Floor Statements

Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Senators McCain, Sessions, Cornyn, Vitter, Wicker, and Inhofe--and probably others before the end of the day--I am going to introduce legislation called the New START Implementation Act, which I would like to describe briefly. This legislation is nearly identical to a companion bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Turner, the chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. He has been a leader in the House on nuclear and missile defense issues. I understand many of the provisions have been included in the chairman's mark of the National Defense Authorization Act in the House and that the remainder will be introduced as amendments later today at a full committee level. I specifically wish to thank Chairman Turner for his leadership.

Nuclear deterrence issues are among the most complicated and technical issues that we in the Congress are confronted with, and he deserves full credit for tackling them with vigor and for mastering them so quickly.

Similar to the House legislation, it is my hope that the Senate bill will be incorporated into the Senate version of the National Defense Act for fiscal year 2012. Let me now explain a little bit why I think this legislation is necessary at this time.

I voted against the New START treaty for reasons I have made clear previously on the floor. But I recognize the President's stated commitment to the modernization of our nuclear deterrent is necessary and is important and that Congress needs to codify the commitments made during the debate on the New START ratification process as well as the agreements the President has indicated through his comments and letters to us. This is important for the future, for future Congresses and future Presidents, because this process is going to take place over a period of at least 10 to 12 years. Modernization of our nuclear weapons facilities and the strategic delivery systems all will require commitments over the space of another decade or more. Memories fade, people's interpretations may change over time, circumstances change, and what we want to make sure of is that over the time period involved during which this modernization process must occur, the understandings that were agreed to at the time of the START treaty ratification will be memorialized in statute and complied with by the Congress and by the administration as time goes on.

The five key features of the legislation are these. First, it would link the funding of the administration's 10-year nuclear modernization program with any U.S. nuclear force reductions during the implementation phase of the treaty. What that means is, as in the later years of the treaty, funding is necessary for the demobilization, the dismantling of some of the weapons that are called for to be dismantled under the treaty but that funding is coordinated with the funding for the modernization program which is going on at the same time. It urges the President to stand by the timelines he pledged on warhead modernization in the revised plan he submitted in November of 2010. This is key to ensuring that Congress will support these modernization efforts that were deemed necessary in conjunction with the New START treaty.

The second thing the bill does is to ensure that nuclear doctrine and targeting guidelines and the New START force levels that the former STRATCOM commander, GEN Kevin Chilton, said were ``exactly what is needed'' are not arbitrarily cut by the administration that seems eager now to go to even lower levels, perhaps even unilaterally, than were negotiated in the START treaty. The President has indicated his desire for a world without nuclear weapons and said he would like to do new things in the future to reduce the numbers of these weapons. We simply want to make certain the guidelines that are militarily necessary reference points for the number of weapons we have, the types we have, how they are deployed and so on, are not modified in order to be a reason for or an excuse for reducing strategic weapons thereafter.

I think this is necessary because the President's National Security Adviser said on March 29 that, even as ``we implement New START, we're making preparations for the next round of nuclear reductions.'' In developing options for further reductions, he said: ``We need to consider several factors, such as potential changes in targeting requirements and alert postures that are required for effective deterrence.''

We were told the New START force levels were exactly what is needed for deterrence. Yet now the administration may seek to alter deterrence requirements in order to justify further reductions. My view is, the administration cannot use one set of facts to ratify the treaty and then immediately change those facts in order to suit its Global Zero agenda. Forty-one Senators made clear in a letter to the President on March 22 that we expect the administration to consult with Congress before directing any changes to U.S. nuclear weapons doctrine or proposing further strategic nuclear reductions with Russia. No consultations have occurred to date, and we expect that those consultations would occur before any discussions with Russians take place.

Third, the legislation would ensure that the triad of strategic nuclear delivery systems--that is to say, the bombers, cruise missiles, ICBMs and ballistic missile submarines--are modernized and that their reliability is assessed each year. Even today, we are still uncertain about the administration's plans to modernize the ICBM leg, nor do we know if the new bomber will be nuclear certified upon its deployment. For example, according to an April 22, 2011, press account in the Global Security Newswire, ``The US Airforce cannot say exactly how much it will spend to explore options for modernizing its ICBM fleet, nor where the money will come from.''

Obviously, if we are currently planning the modernization of these fleets, but we do not even know where the money is going to come from for the planning, we have a problem that needs to be resolved now rather than later.

That is what the third requirement of the legislation would require.

Fourth, the bill would affirm that the New START treaty contains no limitation on U.S. missile defense beyond the language in article V, section 3 and that any future agreement with Russia that would attempt to limit U.S. missile defenses could only be done by a treaty that would require the Senate's advice and consent. This is no different than what we all talked about on a bipartisan basis when the New START treaty was ratified, but we think these commitments should actually be codified to ensure they are kept.

