about Mr. Dunne and Mr. Henwood--

we've regained just 1.8 million jobs lost in the Great

Recession and its aftermath, or about one in five.

So the policies we are following are not working. We have to get this economy moving. We added only 54,000 jobs, a net decline in percentage in terms of employment. We have to get jobs created, and 54,000 is way below what we need to have to stay level. About 180,000 a month need to be added.

I would suggest that it is no wonder the President's top economic team is leaving the administration.

But rather than recognizing the need to change course, the President doubled down with the budget he submitted to Congress. He told the American people his budget would ``not add to the debt'' and that it would allow us to ``live within our means.'' But the Congressional Budget Office analyzed that budget and found otherwise--dramatically. In fact, CBO said that the budget the President submitted to this Congress in February would double our debt over the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, economists are warning that if we don't change our debt trajectory--and soon--our debt could stifle the very economic recovery that is already moving far too slowly.

This is the important point, and it goes right to the heart of the argument that we have to artificially stimulate this economy by borrowing money from our children so we can spend it today and that this is going to make us more healthy. A study by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff titled ``Growth in a Time of Debt'' in American Economy Review (2010) shows that economic growth is 1 percent lower, on average, in countries with gross debt above 90 percent of GDP--90 percent of their economy. It is 1 percent lower. If we want growth, we have to look at how big our debt is. If it gets over 90 percent of GDP, then we show an average of a 1-percent reduction in growth.

When asked about this study while testifying before the Budget Committee earlier this year, Treasury Secretary Geithner called the Reinhart and Rogoff study excellent, adding that ``in some ways . . . it understates the risks.'' In other words, it creates greater risks of economic and financial spasm that could put us back into a recession. Stephen Roach, chairman at Morgan Stanley and lecturer at Yale, was recently asked on CNBC--yesterday, I believe--about what is happening with the economy, why we see the disappointing results. This is what Mr. Roach, a professional economist and player in the world financial markets, said:

I come down on it as Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart do, in

their analysis of post-crisis economies. This is the way it

is. When you have such a massive buildup of debt pre-crisis,

when you hammer the consumers the way we did in this crisis,

the economy is going to sputter.

America's debt stands now at 95 percent of GDP. It is set to exceed the entire economy by the end of this year, and the President's own Treasury Secretary and widely respected economists are saying this could have a negative impact on the economy and jobs. It could cause a 1-percent decrease in economic growth, according to Rogoff and Reinhart.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, a 1-percent decrease in growth could cost about 1 million jobs--not 54,000 but 1 million. If we had less debt, we would be seeing more than the anemic 1.8-percent growth in the first quarter as we come out of this recession. We would have probably had 2.8 percent growth, if this study, which Mr. Geithner considers to be excellent, is accurate. Certainly, debt pulls down economic growth. Common sense tells us so. Numerous experts agree this debt is dangerous. It threatens our fragile economic recovery. Growth is what we need for jobs and it brings in more tax revenue and helps us balance our budget.

But in response to the debt threat, what do we see? We got a budget from the President that would double the Nation's Federal debt in 10 years. When that budget was released it received immense criticism, so the President gave us a speech that suggested some changes. He called it a framework. Members of the Budget Committee wrote to the President and said: Well, put this in budget language. Send us a new budget then. If you are changing, if people didn't like your first one, let's see this one in detail. But they refused to do that. Recently, we voted on the President's budget in this Senate. It was brought up and voted on. Not one Senator, Republican or Democratic, voted for that budget. It was utterly rejected.

Meanwhile, our Democratic leadership in the Senate, which has the power to call the committee hearings that would commence a budget markup and eventually pass a budget, hasn't offered a budget this year. Indeed, they haven't passed a budget in the last 770 days. At least one was brought out of committee last year but never brought up by Senator Reid on the floor to be voted on, so we didn't have a budget last year. This year, they didn't even bring the budget to committee to be marked up. The majority leader said it would be foolish for us to have a budget. It would be foolish to have a budget in a time of the largest deficit the Nation has ever incurred, which will occur this year-- approximately $1.5 trillion in deficits. We bring in $2.2 trillion, and we are spending $3.7 trillion this year. Forty cents of every $1 we spend is borrowed, and we don't even have a budget. What do we do? The majority leader calls up the House budget, a responsible, historic alteration of the unacceptable debt path we are on, putting us on the right path.

You can argue about some of the things that are in it, fine. But it courageously and honestly changed the trajectory of America's debt path and was widely praised in that regard. The majority leader brought it up so he could vote it down and attack it, producing nothing on his own. So I brought up the President's budget. It got zero votes.

The failure of this body to produce a spending plan to tackle our Nation's debt only creates more uncertainty in the economy. Doubt and fear are driving away jobs, stifling growth and investment. That is a fact.

For nearly 3 years, the White House has been seduced by the vision of growth through artificial means, including trillions in fiscal stimulus spending and so-called investments. Indeed, in a time of dramatic fiscal irresponsibility, the budget the President submitted to us called for a 10-percent increase in the Department of Education, a 10- percent increase in the Department of Energy, a 10.5-percent increase in the State Department, and a 60-percent increase in rail and transportation spending. We do not have the money.

That budget reflected utter confusion and a detachment from reality.

Are our cities, are our counties, are our States increasing spending by 10.5 percent? Aren't most of them actually reducing spending? That is reality. That is what is happening in the rest of the world. The British reduced some of their spending recently--far more than we have. Some people there did not like it, and they complained that it was too difficult and too tough. But the International Monetary Fund, in a recent report, said: Stand to your guns. Get your debt under control. In the long run, the International Monetary Fund said, this is the way to build a strong economy, and we have been going in the other direction.

The Keynesian siren call to spend did not lead us to prosperity. We have restored only one-fifth of the jobs lost in the recession. As a percentage of our population fewer are working today than during the so-called worst period of this recession, and we are experiencing the weakest recovery in modern history. Unemployment is back up again, and the housing market is back down. Bad housing numbers came in last week also.

Our fast-rising debt and our unwillingness to adopt a credible budget plan--and we can do that--is shattering economic confidence and jeopardizing our future. But our Democratic leadership in this Senate refuses to put forward a budget plan to confront the debt that they have themselves increased so greatly.

We are told the President has not involved himself personally in discussions over the debt limit. That has been turned over to the Vice President. One report says he no longer receives daily economic briefings. What signals do these actions send to our out-of-work Americans, to struggling industries and businesses, and the anxious financial markets throughout the world?

Instead of stonewalling a budget, the Senate should be working together, Republicans and Democrats, to produce a budget that puts us on a sound path and makes our economy as robust and as dynamic as possible. That is so basic. Blocking a budget under these economic circumstances is simply unthinkable. There is no quick fix, no accounting gimmick, no political trick that will solve these problems. We have a potentially healthy, growing economy. Our American businesses have never been leaner or more efficient, as the Dallas Federal Reserve Governor, Mr. Fisher, said the other day on one of these interview programs. We have never had a more efficient, competitive business environment in America.

But in the long run--and that is what we must focus on--sound principles, common sense, spending restraint, less regulation, and more commitment to the free markets will, if allowed, lift us out of this malaise in which we find ourselves. To put America back to work, the Senate needs to get back to work.

