Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to say a few words on the departure of Bradley Hayes, a valued, longtime member of my Judiciary Committee staff. Although I will feel the loss of his knowledge and enthusiasm, I am pleased that he is moving on to a new phase in his career.

Bradley had a wonderful upbringing in his home town of Mobile, AL, and a

stellar academic background. He graduated cum laude with a B.S. in business from Birmingham Southern College. After managing a live music venue in Birmingham for several years, Bradley entered law school at the University of Alabama, where he served as managing editor of the Journal of the Legal Profession and was an active member of the moot court board. Immediately after being admitted to the Alabama bar, Bradley joined my staff on the Judiciary Committee.

In the 6 years he was with me, Bradley served at various times as my legislative counsel, senior counsel and deputy chief counsel on the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. Throughout that time, he has worked to secure our borders, protect our country from the threat of international terrorism, secure the private property rights of artists and inventors in the information age, and eliminate wasteful spending and destructive litigation. Perhaps most importantly, he showed both courage and unwavering leadership during the Senate's debates on comprehensive immigration reform in 2006 and 2007. Bradley's hard work played an important role during the DREAM Act debate last year. Bradley was an effective staffer during debates on the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2005 and 2006. He also participated in the constitutional advice and consent process for four Supreme Court confirmations and countless important executive branch nominations.

I would just conclude by thanking Bradley for his hard work and for his loyalty. He was more than willing to invest the time and effort necessary to handle a breadth of issues, and he did so with great skill, professionalism and integrity. He was with me during some of the most critical times of my career in the Senate thus far, and his insight will be missed. He has been an excellent public servant because he loves his country and understands and defends its exceptional core values. In addition, he is fun to work with. I wish him the best in his new endeavors.

Mr. President, I appreciate the fine remarks of my friend from Missouri. Seeing the damage that was done by the tornadoes in Alabama, they have far exceeded anything I have seen before. I appreciate more than most the damage and difficulties the people of Missouri are going through. I know there will be emergency funding for that. There is a legitimate question as to whether we ought to not find that emergency spending someplace in our budget where it can be recovered that is not so important. But I know we will process that as we go forward.

Unsustainable Budget Path

I truly believe our Nation is facing an economic crisis, but it's not so much what I believe but what every expert we have heard from believes and has testified to. Mr. Erskine Bowles, who cochaired the debt commission, who was appointed by President Obama, said, along with Senator Alan Simpson, his cochair, in a written statement to the Budget Committee, that this Nation has never faced such a predictable economic crisis. In other words, the deficit levels we are operating with are so high and they create such danger to the economy that we have to get off this path. Every expert has said we are on an unsustainable path.

Many people have thought the problem we are dealing with today places a burden on our children and our grandchildren; therefore, it has removed to some degree the immediacy of the problem. But that is not what Mr. Bowles said. In his testimony before the Budget Committee just a month or two ago, he said that we could have a financial crisis. When asked by the chairman when, he said 2 years, maybe less, maybe more. Senator Simpson said it could be 1 year.

We are taking a risk with the American economy. This has been echoed by Moody's bond ratings, and it has been echoed by S&P, which warned that our debt rating for our government debt could be downgraded. Alan Greenspan has made similar comments. Alice Rivlin, former OMB Director under President Clinton, made those comments. Pete Domenici, who cochaired a debt commission with Alice Rivlin, former chairman of the Budget Committee in the Senate, said to us with real passion: I have never been so afraid for my country. That is what Pete Domenici said.

We know we have to take action, and now we are heading today to 756 days since the Senate has passed a budget. We have not passed a budget. I say with confidence that in terms of a real, long-term threat to the American future, this Nation has never had a greater danger financially and in terms of debt because the problems we face are more severe than even in the nineties when we turned our business around and in 3 years balanced the budget. It is going to be harder to do it now.

We went through World War II. We borrowed money. But we had a vibrant, growing economy and growing population, and we promptly moved our way through that, and growth took care of us. But we cannot expect that the level of growth that according to the experts we can reasonably predict will be sufficient to get our house in order.

When you do not have enough money and the course you are on is unsustainable, you need to develop a plan that puts you on a sustainable path. How simple is that? That is grownup talk. How do you do it? What is our mechanism in the Congress?

This is a budget. This is title II, section 271 through et seq, and it has the Budget Act. We passed a Budget Act. It is law. Clever Congress did not put any penalties on it, so we can violate it and not go to jail. We do not have to personally pay fines. But it represented a serious commitment by a previous Congress that we needed a budget. They

also made as part of that budget law that it could be passed with a simple majority so it could not be filibustered. That was one of the reasons budgets sometimes failed to be passed. At a time when they were thinking about the future, they said: Let's make the budget passable by a simple majority. It also has a timeline in it. It says the Congress must pass a budget by April 15. We are long past that date--long past it. Are we going on to a third year now without a budget?

Mr. President, 1,000 days without a budget while our country is on a debt path unsustainable to a degree that threatens the future of America economically--yes, that is where we are heading.

People say: Surely, Jeff, that is not so. Surely there is some plan.

There is not any plan--not a plan to pass a budget. What there is a plan to do is not pass a budget. It is irresponsible. It is unwise. It is dangerous for our future because we are on a certain path, a predictable path, as the debt commission told us, to financial ruin. Our debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 100 percent by September 30 of this year. That is above the level that economic experts tell us puts our country at risk. Indeed, when we passed a 90 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, economists Rhinehardt and Rogoff, who completed a massive study of national defaults of economies around the world by sovereign states, warned that at that level you reduce the growth in the economy by at least 1 percent of GDP. The average was higher than that. They said on a median level, it is 1 percent of GDP, and they used that number--1 percent growth that we don't get. Well, some think we may not get 2 percent growth this year. Would we have gotten 3? If we get 1, would we have gotten 2? One percent growth in GDP is a large thing in an economy the size of ours. It increases tax revenue significantly. It increases jobs. According to experts, 1 percent of GDP growth means 1 million more jobs. A decline of 1 percent in our economy represents a loss of 1 million jobs. This is not a little-bitty matter.

On Monday, I objected. I realized what is going on in the Senate, that there is no plan to deal with this situation, that there is a gimmicked-up scheme to bring up a series of budget votes that the majority leader knows will not pass. Indeed, he intends to bring up a vote on a budget that he and all his colleagues intend to vote against--the most responsible one out there, the House budget, passed by the Republican House. That is what they want to bring up for a vote and vote against. But the Budget Act does not say bring up a House budget. It says each House--the Senate and the House--should bring up its own budget and pass it on the floor. It should go to committee. None of the budgets we will be voting on have gone through committee. We have had no markups in committee. We never even had a markup on the budget. Why? What is this? What is going on?

Let me share with my colleagues why we are not having a legitimate process to produce a budget at the most critical financial time in our history. It is about politics. Does that surprise anyone? This is what Democratic staffers were quoted as saying in a Wall Street Journal article a few days ago. What did they say about it? Did they say: We have a plan to solve America's future. Did they say: We have a plan to reduce our debt and get us on a sound path. Did they say: We understand the future of the country is endangered by unsustainable debt growth. No, they did not say that. This is what they said:

As a political matter, Senate Democratic strategists say

there may be little benefit in producing a budget that would

inevitably include unpopular items.

They do not want to produce an honest budget, a budget that would make a difference, because it would have some unpopular items in it. I ask, is that responsible leadership? I suggest it is not.

It goes on:

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 . . .

What does that mean? It means their budget, if they produce one, would call for higher taxes, and they do not want to do it. They do not want to propose a budget that reduces spending. They do not want to produce a budget that has higher taxes. Why? Because they are playing politics rather than serving a national interest. That is just plain as day. I wish it were not so, but there is no other explanation for why this Senate preparing to go into recess Friday for Memorial Day without having even commenced hearings on a budget.

This is what they decided to do. I am quoting from the article:

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

The House budget--

hoping to force GOP senators to cast a vote on the Medicare

overhaul that could prove politically difficult.

Give me a break. Is that what it is all about? Is that what we are here for? It is not what many of my Democratic colleagues tell me. They tell me they know we are on an unsustainable path and we have to do something. But why are we going through this charade, to bring up one, two, three budgets and vote them all down and then say: Well, we tried. Maybe we will have some secret talks over here and we will plop something down right before some emergency date and demand everybody vote for it, not having a chance to read it. Is that what the process is going to be instead of an open process where the Budget Committee has open hearings, amendments are offered, a budget is voted out of committee, it comes to the floor, and there is a guaranteed 50 hours of debate? But the process comes to an end. The Budget Act states that we cannot filibuster it. There is only limited time of debate, but there is an opportunity to debate, an opportunity to offer amendments.

We are told Senator Reid does not want his members to have to take tough votes. None of us like to take tough votes. None of us likes to take tough votes. Isn't that what we are paid for here? Isn't that why they send us--to vote on important, tough issues that impact the future of our Nation? I am telling you, we are so far off path it is stunning to me.

I quoted his staffer earlier, but what about Senator Reid himself, the Democratic leader of the Senate? Anybody who has worked with Senator Reid likes him, and I enjoy working with him. I respect him. I know he has a difficult job, but at some point one has to stand and lead. He is not leading and neither is President Obama. But this is what Senator Reid said just a few days ago--I think Friday.

There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my

opinion.

Well, there is a need, a statutory legal requirement that we send a budget out of the Senate.

Then, he said:

It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.

Why does he say it would be foolish? I think my good friend, Senator Reid, has taken his eye off the national interest. He has taken his eye off the crisis our country faces, and he has his eye on politics. He means it would be foolish politically. He has a scheme, and this is what his scheme is. He is going to bring up the House budget--the Ryan plan. In all honesty, it is the only plan I have seen in my time in the Senate that comes close to providing a long-term alteration of the unsustainable fiscal path we are on. It deals with it. It makes some tough choices, but they are not unbearable and I think most of them will actually work.

It is not perfect. I don't promise that I would vote for everything in it. But it is a historic plan to put America on a sustainable financial course. I thought they could have reduced spending more in some areas, frankly. But it puts us on a sustainable course. It was produced by the House Budget Committee. They had public hearings, the committee voted on it, they brought it to the floor, and it passed in the House of Representatives, in the way the Congress of the United States is supposed to operate.

What does our leader in the Senate and his colleagues who support him do? They make a decision to do something political, not responsible. They are not putting forth the vision they have for the future, but they are going to bring up the Ryan budget so they can all vote against it. I don't think that is responsible. I don't think it is responsible at all.

I am not going to participate in this scheme to have a series of votes. Count me out. I am not supporting it. I am not going to give my consent to it.

That is the way I see it and I don't think that it makes sense. If I did, I would change my mind. But as I see it, it makes no sense for me to, in any way, consent to a process that is designed to fail. The whole process is designed to fail. With a simple majority in the Senate, our Democratic colleagues can pass any piece of legislation. They have 53 Members. They can win the vote. If they put up a good budget, they might have some Republicans--maybe all the Republicans, if we reached a bipartisan agreement. But there is nothing close to that. We have not approached this in any realistic way, and I am concerned that we are off track.

Senator Schumer, who once headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee--he designed all that--is a Senator who is considered to be a guru of politics around here. He is good, and there is nothing wrong with being a smart politician. But at some point politics goes too far. This is what he said on May 23 regarding the Ryan budget.

We will exhibit this issue as an example of why we need to

keep the Senate Democratic in order to counter House

Republicans. We will point to this week and say the

Republicans tried to end Medicare but a Democratic majority

stopped it in the Senate. It is that simple.

That is an open statement of raw politics. Where is the national interest? Where is the response to Mr. Bowles, a leading Democrat, to Alice Rivlin, a leading Democrat, and their principled cries that we do something about the debt crisis we now find ourselves in? Nowhere.

My colleagues want to go home, and they intend to go home--go home Friday. Our soldiers are out there, and they are not getting to come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are going down roads where bombs might be planted and they are putting their lives at risk. They do not get to come home. Their business isn't finished yet. But we plan to go home, apparently, not having done anything but having gone through a political exercise that is an embarrassment to the Senate at a critical time in our Nation's financial history--a very critical time.