Finally, the bill would counsel against unilateral reductions or withdrawal of U.S. nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Europe without the unanimous approval of NATO's members. Obviously, in NATO, one State should not be permitted to end NATO's successful article V policy, the policy that an attack on one is an attack on the others and will be met with resistance from the other NATO allies.

In conclusion, I think this bill should enjoy broad congressional support, given the fact that it merely builds on what the Senate and the administration agreed to in the New START resolution of ratification with respect to nuclear modernization and our freedom of action to develop and deploy missile defenses. It ensures that a future Congress and a future President understand and support the current commitment to nuclear modernization and ensures that there will be no further limitations on our missile defense efforts.

Finally, it builds in vital checks to permit congressional oversight of impending activities by the administration that portend significant changes to U.S. nuclear doctrine, further strategic nuclear reductions and potential activities with, and possibly concessions to, Russia with regard to missile defense and tactical nuclear weapons in Europe--all of which might be counter to U.S. security.

I will be pleased to add other colleagues as cosponsors to the legislation. As I said, I intend to actually introduce this toward the end of the day, and I am sure we will have additional cosponsors by that time.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. President, I note that Vice President Biden was just here in the Chamber for the swearing-in of our newest Senator, Dean Heller from Nevada. I add my congratulations to now-Senator Heller joining this body.

Vice President Biden has been kind enough to host discussions--starting last week and going into this week and perhaps beyond--with Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to try to find a way to reduce the huge debt that hangs over the United States, as a prelude, I am sure he would put it, to the Congress acting on the President's request that Congress increase the debt ceiling.

There have been generally two ways suggested on how to deal with our debt. Many Democrats believe the wealthy in the United States do not pay enough taxes, and therefore one way to reduce the debt is for taxes to be increased, especially on the wealthy. Most Republicans believe that is a bad idea, that since debt is our problem and we got into debt because we have been spending too much, the better way for us to deal with the problem is to begin reducing our spending and to make sure over the years we are able to do that.

There are a couple of interesting things that have just come out in the news recently that I think bear on this argument.

A lot of folks wonder about the debt burden in the United States, and I think it is useful to point out the fact that last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Joint Committee on Taxation found that ``the percentage of U.S. households paying no federal income tax . . . reached 51% for [the year] 2009.'' I think that is the first time in the history of America that over half of Americans didn't pay Federal income taxes. I do not think that is a good thing. While certainly people in the lower income brackets are not able to pay very much in the way of taxes, I think even a very small amount, an affordable amount, would be appropriate so everybody has what they call skin in the game, so everybody understands the relationship between the burdens and the benefits of government. I would not impose a significant tax on the lower half or certainly not the lower 10 percent, but I think it is important for all Americans to know we all have a stake in this, and that more than half of the people cannot just expect the so-called wealthy to bear all of the burdens of government.

But the question remains, are American wealthy taxpayers undertaxed? I think a useful measure to look at here is a comparison with other countries, for example. The OECD countries--which stands for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--are generally regarded as the most advanced economies in the world, and the United States is one of those countries.

A study that is based on 2008 statistics found that the highest earning 10 percent of the U.S. population paid the largest share among 24 countries examined, even after adjusting for their relatively higher incomes, and it concluded:

``Taxation is most progressively distributed in the United

States,'' the OECD concluded.

The bottom line here is that for a country to be competitive, the people who provide the capital for job creation, for economic growth, have to have some capital remaining after they have earned it in order to invest that capital, return it to their businesses, hire more people, be more productive, create more wealth, and thereby provide for the families of the people who own the businesses and, by earning more income, increase the amount the Federal Government and the State government take in as revenues.

Republicans are very happy to concede it would be helpful if the government has more revenues in order to help close this debt gap we have. The question is how we get more revenues. We believe more revenues are a function of a growing economy. Here too some statistics that just came out over the weekend, I believe it was, demonstrated that we can actually delay the increase in the debt ceiling by some period of time because revenues to the Federal Treasury have been a little higher than previously expected. Why? Because the economy grew more than expected, and as people made more money, they therefore paid more in withholding and in Federal income taxes. That is the way for the government to get more revenue--for the economy to do better, for Americans to do better.

So if you tax more the people who are the ones likely to do the investing into businesses, will you get more investment? Will you get more Federal revenue? Well, you will get a little bit more to begin with, but in the long run, you will get less. One of the reasons it is not a good idea to tax more the very people whom we are referring to in this study is because half of all the small business income reported is reported as part of the highest income tax bracket for individuals. In other words, small businesses do not pay as corporations, they pay as individuals, and when a small businessman has to report his earnings, he reports all of the income from his enterprise. A lot of that is business expense, but that is how he has to report it. So you are talking here about half of all that income reported being taxed at a higher rate, if, in fact, the President and some of his colleagues have their way. That will reduce the amount of investment and growth in the economy and thereby make it harder for us to pay off this large debt.