I thank the Acting President pro tempore and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I wish to share a few thoughts about the state of the American economy and the lack of effectiveness of this Congress in confronting it--in particular, the lack of the leadership of the U.S. Senate to deal with the crisis we are facing both economically and financially as part of our economic condition. We can't separate those two.

The leading economic indicators are not good. Last week, we were pummeled with a series of reports that were bad news. The numbers continue to be disturbing, actually. The share of our population that is employed today declined to 58.4 percent--the lowest level since 1983. So the percentage of people working today is the lowest we have had since 1983.

The May jobs report that just came in fell well short of projections. The consensus view of economists was for a gain of 165,000 jobs, but, in fact, we gained 111,000 fewer than that. We had a very low job creation month, and it marks the worst jobs report in 8 months. Everybody is saying things are getting better and jobs are getting better, but this is a wake-up call. The numbers have not been strong. They

have actually been very fragile. The jobs have to increase about 180,000 a month to actually stay level, and to begin to increase, we have to be above that. To reduce our unemployment rate, it has to be above 180,000. So we were far below that this month.

The percentage of people who are long-term unemployed--who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more--jumped nearly 2 percentage points to 45.1. The unemployment rate increased to 9.1 percent from 9 percent. However, the unemployment rate does not take into account those who are underemployed or who may have become discouraged. That is why we have such a low percentage of people working. Many are discouraged and have given up looking for work.

Since its peak of 12,800, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down now 698 points or more than 5 percent over the last month. I believe this is the sixth consecutive week the Dow has declined.

Consumer confidence is also deteriorating. The Consumer Confidence Survey is down 12 points from its peak in February. It has been steadily going downward. Consumer expectations about the future are even worse, falling more than 20 points in the last 3 months, from 97.5 to 75.2. The last time we experienced a 3-month drop in consumer confidence of more than 20 points was March 2008, during the heart of the great recession.

The Misery Index, which combines the unemployment rate with the 1- year change in inflation growth, hit 12.2 percent, the highest level in a year.

Those are grim statistics. Indeed, I am looking at Barron's and a lead editorial by Mr. Abelson in today's issue. This is something he expressed unease about, very serious concern, in his lead column for the Barron's publication. He quotes a report from the Liscio Report, Philippa Dunne and Doug Henwood, and he quoted from their analysis:

More than a little shocking to Philippa and Doug, and to us

as well--

Referring to himself--

is that private employment today is 2 percent below where it

stood 10 years ago and, as they've noted before, job loss

over a 10-year period is unprecedented.

In other words, over 10 years we have 2 percent fewer people working in the private sector--the first time we have ever identified a 10-year period in our history--and he goes back to 1890--that we have actually seen a decline in employment over 10 years.

It continues:

So far, they point out somewhat grimly, ``We've regained

just 1.8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession and its

aftermath, or about one out of every five that have been

lost.

So we only recovered about one in five of the jobs. We have been reading that job growth is out there, but it hasn't been much. It has been anemic, and so has been GDP growth.

He goes on to note that ``the number of folks out of work increased by 167,000 and a goodly number of those--44.6 percent, to be precise-- have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, within crying distance of an all-time high. The average stay in the ranks of the jobless has reached the longest in the postwar period.'' That is World War II. So that is the longest time we have gone with almost half the people being unemployed for at least 27 weeks. So it is not a good situation.

We have tried. The Federal Reserve has tried. The Congress rammed through a stimulus bill that didn't work. I felt it wouldn't work, and I explained why at that time, but it passed anyway, adding almost $800 billion, $900 billion to the total debt of our country, and every penny of that was borrowed. It has not worked. But we will pay interest on it.

Last year, our highway spending was about $40 billion. The interest on that stimulus bill will be almost that much unless we find some way to start paying down our debt. And there is no plan on the table to reduce our debt in the immediate future. That is for sure.

So what would I say about where we are today? I believe this Congress cannot justify having created a financial situation in which 40 cents of every $1 we spend is borrowed. We take in $2.2 trillion, and we are spending $3.7 trillion. Every economist has told us in the Budget Committee--I am the ranking Republican there--this is unsustainable.

President Bush's highest deficit was too high: $450 billion. Under the first 2 years of President Obama, we have had $1.2 trillion and $1.3 trillion added to the debt, and this year, on September 30, we expect $1.5 trillion to be added to our debt. We will have doubled the entire debt of the United States under 4 years of his leadership.

His budget he submitted to us earlier this year makes the situation worse. If you take the basic trajectory of the Congressional Budget Office, the President's budget, even though it raises taxes, raises spending more and actually puts us on a more unsustainable path than otherwise would be the case. Over the 10-year budget he proposes, the lowest single deficit is $748 billion, and it is going up to around $1 trillion in the 10th year. These are systemic, unsustainable deficits, and they have to be confronted.

We have to reduce spending. Everybody knows that. But we are not willing to do so. The Democratic leader, when we had the continuing resolution and we had the debate over how much to spend the rest of this fiscal year, proposed a $4 billion reduction in spending. And our deficit will be $1,500 billion this year. He proposed to cut $4 billion in this year's continuing resolution. After much fight--and the House had passed $60 billion or $70 billion in spending reductions through the rest of the year--the Senate finally, under the Democratic leaders here, got it down to $38 billion, I believe.

We are not facing up to reality. So what do you do? The Fed has cut interest rates to zero. We are spending unlimited amounts of money. We have tried all kinds of gimmicks and efforts--reducing the Social Security tax, other things--to try to create growth in the economy, and it has not worked. I suggest part of the problem is the deficit itself.

Professors Rogoff and Reinhart have written a book: ``This Time Is Different.'' In their analysis, when your debt equals 90 percent or more of your economy, you will show at least a 1-percent reduction in economic growth for that year. This year our debt, which is already about 95 percent of GDP, will be 100 percent of GDP by September 30. So the first-quarter growth numbers were 1.8 percent below what had originally been projected. That was a reanalysis of it--1.8 percent. According to their theory, it would be 2.8 percent growth if we did not have debt in excess of 90 percent of the gross domestic product.

I asked Secretary of the Treasury Geithner at the budget hearing whether he agreed with the Rogoff-Reinhart study, which has received quite a bit of attention and a great deal of respectful attention. He said he did. He said that in some ways the situation is worse than that suggests because we could have an economic crisis. When your debt-to- GDP is 90 or 100 percent, that is how you can have a circumstance somewhat like we had with the financial meltdown or like they are having in Greece.

So we have been warned by the fiscal commission Chairman and Cochairman, appointed by President Obama, Mr. Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. They testified that we are facing the most predictable economic crisis in our Nation's history--the most predictable. When asked when it might happen, Mr. Bowles said 2 years, give or take. So we do not know what is going to happen.

I think we have to just grow up, realize that we have placed our Nation in financial jeopardy, that this country has spent money it did not have to a degree greater than this Nation has ever spent before, except maybe in the height of World War II when the entire Nation was in a life-and-death struggle. We have never spent this kind of money. We have never had these kinds of deficits.

