Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank Senators Levin and McCain for their work. We do need to address wasteful spending. Both of these Senators understand it. Senator McCain has always been willing to challenge programs he thinks are not justified for the warfighter.

I wish to note a few things before we vote on passage as well as urge support for the legislation. First, the legitimate concerns voiced by the Department of Defense about the implications of this bill have been listened to and have been reasonably accommodated. I wish to highlight a few points identified by a report last month by the Government Accountability Office, the independent GAO, titled ``Defense Acquisitions, Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs.''

Since 2003, the number of major defense acquisitions programs has grown from 77 to 96. All 96 programs were assessed by GAO. They found investment in these programs had grown from $1.2 trillion to $1.6 trillion. Research and development costs are now 42 percent higher than originally expected. The cumulative cost growth was $296 billion. I find that to be a stunning number. I almost have to believe that somehow they calculated it in an excessive way. Sometimes numbers can look misleading. But if it is a third of that, we have a major problem. They concluded the cost growth on these programs was almost $300 billion. The average delay in delivering the initial capabilities has increased to 22 months. So we have an excessive delay in producing our capabilities. GAO found that only 28 percent of the programs were expected to be delivered on time or ahead of schedule.

To combat cost growth, they found that quantities; that is, the number of the weapon systems and vehicles and other things that were to be produced, had to be reduced by 25 percent or more for 15 of the programs in the 2008 portfolio, and 10 of the largest acquisition programs, which account for half the overall acquisition dollars in the portfolio, have seen quantities reduced by almost one-third.

When the price per item goes up significantly, often the compensating action is to reduce the numbers. But the net reality is, that the taxpayer hasn't received as much as they expected out of the program. So clearly these statistics are disturbing and underscore the need for this important legislation and reform.

In summary, our warfighters are receiving less capability at a higher cost

than was originally agreed upon. I believe this bill will improve the acquisition process by ensuring the Department and industry are more thoughtful when estimating the production cost at the beginning and the total life cycle cost of these programs. While I am mindful that acquisition reforms can continue to be improved, I encourage colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation. It is clearly a step in the right direction.

I salute our chairman and our ranking member, Senators Levin and McCain, for this accomplishment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am firmly opposed to this proposed budget conference report. It is, I sadly conclude, the most irresponsible budget in the history of the Republic. This budget will increase nondefense discretionary spending in 2010 9.7 percent over this year's levels.

As a result of this reckless spending, the budget proposal doubles the national debt to $11.5 trillion in only 5 years, and will nearly triple it in 10. The amount of money we spend each year to pay the interest on this debt will also soar because of the conference report. This year alone we will spend $170 billion to service the national debt. In 5 years we are projected to spend $428 billion on interest payments in that year alone, and we will likely spend over $800 billion in 2019 to pay the interest on our national debt alone. By comparison, the Federal Government spends less than $100 billion a year on education, and about $40 billion a year on highways. In 10 years, this budget will spend more on interest payments on our national debt than it spends on education and highway funding combined.

I am also disappointed that the conference report includes reconciliation instructions to expedite sweeping changes to our Nation's health care laws under special rules that limit debate and require only a simple majority for final passage. The purpose of reconciliation is to maintain fiscal control over the Government, not to fundamentally change the government's policies. The American people deserve a robust and full debate on the merits of health care reform. Using the reconciliation process to move health care legislation would preclude the reasoned and informed debate necessary to ensure that the best possible policy is enacted. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous budget.

Mr. DURBIN Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on final passage of the budget resolution conference report for fiscal year 2010.

We will be voting on fundamental decisions about the shape of our economy and the prosperity of our country.

We need to face the facts--we have inherited the worst economic crisis in generations.

We took an important first step in returning our Nation to prosperity earlier this year by passing the economic recovery package.

The Obama administration continues to work hard to repair our financial system so that businesses can make payroll and families can borrow for college.

But there is much more to do to put our economy back on track, and the budget resolution conference report we are considering follows the principles President Obama laid out in his budget proposal.

This budget resolution sets a path to regain the balance our country once enjoyed--careful investments in our future, while creating opportunity for working families who have lost ground over the last decade.

It provides the flexibility the authorizing committees need to tackle our toughest challenges.

And it begins to repair years of neglect by making critical investments to recover economically--particularly in health care, education, and energy.

We need to reform our health care system fundamentally, and we need to do it this year. This budget gives the Congress the flexibility we need to get this job done.

The budget resolution includes a deficit-neutral reserve fund that will allow the Finance and HELP Committees to take on the challenge of fundamental health care reform this year.

We hope to work on a bipartisan basis to reform the system in a way that benefits all Americans--patients, providers, insurers, and the taxpayers.

But if the Republicans decide to try to obstruct these reforms, the reconciliation instructions included in this budget give us the tools we need to pass meaningful reform.

Those instructions don't take effect until October 15, and so we have several months to work together before reconciliation is even an option.

I very much hope that we don't need to use this approach. But reform can no longer wait.

The budget resolution conference report also offers a promising vision for education. First, the budget will dramatically expand access to quality early childhood education programs, including Head Start. And the budget invests in teachers and innovative programs so that all children can succeed in the classroom.

This budget will help us build the education system we need to compete in the global economy, not just today, but in the next generation.

This budget would also help families afford the high cost of tuition by raising the maximum Pell grant award and streamlining student loan programs.

The cost of college is higher than ever before. Since 2000, the average cost of tuition at public 4-year college has increased 29 percent, far outpacing inflation and increases in household income.

Financial aid hasn't kept up these costs. Thirty years ago, a Pell grant could cover 77 percent of public college costs. Now it covers just 35 percent.

The budget would increase Pell grants to $5,550, which will help the 7 million students who rely on these grants pay for college.

We can't transform our education system overnight. But we can start to provide the investments and the programs that will help to get us there soon. This budget would do just that.

This budget also starts the process of reducing our dependence on foreign energy by funding the President's request for energy funding in 2010.

This budget also lays the groundwork for cutting back on energy sources that generate greenhouse gases.

The budget proposes we spend less money burning conventional fuels and more money developing cleaner energy sources.

This budget helps us create good jobs, dramatically improve energy efficiencies, and protect the environment before climate change inflicts permanent damage.

Finally, the conference report provides for tax relief to American families at a time when that relief is much needed.

The budget provides $764 billion in tax cuts, mostly to the middle class.

The conference report provides $512 billion to extend middle-class tax cuts such as the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief, and education incentives.

It includes $214 billion for 3 years of alternative minimum tax reform.

The budget matches the President's estate tax proposal, which would permanently extend the 2009 exemption of $7 million for couples and index that for inflation.

And the resolution provides $63 billion for 2 years of ``tax extenders'' for businesses and individuals.

Preparing a budget is about making choices.

It is a moral document, one that describes what you believe in.

The conference report prepared by the Budget Committee would make critical investments in our Nation's highest priorities, at a time when America needs them most.

This budget would provide a little bit of help to hard-working families that desperately need it.

This budget would bring true, long-lasting change to America that is smart, fair, and responsible.

I urge my colleagues to support it.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank Senator McConnell for his leadership on the issue of securing the peace and security of the United States of America and the challenges we face in this very difficult world. I am pleased it was he who offered a resolution not long ago that passed 94 to 3 to say that those terrorists we have in Guantanamo should not be released into the United States. It passed this Senate 94 to 3.

So I was alarmed on Friday to see a report in the Los Angeles Times by Julian Barnes, the first line of which said:

The Obama administration is preparing to admit into the

United States as many as seven Chinese Muslims who have been

imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in the first release of any of

the detainees into this country, according to current and

former U.S. officials.

The Times report was followed by an Associated Press story over the weekend entitled ``Holder Close to Making Decision on Gitmo Detainees''--Holder being Attorney General Eric Holder--which detailed an emerging plan to release a group of Uighurs held at Guantanamo into the United States, possibly northern Virginia.

Three weeks ago, on April 2, 2009, I wrote the Attorney General. I am a member of the Judiciary Committee, and I served in the Department of Justice for 15 years. I wrote Mr. Holder on exactly this issue, to explain my concerns about the serious national security and legal issues raised by any proposed release of Guantanamo detainees. In my letter I explained that the 17 Uighur detainees currently held at Guantanamo ``received military training, including firearms training, in terrorist camps in Afghanistan for potential terrorist actions against Chinese interests.''

I further explained that Federal law, specifically title 8 United States Code section 1182(a)(3)(B), clearly prohibits the admission of any alien--and they are all aliens--who has engaged in various forms of terrorist activity or training, including military type training ``from or on behalf of any organization that, at the time the training was received, was a terrorist organization.''

The Uighurs at Guantanamo received military training, including on AK-47s, at camps run by the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Nations since 2002. Accordingly, under the clear letter of Federal immigration law, these detainees are not eligible for admission into the United States. In my letter I called upon the Attorney General, whom I supported for that job and have respect for, to explain ``what legal authority, if any, you believe the administration has to admit into the United States Uighurs and/or any other detainee who participated in terrorist-related activities covered by Section 1182(a)(3)(B) [of the federal immigration law].'' He has not responded in any way. I am a member of the Judiciary Committee. That was a respectful and proper request I made. I have not heard from him at all. Yet we are reading in the paper that there is a plan afoot to allow this release.

The current stories in the Times and the Associated Press suggest that the administration is knowingly and willfully acting contrary to law and to the will of Congress and doing so on a matter that is directly at odds with our Government's obligation to keep America's communities safe from dangerous terrorists and militants.

Let me say, the Attorney General has a responsibility to uphold the law and protect civil rights. But I would say this, the primary responsibility of the Attorney General of the United States is to ensure that decent people who follow the law are protected from criminals and terrorists and those who would do them harm. If he is not the one who is going to lead the effort to protect us from those who would harm us, who is? Sometimes I wonder what they think their goal is.

So some will claim that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo are not dangerous because the courts and previous administrations agreed that these individuals are not enemy combatants against the United States. But this argument overlooks the fact that the Uighurs aren't deemed enemy combatants against the United States because the organization they were affiliated with, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, is not closely associated enough with al-Qaida or the Taliban to justify that determination. But make no mistake about it, these detainees are trained militants with ties to a terrorist organization, albeit one targeting Chinese interests rather than American interests. They should not be ushered into American communities by this administration.

The Los Angeles Times story from last week illustrates the danger these detainees pose:

Not long after being granted access to TV, some of the

Uighurs were watching a soccer game. When a woman with bare

arms was shown on the screen, one of the group grabbed the

television and threw it to the ground, according to the

officials.

According to the news story, the officials at Guantanamo had to censor the TV shows and showed only pretaped programs that wouldn't offend the Uighurs. If these detainees cannot handle mere televised depictions of Western culture without violent outbursts, why are we releasing them into our towns and communities? Even though this seems like an obvious question, this administration seems to have little concern over it. Rather than sounding alarm bells, the Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair proposed releasing the detainees with some form of welfare subsidy. In comments in March, Admiral Blair agreed that ``[y]ou can't just put them on the street.'' But his solution was not to continue detention or to release detainees to their home countries or to China, which wants them. Rather, he said, ``If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life.''

So this administration seems more concerned about the welfare of the dangerous militants, frankly, than it does about the real safety concerns of the American people and of the views of the citizens of our country who, by overwhelming polling data, oppose the release of these Guantanamo inmates into the country. According to an April 3, 2009 Rasmussen Reports survey, 75 percent of U.S. voters oppose the release of Guantanamo inmates into this country. A similar number--74 percent-- oppose providing public assistance to any Guantanamo detainees who might be released.

So what is surprising about the recent news reports about the possible release of Guantanamo detainees is that they come on the heels of another announcement earlier last week which made me think the Obama administration was coming to understand the dangerous nature of the Eastern Turkish Islamic Movement. This past Monday, April 20, 2009, President Obama's Treasury Department issued a release listing Abdul Haq as a designated terrorist. This announcement, which follows on the heels of a similar announcement from the United Nations, is significant for three key reasons, as well as a fourth reason that relates directly to the Uighur detainees:

Abdul Haq is the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement.

Abdul Haq was listed as a ringleader in planned attacks on the Olympic games in China.

Abdul Haq is listed as a member of a council within al-Qaida. He is connected to al-Qaida.

Perhaps most importantly, Abdul Haq is directly tied to the Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. According to a recent article by Thomas Jocelyn, who published a series of excerpts from the Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings for the

Uighurs at Guantanamo, the detainees, one after another, testified that they were trained by none other than Abdul Haq who ``was the one responsible for the camp.'' So just as these detainees testified that Haq ran the camp and led their training, they, time and again, admitted to training on what they referred to as ``the AK-47'' or ``the Kalashnikov.''

It is unbelievable to me that we are talking about releasing these dangerous detainees into American communities, despite the fact that they received military-style training on AK-47s in a camp run by a known terrorist and terrorist organization, both of which are designated as such by the United States and the United Nations. And the administration is doing so just one week after it denounced the man who trained the Uighur detainees in the following clear words. This is what the Treasury Department said:

Abdul Haq commands a terror group that sought to sow

violence and fracture international unity at the 2008 Olympic

Games in China. Today, we stand together with the world in

condemning this brutal terrorist and isolating him from the

international financial system.

So within a week of our Government seeking to condemn and isolate ``this brutal terrorist,'' the administration is planning to turn loose his pupils into the United States.

There was a time not long ago when no Senator would need to come to the floor to explain that it is dangerous and unlawful to release extremist militants trained by terrorists into the United States.

Why would we release them here? We captured them on the battlefield. We took them to Guantanamo. Now we are going to release them. China would like to have them back. They are rightly concerned about the people who attempted to bomb the Olympic games. We don't have to release them here. We don't have to release them.

Well, according to the press reports I have cited, the administration is planning to release the Uighur detainees to gain favor and ``generate good will'' with foreign governments. Now we understand, according to the Associated Press, Mr. Holder is in Europe where he is ``to reassure skeptical Europeans without generating too much opposition back home.''

That is an uneasy statement for me. That sounds a little duplicitous to me, for an Attorney General to be in Europe where he is ``to reassure skeptical Europeans without generating too much opposition back home.'' I suggest he needs to be focused on security in the United States. I think we need to consider why it is we feel that a nation we have favorable trade relations with, China, which successfully conducted Olympic games, isn't able to detain people who are committed to a group that was designed to attack those games.

If another country captured terrorists who were attacking the United States--and we would like to have them and hold them in custody--let me ask, what would we think if they released them into their communities and gave them subsistence and payments from the government? Wouldn't we think that government was aiding terrorism?

How did we get into this position? I do not think the administration has thought this through. There is no question China has certain well- known problems with human rights, and I have been one of their critics. But are those problems any worse than the problems in Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia--all countries to which the United States has returned Guantanamo detainees? What message is our government sending here, and what will be the repercussions? Have any of these questions been seriously considered?

I call on Attorney General Holder to answer my letter of April 2 well before he plans to release any of these militants onto the streets of America. If he is able to travel halfway around the world ``to reassure skeptical Europeans,'' perhaps he can answer a simple, direct, two-page letter from this skeptical Senator.

We know as many as 60 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who were released overseas have returned to the battlefield, including some in senior roles with al-Qaida. That stark reality is why the Senate voted 94 to 3 to support Senator McConnell's resolution that concluded with these words:

It is the sense of the Senate that detainees housed at

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including senior members of al Qaeda,

should not be released into American society, nor should they

be transferred stateside into facilities in American

communities and neighborhoods.

I note that now-Vice President Biden and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--Members of the Senate then--voted for the resolution. Then-Senator Obama did not. He was not voting. But he has made statements that indicate he understands the dangerousness of these individuals. I suggest that he give more thought to those words he has previously issued and that he follow the law, the plain law as I see it, and not release any of them into the United States.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Madam President, while I agree with Senator Conrad that Senator Wyden has worked hard on this and he is raising some important issues, I am very worried about where we may be heading in the realm of health care. I have been impressed with Senator Wyden's efforts to create something that could result in bipartisan agreement. I don't know where we are headed, but I respect him greatly for his efforts.