The advocates of a gigantic tax increase are really very shortsighted, therefore, in assuming that if they raise tax rates, they are going to get more revenues. That is what they tried to do in Japan during the late 1990s. It did not work out. Japan went back into a deep recession, and it is not going to be possible for them to generate existing revenue with their higher tax rates.

The way you get robust growth is not with higher tax rates but with lower tax rates. A rapidly expanding economy does create new jobs and income for investment and wealth-creating enterprises, and obviously some of that wealth flows back to the government and can be used to reduce the debt.

But the policy tools we decide upon in these negotiations will have a lot to say about how we are able to reduce the debt and whether part of that will be a result of economic growth in the future. Obviously, the point here is not just to have economic growth so the Federal Government can earn more in income tax revenue but to promote American prosperity and a better future for our families.

So the question is, Will we impose tax hikes that discourage investment and punish job creation or will we make the tax system more efficient and conducive to growth?

I wish to cite a couple of studies to show why it is most important for us to focus on reducing spending rather than raising tax rates, because spending cuts, not tax hikes, are the best way to close the massive budget gap and help to produce economic growth in our country.

One study was performed by two Harvard economists, Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna. By studying large-scale fiscal adjustments by wealthy developed countries from 1990 to 2007, they determined that ``spending cuts are much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns.'' Moreover, they found ``several episodes in which spending cuts adopted to reduce deficits have been associated with economic expansions rather than recessions.''

Two economists at Goldman Sachs, Ben Broadbent and Kevin Daly, undertook a similar study and reviewed every major fiscal correction in wealthy nations since 1975. They found:

Decisive budgetary adjustments that have focused on

reducing government expenditures have (i) been successful in

correcting fiscal imbalances; (ii) typically boosted growth;

and (iii) resulted in significant bond and equity market

outperformance. Tax-driven fiscal adjustments, by contrast,

typically fail to correct fiscal imbalances and are damaging

for growth.

So reducing spending was the way not only to reduce the debt of the

country, but it also boosted growth; whereas, tax-driven adjustments had exactly the opposite effect and failed to correct fiscal imbalances and were damaging for growth.

A final study--and I think this is interesting because it focuses on what we think are big-spending countries. It is by the same two economists, Broadbent and Daly. They pointed specifically to Ireland, Sweden, and Canada. They pointed out cases driven by cuts in public spending. Sweden, in particular, which is famous for being a generous welfare state, was able to trim the size of government substantially-- all of which suggests to me that if Stockholm can do it, Washington ought to be able to do it today.

Reducing the short-term deficit and stabilizing the long-term debt are critically important to American prosperity and living standards, and if you do it by reducing spending rather than increasing tax rates, you can also have the additional benefit of increasing prosperity not just for businesses and families but for the U.S. Government, which would then make more in terms of income tax revenues.

The bottom line here is when we work to forge this bipartisan compromise that everybody is looking to us to reach, we should bear these basics principles in mind: Cutting spending, not raising taxes, is the answer.

I ask unanimous consent to have two documents printed in the Record. The first one was published in the National Review Online, dated May 9, called ``The Future of American Prosperity,'' which I authored. The second is a publication which was in weeklystandard.com on May 16, by Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan.

Mr. President, since my time is about expired, I will say this is one of the best statements I have seen recently, by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, where they write about the result of the death of bin Laden, not offering an excuse to end the war in Afghanistan or our other efforts against terrorists but, rather, that success will come to us when we understand the nature of the threat and maintain our efforts to root it out wherever it may be, whether that be in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or wherever. I think it is an excellent piece. I commend it to my colleagues as suggesting the way forward as we continue to fight the radical Islamists who would continue to visit ill on the United States and other western powers.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. President, in a few minutes, we are going to be voting on the continuing resolution which our House colleagues are voting on literally as we speak. I wish to address that briefly, but I must comment on one of the things my colleague from Pennsylvania said.

He is critical of the Ryan budget but does not appear to have read the Ryan budget because I know he would not deliberately mischaracterize it. He is wrong in several respects, and I will cite one example. He said the Ryan budget will end Medicare as we know it and that millions of seniors will be directly affected. That is simply not true, unless we count someone as a senior who is 53 or 54 years old. The Ryan budget does not affect anyone above the age of 54 with respect to Medicare. It says, if you have Medicare and you are 55 or older, nothing changes for you. All we do is provide premium support for those age 54 and below.

It is simply incorrect to say millions of seniors would be directly affected by the Ryan budget with respect to their Medicare coverage.