Many remember the big fight over spending in the mid-1990s that resulted in the balancing of the budget in the late 1990s. That was a much simpler problem than we have today. I have looked at the numbers. I have studied the numbers. To get this country to a balanced budget is going to take some very serious, sustained work. It is going to be much more significant than it was in the mid-1990s. We simply cannot grow this economy--which is the key to getting ourselves out of the mess we are in--we cannot grow it by just passing more taxes. We cannot do that.

Congress has to step up to the plate. I remain extremely disappointed that

the majority in the Senate did not even bring a budget to the floor last year. We are now at 750-, 760-some-odd days without having a budget. That is one reason we are spending so much money we do not have. We do not even have a budget. It was not even brought to the floor last year. Not a single appropriations bill was brought to the floor and passed last year. Since I have been here--and I guess in 20 or more years--our Democratic majority had the largest majority any Senate has ever had. They had 60 votes last year in the Senate. It only takes 50 to pass a budget. You can pass a budget without a supermajority, without a filibuster. It is designed to make sure we pass a budget because it is needed that we pass a budget. But it was not even brought up last year.

So what about this year? We have not even marked one up. We have not had a hearing in the Budget Committee to mark up a budget. Under the Budget Act, the budget is supposed to be passed by April 15. The House has passed a budget, a historic budget, a sound budget. It changes the unsustainable trajectory we are on. It is responsible. It has gotten widespread bipartisan applause for being a serious attempt to confront the financial crisis we are facing.

The Senate has not produced anything. Indeed, my good friend--and he has a tough job--our majority leader, Harry Reid, said it would be foolish to pass a budget. And his staff said something similar to the press. Foolish to pass a budget? What did he mean by that? Would it be against the American interest to pass a budget? Would it make our country less strong financially if we passed a budget? Would it be less responsible to pass a budget than to not pass one? I do not think so.

Actually, I do not think that is what he meant. What he meant was it would be foolish politically to pass a budget. So he did not bring one on the floor last year when he had 60 Senators. He has 53 now. He is not going to bring one up again this year. He would be foolish to. Why? Because when you produce a budget, you have to set forth, for the entire world--the financial world, the American people, the political world, the individual citizens of this Republic--what your plans are for the future. What are we going to do? How much are we going to spend? How much are we going to tax? How much deficit will be created, or surplus, if one is to be found? And it is not going to be found soon--a surplus--trust me. I have looked at the numbers. But we have to get on the right path. So he thinks that is foolish. I guess because, well, if he produced a budget, he might have to cut spending and somebody might complain. If he produced a budget and it is consistent with what some of my tax-and-spend friends believe and he has a bunch of tax increases in there, that might not be popular. So since it is not popular, we are just not going to do it, while we have the lowest number of people working in this economy since 1983 and we are 2 percent below the number of people who were actually working 10 years ago.

This Keynesian spend-tax-spend idea of how to make an economy grow is not sound. We have tried it. It was done over my objection, but it was done. We threw money at this economy the likes of which we have never seen before.

Now, the Brits, they are reducing their spending. They are making some tough choices in the UK. And some have been pushing back: Oh, you are cutting too much. They are having riots in Greece, where people are saying: You are cutting back spending too much. We have to have this money. But what did the International Monetary Fund say today? I believe it was today. They said: The UK, the Brits, stay the course. Stay with your fiscal responsibility that was initiated by the new conservative government. Do not go back to spending. Do not adopt the idea that you can create something out of nothing by borrowing money, money you do not have.

Of course, Julie Andrews laid that out really well in her song. I have thought and always try to remember: Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.

You cannot borrow your way out of debt, as one person in Evergreen told me his granddaddy said. We have to face the music. We do not have the money to operate at the level we are.

I was at a town meeting in Marion, AL, and an elderly gentleman said he lived through the Depression, he lived through World War II, he lived through the great inflation surge in the 1970s, and he sees this other challenge we face today. He said the problem is not the high cost of living; the problem is the cost of living too high. That just sort of closed the meeting. He was the last one to speak. I thought there was a real silence there--the cost of living too high.

We have just been living on the idea that these brilliant people--the Fed and the Treasury and all--that they can just borrow money and spend it today, and that will make the economy flower, and we will all be successful, and we do not have to worry about paying it off.

What is a little debt? Well, we went down that road, and it has gotten completely out of control, and we cannot sustain it.

We are at a point where our debt threatens our economic growth. According to Rogoff and Reinhart, it is already reducing our growth by 1 percent. And if we have 2 percent growth for the year--if we have 2 percent growth this year instead of 1.8 percent, as we did the first quarter--that means 1 million more people employed. A 1-percent growth, economists tell us, is equal to 1 million people employed. If you get 3 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent growth, like we ought to have coming out of a recession, then you can have millions of jobs created and change this direction of our country.

We have used every weapon we have except common sense and sound policy. So what do we do? How do we get out of the mess we are in? It is not going to be an easy road, but we need to reduce spending. We have increased spending in the last 2 years--the first 2 years under President Obama--24 percent in discretionary nondefense spending.

We cannot cut that back to where we were in a previous day? Is the United States of America going to cease to exist if we reduce spending? We are going to have to. We do not have the money. So we do that. We send a message to the world as the people in England have that we understand the problem. We know we have gone too far. We are going to get on the right road. We are going to put our shoulders to the wheel, and we are going to lift this country forward and put it on a sound path.

We can do that. We will do that. That is what the American people said they wanted--I am convinced--in this last election. They want some responsibility here, and we owe it to them. I hope and pray that we can come together and make some significant changes in the way we spend money and the amount of debt that we have.

Yes, it might be tough for a while, but we will get on the right path. We will get this country going in the right direction. So when we are confused about the future, nobody knows exactly what to do, I think it is time to take a deep breath and go back to the old verities, the old truths that nothing comes from nothing. Hard work pays off. Borrowing, borrowing, borrowing is a road to disaster. We need to start paying down our debt. The kinds of things we tell our children every day, this Nation needs to do.

If the world and if the business community in our country saw us in that direction, nothing could be better for our economic growth. They would say: The United States of America has finally got it. They have their heads on right. They are making the decisions that will lay a foundation for sound, positive growth in the future, and they are not trying to get their way out of the problem they are in by something for nothing, some gimmick.

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

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

Mr. President, I would like to share some brief thoughts about the nomination of Donald Verrilli to be Solicitor General of the United States. Solicitor General has been called the greatest lawyer job in the world. It is the position in the

Department of Justice that represents the United States in appellate courts and the Supreme Court. As they said, again, there is no higher honor than to appear in the highest Court in the land and be able to announce that you represent the United States of America. That is what the Solicitor General gets to do and supervises that. It is a very important position.

It requires integrity, independence, and a commitment to the rule of law. Mr. Verrilli, by the account of quite a number of people, is a smart lawyer with significant experience in appellate matters and is respected as to his integrity and his legal ability. I say that because I am not going to be able to vote for him today, but what I am saying about him is not to be personal in any way. I can disagree with someone about their approach to law and still sometimes be able to vote for them.

I voted for most of the President's nominees. I supported Attorney General Holder's nomination. But what I want to say is, we are in a struggle internationally with a most virulent form of terrorism that has been declared by virtually all objective people as a war. We are involved in a war on terrorism. That is just what it is. Bin Laden and the people who attacked us on 9/11 had declared war against the United States. They had officially said they were at war with us. Our President, on occasion, has acknowledged that we are at war. Congress has authorized the use of military force in Iraq, Afghanistan, and against al-Qaida. We have authorized it. We have not in Libya, but we have in those other instances.