President Obama utterly ignored, in his completely irresponsible budget, the fiscal commission that he himself created to seek a national consensus on funding. I have to say the President's budget is nowhere close to what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare. That is not a Jeff Sessions quote. That is a quote from Erskine Bowles, who cochaired the Commission, when he saw the President's budget plan that was submitted a couple months ago. He said it is nowhere close to where the Administration will have to go to avoid our Nation's fiscal nightmare.

So that is what the President has done, and the Senate has done nothing. They will not even hold a markup and propose a plan. Why? They think it is politically unwise. They think they can gain more politically by refusing to produce a budget, by attacking the House Members who produced a budget--as they are required to by law--that is honest and would make a huge long-term difference in America. It would put us on a sustainable path, not leave us on an unsustainable path.

I will conclude with a quote from the preamble to the fiscal commission's debt report. This is what they wrote to us. Remember now, Senator Reid's plan is to bring up the House budget and have all his Members vote it down so they can attack Republicans for having the audacity to propose any changes in Medicare--and not even in the 10 years of the budget. It is the outyears they are complaining about, and it is not law. Any change will not become law until it passes both Houses of Congress. But it is a vision that could work to make Medicare sound and actually save it.

They think they can scare people by saying we are going to end Medicare, so they are going to vote on it. That vote, in the minds of our Democratic politicians, shows that they are defending Medicare and that all the Republicans oppose Medicare. But the American people are getting too smart for that. I don't believe they are going to buy that story any longer. They know Medicare is on an unsustainable path and that it cannot continue.

The Medicare actuaries and trustees have reported today that it is going to go bankrupt a number of years sooner than was originally expected. But this is what the debt commission said about the need to have a plan to fix our future:

In the weeks and months to come, countless advocacy groups

and special interests will try mightily through expensive,

dramatic, and heart-wrenching media assaults to exempt

themselves from the shared sacrifice and common purpose. The

national interest, not the special interests, must prevail.

We urge leaders and citizens with principled concerns about

any of our recommendations to follow what we call the Becerra

Rule: Don't shoot down an idea without offering a better idea

in its place.

Isn't that a reasonable request--don't shoot down an idea unless you are prepared to present a better one in its place? That is exactly the opposite of what our Democratic leadership is proposing. They are proposing to bring up a budget they say they do not like. They are going to vote it down without producing anything in its place. That is not responsible leadership, it is not respectful of the budget process, which is required by law, and it is not in the national interest. It is not in the national interest.

Yes, we are going to have to deal with tough issues. We find ourselves in a fix, a deeper hole than we should ever have been in, and the American people punished Congressmen and Senators last year because they were unhappy, and they were right to be. There is no way any Member of this Congress can stand before their constituents and justify a deficit this year of $1.6 trillion and defend or justify a spending program in which 40 percent of every $1 we spend this year is borrowed. How can that possibly be called sanity? It is insanity. That is why every one of these people is telling us we have to change and why PIMCO, the largest bond company in the world, has said they are not buying any more American debt. They believe we need to get serious and make some serious changes.

I thank the Chair.

I will just wrap up by saying that is why I think the process planned for this week is unacceptable and I do not intend to support it.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I reserve the right to object and I will object at this time and would like to review that unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, under the unanimous consent request propounded by the Senator from Oregon, I will remove my objection. I will not object.

Mr. President, I appreciate the difficulties the majority leader has and would agree substantively that the PATRIOT Act does need to be passed. It doesn't need to have any gap in it. As a former Federal prosecutor for 15 years, I agree that the Paul amendment to make our terrorist investigators go further and have more difficulty in obtaining gun records than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms investigators for far more minor crimes is a bad policy. I see where he is coming from, but I don't agree with that.

I would say that Senator Paul is a courageous, strong, new Member of the Senate. He has some deep beliefs. He is entitled to advocate for those. I believe he has tried to do that in good faith. He thought he had an agreement to be able to offer his amendment, and the majority leader suggested he could offer amendments, but only the ones he approved, and he won't approve the one on guns.

I think that is not healthy, in the defense of Senator Paul, that he would not have an opportunity to offer the amendment he wants to offer, not the one that is approved in advance by the majority leader. I think, to the extent that happens, it diminishes the great robust tradition of debate in the Senate. It is a difficult matter. I know people feel strongly about it. I wanted to share those thoughts.

The Budget

My good friend Senator Conrad, who chairs the Budget Committee, made his speech. I was disappointed in some of it. He said one thing very dramatic in his statement. We should think about it. He said the Ryan budget is insufficient because it allows $8 trillion in new debt to be incurred by the United States over the next 10 years. Think about that. He says that is unthinkable and it really is dramatic that we would have that much debt accrue.

The only budget that exists from the Democratic majority is the President's budget. The President's budget, as analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, without any doubt or dispute would add $13 trillion to the debt of the United States in 10 years. They conclude that the President's budget--the one that was praised by the Democrats when it came out--would increase the debt, increase spending, and increase taxes more than if we did nothing. I call it the most irresponsible budget ever to be introduced because it makes our debt situation worse at a time in which we have never faced a more serious systemic debt crisis in America.

Senator Conrad says Federal education spending, which is basically the Department of Education and some other programs, should not have its funding reduced. He did not acknowledge the fact that the President's budget proposes to increase education spending through the Department of Education by 10.5 percent next year, at a time when we are in record deficits. The Department of Energy is proposed to receive a 9.5-percent increase. The Department of State is proposed to receive a 10.5-percent increase. The Department of Transportation, with a phantom assumption of revenue from a source unidentified by the administration, is projected to receive a 60-percent increase to fund new high-speed rail and other priorities that have not been proven to be effective today. Even if they are effective, we do not have the money. Sometimes you cannot do things you would like to do because you do not have the money. To that extent, I would say we are on the wrong track.

Let me say about Congressman Ryan's budget proposal that it does significantly reduce spending every year. It completely changes the debt trajectory. It reduces spending and deficits every year. It does not get to a balance in 10 years, but it eventually gets to a balance in the outyears, according to their projections. Of course, intervening Congresses will have much to say about it. It does change the debt trajectory, and it does put us on the right path. If passed, in my opinion, it would be the kind of budget that would create confidence in the international markets, create jobs and growth in America, create vitality in our businesses, and it is something that would be better than doing nothing and absolutely better than the inexcusable budget that has been presented by the Democrats--the only one they have presented so far.

I wanted to make those points.

Madam President, the simple fact is that the American people are furious with Washington. And they have every right to be. They work hard, pay their taxes, and play by the rules. They sacrifice for their families, contribute to their communities, and uphold this Nation's values. They have built up the greatest, most dynamic economy on the face of the Earth. But Washington has wasted their tax dollars, eroded our values, and placed this Nation's economy at grave risk.

Politicians have arrogantly believed that the rules don't apply to them. In the midst of a deep recession, as American families tightened their belts, Washington went on a historic spending spree. By the end of the first 3 fiscal years of the Obama administration, we will have accumulated another $5 trillion in total gross debt. Our deficit this year alone will approach $1\1/2\ trillion. Our annual budget has nearly doubled from what it was at the beginning of the decade.

This enormous surging debt prompted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to describe it as the greatest threat to our national security. At $14 trillion it hovers over our economy like a dark cloud. It undermines confidence and fosters uncertainty. Studies show our crushing debt stifles job growth and robs us of as many as one million jobs a year.

We borrow $5 billion a day, $100 billion a month and, under the president's vision, we are on track to do the unthinkable: doubling our entire national debt in just 10 years. We are faced with what has rightly been called the most predictable economy crisis in our history. The question is not whether such a crisis will occur but whether we act in time to prevent it.

A major financial crisis is not just some hypothetical danger: it is very real and it is very serious. If the world loses confidence in our ability to control our spending and debt, our interest rates could dramatically spike. Greece saw its interest rates triple before its debt crisis hit. The rates for Ireland and Portugal quadrupled.

If the same were to happen to the United States we could become unable to pay the interest on our debt and face

a Greece-like debt crisis that plunges our country into a deep recession. This would not be some distant financial event, but an economic disaster felt most severely by everyday working Americans.

There is no reason we should be in this situation. America's workforce is the most productive on Earth. Our system of government is the envy of the world. But those who occupy the halls of power have failed to uphold the public trust. They have squandered this Nation's wealth and threatened our children's future.

So, again, the American people have every right to be furious.

They rose up in the last election and the big spenders in Washington took a shellacking. We saw the emergence of the Tea Party a diverse collection of Americans spread across the country who, after years of sitting silent, spoke out for the first time in their lives. They are good and decent patriotic Americans who fear for their country and for the future their children will inherit.

Their concerns are shared by the vast majority of Americans. Overall, more than 70 percent of Americans believe this country is on the wrong track.

To get back on the right track requires strong leadership. I have continued to hope that President Obama would rally the country behind needed reform. Unfortunately, the president seems determined to not only keep our country on its dangerous course but to accelerate our pace. He offered a budget in February a budget many Democrats praised that he and his budget director declared to the whole world would ``not add more to the debt,'' ``spend only money that we have each year,'' and ``live within our means.'' But those statements were not honest. The President's budget never once produces a deficit less than $748 billion. And the deficits climb to $1.2 trillion in the 10th year.

And what about the Senate? What is this august body doing to confront this crisis? Is the Budget Committee meeting to work on a plan? Is there a Senate budget being considered on the floor today? Will we be amending a resolution on the Senate floor?

The answer to all of these questions is no. Today is the 756th day since the Democrat-led Senate passed a budget. In that time Congress has spent more than $7 trillion. We have accumulated another $3.2 trillion in debt. What do we have to show for it? Unemployment stuck around 9 percent, anemic economic growth, and the very real threat of a debt crisis.

But Majority Leader Reid and the big spenders in the Democrat Party are determined to keep spending and spending and spending. The reason we have not seen a budget from Chairman Conrad and the Democrat Senate is because they know that they can't put forward a plan that wins the support both of their caucus and of the American people. News reports confirmed that budget proposal Senate Democrats were working on and then abandoned relied more heavily on taxes than savings. It would have cut only $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That doesn't even come close to what we need to cut. We are going to spend $45 trillion over the next 10 years. Our national debt will be 100 percent of GDP by the end of September.

House Republicans have stepped forward, fulfilled the duty they asked the American people to bestow on them, and presented an honest, courageous plan that will get the job done. It will save, or cut, around $6 trillion. But Leader Reid wants to use our floor time this week to simply vote down this plan while offering nothing in its place. He just wants to keep spending and spending and spending.

He is simply trying to remove himself from the spotlight that should be directed on the inability or unwillingness of his caucus to deliver a budget plan to the American people.

But the majority leader is more than happy to go into recess, more than 750 days since the Senate has passed a budget, and simply be content to have obstructed every single effort to reduce spending or impose budgetary control. He is content, it would seem, to send this Chamber into recess after he has failed miserably to protect this Nation from the financial danger ahead. He says ``there's no need to have a Democratic budget.'' He says it would be ``foolish'' to present one. So we will just keep spending and spending and spending.

What is the real strategy here? The Democrat strategy is just to attack, vilify, and disparage House Republicans because they did the honorable thing and put forward an honest plan. Here is what Senator Schumer said earlier this week, speaking of today's votes:

We will exhibit this issue as an example of why we need to

keep the Senate Democratic in order to counter House

Republicans. We will point to this week and say the

Republicans tried to end Medicare but a Democratic majority

stopped it in the Senate. It's that simple.

Medicare is going to be insolvent in about 10 years. House Republicans have a plan to save it. People may disagree on aspects of that plan, may have different ideas for implementation. But the House Republican plan will save Medicare. The Democrat Senate plan is to allow Medicare to go bust and to waste the Senate's time savaging the House Republican plan with a series of false, dishonest attacks. The Democrat Senate plan is to ignore the danger and just keep spending and spending and spending.