Let me go back to the point of our discussion right now. As I said, we will be voting very soon on the continuing resolution. This is the final continuing

resolution, we can finally say, for the fiscal year 2011, that funds the government for the rest of this fiscal year. It does mark the end of a long and hard-fought process. I am pleased we have been able to cut billions of dollars from the Federal Government and avoid a government shutdown.

It is true $38 billion in spending cuts represents a tiny fraction of the Federal budget, and it is less than many of us would have liked. But those who have been critical of the deal, saying it does not go far enough, should keep three points in mind.

First of all, our fiscal problems were not created in a day and will not be solved in one budget. It is a good start. It is like the weight I put on. It took me a long time to add the 10 or 12 extra pounds, and I am not going to get them off overnight. It will take me time to get them off.

The budget agreement begins a process that is critical to beginning the reduction of our deficit. The agreement will enact the largest nondefense spending cut in dollar terms in American history, just months after President Obama asked Congress for a spending freeze that would have provided no cuts whatsoever.

The Wall Street Journal points out:

Domestic discretionary spending grew by 6 percent in 2008,

11 percent in 2009, and 14 percent in 2010, but this year

will fall by 4 percent. That's no small reversal.

I believe they are correct.

Second, no one got everything they wanted. Some wanted more in cuts, some wanted less. I would have preferred we cut more, but this was the best deal we could get that could pass both Chambers of Congress and signed by the President.

Third, this debate has altered the conversation about spending, and that is a good thing. As columnist William McGurn wrote Wednesday, during the budget negotiations, Speaker Boehner helped change the national debate over spending ``from `stimulus' and `investment' to `how much spending we need to cut'--which is why [the President] press[ed] the reset button'' in his speech this week on spending and debt. I think Mr. McGurn is correct. We have changed the fight from how much money we are going to spend on stimulus to how much we are going to cut from this and future budgets.

Once the final 2011 budget passes, and we move on to the much larger discussion about the 2012 budget, we will be talking not about saving billions but about saving trillions of dollars. The problem, as we all know, is a $14 trillion debt, with a large amount of that owned by China and by other foreign countries. It also represents over $53 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

In May, our Nation is expected to hit its debt ceiling, and the President has asked us to increase that ceiling. Senate Republicans and House Republicans--and I believe many Democrats as well--have said that in order to raise the debt ceiling, we need to do something significant about the debt and about constraining future spending. The longer we wait, the worse the problems will get. They are exacerbated over time. And we are not going to raise the debt ceiling without ensuring we don't have to keep on doing it in the future.

Raising taxes, as the President proposed, will not be helpful in this process. It is disappointing the only specific proposal the President laid out in his speech yesterday was, in fact, this call for higher taxes. Speaker Boehner has said raising taxes is a nonstarter, and I imagine the vast majority of Senate Republicans will take that position as well. Most Americans do not believe that we are undertaxed but that Washington has a spending problem.

I will briefly go over a few of the better ideas our conference has been discussing, which I think could attract support from both sides of the aisle.

First is a balanced budget amendment, which all Senate Republicans have cosponsored. This should not serve as a means to raise taxes but as a mechanism to ensure the Federal Government has to live within its means each year, just as most American families do.

Second, I believe there is strong support in the Republican caucus for a constitutional spending limitation at 18 percent of the gross domestic product. Why 18 percent? Because that is roughly equal to the revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product over the last 40 years. An 18-percent spending limit would stop Washington from spending more than it takes in each year.

And third--and I am glad to see the Senator from Missouri in the Chair while I pass on this compliment--Senators Corker and McCaskill have sponsored the Commitment to American Prosperity Act, known as the CAP Act. I strongly support their legislation. It would cap both mandatory and discretionary spending and put all government spending on the table.

Beginning in 2013, the CAP Act would establish Federal spending limits that would, over 10 years, reduce spending to 20.6 percent of the gross domestic products. That is the average of the last 40 years. To reduce any gamesmanship, the bill codifies the definition for emergency spending.

I know some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle wish to see even more dramatic reductions as a part of the CAP Act. I will note the Corker-McCaskill proposal is responsible and mainstream and it could, hopefully, attract a good deal of support from both sides of the aisle.

Over in the House of Representatives, there are also some good ideas. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has been a leader on fiscal issues, and that Chamber will soon consider his budget plan for the next fiscal year. Chairman Ryan believes this blueprint could reverse Washington's trend of spending beyond its means and passing the debt on to our children and grandchildren, and I believe he is on target. His budget reflects the kind of difficult and politically unpopular choices lawmakers will need to make in order to do something about our unsustainable spending and debt.

Perhaps that is why Democrat Erskine Bowles, head of the President's deficit commission, praised the Ryan budget as ``a serious, honest and straightforward approach.'' Notably, Mr. Bowles and his cochairman Alan Simpson said the President's budget ``doesn't go nearly far enough in addressing the Nation's fiscal challenges.''