Motion to Instruct

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my motion to instruct conferees.

Madam President, the budget resolution is on the floor now, and I believe we ought to talk about it and be honest with ourselves about it. I will speak as one Senator. I know it passed this Senate. I don't think any Republican voted for it. Maybe a couple of Democrats voted against it, but it passed with extra votes to spare.

I would say--and I hate to say it, but I will repeat what I have said before: I believe this is the most irresponsible budget in the history of this Republic. It surges debt to a degree to which we have never seen before, not because it assumes we are going to be in long-term economic turmoil--they assume we are going to have economic growth roaring back in a year or two and that revenues will be surging in to the Government. The debt and deficit we are incurring is a direct result of massive spending--an alteration, I believe, by all accounts of an historic concept that Americans have of limited government, lower taxes, and a vibrant private sector. We have always objected to the Europeans and their more socialist model. We have consistently, year after year, had greater growth than they have had, lower unemployment than they have had, and we have been proud of that.

Of course, both Europe and the United States are in trouble today. I was rather mortified when the European leaders told our President and our Secretary of the Treasury that no, they were not going to spend like the United States; no, they believe we are incurring too much debt and they were not going to follow us; and the President of the European Union said our financial proposals were the road to hell. That is what he said about them.

Let me share a few things before we get started on the specifics of the motion to instruct. This is what the President's budget called for. He submitted a 10-year budget, and this is not something, let me add, that he was forced to do. This budget represents the President's, the administration's, and now, I guess, this Senate's fundamental view that we need to spend, spend, spend more than we ever have in history and not be too much worried about the debt.

So under the present state of affairs, in 2008 the debt of the United States, from the founding of the Republic over 200 years, totaled $5.8 trillion--a lot of money. We paid on that $170 billion in interest in 2008. That is how much interest we paid. We spent less than $100 billion on education and $40 billion on highways. This year we paid $170 billion on interest on our debt. But, within 5 years, according to the President's own budget numbers we will double that debt to $11.8 trillion in 5 years, and in 10 years, the debt will triple to $17.3 trillion. The young people who are coming out of school today and beginning to work, how much interest will they be required to pay on that 10 years from now? Not $170 billion, but according to our own Congressional Budget Office that scored this carefully--and they are under the control of the Democratic majority, but they are a nonpartisan group, and I respect what they do--they calculate we will pay $806 billion in interest, over ten times what we are spending today on the education expenditures of the Federal Government, and many times the $40 billion we spend on highways this year.

I would say this is a stunning development. I am worried about it. I think every American should be worried about it. Are those projections off base? I have the numbers; they just released the numbers for this year. Remember, last year was the biggest deficit this Nation has had since World War II--$455 billion. We need to be working that annual deficit down.

Look: In October, the first month, we hit $134 billion; by January--4 months--we were at $563 billion this fiscal year. That is this fiscal year. By January of this year, in 4 months, $563 billion in deficit represents the largest deficit in the Republic since World War II. Here we go back to the end of the quarter, at 6 months from October, through March, it is now $953 billion, already twice what last year's numbers were. So we are on track this year to see an annual deficit of $1.8 to $1.9 trillion. That is unbelievable.

I ask my colleagues, does it get better? Not under the President's budget. Under the President's budget, in the outyears, the numbers continue to go

up, and in the tenth year, his budget projects a deficit of $1.2 trillion. Over 10 years, his budget deficit will average over $900 billion each year. Again, this is not projecting a war; it is projecting a decline in defense spending for military activities around the globe. It is projecting solid, even robust economic growth. The deficits are caused by spending. I am so disappointed we haven't done a better job of controlling it.

I know the Senate budget is a 5-year budget. That is what they think is going to look a little better than the President's 10-year budget, but according to the Republican staff, they did an analysis of it and it is essentially the same over the first 5 years. In fact, Mr. Orszag, of the President's Office of Management and Budget, who used to be the Director at CBO, said publicly it was 98 percent of what the President wanted. This chart shows that in discretionary outlays it is 98.8 percent identical to the President's 5 years; on total outlays, it is 96.6 percent identical; and the revenue they project is 99.8 percent identical.

What can we do about it? There are a lot of things we can do. The most difficult--and our chairman, Senator Conrad, and the ranking member, Senator Gregg, have made some steps toward dealing with the crisis in entitlements. They are growing at a rapid pace and we have to do something about it. This budget assumes no reform on entitlements whatsoever, but maybe they will be able to make something happen. I would like to see us project some savings in that, but it is not shown in this budget.

So the motion to instruct I have filed, and that at some point we will be voting on, would say we ought to begin to establish some sense of fiscal responsibility by containing the growth in discretionary, nondefense, nonveteran spending. This can be done. It is particularly easy to do so this year because we, a few months ago--a few weeks ago, really--passed an $800 billion stimulus package, on top of our base budget. So I would have thought, when we did our baseline budget this year, knowing we had pumped in $800 billion over the next 2 years to try to stimulate the economy, that we would have a frugal baseline budget. Not so. In fact, according to the budget that is on the floor, I believe, it shows a 7-percent increase in baseline discretionary, nondefense spending.

Most of my colleagues know the rule of seven: A 7-percent growth rate doubles your money in 10 years. So this proposal puts us on a track to double the spending for discretionary, nondefense spending in 10 years. It is an unsustainable track.

I propose this: In light of this stimulus package--the largest single appropriation of money in the history of America that we passed, and every penny going to the debt; all $800 billion of it has to be borrowed so we can spend it. In light of that, we ought to be able to keep the baseline budget flat for 2 years and show a modest increase of 1 percent over the next 3 years. This will make a difference. It will save us $173 billion. It will give us--it will start us on a process of having a baseline spending level for this country at a more frugal rate. Most States are having to cut. Most cities are showing reductions, 3.56 percent, some more than that, all over the country. They are not disappearing from the face of the Earth. It is not impossible to cut spending, but this doesn't propose any cut. It proposes 2 years of flat spending--but remember, we added $800 billion on top of it; and then for 3 years, a 1-percent increase. This will make a difference. In over 10 or 15 years, it will have an even bigger impact than we might think.

I urge my colleagues to consider this. We ought to show some restraint. Everybody is saying, Well, we will worry about that tomorrow. We have a crisis today, and we are going to spend today, and we will worry about the debt later. But it is time for us to stand up and be counted, I believe. I think my amendment is modest, I think it is responsible, but I think it is significant. I urge my colleagues to consider this motion to instruct.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on it. I appreciate those who worked on this budget, but I have to say, it should not become law. It is a bad mistake for this country to do it. I urge my colleagues to not go forward with a lockstep movement to vote for this budget. I don't think the American people are at all happy with it. I believe they know we are doing something fundamental to this country--and that was a big part of some of the tea party talk--a deep angst out there that something is happening to their country that is unprecedented.

I appreciate my colleagues' attention to this motion to instruct and I urge their support for it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this motion would instruct that the budget be altered so that there would be level funding for 2 years during the time that we are now spending an additional $800 billion in the economy as part of the stimulus package.

We ought to be able to keep the baseline budget level for 2 years, and then finish out the 5-year budget at 1 percent growth. We have doubled the national debt through this budget--we will do so in 5 years--and triple it in 10.

Interest on the debt today is $170 billion over the President's 10- year budget. At the 10th year, it would be $800 billion in interest alone, dwarfing our education budget of $100 billion, dwarfing the highway budget of $140 billion.

This is the right approach to show some discipline on the baseline budget at a time we are surging the discretionary spending through the stimulus package.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask to be notified after 4 minutes.

Madam President, I thank the Chair. I appreciate the comments that have been made. I agree first with Senator Coburn's comments about our distinguished chairman's pride in spending less money than the Obama proposal called for for discretionary spending over 5 years. He said he saved $600 billion--and it should save some. However, President Obama's budget was an 11-percent increase.

Senator Conrad came in with a 7-percent increase, which is huge in light of the money we are spending on top of that with the stimulus package we just passed; and at 7 percent, Government spending would double in 10 years. But the House is at 12 percent. So when the bill goes to conference, it is not going to be at 7, it is going to be at 10, 11, maybe 12 percent.

No. 2, his savings are projected in years 2, 3, 4 and 5, and as Senator Coburn said, when we come back next year, this body, if the same Members are here, is going to have another 7 percent or 10 percent. The only one that counts is this year. So I do not believe we have a real change in this budget. I believe Mr. Orszag is correct--the President's budget manager--that this is 98 percent of what he asked for and he asked for a budget over 10 years that doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10. It triples the debt in 10. It is admitted by the President's own budget. It is in the numbers he sent to us. We are not making this up. That is No. 1.

I have several amendments I will be calling to my colleagues' attention. One is the Comprehensive Outer Continental Shelf Study. We have no idea today how much oil and gas may be off our coasts, our Atlantic coast and Pacific coast. Particularly, the Atlantic States are eager to know what is out there and to consider whether they want to produce out there. I think it has great potential for America.

Every barrel of oil and energy we can produce in the United States off our shores so we do not have to transfer our wealth to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or places around the world but keep it here creating jobs and revenue is progress for America in a significant way. That is an amendment on which I hope we will have bipartisan support.

Missile defense, I am working with Senator Lieberman on that. I am concerned there might be some belief that we can ease off the completion of missile defense. Our missile defense system now has 26 launchers already built or contracted for; we want to do 44. After years and years of science and technology and investment, we are about to be able to complete a missile defense system that will make us all proud and can protect us from such things as a North Korean launch. If we don't get this system up like we need it, we will not be able to do that.

I believe today our technology would knock down that missile if it reached the United States. We need to complete that program. If we slow it down, it will just drive up the cost even more. That is important.

I am concerned about the history of this Congress when it deals with border security. We have voted repeatedly--the last big vote was 80 to 19--to complete 700 miles of fencing and barriers on our border. The money often does not get appropriated, however. We vote and say we are for it, but when the chips are down the money doesn't get funded. This would call on us to complete the funding for that project. I think all of us would want to complete what we have started.

Madam President, I want to say it is not impossible for us at least to move substantially toward a balanced budget. In the immediate years ahead it is going to be hard to get to a balanced budget. But the President's budget does not attempt to do so. In fact, in years 7 and 10 of his budget, his deficits are not going down. This is his own document he submitted to us--they are surging upward. In his 10th year, the Congressional Budget Office says his deficit will be, in 1 year, $1.2 trillion. That will be almost three times the highest deficit this country has ever had in its history.

I thank Senator McCain and others who are working on it.

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee.

This Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 80 to 19, with broad bipartisan support, including then-Senators Obama, Biden, and Clinton. We committed to 700 miles of barriers. Today we are less than halfway there. The funding has simply not been there.

Some progress is being made in areas where the fencing is in place. We have had a dramatic reduction in crime in the San Diego area since the fence was completed a number of years ago. This will help us reduce crime. It will help us reduce drug smuggling, gun smuggling, and immigration violations. We have a lawless border.

Progress is being made, colleagues. We are seeing a reduction in the number of people entering America, a reduction in the number of arrests. And if we follow through with what we have told the American people we intend to do, we will be able to create a lawful system of immigration, which is a responsibility this Congress has.

I urge support of this amendment. It is consistent with previous votes. It puts a budget point of order against an appropriation in this area that does not fund the fence completion.

Mr. President, this amendment would call for the level funding of nondefense--my amendment earlier today was nonveteran discretionary spending--by leveling the funding for 2 years and having a 1-percent growth for 3 years.

This is reasonable and responsible, No. 1. No. 2, let me recall to our colleagues the stimulus package that we passed a few weeks ago, which increases nondefense discretionary spending by an average of 30 percent over the next 3 years. We are not cutting our spending for discretionary accounts this year. We are seeing them surge. But in light of the stimulus package, this will be an excellent way to contain spending and save $200 billion over 5 years.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Yes.

Mr. President, I ask for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I support the Gregg amendment because it at least requires us to focus on the enormity of the wrong we are now committing.

This chart I have in the Chamber--you have seen a lot of charts and a lot of obfuscation and numbers thrown around--this chart is not disputable. These numbers come directly from the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Obama 10-year budget. That budget says that today our debt is $5.8 trillion--$5,800 billion since the founding of the Republic. It will double, in 5 years, to $11.8 trillion--$11,800 billion in 5 years. It will, in 5 more years, triple to $17 trillion of debt. We all know that nothing comes from nothing.

We have to pay interest on that debt. CBO has calculated that. We are currently paying $170 billion a year in interest--$170 billion. My home State of Alabama's entire budget is under $10 billion. The federal government spends $40 billion a year on highways. We spend $100 billion on education. We are currently spending $170 billion just on interest on our debt. When this budget gets through, in calculating the interest rate, with some increases--because these debt levels are going to require higher interest to get people to loan us money--it will be $800 billion in interest at the 10th year, which is bigger than the defense budget, bigger than education, bigger than anything else in our account.

I know the chairman has the budget on the floor and has said it is a 5-year budget, but the House has a 10-year budget. Director Orszag, the President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, has said the Senate's budget is 98 percent of the President's budget. So it is not a fundamental change. It is, essentially, the President's budget. This is what the President's budget does. I would contend it is, essentially, indisputable that this is what he calls for. He made choices. He could have cut spending in some other places, but he increased spending.

I will add this: He does not project these deficits arising from slow economic growth. Under the President's budget, he projects robust growth, good growth. The only negative year is this year. Next year, he projects solid growth. The next year, I think, 4 percent; 3 years in a row of over 4 percent growth, which is very robust. No recession is projected in this 10-year period. So we have good years, fat times, and all the while we are increasing our debt, tripling it.

Senator Gregg is saying, let's at least have a vote that requires 60 votes of the Senate, such as we do on any other important piece of legislation, as to whether we will exceed doubling the debt.

Let me tell you the consequences of this. Last week we had difficulty selling our debt. The Brits' debt auction failed. The British are following our model of huge spending increases and surging debt. That idea is being rejected by Central Europe, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, and others. They reject that. They have refused the mortifying request of our own Secretary of Treasury that they go further into debt, spend more money as part of this wild plan to stimulate the economy with unprecedented debt. They have said no. It is irresponsible. In fact, the EU President said it is the road to hell.

The idea is, we have to pay this. This has a cost to the future. Yes, it gets money into our economy today, and in the short run there has to be some benefit, although Nobel Prize laureate Gary Becker says it is so poorly drafted--this money we are spending--that we are not going to get nearly as much financial stimulus as we should be getting from it.

And you would say: Well, we will soon begin to pay this debt down. The President says he is worried about it. We are going to pay the debt down. But the debt is not going down. The annual deficit, in the last 4 years, surges until CBO scores the 10th-year deficit, in 1 year, at $1.2 trillion. The highest deficit we have ever had prior to this year was $455 billion, and in good economic times, they are projecting a $1.2 trillion deficit. That is the annual deficit, adding to these numbers, as shown on the chart. That is why it triples. They keep going up, up, up.

There is no constraint in spending whatsoever. There is no plan to control the entitlement surge, no plan to control spending.

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

In fact, the President's budget, this year, proposes to increase domestic discretionary nondefense spending by 11.5 percent. We passed, a few weeks ago, a stimulus plan to spend $800 billion--the largest single appropriations in the history of America; $800 billion-- every penny of it going to the debt. Now we are going to have an 11- percent increase this year in discretionary spending on top of that? You know the rule of 7. It states that at 7-percent growth, your money doubles in 10 years. At 11.5-percent growth, our spending would double in 7 years. The entire spending of the discretionary account would double in 7 years if we maintained this incredible, colossal spending path we are on.

I think Senator Gregg is exactly right. Let's at least slow down and let's at least have the 60 votes we would normally have to pass an important piece of legislation if and when--and we certainly are heading to a point where this debt doubles--so at least to go to tripling, we ought to have another vote and slow down and ask ourselves: What in the world are we doing to our children? They are going to be carrying--at this year, as shown on the chart--$800 billion in interest that year. That assumes the interest rate is mainstream. But the truth is, with this much borrowing in these many countries around the world, we could have interest rates higher than that. If the interest rates go up, the $800 billion could become $1 trillion a year easily, and above, if the debt continues to surge.