Chairman Conrad, I am sad to say, called the House Republican plan ``ideological,'' ``partisan,'' ``unreasonable,'' and ``draconian.'' I was surprised to hear this given that the chairman served on the fiscal commission, which issued the following statement in the preamble to its report:

In the weeks and months to come, countless advocacy groups

and special interests will try mightily through expensive,

dramatic, and heart-wrenching media assaults to exempt

themselves from shared sacrifice and common purpose. The

national interest, not special interests, must prevail. We

urge leaders and citizens with principled concerns about any

of our recommendations to follow what we call the Becerra

Rule: Don't shoot down an idea without offering a better idea

in its place.

So after this week's mockery, what is next for the Senate? We will promptly adjourn for recess. The Senate will adjourn for Memorial Day-- a time when we honor those who have kept this country safe. But the Senate has done nothing to protect this country from the economic danger that draws nearer each day.

If, after this shameful display, Majority Leader Reid wants to adjourn for recess, all I can say is this: not with my consent. I will force a vote on it. Senate Democrats will have to stand before the American people, having more than 750 days since passing a budget, and declare that they will go into a 1-week vacation having not taken a single, solitary step to address our Nation's fiscal crisis. They have not even allowed the Budget Committee to meet.

We are told we don't need public meetings, that a small group of lawmakers and White House officials should meet in secret to hammer out some 11th hour deal that nobody sees or scrutinizes until it is adopted. Well, it is that kind of thinking that got us here in the first place. What this process needs is more sunlight, not less. First, we were told to wait for the Gang of Six. Now we are to supposed to wait for the Biden talks. But at what point will we just do our duty under the law and work on a budget? I firmly believe that the best way out of this debt crisis is to have an open, honest, and public debate.

The one thing we haven't tried in this town is the one thing that I know will work: to have an open, transparent process before the whole world. Let's speak honestly about the dangers we face. Let's put forward a plan in the Senate to address those dangers. Let's open that plan to amendment and discussion. Let's stand and be counted before the American people. If Democrats think the way out of this crisis is to raise taxes, let them put that plan on paper and let's debate it. But enough operating in the shadows. Enough hiding. Enough ducking. Let's do the people's work. Let's give the American people the honest process and the honest budget they deserve.

We also need a budget that is based on facts. All of the evidence shows that deficit reduction plans relying on heavy tax increases are far less successful and result in far less prosperity. Though raising taxes is billed as the compassionate choice, there is nothing compassionate about weakening our economy and bankrupting our country. There is nothing compassionate about

dividing up an ever smaller amount of wealth. There is nothing compassionate about ignoring the facts, the evidence, and the lessons of history. A compassionate budget is one that improves the fortunes for every sector of American society--creating jobs, increasing wages, and expanding opportunity.

In other words, we must focus on growing the economy instead of the government. That is the only way to ensure that America is able to compete, to lead and to thrive in the 21st century.

An honest budget is one that not only puts our budget on a path to balance but our country on a path to balance. In other words, we need a budget that shifts the balance of power from Washington back to the people.

At its core, the debate over our Nation's debt is a debate over our Nation's identity. In his recent speech on the deficit, the president spoke of America's social compact to justify his big-government vision. But the social compact I am familiar with is very different. The American idea is that the government's role is to preserve our liberty, not control our lives.

Ultimately, what we are fighting for is a future for our children that is free from both the burden of debt and the burden of big government. I was not elected to this office to participate in the transformation of America to a European-style social democracy where government dominates our lives.

America's greatness is not found in the size of our government but in the scope of our freedoms. We need a budget that recognizes this essential truth.

I see my colleague Senator Paul is here. I know he would like to take 5 minutes to respond to the majority leader. He is definitely entitled to that.

I ask unanimous consent that he be given 5 minutes, Mr. President, and that the 5 minutes not count against the time on this side.

Madam President, I yield Senator Ayotte up to 10 minutes or such time as she may consume.

Madam President, before the Senator departs, I thank her for her comments and her valuable and constructive insights. I would ask her about one thing. I know a lot of our new Members came to Congress, having campaigned and talked to people all over their States, with a passion to do something about the unsustainable spending path we are on. We had a large number who wanted to be on the Budget Committee, and we are glad she just joined us.

But let me ask, is it a disappointment to get on the Budget Committee, which the law says should write a budget and have hearings on the budget, and then to find the majority leader has decided not to even allow a budget hearing to take place?

Madam President, I thank Senator Ayotte of New Hampshire. She is following in the footsteps of a great budget leader, chairman, ranking member, Judd Gregg, and brings those good instincts to the body.

I ask unanimous consent that the following Republican speakers be limited to 10 minutes each. I, at this point, am pleased to recognize my very able and effective colleague, Senator DeMint, for his comments at this time.

I see my colleague Senator Hatch and I will be yielding to him for 10 minutes. I thank my colleague, Senator Toomey, a member of the Budget Committee. He served on the House Budget Committee. He has worked harder than maybe anybody on the committee and has proposed a plan that would actually balance our budget within 10 years. It is the kind of thing we should be debating in the committee. Unfortunately, I know the Senator has to be deeply disappointed because we are not having a markup in committee. We are not even having a chance to bring forth his budget and defend it and point out why he believes it will make America a better place.

I thank the Senator from his contributions to the debate and to the committee.

Let me note that Senator Hatch is the ranking member of the Finance Committee, a very significant, important committee that deals with the financial challenges our Nation faces every day. I thank the Senator, and I yield to him.

Madam President, I tell my distinguished colleague that we only have a few minutes left, and the Senator from Utah is waiting. So if the Senator could wrap up briefly. I have thoroughly enjoyed the Senator's remarks.

Madam President, I thank the Senator.

I have to say, the Senator's remarks about the progressive budget and the fact that it represents the heart of this Senate Democratic conference's view of the budget is probably correct. It also represents a view that would be widely and strongly rejected by the American people.

Senator Lee, from Utah, is a new Senator. He campaigned in every corner of his State. He has talked about this issue and spending and has listened to his people and I am delighted to hear from him at this time.

Madam President, how much time remains on this side?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Utah have 4 minutes.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for allowing us to have a few remarks at this time, after the process has been completed tonight.

The Senate has not fulfilled its responsibility. The United States Code that we passed, Congress passed, requires that there be a budget. It requires that Congress commence marking up the budget in the Budget Committee, as the Presiding Officer knows, by April 1, and a concurrent resolution be passed by April 15, setting forth what the Congress authorizes to be spent in the next year.

If anybody attempts to spend above that amount, the Budget Act allows a point of order to be raised, and it would require 60 votes to go above that level. So a budget says what we want to spend and makes it difficult for anybody to spend more. It is what we do in our households, it is what our cities and counties do, it is what our State governments do.

I know Senator Manchin, the Presiding Officer, as a Governor, he had to deal with his tough budget situation. My Governor, Governor Bentley, just announced he is prorating 15 percent of the discretionary spending for the rest of the year.

We are not talking about those kinds of cuts this year in Washington. I was in Estonia, near the Soviet Union on the Baltic Sea, and the proud Estonians had a larger deficit, larger economic decline than we did. The Estonians told us that every Cabinet official took a 40- percent pay cut, every employee took 10 to 20. The health system, one said: My wife is a doctor. She is very unhappy. But they intend to complete the recovery in Estonia without adding to the debt at all. Their debt to GDP is 7 percent.

By September 30 of this year, our debt-to-gross domestic product will total 100 percent, and according to the Rogoff-Reinhart study, a great authoritative study that has gained a great deal of applause, when the debt amounts to 90 percent of GDP, economic growth declines by 1 percent.

A 1-percent decline in GDP--the experts tell us--is the equivalent of 1 million jobs. So we will be in a position where, because of the debt we have accumulated, the economy will grow 1 percent less and we could have 1 million less jobs.

We do not know what our economic growth might be. It looks like it could be less than 2 percent. We are talking about a huge difference in what our economic growth could be this year. Maybe it will be 3. But if it is 3, it would have been 4. If it was 4, it would have been 5. If it is 3, it would be 2 because of this debt.

So these are the circumstances we are dealing with. Every witness has told us we need to do something about it. The Nation is in a most serious fix. So there has been a decision made by the leadership of the Senate, the Democratic leadership of the Senate, not to produce a budget.

It was interesting, when the President's budget was brought up, every single Member of the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--voted no. We could say: Why did they do that? Well, the President's budget deserved not a single vote. Considering the severe, serious financial condition we are in, the President's budget was the most irresponsible budget that has ever been presented to Congress. It is stunningly short of anything necessary.

Erskine Bowles, the man President Obama appointed to head the fiscal commission, said the President's budget was nowhere close to where they will have to go to avoid our fiscal nightmare--nowhere close. But our colleagues, what have they done? They complained about the Ryan budget. They vote against their own, and they vote against any other budget. They vote against the Ryan budget saying it is going to eliminate your Medicare, and you will not receive your Medicare because of Paul Ryan and the mean Republicans.

But the Ryan budget made no change in Medicare in the 10 years in the Ryan plan at all, except canceled the President's health care bill and saved hundreds of billions of dollars. What it did was to propose in the future that we develop a new way of administering Medicare that would save money and make it more responsible to individual needs.

We refused to even move to that legislation, to discuss it, and to analyze whether it should be done that way or whether it could be done another way. But nobody denies that this budget, that any budget we pass, must confront our entitlement programs. Surely, they do not. So whatever you do, you are attacked by it. Our majority leader, whom I admire and enjoy working with, was quite frank. He said: It would be foolish for us to pass a budget. He did not mean it would be foolish for America. He did not mean it would be foolish for the public interest. He did not mean it would be foolish in terms of containing the reckless spending and dangerous path we are on. He meant it would be foolish politically because he had a plan, and the plan was to attack the people who had the courage, the gumption, and the hard work to produce a budget dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges of America: Paul Ryan and his Budget Committee, wants to attack them, bring up their budget and vote it down, and not produce anything in response.

I believe that is an embarrassment to the Senate. It is an utter failure to meet our statutory obligation. More importantly, it is a failure to meet our moral obligation. Many have said:

Well, we need to do something because we are putting debt on our children and grandchildren. That is absolutely true. But we have been told by numerous experts, including Mr. Bowles, who chaired the debt commission, that we could be facing a debt crisis in 2 years, give or take a little bit. That was his opinion.

His cochairman, Alan Simpson, said it could be 1 year. So we could have another debt financial crisis that could put us back into a recession as a result of our fiscal irresponsibility as soon as 2 years, according to Erskine Bowles--accomplished businessman, successful businessman, President Clinton's Chief of Staff, chosen by President Obama to head the Commission. That is what he told us in the Budget Committee just a few weeks ago.

How serious is it? Our highway spending this year is about $40 billion. Last year, this country spent, in interest on our debt, $200- plus billion, five times the highway bill, just for example, and we need to do something about our infrastructure and highways in America. I am very worried about it.

I indicated that, just for example, the highway budget is about $40 billion. The Federal Department of Education is about $70 billion. But we spent last year in interest payments on the debt that we have accumulated, over $200 billion.

The President submitted his budget. It was favorably commented on by Democratic colleagues and represented what appears to be, I guess, the mainstream Democratic view--although I am pleased to see nobody voted for it.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, which has analyzed the budget the President submitted to us, it would result in an interest payment, in the 10th year, of $940 billion.

That is an amount of money that exceeds our imagination. It is larger than the Defense Department budget. It is larger than Medicare. It is larger than Medicaid. It is the fastest growing item in our entire budget. And that assumes a slight increase but modest interest rate, below the 6-percent historical average. So if interest rates were to go up faster--and that is quite possible--instead of $940 billion, we could have trillion-dollar-plus interest payments every year, crowding out the ability of the Education Department, Transportation Department, NOAA, the EPA, and every other agency in government to get funds. We will crowd out that spending by placing an annual burden on our people of $940 billion a year. It is this trend and this path that is unsustainable. We have been told that.