Chairman Ryan's budget would return Federal spending--specifically what is known as nondefense discretionary spending--to 2008 levels. That is the level before the massive spending unleashed by the Obama administration. The spending cuts proposed in Ryan's budget total $5.8 trillion over 10 years.

In a recent article, John Taylor, an economics professor at Stanford, Gary Becker, a Nobel prize winner, and George Shultz, former Secretary of Labor, Treasury, and State, wrote:

Credible actions that reduce the rapid growth of Federal

spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the

unemployment rate.

They also said:

Higher private investment, not more government purchases,

is the surest way to increase prosperity.

Reducing government spending can increase economic productivity and jobs.

President Obama has sought to stimulate the economy and create jobs by spending trillions of government dollars. What has that gotten us? Record deficits, excess borrowing--about 40 cents of every dollar the government now spends will have to be borrowed--and it has gotten us stubbornly high unemployment.

Chairman Ryan's budget also calls for tax reform through sensible and growth-promoting policies. The budget contemplates a top tax rate of 25 percent for individuals and businesses. Currently, the tax rate on business is 35 percent, the highest of all of the countries in the developed world. That rate, by the way, discourages investment, it discourages job creation, and it makes America an expensive place in which to do business. In effect, it encourages business to move their operations overseas, something all of us are very concerned about.

What we need are solutions that emphasize the strength of American entrepreneurs and our private sector, not the government; to spur the economy and help put people back to work.

In the debate ahead, I hope we can engage in serious discussions about how to take on our fiscal problems in a responsible way--to bring down the cost of government, boost our economy and promote economic growth. That is what Americans are looking for, and it is what our country needs.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. President, at this very critical time in our country's history--a time when we have over a $14 trillion debt and we are desperately trying to find ways to reduce government spending and there looms the possibility of a government shutdown--I think we would be best served trying to provide some information to our constituents and, as politicians, resisting the temptation to throw rotten apples at each other. I also think it would be wise for the media to not hype or overhype a situation regarding a government shutdown but to try to put things into perspective. So let me try to do that for a moment this morning.

In the first place, obviously we are trying to reach agreement. I compliment the majority leader, Senator Reid, who just spoke, and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, for their efforts to get together and bridge the differences between the two parties--the two bodies--and to reach an agreement. In the last 2 or 3 days, the President has also weighed in on the issue, and I think he too is trying very hard to help the parties reach an agreement. Notwithstanding that fact, under the law, tonight at midnight, the funding for much of the government stops, and the question is, What can be done about that?

The House of Representatives has passed a bill. They passed it yesterday. The Senate could take up that bill and pass it. It would keep the government running for another week. It would provide full funding for the military, not just for another week but for the entire rest of the year. That is a reasonable measure to keep the government running. It also, by the way, reduces $12 billion in spending, and most of that spending, I am informed, has already been agreed to by the administration and would be included in any longer range continuing resolution.

Well, what happened? The President said he would veto that bill. That is very puzzling because if we are all seeking to fund the government, at least until there can be an agreement on a long-term resolution, one would think we would try to keep it going for another week and adopt what the House did, especially since it provides funding for the military.

The President, in his veto message, said that the bill was a distraction. I do have to take issue with that. It is not a distraction, it is what is necessary to keep the government running. Let me get back to that in a moment.

What would happen if we were able to reach agreement by tonight? If we are able to reach agreement before midnight then at least theoretically both bodies, both House and Senate, could pass a very short term, 2 or 3 days, stop-gap measure in order to have the time to complete the work on the full measure and then adopt that sometime next week and that would avert a shutdown. It is possible also, because in the Senate it would require unanimous consent; somebody might disagree with that process and would object. In that case, it would take a few days for us to do, in effect, the paperwork to get this done. That would then result in a government shutdown during that time, at least over the course of the weekend.

That should be avoided if at all possible. But while there would be some dislocations and inconveniences, I do think the media exaggerates a little bit the result of a shutdown over the weekend.

The biggest problem from my perspective is that the military doesn't get paid during that period of time. They will get paid but it is a disruptive thing when you have young military families trying to make ends meet and sometimes living from paycheck to paycheck to have that disrupted. That is why I think it makes so much sense to adopt what the House passed yesterday so we have the time, the week to complete the work on the continuing resolution that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, that is to say through the end of September, and then not have to worry about a government shutdown and especially funding the military.

There is a question that has been raised that is very logical. Why can't the parties get together? Why can't you split the difference? In ordinary times it might be possible to reach an agreement that way, but these are not ordinary times. We are talking about a country that is on the verge of not being able to pay its debts. The President himself has asked us to raise the debt ceiling--I believe sometime next month. In effect, we run out not only of money but of the capacity to borrow. Our credit card in effect, the government's credit card, is full up and we cannot get any more credit unless we go to the credit card company and say: Would you extend the amount of money we can borrow? In that case, it is the Congress passing a bill.