So the Department of Justice, of which I was honored to be a member for 15 years as a Federal prosecutor, and U.S. attorney in Alabama for 12--and I loved that great Department and believe in it deeply. I am troubled by the extent to which it is being led by people who have an unwise understanding of the nature of the struggle we are in. One of the ways this plays itself out is to conclude that an individual affiliated with al-Qaida was presumptively to be tried in civilian courts like a normal criminal. But under the rules of war, under our Constitution and laws, and consistent with the history of the United States, it is perfectly permissible to capture an enemy combatant who is threatening us and to put them in jail and detain them, just like all prisoners of war have been detained, until the conflict is over.

No, we do not give them a trial. They are not entitled to lawyers. They are not entitled to go before a judge. They are prisoners of war. They are held in prisoner of war camps. They have to be humanely treated. They cannot be tortured. We have a specific statute about that, and I know we have had some instances where people said we are torturing. Some say it is not. But that is not the situation today. We are not close to the line of what is torture of anybody that is being held in custody today.

So the question is, What does the Department of Justice say? Well, they have made the statement that there is a presumption that these individuals should be tried in civilian courts. Congress, after several years of debate, finally passed a law that prohibited the funding of a civilian trial of any of the 9/11 terrorists who have been captured. Some have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. They have to be tried, if they are tried, before military commissions.

Military commissions have historical precedent. For example, in World War II, Nazi saboteurs entered the United States and attempted to attack us. They were captured. Trial was held within a few weeks by the military, and most of them were executed promptly. The Supreme Court, in ex parte Quirin, held that was perfectly appropriate.

Now, we cannot try a normal prisoner of war and execute them. We cannot do that. If a prisoner of war, however, violates the rules of war and commits crimes above and beyond the rules of war, then they can be tried and punished appropriately.

The 9/11 conspirators and other terrorists are wholly and totally committed to violating the rules of war. They attack innocent men, women and children. They attack noncombatants. That is all prohibited by the rules of war. They do not wear a uniform. If they want to have the protections of the rules of war, they have to wear a uniform when they go into combat. If they are captured, they have to be treated as prisoners of war. But if they have been sneaking into the United States surreptitiously, with a plot to bomb a target and murder innocent men, women, and children, then they have committed a war crime, and so they can be detained as prisoners of war and can be tried by the military as the war criminals they are.

So this has been a big battle, and we went through it for years. On the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member, we had quite a bit of discussion about it in hearing after hearing. We somehow have tragically convinced the world that the American military is torturing people at Guantanamo, and it is not so. The people who were found to have been waterboarded and that kind of thing, it was not done at Guantanamo, and it was not done by the U.S. military. Zero.

At any rate, we had all of those debates, and we had fusses. We had lawsuits filed, and people were complaining about President Bush and all his policies. And we remember that. So now we are here with a series of people being appointed to the leadership of the Department of Justice, the law enforcement agency, the top prosecutors in the country, and those positions are being filled by the people--not who are prosecuting terrorists, not who know something about it, not skilled professional prosecutors who know how to do this job. The top positions are being filled with the people who protested.

Attorney General Holder himself has said that these cases ought to be tried in a civilian court. The Acting Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Cole, wrote an op-ed in the Legal Times saying the war on terror was a criminal matter, not a military matter.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, Tony West, defended John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban; the Acting Solicitor General, Neil Katyal, argued on behalf of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, bodyguard and chauffeur for Osama bin Laden, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, arguing that military commissions were illegal. These are some of the top positions in the entire Department of Justice: the Attorney General, a Deputy Attorney General of the Civil Division, and the Acting Solicitor General, and the person who is nominated to fulfill that spot.

So Mr. Verrilli, I believe, is a good man. In normal circumstances I would be willing to accept his nomination and vote for him. I am not going to try to slow it down. I am glad to have the vote and cast my vote. I am sure he will be confirmed. But it has been reported in the media that President Obama has now appointed 13 to 16 lawyers to high- ranking positions in the Department who themselves previously represented alleged terrorists or their supporters or were senior partners at their law firms when their firms decided to accept alleged terrorists as clients. Many of these lawyers, including Mr. Verrilli, support the view that terrorists are criminals and not unlawful combatants. It is all right to defend unpopular people, criminals who are unpopular. It is perfectly all right.

But I just want to say, as someone who loves the Department, I am concerned about the positions they are taking on the questions of the civilian trials of unlawful combatants.

I think it is wrong, and I have voted for the last one I am going to vote for to a top position at the Department of Justice who advocate that view. I think it places our Nation at greater risk. We do not need to be treating these individuals in that fashion.

As a practical matter, it works out this way. If you apprehend the Christmas Day bomber, he is treated as a civilian and he has to be given his Miranda rights within minutes of being arrested, which say that you can have a lawyer, you can remain silent, and you will be appointed a lawyer promptly. He has to be taken before a magistrate promptly--letting all his terrorist associates know he has been captured. He is entitled to discovery in the government's case in short order, and he is entitled to a speedy trial.

All of those things are part and parcel of the civil process. But if a suspected terrorist is captured as an unlawful combatant and detained by the military, he can be held as a prisoner of war, and he can be interrogated--not

tortured--over a period of weeks, or months; and the military does not have to appoint a lawyer for them. Unlawful combatants can be tried at Guantanamo Bay by a military commission--and potentially found in violation of the rules of war--which is what ought to happen in these cases.

But that is not the position of the Department of Justice. The Department has been populated with people who have a different view--I think a wrong view--of it. Although I have great respect for Mr. Verrilli and his record, which seems to be a good one, the fact that he is another voice in the Department for a wrong philosophy is something I will vote against by voting no.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, we had an unfortunate series of votes last night, in my opinion, because it was all arranged by our leadership in the Senate to have a series of votes to do nothing. That is unfortunate because the United States of America, and the Senate are proceeding with an idea that they do not have to have a budget. In fact, the majority leader, Senator

Reid, said it would be foolish to pass a budget. And as one of the staffers said, on background: Well, if we pass a budget, we will have to tell people how much we are going to raise their taxes and talk about spending reductions, and that will not be popular.

What did they do? One of the most incredible things I have ever seen in the Senate. Did they express regret that they could not pass a budget, that they would not state for the American people a vision for spending and the financial future of America? No. What did they do? They have the majority in the Senate. They called up the budget passed by the House of Representatives, which is a really historic budget, an honest budget that deals fairly and objectively with the challenges we are facing, reduces spending, actually was able to reduce some taxes, and proposed, a decade out, that the Congress confront Medicare because it is going broke. So what did they do? They called up that budget. Did they call it up to amend it? Did they call it up to offer us a chance to debate it and offer amendments and fix anything anybody did not like about it? No. That was not what was done. They brought it up only with the most limited debate before all four votes. They stacked all four votes on four different budgets and projections and just voted them down. They voted down every budget that was offered.

I have on my desk in my office the President's budget. It is four volumes, hundreds of pages, and it lays out a budget. Every President submits budgets. They have a 500-person Office of Management and Budget staff. Every year, they produce a budget. The law requires them to produce a budget. This is the Code, the United States Code Annotated, and in this is the law that says a President should submit a budget and the date by which he should do it. It says the U.S. Senate should commence markup in the Budget Committee by April 1 and the Congress should pass a budget by April 15. Last I heard, April 15 is long since passed.

How do you get a budget out of committee and to the floor of the Senate? What are we supposed to do by April 1? The chairman is supposed to call a markup, and he is supposed to bring up the budget he proposes, offer it to the Budget Committee. It is open for amendment, change, and debate, then it is voted on. A budget should then come out of the committee to the floor of the Senate. It has expedited procedures, but you are allowed to offer amendments, and there is 50 hours of debate--not too much. It does not require the normal 60 votes we have to have for legislation here; it only requires a majority, 50 votes.

That is basically designed, frankly--when the people wrote the Budget Act back in the 1970s--to allow the majority party to be able to pass a budget because there were too many filibusters of budgets and no budgets were getting passed. If you have the majority in the Senate, at least you should be able to produce a budget. So it provides the Democratic majority--the 53 Democratic Senators they have--the opportunity to produce a budget on a partisan basis if it cannot be done on a bipartisan basis. So the normal process is, you work with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and if you think a good agreement can be made in a bipartisan fashion, you do so and move a bipartisan budget.

I remember last year when Senator Gregg, our Republican ranking member, talked about his conversation with Senator Conrad, and he said: He is not letting me see the budget. It is going to be produced the next morning. What that means is, he is going to produce a partisan budget. He does not want our opinion. He is not going to show us what is in his budget until the day of the mark-up.

So this year, we wrote--all the Republican members; I am the ranking member now--we asked the Budget chairman to show us his mark 72 hours before the mark-up because he had not consulted with us and it appeared he was going to produce a partisan budget. Actually, he told me the date the hearing would commence to mark up his budget, but he did decline to give us any advance notice or opportunity to see what was in it.

All I am saying is that the procedure is set up realistically under the Budget Act to allow the majority party to meet its responsibility to pass a budget. They do not need a single Republican vote to pass a budget. I think it is better if you can get a bipartisan agreement. Oftentimes in the past, there have been. But since budgets represent visions for America, oftentimes in recent years they have gone on pretty much a party line but not 100 percent. That is what I would say.

So the President submitted his budget, and it was roundly criticized around the country, and I was a very severe critic of it. So we offered that budget last night. That was one of the four budgets that was offered. We brought it up. It is the only Democratic budget to be produced. I believe the Progressive Caucus produced one in the House, but, of course, it did not pass. It had a lot of tax increases, a lot of spending increases in it. It had no chance whatsoever of being passed. The American people sent us a message last year that they want us to get spending under control. They want us to reduce the size and scope of government. That is what they asked us to do.

So the President's budget came up last night, and, 97 to 0, every Democrat voted against the President's budget. Well, they should because it was unacceptable. I have referred to it as the most irresponsible budget in the history of our country because we are in a deeper financial hole than we have ever been. That is just a fact, and it is not a short-term, little problem; it is a problem that is getting worse in the years to come.

So the American people have come to the conclusion that we need to change the trajectory of debt that we are piling on year after year, month after month, day after day, by the billions--trillions, really.

The President's budget, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, would produce uncontrolled debt year after year after year, in amounts never before contemplated in our country, making the debt trajectory of our current baseline spending worse, not better.

I was under the impression everybody understood we had to change and get better. I thought, when we came in with this Congress, the debate would be over how much to change in the right direction, how much could we do to reduce the deficits, put us on the right path. Not the President's budget, which made things worse.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed his budget and scored it, as we say, the lowest single deficit that budget would produce is $748 billion, the lowest deficit to be produced under his 10-year budget. President Bush was criticized for spending. The highest budget deficit he had was $450 billion. That was the highest President Bush had, and he was criticized for that by many of my Democratic colleagues quite vociferously.

President Obama is now heading to his third trillion dollar budget deficit. This year, it is going to be $1.5 trillion, it looks like three times the size of President Bush's highest deficit. As I said, the lowest deficit they are projecting is $748 billion, and then it starts going back up again. In his 10th year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit will be $1.2 trillion.

It is an indefensible, irresponsible budget. I am stunned that it was presented here. It has been widely criticized, as well it should be. So it was voted down last night.

If you are going to vote down something, should you not offer something in its place? That is what the fiscal commission that President Obama appointed said. That was their rule. That is what they promoted publicly: If you oppose a budget, you should offer your own. And, in fact, after Congressman Ryan, who served on the fiscal commission with Mr. Bowles and Senator Simpson, the cochairmen, he produced a budget. They gave him great credit. They said it was honest and courageous, and it faced the challenges of America, and it deserved respect, and then said: Anybody who does not agree with that should show what they would do.

So yesterday afternoon, we had the spectacle of Democratic Senators hammering and complaining about the Ryan budget, which in my opinion is the most historic and responsible budget to be produced in decades. No, it is not perfect. It is perfectly acceptable to believe that it ought to be amended.

But it was a historic, honest attempt at dealing with the fiscal challenges we face, and would put us on a financial path to solvency and stability and eliminate the risk we are facing. We probably should do more to reduce spending than he proposed. But it was courageous and bold and honest and without gimmicks. I thought a very impressive document. I looked forward to debating parts of it in our Budget Committee.

So what did we have last night? Yesterday? They just brought it up and every Democratic Member voted it down. And why? Because he had the gumption to actually suggest that for people 55 and younger, we should begin to create a Medicare system that would be solvent and effective and save Medicare, because the trustees have reduced the year again at which it goes insolvent. Senator Reid and Senator Schumer had cleverly thought up this theory and were explicit about it. Their theory was they would not bring up their own budget. They would not tell the American people how much they wanted to increase their taxes. They would not tell the American people they were going to cut anything, because they might make someone unhappy and be unpopular. They would just call up the Ryan budget and attack Republicans as wanting to kill Medicare, and produce nothing in response. They do not have any plan to fix the situation we are in.

I am disappointed about that. It is unthinkable that we would be recessing and going home for a week without commencing markup hearings in the Budget Committee to produce a budget that we are required by law to produce. It is unthinkable we would do that.

I will be presenting to the majority leader a letter today from Senators on our side of the aisle--large numbers of Senators have signed it, saying, we do not need to go home until we have confronted this problem, and you have shown us how we are going to move forward to meet our statutory responsibility to pass a budget.

I think that is reasonable. That is what we are going to be asking today. I am not going to vote to go home without having met our duty. We call up our young men and women in uniform. We say: You will go to Iraq for a year. They say: Well, I would rather not go. It is in your contract. You signed up. You have to go. It is your duty. And they say, yes, sir, and they go.

Many of them have lost lives and limbs and we ought to remember them this Memorial Day. But Do not we have a duty here? I think we do. I think we have a duty to the United States of America to produce a budget, whether or not it is law. But it is law in the United States Code. That is our duty. We do not need to be going home until we fulfill it, and we have a plan to go forward with it. I want to say this is not a little bitty matter with me. We are not going to have four votes--as we did yesterday--and then the majority leader is going to say, see, it is foolish to produce a budget. I told you we could not produce a budget. We are not going to fool with having a budget this year.