I support the amendment. I am very worried. The numbers we are talking about on the floor are not a political dustup. This is about the future of America. The financial integrity of our country is at stake. We have never spent like this before, except in World War II when we were in a life-and-death struggle. It is not the right thing to do, and I support the amendment.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I see the chairman.

I will be delighted to.

Yes.

Mr. President, as we get into this debate----

And, Mr. President, how much time is left on the Boxer amendment?

Mr. President, first, I want to repeat the situation in which we find ourselves. My colleagues are quick to say President Bush spent us into bankruptcy, that he did all this reckless spending and that is the problem we have today. President Bush, in my opinion, did spend too much money and the debt was too high during his 8 years in office.

Last spring, I voted against sending out $160 billion in checks. I didn't think that was a good policy. The Democratic majority here supported that steadfastly, overwhelmingly. Spend, spend, spend is what we have been seeing over there over the years and, in fact, with this big majority they have, and on the budget, Republicans are not able to take the heat, Republicans are not able to say to my colleagues, they have the votes, they can pass whatever budget they want.

What I do want to say is that these are some accurate figures about the Bush budget: His worst deficit in 2003 was after 9/11, after he inherited an economic slowdown. The tech bubble had burst. When he took office, the day he took office, the Nasdaq had already collapsed and lost half its value. We were in a recession. Then we were attacked 9 months later, and the money got spent. At one point we ended up with a $412 billion deficit. We thought it was horrible. But in 3 years, that deficit was reduced until fiscal year 2007, when we had a deficit of $161 billion. We worked it down and were heading in the right direction. Then last year he sent out those checks and we had an economic slowdown and both Houses, controlled by the Democrats, voted overwhelmingly to spend another $160 billion to stimulate the economy. It didn't work, and we ended up with a $455 billion deficit.

In the third year of the Democratic majority in the Congress and in the Presidency of Barack Obama and not all of this money can be traced to him, but much of it can--our deficit this year will not be $455 billion. It will not be $800 billion. It will not be $1 trillion. It will not be $1.4 trillion. It will be $1.8 trillion this year. Nothing has ever been seen like this before, ever. Next year, it will be over $1 trillion. In the outyears of the President's 10-year budget, it will be increasing the annual deficit $1 trillion. In fact, in the 10th year of his budget, according to our own Congressional Budget Office, basically hired by the Democratic majority here, they are scoring the deficit that year to be $1.2 trillion, added to the other. That is why this irrefutable chart shows that the debt goes from $5 trillion to $11 trillion, doubling, and then tripling in 10 years. That is not sustainable, as our Budget chairman has said.

Mr. President, I see my colleagues are on the floor. I will be pleased to have a discussion with them about the reconciliation process. Let me just say this: In a time of economic hardship, when families are struggling to pay

their bills and businesses are laying off people in order to survive, the last thing we need are major tax increases. Raising taxes hurts the family budget and kills jobs. Yet the President's budget contains the largest tax increase in American history, $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

Again, I note that the deficit is not because we are not increasing taxes. We are increasing taxes. The spending is so great it still triples the debt.

I will be pleased to.

That is correct. Under the President's plan, the average American family will see their energy bills increase up to $3,128 each year. Not over 10 years, but each year. That is how much it will go up.

In a candid moment when he was still a candidate, President Obama admitted:

Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electric rates

would necessarily skyrocket.

I will be pleased to yield to Senator Thune from South Dakota.

Not only did he say that, last Wednesday OMB Director Orszag said that jamming a new national energy tax through the Senate with very limited debate and ability to amend under the reconciliation is, and I quote--

not off the table.

In fact, the House of Representatives is very clear about this plan. Section 202 of the House of Representatives budget resolution states:

reconciliation in the Senate. (Senate reconciliation

instructions to be supplied by the Senate.)

Since the House has a Rules Committee, which allows them to pass bills with minimal debate, this is clearly intended, not to affect their procedures, but to make sure that the conference on the budget adds this provision so it can be jammed through the Senate.

I will be pleased to yield to Senator Ensign from Nevada.

Mr. President, I fully agree, I say to Senator Ensign, with Senator Byrd's view. Senator Byrd wrote this legislation. He also wrote the book, literally, on Senate rules. He is our conscience of the Senate in terms of the great historic role of the American Senate.

Senator Byrd has also said this:

Using the reconciliation process to enact major legislation

prevents an open debate about critical issues in the full

view of the public. Health reform and climate change are

issues that, in one way or another, touch every American

family. Their resolution carries serious economic and

emotional consequences. The misuse of the arcane process of

reconciliation . . . to enact substantive policy changes is

an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate's

institutional role.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it not be in order in the Senate to consider any conference report or House amendment on the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution which contains reconciliation instructions for the Senate.

Mr. President, do I still have the floor?

I will be glad to yield for a question. I have another request to offer.

Mr. President, I say to Senator Boxer, we will have more in-depth discussion of the cost of this program, but it is not without cost. The President and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget have admitted clearly there will be costs of very large amounts passed forward to our constituents.

No. 2, and since it is such an incredibly monumental, colossal intervention and tax on the American economy, it certainly needs more debate than the limited hours that would be given under the budget process. That is what we were asking, that it be treated in the normal order of business and not expedited with a simple majority vote and a limited number of hours of debate. That is what the objection is to.

I will yield to the Senator, our chairman.

That is a good question, and I will be pleased to answer our chairman. No, it did not, and I think that was the chairman's preference, his stated preference, and other Democrats on the committee did not want this reconciliation language in the Senate budget. But the language is in the House budget.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, has said it is not off the table, as you know, that this might be included in the final conference package. And as you know, since it is in the House language, Senator Reid will appoint the conferees, a majority of the conferees. And if he so says, the language will be in the final package that could come before the Senate, which terrifies people who believe in the great historic role of the Senate. That is what our concern is today.

I am not aware of that. Maybe some of my colleagues might have heard that, but my understanding is that our leader says it might be included. In fact, he went so far as to say the revenue that would surge into the Treasury from the cap-and-trade could be used to finance health care. So that is a matter that is important to us.

If the Senator shares my concern, I find it odd that he would object--or Senator Boxer would object to language in this resolution calling on us not to accept it.

Mr. President, I have the floor, and I would be pleased to yield for a question from the Senator from New Hampshire.

I think the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee is correct. Having read the House language on reconciliation, it appears to me, quite clearly, that if it is accepted in final passage of the bill, after conference, it would give the Senate the power to enact cap-and-trade or health care legislation without the normal processes of the Senate.

Would the ranking member not agree?

I believe the Senator is absolutely correct. In other words, the House can pass anything on a simple majority, and Speaker Pelosi has a pretty good machine over there. They can pass whatever they want to pass. They do not need reconciliation. Why did they put reconciliation in their bill? They put it in there because it could be accepted in the final conference report and give the power to the Senate to use it to deny the historic debate rules of our Senate. Wouldn't that be a logical conclusion?

I would agree.

I would be pleased to yield to the Senator from South Dakota.

I agree with my colleague, Senator Thune.

Look, we are all grownups here. We know how the Senate works. We know how things are handled. We offered an amendment to put E-Verify in the stimulus bill in order to check the citizenship of people before they get jobs under the stimulus package. It was in the House bill, but we were not able not to have a vote in the Senate. The majority party knew exactly what they intended to do. When it went to conference, they took out the language, but everybody in the House could say they voted for it.

This is the same kind of situation. The language is now in the House bill, which they do not need. They do not need that language to pass anything in the House. But if it were to be accepted by the Senate, and Senator Reid has indicated he might do that, if they accept it in conference, then cap-and-trade or health care reform could be passed without the classical historic debate this Senate is used to having. That is why our conscience of the Senate, Senator Robert Byrd, has said this is bad, it should not happen, and it demeans the Senate. He used very clear language.

Reserving the right to retain the floor, I yield to the majority leader.

Mr. President, we know this is a big deal--a very, very, very big deal that we are discussing. If my friend, Senator Conrad, is correct, and he didn't put it in his committee

report, when we try to make it a clear statement that the Senate would not accept this language if it came out of conference, why would Senator Boxer object? We have seen these maneuvers before.

Without this language, we would be in a position in which the leadership of the Senate could move forward with legislation that would use reconciliation to pass other bills. So I would make another unanimous consent request, Mr. President.

I ask unanimous consent that it not be in order in the Senate to consider any conference report or House amendment on the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution which reconciles any of the following Senate committees: The Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Committee on Finance, and the Committee on Energy.

Mr. President, that clearly states where we are headed.

I yield to the Senator from New Hampshire.

No. In fact, few pieces of legislation this Senate has ever considered will have as much broad-based complexity and impact on our economy as a cap-and-trade system, period. That is why Senator Byrd, the conscience of the rules of the Senate, said:

Using the reconciliation process to enact major legislation

prevents an open debate about the critical issues in full

view of the public. Health reform and climate change are

issues that in one way or another touch every American

family. Their resolution carries serious economic and

emotional consequences. The misuse of the arcane process of

reconciliation . . . to enact substantive policy change is an

undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate's

institutional role.

That is what Senator Byrd, the Democratic Senator who wrote the reconciliation bill and who has written a book on the rules of the Senate, has stated.

Mr. President, I have one more unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that it shall not be in order to consider any reconciliation bill in the Senate that raises energy prices.

Mr. President, I believe I still have the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

The unanimous consent request would be in harmony with the budget resolution that came out of committee and in harmony with Senator Conrad's expressed personal views, would it not?

Mr. President, I have filed and call up amendment No. 772 and ask that it be the pending business.

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

Mr. President, as so often has been said, we are on an unsustainable path of taxing and spending and borrowing. The numbers are larger than anything we have ever seen before in the history of our country. We have dueling charts and different views and obfuscation and spin and talk and all that kind of thing, but the bottom line is that our debt is surging under this budget--President Obama's budget and the Senate budget and the House budget--to a degree we have never seen before. I think that much is not disputable.

President Bush had a $412 billion deficit at the time of the recession he inherited and the war in which we found ourselves. Then it dropped until 2007 to $161 billion. This Congress, responding to the President's requests--without my vote--added another $150 billion and sent out the checks last spring, which did nothing good for the economy, although everybody was glad to get the free money from Washington. That caused us to reach $455 billion in deficits for that year--the largest in the history of the Republic outside of World War II. This year, the deficit will be $1,800 billion--four times that. Next year, we will be over a trillion.

The Congressional Budget Office scores President Obama's 10-year budget as averaging over $900 billion in deficit each year--almost $1 trillion in deficit each year--with no plan to bring that down. In fact, it surges in the 10th year to $1.2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO is our group, a bipartisan office, though the Democratic majority hires them. But basically we have a good group, and they are honest numbers. So that is what we are looking at.

To say President Bush's $455 billion deficit he had in his last year--which every dime of that was appropriated by the Democratically controlled Congress--somehow excuses the path we are on today is unbelievable. The year before last, he had $161 billion. They are going to average $900 billion.

What does it mean in terms of interest? Most people can understand this. When you borrow money--and we have to borrow the money. That is where we get the money. It doesn't drop out of the sky. If we print it, it debases the value of the currency. So we are borrowing. That is what we plan to do, to borrow the money and pay interest. This year, interest on our over $5 trillion debt is $170 billion.

This chart shows the trend of the interest this Government will pay each year on the debt we are now adding to each year in unprecedented record numbers. It goes from $170 billion in 10 years to $806 billion. This is a thunderous alteration of our financial situation. This is not politics; this is the President's budget as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. These are not my numbers but CBO's numbers.

I know the budget we have today on the floor is a 5-year budget. They didn't like the looks of the President's 10-year budget, so my colleagues cut it to a 5-year budget. There is nothing in this 5-year budget that suggests there is any effort to contain the surging deficit in the outyears, which continues to surge. There is nothing in the budget that suggests we are going to control entitlements or any other spending. In fact, Mr. Orszag, who used to be CBO Director but who is now the President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, says the Senate budget is essentially ``98 percent of what the President wanted.'' So it is essentially the same budget. It puts us on the same path. You can spin it any way you want to, but that is true. Those of us here in the body know that. Anyone who is sophisticated about it understands what is happening, and it is very troubling.

The President proposed an 11\1/2\-percent increase in domestic nondefense discretionary spending this year. That is a thunderous number, particularly in light of the fact that we just passed, a few weeks ago, a stimulus package that added $800 billion in spending on top of all of the fundamental baseline spending we have. Scored over 10 years, that is $1.2 trillion based on the interest to it.

So our colleagues in the Senate Budget Committee thought that didn't look good and it was easier, I think, to just propose a 5-year budget so they wouldn't have to deal with these numbers out here. No changes were made that would have actually created any real reduction in those numbers. They propose, instead of an 11-percent increase in domestic discretionary spending, a 7-percent increase. That is on top of the stimulus package. Surely we all know that every penny of that stimulus package was paid for by increased debt. We are already in deficits, so when you add another $800 billion, where do you get it? You borrow it.

You know the House is not outside of this game. They are in the game too. What does their budget do on nondefense discretionary spending? Their budget projects an 11\1/2\- to 12-percent increase in discretionary spending. They passed their budget. So if we go to conference with this bill, the Senate will be at 7, the House will be at 11 or 12, the President is at 11 or 12, and I suspect we will come out with a budget that increases by about 10. Let me just note that an 11\1/2\-percent increase over 7 years doubles your money. You know the rule of 7: If you have 7 percent on your money, in 10 years it doubles.

Here we are talking about a rate of increase that will double nondefense discretionary spending in 10 years--probably considerably less than that. That is why the baseline funding is important.

I have to note, in all frankness, that our Senate budget is less honest--I will use that word for lack of a better one--than the President's. The President scored the cost of fixing the alternative minimum tax for 10 years, which he says will be about $600 billion.

The President also scored the cost of fixing our doctors' medical payments that, if we do not put money in, will drop down 20 percent. Our Senate budget doesn't fix that. So that is maybe how they make the numbers look a little better. But I want to say these numbers are huge.

Madam President, what is the status of our time?

I wish to be notified when I have 6 minutes remaining.

Madam President, this is a dangerous exercise we are in. I want to say a couple of things. The surging of debt and interest payments is not due to an expectation by the Senate or the President that we will be in a recession or in an economic slowdown. This is the only year they are scoring us as having negative growth. The President expects 3 percent next year and 4 percent the next and 3 years which is robust growth. Those are the kinds of numbers that President Reagan and President Clinton had in their best years. So that is not why we are going deeper and deeper in debt with a $1 trillion 1-year debt in the 10th year. It is because of spending.

States are facing financial crisis. This year States are expected to reduce their spending by 4.1 percent. Are they going to disappear from the face of the Earth? No, they are making some tough decisions. They are wrestling with costs, fraud, accountability, efficiency, productivity. We need to be doing that instead of throwing money at this problem.

I suggest that, with the huge surge of stimulus funding, we ought to keep the baseline level for 2 years. We will be spending huge amounts of money--65 percent more nondefense discretionary budget authority in the first 2 years with the stimulus money pouring into the system. So I suggest we could achieve a significant improvement in our long-term fiscal situation by saying during this time of stimulus spending we will have a 2-year freeze and then we will go up to a 1-percent increase.

Flat spending does not require us to savage anybody's budget. The power is given to our appropriators to work out exactly how some programs might take more than others. Others could still get an increase. But fundamentally we need to set here, as a principle, we are going to have a budget that actually contains baseline spending and it will save $226 billion over 5 years. I project it would save at least that much in the second 5, maybe more because the baseline of our budget would not have gone up so much.

What about this interest on the increasing debt? It amounts, today, in 2009, that every household is paying to the Federal Government $1,435, just to pay the $170 billion in interest. That number in 5 years, 2014, will increase to $3,433 per household, to pay the interest on the debt. With interest rates increasing as we expect--unfortunately as they are going to be doing with this inflationary budget--the number may well be twice that in 10 years. That is an unsustainable path.