I just want to repeat what happened just a few moments ago. What happened? Four measures were brought up by the majority, and they were brought up with the full knowledge that nothing would happen. There were several hours of debate. We voted on four tremendously important items, four budgets for the United States of America, with no real ability to discuss each one of them in any depth at all. It was a political exercise. The majority leader said it would be ``foolish'' for us to pass a budget. In other words, it is foolish for the Democratic majority to commit themselves to any plan for the future of America. It was an avoidance of responsibility. They would not even vote for the President's budget because if they did, they would be responsible for it.

What they did was attack the one group of people who have done the right thing, the responsible thing, and that is to produce a historic budget that would basically solve our debt problem--it didn't overreach--and that is the House budget. It was long term, short term, and it dealt with entitlements, discretionary spending, and taxes. It was a thoughtful, important, historic budget. The Chicago Tribune praised it. The Wall Street Journal praised it. The fiscal commission chairmen, Bowles and Simpson, praised it for its courage, its integrity, its lack of gimmicks, and for being honest.

Do you know what they said. They said, again, that anyone who opposes the Ryan budget or opposes any one of the budgets, if you don't like it, you should put forth your plan. Has the leadership in the Senate proposed any plan? In a shocking display of irresponsibility--I don't have words to describe the degree of irresponsibility that I think has been shown here tonight--they have said: We are not going to produce anything. We are just going to attack what you have done.

Many of our colleagues have said we have to deal with entitlements and confront the surging debt caused thereby; that Medicare and Social Security are in danger and they could go belly-up. We have to change what we are doing. The House wrestled with that. It wasn't within that 10-year window. Everybody who is 55 and above and everybody who is on Medicare today would have no change--none. Yet we have people going around telling our seniors that this Ryan House budget would change their Social Security and they would not get it. In fact, it would save the Social Security Program, put it on a sound basis, and guarantee that people now receiving it and people over 55 who are soon to be receiving it would have no change whatsoever. In fact, in some ways, it would strengthen it for them. This is not correct.

Well, do we have a better plan? What about the Becerra rule? I suppose that is Congressman Xavier Becerra they named that for, a Democratic Congressman from Los Angeles. Did they produce anything they think is better? Do they have any plans to change the debt course we are on? Zero, nada.

I really believe this is not the responsible way to deal with the challenges this country faces. I am deeply disappointed. The matter is not going away. As ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, I feel a great sense of responsibility to defend the legally required processes of a Budget Act. What kind of ranking member or member of the Budget Committee would I be if I sat by and acknowledged and accepted these four votes as somehow disposing of the situation?

What should happen? What should have happened is that by April 1, the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, with whom I enjoyed working this year, should have produced a chairman's mark, and it should have gone to the Budget Committee, and we would have had an opportunity to debate and vote on that and discuss all the issues relevant to getting our country on a fine, sound, fiscal path. But I think the majority leader decided that was not a good path.

Senator Conrad, if you read the newspapers, apparently brought up his budget, his proposal to the Democratic conference, and it received a chilly reception, according to the newspapers. Senator Conrad has said repeatedly that he knows we are on an unsustainable path. He said once that we are heading to the wall at warp speed. We have to change, he said, because we are on an unsustainable path. But they thought, I suppose, he was too frugal, and so apparently, according to the papers, he came back the next week with a budget that Senator Sanders and some of the others apparently blessed. We thought we were going to have a markup, maybe, and he would bring that forward. They said publicly: We have a budget, and we have basically agreed on a budget, but we are just not bringing it forward. But it should have been brought forward to committee, marked up, passed out of committee, and brought to the floor.

It won't pass the committee, they say. What do you mean? We have to pass a budget. The Budget Act provides that it can't be filibustered. It allows the budget to be passed with a simple majority. The Democrats have a majority in the committee. They can pass a budget just like they like it. Whatever they like, they could vote to pass it. Why not? Well, I think it is because they thought it would be foolish politically for them to commit themselves to any plan that dealt with taxes, with spending, with the debt. They didn't want to commit themselves. They decided that the smart thing to do would be to attack the foolish Republicans, who actually had the responsibility and the integrity and the sense of duty to lay out a plan for this country's financial future.

Make no mistake about it, a budget is a serious matter. It sets forth your vision for America, how big you would like the government to be, how much tax you want to impose, how much spending you want to incur and how much debt you would like to incur, and it sets it forth before the whole world. We were waiting to see--the House had done their duty--what will the Senate do? Nothing.

I don't think that is responsible. I don't believe it is acceptable. I don't accept it. I am going to continue to resist this kind of no- action policy.

I hope the American people will register their complaints and concerns with their Senators and demand that this Senate do its duty to set forth a budget that can help contain spending in America and put us on a path to financial stability and allow our economy to begin to grow at a robust rate because I truly believe the debt and the interest we pay is weakening our economy, as the expert economists have told us.

Mr. President, we can't quit now. We are not going to quit now. We are going to keep pushing for the kind of budget that will allow us to put this country on a sound path. I am deeply disappointed that we have totally shortcut the entire process. We have entirely avoided the responsibility to cast a serious vote on a budget, bring one up where we have the opportunity to debate and amend it and calculate out and study and make sure there are no gimmicks in there and hidden manipulations that hide the way the numbers appear. We have seen that too often. In fact, if the American people knew the extent to which this Congress, year after year, has manipulated the numbers to hide the serious, irresponsible spending programs we are executing, they would be more angry with us than they are, and 70 percent of Americans think this country is on the wrong track. Fundamentally, I believe that is based on the fact that they think we are spending recklessly, running up too much debt, and endangering the future health and welfare of generations to come.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask to speak in morning business.

Mr. President, I am deeply concerned by our growing financial crisis and really deeply angered by the failure of this Senate to take any meaningful steps to address it. I am going to announce steps I will take to try to force this Senate to do its job since our Democratic leaders seem determined to prevent the people's work from being done.

As ranking member of the Budget Committee, I see quite plainly that the process the statutory act requires is not being followed at a time in which we have never faced a greater systemic long-term debt crisis as we face today. The act calls for a budget to be produced by April 15, the Budget Committee to have meetings by April 1, and here we are toward the end of May, about to recess, and we have not even had a hearing in the Budget Committee on the markup of a budget.

Budgets, of course, are able to be passed by a simple majority in the Senate, and they have given the majority party in the Senate the opportunity--really the responsibility--to set forth their vision about the financial future of America, to set forth their priorities, how they would conduct the people's business.

We know the House of Representatives met that deadline. They passed a historic budget. But the Senate has not done so. All we have seen from Majority Leader Reid are political games, cynical games, distractions and gimmicks to avoid confronting the fiscal nightmare we are now facing. How else can you explain why, in the middle of the crisis, Democratic leaders have not even produced a budget, have not even allowed the committee to meet to work on one? We have not even met to mark up one. We are required by law to produce a budget in committee and pass that budget on to the Senate floor, but this process has been shut down. We have not produced a budget in 754 days. Let me repeat. This great Senate, in a time of financial stress and danger, has not passed a budget in 754 days and has, it appears, no intention of doing one this year.

Today I join with the newest member of our Budget Committee, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, to send a letter to Senator Reid, signed by every Republican Senator in the Senate, pressing him to finally allow the Senate to begin work on a budget. But we are told in the media that the Democrats' refusal to put forth a budget is just good strategy, that it is best that they avoid putting a plan on paper.

Here is an excerpt from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Fittingly, the article is entitled ``Democrats Unhurried in Work on Budget.'' I would say that is true. This is what the article said:

As a political matter, the Democratic strategists say there

may be little benefit in producing a budget that would

inevitably include unpopular items. Many Democrats believe a

recent House GOP proposal to overhaul Medicare is proving to

be unpopular and has given Democrats a political advantage.

They loath to give up that advantage by proposing higher

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

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

overhaul that could prove politically difficult.

This is astonishing. It is the position of the great Democratic Party that their vision for deficit reduction is so unpopular or unfeasible that they won't even articulate it in public, let alone offer it up as a budget?

The heads of President Obama's fiscal commission warn that an economic crisis may be just 1 year or 2 years away.

That was the testimony they gave us in committee. It could be a year, a little sooner or a little later, said Erskine Bowles, Chairman of the commission, along with Alan Simpson, who said it could be 1 year, in his opinion, that we could have a debt crisis--not a little warning from people who spent months hearing witnesses and studying the debt situation facing our country. But it appears the leaders of the Senate would prefer to hide in the hills and take shots at Republicans from a distance. Is that what they prefer?

Chairman Paul Ryan and the House GOP had put forward a plan to get this country out of a looming, Greek-like debt crisis, make our economy more competitive, and save Medicare for future generations. It is an honest, courageous plan that will improve the quality of life for millions of Americans and do the job short term and long term. It may not be perfect. I am not saying it is perfect. I am saying it is a serious plan, seriously considered, that confronts both long-term and short-term problems and reforms Medicare and puts it on a path to salvation. But all we hear are attacks.

By contrast, the budget the President sent forward doubles our national debt and puts our entire country at risk, even though the President promised it would ``not add more to the debt'' and have us ``live within our means.'' Those were the President's words. In the 10 years of his budget, analyzed by the objective Congressional Budget Office, they tell us the lowest single annual deficit out of those 10 would be $740 billion--a stunning amount. They would average almost $1 trillion. The last years--8, 9, and 10--of his 10-year budget do not show the debt going down but going back up to $1 trillion. It was the most irresponsible budget that has ever been presented to this Nation. It is a stunning failure to lead at a time of financial crisis. It doubled the debt. It increased the debt over the projections of our baseline as it is. Instead of helping, it made it worse because it raised taxes and raised spending, and it raised spending more than it raised taxes.

So where do our colleagues in the Senate stand? They refuse to put forward their own plan. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Reid said the Democrats don't need a budget. ``There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion.'' He said it would be ``foolish'' to present one. The only thing that is foolish is violating the Congressional Budget Act in such a cynical attempt for political gain. The decision not to produce a budget is not a decision based on what is best for our country but based, as you can see from the quotes of the staffers and actually Senator Reid's own quote--it was designed for political advantage.

The Ryan budget is honest. If anybody confronts the budget situation in an honest way, they know the budget is going to have to have some bad news. It is going to have to tell people things cannot continue as they are today but we are going to have to do better. We are going to have to reduce spending. So maybe for some people that is not popular. Isn't that what we are paid to do here, serve the national interest, tell the truth about what is happening in our country?

We find ourselves in the remarkable position this week of having Senate

Democratic leaders bring forward not a Senate budget but bring forward the House Republican budget, only to vote it down while offering no alternative of their own. What a cynical ploy. Think about it.

Senator Reid said we are going to bring up the House budget, we are going to vote on it, and every member of his caucus--I am sure he has already counted the heads--will vote no. It has no chance of passage. What good is that? The Senate has a statutory duty under the Budget Act to produce a budget. We have not even attempted to produce a budget. They will attempt to bring forward a budget they have no intention of working on, no intention of taking seriously, no intention of opening for amendment or discussion, with only one goal: to use their majority to vote it down.

I look forward to the chance to support the House budget. I look forward to casting a vote which says we will be getting our spending under control, we will deal honestly with our budget challenges short term and long term. I look forward to voting for a budget that creates jobs, makes us more competitive, and deals honestly with the debt threats we have. But let's look at the bigger picture.

This week, the planned series of votes are designed by the majority leader to fail, of course. They are designed as a gimmick to distract attention from the Senate's failure to produce an honest plan. They are designed to keep this Senate from doing its job and defending this Republic from grave financial danger.

I, therefore, will not provide unanimous consent for any prearranged package of votes doomed to fail, intended to fail. Anyone can call up these budget votes, consistent with the rules, anytime they wish. But a package deal that wastes the Senate's time I cannot and will not support. The majority leader is wasting the American people's time. I am here to speak honestly and just tell the truth about that. That is the plain fact. It is a political gimmick that is going on.

Further, I will not agree to unanimous consent on any motion to adjourn for the Memorial Day recess. If we are going to close down this Chamber for another week without having produced a budget, without having even scheduled a committee hearing, then I am going to require we have a vote on it. Let's vote to go home, not having done the people's business.