It has been 757 days since the Senate has had a budget, because the majority leader did not bring up a budget last year either. Does anybody have any wonder about why we are going to have a $1.5 trillion deficit this year, why 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed? We spend $3.7 trillion and we take in only $2.2 trillion.

Experts and financial wizards all over the world are telling us, what are you doing in the United States? You are about to threaten the world's most prominent economy. It could have worldwide ramifications. Our debt to GDP compares with Portugal and Spain, almost as high as Greece. It will be 100 percent by September 30 of this year.

And we are going away without a budget again. The people who have asked to be given a leadership responsibility in the Congress cannot even comply with the Budget Act. They refuse to stand before the American people and say what they want to tax, what they want to spend, what they want to cut--because it would not be popular. It would be foolish.

I do not think so. It is not acceptable. You asked to be the leader of this Congress. You asked to be the President of the United States. You have a responsibility to submit a responsible budget, an honest budget, a fact-based budget, a budget the American people have an opportunity to understand, to read and study before we vote. And if the American people find we have cast a bad vote, they can cast a good vote to throw some people out of Congress.

They threw some people out last fall. It does not look like we have gotten the message--Business as usual. We are in denial. We do not have to change. Oh, no, you cannot cut this spending program. What do you mean you cannot cut spending programs? Give me a break. The Alabama Governor, Dr. Bentley, had to announce a 15-percent reduction in discretionary spending. Why? He did not have the money. Is that something we have forgotten in Washington--when you do not have money, you should not spend it?

Well, you say, it is all because of this economy, or something else. Look, under President Obama, nondefense discretionary spending in 2 years went up 24 percent. We are going broke. We are increasing spending on all the government programs. On an average, in the last 2 years that is 12 percent a year. You know, the value of your money will double in 10 years if your interest is 7 percent. At 12 percent, I guess the size of government would increase and double in 6 years.

Great scott. No wonder people are upset with us. We have been spending incredibly recklessly. Also the 12 percent I mentioned--24 percent in 2 years--that does not include the stimulus package, the almost $900 billion stimulus package that was thrown out the door with almost no oversight. It was just designed to spend. And do you remember, it was supposed to stimulate the economy.

We probably have had the slowest ever rebound from a recession. It has been a very shaky recovery. They will say, well, we should have spent more. But Rogoff and Reinhart, the professors, tell us, when your debt gets as high as that of the United States, then you begin to show a decline in growth. One percent of GDP growth is reduced when your debt reaches 90 percent of GDP. We reached that this year, and we will go over 100 percent by September 30.

This is the budget that the President has submitted to us. He has a large staff over there. They maintain it. A large number of them have been there for many years. The President submitted to us a budget. It was rejected yesterday 97 to 0. It confirms the fact that we do not have a legitimate budget before us. The President's budget has been rejected utterly. The Democrats have refused to produce one.

They say: Why don't you have a mark-up and offer your budget? I cannot call a mark-up. The chairman calls the mark-up. The majority leaders confer and tell the chairmen when to call a mark-up. They decided not to call a budget mark-up. We do not have an opportunity to go to the Budget Committee and pass a budget.

We had such tremendous interest, and a lot of the new people who got elected to the Senate last fall wanted to be on the Budget Committee. They traveled their States. They had heard from their people all over their States that they wanted us to control spending. They wanted to be on the committee. It was the committee which had more interest and more people pushing to be on it than any other committee. We finally selected a fabulous group of people to serve on the committee. And now we do not meet. Now we are not even going to mark up a budget. What a disappointment for those new Members coming here with vim and vigor and ready to do something about the future of the Republic.

You know, one of the things that was interesting about the President's budget is how much praise it got from our Democratic colleagues who voted it down last night when it came out. This is what Senator Schumer said about it: ``This is a responsible proposal. I believe this approach should have bipartisan support.'' Senator Bill Nelson: ``I personally think the President's budget is a step in the right direction.'' Senator Max Baucus: ``The President's budget strengthens our economy.'' Senator Ben Cardin: ``President Obama has given us a credible blueprint.'' Senator Tom Carper: ``The President's budget is an important step forward.'' Senator Frank Lautenberg: ``President Obama's budget presents a careful evaluation of what our Nation needs.''

They all voted no last night. You know, with friends like that, you do not need enemies, as they like to say. But what about Mr. Erskine Bowles, the man President Obama chose to serve as chairman of the debt commission? Mr. Bowles talked about the budget. He was rather stunned actually when it came out. It came out I think on Friday. On Sunday, Mr. Bowles said: ``It comes nowhere close to where they will have to go to avoid a fiscal nightmare.''

Can you imagine? This is the man President Obama chose to head the deficit commission, and he hammered this budget.

He said it is nowhere close, and it is nowhere close to doing what we have to do. So I believe what we went through yesterday was a sham, a mockery, a joke, and had no meaning. It was nothing but politics, nothing but an avoidance of responsibility to help provide leadership.

We all know some serious choices have to be made, and I will close with these thoughts. We are going to need a partnership in the Senate between our parties. There are going to be some tough choices which have to be made. In my view, we simply cannot continue at our rate of spending. It has to be reduced. But we have people in denial, who don't think it has to be reduced. But when your lowest deficit in 10 years is projected to be $740 billion, and this year's will be the highest in the history of the Republic, $1.5 trillion or more--how do we get there?

We are going to have to make some choices. I have saluted the Gang of Six, who have tried. Apparently, they have fallen on hard times and the prospects aren't good for that. Now the Vice President is meeting. There is some excuse, they say, that we don't have to do our business openly and before the public and stand and be accounted for because that would not work. People are afraid to make tough choices and decisions in public.

I believe the American people are not happy with us. I know they are not happy with us. Seventy percent of them believe this country is on the wrong track, and the biggest part of that, surely, is our fiscal management. They know this debt cannot be sustained. So we need to do something. The best way to do it is to follow the regular order, follow the legally constituted method of budget processing. Let's have a Budget Committee meeting, and if the Gang of Six has ideas, let's have them brought up in the Budget Committee and vote on them. If Vice President Biden wants to send something over, I am glad to hear it. If the President wants to send his people over to defend this budget that has been rejected 97 to zero, let them do it.

I will tell you what he and his Budget Director, Mr. Lew, said--can you believe it? They said this budget will allow us to live within our means and not spend money we don't have. That is the way they promoted this budget. It was rejected last night. If it caused us to live within our means and allowed us to pay down our debt then I would vote for it. It did not come close to that. Yet the President talked about it all over the country, and his staff ran around saying this budget will allow us to live within our means. That is totally inaccurate, and that is irresponsible. What the President should have done, and what our Democratic leaders have to help us with, is go to the American people and, with clarity, without equivocation, say we cannot continue. We must tell them big changes have to be made, and we are so sorry this country has gotten in the shape we are in. We must say that we are going to make some changes, and we urge you to help us stick together and do it. We must do this to put the country on the right path.

But what do we have? We have Congressman Ryan, in the Republican House, who had the temerity, the courage, the discipline, and the sense of duty sufficient to pass a budget that would actually do what needs to be done. They called it up and attacked it with everything they had, but they will not produce anything of their own.

It cannot be denied that this is a failure of leadership. I believe the process and path we are on now is dangerous; it is not public, it is secret. They tried to produce a secret plan on comprehensive reform of immigration. The American people heard about it, and down it went. They tried to negotiate in secret this health care reform bill. They were able to hold their votes on a straight party-line vote--60 to 40-- but the American people were not happy with the process or results and a lot of people who participated in that spectacle didn't come back after this last election.

That is not the path we are hearing from our constituents. Our constituents are saying: You work for us. We want to see you publicly stand and defend the values we believe in. If you don't do so, we are going to hold you accountable. I think that is democracy in America, and that is healthy. I don't think there is anything wrong with it. I respect the American people who are watching Congress and demanding that we change the trajectory we are on.

I believe strongly that we need to do better. I believe strongly that this Congress should have in play and commit before we recess--or not recess--a plan to deal with the financial crisis our Nation faces. When we do that, we can feel like we are fulfilling our duty both in law and morally to the people who have given us the honor of serving in this body.

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

I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with Senator Coburn, if he has a moment to stay, for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, Senator Coburn served on the debt commission. Senator Coburn had no burden to run for reelection. I am so glad he did. He is one of the most valuable Members of this Senate.

I have an understanding that the Senator from Oklahoma came here to try to do something about the debt this country faces. Is that fair to say?

The Senator believes this Congress has a responsibility to confront what Admiral Mullen calls the greatest threat to our national security, which is our debt.

The Senator also has tremendous experience as a practicing physician. The Senator practiced up until the very day he was elected. How many years ago was that?

Seven years ago. He continued to practice even while in the Senate until the bureaucrats made it impossible, I guess, to do so. So the Senator from Oklahoma comes here with practical experience, a brilliant mind, and a committed vision for America.

I appreciate the Senator sharing his frustration about what has occurred this week.

This is a quote that was in the Wall Street Journal by Democratic Senate strategists about this scheme and plan that was offered in four votes yesterday--votes the majority had conceived in such a way that they were guaranteed to fail and nothing was going to happen. It was a guaranteed plan to ensure nothing would happen. This is what the journal said about it:

As a political matter, Democratic strategists say there may

be little benefit in producing a budget that would inevitably

include unpopular items.

The Senator is famous for telling the truth. If he would, I would like him to respond to that. What does that say about our Senate, that the Democrats say there would be little political benefit in producing a budget that might include unpopular items? Doesn't a tough budget that gets us on the right path have to have some things in it that some people might not like?

Let me ask the Senator. The Senator just won an overwhelming reelection. There is not a Senator here, I don't think anybody would dispute, who has been more frank in expressing the need that all of us are going to have to rein in our spending and who shared that directly with his constituents. When they have asked for things, the Senator from Oklahoma has tried to help them, I know, but he is frank with his constituents.

Would the Senator share with us what kind of percentage he got in the last election?

Seventy-one percent. Does my colleague think perhaps that some of us here in Washington are overly afraid of being frank and truthful with our constituents about the challenges America faces?

Mr. President, the Senator has served on the debt commission. I know there has been a concerted effort to blame and exaggerate and distort the House budget, particularly as it refers to Medicare.

Again, quoting Democratic Senate strategists, this is what the Wall Street Journal said:

Many Democrats believe a recent House GOP proposal to

overhaul Medicare is proving to be unpopular and has given

Democrats a political advantage. They are loath to give that

up by proposing higher taxes.

Which they would prefer as a solution.

Senate Democrats plan to hold a vote on the Ryan plan . . .

Which they did yesterday--

. . . hoping to force GOP Senators to cast a vote on the

Medicare overhaul that could prove politically difficult.

I say to Senator Coburn, you served on the debt commission. This is what

your commission chairman said in a written statement after Paul Ryan and the House Republicans produced their budget:

The budget released this morning by the House Budget

Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is a serious, honest,

straightforward approach to addressing our nation's enormous

fiscal challenges. We applaud him for his work in putting

forward a proposal which will reduce the country's deficit by

approximately the same amount as the plan of the President's

Fiscal Commission.

They also went on to say that if you criticize it, you have a responsibility to offer an alternative.

I say to the Senator, you served with Mr. Bowles. He was a Democratic Chief of Staff to President Clinton and was appointed by President Obama to chair this commission. That does not sound like the things we heard yesterday, attacking the House Ryan budget, does it?

I thank Senator Coburn for his leadership. I have watched him with admiration over the years with consistency and fidelity for the national interest to work to bring our spending under control.

I see our colleague, Senator Alexander, in the Chamber, and I will yield the floor. I will just follow up, before I do that, with a quote from Erskine Bowles.

When the President announced his budget not long after the deficit commission he called together had made some pretty good proposals about how to improve fiscal matters in the United States, Mr. Bowles was, obviously, deeply disappointed with what the President submitted and said this plan goes ``nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our [country's] fiscal nightmare.''

I think there is a consensus that we are facing a fiscal nightmare. We are going to have to take some serious steps in that regard.

Mr. President, I think there are some other Members who have reserved time. If there are no other Members here who have reserved time after Senator Alexander completes his remarks, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized at that time.

As I said, my consent would be that if anyone has reserved time, they would get it before I will speak.

Mr. President, today the Senate declined to vote on whether to recess. Someone said the Republicans blocked the Senate from recessing. That is not correct. Republicans wrote a letter to the majority leader and said we should not recess until we have plans set forth and begin to take action to deal with the budget that we have not passed that is required by law to be passed.

That is what was done. So when it comes down to the moment to move to recess and vote to recess, as we are required to do to have a recess, a unanimous consent, or an actual vote, the majority leader chose not to vote. I guess he wanted to protect his members from having to actually be recorded voting to recess this body when we have not done our work.

The Budget Act, in the United States Code, in the Code book, the Budget Act requires that the Senate commence markup hearings in the Budget Committee by April 1 and that a budget be produced by April 15. Congress does not go to jail if it is not passed, I will acknowledge. There is no fine. Perhaps there should have been.

Congress writes laws. I guess they make sure that no consequences occur when they apply to them and they do not comply with their duties.

The majority leader decided to keep us in pro forma session through the week but to do it in a way that guarantees we will take no action on a budget. This is a sad thing. It is not a little bitty matter. Our Congress knows we are in a serious national crisis. I think we can't deny it, and we have to figure out how to respond to it.

I hope this letter--and I will make it a part of the Record--to the majority leader will have some impact on our colleagues and cause them to reconsider the actions that have been taken so far. This is what it says:

Dear Majority Leader Reid: Today marks the 757th day since

Congress last adopted a conference report on a budget

resolution. But while the Republican House has met its

obligations this year, the Democrat-led Senate remains in

open defiance of the law--last year the Senate did not even

call up a budget for a vote and this year the Senate Budget

Committee has not even marked up a resolution, as required

under Sec. 300 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Despite this dubious distinction, the Senate plans to

adjourn for a week-long recess on Friday to coincide with

Memorial Day, a holiday that honors our men and women in

uniform. As our service members put their lives on the line

to defend this nation, surely the least Congress can do is

produce a plan to confront the debt that is placing the whole

country at risk. House Republicans put forward just such a

budget weeks ago--an honest plan for prosperity to overcome

this nation's dangerously rising debt, cut wasteful

Washington spending, and make our economy more competitive.