I propose we take this step. It is a rational step in light of the huge stimulus package we passed--without any cutting of total expenditures but an unprecedented increase in our expenditures would still occur with flat funding, level funding for 2 years and 1 percent for 3 years. I think this is a rational approach we could be proud of.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal noted that nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom will be tempted to use inflation to pay their massive debts. Households in the United States are among the most indebted in the world. People on fixed incomes would be most hurt by inflationary rates. Other nations might also continue to borrow, creating more nations seeking to borrow more and more money, therefore having to raise interest rates to get people to buy their debt, which could mean that the estimate that in 2019 we would be paying 5.5 percent on our Treasury bills would probably be low. In fact, it could be much higher.

Indeed, Mr. Rogov was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. He is at Harvard. He was the chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. He predicted--hold your hat. This is something new. He predicted that inflation in the United States could hit up to 10 percent in the next 3 to 5 years, all because of this incredible spending spree we are on.

Let me say this to my colleagues. This country is going to come out of this economic problem. We don't have to spend irresponsibly now. We have already spent an incredible amount of money in the stimulus package. Our baseline budget needs to start getting frugal, to challenge us to get more for less in the Federal Government. The best way the U.S. Government can help the American people and the American economy is to use every dollar our Government gets wisely, to get the best possible return for it. You will not get that kind of return throwing money around as rapidly as we are throwing it today. In fact, I think it is a general acknowledgment that the surge in spending under the stimulus package, plus 7, 8, 12 percent increase in general spending, will throw so much money so fast that our Presiding Officer, who doesn't like waste, fraud, and abuse, is going to have a lot to do to watch out for it because, like her, we have been prosecutors and we know that you have dangers out there in spending money unwisely.

I believe the issues we are talking about today are not insignificant. They represent the direction the President of the United States wants this country to go--which is huge spending without compensating cuts, with tax increases but not enough to cover it--and that this is an unsustainable path. This amendment would be a significant step in the right direction. With the stimulus package that has already been passed this year, we will still have sizable increases in discretionary spending across the board, and we will be able to carry on all requirements of our Government without having to spend this much of our children's money.

Maybe we won't have to pay $806 billion a year in interest, when our education and highway budgets will each be about $100 billion. The education budget and the State general fund budget in Alabama, for the teachers and schools and highways and police and the Governor and the legislature--all of that is less than $10 billion a year and we are talking about $806 billion in interest? It is not responsible.

I thank my colleagues for giving this amendment their serious consideration. I believe it is the right step and the right direction.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would ask to be notified at 7 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee. I say to the Senator, it is a pleasure to work with you. You do a great job in an exceedingly difficult situation.

But the net result so far is a budget that is thunderously irresponsible, and we cannot and should not pass it. We must not pass this budget. I think it would send a signal that we are not serious about our financial future, that the world may think, as the President of the European Union said in Europe recently, from the Czech Republic, that the United States fiscal policy is on the road to hell. That was his direct quote in the newspaper.

So this is a serious matter.

A President's budget states what the President believes in, and what he wants to see accomplished over a period of time. A 10-year budget-- which he submitted--is good. Sometimes we do 5 years. It could be 5 years. Senator Conrad and the Democratic members of the Budget Committee, unhappy with the numbers of the 10-year budget, submitted a 5-year budget, and just did not talk about the second 5 years. But there is a grim second 5 years also.

So this budget is a plan, a direction, a list of priorities of the President. What we can see with absolute certainty is that financial responsibility is not a priority for the President. It is not. In fact, the title of his budget is ``A New Era of Responsibility''--and the numbers I am going to be talking about are either numbers that come right out of his budget called ``A New Era of Responsibility,'' from the Office of Management and Budget, and it has explicit numbers about what it intends to spend, how much debt will be created and how much taxes will be imposed and how it all will play out over a 10-year period.

So the Senate Budget Committee's budget suggests it is better or at least it does not spend as much money. But I do not think that is sustainable. I think the real analysis came from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Peter Orszag, the President's budget manager, who said it is 98 percent of what President Obama asked for.

Because there are some gimmicks in the Senate budget. And there are flaws in it that make it look better, such as not fully accounting for the cost of fixing the alternative minimum tax or the doctor fix or TARP II or some of the other things we know we are going to be spending money on.

Let me just sum up the situation with regard to the CBO analysis, the Congressional Budget Office analysis. Our Congressional Budget Office analyzes the President's budget and attempts to explain what it is. They calculate numbers just like the President did. But very truly their analysis is more realistic and more likely to be true than the President's because he took some gimmicks too--not as many, I have to admit, as some have taken, but he has quite a number of gimmicks in it. Without the gimmicks, our Congressional Budget Office gives us a reliable analysis. They work both Houses of Congress, their leadership is selected by the Democrats, and it is certainly not a Republican institution. They are proud of their nonpartisanship and their accuracy and their figures.

So this is what would happen to the debt held by the public if this budget passes and becomes reality. In 2008, debt held by the public was $5.8 trillion. That represents the entire debt of the United States of America since its founding. Under the proposed budget of President Obama, by 2013 that debt will double to $11.8 trillion. In 5 years, it will do that. In 2019, 5 more years later, it triples to $17.3 trillion. I do not believe those numbers are challengeable in any significant way.

If you take the President's budget, you make sure that the figures, calculated with legitimate expectations of the future as CBO has done-- this is what they come up with. The President's proposal assumes more favorable numbers--instead of $17.3 trillion, $15-plus trillion, which is almost virtually three times the $5.8 trillion we have today. He admits that is what his budget does, with his own numbers. So that is a big question.

Here is an example of where we are with the debt. My colleagues savaged President Bush for excessive spending, and the debt held by the public did go up during his time in office, to over $5 trillion, but this is not an exaggeration, colleagues. This is what the numbers show. It is going to go up to $17 trillion.

So my first point to my colleagues and to those who might be listening is these numbers are not political numbers ginned up out of thin air; these are numbers that have been calculated from the President's own budget, entitled ``A New Era of Responsibility,'' according to the Congressional Budget Office, and that is when they score the situation to be 10 years from now.

So you say: Well, we are in an economic disaster area. We have very bad problems in the economy.

Well, maybe we do, but the President, in his expectation of income to the Government, other than this year being a year of negative growth, assumes we will have positive growth in the future.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

So according to his budget, in year 3, we will have 4 percent growth for 3 consecutive years and never have a recession and have good growth all 10 years, except for this year, where we will have 1.2 percent negative growth. Well, I think that is probably too optimistic. If it is too optimistic, then this figure is going to be worse. It could be far worse.

So what does that mean? Does the debt make a difference?

This is today's Wall Street Journal, an article by Mr. Mark Whitehouse in which he states that countries with mounting debt burdens will:

Ultimately face a growing temptation to allow inflation to

accelerate more than they typically would--a move that would

slash the value of their debts as the prices of everything

else rose.

He points out that poor demand at a U.S. Government bond auction and the failure of a separate auction in the UK added to unease about the market's willingness to support the country's heavy borrowing. So we have now not only our country going in debt, we have the UK going into debt, causing the European Union folks to get very nervous.

So who is going to buy this debt? When we go into debt, it doesn't just happen; somebody has to loan us the money. Right now, we sell Treasury bills. China has bought a whole lot of them, as well as Saudi Arabia and other countries. We are talking about selling twice as many in 5 years, three times as many in 10, and at the same time other countries are going into debt. Who is going to buy this, and what does it mean to the economy?

Mr. Whitehouse quotes Mr. Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard and a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. This is what he said in today's paper. Mr. Rogoff says annual inflation could go as high as 8 to 10 percent within 3 to 5 years in the United States and sooner

in the UK. He projects eight to ten percent inflation in 3 to 5 years, based on what we are doing today. He notes that the average inflation rate in 1 month in this country has gone up 25 percent, the projected rate of inflation.

Debt matters. There are no free lunches. Nothing comes from nothing. Debts have to be repaid--not only repaid; we have to pay interest on it, and the interest on this debt will go, according to the Congressional Budget Office, from $170 billion this year--that is what we pay out of our whole $3 trillion budget--$170 billion is the interest on the public debt--this $5 trillion. CBO is projecting that 10 years from now, we will pay in interest $800 billion--$806 billion, to be exact. We spend $100 billion on education, so we will have interest payments in just 10 years 8 times as large as the amount of money we spend on education. Our highway spending, $40 billion a year today--it will go up some, but we will be spending 20 times as much in interest. So future generations in America will be paying an incredible burden of interest, denying them money to spend on education and highways and other good things because we irresponsibly spent it now.

It is not right. It is wrong. It should not occur. We really need to have a national discussion about this and try to fix this problem.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, there are good examples, as Senator Enzi declared, of bipartisan work in this Senate. We have a lot of those examples. I would point out, however, that a budget is a document that tends to favor an individual party's belief. It tends to point out where they want to take the country. It is a roadmap for the country, and that budget is a vehicle to achieve the goals that party has.

I want to say this about the budget: A budget is not just something an individual has to submit. The President submits one, but the numbers contained in it, the directions contained in it, are the choices made. You can choose to spend less, you can choose to spend more, you can choose to reduce debt, you can choose to increase debt. It might be more popular to spend more and run up more debt today, but it may not be good for the long-term interest of America.

We just left the budget markup, and the Democratic majority passed out of the committee on a straight party-line vote--with no Republicans supporting

it--what I believe is the most irresponsible budget in the history of our Nation. It takes our spending, as a percentage of the gross domestic product, to the highest level we have had since World War II, when we were fighting for our very existence. We had been attacked at Pearl Harbor. We were facing the Nazis and Hitler. The problems we face now are not like that, but that is the level of spending we have now, and it is a very dangerous thing.

Does anybody doubt the conventional wisdom that nothing comes from nothing; that there is no free lunch; that somebody had to produce it; that debts must be paid when incurred; and that if you borrow money, you have to pay interest on it? Does anybody doubt that?

From the beginning of the founding of our Republic until this year, we, the public, have accumulated $5 trillion in debt. That is the whole founding of our country. That is what we have accumulated. Under the budget that the President has submitted to Congress--in a bound volume, carefully put together--in 5 years alone that $5 trillion debt will double, and in the following 5 years it will triple. So in 5 years, we would add twice as much debt--according to the President's own numbers he submitted to us--as we have today and three times as much in 10 years. I am not making this up. These numbers are in the book. And it is pretty disturbing to me.

The chairman offered an alternative budget. He got clever. He said: We will do a 5-year budget. We won't do a 10-year budget. We will move some things around and make things look better, and then we can all vote for it. That is basically what happened today. But when you look at it carefully, it is no big change. And the chairman's mark that was passed out of committee today, that mark is disturbing because it was less honest and it was more gimmicked up than the President's budget.

President Obama's budget was pretty honest about two or three big issues. One of them is the alternative minimum tax fix. It costs quite a bit to fix that. We only fix it 1 year at a time, but we fix it every year. President Obama assumed we would fix it. I think he underestimated the cost of a 10-year fix, but he had it in there. It cost hundreds of billions of dollars to do that--$500 billion. I think it is probably closer to $700 billion or $800 billion, but that was in there. That was omitted from the chairman's mark that was voted out. But that is going to be fixed, and when you fix it, you reduce the alternative minimum tax's impact in the country, you lose revenue, and that makes your debt look worse.

Also, every year we have been fixing the doctors' reimbursement rate under the Balanced Budget Act. A decade ago, we required those payments to be cut, and we required them to be cut too much. They can't be cut that much, but that is the current law. They are dropped about 20 percent today. So every year, we come back and we put the money in. We spend the money necessary to keep the doctors with a modest increase in their reimbursement rate. We don't let them take a 20-percent cut. The chairman's mark assumes we don't fix the doctors' bills. That is not going to happen. That makes his numbers look somewhat better.

But when charted out carefully, the Budget Committee, on the Republican side, put the numbers together and found discretionary spending over 5 years under the chairman's mark was 98.8 percent--the same as President Obama's budget. Total outlays over 5 years was 96.6 percent--the same as the President's budget. And revenue was 99.8 percent--the same. So it is basically the President's budget. But since it was getting so much flak and that budget was so irresponsible, people wanted to pretend that the budget they voted out of the committee was more responsible and deserved more support. But it is just not so, really. There is nothing in it that suggests a confronting of the serious financial situation we are in.

It has an incredible increase in spending, and that is why the debts are so large. It creates these deficits. As I indicated, we go from $5 trillion to $10 trillion in debt held by the public in 5 years. Where does that $5 trillion come from? Where does it come from? It comes from borrowing. And you borrow by going out and offering Treasury bills on the U.S. Treasury. You offer people an opportunity to buy them, and you pay them interest to loan you the money. So they loan you the money, and you pay them interest.

We have been in a time in which the interest rates have been unusually low because people were so scared around the world and other countries were shakier than we were, and so they wanted to buy Treasury bills--because we always pay them, basically. We have historically been a very safe investment. So that is how we get there. We borrow the money.

Now, I want to suggest that costs money. I am not making these numbers up. These are the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office calculated. The Congressional Budget Office is hired by the Congress-- both Houses of Congress--though it is controlled by the Democratic majority. They essentially have the final choice on who becomes the head of that office and who can control that office. But CBO takes pride in being nonpartisan and doing the right numbers. We use them a lot. They are the best numbers we can get. This is what they have calculated that interest payments on the debt will be.

People can understand interest. How much are you paying on your credit card in interest? How much are you paying on your house note in interest? When you borrow money, you pay interest. When the United States borrows another $5 trillion, we pay interest on that 5, plus the 5 we have already borrowed. And when it goes to $17 trillion, as CBO expects this budget deficit to do based on the budget the President sent us, you would see these kinds of numbers. And these are the President's numbers, but on these numbers, I think he is low. I trust CBO. But we will look at both of them.

According to CBO's estimates, we will spend $170 billion for interest this year. It goes up slowly. In 2011, $216 billion; then $282 billion, $460 billion, $601 billion, $734 billion; and in the 10th year, $806 billion in interest. One year's interest. How much of that is for foreign countries--China and Saudi Arabia and other countries who bought our Treasury bills? That is $806 billion.

How much is $806 billion? My State of Alabama is an average-size State--maybe a little smaller, not much--and we are about one-fiftieth the population of the country. Our entire general fund budget, including our State school spending and teachers, is less than $10 billion a year. The Government will be paying $806 billion in interest in 1 year.

The Federal highway program today is $40 billion. We send that out to the States, where they get an 80-20 or a 90-10 split, and they use it to repair interstates and highways, and they do a lot with that. It is $40 billion. We're talking about 20 times as much as the highway money.

I am very concerned about that interest number. Can we not understand why this is important? And we are not sure what this number will be because we are not perfectly sure what the interest rates will be.

There are some developments today in the world that cause us quite a bit of concern. In the Washington Post today, there is a report that the President of the European Union blasted U.S. spending. Subheadline: ``Czech Premier Calls Obama Administration's Economic Policies `a Road to Hell.' '' The article is talking about the United States urging other countries to borrow more money and spend more money, as we have done. Let me quote from the article:

Some countries, led by Germany, have strongly resisted,

predicting that such a path could lead to unsustainable debts

and runaway inflation. Luxembourg's prime minister . . . who

heads a coordinating body . . . said European countries had

already spent enough to jumpstart their economies.

They haven't spent as much as we have, yet we are urging them to spend more.

To further quote from the article:

The European stimulus plans are muscular. They are

demanding, they are important in volume and in quality. . . .

There was ``no question'' that the European Union would

reject requests from Obama to spend more.

Well, what happens when you do that? What happens when you borrow too much money?

There was an article in today's Washington Times talking about Mr. Geithner's difficulties in misspeaking

and causing the dollar to plunge and the market to plunge, and then rebalance after he corrected himself. The article said:

By afternoon, a poor showing of buyers at a Treasury bond

auction sent interest rates sharply higher, raising fears

about the U.S. ability to sell a massive load of $2.5

trillion of debt this year.

It goes on to say:

Buyers may have been spooked by . . . the unveiling of

budget plans on Capitol Hill that would double the amount of

debt the Treasury has to sell in the next 5 years to nearly

$12 trillion.