We are in a very difficult position in this country and everyone knows we are passing a lot of our debts on to future generations. We need to get a handle on that and I don't think anybody disagrees with the proposition that means we need to cut spending. That is what this exercise is all about. So it is not the usual thing of splitting the difference. We are talking about big spending cuts.

I was disappointed in the comments of the majority leader just now. He said this debate is about saving money. Indeed it is. Yet it appears the one thing--this is what he said. I do not tend to believe this is correct, but in effect what he was saying is it all boils down to a $300-and-some million subsidy for Planned Parenthood. I do not believe that is what is keeping us from allowing the government to continue to operate. The majority leader has been in the negotiations. He is in a position to say that. If that is the case, then it seems to me we are in a very untenable position here, at least the majority leader is, because Planned Parenthood is not the only entity that can provide medical care in this country. It gets a subsidy of something like $300 million-and-some a year. To shut down the government over that would be absolutely unthinkable.

The majority leader never said Planned Parenthood, you know, he said title X. Title X does not receive the subsidy, Planned Parenthood receives the subsidy. Everybody goes to clinics and hospitals and doctors. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don't have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that is what Planned Parenthood does. So this is a red herring. To say that somehow the government is going to be shut down over the fact that Planned Parenthood will not get a $300 million gift from the taxpayers of America would be absolutely irresponsible. If that is what the majority leader is saying, it is irresponsible. I cannot believe that is the fact of what is holding up this agreement from being reached.

As I said, we have the bill before us which would provide for a week- long continuation of the government with a $12 billion reduction in spending and a funding of the military through the end of the year. It seems to me that is a very reasonable proposition. We don't have to worry about shutting the government if we adopt that.

I said I would get back to the President's message. He said it would be a distraction when he said he would veto that bill to keep the government running, and to fully fund the military. He said it would be a distraction. His exact words, ``this bill is a distraction from the real work that would bring us close to a reasonable compromise.'' I don't see how it is a distraction if it provides another week for us to complete the work to be done. It is obvious we are going to need time to get the work done because neither the House nor the Senate can get everything that would have to be done completed by midnight tonight. The House has a requirement that they have any bill pending for 72 hours before it is adopted. This continuing resolution clearly would have to be posted for 72 hours. Do we want to shut the government down during that period of time because the President thinks the bill to do so is a distraction? I find that incomprehensible, frankly.

I also will make this final point. The discussion about reducing government spending is not just because we are having trouble borrowing from borrowers now. Over half, about 42 cents on every dollar we spend now, is borrowed from someone. About half of that is from foreign entities. It is also because, as the government spends more and more money, the private sector has less money to invest and spend. It is the private sector that creates jobs. What we need to do is spend less government money, not only to get ourselves out from under this huge debt burden but also to allow the private economy to have the resources to grow. Included in that, of course, is to hire more people.

On April 4, the Wall Street Journal had an op-ed by Dr. John Taylor, a noted economist from Stanford, Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, George Shultz--three different Secretaries, serving in two different Cabinets--all experts in financial, fiscal matters. What they wrote in this, which they called ``Time for a Budget Game-Changer'' is the following two sentences:

Credible actions that reduce the rapid rate of growth of

Federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and

lower the unemployment rate. Higher private investment, not

more government purchases, is the surest way to increase

prosperity.

What we are talking about here is not drastic cuts for austerity's sake, but rather sensible reductions to create prosperity in this country. That is what we are talking about doing here. That is why I support what Speaker Boehner has been trying to do. I urge my colleagues, instead of, as I said, throwing rotten apples at each other here and trying to preach a doom-and-gloom game, let's focus on what this country can do in a positive and constructive way to get our economy going again and get our people back to work.

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

Mr. President, throughout this day a lot of our constituents back home have been watching the debate. I wonder maybe if they are a little frustrated. I talked earlier this morning about throwing rotten apples at each other. There has been a lot of that today. I am not going to do that tonight. I suggested this morning one of the things we could do while we are waiting to see whether an agreement can be reached to fund the government over this fiscal year is to try to shed some light on the process which undoubtedly is a bit confusing to people: What exactly is it that we are arguing about, how did we get here, and what do we have in the future.

We talked a little bit this morning, and what we are talking about today, and what we are hoping to achieve tonight, is an agreement that would determine how much we will spend to fund the Federal Government for the next approximately 6 months through the end of September, which is the end of the fiscal year that begins each October 1.

That is an important proposition. It is important enough that there has been a lot of very difficult debate about that, as people have seen over the last several days, and certainly today. It appears there is still a bit of a deadlock over exactly how much money should be saved in the last 6 months of this fiscal year.

But when we have concluded this particular debate and determined how much we are going to spend to fund the government through the end of September, we are going to turn to some even more important issues, and they are going to require our concentration, our reaching across the aisle to talk to each other, to the other body, and both bodies of the Congress to speak to the President. We are going to have to listen to the American people and try to reach important understandings because then we are talking about funding the government for the entire fiscal year for 2012 and also trying to figure out what to do with the President's request to extend the debt ceiling.

As I mentioned this morning briefly, extending the debt ceiling is a little bit like going to your credit card company and saying: All right, I have used up all of my available credit, but I want to buy something else. Will you let me spend a little more on the credit card? That is what the President has asked Congress to do, to extend the debt ceiling. We will have a robust debate about that.

Let me see if I can put what we are doing here in this context. At least for the year 2011, which we are halfway through, we will have reduced spending by a pretty dramatic amount, somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 and $50 billion. I don't know exactly how much until we are done, but when we add that to what we call around here the baseline, and multiply it by 10 years, we get substantial savings. Just on the $10 billion we saved earlier this morning, over 10 years that $10 billion equates to $140 billion saved over the 10-year period. So we are talking about substantial money.

But that probably pales in comparison to what we are going to need to save in the entire budget for the fiscal year 2012. There is no shortage of problems that have attracted our attention--for example, the trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities coming from the mandatory spending side of our ledger, in addition to the way that we are trying to save money just to keep the government running. By mandatory we mean the programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, some veterans spending, and so on.

I talked about the estimate of hitting our debt limit. The Treasury Secretary estimates we will hit that debt limit--in other words, the amount we borrowed on our credit card and cannot exceed; that is the total amount of the U.S. legal debt--no later than May 16 of this year. So May 16, the President says we need to address the debt ceiling. If you are not keeping track, the current debt limit is about $14.3 trillion. So we are going to be pressing up against $14.3, in other words, and we are going to have to borrow more money if we are going to spend more in the next year.

Republicans have offered a variety of ideas. I want to alert my colleagues to what some of these ideas are so we can begin thinking about them and hopefully acting on them in the runup to

the debate about what to do about the debt ceiling.

There is very little enthusiasm around here for increasing the debt ceiling if we do not also do something to constrain future spending, because we do not want to come up against the debt ceiling every few years or months. We need to decide this is going to be it, we are not going to incur any more debt. In fact, we are going to begin to lower the debt. But to do that, we will have to constrain ourselves in some ways to rein in our appetite for spending.

One of the ways to do that almost passed about--well, a few years ago in the Senate here; I have forgotten the year. But it failed by one vote. That is the balanced budget amendment. A lot of people think that would be a good way for Congress to tie our hands so we cannot spend more than we take in. Every single Republican has cosponsored a balanced budget amendment. We hope we will get a lot of support from our friends on the other side of the aisle as well, because it clearly would require the Federal Government to live within its means each year, as most American families have to do.

There is also something that I believe is also a very good idea, and that is a constitutional spending limit. In other words, you do not have to require that the budget is balanced if you limit spending to, in this case, 18 percent of the gross domestic product. The advantage of that is there will be a desire on the part of everyone who wants to spend more money to have a more robust economy, because every percentage of growth or every dollar of growth in the gross domestic product means more money you can spend at the Federal Government level. So I would imagine if we wanted to spend more money at the Federal Government level, we will be supporting regulatory policies that do not wipe out whole industries such as the coal industry, we will support tax policies that promote growth, that try to keep tax rates at a lower level, and do not punish companies here in the United States so they have to move operations abroad, and so on.

In other words, these are things we can do to promote economic growth that mean we have a bigger GDP. If you have a bigger GDP, then you can spend more money at the Federal Government level. But if you do not have a bigger GDP, then you cannot; we can only spend 18 percent of the GDP under this proposal.

And that, by the way, is about the historic average of what we have spent. In the last year and a half, unfortunately, we have gone way above that. We are spending around 22 percent of GDP. It is going up to 24 or 25 percent. That is not sustainable, and almost everyone agrees.

Another idea that is sponsored by Senators Corker and McCaskill, a Republican and a Democrat, is the--they call it the CAP Act. That CAP Act would cap both mandatory and discretionary spending. It would put all government spending, in other words, on the table. It would not just take the discretionary spending we are talking about tonight to keep the government funded, we would also include all of the other spending.

Beginning in the year 2013, the CAP Act would establish Federal spending limits that, over 10 years, would reduce spending to 20.6 of the gross domestic product. Calculated a little differently, that is an average of the last 40 years of spending. What it would do is create a glide path by which we could gradually reduce the spending so you do not have to do it all at once.

I mean the reality is, if we try to be too strong here in the way we are going to reduce spending, we are not going to be successful because people will not stand for it. Have you already seen the debate yesterday and today: Oh, my goodness, you are going to cut money from this and that? We cannot do that.

There will always be resistance to reducing spending.

So it has got to be done, in my view--I think both Senators Corker and McCaskill agree--it has to be done in a way that Members also agree to each year, rather than simply deciding this is too hard, we are going to give up. And, of course, since it is only statutory, we could give up. We can waive it by 60 votes and say: Too hard. We are going to give up. So it has to be at levels that are tough, but over a 10-year period gradually we can reduce.

It is a little bit like going on a diet. You did not get the weight you have overnight, and you are not going to lose it overnight. It makes more sense to do it in a way that keeps you healthy, keeps a consensus around here, but for sure gets us to the goal we want to achieve so that our kids and grandkids do not have to pay for all of the things we have purchased.

This CAP Act, by the way, has a lot of good provisions, such as a definition of emergency spending so we cannot game it every year when we decide we want to spend more. If we just say, well, this is emergency spending, then we do not have to count it in our calculations.

I would like to see more dramatic reductions. I know other people would too. But, as I said, this is the kind of Main Street proposal that should attract a lot of attention on both sides of the aisle.

These are three ideas: the balanced budget amendment, the constitutional spending limit, and the statutory CAP Act. There are a lot of other good ideas. And we, frankly, are going to have to have a good debate about these ideas, because I will predict there is no way the debt ceiling will be increased without Congress adopting some of these constraints and the President signing those into law so we will know that in the future we do not have to keep raising the debt ceiling.

The last point I wish to make is there are two big reasons why we are trying to reduce the deficit. First, we all know we cannot keep spending what we are spending. The interest on the national debt, in a little over 10 years, is going to approach $1 trillion a year. It is over $200 billion this year. It will be close to $250 billion next year. It keeps going up about $60, $80 billion a year, to the point that in the tenth year, it is $900 some billion. Think about that. You want to spend money on education. You want to spend money on health care. You want to spend money on defense. Sorry, we have to spend it on interest on our national debt. This is money we are paying to the Chinese or to anybody else who happened to purchase American debt. But it is going to crowd out spending in other areas that we want to spend money on. That is not good. And as a result, we have got to get this spending under control while we still have an opportunity.

But there is a second reason it is so important, and that is, the more money, in effect, that is sucked up by governments--that includes the Federal Government--the more money out of the economy the Federal Government demands, the less money there is for private sector growth and investment. And it is, of course, in the private sector where most of the new jobs are created. That is why we need to leave more money in the private sector. We are not reducing Federal spending in order to engage in some big austerity program to try to punish people by providing less for them, and so on. We are doing it to create more prosperity. The whole idea is prosperity.

I ask unanimous consent for a couple more minutes of time.

In other words, the idea here is to spend less money at the Federal Government level, thereby allowing more for the private sector to invest in job creation, thereby growing the economy, making us a more wealthy nation, and helping our families and job creators in the process.

I have cited a Wall Street journal op-ed many times. I will close with this: It is an op-ed that was written by Gary Becker, George P. Schultz--he was Secretary of three things including Treasury--and John Taylor, who is a Stanford economics professor. The three wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. I will quote two short paragraphs. They start out by saying:

Wanted: A strategy for economic growth, full employment,

and deficit reduction--all without inflation. Experience

shows how to get there. Credible actions that reduce the

rapid growth of Federal spending and debt will raise economic

growth and lower the unemployment rate. Higher private

investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way

to increase prosperity. When private investment is high,

unemployment is low.

Above all, the federal government needs a credible and

transparent budget strategy. It's time for a game-changer--a

budget action that will stop the recent discretionary

spending binge before it gets entrenched in government

agencies.

And they conclude by saying:

We need to lay out a path for total Federal Government

spending growth for the next year and later years that will

gradually bring spending into balance with the amount of tax

revenues generated in later years by the current tax system.

Assurance that the current tax system will remain in place--

pending genuine reform in corporate and personal income

taxes--will be an immediate stimulus.

I think this is an excellent strategy for a long-term growth policy. It is predicated on the fact that Congress will work in the short term, i.e. tonight, to reduce the spending for the remaining 6 months of this fiscal year.

We will then begin work on a budget that will reduce spending over the course of the next 12 months and, in the context of the debt ceiling debate, will also act on other programs to constrain government spending. It could be a balanced budget amendment, a constitutional spending limit, the CAP Act I talked about, or any other idea people can bring to the Senate and House floors and get passed here, to begin to constrain the spending, not just so we will have the money to spend in the government on the things we want to do, but also so we can free up the great energy of the private sector so investment can once again flow, people can be hired, we can have economic growth and a real sense of prosperity in this country in the years to come.

That is the challenge we face after the agreement is reached tonight. I know you share my hope that an agreement will soon be announced and we can then move on to the other items I am talking about here this evening.