Paul Ryan is leading. Speaker Boehner is leading. The House Republicans are leading. They produced a document that can be defended, that has integrity, that deals with our short-term spending problem and our long-term spending problem. It is not perfect, of course. We have the opportunity to amend it. We have an opportunity to pass a budget of our own that might be different, but it will get us off the unsustainable path we are on. But our Democratic leader and the Democrats who control the Chamber are refusing to allow a budget to go forward. They are refusing to share with the American people the contents of the plan they say they have behind closed doors. They say they have one. We read in the paper they have one. Why don't we see it?

So on Memorial Day--a week from today--we honor those who have fallen serving their country. We honor the brave men and women who have risked and given everything for our freedom and our future. We truly do. We honor those who gave their last breath to preserve our way of life. But now that way of life is threatened by a tidal wave of debt that we refuse to confront. It is a debt we have created, that we are growing, and that is up to us to stop, to defeat. That the Senate would go into recess this week refusing to work on a budget or even hold a public meeting on it, a further hearing on it, is unthinkable. Our soldiers serving overseas will not get the next week off. Why should the Senate get a week off after failing miserably to do its job?

My message to the majority leader is simple. If you object to the House GOP plan or to other Republican plans, then you must come forward with your own honest plan to prevent financial catastrophe and create a more prosperous future. Indeed, I close with this quote from the preamble to the fiscal commission report. This is what the Commission said because they anticipated just this kind of political difficulty. They anticipated that politicians in our country would do exactly what they are doing in the Senate--not what they did in the House where they faced up to their responsibility, but in the Senate.

This is the quote:

In the weeks and months to come, countless advocacy groups

and special interests will try mightily through expensive,

dramatic, and heart-wrenching media assaults to exempt

themselves from shared sacrifice and common purpose. The

national interest, not special interests, must prevail. We

urge leaders and citizens with principled concerns about any

of our recommendations to follow what we call the Becerra

rule: Don't shoot down an idea without offering a better idea

in its place.

That is exactly what the majority leader plans to do. He said: We don't need a Democratic budget. It would be foolish for us to produce one. We will just call up this House budget, and we will attack it, and with our Senate majority we will vote it down. But we won't produce our own. We won't produce any other alternative. We won't tell the American people our vision, our prospects and plans for getting this country off the unsustainable debt path we are on, and on to the path of prosperity and job creation and a sound financial future.

Why don't we hear it? Because, as one of their staff members said in that comment to the press, it might cause somebody to object. We might have, as the debt commission warned, advocacy groups and special interests that are going to rise up and complain about anything that reduces a dime they receive.

I don't deny in an honest budget, at this point in history where 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed, we are going to have to reduce some spending. Some good people are going to feel it. It is not going to be easy, just as the debt commission told us. Don't we know that? I thought that was what the past election was about last fall, when the big spenders and the high tax guys got shellacked. I thought Congress would get the message. Apparently, we haven't.

The debt situation we are in is not a little biddy thing. Under the Congressional Budget Office analysis of President Obama's 10-year budget, last year we had interest on the debt that we now owe of a little over $200 billion. According to the analysis of the President's budget, in the tenth year, under his plan, the Congressional Budget Office estimates we will pay, in interest in 1 year, $940 billion.

I know that is so much money it is difficult for people to comprehend it. Alabama is a State of just about average size. We are about one- fiftieth of the United States. We have a lean government that is making some serious reductions in spending because our money hasn't come in, and we have a constitutional amendment that requires the budget to be balanced. But the amount of money that Alabama spends on its general fund obligations is $1.8 billion.

The President's proposed budget would cause the interest on our debt in 1 year to reach $940 billion. That is way above what we spend on defense. It is way above what we spend on Medicare. It is the fastest growing item in the entire spending plan of America--interest on the debt--and that is why Mr. Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Mr. Alan Greenspan, our former Chairman; the International Monetary Fund; Moody's; the debt commission have all told us this is unsustainable. We can't continue. We won't go 10 years without a debt crisis. When asked, Mr. Bowles said we could have one in 2 years, maybe a little sooner, maybe a little later. I am not predicting that, but if we don't change that could happen, as expert after expert has said.

I hope in the days to come we will see the regular order be reestablished. Our colleagues say they have a budget. Let's bring it forward. Let's see it. They certainly have talked to the Democratic Members on more than one occasion about it. Maybe it has some good things on which we can agree. It will probably have some things that I wouldn't agree on, but it can be passed. We can't filibuster a budget. Under the Budget Act, it can be passed by a simple majority. A budget can clear the Senate, but you know what. If we produce a budget, we have to tell the American people what we really believe about America, where we really want this country to go.

Do we want a limited government, or do we want to continue to expand a larger and larger government? Do we want to raise taxes more and more to sustain spending levels higher than we have ever had them before? Is that what we want? Or are we prepared to make reductions in spending? One or the other has to occur. We cannot continue to borrow at the rate we are borrowing, which every expert has told us.

I am challenging the leaders of this Senate who asked for the job, who asked to be leaders of the Senate, asked to be given the responsibility of helping guide our Nation, to step forward and provide leadership.

In the joint statement issued by Mr. Bowles and Alan Simpson that they submitted to the Budget Committee, they said our Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. In other words, to the experts they heard from and who testified to them, and then based on their own study, they believe we are heading to a financial crisis. Alan Greenspan recently said: I think the Congress will, at some point, pass reform in spending and budget matters. The only question is, Will they pass it before or after the debt crisis hits.

So we have that challenge. We have no higher duty than to protect our people from a foreseeable danger.

That danger is out there. We are heading right toward it. It is time for us to stand up and be honest and face that challenge. I do not believe business as usual should continue, and I will object to it so far as I am able.

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 ask unanimous consent that Senator Hatch and I be able to speak in a colloquy.

Mr. President, the Congressional Budget Act requires that Congress pass a budget by April 15. The Republican House has passed its budget. They stated their financial vision for the future in America. The Democratic Senate, however, has not passed a budget in 750 days. It has been 750 days since we have had a budget that passed the Senate. This year they haven't even brought a budget forward to committee to begin to mark up a budget as specifically required by the same statute. They have not even put forward a plan.

The Democrats control the Senate. They campaigned for the majority and, as my wife says to me when I complain: You asked for the job. So we have the largest economy on Earth, and we are in the middle of a fiscal crisis. For the majority party to skip work on the Nation's budget is not something to be taken lightly.

I ask my good friend, the Senator from Utah, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, my former chairman in the Judiciary Committee, if the American people were polled, how many does the Senator think would say the Senate should not pass a budget?

One reason it is so important to have an honest, open budget process is that budgets are so easy to manipulate and spend. The President, in proposing a budget sometime ago, said his budget called on America to live within its means and ``not add more to the debt.'' That was the President's own statement. In fact, his budget doubles the debt in 10 years, producing annual deficits each year, the lowest of which never once fell below $748 billion. In fact, that would average almost $1 trillion a year and nowhere close to balancing.

The CBO found numerous gimmicks when they analyzed the President's plan. They found that it contained another $2.3 trillion in deficits. It increased the deficit. The President delivered a speech promising $4 trillion in savings over 12 years. After his budget was ill-received by objective commentators all over the country, editorial boards, and in Congress, he made a speech and he promised $4 trillion in savings over 12 years. But the committee analysts on our staff revealed that this so-called framework actually worsens the budget in relation to the CBO baseline.

Does the Senator from Utah believe the White House and the Democratic leaders in the Senate should produce an honest, concrete, fact-based budget on which we can rely?

I ask Senator Hatch, for the people who may not understand, it is the chairman's responsibility to call a hearing and to begin a markup, and the minority is not able to call the committee into effect. So we do have to look to the chairman, and probably the chairman would operate in relation to the majority leader to call the committee into session; is that right?

The budget is fundamentally a plan, a vision for the financial future of America. It is astounding that the party in the majority is not even prepared to say to the American people----

Yes.

I couldn't agree more. When the President submitted his budget, Mr. Erskine Bowles, whom the President asked to chair the fiscal commission that was supposed to come up with a plan to help us get out of this fix, said the President's budget is nowhere close to what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare. That is what the co- chair of the President's commission said.

So now we are looking to Congress. That is the President's proposal, but the Senate has to move forward a proposal. We cannot even go to conference and begin to work out a budget that both Houses can agree on until the Senate moves a budget forward.

I agree. As a matter of fact, we have heard reports that the Democratic caucus is debating a budget in closed door caucus meetings, and they have done that at least twice. This is now 6 weeks after the committee deadline to bring forward a budget has passed.

These reports indicate that in order to oblige the Senate's leading progressive, the Senator from Vermont, Senator Conrad has moved his budget further to the left, I think, than he probably desires. So we are told this budget now has more taxes than savings--raising taxes $2 trillion and possibly even $2.7 trillion, while cutting just $1.5 trillion in spending over 10 years. We will have to see it to know for sure. All we are hearing is news reports at this point.

Even the President, in his speech, called for $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Our analysis of his speech shows he did not do that. But that is what he said is the right approach.

As a ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, what are the Senator's thoughts about how steep tax hikes would affect the economy? Would it be better to cut wasteful Washington spending or to raise taxes and continue the spending spree we have been on?

Well, we cannot even have a discussion if a budget isn't brought up.

I just had occasion to meet with the Finance Minister from Canada, and he told me they are bringing their corporate tax rate down to 15 percent or below. We are at 35 percent. We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. Wouldn't it be nice if we can tax more and get some more money? But as the Senator knows from his experience, if we have too high of tax rates, it drives investment out of America, drives jobs out of America, and companies are liable to want to move to Canada where they pay less taxes, creating jobs for them and not us.

So there is a danger, is there not, economically?

There is a danger economically, is there not, and a danger to growth, which we need desperately, if we keep raising taxes.

I think the Senator is right. This Senate is filled with remarkable people, but I think our colleagues on the other side are paralyzed, frankly, by the challenge of putting a plan on paper that can actually be examined, the numbers calculated, and ideas confronted. I think their problem is they are not able to produce a budget their caucus will support, that the American people will support, and that would actually get the job done. That is a difficult challenge. But if you want to be a leader, you have to meet that challenge.

Democratic leaders and the President talk a lot about a balanced approach to reducing our deficit. We believe in that approach. The Senator from Utah has indicated that. But I ask the Senator, what is the more balanced approach? Is the plan that hikes taxes and grows the government or a plan that controls Washington spending and shifts the balance back to everyday Americans?

This is true. It is dangerous to our country. We have gone 750 days without passing a budget in the Senate. I do believe if we took a poll of the American people, what percentage would one get if they were asked: Should the Congress of the United States, particularly at a time of great financial danger, have a budget? We will not have a budget unless the Senate acts.

It is a question both of philosophy and economics. Philosophically, the American people do not want Washington to hike taxes on millions of Americans in order to fund its wasteful

spending spree. Economically, the evidence shows cutting spending--not raising taxes--and we have done a number of studies on this--is the approach that consistently produces the best results time and time again.

We need a budget based on facts. We need a budget to grow the economy, not the government. We need a budget that imposes real spending discipline on Washington. We need a budget without gimmicks or empty promises. We need a budget that is produced publicly and openly, allowing the American people full opportunity to see what is in it and to consider it. We need a budget that the American people deserve, an honest budget that spares our children from both the growing burden of debt and the growing burden of big government. We need a budget that ensures America will compete, creating jobs, lead, and thrive in the 21st century.

I thank Senator Hatch. I have enjoyed sharing these thoughts. I will note again that we are looking at a period in history in which our systemic debt problem is greater, I believe, than any time in our history. World War II was serious, but we could see our way out of it as soon as that war was over, and we bounced back rapidly.

Every expert tells us it is not going to be easy to bounce back out of the systemic problems we have. We need to have leadership. To have gone this long, 750 days without a budget in the Senate. Last year we did not pass a budget, and there were 59 Democrats in the Senate.

One may say: Don't be so partisan, Senator Sessions. We are calling their names this morning. We like our colleagues, but the truth is, when you have the majority, you have a responsibility. The responsibility at this point in history could not be greater than to produce a blueprint, a plan for the future, such as the House has done, that the American people can see: Does that solve our problems? Does it put us on the right path? I think the House bill does.