But, in this time of economic danger, the Senate continues

to stonewall any and all action on a FY2012 budget. For this

reason, we respectfully request that you delay any

adjournment of this body until you or members of your party

in the Senate bring forward a budget resolution and schedule

a meeting of the Budget Committee--a power which resides

solely with the majority--to work on that budget.

In an interview last week, you stated, ``There's no need to

have a Democratic budget in my opinion . . . It would be

foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.'' We find these

remarks shocking, especially given the state of our fiscal

affairs: the co-chairs of President Obama's own fiscal

commission recently warned that, if we do not take swift and

serious action to address our rising debt, the United States

faces ``the most predictable economic crisis in its

history.''

The House completed its work on the FY2012 budget

resolution on April 15th. But no budget can become binding

until the Senate acts. In our view it would be an astounding

abandonment of responsibility for the Senate to go on recess

without having taken any steps to produce a budget. We hope

that, as required by law and in your capacity as Majority

Leader, you change course and follow the example of the

Republican-led House and provide the American people with the

honest leadership and the honest budget they deserve.

Until a budget plan is made public, and until that plan is

scheduled for committee

action, on what basis can the Senate justify returning home

for a one-week vacation and recess while our spending and

debt continue to spiral dangerously out of control?

We appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this request

and welcome any questions you might have.

We are out of sorts. The American people are not happy with this Congress. They say our polling numbers are the lowest they can get. In last fall's election, there was a shellacking, particularly of the big spenders, the ones who want to have more government programs and create more debt. There was an accounting and I guess there will be an accounting in the next election and we all better be sure we have tried to respond faithfully to the challenges America faces.

What has happened this week is a mockery, a sham, a joke. We had four votes yesterday. Each one of them was carefully and sophisticatedly structured to fail. The one that failed the biggest was President Obama's budget. It was voted down unanimously by this body, with zero votes. It was all designed to suggest it is impossible for the Senate to pass a budget. But the Senate doesn't even require a supermajority to pass a budget. Under the Budget Act that we have, it provides that it has a preference, has to be brought up properly, and can be passed with a simple majority.

The Democratic majority, similar to Republican majorities in the past, have to choose will they seek to pass a budget that has the broad support of both parties or will they simply use their majority and pass their budget? You should do one or the other. A good, bipartisan budget is always preferable, but sometimes we have different opinions. So if you have a different view from the other party and you can't reach an agreement, you have a majority, you can pass your budget. You know, when you do that, what happens. When you pass your budget, what happens? You lay out for the American people what you believe. It is one thing to criticize someone else, it is another thing to tell the world what you believe. The House has told the world what they think would be an effective budget for the future. What does the Senate say? Nothing. We haven't even commenced a markup in the Budget Committee.

A budget sets forth your vision for the future. It tells how much you want to cut taxes or raise taxes. It tells how much you want to raise spending or reduce spending. It says how much debt you expect to accumulate over the years to come or whether you would reach a surplus or a balanced budget. That is what a budget does. It holds you accountable. You have to defend it. You have to say what it is.

One thing I have been proud about is that the Republicans over in the House met their duty and produced a budget and they are prepared to defend it. Congressman Ryan knows what he is talking about. He worked on that budget and he is prepared to defend it. It has been terribly misrepresented, but he is prepared to defend it, explain it, and talk to anybody about it.

But if our colleagues in the Senate fail to produce a budget--don't produce one at all--it is kind of hard to hold them to account, isn't it? That is why it is pretty clear that Senator Reid said: Why, it is foolish for us to have a budget. It is foolish for us to have a budget because we would then be in a position to be held accountable. Was he talking about foolish for America to have a budget? Was he expressing a view that it is better for America that we have a budget? No. When he said it is foolish for us to produce a Democratic budget, he was talking purely politically. He was saying we think it is smart politics for us not to put our necks on the line to actually expose to the American people what we believe in. We would rather be in a position to criticize those people in the House who actually had the gumption--I guess he would say the foolish sense--to pass a budget and tell the American people what they think.

I have to say that is not a good situation. We didn't have a budget last year. We are not having one this year. Is there any wonder, then, our deficits continue to spiral out of control to a degree that we have never, ever seen before?

Many criticized President Bush--and so did I--for the $450 billion budget deficit he produced. I thought it was a stunning number. Since President Obama has been President, the budget deficits have been $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and by September 30, it is projected to be about $1.5 trillion. We will take in $2.2 trillion this year, we expect, and we will spend $3.7 trillion. Forty cents-plus of every $1 we spend is borrowed. We are not confronting that.

So we are taking a recess. When it came time to vote to recess, the majority leader figured out a way to not have to actually vote to go home because, I guess, his Members felt they would be embarrassed if they had to vote to go home after being in violation of the United States Code to produce a budget.

This is not going away. This issue is not going away. Every expert, including the chairman of the fiscal commission formed by President Obama, the chairman of which he appointed Mr. Erskine Bowles, told us in a written statement, delivered by Mr. Bowles and Cochairman Simpson, that this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. We are heading toward that wall at warp speed. We can have a financial crisis. In fact, Mr. Bowles was asked by our chairman, Senator Conrad: When do you think this crisis might occur? He said: Two years, maybe less. Alan Simpson said: I think maybe 1 year.

Surely, we have to get off the debt path we are on, spending so much more than we take in, and 40 cents of every $1 we spend is borrowed and we pay interest on it. The interest has the potential to damage our economy in a very significant and substantial way. It could put us in another recession. That is what Mr. Bowles was talking about--a debt crisis, another recession. Maybe it could be perhaps worse than the one we are in. Our projection for a fragile growth is not coming back as much as we would like it to. One reason, expert economists tell us, is that we are carrying too much debt and that has the potential to pull down our economy.

I think we are in a crisis. I think the economy is so naturally strong, the American people have so many capabilities and such a good work ethic that if we get the economy under control and our fiscal house in Washington under control, I believe the economy will come back. But we need to do it now, and every day we delay increases the risk that we will have a crisis occur.

I thank the Chair. I saw my colleague, Senator Klobuchar. I know she wants to speak tonight. I will repeat that this matter is not over. We are in a long-term battle for the future of America. We are in a long- term battle for the financial security of our Nation. Yes, it is about our grandchildren. But as Mr. Bowles told us and Alan Simpson told us and Alan Greenspan told us, we could have a debt crisis in just a few years. Would that not be a disaster--because of our failure to respond to the extraordinary debt we are incurring, that we have a financial crisis that could put us back into recession. I hope not. I don't think that is going to happen this year, but I don't know. We have been warned it might. It is scary.

So we are going to continue to talk about this. We are going to continue to use the rules of the Senate to try to force the Senate to comply with the rules of the United States Code that says we should have a budget. We have had 757 days without a budget. How many more will it be before we have a budget? We will continue that battle. It is going to be a battle for the financial future of our country. Hopefully, we will be successful and somehow, someway, as the pressure builds and the American people continue to have their voices heard, the White House, which today has been oblivious to these challenges, that the Democratic Senate, which has been oblivious to these challenges, will somehow get on board and seriously work with the House to confront the challenges we face and put us on a sound path to financial security for the future.