The markets are worried about this. So if you are going to buy a Treasury bill and you think the United States is selling too many of them, or there are too many on the market and not enough money out there to buy them, or the interest rates are low and you want higher interest rates, you just don't buy. And then what is going to happen? To sell our bonds, to get people to loan us money, we are going to have to promise to pay them higher interest rates. That is the deal.

The New York Times had an article about this a month ago. Chairman Conrad, our very able chairman of the Budget Committee, passed it out to our committee members. This is a warning. When you get too much debt and you are demanding that too many people loan you money, countries such as China--which have a fraction of the surplus in their trade account today than they had a number of years ago--are not going to buy as much of our debt, even if they wanted to, because they do not have the money to buy it with. Who is going to buy this? To get enough people to send us their money to finance our spending spree, we are going to end up having to pay higher interest rates. That is a fact.

The article goes on to say:

The mounting worries about the debt also snuffed out a

rally in the stock market . . .

He talked about China. You have heard a lot of people talk about China and buying our Treasury bills and our concern about being obligated to them. This is what the article said today:

China and other investors recently have taken to worrying

about whether the United States may debase its currency in

its drive to address economic problems.

I think the world is worrying about that. Are we going to debase our currency? Are we going to inflate our currency to bail ourselves out and pay back those who loaned us money with dollars worth less than the dollars they loaned to us? If they think that, what they will demand is even higher interest rates. Because then they have to have interest rates that will assure them that even if the money is inflated, they will be paid back in an amount similar to that which they loaned us.

It goes on to say:

But the investors worry about the lingering effects of the

legacy of debt and the inflationary impact of the Federal

Reserve's program to help finance that debt with $300 billion

of Treasury bond purchases.

So the Federal Reserve is basically printing money and buying these Treasury bills themselves to try to help us out, and that is worrying people because nothing comes from nothing. Debts must be repaid. It goes on to say:

Apprehension about these matters is apparently what led to

the Treasury's difficulty in selling $24 billion of the five-

year notes Wednesday afternoon.

That is yesterday afternoon.

To attract buyers, the Treasury had to pay interest rates

that were significantly higher than its previous auction,

touching off fears about the nation's ability to finance ever

bigger loads of debt in the future. It didn't help that

Britain on Tuesday experienced its first failed bond auction

in nearly seven years--a bad portent since Britain, like the

United States, has gone deeply into debt to finance large

economic stimulus and bank bailout programs.

The Brits have followed us. The Central Europeans are saying no. The Brits are spending like we are and the other countries are rejecting that. They pushed back and we have urged them to spend like we do and they said: No, we are not going to do it.

I think it is embarrassing. It is mortifying to me, as an American who believes in limited Government, lower taxes, and free enterprise, to be in a position where we are being lectured by the Europeans and told no, when we want to spend more, tax more, and create more debt and they are saying it is irresponsible. We have always believed we were more responsible and we had more honesty in our system and we were more frugal in what we spent and our economy has been more robust than the European economies over the last 15 or 20 years. But now it looks like the situation has shifted. CreditSights--an organization that deals with these kinds of interest issues--CreditSights' Ms. Purtle was quoted in the article. She said that:

. . . the most serious problem the Treasury faces is a lack

of buyers worldwide for its growing mountain of debt. In

particular, countries like China and Japan that invested

their trillions of dollars in export earnings in the Treasury

market have been hit by plummeting exports--

They are not selling as much as they used to.

--which means they have less money to invest in Treasury

Bonds, she said.

She concludes by saying:

``. . . funds simply aren't available to continue the

purchases.''

That is something I have been talking about for some time. It is pretty obvious, unless you believe something can come from nothing.

Julie Andrews had it right:

Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.

In the course of this debate, a lot of efforts were carried out to try to do something about the stark numbers that are revealed in the President's bound book he sent to us. This chart reflects what is in his book. I didn't make up the numbers. They came right out of the book he wrote, or his staff did, and it reflects the total of the debt held by the public which is the best hard number we have, I think, of what the debt of the country is.

We start out in 2008 with $5.03 trillion. You can see the deficits, how they increase. By the first 5 years, debt held by the public is $11.55 trillion, virtually a doubling in 5 years of that debt. Then, in the 10th year, it is $15.370 trillion, more than three times the amount, about three times the point of the 2008 figure.

The numbers don't lie. Nobody is disputing this. They are saying, you know what, as my colleague said on the floor in a very partisan speech: Well, we are investing. We admit we are in a changed environment. We are trying to do things in a different way, and get over it, you guys, you mossbacks, worrying about debt. Don't worry about debt. Don't worry about spending. We are investing. We are going to spend more in education--like we haven't done that year after year--and we are going to have such an improvement in the quality of our graduates it is going to make America better and we are going to pay all this back. I guess that is what the argument is. But at some point, you just don't have the money. We do not have the money.

It would be nice if we could double every program in the world. Maybe we'll send more as foreign aid. Somebody offered that amendment in the Budget Committee today to spend more on foreign aid. Spend everything more and more and it will all work out.

I do not think that is acceptable, and these numbers represent, I contend, the most irresponsible budget since World War II, and since we were in a life-or-death struggle in World War II, those deficits were necessary.

Well, somebody might say: Sessions, we are in a recession. That is why the President's numbers look bad.

But hold your hat: the President's budget says we will have, this year, a negative GDP of 1.2 percent. He projects in this budget, to make the numbers look better, actually--I think, that is the only thing I can say; I hope it would be right--he projects that unemployment would cap out, the highest we would ever have in this recession is 8.1 percent. It is already at 8.1 percent. Wouldn't it be great if it doesn't get any higher? Maybe it won't. I surely hope not, but I suspect it will.

Look at this. This is the projections through 5 years. He doesn't project--the reason we are having these deficits is not because of lack of economic growth. The reason we have these deficits is spending, unprecedented spending. Look, in 2009, this fiscal year ending September 30, they predict a GDP decline of 1.2 percent. The independent, Blue Chip consensus, which is the most respected group, they project it will be worse, at 2.6 percent.

In 2010, that is next year--we are in 2009. In 2010, the President is projecting 3.2 percent growth. That is robust

growth. That is not a little growth, that is robust growth. In 2011, it is 4.0; 2012, 4.6; 2013, 4.2.

The point I am trying to make is, the reason the deficits are here in the outyears is not because the President is saying we are going to be in a sustained economic slowdown. President Clinton in his best years in the 1990s, President Reagan in his best years, I think it very rarely broke 4 percent or 5 percent growth. Four percent growth is robust growth. Great Scott, it would be great to have that every year.

We are not having these deficits because we are assuming we are going to be in an economic slowdown or a war. That is not assumed either because the defense budget is one thing that is getting reduced.

Amendments were offered. Senator Gregg offered an amendment, the ranking Republican on the committee--and such a smart and experienced member of the committee. To get into the European Union, you have to commit that your annual deficit will not exceed 3 percent of your GDP and that your total debt will not exceed 60 percent of your gross domestic product, the GDP. This budget, I think, is taking us--this is where we are. In 2009, this year, we are at 55 percent of GDP is our debt. It goes up next year to 61, in 2010, because of the budget, with such huge deficits. That already takes us outside of being admitted in the European Union. The European Union says if you are going to be a member of our economic union, you have to show you have financial discipline in your country. Every new member has to go through this.

But under the President's budget in 2011, it is 64 percent; in 2012, it is 65 percent; 2013, it is 66 percent; and 2014, it is 66 percent. I think it hits about 80 percent. It goes on up in the second 5 years.

This is a troubling trend. So Senator Gregg said: Why don't we at least make it a situation in which at least to pass a budget such as this you have to have 60 votes if we violate the standards of the European Union? It was voted down. Every Democrat voted against that reform, that containment mechanism.

Senator Gregg also offered an amendment dealing with the budget presented by the chairman. I think he had a little humor in him when he offered this. The budget presented by the chairman projected a 7- percent increase in spending this year; 7 percent over the baseline. But over 5 years, he claimed it only would increase spending by about 2.5 percent. That is pretty good, a 2.5-percent increase. It is not great. I offered an amendment lower than that but 2.5 percent. OK? Then, Senator Crapo, a Republican member of the committee and a very experienced and knowledgeable person, he said one thing I have learned around here, the budget that counts is the one for this year. You can project anything in your next year's budget and the next year's budget and the fourth and fifth year's budget. You can project any spending level you want because we will be back here next year, sitting in this room, and we will be voting on what this year's increase will be.

In other words, it appeared we were dealing with a gimmick. It appeared we were talking about spending a lot this year in the budget that counts--this fiscal year--and having reductions next year when we will have every opportunity to increase it.

OK. So Senator Crapo says: OK, you said you are going to keep it at 2 percent. That is what your budget says. I am going to offer an amendment that sets up a budget point of order that takes 60 votes if you go above that. Fair enough, right? So if next year--actually, I think next year they are proposing a 1-percent increase, which is not going to happen, I assure you.

And he proposed we hold them to that 2.5, and we would have a 60-vote point of order if they went over 2.5. Every Democrat voted it down because they knew they were not going to stay at 2.5. Everybody knows it.

I will just say this: No matter what is in the budget that comes out of this Senate, if it is any kind of real reduction from President Obama's budget, and I do not think it will be, but if it is, when it goes to conference and they meet with Speaker Pelosi, they are going to put the money back in. When the bill comes over here, it is going to essentially be the Obama budget. We have seen that is the tone of this discussion.

So that is why he offered that amendment. That is why they voted it down, because they flatly intend not to stick to a 2.5-percent-per-year spending increase in nondefense discretionary spending.

Senator Lindsey Graham offered an amendment--get this--that would limit each household's share of the debt in America to $80,000 per household. Our debt today is $60,000 per household. The Federal debt, if divided out per household, is $60,000. So Senator Graham said: Well, let's just put a mechanism in here, if you go over $60,000 and get up to $80,000, we have a budget point of order; at least it would take two-thirds to pass it.

No. They voted that down because the budget clearly puts us on a track to go well above $80,000 per household. It would have the potential to bite and be a potential way to contain this growth of spending.

Senator Alexander offered an amendment that said there would be a budget point of order if the amount of our total debt reached 90 percent of the gross domestic product of our country. I just told you that you cannot get in the European Union if your debt exceeds 60 percent of your GDP. But this budget puts us on track to going beyond 90 percent of GDP, and Senator Alexander offered an amendment. How reasonable is that? And it was voted down, on a straight party-line vote.

Senator Cornyn offered an amendment that would create a 60-vote point of order if we doubled the debt. If we double our debt, we ought to at least have 60 votes to do that. It was voted down, straight party-line vote.

These are troubling instances. We are not making this up. The issue is critical for the future of our Nation. It also says something more than just debt; it says this President meant something when he said: We are going to remake the American economy.

At a point in last year's campaign, many will remember this, when our President met Joe the Plumber, and he said: Well, we are going to take this money and spread it around a little bit, Joe.

People said: Wait a minute. Was that revealing who he really was? Is not that the socialist impulse to take money from people who have it and spend it on people you want to have it? Is not that the socialist impulse?

People talked about President Obama--Senator Obama then--is that the way he really thinks? Is that what he is going to do if he gets elected?

Oh no, they said, we are not socialists. We do not believe in those things. But budgets are not campaign rhetoric. The campaign is over. We are dealing with real books, a proposal to triple the debt in 10 years out of his budget office, with his name on it. I think the name of the budget document is ``A New Era of Responsibility.'' That is what is on it. That is what is right here. Here it is. ``A New Era of Responsibility.'' You tell me how tripling the debt is an era of responsibility. You tell me how raising the interest payment per year from $170 billion to $800 billion is responsible, in 10 years. It is not responsible.

We will have this debate next week. The Members will have a chance to speak about it and talk about it. For some people listening out there in the great American countryside, you may think this is just another Republican-Democratic dust-up, just another flim-flam fight, a burning of political hot air about nothing. And why does everybody not get together and just agree and work in a bipartisan way and pass something?

Well, what if they passed something that you think is bad for America, the legislation that has been offered. Every amendment that will make a difference gets voted down on a straight party-line vote, and it is going to be voted out of this Senate with an overwhelming partisan vote. I doubt a single Republican will vote for it.

But because a budget is passed--unlike most legislation--with a simple majority, there are plenty of votes to pass this. So there have been a lot of votes in this Senate, and a lot of times Republicans, I have often thought, have saved our Democratic colleagues from themselves by taking the hard votes by asking: How much is it going to cost? Do we really have the money? And not vote for things that in the

long run have not been wise for America.

OK. It is not going to happen this time because the votes are here. Senator Reid, the majority leader, has the votes. This budget is going to pass. I suppose it is possible that the American people will have their voices heard and something could change and it could come out better. That would be my hope. But unless something changes in the dynamic, and the only thing that can change this dynamic is if the American people make their voices heard through their representatives and tell them that is not what we intended when we voted for President Obama. Or almost half the people voted for John McCain; that is not what we intended you guys to do. You did not tell us you were going to triple the debt. You did not tell us you were going to do these things.

What about our Member who ran for reelection recently in the last several years? They have been attacking President Bush. They have been attacking President Bush as a profligate spender and saying they were going to do better. This is better? Give me a break.

Let's talk about that. I think a relevant year is 2003, after 9/11, after that recession, the commencement of the war on terrorism, President Bush had a deficit of around $400 billion. He was savagely criticized for that, and some of that was justified. At the time that was the biggest deficit since World War II.

It dropped for 3 consecutive years. In 2007, the year before last, the budget had dropped to $161 billion. We were on a good path, and then this recession hit. The President sent out $150 billion last year, unwisely. That did very little good. All of a sudden the deficit last year, September 30, was $459 billion.

Well, that was the biggest since World War II. And I think he was rightly criticized for that. I did not vote to send out the checks. Sorry, constituents. I did not think it was going to work. I do not think it has. Most economists say it did not benefit us.

But this year, hold your hats, with the $800 billion stimulus bill we passed this year, the deficit for this 1 year will not be $455 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion, $800 billion, $1,000 billion. No, it is $1.8 trillion. It is $1.8 trillion this fiscal year, and they are scoring the Wall Street bailout all this year. They are scoring Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae this year. There are some one-time things in that score.

But next year it is going to be $1.1 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If you look at Congressional Budget Office numbers--here are the President's numbers. He projects, with a robust growing economy, the debt will be $1.75 trillion in 2009; $1.1, almost $1.2 trillion in 2010; almost $900 billion in 2011; and he goes down. And it starts coming back up in the outyears when he has solid growth and no projections of an economic slowdown. He projects continued growing deficits to $712 billion. And that is that 1 year. OK. There is not a single year, not a single year in these 10 years of the President's budget that the deficit is as low as the highest deficit President Bush ever had. Not one.

But my staff tells me, let's not forget, that is the President's score. It has been doctored too. It is really worse than that based on the money they plan to spend. Our own Congressional Budget Office, controlled by the majority Members of our body, this is what they have for the deficit. They have this year being $1.845 trillion, $1,845 billion; 1.4 the next year; not at $712 billion but at $1.2 trillion in the tenth year.

So that is why Senator Conrad, our Democratic chairman, has said it is unsustainable. You cannot sustain these kind of deficits, even with a healthy economy.

USA Today, when this crisis began to hit us, they wrote an article that said simply this: An economy founded on excessive personal debt, excessive Government debt, and excessive trade deficits is not healthy.

So what we have to do is get off debt and get back to an honest growth economy that we have always been able to have. We have had a clear housing bubble that has burst. It has impacted the financial community significantly.

We have done a lot of things. Some of them are of dubious value. But we have done a lot of things to work our way through, and certainly President Obama projects the economy to bounce back strongly. But we cannot keep spending. We have to control that.

So as we go forward next week, I hope the American people will be alert to the most important issues; that they will make their voices heard; that all of our colleagues will go home, and as they sit down in quiet time, ask themselves: Can I vote for this? Can I go on record as voting for a plan that will increase the annual interest payment of Americans from $170 billion to $800 billion? And I am going to triple the debt in our country in 10 years, put us on a plan that will do that? I think not. I hope not.