We have yet to see anything out of the Senate that does. It is our responsibility in this body to pass legislation, because if we do not, we cannot conference with the House, and we can never get a budget passed.

I thank Senator Hatch. I look forward to working with our colleagues. Maybe we can somehow break this logjam. The American people have a right to watch us and not be happy when we are not doing the kind of work necessary to put this country on a sound financial path.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, yesterday the Senate debated a bill to increase taxes on the production of oil and gas in the United States, as well as the tens of thousands of Americans that industry employs and really the millions of Americans it serves. We should have been debating a budget. In fact, the Senate has not passed a budget for 749 days.

The majority decided to bring their bill to the floor yesterday in an effort, I think, to change some of the conversation from the problem at hand, which is our spending problem in Washington. Today we borrow 40 cents of every dollar we spend. Spending on domestic government agencies domestic

nondefense government agencies in the past 2 years increased 24 percent. That does not count the $700 billion, almost $800 billion stimulus package. It was much more than that added to it. The Medicare trust fund will go bankrupt in 2024. The Social Security trust fund will be insolvent in 2036. In the past decade, our Nation's debt has increased from $5 trillion to $14 trillion.

Despite the gravity of our situation, the majority has chosen to debate a bill to increase taxes on oil and gas, an industry that employs 170,000 Americans and a number in my State and added this past year 11,000 new jobs. Mr. President, $1.9 trillion in taxes has been generated by the industry since 1981. The Reid-Menendez bill would not have decreased prices at the pump but would have shipped more jobs overseas and resulted in the importation of more oil and gas. Whenever you tax something, you get less of it. Whenever you tax a refining process, you drive up the cost. It is just that simple.

We are all aware that gas prices have doubled in the President's first 2 years in office. Raising taxes on energy companies operating in America would do nothing to help that situation. The real solution is for America to enact legislation that increases domestic American energy production from a variety of sources--oil, natural gas, nuclear--we need to do more on nuclear--hydroelectric, biofuels, coal and other sources of reliable energy that Americans can put to good use--our energy.

Conservation is a very important factor and should play a very important role. America needs an energy policy that strengthens our national security, fosters economic growth, and protects the environment in a reasonable and cost-effective manner. Americans need affordable domestic energy. Regrettably, the Senate majority plan does not seem to be interested in that kind of energy policy.

In April of this year--just last month, the United States imported 344 million barrels of oil from foreign sources. That is over 60 percent of the oil consumed in America. That means we sent $42.5 billion overseas in April alone to purchase the oil we import.

Stated differently, last month alone the United States spent over $980,000 per minute on oil from foreign sources. That is almost $1 million a minute. This presents a significant risk to our national security, as so many have told us, as many of these dollars are going to nations that are not friendly to us.

This also further exacerbates our Nation's trade balance. We import far more than we export, and our exports now are beginning to rise a little bit, but those gains are being more than offset by the importation of oil and the price of oil.

The Reid-Menendez bill would have increased the price of energy in America, which, I have to say, seems to be the objective of the administration and some in this Senate. In September of 2008, Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal in an interview:

Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of

gasoline to the levels in Europe.

Dr. Chu is now the Secretary of Energy for the United States of America. He needs to be thinking about how to get the costs down and serve the constituency of America. I do not know what idea he has that we ought to be raising the cost of energy to the level in Europe.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in fact, is enacting new regulations that will also drive up the cost of energy in a way that should never have happened, in my view. We have had some close votes on that issue. Hopefully, we will soon be able to pull back that effort. A study by the Affordable Power Alliance concluded that EPA's greenhouse gas regulations could increase the cost of gasoline by 50 percent, electricity by 50 percent, and natural gas by 75 percent over the next 20 years. That is a stunning figure. There is no doubt it will drive it up. The majority has yet to recognize the negative impact these tax increases and new EPA regulations will have on the economy.

With gas prices up to $4 a gallon, from $2.75 in September--$4 from $2.75--this translates into a 5-percent cut in the average American's discretionary income just for the same amount of gas they are buying. This means less spending on home improvements, furniture, clothes, vacations--things people and families need. All that is eaten up by increased energy costs. In a way, it is a form of a stealth tax on the American people.

Furthermore, increasing energy taxes will make doing business in the United States more expensive. As a result, jobs will go overseas.

The rise in gas prices over the past two years has meant that a family paying $100 a month for gasoline will now pay over $140 a month for gasoline. If someone is paying $200 a month--and many are--they would pay $280 a month just because of a change in the gasoline price. Add it up. That is what it amounts to--$80 for a family who uses $200 a month in gasoline.

Some argue raising taxes will help reduce our deficit, but the tax increases in the Reid-Menendez bill would have raised approximately $1.2 billion in 2012. With a projected deficit of over $1.6 trillion this year, the revenue produced from these taxes would be a drop in the bucket. Don't think it is going to balance our budget, that is for sure.

Furthermore, the bill's sponsors claim the money would be used to reduce the deficit, but there is nothing in the bill that does that. Although the language sounds good, the language is essentially what we call a sense of the Senate and has no binding power. In the end, nothing in the bill could have been construed as mandating deficit reduction. It is simply a tax increase, plain and simple--tax and spend.

As the majority tried yesterday to increase taxes on the energy industry, they ignored the convoluted tax system that is increasing and inhibiting job growth in America. The United States has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world--39.5 percent. All the developed nations have been reducing their taxes. Only Japan has as high a corporate tax rate as we do, and they are reducing theirs. The Canadian Finance Minister, whom I had the chance to meet with last week, says Canada is bringing its tax rate down to below 15 percent. And we are taxing at 39.5 percent? Will that not cause a business to decide maybe to build their factory in Canada rather than in the United States and cost us much needed time?

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

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I believe the McConnell legislation, which has three components--one aimed at restoring American offshore production in the wake of the moratorium that has been imposed, a safety component aimed at preventing future incidents like the Deepwater Horizon, and an efficiency component aimed at streamlining the issuing of permits--is the right way to go. More production of American energy will help our country, our economy, and our people.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to share a few thoughts on a very important matter, the financial health of the United States. We had a nice meeting with the President earlier today. The Republican Senators virtually all were there, shared their thoughts, and the President responded. All in all it was a good exchange. Those are the kinds of meetings where I do not talk about what is said in detail and quote anyone.

I was asked by a number of reporters what happened and what did you say about it. I guess my conclusion is that not much happened. No commitments were made that I could see, that indicated the President had made any

change in the budget he had submitted or the speech he gave somewhat amending his budget a few weeks ago.

He did not make any changes in the plan I am seeing out there. He was open, discussed it, maybe something will happen. What is the status of the Senate's business? This is the Senate. The Senate has serious responsibilities. The Budget Act was designed to ensure that Congress passes a budget, because it was learned over the years--it goes back to the 1970s--that a budget is important for a country. Families have them, businesses have them. You need a budget.

Congress was having trouble passing a budget. So they passed the Budget Act that allowed a budget to become law without 60 votes in the Senate, but they could be passed with 50 votes. As we know, there are 54 Democrats in the Senate--and more, I guess, than that with Independents who caucus with the Democrats. So this is the situation we are in.

The President complied with the Budget Act, a week late, by submitting his budget, and his budget failed to meet the requirements of our time to a very significant degree. Every witness we have had in our budget committee--I am the ranking Republican on it--has indicated and told us, many in great detail and with passion, we are on an unsustainable course; you cannot continue to borrow 40 cents of every dollar and try to fund a government borrowing that kind of money.

We will hit a budget deficit this year of $1.5 trillion, the largest in the history of America. In 4 years, the President will have doubled the entire debt of the United States based on the trillion-dollar deficits he has had each year. So this is not an acceptable path for us to be on.

We had hearings in the Budget Committee about the critical issues we face. We considered and had testimony from the fiscal commission that President Obama appointed--Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, we had Rivlin-Pete Domenici. Senator Domenici, retired now, was Budget chairman at one point in time in the Senate. Alice Rivlin, OMB Director for President Clinton, is a wizard herself with numbers. They proposed some real changes in the debt trajectory we are on. I thought after that, and based on the comments of Senator Conrad, our chairman, and the strong witnesses we heard who called on us to make significant changes in what we were doing that we would move forward with a budget that would be a good bit stronger than the one President Obama submitted.

Indeed, President Obama's budget was not serious. President Obama's budget took the current spending line for 10 years, that the Congressional Budget Office said we are on, and it made it worse. It made the deficit worse, $2 trillion worse than the current plan we were on--totally unacceptable.

He proposed in his budget increasing the Department of Education funding by 10.5 percent; increasing the Energy Department funding 9.5 percent; increasing State Department funding 10.5 percent; proposed increasing the Transportation Department 62 percent.

In a time when inflation is 2 percent, we are having those kinds of increases and we say we are submitting a budget that recognizes we are on an unsustainable course and we have got to change. Well, it was unacceptable. I was very disappointed about it. I think even the man he appointed to head the debt commission, Erskine Bowles, said they have come nowhere close to what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare.

We were told by our Budget chairman, Senator Conrad, whom it has been a pleasure to work with, that we would have a budget markup beginning this Monday. He told us that last week. Well, it did not happen on Monday. Then maybe it was going to be Tuesday. Maybe it was going to be Wednesday. Then all of a sudden the President invited the Democrats over Wednesday and the Republicans to the White House Thursday and everything is off.

I asked my staff, have we received a notice that we are going to have a Budget Committee hearing next week? The answer is no. So what do we say about that?

The Budget Act says the Senate and the House should commence budget action April 1. We have not done that. It says a budget should be passed by April 15. The Senate has not done that. The Republican House has. The Republican House has proposed a historic budget. They have passed it. They passed it on time. It will reduce spending by about $6 trillion. That would actually reduce taxes also and get the rates down to help encourage more economic growth, and put us on a path to fiscal sanity, not only this decade, but in the decades to come, because it dealt with some of the exploding entitlement programs such as Medicare.

What resulted from that? Well, Mr. Ryan, a brilliant young Congressman who has worked on budget issues for many years, is the most knowledgeable person probably in America about the details and the financial condition of America. They attacked him as though he did something wrong. The Democratic Senators and the President are spending their time attacking the one person who stood up and produced a budget that can be defended. He is prepared to defend it anywhere, anytime. He goes to townhall meetings. He has stood before the press. He has issued statements. He has explained what his budget is. It may not be perfect, but it is a change. It would put us on a path to financial stability. And what has the Senate done? Complained about his budget. Well, it is time this Senate produces a budget.

Let me say this: Today, 743 days have passed since the Senate has passed a budget. Now, let me ask, if we took a poll of the American people, how many of the American people would say the Senate shouldn't pass a budget? We have a whole act that requires one to be passed and brought up and voted on. What happened last year? The Budget Committee did produce a budget. It came to the floor, and the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, just didn't have time to bring it up. Why? Well, you know, there is a vote-arama. We don't like vote-aramas. What is a vote- arama? Everybody gets to file an amendment, and Senators are supposed to vote. It has to be brought up and passed. It is passed by a simple majority. Why? Because we want to accelerate the debate and make sure a budget is passed because a nation that intends to be serious about its financial stability needs a budget, does it not? This began in the 1970s.

So we are now beginning to wonder, will the committee even pass a budget? Is Senator Conrad not even going to have a committee markup and produce a budget? Is the Democratic Senate not even going to move one out of committee? At least it moved one out of committee last year. And if the committee does meet and does move a budget, is Senator Reid prepared to stand up, like Congressman Ryan, lay his budget down before the American people, and defend it before the world? Oh, well, we need to have talks. We have talks going on. The Vice President is having a meeting. The President is inviting everybody over.

Why don't we move forward with our budget process, I ask? Why don't we? Well, why not? We read in one of our local newspapers that cover the Senate--I think it was The Hill--Senator Conrad had a hard time with his Democratic colleagues. His budget, which I very much was afraid wouldn't contain spending enough, but certainly I felt it would be better than the budget President Obama had submitted, was discussed with his Democratic colleagues last week in their conference, and it didn't go well, we are told. So this week he came back again, apparently, and produced another budget.

According to the report, Senator Sanders--probably the most aggressive and articulate advocate for greater government spending and activism in the Senate--seemed to be very happy that he changed the budget, and it had $2 trillion in tax increases, they said, and $2 trillion in spending reductions. That is supposed to be balanced. But that is not what the debt commission said. The debt commission--which I didn't agree with, really--said we should have at least $3 worth of spending reduction for every $1 in tax increases.

Then we have another report. I think it was in the CQ publication that does work around here and digs up information. They said it looks as if there are going to be fewer spending reductions. It looks as though it is going to be about $2 trillion in tax increases and only $1.5 trillion in reduced spending. So it is less than even 1-to-1.

Well, I think if I were the majority leader, I wouldn't really feel comfortable about bringing such a budget as that before the American people and standing right down here and defending such a weak response to the fiscal crisis we are now in. Of course, that budget is irresponsible if that is so. I don't think the American people will be happy with it. I certainly will oppose it with all the strength in my body if that is the nature of it.

Well, why don't you know, Sessions?

Well, I haven't been told. We asked. The Republican members of the committee wrote the chairman and asked that any budget numbers that are produced be produced 72 hours in advance of the hearing so we can study it, offer amendments, or substitute as we choose to do. We have been basically told we will get the budget resolution the chairman intends to file the morning it starts. When we commence the hearing to mark up the budget, we will be getting the copy of what they propose to bring forward. We really think that is not a healthy way to do business on a matter this important.

This period in history represents the most significant long-term threat to American financial stability that we have seen maybe ever. Sure, we had a tough time during World War II and the debt went up, but we could see, when the war was over, the strength of our workforce, and the economy grew. We came right out of that and got that situation under control quickly. But now we are in a situation in which our Nation is aging. The number of people working is down. The number of recipients of Medicare and Social Security is up. We have to figure out a way to honestly deal with that without in any way placing our seniors at risk and other people who benefit from government programs.

It is going to take some change. It is first going to take change in wasteful Washington spending. All our discretionary spending needs to be looked at, and we also are going to have to look at the long-term prospects for our financial future, as our creditors--those who are loaning us this money we are borrowing--are getting uneasy. They are not too comfortable with what we are doing.

I believe any President of any party who desires the mantle of a leader, desires to demonstrate a commitment to a firm footing for our financial future, should come forth with a plan as part of the budget process and lay it out so the American people can see it.

I am becoming very concerned, once again, even though 743 days have passed since a budget has cleared this Senate, that we may not get one this year. What an event. That, to me, is unthinkable. How irresponsible could we be to go another year under these circumstances? For example, the Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the President's proposal for the future, and that scoring of the President's budget concludes a couple of things. Last year, the interest we paid on the money this Nation has borrowed was $200 billion. In 10 years, under the President's plan, the Congressional Budget Office said the amount of interest that would be paid in 1 year is $940 billion. That is bigger than the Defense Department. That is bigger than Medicare. It will be the largest single item in the entire budget. It is unthinkable. We get no benefit from that whatsoever except the money we borrowed to live off of.

We are passing huge debts off to our grandchildren. The expert economists and financiers who testified before the Budget Committee said: Don't think you can just assume the problem falls on your grandchildren. They said we could have a crisis much sooner than that.

Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson issued a statement to us when they testified that said we are facing the most predictable debt crisis in American history. We asked: Could we have an idea of when such a crisis could hit us? And Mr. Bowles, chosen by President Obama to head the commission, said 2 years, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later. Alan Simpson said: I think it could be 1 year.

Well, we hope we don't have some new debt crisis. We hope the people who have been loaning us money don't get so nervous, as they have done in Greece, that our interest rate surge puts this economy in a dangerous condition and damages our country. I hope that is not happening within 2 years or 1 year. Wouldn't that be a disaster for us? How do we prevent it? We take action now that changes the debt trajectory of our country and sends a message to the whole world: We get it. We know we can't continue on this path, and we are changing. And the way our Congress and government is set up, the way that change occurs is through the adoption of a budget.

I remain very disappointed that while the House has produced a historic budget on time--by April 15--we have not even begun to mark up a budget in the Senate. That is irresponsible. And we need to know and the American people need to know that the majority leader, if a budget is passed out of committee--and certainly it should be--will move it to the floor and bring it up for vote and amendment and debate, and then it goes to the House and conference, they hammer out the differences, and we adopt a budget that can help put this country on a sound financial path and avoid the kind of crisis so many experts have warned us could occur.

I thank the Chair. I see my fabulous colleague, Senator Hatch, the ranking Republican member of the Finance Committee and my former chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I was honored to serve with him.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

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

Madam President, a headline in the Hill today reads ``Budgets everywhere, but not [a single] one has votes to pass.'' Well, that is not exactly correct. In reality, there is only one budget that has been presented, publicly debated, worked on in committee, shared with the American people, and passed on the floor in one house, and that is the budget of the Republican House. Paul Ryan led the fight on that, and it is a courageous, serious budget that would restore fiscal sanity and prosperity to this Nation.

It deals with our short-term funding crisis and the long-term ability of our financial system. We had another budget presented by President Obama. It was an irresponsible budget. The budget presented by the President to the Senate is about this thick. It is required by law that the President submit one every year. He has around 500 people in the budget office who help prepare that. That budget--analyzed by the CBO, our independent group of analysts--was found to not reduce the debt path we are on but to actually increase the debt over 10 years more than would occur based on the Congressional Budget Office baseline we are already on--substantially, $2 trillion more. It has tax increases in it too. This is not a responsible budget. It was never received responsibly in the Senate and not by the independent commentators. They all said it fails to do the job we have to do.

I have to say, by contrast to the House, that there still is no Senate Democratic budget--a budget set up to be passed by a majority. The majority party always has the responsibility--and sometimes they meet it and sometimes not--to present a budget. No action has even been scheduled in the Budget Committee. No plan or resolution has been brought up for a vote. In fact, it has been 742 days since the Senate passed a budget--2 years. The Democratic-led Senate has missed the statutory deadline of April 15 to produce a budget for the second year in a row. In fact, as a statutory requirement, the committee is to start work on it by April 1. We have not begun it yet and it is mid- May. Is it any wonder that this country is in a financial crisis, that we are not containing spending, when we don't even have a budget and we didn't even bring one to the floor last year? Majority Leader Reid chose not to bring a budget to the floor for debate or to even attempt to pass a budget.

We are in the middle of a fiscal crisis. There is no doubt that the single greatest threat to America at this point in time is the financial situation in which we find ourselves. This year, we will spend, by September 30--and we are moving on to that date--$3.7 trillion. We will bring in revenue of $2.2 trillion. Forty cents of every dollar we are spending this year is borrowed. It is an unsustainable path, as every expert has told us in the Budget Committee, where I am ranking Republican.

We have heard witness after witness, Democratic and Republican, and the President's own debt commission tell us we are on an unsustainable path. Erskine Bowles, the man chosen by President Obama to head the fiscal commission the President established, told us--along with Alan Simpson, his cochairman--that this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. We are heading right to it. It is going to hammer us, our children, and our grandchildren. If we don't get off this course, the bond markets are going to revolt, and we are going to have a serious financial crisis of some kind that will not be good for this economy.

When asked when such a crisis could occur, Mr. Bowles said 2 years, maybe a little less or a little more, and Alan Simpson said he thought it would be 1 year. These are independent people who love America. They are warning us to take action now. The President's budget simply doesn't get it.

The American people are not happy with us. They think we are not meeting our responsibilities.

Are they right? They hammered a lot of big spenders in the last election. Were they right? I totally believe they are right. I totally believe that. I am of the view that there is no way this country should be in the present debt situation. It should never, ever have happened. I opposed a lot of the spending. I would like to think I was more vigorous than most in warning against it. But I don't think I have done enough. There is no reason to borrow 40 cents out of every dollar we spend; it threatens our future.

We will double the entire debt of our country in 4 years under this President's watch. When he leaves office, completes his 4-year term, he will have doubled the entire debt of America, and we are on a course that continues to be dangerous.

As we know, Budget Committee Chairman Conrad has been meeting privately with his Democratic caucus--it has been in the press--to try to finally bring some sort of budget forward. The Democrats apparently have been unable to do so, from reports we see, because the big spenders in their caucus cannot support a plan that would actually get the job done and put us on a sound financial path, and they can't produce a plan that will withstand public scrutiny, apparently, and that the American people would support. So they have a difficult problem.

This was shown, as reported in The Hill, because Chairman Conrad--who served on the debt commission and I believe fully understands the dangers this country faces--has repeatedly acknowledged that. I really respect Senator Conrad's insights into the challenges this country faces. Apparently, his proposal, which was going to be somewhat better than President Obama's, I assume, failed to win the support of his conference and of Senator Bernie Sanders, who is a gutsy Senator and is open about what he believes. But he has described himself as a Socialist and is the Senate's most powerful advocate for bigger government. He is a member of the Budget Committee. The reason Senator Sanders' vote became important is because the Democrats have apparently been working to pass a budget through committee without a Republican vote. They don't expect to get any Republican votes. The committee only has one more Democrat than Republicans, so the chairman needs Senator Sanders' vote if he wants to get the budget out of committee.

Here is an excerpt from The Hill:

Reid said Senator Conrad presented to the [Democratic]

Caucus a 50/50 split when asked about the preferred ratio of

spending cuts to tax increases. . . . Conrad has moved his

budget proposal to the left in order to gain the support of

Senator Bernie Sanders, an outspoken progressive on the

budget panel.

You know, ``progressive'' is a word they are using now for big government types. They want to take more money from the American people because they believe they know better how to spend it than the American people who earn it. They want to spread it around the way they want to spend it.

This is a remarkable turn of events. It is particularly stunning because the President's budget--repudiated for its dramatic levels of spending and taxes--claimed there was a 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes. ``We cut spending $3 for every $1 in tax hikes'' is what the President said. Chairman Conrad has indicated that would have been his choice. He praised that. He said he favored that same ratio. I don't think that is necessarily a good ratio. We need to reduce spending more than that.

Taken literally, what this means is that Senator Conrad has, in a fundamental respect, moved his plan to the left of the President and the fiscal commission, which also proposed a plan that actually did reduce spending $3 for every $1 in tax increases or pretty close to that, pretty fairly, without gimmicks, and came close to achieving that. The President's budget was so gimmicked that it really didn't achieve $3 in spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. It did not. It wasn't correct for him to say that.

It is important to note that the President and the fiscal commission use a baseline that assumes tax rates will go up. Fairly analyzed, those plans rely much more heavily on taxing than those ratios indicate, as I said, and I fear that the composition of this new Democratic budget proposal may not even meet the 50-50 plan. The others have it in terms of taxes and spending cuts.

The merits of this 50-50 split between savings and taxes are both a question of philosophy and economics. Philosophically, the American people don't want Washington to continue raising taxes to pay for larger and larger spending. American families should not be punished for the sins and excesses of Washington.

According to the CBO, we are going to spend $45 trillion over the next 10 years. The Senate Democratic plan, which no one is likely to see until after the committee meets--that is what we have been told, that we won't see it until it is plopped down at the beginning of the committee markup, where amendments are supposed to be offered soon thereafter--their own plan, at least from what we read about it, says it will cut or save just $2 trillion out of $45 trillion over the next 10 years.

The American people know there is much more we can and must do to bring this government under control and to achieve real balance in this country. What kind of balance? Between raising taxes and cutting spending, 50-50? No. The balance we need is one that respects the American people, that reduces the growth in spending and wealth taken by Washington and allows it to be kept by the American people, who earn it.

There is also a question of economics. Our committee has conducted an exhaustive survey of available research which conclusively shows that debt reduction plans that rely equally on saving money, reducing spending, and raising taxes are far less successful and result in far weaker economic growth than those plans that rely on cutting spending. We will release a white paper very soon that will share these findings with my colleagues and the country. It is very important that we understand this. What history is showing us is that when you reduce spending, you get more growth and prosperity than increasing spending and taxes.