I encourage my colleagues to study it carefully and vote no and let us see if we cannot come back with a much better budget. The only way to fix some of these issues is a bipartisan effort because some of those spending programs are tough. They have been growing out of control. It is going to take mature, tough decisionmaking to bring it under control.

Some special interests are going to holler as soon as you try to do it, and you have to listen to them. But you cannot let them set the national policy.

You can't let the person who is getting a benefit from a single program set a policy that adversely impacts everybody else in the country. That is what we are paid to do, to make the tough choices. We are not doing it now. The President's budget is not responsible. I hope we can confront it honestly and make some positive changes.

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

Madam President, I thank Senator Thune for his excellent remarks. I will just say that sums it up pretty well. I would like to go into a little more detail about the budget--just some of the matters in it--so we confront honestly the situation with which we are dealing.

This is the budget, which I hold up in my hand. This is the budget the President sent up. It is from the Executive Office of the White House, Office of Management and Budget. The big print on it says, ``A New Era of Responsibility.'' The small print says, ``Renewing America's Promise.'' Well, I am not sure what ``Renewing America's Promise'' means, I guess, but I am pretty sure that ``A New Era of Responsibility'' is not what this budget is. I would like to talk about it because it is breathtaking, really.

Now, some would think: Oh, here we go. This is just another political dustup, just another fight between the Republicans and Democrats, just another partisan spasm. That is what it is all about. They talk about these numbers, and I don't know what these numbers mean: a billion, a trillion, a million. What does all that mean? Well, sometimes numbers do mean something. Sometimes numbers are quite different from one another. Sometimes situations have changed, and sometimes they have not changed much. Sometimes the changes are dramatic, significant, directional in nature, historic in nature. That is what I think we are dealing with today.

I believe the discussion over this budget--I am a member of the Budget Committee--is historic. I believe the decisions we make around this budget will affect the very nature of the economy, the nature of the Government that we have, whether we will continue to have a government of limited powers, and where we are heading. Are we moving toward a ``Francification'' of America, a socialization of America? That was a big issue in the campaign. It turned out to be where, in the last few weeks, you remember Joe the Plumber and the quote ``We are going to spread the wealth around.'' People said: Oh, no, President Obama does not really mean that. Yes, he is going to do some new things and make some changes, but he is not heading toward a European-type of economy for America.

So let's talk about the budget. What does his budget say? What does it mean? A budget is a President's plan for the future. It tells where he will get the money he wants to spend. It tells where he will spend it. It tells how much money he will spend and how much spending will occur, and will there be a surplus or will there be a deficit?

Now, some people think: Well, he can't help it. That is just the way things are. These are things that a President does not have power over.

Not so. These represent Presidential priorities. Most States in this country have a balanced budget constitutional amendment. They have had shortages bigger than we are having, and those States are getting by. They are having to make some reductions in their expenditures. I have had a bunch of cities and counties in to visit with me the last 2 weeks, and all of them are making some kind of reduction in their spending. They are not disappearing from the face of the Earth.

So here we go. This is not a secret document, fundamentally. The numbers I am talking about that he proposes as his budget for the country are here.

Normally, since I have been in the Senate--12 years--and on the Budget Committee most of that time, budgets pass on a party-line vote. There have been some tough, close votes. I remember the budget that had the tax cuts in it was a close vote. Several Democrats voted with the Republicans, and it passed. But this budget is different because we have a very large Democratic majority in the Senate. I think it is a three-vote Democratic majority on the Budget Committee. Under our rules, a budget does not have to be subject to a 60-vote point of order, and it is not subject to filibuster or any kind of 60-vote threshold; it passes on a simple majority. So the Democratic majority-- a very large majority now--has the power to pass this budget. That is just the way it is. They have the power. I hope, therefore, they will feel the awesome responsibility they have in discussing this budget because it is so unusual, it is so large, and it is so game-changing, to a degree which I have never seen before, and I don't think any of us have.

One of the things that disturbed me in this whole process is the spectacle of our Secretary of Treasury going to Europe to meet with European leaders and chastising them--and they have had some pretty big stimulus packages--for not having bigger stimulus packages, not spending more money, and not going into more debt. This is so odd because we as Americans have normally been the ones who have criticized the Europeans for their tax and spend and entitlement, socialistic welfare system. So here we are doing that.

Prime Minister Merkel in Germany said it is extraordinarily dangerous that transatlantic conflict is being fanned, and, ``I am grateful to the American President that he has told me this is an artificial debate,'' she told lawmakers on April 2 at the Group of 20 nations. She said:

The Group of 20 nations need to send ``a positive

psychological signal, not a competition over stimulus

packages that can't be implemented.''

The European Central Bank president, Mr. Trichet, said this:

If the additional deficits are costing you both a strong

increase of the cost of your own refinancing and a loss of

confidence of your people, you are not better off!

He goes on to say:

If your people have the sentiment that they will not be

better off in an endless spiraling of deficits, they will not

spend any money that you give them today!

So the Europeans are pushing back. They are warning us that we are going too far.

So let's look at some of the numbers to which Senator Thune made reference. The first is the title of the budget, the President's budget, which came right out of this book--these numbers the President has submitted to us--what he plans to occur in America over the next 10 years under his budget.

In 2008, last September 30, we had a $455 billion deficit. Since World War II, that is the largest deficit the country has ever had-- $455 billion. Do you know what it was the year before? It was $161 billion. Why did it jump that much? Well, 150 billion of the dollars that jumped was the checks that got sent out. President Bush sent out the checks. He was going to stop the recession. He sent everybody a check last spring. It didn't work. I voted against it. It wasn't easy to vote against constituents getting a check, but I didn't think it worked then, and everybody agrees now that it didn't, but that helped jump the deficit to this record amount--$455 billion.

What about this year? Including the stimulus package--or a part of it that we just passed--and the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and the bailout of Fannie and Freddie, scored at about $200 billion according to CBO, it comes out this year, September 30, the deficit will be $1,752 billion, more than three times the highest deficit we have had since the Republic--well, at least since World War II, when we were in a life-and-death struggle with millions of people in arms all over the world, turning out airplanes and ships by the thousands.

Is this just one time? Is it just a one-time expenditure? No, it is not. In 2010, the President's own numbers show the deficit will be $1,171 billion, or about $1.2 trillion.

According to the numbers in the President's budget, which were gimmicked, in my view, we will already be under a recovery in 2010. We will not be in negative growth; we will have I think 1.6 percent economic growth, GDP growth. We are still going to have $1.2 trillion in deficits. It drops down to $912 billion, $581 billion, $533 billion, and then starts growing again, and in the 10th year of his budget, he is projecting a deficit of $712 billion.

Now, within those projections are some rosy scenarios, such as if the economy is growing and unemployment is not too high, then you have more money to spend than if the economy is still slow-sinking and unemployment is high. So the budget assumes an unemployment rate of 8.1 percent, the highest--that is as high as it would ever get during this entire 10-year period. It assumes that next year or later this year, we will have 8.1 percent unemployment. Well, we are at 8.1 percent unemployment now. That is the current figure. The blue chip group, the top economists and the ones most people look at, project unemployment to be over 9 percent. CBO projects 9 percent will be the maximum unemployment rate. If it goes that high, then we are going to have bigger deficits. So there

are some other rosy scenarios in there that the objective economists do not believe will occur.

When you score this budget without using those gimmicks or rosy scenarios, as the Congressional Budget Office is required to do--they are required to make an independent analysis of the President's budget, and they have done so.

Let me just say that we are proud of the independence of the Congressional Budget Office. They are a talented group. They work for us here. The new Director was chosen in a bipartisan way but clearly with the final power in the hands of the substantial Democratic majority in the Senate. They control the ultimate choice of the Congressional Budget Office.

They come out not with a $712 billion deficit for that year--not $912 billion but $1.2 trillion, $500 billion higher when they use numbers they believe are fair and honest and accurate, coming out with $1.2 trillion in deficit, not $700 billion in deficit. There will not be, in this entire 10-year period, taking President Obama's own numbers, and certainly not the Congressional Budget Office's numbers, a single year that is close to as low as the $455 billion deficit of President Bush's last year. Most of them are twice that or will average twice that.

So what I wish to say to my colleagues is that this is not sustainable.

The President had a great meeting with the Republicans one day at lunch in the room right over here. He was very personable, open, and responded to any questions asked. I thought he was very sincere when he said: Look, we are going to have to spend a lot of money now, but when this economy comes back we are all going to have to work together to reduce the systemic threat of out-of-control deficits. He said that more than once. I thought he meant that. But when you propose a budget that has deficits increasing every year over the next 5 years and reaching, in his own numbers, $712 billion in deficit--and according to CBO, $1.2 trillion--then I can't take that very seriously. There is not one act in this budget plan of any significant evaluation of the out- of-control entitlement programs we have or how to bring those under control.

So that is not politics; that is reality. It is not acceptable. We have to say no to this budget. I know my Democratic colleagues are uneasy about those numbers. They tell me they are uneasy about them. They want to support their President. They want to pass this budget. But at some point, I think my colleagues are going to have to say no. I hope they will. Certainly, the Republicans can't say no; we don't have enough votes.

Now, Senator Thune made reference to this number.

Madam President, what is our timeframe?

Madam President, I would just point out these numbers. The public debt, which I think is probably the clearest definition of what our debt situation is--you can argue about that, but the public debt, I believe, is correct--is now $5.8 trillion. In 5 years, it will be $11.5 trillion, a doubling of the debt; and in 10 years, another 5 years, it will be $15.3 trillion, tripling--that is the debt since the founding of the Republic--$5 trillion right here. In 10 years, we are going to triple the total debt. That is not acceptable. And they are projecting not a recession in the next 10 years after we get out of this one, they are projecting growth, no wars, and it is still like this. The truth is, those of us who observed budgeting before don't stay to the budget totals; we usually go over them through some sort of gimmick or maneuver.

How about another number that is disturbing to me--very disturbing. The White House estimate on interest payments in the budget is $148 billion for 2009. According to CBO, they estimate it higher at $170 billion.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have 2 additional minutes.

It shows the interest rate or payments on this tripling debt reaching $694 billion, according to the White House's own estimate, in 2019, to the people who buy our debt--the largest foreign recipient of which is China.

CBO says that is underestimated. They calculate it to be $806 billion. The entire general fund of the State of Alabama, an average- size State, is about $7 billion for the counties, schools, teachers, and roads. The highway budget for the entire United States of America is $40 billion a year, including interstate, all the money we send to the States, and all of the pork money we put on top of it. This is $806 billion in interest alone on a debt that we have run up in previous years. That is why people are worried about it.

I will conclude with that and say, again, I know we all get caught up in politics, that is true. But this year, this budget is not a normal budget. It is not a bigger budget or a lot bigger. It is a gargantuan budget, the likes of which we have not seen before. It results in debt increases that are not sustainable. It has no projection of any containment of spending. It does nothing to deal with the entitlement difficulties that are driving much of the debt, and it cannot be passed in this fashion.

I urge my Democratic colleagues to say: No, Mr. President, you have to go back and look at this some more. We cannot pass this budget and not just take a few hundred billion dollars off, or something like that. We need to have a serious discussion of the financial condition of our country. I think the Republicans will be there trying to work with you on it. But without some leadership from the other side, this budget will go into effect.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to share my thoughts about the nomination of Elena Kagan to be Solicitor General.

I have strong concerns about her nomination and will not support her nomination. I do believe the President, like all Presidents, should be entitled to a reasonable degree of deference in selecting executive branch nominees. But for some of the reasons I will set out, and one in particular, I am not able to support this nomination and will not support it.

I believe her record shows a lack of judgment and experience to serve as the Nation's chief legal advocate--a position many have referred to as the Supreme Court's ``tenth Justice.'' It is also a position that has been called the best lawyer job in the world.

Well, so far as I can observe, other than time in the White House Counsel's Office, Dean Kagan has only practiced law for 2 years in a real law firm practicing law. She had very limited experience in the things you would look for in a person of this nature.

But let me discuss one defining moment in her career that I was sort of indirectly involved in because of legislation that was percolating in the Congress, in the Senate and in the House, and it means a lot to me.

During her tenure as dean, Ms. Kagan barred the U.S. military from coming on the Harvard Law School campus to recruit young law graduates to be JAG officers in the U.S. military. That was from November of 2004 through September of 2005. She barred them from coming and recruiting on campus while 150,000 of our finest men and women in this country were serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and during a time in which 938 troops died in combat, preserving the rights of people like law deans, faculty, and students to have all the opinions they want. Her decision to bar the military from her campus during a time of armed conflict represents exceedingly poor judgment and leadership, particularly for someone who wants to lead the Department of Justice, the executive branch, and support the military of the United States.

By refusing to allow military recruiters on the Harvard Law School campus, she placed her own opposition to military policies above the need of our military men and women to receive good legal advice, even from Harvard lawyers. And she did so at a time when the military, serving in conflicts in two foreign countries, was facing a host of complex legal issues. We are still fighting over them, for that matter. Maybe it would have helped if we had some of those graduates participating in them.

I don't believe she ever had a basis to have barred the military from her school's campus, and I believe she should have had the judgment to realize the signal and the impact that was being sent to our military and to the students who want to support and serve in the military. Indeed, President Obama should have realized the signal he was sending by nominating her to this position.

Flagg Youngblood wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times on January 30 and this is what that op-ed stated. I will quote from that article. I think it makes a point. This is a military person:

Since the Solicitor General serves as the advocate for the

interests of the American people to the Supreme Court, we're

expected to believe Kagan is the best choice? Her nomination

smacks of special interest, aimed at protecting the Ivy

League's out-of-touch elitism at the expense of students,

taxpayers, and our military alike.

And what about the qualified students who desire to serve

our country?

In the military, he is referring to.

Second-class, back-of-the-bus treatment, that's what they

get, typically having to make time-consuming commutes to

other schools and, much worse, the ill-deserved disdain of

faculty and peers on their own campuses.

The military, nobly and selflessly, stands alert at

freedom's edge, ready to defend our Nation in times of

crisis, and should therefore be honored, and, as most

Americans would argue, given preferential treatment, for

guarding the liberties that academics such as Kagan profess

to protect.

That's precisely why Congress intervened more than a decade

ago, at the behest of a large majority of Americans who

recognize and appreciate what our military does, to fulfill

the Constitution's call for a common defense among the few,

enumerated Federal powers. And, to stop financing those who

undermine that fundamental duty. Yet, leftwing views like

Kagan's still disparage the sacrifices our military makes and

cause real, quantifiable harm to students and to our Nation

at taxpayer expense.

Well, Mr. Youngblood's editorial--he felt deeply about that-- deserves, I think, extra force and credibility because he was affected by similar policies when he tried to participate in ROTC while attending Yale University during the 1990s. Due to Yale's exclusion of the ROTC from campus, Mr. Youngblood was forced to travel because he wanted to serve his country, 70 miles to commute to the University of Connecticut to attend the military ROTC classes. His ordeal--and many like it--led to the passage of the Solomon amendment, which is the Federal law that requires colleges to allow military recruiters on campus in order to be eligible for Federal funds.

Well, let me say, that amendment didn't order any university to admit anybody or to allow anybody to come on campus; it simply says when you get a bunch of money from the Federal Government, you at least need to let the military come and recruit students if they would like to join the U.S. military and not exclude them.

So the Solomon amendment is critically important here because it shows that Ms. Kagan's decision to block the military from Harvard Law School's campus was not just wrong as a matter of public and military policy. It was also clearly wrong as a matter of law. While dean at Harvard, Ms. Kagan was a vocal critic of the Solomon amendment. She called the law immoral. She wrote a series of e-mails to the Harvard Law School community complaining about the Solomon amendment and its requirement--horrors--that federally funded universities, if they continue to get Federal money, ought to allow military recruiters on campus or lose the Federal money. She thought that was horrible.

I should note that Harvard receives hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal funding: $473 million in 2003, $511 million in 2004, and $517 million in 2005. That is a lot of money. The Federal highway budget that goes to the State of Alabama is about $500 million a year. Harvard University gets that much. By opposing the Solomon amendment, Ms. Kagan wanted Harvard to be able to receive these large amounts of taxpayers' dollars without honoring Congress's and President Clinton's judgment that military recruiters were eligible to come on campus. Under the Solomon amendment, Harvard has always had the option of declining Federal funds and relying on its big endowment--$34 billion-- and their tuition to fund the university. Much smaller institutions, such as Hillsdale College, have chosen to decline Federal funds to carry out their full academic independence. Harvard and Dean Kagan were not willing to do so. They wanted both. They wanted money and the right to kick out the military.

I think she showed her legal judgment regarding the Solomon amendment in 2005 when she joined in an amicus brief of Harvard Law School professors to the U.S. Supreme Court in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, opposing the Solomon Amendment's application to Harvard Law School. Unlike the chief litigant--the formal appeal group--in the case, which raised a straightforward first amendment challenge to the Solomon amendment, the brief Ms. Kagan joined with other Harvard Law School professors made a novel argument of statutory interpretation that was too clever for the Supreme Court.

Her brief argued that Harvard Law School did not run afoul of the letter of the Solomon amendment because Harvard law school did not have a policy of expressly barring the military from campus. Harvard, she argued, barred recruiters who discriminate from campus. Her brief reasoned that the Solomon amendment shouldn't apply

where the military wasn't singled out, but just ran afoul of a school's nondiscrimination policy.

Ms. Kagan's argument was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Solomon amendment. In specifically addressing Ms. Kagan's amicus brief with the Harvard professors, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, dismissed Ms. Kagan's novel statutory interpretation theory using these words:

That is rather clearly not what Congress had in mind in

codifying the DOD policy. We refuse to interpret the Solomon

amendment in a way that negates its recent revision, and

indeed would render it a largely meaningless exercise.

It is telling also to note that the brief she signed on to was unable to convince a single Justice of the Supreme Court to go along with it-- not even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg who was once general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Let me mention one more thing people have mentioned about the Kagan decision to bar the military from recruiting on the Harvard campus. Some may have heard that the decision to bar the military was merely honoring a ruling of the Third Circuit, which briefly ruled against the Solomon amendment on a split decision in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. It is critical to note that the Third Circuit's ruling never went into effect because the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Third Circuit stayed enforcement of its decision. In other words, the Third Circuit said: Yes, we have rendered it. We understand our opinion is under appeal. We are not going to issue a mandate or an injunction that our opinion has to be followed. We will allow this case to be decided ultimately by the Supreme Court of the United States.

No injunction was ever entered against enforcement of the Solomon amendment. Any decision by any dean to reject the Solomon amendment and not enforce it was not required by law. The law stayed in effect. In fact, Dean Kagan acknowledged that in an e-mail to the Harvard Law School community in 2005. There was a lot of controversy about this at Harvard. A lot of people weren't happy about it, you can be sure. She admitted in that e-mail that she had barred the military from campus, even though no injunction was in place, saying:

Although the Supreme Court's action meant that no

injunction applied against the Department of Defense, I

reinstated the application of our anti-discrimination policy

to the military . . . ; as a result, the military did not

receive assistance during our spring 2005 recruiting season.

So it is clear that the barring of the military took place while the Solomon amendment was, in effect, the law of the land. Her e-mail indicates she understood that at the time. As a result, students who wanted to consider a military career were not allowed to meet with the recruiters on campus. The military was even forced to threaten Harvard University's Federal funding in order to get the military readmitted to campus as time went on. This was all a big deal. The Congress was talking about it. We had debate on it right here on the floor and in the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member.

I think a nominee to be the Department of Justice's chief advocate before the Supreme Court, to hold the greatest lawyer job in the world, should have a record of following the law and not flouting it. The nominee should, if anything, be a defender of the U.S. military and not one who condemns them. Ms. Kagan's personal political views, I think, are what led to this criticism of the military, this blocking of the military. She opposed a plain congressional act that was put into place after we went through years of discussion and pleading with some of these universities that were barring the military. They had refused to give in, so we passed a law that said, OK, you don't have to admit the military, but we don't have to give you money, and we are not giving you any if you don't admit them. They didn't like that. So Ms. Kagan's refusal of on-campus military recruiters went against a congressional act. Her actions were an affront to our men and women then in combat and now in combat. The Solicitor General should be a person who is anxious and eager and willing to defend these kinds of statutes and to defend our military's full freedom and right to be admitted to any university, even if some university doesn't agree with the constitutional and lawfully established policies of the Department of Defense.

I would also raise another matter, and I think this is important. If there was some other significant showing, I think, of competence or claim on this position, I would be more willing to consider it. If she were among the most proven practitioners of legal skill before Federal appellate courts or had great experience in these particular positions, maybe I could overcome them. Maybe if she had lots of other cases in her career that could show she had shown wisdom in other areas, but that is not the case. She has zero appellate experience. Dean Kagan has never argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which isn't unusual for most American lawyers, but for somebody who wants to be the Solicitor General whose job it is to argue before the Supreme Court, it is not normal. But for that matter, she has never argued any appellate case before any State supreme court.

In fact, she has never argued a case on appeal before any appellate court, whether Federal, State, local, tribal or military. That is a real lack of experience. When asked about this lack of experience at our hearing, Ms. Kagan tried to compare her record to other nominees saying this:

And I should say, Senator, that I will, by no means, be the

first Solicitor General who has not had extensive or, indeed,

any Supreme Court argument experience. So I'll just give you

a few names:

Robert Bork, Ken Starr, Charles Fried, Wade McCree. None of

those people had appeared before the courts prior to becoming

solicitor general.

Well, Ms. Kagan's record hardly compares to the names she cited in her own defense.

Regarding Charles Fried, Ms. Kagan was wrong in stating that he never argued to the Supreme Court. Although Professor Fried did not have much in the way of litigation experience before being nominated, he had argued to the Supreme Court while serving as Deputy Solicitor General in Rex Lee's Solicitor General's Office. Accordingly, Mr. Fried had two things Ms. Kagan lacks--Supreme Court experience and experience within the Solicitor General's Office.

Ms. Kagan also compared herself to Ken Starr and Wade McCree, both of whom had a wealth of appellate experience that she lacks. Prior to his nomination to be Solicitor General, Ken Starr served as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in the District of Columbia--an appellate court--from 1983 to 1989, a court before which the best lawyers in the country appear and argue cases. He had to control and direct their argument, and as a result he got to see and have tremendous experience in that regard as an appellate judge. Wade McCree had even more experience before his nomination. Mr. McCree served as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in the Sixth Circuit, from 1966 to 1977, 11 years.

Robert Bork also had a strong litigation background before his nomination. He was one of the most recognized, accomplished antitrust lawyers in private practice in the country.

We should not forget the critically important role the Solicitor General plays in our legal system. As Clinton-era Solicitor General Drew Days wrote in the Kentucky Law Journal, ``the Solicitor General has the power to decide whether to defend the constitutionality of the acts of Congress or even to affirmatively challenge them.'' That is quite a power--the power to defend statutes in the Supreme Court, or even challenge them in the Supreme Court.

This is a very critical job within our Government. I think it deserves a more experienced lawyer, one with a record that shows more balance and good judgment. I think Ms. Kagan's lack of experience is an additional reason I am uncomfortable with the nomination. I think nominees have to be careful about expressing opinions on matters that might come before them in the future. But for a nonjudicial position, and concerning issues which were commented on today, Senator Specter believes she has been less than forthcoming. Had she been more forthcoming, I might have been a little more comfortable with the nominee. Her failure to be responsive to many questions, I think, causes me further concern.

To paraphrase a well-known statement of then-Senator Biden--now our

Vice President--the job of the Solicitor General does not lend itself to on-the-job training. One time, Rudy Giuliani was arguing about who should be his replacement as U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and they were discussing people with very little experience. He said: I think it would be nice if they were able to contribute to the discussion every now and then.

I think it is good to have some experience. So I don't see a sense of history here to overcome what I consider to be bad judgment on a very important matter. I supported the nomination of Eric Holder. I like him and I hope he will be a good Attorney General; I think he will. I intend to support most of the other nominees to the Department of Justice. I certainly hope to. But I am not able to support Elena Kagan's nomination in view of her positions concerning the ability of the U.S. military to come on the campus of Harvard and actually recruit the young men and women who might wish to join the military. I think that was wrong. I also believe she has a very significant lack of relevant experience for the position.

I yield the floor.

If the Senator will yield, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has set up ample time for this to be discussed today. I thank him for that. Senator Specter, a little while ago, indicated that he thought the time should be yielded back and we could vote as early as 5. He hoped that would be acceptable, and he urged people to come down if they have comments. I will join him and you in urging people to come down if they have remarks to make. It would be more convenient, I think, for people to have an early vote.

I thank Senator Chambliss from Georgia for his very fine summary. I think one of the more dramatic situations in which this Congress has found itself, in the face of a projected positive turnaround in the economy, a predicted unprecedented debt for years and years to come.

This cannot go quietly. It is a big deal. We have never seen anything like this before. I hope our Senate colleagues will focus on it. I wanted to first return again to the AIG bonus issue and expand a little bit on the remarks I made earlier in the week.

The simple fact is, we are investing a very large amount of not only money but time, energy, and bombast in how to deal with the one one- thousandth of the AIG bailout money that has gone to bonuses. I think they are utterly unacceptable. They are going to the very division of AIG that got them into trouble. They were the last people who ought to get bonuses.

Now, normally politicians who have a nation to run, Cabinet Secretaries who have an economy to manage, should not be spending a whole lot of time on a private company's bonus plan. But it has become necessary, unavoidable really, because our Government owns 80 percent of this company. We own 80 percent of the stock in AIG after investing $173 billion to buy that stock. So no wonder people are furious.

If you are running a company, Secretary Geithner, how come we are having bonuses given to people who ought not to be receiving bonuses?

Well, it is a difficult thing with the CEO. Why didn't he do something about it? The CEO, Chairman Liddy of AIG, was put in place by us--first, by Secretary Paulson back when he first started this misguided attempt last fall to take over this company, and he has been kept in place by Secretary Geithner, our new Secretary of the Treasury.

I would also note that Secretary Geithner was walking hand in hand with Secretary Paulson last fall when they conjured up this scheme that sought to alter the financial problems on Wall Street. In reality, Secretary Geithner is the ultimate chairman of the board of AIG. He ultimately is responsible for bonuses, pay scales, office space, whether or not they have airplanes, and all of that stuff. So, oh, what a tangled web we create when we first start to regulate, to take over a private company.

Mr. Geithner needs to get AIG and these banks--in addition to AIG--we have invested in, of which we now own large stock shares, off his portfolio, his list of things to be dealing with. He needs to be focused on the policies necessary to revive this economy.

Did anybody see Coach K from Duke? He was asked about the President saying they were going to make it to the Final Four. And Coach K did not miss a beat. He just looked up and said: Well, that is nice. But I would really feel better if he were focusing on the economy.

So would I. Distracted by these noteworthy and transient issues over bonuses, Mr. Geithner, who stands at the center of our people's concern over the economy, has not even begun assembling his staff. It is really troubling. I understand there are about 17 vacancies in his top staff. People are basically saying he is running the office himself with very little help.

But he did find time to call Mr. Liddy, the hand-picked CEO at AIG, to demand that he not give bonus payments. He found time to go over to Europe to present--a mortifying spectacle to me, of the once-proud U.S. Secretary of Treasury now urging the big-spending, quasi-socialist Government of Europe to increase their spending, to increase their stimulus package, to increase their debt, and assuring them we are going to do more and we are leading, big government, big taxes, big spending, big debt.

That does not make me proud. Some people may think that is leadership. I am not in that range. That is not my mindset today. Basically, it appeared the Europeans said no. They already thought they had spent enough. They are well below what we are spending as a percentage of their gross domestic product. They are not spending any more.

I remember when I first came here as a young Senator. It came my time to question the Chairman of the Federal

Reserve, Mr. Alan Greenspan. I was nervous about it. I am not an economist. So I read to him from an article. I asked him if he agreed with it. It basically said the reason our economy was growing more than Europe, the reason we had quite substantially less unemployment was because we had less taxes, less spending, and less regulation.

So I asked him: Is it less taxes, less spending, and a greater commitment to the free market the reason we are doing better than Europe?

He looked up at me and he said: I absolutely agree with that.

So I have taken that as sort of my marching orders. I still think that is a sound philosophy: to keep our regulations low, keep our taxes low, keep our spending as low as possible. Do not waste money, and we will get through a lot of these difficult issues.

I would also note that I assume that Secretary Geithner at least had some role in this phenomenal, gargantuan proposal the President has just sent over here to us that proposes--get this--budget deficits higher than anything we have ever seen before.

Last year, President Bush, his budget deficit was a record $455 billion, and he was criticized for that. He was criticized for a $412 billion budget deficit back on 9/11, the time when that recession hit us. He reduced it to $161 billion in 2007, and it jumped to $455 billion last year.

This year, with the stimulus package and other things we are doing, the projected deficit--as of September 30--will be $1.8 trillion. Next year, it will be $1.1 trillion. It is projected to reach its lowest point in 4 years, according to the President's own plan. The lowest point is at $533 billion, well above the highest amount in the history of the Republic.

In year 10, it would be over $700 billion. As Senator Chambliss just noted to us, those figures are not accurate. Our own Congressional Budget Office is going to calculate the assumptions given to us by the White House, and everybody is pretty firmly convinced the numbers are going to come in higher and worse than that.

It cannot be so that we will pass a budget that assumes a $700 billion deficit 10 years from now, when they are also assuming a nice growth, not a recession or anything, but a nice growth at that time. Well, that is a general situation. It is not good. I just cannot believe this Congress would pass such a budget. I believe we will have to push back.

I know a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are uneasy about it. The more they learn about it, I am confident the more uneasy they are going to be. It is just fact. I mean, you can talk and testify and you can spend, but when you send out a budget in a slick binder, with a blue cover on it, and it is the official projection for the next 10 years from the President of the United States, when they project these kind of numbers, I think the Congress and the American people will rally and do something about it and not accept it.

I just wanted to say that. Now, with regard to AIG, this is a matter of great importance. In addition to teaching us a lesson about the danger of taking over private companies in general, there are some specific special problems with this bailout that I believe are worthy of discussion, and in some points, real investigation.

It was highlighted by the Wall Street Journal in their lead editorial 2 days ago. They pointed out that the bonus flap we have been talking about is a deflection from--a neat deflection--they say, from the ``larger outrage, which is the 5-month Beltway cover-up of who benefitted the most from the AIG bailout.''

First, they note that the Federal takeover of this once proud insurance company, AIG, was never approved by the AIG shareholders.

Normally a company that merges or sells or changes its corporate makeup goes through some sort of vote by stockholders. They have proxy votes, solicitations. They attempt to get approval of the stockholders. We just took it over.

The Wall Street Journal notes that, in effect, AIG was used as a conduit, a funnel to bail out others not mentioned. Since September 16, 2008, AIG has sent $120 billion of their $173 billion of taxpayer money to banks, municipal governments, and ``other derivative counterparties'' around the world, not only in the United States.

The Journal goes on to say that this includes at least $20 billion to European banks and, they wryly note, ``charity cases like Goldman Sachs which received at least $13 billion.''

They further note:

This comes after months of claims by Goldman that all of

its AIG bets were adequately hedged and that it needed no

``bailout.'' Why take the 13 billion then?

Then the Wall Street Journal, not one to needlessly dump unfairly on the Wall Street business crowd they often speak up for when they believe they are abused, declares importantly:

This needless cover-up is one reason Americans are getting

angrier as they wonder if Washington is lying to them about

these bailouts.

Then they ask the most critical question. Remember, Congress was told last fall that we had to bail out the banks because they were too large to fail and that their failure would pose a systemic risk to our economy. They said they were going to buy toxic assets. They never said they were going to buy stock. They never hinted they would buy stock in an insurance company.

This is what the Wall Street Journal said about the systemic risk question:

Given the government has never defined ``systemic risk,''

we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American

taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in

which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions

and in some cases it's not even Americans. The U.S.

government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid

to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great

American company.

That is fundamentally true. It is not good. I don't think we ever should have started down that road.

The Wall Street Journal concludes:

Whether or not these funds ever come back to the Treasury,

regulators should now focus on getting AIG back into private

hands as soon as possible, and if Treasury and the Fed want

to continue bailing out foreign banks, let them make that

case honestly and directly, to the American people.

I thank the Wall Street Journal for writing the truth on this complex issue. I don't like the way it was done. These decisions to hand out billions of dollars were not made in public. Until a few days ago, we didn't even know who got this money. These banks, these foreign banks, Goldman Sachs, the ones that have been listed as getting money, we didn't know their names. Our Secretaries of the Treasury, the two of them, have been passing out this money to these banks through AIG and not even saying where the money went. That is no good. And how do they decide how much to give them? Was there a hearing somewhere where people came, such as in the Senate--poor as we are at it--raised their hands under oath or, much preferred, was there something like a bankruptcy proceeding where a Federal judge calls all the people in, collects the data, figures out what the income is and the debts are, and makes people testify under oath and lawyers cross-examine them and they get down to what the real facts are and then decisions are made about how to handle a company like this?

No, apparently they went in and got down on Mr. Geithner's rug and Mr. Paulson's carpet and asked for $20 billion. And he said: How about 10?

No, I need more.

OK, you get 13.

Of course, they knew one another. That is just a fact. I am not making it up. Where did Secretary Paulson come from? He came from Goldman Sachs. I wonder what it would have looked like if he had given Goldman Sachs $13 billion publicly.

I am not happy about it. I don't think the previous administration handled it well. I am disappointed that this administration has taken Mr. Paulson's right-hand adviser--some say the architect of his plan-- and put him in charge of it. He is continuing this indefensible process. I opposed it at the time. I said we are giving too much power to one man. In the history of the Republic, we have never given this kind of power to one man to pass out this kind of money. This is the Senate. It is taxpayers' money. We threw him $700 billion and said: Do whatever you think is right. He told us he was going to buy toxic mortgages. Remember that? Within a week, he decided he wasn't going to buy toxic mortgages. He bought stock; not only in banks, he bought stock in insurance companies.

It is a dangerous thing. When you get into owning these companies, people start wanting to know about what kind of bonuses they have, what kind of car the CEO drives, whether they should have a jet plane. The Secretary of the Treasury ought to be involved in other things besides managing corporate affairs. He needs to get us out of these companies as soon as possible.

I talked to some people from a very solid Main Street bank, big Main Street bank, who were pressured to take money at the time they came up with this scheme. They want to pay the money back and get out from under the Federal boot. They are not agreeing yet to do that. I am not happy about that.

I understand another bank may be the same. Others are worried about whether they will be allowed to pay this money back and get out. This bank told us, the people I was talking to: We are ready to get out. We think we will do better. Our stock will go up, if the people know we are not indebted to the government. We are strong enough. We are not happy about this.

They are getting the impression and the fear they have--along with other banks in a similar situation--is that there is a resistance from the Treasury Department to have them do that, which would be unthinkable to me.

I hope we will find out more about it. If there is wrongdoing of a more serious nature than incompetence and bad judgment, I hope it will be pursued. Hopefully not; I hope there is no more than bad judgment. I hope as Americans we learn a lesson that it is not easy and there are all kinds of unanticipated ramifications from the act of taking over private companies.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of this Wall Street Journal editorial, as well as the list of companies benefitting from AIG's bailout.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I first would like to say a thing or two about the bonuses that have been paid to the AIG employees, those persons who are in the specific division whose actions led to the demise of what was once considered a great insurance company.

No doubt about it, that was a very serious error, and now as a result of agreements made, apparently sometime ago, they are going to receive bonuses. Everybody has been upset about it. So have I.

I said Monday on this floor the only thing I felt like giving them for free would be a free lunch and a free bed somewhere in a penitentiary. I know the Presiding Officer is a former prosecutor and has sent some people to the penitentiary. I hope they are not guilty of criminal activities, but that is how I feel about it.

But the reason we are in this is because of an unwise act. That act was--beginning with Secretary Paulson, President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, continued now under Secretary Geithner, President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury--taking over AIG.

We own 80 percent of AIG's stock. Secretary Paulson picked Mr. Liddy, who had a good record in the past and was off somewhere with his grandchildren, and asked him to come back and try to take over this company and start pumping billions of dollars into it. It now has totaled $170 billion.

It is unbelievable how much that is, $170 billion. I would repeat, that is, compared to the Alabama budget, including schools and teachers' pay, $7 billion a year. We gave one private company, competing with a lot of other private insurance companies in America today that did not get themselves in trouble--we are bailing them out. So we should not have done that.

Now, when Mr. Paulson came before this body and asked for this power to get $700 billion to spend as he wished, I objected. As just a Senator, I was flabbergasted that he would ask for such unlimited power. Not one time did he hint that he was going to buy stock in an insurance company. It was to buy the toxic assets from banks. Do you remember that?

So Secretary Paulson, within a few days, a week I believe, had gotten his authority. But it did not say: Mr. Secretary, you get to buy toxic assets in banks--which I did not think was very good anyway and voted against it--it gave him power to do virtually anything. That is another reason I voted against the legislation.

By the way, under oath in a House committee, Secretary Paulson said he had no intention of buying stock. Somebody asked him: What about buying stock in these banks?

He said, no, he did not want to buy stock; that we were just going to buy these toxic assets.

A week later he was buying stock in an insurance company and stock in banks. And to this day, we have not yet bought any of these toxic assets, these bad mortgages that are really the problem that have destabilized our financial situation and have not dealt with yet. That is why there is still instability out there.

OK. So here we are now; we own this corporation. So I asked the question about the bonuses at AIG. Apparently, they got a contract. By the way, when we passed legislation here, it was with a Democratic majority. Somewhere in conference they put in language in the legislation that basically said bonuses would be honored if they were entered into before a certain date. These bonus contracts were entered into before that date.

So now we have all of these protestations and all this angst and all this outrage about bonuses, and we have to do something about it. I am outraged, too, really but have a little perspective. The amount of the bonuses are one-thousandth, less than one-thousandth of the amount of money we put in this corporation that is at great risk today. And that is a galling issue for all of us, to have this division, the bad division in the whole fine insurance company, taking this company down, and they get the bonuses. It is outrageous. It really is. But the truth is, it appears there is some contractual right for them to have it.

So I would ask, what about the folks in these companies who are paid too much? Maybe we ought to have debate on the Senate floor about how much every employee of AIG should be paid or how their bathrooms should be configured or whether they should even have a private bathroom or how many businesses they ought to have or what kind of cars they should drive, whether they should have jet airplanes, whether they ought to be on Manhattan or some cheaper place in Brooklyn.

I mean, what we are going to enter into is these have become political decisions because politicians own the company. This is a warning for us. We have to be careful about buying stock in corporations. I am telling you, it is not a good policy. I do not believe it was justified in this circumstance. I think history is demonstrating that.

I am worried about it. We need to get out of AIG. How are we going to do it? I think the way you do it, and the way it should have been done from the beginning, is the company should have gone into chapter 11 under the Bankruptcy Code. You would have had a Federal bankruptcy judge bring all of them in, raise their hands under oath, testify to the financial condition, how this all happened, what parts of the company are good, valuable, prosperous, what parts are sick and in danger.

Then we could have figured out as a government how we could help with the sick and toxic parts, get rid of the others and let all of that go, and we would not have been running this company.

So now we are going to tax them. I am not sure how this has been written, but we are somehow going to identify the several hundred people who got bonuses, and we are going to tax them. We might as well put their names in the Record. I do not know; it is probably unconstitutional. It really is. It is a real constitutional question, certainly a policy question, that the Congress is going to abrogate a contract whether we like it or not. But a bankruptcy judge can. A bankruptcy judge has constitutional power to abrogate a contract. I am certain a bankruptcy judge would have invalidated the contract for bonuses for the people in this division. They do not have the money.

The only reason they are afloat today is because we bailed them out. They would not have jobs if we had not bailed them out. This whole thing would have been done differently. So I am worried about what we are doing.

The Budget

Mr. President, I am also worried about the budget. The President has submitted a budget. It has come over to us now. It is in a bound book, slick cover. It sets out his agenda for the future. It is an important document, and it sets out his priorities and his direction he wants the country to go.

I am a member of the Budget Committee, and we will be marking that up and offering amendments to it next week. But the American people need to know that the financial condition of our country will be altered to a historic degree if this budget is passed. I am not just saying that. I am saying, read the budget. That is what it says.

I will share some thoughts about it. I think there is a growing bipartisan consensus, and certainly at least a concern on both sides of the aisle, that the budget deficits and spending levels are unsustainable; that is, continuing these levels of spending will destabilize this country, weaken the value of our dollar, perhaps kick off inflation, and in many other ways erode confidence in the United States as a government of integrity and financial wisdom and management that can be relied on.

So while American families are out there right now saving a good bit more than they have in years past, watching their pennies, while American cities and towns who have been in my office this week and are telling me they are seeing a 6 or 7 or so percent reduction in sales tax revenues and revenues for their towns, they are managing well, and they are getting by. They are postponing some things they would like to have done this year until they get a little more money in, and they are not going out of business. They heard there was some free money in the stimulus package. They wanted as much of it as they can get. Fair enough. But, you know, they are getting by.

Our Government is increasing spending to a degree to which we have never seen before. This budget calls for $3.6 billion in spending, which is, in effect, a 20-percent growth in nondefense programs. I am talking about the discretionary programs under our control that we deal with from 2008 levels to 2010 levels, 20 percent.

At that rate, of course, that is 10 percent a year, and with a 7- percent growth rate per year your money will double in 10 years. This is the track we are on. It is a huge baseline budget increase to pay for this expansion of Government.

The budget imposes or presumes $1.4 trillion in new taxes. That includes a national energy tax similar to the one the MIT experts predict would cost working families $3,100 per year. That is almost $300 a month for the average family for this tax. So despite these taxes, the budget will require even more borrowing. We will go even further in debt despite the tax increase.

We would double the debt held by the public in 5 years. I mean, the total American debt we have today would double in 5 years and triple in 10 years. Our budget is a 10-year budget. It projects what this administration believes should happen over the next 10 years. That is what they project will happen.

Under this plan, starting in 2012, the United States will pay $1 billion a day in interest to our creditors, the largest of which are China and Japan outside of our country. That is $1 billion a day in interest on this surging debt we have.

So, in summary, I believe it is fair and honest to say this budget spends too much, it taxes too much, and it borrows too much. The administration has promised the budget would be free of accounting tricks and gimmicks, but they have not met that standard either. On the one hand, we have been told repeatedly by the administration that we face the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

On the other hand, his budget assumes that unemployment will not rise beyond today's level and economic growth will not substantially fall. I cannot accept and I do not buy the rhetoric of imminent economic disaster. I have not believed that is likely. I still don't believe it is likely. I know we are in a difficult time, but few, if any, economists would agree with the budget's prediction and assumption that unemployment will stay at today's rate of 8.1 percent or that the gross domestic product this year will only decrease by 1.2 percent. The administration's rosy economic picture permits them to assume, therefore, greater revenue. If you assume you have a higher growth rate, a lower unemployment rate, more people are making money, more people are working and getting paid, less people are on unemployment compensation, you assume you have billions more dollars to spend on whatever you would like to spend it on.

An independent blue chip group that predicts unemployment and predicts GDP is predicting GDP will decline more than twice 1.2 percent, and they are also predicting the unemployment rate will hit 8.9. I believe our Congressional Budget Office is predicting unemployment will cap out at 9.1 percent. I have seen some figures of 9.4 percent. I am hopeful we will come in under 10 percent. I believe we will.

To build on good feelings here, I will note that under President Reagan, when Mr. Volcker was Secretary of the Treasury, they realized they had to confront and break the back of surging inflation. Unemployment hit 10.9 in the early 1980s. It kicked off, though, a sound economy, and for 20 years we have had steady growth after collapsing the unacceptable inflation rate.

The best estimates I am seeing do not predict economic disaster, but they

certainly don't predict the kind of minimum economic slowdown these numbers are assuming. When those numbers prove to be off the mark, the result will be deficits higher than the administration is predicting in their own budget. That is what I am saying. If you look at the budget over the next 10 years, that is what really worries me.

In 2004, President Bush, after 9/11 and after the recession that occurred there, his deficit hit $412 billion. That was the biggest deficit we had since World War II. He was roundly criticized for that. I wasn't very happy with it either. I liked President Bush, but I thought that was too big a deficit. It dropped until 2007, when it hit $161 billion.

Last year, President Bush sent out the $300 checks and the $150 billion in deficit spending on top of our other deficit to try to stimulate the economy. It didn't work. He sent out that money. Everybody got the little check. Whatever they did with it, it didn't do much good. The debt jumped to $455 billion. So last year, September 30, the deficit was $455 billion, the largest we have ever had, perhaps including World War II. This year, there is uniform agreement.

The Congressional Budget Office is scoring that at September 30, our deficit--the amount of money we spent, less the amount of money we have taken in in taxes--will be $1.8 trillion, one thousand eight hundred billion, four times the highest deficit we ever had last year. That is a serious matter, not a little bitty matter. The budget the President sent us projects that next year--and he does this over 10 years--it will be $1.1 trillion. It begins to drop down to that and hits $533 billion in the fourth year. That is the year he said he cuts the budget deficit in half.

The reason the deficit was particularly high this year is the money we spent for the financial bailout of Wall Street that they bought AIG with and other bank stock. The Congressional Budget Office said we are going to lose about $250 billion in that deal. We will get some of it back. They scored in this year's budget $250 billion for that. We have bought Freddie and Fannie, taken over and guaranteed all those loans at those two huge financing institutions, which were quasi-private, basically private, we have taken those over now, and CBO has scored about another $250 billion. They are putting all of that in this year. And then we passed, a few weeks ago, $800 billion--pure stimulus spending to send out over the country. You heard it was for roads and bridges. Only 3 or 4 percent went for roads and bridges. The rest of it went for all kinds of nice ideas, not very stimulative in the minds of experts. So you add that over the next 2 years of spending, split that out. That is how we get such a high year this year.

One reason we are at a trillion dollars next year is because they are scoring some of that $800 billion in next year's deficit. At any rate, it drops down, OK? So the fourth year, we are hitting $533 billion. That is still the highest deficit in the history of our Republic. Then it starts going up. And the budget President Obama gives us projects that in the 10th year, the deficit will be over $700 billion.

That is why we need the American people to be engaged. Members of Congress are going to have to study the numbers. They are going to have to study the immensity of the requirements of this budget. We are going to have to reject it. We cannot pass such an automatic guaranteed surge in debt. It would triple our total national public debt in 10 years.

This is the beginning. The budget will begin to be marked up next week in committee. It is going to take more than just the committee members to decide what we do. I believe the American people and the Members of this Congress are going to have to get our heads together and figure out some ways to do like our cities and counties. Instead of having baseline spending increase at 7, 8, 10 percent a year, we might go for a year or two where we don't increase at all. Just a little bit of that would have a dramatic impact on the deficit. It is the increases that are killing us. They are projecting increased revenues in the years to come, but they are projecting substantially greater increases in spending.

That is not who we are as a people. We are a people of limited government. We are people of low taxes. We are people of individual responsibility. That is a fundamental American ethic, individual responsibility. The Europeans are more into this Socialist mentality, but we were faced with the spectacle over the weekend of our own Secretary of the Treasury going to Europe meeting with Europeans and upbraiding them because they aren't borrowing enough or spending enough, in his mind, going far enough into debt to stimulate the economy as much as he would like to see it done. They are being more conservative and responsible than we are. It is a matter of real concern.

These are important issues. I hope the debate will continue and all of us will look at the long-term interests of this great Nation and take the steps today that will protect our future.

I yield the floor.