Here is one example of the many studies we analyzed. This is a Goldman Sachs study by analysts Ben Broadbent and Kevin Daly. The report resulted from a cross-national study of fiscal reform that:

In a review of every major fiscal correction in the OECD--

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the world's major developed economies--

since 1975, we find that decisive budgetary adjustments that

have focused on reducing government expenditure have (i) been

successful in correcting fiscal imbalances; (ii) typically

boosted economic growth; and (iii) resulted in significant

bond and equity market outperformance.

In other words, the stock market and the bond market improved, and both of those are a bit shaky now after some rebound.

Tax driven--

``Tax driven,'' that means tax increases--

fiscal adjustments, by contrast, typically fail to correct

fiscal imbalances and are damaging for growth.

That is the Goldman Sachs study. Half of our U.S. Treasury Department has been manned by people who served at one time or another at Goldman Sachs. They are not considered a rightwing group. That is what their analysts have said to us.

The Democratic Senate, I believe, should heed the large body of research showing that spending cuts on a basic economic level work better than trying to drain more out of the economy by way of taxes. In other words, the Senate should produce a budget based on facts. They should produce a budget that grows the economy, that imposes real spending discipline on Washington. They should produce a budget without gimmicks and empty promises. They should produce this budget publicly, openly, and allow the American people to review and consider it before the committee meets in 72 hours, as my colleagues have pleaded with the chairman twice to do but he will not do. They should produce a budget the American people deserve--an honest budget that spares our children from both the growing burden of debt and the growing burden of an intrusive big government.

I hope we can continue to have the opportunity to talk about this issue. It is right that the American people be engaged in it. I have to say, I feel as though we failed in our responsibility to conduct open hearings and markups on a budget.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma for his leadership on the Environment and Public Works Committee. I am pleased to be back on that committee with him. I share very much the substance of his views about the need to produce more oil and gas. It keeps money in the United States, creates jobs in the United States, and creates tax revenues for the United States. Offshore oil and gas in our gulf produces billions of dollars for States and the Federal Government. Why we would want to produce oil and gas off Brazil and not produce it off our shore I do not know. I thank my colleague.

Madam President, I wish to make a few remarks about the budget circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Yesterday, we learned that the President has scheduled two summit meetings on the budget this week. The President will meet with Senate Democrats on Wednesday and Republicans on Thursday. By calling this summit, it would seem the President has effectively canceled this week's planned unveiling of a Democratic Senate budget in the Senate Budget Committee that was planned earlier. First it was going to be Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. It looks as if maybe it will not be held this week at all. It might be that Senator Conrad could do that, but somehow, with this event occurring, he may not.

Regardless of this new discussion period, it is my expectation and belief that the American people should be given a Senate budget plan so it can be examined and we can know what is in it and see what it is about. The American public deserves to know where our elected leaders stand.

I hate to say that we have gone 700-plus days without a budget for the United States of America during a time of the greatest debt increase we have ever faced. We will have doubled the debt of the United States, I believe, by next year in 4 years. We will add $13 trillion to the debt over the 10 years presented by President Obama's budget that he sent to us in February.

There have been all kinds of discussions and talks and a lot of speeches. The President created a fiscal commission. They came forward with a serious proposal that was worthy of real insight and study. They spent a lot of time on it. It did not go far enough, in my opinion, to reduce our surging growth in spending, but it was intellectually honest, and it offered us some very real suggestions about how we could do better.

Then we started hearing that after the President's budget was submitted and it was received very badly--in fact, it was not helpful at all but actually made the debt trajectory we are on worse. We had a gang of six Senators who tried to work together to establish a budget plan that might work for us. They met in secret and had ideas. I was interested in what they had to say, but somehow that seems to have gone on the back burner.

Then we had Vice President Biden. He is going to lead a discussion with House and Senate Republicans and Democrats, and he is going to work out something.

Now, just yesterday, we heard that the President is going to have another meeting at the White House and talk to us. I hope it is not like the one to which he invited the House Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan, and criticized him, sitting right there in front of him, for producing what I think is a historic budget that would put us on a sound path if followed.

Here we are. We have not gotten a plan or a commitment as to what this administration intends to advocate for. They submitted their budget. It was alleged to have reduced the deficit by $2 trillion, but when the Congressional Budget Office, our objective analyst, took the document they submitted and studied it in detail, they concluded it would add $2.7 trillion. In other words, it would create more debt over the next 10 years by $2.7 trillion than was projected to accrue without the budget. That is not what financial experts are telling us, that is not what economists and professors are telling us we need to do. It is unacceptable.

That budget was criticized, and we hadn't heard much about it since. Well, the President, for a week or so, tried to propose that it would have us live within our means and help pay down the debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest deficit in 10 years would be over $700 billion, and the President said this was going to have us living within our means? Apparently, desiring to back off that, the President made a speech and he said he is now going to save $4 trillion.

Well, the budget staff--I am ranking Republican on the Budget Committee--looked at what he said in the speech and noticed a couple of things. We noticed the President had moved the budget period from 10 years to 12 years, and that made the numbers look a lot better compared to a 10-year savings plan. If we save a little each year and we go 12 years, it looks better than 10, when everybody was talking about 10. It is kind of a little gimmick, you see, to make the numbers look better. Then they incorrectly took credit for every dollar that was saved when the Republicans in the House negotiated with the Senate on the CR and reduced spending about $75 billion a year below what the President had asked for. They took credit for that. That was about $800 billion of the savings.

The net result is, it was not any different than the budget plan he had proposed, except it took credit for the House reduction in spending.

I have to say, the House Republicans--Paul Ryan--stood and faced the American people and revealed in advance the core of their plan. I attended one press conference in which Paul Ryan announced the budget he was moving forward with. He had a series of press briefings. He basically said: This is my plan and I am ready to hear any exceptions you have to it, I am prepared to answer your questions, and I am prepared to defend what it is we have done. It was an honest, direct, and responsible approach.

The Ryan budget dealt with the long-term financial threats to America as well as the immediate. The numbers he proposed get us to the point where we can certainly say we are not on the same debt trajectory that put us in such great risk. I believe it is probably the most serious effort I have seen, in the 14 years I have been in the Senate, to address the significant fiscal challenges we face.

We face not only a short-term problem, but we face a long-term, systemic problem. We have an aging population--people drawing more Social Security for longer periods and Medicare for longer periods. We have other entitlement programs. We have been spending extraordinarily. So all that has to be a part of our discussion about how to put this country on a sound path. Senator Conrad, our Democratic chairman, has done a good job in calling good witnesses. Every expert who has testified before the Budget Committee has told us the truth about the grim circumstances we find ourselves in. They have told us: If you don't act, we could have a debt crisis. They have told us the debt we have already accrued, and which continues to increase, is right now pulling down our economy; that our growth is not what it would be had we not incurred this much debt.

It is uncontroversial that this much debt slows down the economy. When I asked Treasury Secretary Geithner, he agreed with the Rogoff- Reinhart study that says when debt reaches 90 percent of GDP it pulls down economic growth 1 percent. Secretary Geithner said: Yes, that is an excellent study, and I would add one more thing. He said: When we get that much debt, we run the risk of having a debt crisis that could throw us back into some sort of recession or financial problem such as we have had. That was President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury. We know we have a serious problem. We need to do something about it.

The President submitted a budget that has basically been rejected. I can't imagine the Senate would bring it forward as the Senate Democratic budget. The House of Representatives, in accordance with the law and the timeframes of the Budget Act, has produced a budget, showed it publicly before they voted on it, and has defended it since. We haven't had one in the Senate. The Senate, by law, should have produced its budget and started its markup 6 weeks ago. The law says we

are supposed to have passed a budget by April 15--tax day. We haven't even begun to mark it up.

People are attempting, politically, to explain. The Democratic spinmasters are attempting to explain what it is all about. Why are we doing these things? Why hasn't a real budget been produced? They say Republicans are divided. They say: Oh, tea party people and Republicans are all divided. The Republican House has passed a budget. Where is the Democratic Senate? Who is divided? Why can't they produce a document? Why do we have to have the Vice President and the President having meetings and the President giving speeches? Why don't we see a real budget that the American people can see in advance and be able to evaluate and Senators standing, as we are paid to do, and casting votes for or against it? That is what we need to be doing.

I don't agree with the fact that the President is leading. I wish I could say that. Maybe he will surprise us on Thursday with something. I hope so. But I don't sense any leadership at all, because the budget he produced will not do the job. That is the only one we have in the Senate at this point. Indeed, Mr. Erskine Bowles, the man the President chose to head his fiscal commission, said the President's budget came nowhere near doing what is necessary. Actually, what he said was the President's budget goes nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.

I am wondering what is happening. The American people get it. They sent a message in the elections last November. They sent 64 new Members to the House of Representatives, and every single one of them promised to do something about reckless spending in Washington.

What about this budget the President has submitted to us? It is the only one we have in the Senate. The Senate Democratic leadership hasn't presented one. The President's budget called for a 10.5-percent increase in education, a 9.5-percent increase in energy, a 10.5-percent in the State Department's budget, and a 62-percent increase in the transportation budget. Well, we don't have the money. Forty cents of every $1 we spend is borrowed. That cannot be continued. We are on an unsustainable path. The American people know it. Every expert has told us. We know it. Where are our leaders in the Senate?

Senator Conrad, apparently, made a presentation of his budget, and the Republicans have asked Senator Conrad to present it to us 72 hours before the committee meets. He said he is not going to do that. He made a presentation to the Democratic conference and, apparently, it didn't go well. Senator Conrad apparently proposed reducing spending more than they liked to hear. The Democratic leader, Senator Reid, was sort of critical, actually. He said it was a nice bunch of charts. Obviously, he wasn't happy.

When are we going to see a budget? Are we going to go another 700 days? Are we not going to have a budget this year? The way things should work is like this: The Senate should come forward--the Democratic Senate, because they have the majority and we can pass a budget with a simple majority--and propose a budget that hopefully will get bipartisan support. If not, they stand and say what they believe in and how this budget reflects their vision for America. The House has done that. Then we go to conference committee. After it comes to the floor and is voted on, it goes to the conference committee and differences are worked out. Then it comes back and we have to vote on final passage of an agreed-upon budget.

We have to have a budget. It is time for this country to begin to reverse the reckless trend we are on because we are placing our Nation at risk. Mr. Bowles and Senator Alan Simpson, when they testified before the Budget Committee, warned us we have to do something significant. In the written statement they both signed, they said we are facing the most predictable economic crisis in our history. When asked when that could occur, Mr. Bowles said 2 years, maybe. Alan Simpson said: I think maybe 1. We are not talking about our grandchildren. I am talking about now.

What I would just say is, I think it is time for us to go back to regular order. We have tried a lot of different approaches to confront this crisis we face. It seems to me our leadership in the Senate is desperately seeking to avoid having to do what is responsible; that is, to stand and produce a budget. If they aren't prepared to stand before the American people and tell them how they think the country ought to be run and where the money ought to be spent and how much ought to be collected, then they are not leading, it seems to me.

I am very disappointed in the President's leadership. He has been roundly criticized because the only proposal he has sent to us is irresponsible. It in no way comes close, as Mr. Bowles said, to doing what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare, and that is the path we are headed toward. It is not a matter of dispute. We will not reach 10, 15 years down the road spending like we are because we will have a catastrophe before then.

Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, said he thought maybe some sort of compromise would be reached that would be good for the country. The only question, he said, was whether it would be before or after a debt crisis occurs. This was a few weeks ago that Alan Greenspan was saying this.

It is a challenge for us and a challenge for the leadership in this Senate to come before the American people and produce their plan and seek support on the floor of the Senate. Let's debate it. Let's have amendments offered. Let's go to conference, and somehow, some way hammer out a budget that will put this country on a better path. We have no other choice. It is the defining moment for this Congress. We have no higher duty than to confront the dangerous fiscal path we are on.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes.