Floor Statements

Madam President, I understand now is the time for the majority. If somebody appears, I will be happy to yield the floor. I ask unanimous consent to proceed in morning business.

I congratulate Senator Nelson for his excellent statement. His statement was very appropriate and on point on the issue of health care and health reform and the need for a bipartisan effort in this Chamber. He is one of the leaders in the ability to bring people together, and I congratulate him for a strong and thoughtful statement.

Madam President, I wish to talk a little bit about the budget and specifically about the proposal

sent by the President yesterday. Yesterday the President sent us his formal budget. We have already voted on a budget, of course. We passed a budget. The President doesn't have to sign the budget. That is one of the ironies of our system. But he does present us with an outline. Because this was a transition year, it is traditional that the President doesn't send us in-depth proposals. He sends sort of a topical approach in early February and then sends us in-depth proposals later in the year. In the last few days, he sent the in-depth proposals. Among the proposals, and what is being most obviously highlighted, is requested rescissions in about 120 programs representing approximately $17 billion. I congratulate him for that. That is an attempt to reduce spending in those accounts and recover those dollars back into the Federal Treasury.

But that has to be put in context, the initiative to save $17 billion. That is a lot of money. It could run the State of New Hampshire for at least 3 or 4 years. But in the context of the Federal budget, it is not a dramatic amount. In fact, it represents less than one-half of 1 percent of the Federal budget, which will be approximately $3.5 trillion this year. So taking $17 billion out of spending programs is not going to solve our overall problem, which involves the fact that we are headed into a nonsustainable government because of the size of spending we are doing and because of the size of the debt we are running up. I do congratulate him for putting forward this initiative. I hope it will pass. I hope the $17 billion will actually be passed by this Congress. But regrettably, most of the items he sent to be rescinded had already been sent by President Bush, not most but a significant amount. Forty percent had already been sent to us by President Bush and had been rejected by the Congress, which is too bad. It was unfortunate when they were rejected under President Bush. I hope the Congress will take a second look and accept them now that they have been given the imprimatur, the approval of President Obama, so we have a bipartisan effort to rescind at least 40 percent of the amount.

In the end, it doesn't change the outyear deficit figures at all. In fact, this amounts to less than an asterisk when it comes to the amount of debt and deficit which we will be running up as a government.

Even with this rescission of $17 billion, assuming it was passed by the Senate and the House and signed by the President and these various programs were reduced, we would still run a deficit of 4 to 5 percent of gross national product over the next 10 years under the President's proposals. We would still run a deficit that would average $1 trillion a year over the next 10 years. We would still run a deficit which would add to the debt at such a fast rate--in other words, deficits become debt--that we would end up with a Federal debt that would be approximately 80 percent of the gross national product or doubling of the Federal debt during the first 5 years of this Presidency. None of those numbers will be changed by these rescissions because they don't go to the core of the problem.

The core of the problem is, the Government is being expanded dramatically, even while these rescissions are occurring. The rate of growth of the Federal Government, as a result of expanded spending which has been initiated by this administration, in large part, will dwarf any savings that occur under this rescission proposal. It is as if we had a vast desert of sand. It is as if this was the Gobi Desert or the Sahara Desert and we came along and took a few pieces of sand off the desert. It will virtually have no impact on the deficit and the debt as we move forward into the outyears because of the fact that while we are taking these few dollars out, which I congratulate the President for trying to do, we are adding back massive amounts of spending: $1.4 trillion in new discretionary spending compared to the $17 billion rescission, $1.2 trillion in new entitlement spending compared to this $17 billion rescission. We are taking a little spoonful of water out of the ocean while we are dumping a whole river into the ocean. So the water levels go up. The debt levels go up and the burden on our children goes up. The cost of the Government and the debt of the Government is and remains an unsustainable event for the Nation and for future generations.

If the President wishes to be serious about spending restraint--and I hope he is, though it doesn't appear that way from his budget--he would address the underlying problem, which is that we don't expand the Government to take up 23, 24, 25 percent of gross national product when it historically has been about 20 percent, that we don't radically expand spending programs until we have an economy that is generating enough revenues so we can pay for them and that we basically try to contain in the outyears the cost of entitlement spending by putting in place proposals which will lead to limiting the costs in the outyears.

The Senator from Nebraska was recently talking about health care. Health care is obviously at the core of issues of how we control costs around here and how we control the outyear growth of the Federal Government. We today spend 17 percent of the gross national product on health care. That is approximately 5 to 6 percent more than the next closest industrialized nation. Yet the President's proposals are to add another $1.4 trillion on top of what we already spend in the area of health care. That makes no sense fiscally. It makes no sense from the standpoint of what the health care system needs. We already have enough funds in the health care system. We should agree that what we are going to try to do is stabilize the cost of health care as a percentage of our gross national product and use the dollars that are already in the system to reform it.

We know we have a huge amount of surplus money in the health care system compared to any other industrialized nation. Rather than throwing more money at the problem, adding to the debt and deficit, let's try to be responsible about a reform program, to live within our means--they are not even our means--to live within what we are already spending and spend those dollars more wisely. Those are the types of initiatives we need.

Obviously, it is helpful to reduce spending by $17 billion. I hope we accomplish it. Congress has rejected 40 percent of these proposals in the past, but I hope we change our minds. Just yesterday, for example, this Senate passed a housing bill which spent $11 billion outside and on top of the budget, new spending. So we have already spent almost all the money represented as being saved by the President's proposal. Fiscal discipline does not seem to be the order of the day around here. I appreciate at least the effort, but I think it does have to be put in the context of the overall problem.

It is akin to taking a teaspoon of water out of a bathtub while we keep the spigot on at full speed and the bathtub doesn't fill up. It is a spigot of spending, of Government growth. There is a belief, regrettably, in this Congress, because of the majority view and from the White House, that by grandly expanding the Federal Government, by moving it dramatically to the left in its size, by growing it significantly, we somehow create prosperity.

We can't do it that way. The only way we can create prosperity is if we have a government we can afford. If we are running up deficits at 4 to 5 percent of GDP, if we are taking the national debt up to 80 percent of the gross national product, we will not create prosperity. We will create significant hardship for the next generation which has to pay off all the debt.

I hope this proposal for rescission which has been sent up will be followed on with proposals that are serious in the area of controlling the spigot which is dumping all the spending into the Federal account. Turn that down. Let's put some controls on the spending side of the ledger that get to the broader problem of the size of the debt and the size of the deficit in real numbers, not just at the margins.

I yield the floor, suggest the absence of a quorum, and ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

Mr. President, is the vote at 10:30?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the continuing effort to address the issue of our automobile manufacturers--specifically, Chrysler and General Motors, and especially where the taxpayer ends up in this effort, whether the taxpayer ends up as a winner or a loser.

On the Chrysler bailout proposal, it is pretty clear that if the administration's initiative is followed through, some very significant events will occur that will adversely affect the taxpayer. In fact, instead of getting a brandnew car, the taxpayer is going to let a lemon.

What is being proposed by the administration--or what was proposed prior to the bankruptcy being filed and which is now being pushed by the administration into bankruptcy, as I understand it--is that the three different classes of basic players, relative to the reorganization of Chrysler, would get significantly different treatment. For example, the taxpayer, who has already put $4 billion into Chrysler--the American taxpayer--would have to forgive all of that; all $4 billion would be lost, 100 percent lost under the administration's proposal, and then they would be asked to put another $8 billion into the pot as Chrysler comes out of bankruptcy. In exchange for forgiving the first $4 billion, the taxpayer would get 8 percent of the new Chrysler, the Chrysler that came out of bankruptcy. This was the proposal. I don't think that sounds like a great deal for the taxpayer, to have put $4 billion in and get none of it back--and remember, we just put the $4 billion in--and then to be asked to put another $8 billion in and get an 8-percent stake. It especially doesn't make a lot of sense when you look at what is proposed--well, let's go to the bondholders next, though.

The bondholders would be asked to essentially take an even more significant reduction in their position, which may be legitimate. They would be asked to forgive, I believe--well, I am not absolutely sure of the number they would be asked to forgive, but I think it would be in the multiple-billion-dollar range, and they would be asked to forgive it, even though they may be secured bondholders. So they would be basically wiped out in this process or their interests would be reduced dramatically.

The practical implications of that are that the bondholders had invested poorly, obviously, and specifically, they would have to forgive, I believe, $4 billion of their $6.8 billion of debt, and they would get $2 billion back. But that would be a big haircut, and that is probably reasonable. They made a bad investment. But interestingly enough, even though they are secured creditors, in many instances, or have a higher priority of bond debt than, for example, the UAW debt or maybe even the taxpayer debt, their position would be treated more detrimentally than the taxpayer or the UAW. That doesn't bother me all that much, from the standpoint of the taxpayer. Obviously, we should be treated better than anybody else in this process.

It does bother me a little bit from the standpoint of how you prioritize debt. If we look at what is happening with the UAW in the deal, as proposed by the administration, they would have to forgive, I believe, approximately $6 billion of their outstanding responsibility-- outstanding debt--which is about 57 percent of the obligation of Chrysler to the UAW. But in exchange for forgiving that $6 billion, they would get a 55-percent stake in the new company.

So to review this situation, the UAW would forgive 57 percent of their debt owed them by the company--or $6 billion--and they would get 55 percent of the new company. The taxpayer would have to forgive 100 percent of what was just put into Chrysler and would get 8 percent of the new company. The senior bondholders would have to forgive all of their debt, and in exchange they would get $2 billion back. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

Basically, what is happening is, the UAW, the union, is being put in a far superior position than the bondholders, who are secure, or the American taxpayer, who basically was asked to put up $4 billion, and then has that wiped out in exchange for 8 percent of the new company, and then is being asked to put in another $8 billion.

This has two fairly significant implications. First, the taxpayer is buying a lemon, getting a bad deal. We, the taxpayers, are getting a bad deal. Second, the unions are getting a great deal. They are getting a higher status as secured debtors. They are getting a significantly higher return--which is 55 percent versus 8 percent of the new company--than the taxpayer. The process is basically turning on its head the traditional legal order under which people are repaid out of a bankruptcy estate. The taxpayer usually comes first out of a bankruptcy estate. Usually, it is the IRS in that case, then comes senior debt, then comes the issue of debt owed to pension funds, obligations which the unions have, and then comes the common equity. In this structure, it is just the opposite. Well, that change sends a very serious signal to the marketplace that is not good because if people don't know the prioritization of debt, then they don't know how to lend money and what the cost of the money they lend should be.

That is going to affect interest rates and create uncertainty and basically undermine what is an established rule of law that we have in this Nation relative to the prioritization of how people get paid off when somebody goes into bankruptcy. It is a very important issue, one of the things that makes our commercial system different than, say, a place like Russia, where you have no idea what is going to happen when you go into a court system because it is totally arbitrary. In ours, we have a structured proposal, an orderly way of approaching things. Everybody knows what is going to happen if an investment should go south. Everybody knows what their order of priority is in being paid out. In a bankruptcy situation, it is pretty clear.

Yet now comes the administration, and for what appears to be purely political reasons, not economic reasons, because the economic issue is how you basically take a company such as Chrysler and make it competitive again so it can produce cars that people want to buy at a price people can afford--that is the economic issue--and keep it viable to the extent that it is viable. No, this is a political decision to reorder who the winners and losers are in a structure--what amounts to an attempt to structure a bankruptcy before it occurs. That was the administration's initiative.

This is a serious issue. When we start putting politics in place of the law in any area in our Nation, but obviously in the area of commercial activity--when we start picking winners and losers based on the political party's implied interest or interest in seeing a certain segment of the society be the winner versus another segment they see as being less deserving, then we undermine the essence of our commercial activity in this Nation, which is to have knowable, identifiable, ascertainable results, as a result of having a legal system that defines people's property rights.

Yet this administration, in a very cavalier way, has suggested that the UAW should be a huge winner compared to the taxpayers and the bondholders in a manner which has no relationship to what has been the historical priority of status relative to distributing and reorganizing a company--distributing a bankruptcy estate and reorganizing a company.

Why would it occur that this administration would, in a very arbitrary way, try to set aside the rules of priority of ownership and property rights to benefit one group over another group outside of what has been the historical and legal way things have been structured? It is obvious. It doesn't take much to recognize that. The UAW has a huge political influence in this administration and in this Congress. They used that political influence to make sure this deal was structured in a way that most significantly benefitted them. But who is the loser? The loser is the real stakeholders and people to whom we are supposed to have primary responsibility as a government, and that is the taxpayers. The taxpayers are the losers on the face of it, when we

only get 8 percent and the unions get 55 percent of the new company, and we are paying $4 billion and they are paying $6 billion, and then we are putting in another $8 billion on top of our $4 billion. So it ends up being $12 billion, and we only get 8 percent. The unions will put in $6 billion to get 55 percent.

That is not right. It is not appropriate, and it is not fair to the taxpayers of America. But that was the proposal and what is trying to be strong-armed through this system. It is not fair to the taxpayers. It also sets a dangerous precedent of trying to reorganize the stated priority of status relative to the right to recover under a bankruptcy situation or pursuant to secure property issues in a way that could be translated into, significantly, other parts of the economy.

People will now question the status of their debt and inevitably have to charge more in order to try to ensure over the unpredictable consequences of the Government coming in and reordering the priority of the debt. That is dangerous in a commercial society that depends on law in order to set an established order of property rights.

This is a big issue. It hasn't been discussed much. Obviously, the bankruptcy courts have now stepped in because some of the secured parties have said they wouldn't accept the deal. But still the administration pushes this concept of having the taxpayer take a vastly significant, reduced position compared to the UAW, while putting in much more money than the UAW and, at the same time, reordering the priority of property rights.

I hope people will begin to focus on this issue, and I hope our bankruptcy courts will stick with what is the order of the law and not the order of politics.

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

Madam President, picking up on the comments made by the chairman--and I fully accept his sincerity and his belief and his desire not to use reconciliation, but that is not, as he said, the position of the President, the Speaker of the House, and the majority leader. I think we can assume if those three folks want reconciliation to be used, it is going to be used.

The practical implications of reconciliation are to devastate the constitutional prerogative of the Senate. The purpose of the Senate is to debate, discuss, and then amend items of major--major--policy.

The point is, reconciliation was put into this document, which we just received, for the purposes of muzzling the minority and making the Senate into having the same status, from a parliamentary procedure standpoint, as the House, where amendments are not allowed, where discussion is limited, and where an up-or-down vote is the only option given to the membership.

It is not only a terrible idea from the standpoint of the impact it has on the constitutional role of the Senate--which has been explained very effectively by people such as Senator Byrd as being a place where we are supposed to give the minority the capacity to make points and discuss matters of high policy and complex issues in an open forum with the ability to amend--but it is also a very difficult way to proceed on an issue of such complexity as health care reform or the climate change issue. The practical effect of using reconciliation will be that a bill will pass in this Congress, especially in this Senate, which the American people will know is not fair. They will know it is not fair because there will have been no ability for the minority or for people who disagree with the way the bill was written down at the White House to object to it or to amend it.

That type of legislation--major health care legislation, which affects every American--in order for it to be effective and in order for it to be accepted by the American people, needs to be perceived as, and really be, a fair document, reached through compromise, with the purposes of having all the different stakeholders at the table in order to discuss the issue. Regrettably, that is not going to happen under the reconciliation instruction.

I would note that even though the chairman has said--and I am sure he says this in all sincerity; I know he says it in all sincerity--he believes reconciliation will not be used in health care, it can be used and will be used on health care if the President and the majority leader and the Speaker of the House want it to be because that is why they put it in.

In addition, the idea it will not be used to raise the national sales tax on energy or a light switch tax, which is what is being proposed relative to the carbon tax, that also probably does not apply because the language of the bill is not binding. It simply says it is assumed. ``Assumed'' is a pretty weak--in fact, I cannot think of many words that are any weaker than the term ``assumed.'' It is assumed reconciliation will not be used in the area of climate change legislation, which means it can be used in the area of climate change legislation and probably will be if there is a determination by those folks who want to push that issue to do so.

It is ironic this bill--for which we have had two major votes in this Senate that said: Do not use reconciliation for the purposes of climate change--has in it such weak language on that issue, basically opening the door to using reconciliation for the purposes of climate change.

But the reconciliation issue, as serious as it is--and it is a serious issue because it goes to the purposes and the role of the Senate, in my opinion; and it also, in my opinion, will undermine the quality of the product produced in the area of health care or climate change--is not the core problem with this budget. The core problem with this budget is it spends too much money, it raises and creates too much debt, especially on our children's backs, and it raises and spends too much in the way of taxes. It is going to have a dramatic impact on the quality of life in this Nation as it plays out, as it is creating an unsustainable government, a government which neither our generation nor our children's generation, nor our children's children's generation are going to be able to pay for because it is going to increase in size so much and create so much in the way of deficit and debt, which will have to be paid for by our children and our grandchildren.

To try to put this in perspective, the budget basically raises discretionary spending by $1.5 trillion. We are going to hear some arguments from the other side of the aisle that: No, it does not do that. I will get to that in a second. They are essentially doing the Obama budget, the President's budget. The Director of OMB says there is virtually no difference between the two. They are 98 percent the same.

Essentially, they are raising discretionary spending by $1.4 trillion, mandatory spending by $1.1 trillion, and raising taxes by $1.5 trillion. In fact, it may be a lot more. They are making absolutely no savings in the area of spending accounts, which are critical to getting this deficit down and under control.

As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, but which is accurate and needs to be repeated, they double the size of the debt in 5 years, they triple it in 10 years, and they leave our children with a debt which is 80 percent of GDP--a public debt which is 80 percent of GDP.

The practical effect of having a debt that is 80 percent of GDP is that basically you have a nation which cannot sustain its obligations of debt. Today, our public debt to GDP is about 40 percent. If you wish to get into the European Union, your public debt can only be 60 percent of GDP. Under this budget, we are going to 80 percent of GDP. Latvia could get into the European Union, but we could not under this budget. That is what is going to happen. It is not a question of some sort of theoretical event. Under the spending program of this budget--and because the Congress is now totally controlled by the liberal side of the aisle and because the President is of that party--this is going to happen. It is not like it is not going to happen. It is going to happen.

What is driving these massive deficits? Primarily, it is massive spending increases. It is not too tricky an issue. Under President Obama's budget, and under the budget that is brought here by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--although they tried to obfuscate the spending; at least the President is forthright about his spending--the spending of the Federal Government goes up dramatically.

This chart I have in the Chamber shows, historically, Federal spending has been about 20 percent of GDP. That is about what we can afford, historically, because our revenues are a little bit below that--19 percent of GDP. Under this proposal, the spending goes up radically in the next year, year and a half, and then it comes down as a result of the end of the recession and then it starts going up again. But it never comes down that much. It is 23 percent, 24 percent, 25 percent of GDP.

The problem is spending. The President is very forthright about this. He says he believes strongly--and his party, obviously, agrees with him--that you should significantly increase the size of the Federal Government, that you should significantly increase spending because if you increase the size of the Government, if you move the Government to the left, if you increase its spending, you create prosperity. He believes governments create prosperity.

Well, we do not agree with that. We think the way you create prosperity is having a government you can afford. That does not mean you eliminate Government. It means you have one you can afford. The proposal here is not for a government you can afford. It is just the opposite: a government we cannot afford, a government that is not sustainable. The way to create prosperity is by having a government you can afford and giving individuals the ability

to go out, make investments, takes risks, and create jobs. That is how you create prosperity--not by radically increasing the size of Government, radically moving it to the left, which is exactly what is proposed in this budget.

All this new spending leads to a massive increase in debt. In fact, one of the more interesting statistics--because I noticed the chart of my colleague from the other side relative to George Bush--this President dwarfs--dwarfs--what President George W. Bush did in the area of adding debt to our children's backs. It dwarfs that. If you take all the debt created in this country since George Washington through George W. Bush, President Obama's budget--and the budget which is being brought here by the other side of the aisle, if it were honestly scored and correctly accounted for, which would be essentially the same as President Obama's budget--doubles the amount of debt that has been put on our books by all the Presidents in all the history of this Nation. That is a tragic event for us, but it is an even more tragic event for the next generation.

I hear the other side constantly talking about what President Obama inherited. Yes, he inherited tough times. But the issue is not what he inherited. The issue is what he is going to bequeath, what he is going to leave the next generation. What he is leaving the next generation is an unsustainable Government. You do not have to listen to me to believe that. The chairmen of the Budget Committees on both sides of Congress-- on the House side and the Senate side--have said the budget, as presently proposed, is unsustainable in the outyears. Their budget is unsustainable in the outyears. Of course, they eliminate the outyears. They only did a 5-year budget. The President did 10 years. They took off the last 5 years so they would not have to talk about it. But it is not going away at the end of 5 years--still growing, still out of control. And it is unsustainable in their own terms.

Why is it unsustainable?

This chart shows the bottom line of why it is unsustainable. It is called the debt. To quote one of the sages and oracles around here: ``The debt is the threat,'' and the debt is just going up and up and up. It is an unsustainable situation.

What does ``unsustainable'' mean? That is some sort of term we throw out and people don't really catch on. What does it mean? It means the average American family at the end of the President's budget will have $130,000 of new debt--every family in America--that they will have to pay for as part of the Federal debt. It means the average American family will have $6,000 a year of interest payments on that debt for which they will be responsible. It means our children will inherit a government which will cost them so much that basically one of two things will happen to them: The economy will have to be inflated radically to pay off this debt, thus reducing the value of the dollar, eliminating savings of most Americans and creating an economic tax of inordinate proportions through massive inflation; or taxes on all Americans will have to be significantly increased at a rate that we have never seen in our history--other than in World War II--a rate which will essentially mean Americans would not be able to go out and buy a home. They would not be able to go out and send their kids to college. They would not be able to buy that car or live that lifestyle our generation had.

With the debt at 80 percent of GDP, it will mean for the first time in the history of our country, one generation will have passed on to another generation less of a nation--less prosperous, less strong, less opportunity. Totally unfair, but that is exactly what will happen. There is no way around this. Their budget locks us into this path. They themselves admit it is not sustainable, but that hasn't caused them to hesitate in going forward, and going forward in an aggressive way to expand the size of government and not pay for it and leave our kids with these massive debts.

I think it is appropriate at this time to also talk a little bit about the specific budget before us, which is the compromise between the House and the Senate budget because there is so much misdirection and disingenuousness about this budget that it is staggering. I give the President of the United States and his people credit, including Director Orszag and OMB. They attempted to send an honest and straightforward budget where they actually told us what was going to happen and what the costs were going to be. They put in one big gaming mechanism in the area of defense where they assumed $1.6 billion of spending, which everybody knew wasn't going to occur because they counted on the war costs going on for 10 years at their present levels--and we all know that is not going to happen--and then they claimed savings when those war costs were reduced. That was a fairly big item. But outside of that item, for the most part they gave us a budget that had integrity to it in the area of what it really was and what it was really going to cost.

This budget which was just sent to us is just the opposite. It is filled with gamesmanship, with stuffing spending under the rug so we don't notice it, with tools that avoid enforcement mechanisms, and with things such as the reconciliation instructions, which are a total adulteration of the congressional process when it is used relative to a public policy issue as big as the question of health care.

Let's note a few of the things they have left out of their budget to get to their alleged number. Remember, their alleged number is around $500 billion of deficit in the fourth and fifth years, and they pound their chest in great praise of themselves: Oh, we reduced the deficit to $500 billion. We have reduced it by half or three-fourths or whatever they want to claim. That is a little hard to sell to anyone with any common sense. When the deficit is run up to $1.8 trillion or $2 trillion and then brought down to $500 billion, that is not moving forward, folks; that is taking six steps back and one step forward and claiming that we are moving forward. We are still going backwards.

This budget goes backwards at an atrocious rate. It goes backwards at an atrocious rate, and it doesn't even tell us how much it goes backwards because they hide so much of their spending and their costs underneath the rug.

In the area, for example, of the doctor fix--we all know around here what the doctor fix is. The doctors in this country get reimbursed under Medicare, but we have this stupid, arcane rule around here which every year cuts the doctors' reimbursements by some amount, and now it is up to 20 percent. So every year we have to fix that. It is an expensive fix, but we do it every year, so we know we are going to spend that money to fix that arcane rule that ends up cutting doctors' reimbursements arbitrarily and unfairly.

The President's budget accounted for that. They accounted for that fix. Does this budget account for that fix? A very small part of that fix--a very small part of that fix. They leave out about $50 billion of that fix.

In the area of the alternative minimum tax, we know the alternative minimum tax wasn't supposed to apply to 20 million Americans; it was only supposed to apply to a small number of Americans who make a huge amount of money who could avoid paying taxes because they used tax avoidance mechanisms. But because of the failure to index that system, we now have 20 million Americans who will be subject to the alternative minimum tax if we don't fix it every year.

So what do we do? Every year we eliminate the application of that tax to those 20 million Americans because it was never supposed to be there to begin with. But what does this budget do? The President had the integrity to say he was going to do that throughout his budget. They were not going to assume the revenues from the alternative minimum tax because they knew for a surety that they were not going to get those revenues because every year we repeal that tax that applies to those folks. So what do they do in their budget?

Unlike the President, they don't account for all the alternative minimum tax. They score some of that revenue to themselves, taking advantage of that revenue. So instead of having the full cost of the alternative minimum tax in their bill, they have a small percentage of it--not a small percentage of it; about half of the cost accounted for in the bill. So they leave out a big number relative to the alternative minimum tax--about $70 billion--or about $80 billion, actually.

Then the TARP, the President asked for more TARP money. It certainly looks as though, when you listen to all of these things coming out of the White House, that they are going to need more TARP money. They put that TARP money in his budget; they leave it out. No, no TARP money. Well, maybe arguably they will not step up when the President asks them to and finance the issue of how we maintain our financial stability as a country relative to our financial system, but I suspect if the President asks for TARP, it will be allocated, and they should have scored it. At least the President did that.

Budgeting for disasters: We know we have disasters. The President knows we are going to have disasters. It appears the House Democrats and the Senate Democrats don't know we have disasters, or if they do, they decided not to budget for them because they left those numbers out in order to get to a better number on their deficit figure.

Health care reform: We know we are going to get health care reform. We are going to get it through reconciliation probably. They are going to ram it down the throats of this Congress. It is going to be their bill, and we know their bill scores at $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That is how it scores. The President had the integrity to say he would put half of that in here. He put in $650 billion of that cost into his budget. Does it appear anywhere? No, it doesn't. The Democrats in the House and in the Senate, they are not going to pay for health care at all. They put in this euphemism of a reserve fund that claims they are going to pay for it, when we know that is about as likely as their use of pay-go to enforce any spending around here.

The Make Work Pay tax credit, one of the premier items of the President, remember; we hear so much about how there is not going to be a tax increase on working Americans. Well, let's point out the fact that working Americans are going to get hammered pretty hard under this bill in the area of tax increases. First, they are going to get hit with a carbon tax, and a carbon tax is essentially a national sales tax on the production of electricity and the use of electricity. So if someone uses electricity in their home and turns on their light switch, they are going to get hit with a carbon tax.

The estimates of that tax are huge--huge. MIT did a study and said it is $300 billion a year, massive numbers. It is $3,000 per household if we take that study and just divide the number of households into the cost of the study. But independent of that tax, which doesn't appear anywhere in this budget, by the way, other than the fact that we know it is coming through some reserve fund, alleged reserve fund--they wipe out the President's Make Work Pay tax credit which he asked to be extended. They assume it would not be extended. Why? They know it is going to be extended because if the President tells them to extend it, they are going to extend it.

Why do they not put it in here? They don't put it in because they want to make their bottom line look better--look better. Then they actually skim down the middle-class tax relief. They have already scored the fact that they are going to tax wealthy Americans--alleged wealthy Americans--people making more than $250,000. They have already scored that and taken in that money.

Remember, most of those people, the vast majority of those people, are basically running a small business, and when we raise their taxes, what can't they do? They can't expand their small business. They can't add jobs. They are the engine of jobs in this country, by the way. So they are going to tax them, take their money away from them, put it into the Government, expand the size of the Government on the allegation that the Government can create prosperity, not small business.

Small business doesn't create prosperity as far as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are concerned. No, no, they tax them. No, it is the Government that creates prosperity, so let's take more money from small business, move it over here and give it to the Government, and we will create prosperity for Americans.

Well, tell that to the person who is running the restaurant or running the garage or has a little software company who would like to use his money or her money in order to reinvest it so they can actually hire some more people and actually produce some value in this society, versus expanding the Government and creating more consultants and more people who are out there spending money in a very inefficient way, for the most part. But that is their policy. They won the election. Fine. But in winning the election, they also said they weren't going to tax middle Americans.

Well, look at the document. There is $180 billion of taxes on middle- income Americans which they do not define from where it comes. They simply say it is there. It is in there somewhere. Well, somebody is going to have to pay it. I think it is pretty safe to say it is going to be working Americans who are going to have to pay that $180 billion.

Why did they raise those taxes on working Americans? Why did they go back on their campaign promises, both in the Make Work Pay area and in the taxing working Americans? Well, they did it so they could make their bottom line number look better than the President's. At least the President had integrity. He had honesty. He came to us and said: I am going to extend Make Work Pay. I am going to have a middle-class tax cut. The other side of the aisle, the Democrats in the House and the Senate don't play by those rules. They play by the old rules of let's obfuscate, hide, sequester money and make it look as if we are saving money when we absolutely know for sure the spending is misrepresented in the bill and the taxes are misrepresented in the bill.

Then they have the temerity to use the phony 920 number. We all know 920 is a phony number. This is an account we set up, and when we claim savings, we put things into 920. In other words, I am going to increase spending on the XYZ program because I like XYZ. Well, where do I get the money for that if I am going to try to stay revenue neutral? I am going to get it out of account 920. I am going to spend $40 billion on the XYZ program and the offset is going to be account 920. Account 920 is an account that for all intents and purposes leads to a cut around here. It never leads to anything. It is not specific. It should come out of all accounts. It never happens, but they were a little off in the numbers they wanted to get to, so they did a 920 account in their budget to the tune of, I think, $40 billion or more--$48 billion.

All of that added up, and their real number, their real deficit numbers--the numbers that the President actually had, ironically--come out pretty close to the same. If we put back in all the stuff they have hidden under the rug, all the stuff they claimed they are not going to do, which we know they are going to do, we come back to deficit numbers which are almost exactly what the President's deficit numbers are.

There is no $500 billion deficit in the fifth year; it is $924 billion--if you put back in what they have hidden, claimed, obfuscated, manipulated, and generally tried to play games with around here.

So the President's numbers were accurate. He deserves credit for that. But this budget is a fraud on its baseline numbers. The reason this is important, besides the fact that there is actually $400 billion of spending almost every year that is not accounted for in this budget, is that the deficit, at these numbers, is around 5 percent of GDP. A deficit of around 5 percent of GDP and a public debt of around 80 percent of GDP leads you to being a country that is essentially unsustainable in its fiscal policy. It leads to a nation where the dollar loses its value, where our debt cannot be sold, where inflation is rampant, tax policy is basically so heavy that productivity is significantly stifled. They want to hide that number. At least the President had the integrity to admit that. The House and Senate Democrats have tried to hide that.

There is one other point that needs to be made here, because of the foolishness of the statements about how they are going to reinstitute a real pay-go. You know, I understand that the Blue Dog Democrats on the House side come from districts where their people expect them to be fiscally responsible. They have gotten on this banner of pay-go. They say we are going to assert pay-go. That will be the rules that guide us, and we will make sure all the

spending is paid for and the tax cuts are paid for. That is called pay- go. They say that as a mantra, to the point where it has become a term of art that implies you are fiscally responsible.

Look at this budget. My colleagues on the House side, who are Blue Dogs, claim to wrap themselves in the banner of pay-go, but they have no banner on their pole. There is no pay-go in this bill that will have a significant impact. In fact, the budget passed by the House and Senate put in place policies that would obfuscate pay-go to the tune of approximately $2.4 trillion. So on the face of this, they have ignored pay-go in their own budget. The ultimate insult is that the most significant public policy event we are going to do, probably in the term of anybody in this Congress, going back to the beginning of Robert C. Byrd's term, forward to the end of probably the youngest Member of the Congress who is serving today's term, which is the issue of rewriting the health care system of this country--17 percent of our GDP--the single most significant public policy event we will ever undertake--affecting every American everywhere, at all different levels, they formally, by law, waive pay-go in this bill for that exercise.

The Blue Dog Democrats in the House say we have the pay-go protection. Nobody who is being forthright with their constituents should go out and claim that pay-go is going to be a disciplining event. It isn't, hasn't been, and will not be--especially on the most significant issue we confront, which is the question of health care reform.

We have already talked, of course, about reconciliation and the affront that is to the Senate procedures and the constitutional role of the Senate. But it should be noted that using reconciliation also creates the situation where you can run through a massive tax increase, such as the carbon tax, and use it to pay for health care reform. Don't think that that is not being considered around here. Assuming that reconciliation won't be used in that area is an optimistic projection, because the majority leader has already said publicly that--and I am paraphrasing--isn't it interesting that the revenues from the carbon tax, or the national sales tax, light switch tax, pretty much is what we need in order to do the first few years of the health care bill as we see it.

So offsetting those two has obviously been an idea that has presented itself to the majority leader, and he wields significant authority here. He was able to keep reconciliation in over the objections of our chairman, allegedly, so I know he is powerful, because the chairman is extraordinarily powerful. When two powerful forces meet, if one of them survives, we know that one is really powerful. We know the majority leader is really powerful because he was more powerful than the chairman on the issue of reconciliation. So that is serious. We could use the carbon tax to pay for the health care, which is possible. I am not saying it is going to happen, but it is possible while using reconciliation.

That brings me back to my closing point, which I want to reiterate. It is about debt. It is about the fact that when this is all said and done, when all the smoke has risen, there will still be burning a massive explosion of Federal debt, an explosion so large, increases so dramatic, that I don't see any way out from under it with this budget. I am so concerned about where this takes our opportunities as a Nation. When you pass on--and it is not that far away because we are talking 2013, 2014, when we start getting big numbers. When you pass on a deficit of 4 to 5 percent of GDP, a debt of 60 to 80 percent GDP, where do we go as a Nation? Let's think about that for a minute. How does a nation get out from underneath that? Doesn't the world start to look at us and say, my God, has America lost its way? Is it no longer capable of disciplining itself and living in a responsible manner? When they say that about us, where does our Nation end up? Where do we leave our children?

It is a serious issue. Yet it is right here, and this budget is the point. If we pass this budget in its present form, with the outyear spending and outyear debt, I don't know how we get out from behind it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like a few minutes. First, I know that one of the senior staff members on the chairman's side, Joel Friedman, is going through some very difficult health situations. I know he wanted to talk a little bit about that. We wish him the best. I know my staff, who works closely with him, feels great concern. The concern goes out to him and his family. We certainly wish him the best during this very difficult period dealing with this very difficult health issue.

Mr. President, let me, again, express the concern of my staff and myself for Joel and his family and wish him the best in this very difficult time and wish his family the best. We certainly hope he returns to good health soon.

Let me second the words of the chairman. This committee has contention. Even when the chairman produces a bill which is utterly incorrect and takes us totally in the wrong direction, I totally respect his efforts. I say that with some humor. The strength of this committee, besides the fact that it is a very influential committee in the Senate, is that we approach the issues in a forthright, professional manner. There is, on both sides of the aisle, a genuine and sincere and very successful effort to make sure the committee does its business in an orderly, professional, and cooperative way, which we hope brings credit to the Senate and the way the Senate should function. I believe it does.

It is, in large part, because the chairman sets that tone, as does his staff--Mary Naylor and the excellent people she has working for her; and on my side, Cheri Reidy, Jim Hearn, Allison Parent, and all the other folks who spend hundreds of hours, especially during this very intense period as we run up to the final passage of this extremely important piece of legislation. Their commitment, their professionalism is what allows this Congress to function well, and we very much appreciate it.

I could go on at some length on the issue of the budget, but I think people have probably heard enough of myself on this issue--although I wouldn't want to say that--and I know I would love to hear the chairman further discuss this, and he would love to hear myself further discuss it, but it is probably time to move it along and allow the chips to fall where they may. I would suggest we yield back all time and we vote at 5:30.

Mr. President, I understand the Senator from New York wishes to be recognized for 5 minutes, so I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 10 minutes following the Senator from New York.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the soon to be pending issue of the budget. We are told that the Democratic membership of the House and Senate reached agreement last night on the budget proposal. They didn't seek our advice or counsel on it. It is pretty much the outline of the budget as requested by the President.

There has been a lot of discussion about whether the President inherited a terrible situation. I think he did, from a fiscal standpoint. He has had difficult issues to confront relative to stabilizing our financial industry and trying to get the economy going and addressing the issues which most Americans are concerned about, which is their jobs, the value of their homes, the ability to pay their bills, and to send their kids to college.

What the President inherited is important, but what he is bequeathing to the next generation is even more important. This budget he proposed is an outline of where he sees the Government going and where he sees this Nation going.

Regrettably, the budget as proposed by the President, which has been worked on here by the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats, puts forward a picture that basically almost guarantees our children will be inheriting a nation with a government that is nonsustainable. The President's budget proposed a trillion dollars of deficit, on average, for the next 10 years. That is a number that is hard to comprehend. But to try to put it into perspective, the effect of that number is that the debt of the United States will double in 5 years and triple in 10 years. If you want to put it in another perspective, take all the debt created since the founding of our Nation, from George Washington through George W. Bush--all that debt that has been added to the backs of the Nation's people--and President Obama's budget doubles that debt in 4 years, which is a staggering event.

The implications are pretty dramatic for the next generation. The public debt of the United States will go to 80 percent of GDP fairly quickly under this proposal. The historic public debt of this country has been 40 percent of GDP. That means the amount of debt out there in relation to the size of the economy will have doubled.

That has dramatic ramifications. For example, at that level of public debt through the economic activity in our country, we as a nation would not be allowed to enter the European Union because we wouldn't meet their standard for fiscal responsibility. Countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, which all have very serious issues, might qualify for the European Union, but we would not because of the fact that our debt was so high as a percentage of our economy. It means our people, who have to pay that debt, will have to pay an inordinate amount of taxes in one of two ways to pay that debt off. Either they will have to pay more taxes because the Federal Government will inflate the money supply in order to pay off this debt, which is the worst tax there is--inflation--because it takes away the savings of all of the American people or you will have to significantly increase taxes on every American, not just the high-income Americans, as was represented by this President that he wants to do, and the Democratic Congress and Senate said they want to do; all taxes will have to go up astronomically in order to pay for the debt.

What is driving this massive expansion of debt our children and we are going to have to pay as a result of this budget that is proposed by the President? Well, it is spending. Very simply, it is spending. The President proposed, and the Democratic Congress will bring forward, a budget that significantly increases the spending of the Federal Government. Historically, the spending

of the Government has been about 20 percent of the GDP. Under this budget, it goes to 22 percent, 23 percent, 24 percent, 25 percent--it gets up to levels that have never been seen, except during the time of World War II. They are unsustainable levels of spending. It is being done with a pure purpose, which is, I guess, to Europeanize the American economy and the American Government, to basically have the Government become the largest and most significant player in our economy and to dominate all aspects of our economy because of its size.

The President is very forthright about this. He says he believes that by growing the Government significantly, he can create more prosperity. Those on our side of the aisle disagree with that. We believe a government has to be affordable for a nation to have prosperity. We also think prosperity doesn't come from the Government, it comes from individuals who are willing to take risks and go out and create jobs by taking those risks. This is a fundamental disagreement. This budget lays that out precisely.

We are going to hear from the other side of the aisle the most disingenuous discussions about how they have been much more responsible on the budget, while they claim they are doing exactly what the President is doing in his budget. The reason they make that statement is because they cook the books. At least the President was forthright and he came forward with a budget--except in the area of defense--which set forth in a reasonably honest way what the costs to the Government were going to be and, as a result, it reflected the fact that because of his huge commitment in new spending programs, the cost of Government was going to be extraordinary, and the amount of debt that was going to be added to the books of the Government and the backs of the American people was going to be untenable and unsustainable.

The other side of the aisle, I guess because they recognize they are going to be up for election before the President, doesn't want to have those numbers out there. So they have gone back and played a lot of games with the numbers the President sent up. For example, the President honestly represented the fact that we are not going to get revenues from the alternative minimum tax, because every year we basically limit the amount of applicability of the AMT. But the baseline reflects a huge income of the AMT. It says 20 million people are going to pay it. But we are not going to allow that to happen, because it wasn't designed to affect 20 million people but the top income producers in this country--probably less than a million people. So every year we basically change the law so that for that year the AMT doesn't apply. The President was forthright and said I know that will happen and I am not going to account for this revenue that never comes in. So he scored the AMT fairly. The other side of the aisle games that number.

In the area of the doctors' fix, every year we know we are going to have to pay doctors a reasonable amount for their services under Medicare. Unfortunately, we have a law in place that keeps cutting that amount. This year it will be cut almost 20 percent over the baseline, in an arbitrary and foolish way. We should fix this permanently, but we don't have the courage to do it because of the effects on the budget. So we have used all sorts of gimmicks over the years--and everybody admits to this--so that we didn't have to fix that over a long period of time and correct that problem, even though we know every year we are going to adjust and make that payment to doctors.

Well, the President was forthright and he said, listen, that is not fair, honest accounting. We are going to tell you exactly what the doctors' fix costs, and we are going to account for it in the budget.

What does the other side of the aisle do? They hide that number again. They go back to the old rules. Those two items alone represent $100 billion of annual spending, which is being put under the rug. The President was honest enough to talk about it, but this Democratic Congress and Senate, in an attempt to obfuscate the issue for the American people, because they don't want to tell the people how much money they are spending, they stick that $100 billion under the rug.

Then there is the health care reform. At least the President--even though I disagree with some of his philosophies, and I hope we can have a bipartisan approach, and I support the Wyden-Bennett bill floating around this Congress--at least the President, in proposing his health care reform, said he was going to account for paying for half of it-- $600 billion he put into the budget to pay for his health care reform. He acknowledges that is about half the cost of a $1.2 trillion program over the time of his budget.

What does the other side of the aisle do when they bring this budget forward? They don't account for any of it--none of it. It disappears off the books. Not only is the $1.2 trillion not there, the $600 billion is not there. How outrageous, to claim they are going to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP in 2014, when they have basically hidden under the rug the AMT cost, the doctors' fix cost, and the most significant fiscal issue, health care reform. It is so disingenuous, it is almost unbelievable. But they are going to do that, and I suspect it won't be covered in any depth. To claim they are going to cut the deficit in half, which is a classic example of language over substance, will be the mantra of the day. They say they are going to cut the deficit in half. They claim they are going to cut it by 75 percent, because they are going to take a $1.8 trillion deficit and allegedly cut it to $550 billion in 4 years.

Let me point out to you that $550 billion is too big. It is like saying we are going to take six steps backward and two steps forward and claim we are moving in the right direction. Of course they are not. Equally important, the $500 billion number is a total fraud. It is a fraud on the American people brought forward in this budget.

Please, please, please do not subject the American people to this sort of disingenuousness. At least have the integrity the President had when he presented the budget of accounting for what we know are real numbers, such as AMT, the doctors fix, and the health care reform initiative proposed by the President and supported by the other side of the aisle.

That is the substantive problem with this budget; that it creates all this debt, all this spending. It takes the Government of the United States and lurches it to the left. It Europeanizes our Nation, for all intents and purposes, and passes on to our kids a government that is not sustainable.

It is ironic that we hear from the Budget chairmen, both in the Senate and the House, that the outyear numbers are unsustainable under this budget. The outyears are so unsustainable under their budget that they eliminated the last 5 years of the budget. The President sent up a 10-year budget to have some integrity around here. The other side of the aisle said: My goodness, we can't tell the American people what is going to happen to them over the second 5 years. It is bad enough what we are going to do to them in the first 5 years. We are going to eliminate the second 5 years and do a 5-year budget and not tell them about the second 5 years.

Both Democratic chairmen of both committees in the House and Senate have said we are on an unsustainable path. What do they do about the unsustainable path? They hide the numbers under the table, they do not admit to the spending, they allow the spending to go up radically, and there is absolutely zero--zero--savings on the spending side of the ledger, especially in the entitlement accounts which is at the core of what is driving the outyear problem.

Ironically, a couple of the ideas the President sent up to save money were dropped, simply dropped. For example, he proposed some savings in the agriculture accounts which were very reasonable. They disappeared. He proposed some savings in the Medicare accounts which were very reasonable. They disappeared. But that is a minor story compared to the trillions of dollars of new debt that is going to be put on the backs of our children.

By the time this budget has run its course, it will have added well over $9 trillion, under the President's calculations, to the debt of the United States. Who is going to pay that? Who is going to pay that? First off, who is going to lend us the money? At some point, the countries that are lending us this

money, the international community that looks to us and lends us money so we can run these massive deficits, is going to say: Why? Hold it. We don't know if they can pay off all this debt. At that point, the value of the dollar is at risk. At that point, the ability of us to sell debt is at risk. At that point, our Nation starts a downward fiscal spiral which will be extraordinarily disruptive and dangerous for us as a nation. This is not a good path to be on.

There are also a couple technical points that should be pointed out because they are procedural points that have massive policy implications. First, of course, is this really pyrrhic claim they are using pay-go as a disciplining mechanism. How many times have we heard that pay-go is going to be used to discipline spending. My goodness, in the last Congress, which was dominated by the Democratic Party, if I recall correctly, the House and Senate both being democratically led, pay-go, which was supposed to discipline the fiscal process around here, was waived almost 20 times--either waived, avoided or circumvented almost 20 times. Those exercises cost us almost $400 billion in spending that should have been offset. So pay-go became ``Swiss cheese-go.'' It had no value and was a worthless purpose, other than to make a political speech and claim on the stump: Oh, I am for fiscal discipline. I am for pay-go. Of course, when you voted in the Senate over the last 2 years, if you made that speech and up for reelection and you were a Democrat, you basically waived pay-go, circumvented pay-go or avoided pay-go to the tune of $400 billion in new spending.

Now we have the House Blue Dogs saying: We are going to get tough pay-go language back in place. I have to explain something to the House Blue Dogs: They didn't get it. They didn't give it to you. The budget that is going to come to the floor of this Senate is going to have structural changes which allow pay-go to be avoided for up to $2.5 trillion, at least that is what the House budget had in it, and the Senate budget was pretty close. Mr. President, $2.5 trillion will circumvent pay-go.

The most egregious exercise will be in the health care area, where they have formally ended pay-go's applicability during the first 5-year window. They basically say openly: We are not going to comply with pay- go on health care.

Health care is going to be the single biggest fiscal event this Congress has probably taken up in the last 20 years, maybe 30 years, maybe 40 years, maybe ever. Restructuring the health care of this country is a pretty doggone big exercise since it represents 17 percent of our economy. To say they are not going to apply pay-go to that exercise, to that effort, to that undertaking is to drive a hole through the pay-go concept that is so big it becomes not ``Swiss cheese-go'' but a great big, huge onion ring; there is basically nothing left but air in pay-go.

When the Blue Dogs on the other side of the aisle start marching around: We have pay-go, we have pay-go, somebody ought to point out to them that their banner does not have a flag on it. Pay-go was taken down under health care rules and under the rest of this bill. It may make for a good press release, but it sure as heck doesn't have any substance to it.

The second procedural event, of course, is this issue of reconciliation, which is a major issue for us on our side of the aisle, and it should be for the Senate. When the Senate was constructed, when our constitutional form of Government was put together, the idea was to have balance so we had a House of Representatives where things might happen quickly, but when it got to the Senate, there would be an airing, a hearing, consideration, and there would be due diligence on issues. That is why it was George Washington who described the House as the cup with the hot coffee in it and the Senate as the saucer into which the hot coffee is poured so it can be cooled down a little bit.

The Senate is institutionally and constitutionally structured to be the place where we have debate, we have discussion, and we have amendments. That is the whole concept behind the Senate, especially on issues of massive public policy implications, and there is probably nothing we are going to take up on the domestic side of the ledger that has a bigger public policy implication than the rewriting of our entire health care system.

Yet what is being proposed is that this rewrite of the entire health care system be done in a way that allows the Senate only 20 hours of debate, with essentially no amendments and with an up-or-down vote, yes or no, on something that affects 17 percent of the gross national product of this country, that affects every American in every walk of life in a very significant way, and that is how is their health care system delivered.

Why wouldn't we want to have a full and clear, hopefully, and significant discussion of what we are doing to the American public and what the policy implications of health care reform are on the floor of the Senate? If we are going to get a good piece of legislation, we are going to have to have bipartisanship and going to have to have the American people believe it is fair. You cannot pass something as significant as health care and do it in a crammed-down manner, in a manner where it is totally partisan. Yet reconciliation is structured to accomplish just that.

You have to have every stakeholder at the table. Granted, we are not going to win all our points, but we may have some points that are constructive to the debate. Let us at least be at the table and make those points on the floor of the Senate through the amendment process. Don't shut this Senate down and don't make us into the House of Representatives and don't essentially convert our constitutional form of Government, which is checks and balances, into a parliamentary form of Government, where there are essentially no checks and balances on the majority once it has an overwhelming position. That is what is being proposed in the bill when it pushes reconciliation as an option for the majority party in the area of health care reform. It is unfortunate.

I appreciate the courtesy of the Chair.

I ask unanimous consent that all quorum calls during debate on the Sebelius nomination be equally charged to both sides.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that provides the President with extraordinary, but critical authority under section 451 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 with respect to assistance for Pakistan.

Specifically, the bill allows the President to reprogram up to $500,000,000 of previously appropriated foreign operations funds for assistance for Pakistan if the President determines that it is in the vital national security interests of the U.S. to do so.

The President must still report promptly to Congress on the exercise of this authority, and it is my expectation--although not legally binding--that reprogrammed funds will be reimbursed in subsequent annual or supplemental appropriations bills.

Extended until September 30, 2010, this authority is required because of the increasingly dire situation in Pakistan and alarming news reports of territorial gains by extremists. While I do not pretend to have the answers to Pakistan's myriad challenges, I do know that the administration lacks the necessary authority to reprogram significant funds to respond to further political and economic deterioration in that country. Should the government of Pakistani President Zardari collapse, the administration will need maximum flexibility in its response.

I can anticipate some may have a knee jerk reaction to the provision of such extraordinary authority. In response, I would remind my colleagues that regardless of their opinions of Pakistan's messy political situation, events in Pakistan directly impact Afghanistan-- and our troops on the ground there.

Of course, this is in addition to the impact that destabilization would have on Pakistan's nuclear complex, specifically the combination of dozens of nuclear weapons, untested security systems, and a surplus of Islamic militants in the area. These issues are at the forefront of our security interests in the region and would exacerbate exponentially the impact of destabilization.

It might interest my colleagues to know that current law limits section 451 reprogram authority to $25,000,000. In contrast, the supplemental budget request seeks $4,000,000,000 in special transfer authority for the Department of Defense to meet emerging requirements. Surely, the State Department should also have increased flexibility to react promptly to the economic and security needs of Pakistan should the worst case scenario transpire.

I urge the relevant Committee to consider and act upon this legislation quickly.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that provides the President with extraordinary, but critical authority under section 451 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 with respect to assistance for Pakistan.

Specifically, the bill allows the President to reprogram up to $500,000,000 of previously appropriated foreign operations funds for assistance for Pakistan if the President determines that it is in the vital national security interests of the U.S. to do so.

The President must still report promptly to Congress on the exercise of this authority, and it is my expectation--although not legally binding--that reprogrammed funds will be reimbursed in subsequent annual or supplemental appropriations bills.

Extended until September 30, 2010, this authority is required because of the increasingly dire situation in Pakistan and alarming news reports of territorial gains by extremists. While I do not pretend to have the answers to Pakistan's myriad challenges, I do know that the administration lacks the necessary authority to reprogram significant funds to respond to further political and economic deterioration in that country. Should the government of Pakistani President Zardari collapse, the administration will need maximum flexibility in its response.

I can anticipate some may have a knee jerk reaction to the provision of such extraordinary authority. In response, I would remind my colleagues that regardless of their opinions of Pakistan's messy political situation, events in Pakistan directly impact Afghanistan-- and our troops on the ground there.

Of course, this is in addition to the impact that destabilization would have on Pakistan's nuclear complex, specifically the combination of dozens of nuclear weapons, untested security systems, and a surplus of Islamic militants in the area. These issues are at the forefront of our security interests in the region and would exacerbate exponentially the impact of destabilization.

It might interest my colleagues to know that current law limits section 451 reprogram authority to $25,000,000. In contrast, the supplemental budget request seeks $4,000,000,000 in special transfer authority for the Department of Defense to meet emerging requirements. Surely, the State Department should also have increased flexibility to react promptly to the economic and security needs of Pakistan should the worst case scenario transpire.

I urge the relevant Committee to consider and act upon this legislation quickly.

Mr. President, let me begin by saying I think it is terribly unsportsmanlike of the chairman of the committee to say such nice things about me, to disarm my ability to effectively attack his budget, but I wish to join his thoughts because he and his staff are very good to work with. He is a professional. They are committed. He genuinely believes, as I do, that this country's outyear fiscal situation is not a sustainable event. We are trying to work together to address that situation. We hope we can gather others to join us in this effort.

I respect he has water to carry around here, and he carries it extraordinarily well on behalf of his constituency, which is the Democratic caucus and the President of the United States. I congratulate him for the exceptional job he does.

That being said----

Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Is the debate over?

That being said, let's begin where the chairman leaves off accurately and correctly in saying that the course we are on is unsustainable.

What does ``unsustainable'' mean? It is one of those terms of art we use around here. It means that by the time this budget runs its course--not necessarily the chairman's budget but the President's budget because the President's budget is a 10-year budget--by the time the President's budget runs its course, we will have passed on to our children a debt which will have tripled--tripled--a deficit which will have averaged every year for the 10 years a trillion dollars or more and a national public debt--that is the debt we owe to the Chinese, to the Japanese, and to our own people who own a fair portion of our debt--a national public debt which will have doubled as a percent of our gross national product, going up to 80 percent of our gross national product.

What does all that mean? It means essentially we will have built a debt in this Nation which our children will not be able to afford to pay down. Just the interest on that debt alone, as we move into the later years of this budget, will exceed anything else in the budget as a line item on the discretionary side of the ledger. It will exceed, for example, all the money we spend, the interest alone will exceed all the money we spend on national defense. It will exceed by a factor of three or four or maybe even eight accounts such as education, housing, veterans affairs, and health. The deficits will have been so large for so long that the debt will have grown to a point that there is no logical way or fair way that our children and our children's children, who will have to pay this debt, will be able to do it in a manner that would leave them with a nation that is as strong and as prosperous as the Nation that was given us.

Putting it another way, at the end of this budget, after these 10 years are over and beginning in about the third and fourth year of this budget, the spending will be so out of control at the Federal level, the growth of the Government will have occurred at such a rapid rate that we will have created a debt structure which will mean that our children will have about three choices in their future.

The first is that there will be a dramatic increase in inflation. We will try to pay this debt off with inflated dollars. There is no more regressive or harmful tax that a society can put on its people than to have uncontrolled inflation or massive inflation. But that is what one of the choices is.

The other choice is that we will raise taxes to a level that they will be so high we will essentially tax away the opportunity of our children to do things which were considered to be commonplace for our generation--buy a home, send their kids to college, invest in a small business, take a risk, create a job. All of that will be taxed away because the tax rates would have to get up to such a level to pay this debt off that we will no longer be able to have that type of prosperity. The third course of action, equally untenable, is that the dollar gets devalued--which is to some extent an inflationary event-- and people stop buying our debt. They simply say: I don't believe you can pay this debt off--you, the people of the United States. You are not going to be able to generate enough productivity to do it. That, of course, leads to some level of implosion of our economy which I can't even calculate or comprehend, but it is much worse than what we even confront today.

So nobody is arguing or debating--at least I am not, though there are some

who are--I am not coming to this floor and saying it is irresponsible for this administration, for President Obama to have inserted a large amount of Federal spending into the economy this year and next year. We recognize that this economy is in stress and that the only source of liquidity for our economy is our National Government and that the Federal Reserve, for all intents and purposes, has become the lender of first resort. But that is a short-run issue.

The problem with this budget is that the type of spending which has to be done now is not curtailed after 2 years. It is not reigned in. It is not reduced or even leveled off. It continues up and up in the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year, the sixth year of the budget the President sent up here. The spending continues to go up on a path that is extraordinarily steep, so that the cost of the Government, which today and historically has been about 20 percent of GDP, jumps to 21 percent, 22 percent, 23 percent, and 24 percent. In fact, if you go outside the window and you presume these numbers continue to compound, you get to a cost of Government that ends up around 28 and 29 percent of GDP. You cannot sustain an economy with that type of cost.

I have a few charts to try to put this in perspective.

The first chart is on the issue of debt. The budget, as proposed by the President--and why do I keep talking about the President's budget rather than the chairman's budget? Because the President's Director of OMB said they are essentially the same, and they are essentially the same. We can get into the differences, but the differences are at the margin and they are really not arguable. The biggest difference is that the chairman's budget only goes for 5 years, not 10 years. Well, there are other big differences, but that leaves off the second 5 years, and by leaving off the second 5 years, you don't talk about and you essentially hide some of the most dramatic effects of this spending binge.

The President's budget increases taxes by $1.5 trillion, it increases discretionary spending by $1.4 trillion, and it increases mandatory spending by $1.2 trillion. And this number, this $1.2 trillion, is grossly underestimated. What does it do in the area of savings? On the mandatory side, it does nothing in the area of savings, absolutely nothing. In fact, the few discretionary savings he sent up, which I happen to support, were dropped in the chairman's mark, especially in the area of agriculture. So as we have said, and some people have heard it before--maybe not in this room--it spends too much, it taxes too much, and it borrows too much as a budget. What it doesn't do is save too much, and that is what gets us into trouble. The practical effect of this budget's structure is that it takes Federal debt and doubles it in 5 years and triples it in 10 years.

Try to remember what we are talking about. We are not talking about going from $100 to $200 to $300. We are talking about trillions. Trillions. I don't know what a trillion dollars is. I can't even conceive of it. But that is what we are talking about. We are talking about taking the Federal debt from $5.8 trillion up to $17 trillion, or thereabouts. To try to put it in perspective, if you take all the spending, all the debt run up by all the Presidents since the beginning of the country--George Washington through Franklin Pierce through George W. Bush--all that debt that has been run up over 230-some-odd years by all our Presidents, that debt is doubled by this President within 5 years of being in office.

There is another chart which shows this even better. It is called the wall of debt. This chart wasn't invented by me, but whoever invented it was a genius, obviously. The wall of debt shows how the Federal deficit just goes up and up and up and up. This wall of debt is what our kids are going to run into when they try to have a productive lifestyle. It is what is going to cost them their ability to be successful.

By the time we get to the end of this, or even right here in the middle somewhere of this budget, the average family in this country is going to have $130,000 of new debt for which they are responsible. And $130,000 is probably more than the mortgage on the homes of most people. The interest cost on that debt, which most Americans, which all Americans are going to be responsible for, will be about $6,000. That may be more than what most people pay in interest on their homes. But that is the debt that is going to be passed on to them by this budget.

Why does it happen? It happens for one very simple reason. It is called spending. The simple fact is that under the President's budget-- and under the budget proposed by the chairman--the spending of the Federal Government goes up dramatically, comes back down, and then starts back up again. It goes up dramatically, of course, in these 2 years here, which I said I have reservations about. I especially had reservations about the stimulus package, which was a misallocation of spending, even though I supported the stimulus effort. Why does it start back up again? It starts back up again because this President, in a very forthright manner--and I give him credit for this--has said not only in his budget but he has said publicly that he genuinely believes the way you create prosperity is to significantly increase the size of the Federal Government, to take it to the left dramatically. So he does. As a result, spending goes up at a rate that is simply not affordable for our children.

Look at this black line here. This is the black line that reflects the average spending of the Federal Government between 1958 and 2008. Look at how much higher the spending is of this Government under this proposed budget. That is a huge gap. When you are talking about an economy as large as ours, when you are talking about 2, 3, and 4 percent--or in this case, 4 or 5 percent--that is where the massive deficits come from. That is where the massive increase in debt comes from. It is debt that is the issue.

The chairman used to say: The debt is the threat. He is absolutely right, the debt is the threat, but the driver of the threat is spending. Unless you are willing to address the issue of spending, you are not going to get debt under control because you can't tax people enough to cover that. Well, of course you can always inflate the economy and try to cover it, but that leads to much more harmful events.

So this is the fundamental difference we have as a party. The President has said he wants to spend, he wants to tax, and he wants to borrow. And I think it is important to note there is a little subtlety here that hasn't been focused on too much, and that is this: When President Clinton came into office, he also wanted to spend and tax, but he didn't want to borrow. He used his taxes, which he increased-- which I probably opposed--in order to reduce the deficit. This President, on the other hand, who is claiming he is going to raise taxes on just the wealthy--which is a canard if there ever were a canard around here--is using all that revenue not to reduce the deficit but to increase spending, and then he spends on top of that. So he is using it to grow the size of Government. He is very forthright about this. He is going to use those tax revenues to nationalize the health care system. That is the way I describe it; he describes it another way. He is going to use those revenues to basically create a massive expansion of spending in the other accounts of the Federal Government. But he is not going to use those revenues to try to reduce the deficit. That is the big difference between President Obama and President Clinton in the area of fiscal policy. So he doubles and triples the debt, and as a result, he leaves to our children a nation which is not affordable. So as I said, there is a fundamental difference.

You know, in the past we would get these budget debates on the floor, and they were sort of academic exercises. People would engage in them, and they would be very interesting, but I don't think anybody ever saw it as the core of the policy of the country. Even though it was important, it wasn't the core.

This debate is about this country's future. This budget is about where this country ends up. The pathway that has been laid out in this budget is a pathway that leads to a debt which the chairman has openly said is not sustainable. If the chairman knows it is not sustainable and the President knows it is not sustainable, why haven't they sent a budget up here to address that fact? Instead, they have sent a budget up here which does nothing about that fact, and, in fact, it does the opposite. It increases spending, it

increases discretionary and mandatory spending, and it saves absolutely zero in the area we most need savings, which is the mandatory accounts.

So the difference is this: The President, as I said, has been forthright. His budget--this budget--probably the most significant document we have received here in the area of fiscal policy since perhaps the time of Lyndon Johnson or before, concludes that the way to prosperity is to expand the size of Government in an exponential manner by spending on Government programs in hopes that they create some sort of economic activity and create prosperity over the long run. Well, we believe, as a party, that doesn't work because in this case it is not paid for and it creates all this debt which we then pass on to our children to pay. We believe the way to prosperity is to have a government that is affordable and to pass that affordable government on to your children. Equally important is to empower the individual citizen and groups of citizens to go out, take a risk, and create a job, not to have the Government take from the individual the ability to create jobs because it taxes the individual either through inflation or through taxes or through a huge debt burden, as is proposed in this budget--a huge debt burden that is not sustainable.

So this is a very significant debate and a very significant decision point in our Nation's history because if this budget passes in its present form, we are guaranteeing that we will pass on to our children a nation whose Government is not sustainable, and therefore we will be passing on to our children a nation which is less than what we received from our parents. No generation has the right to do that to another generation, and that is what this debate is about.

Mr. President, at this point, I yield to Senator Johanns, who has an amendment or who wishes to discuss a motion to instruct.

If the Senator will indulge me for about 2 minutes because I want to speak quickly on behalf of the amendment of the Senator from Nebraska? He has outlined a lot of the substantive reasons it is important. It would not be appropriate to do this type of huge policy on a 20-hour debate, no-amendment situation, up-or-down vote. But there is another issue which goes to the integrity of the Senate and the purposes of the Senate.

Basically, reconciliation is purely a Senate event. The House doesn't need reconciliation. The House has a Rules Committee. They can determine how long debate is going to be, when there is going to be debate, and how many amendments there are going to be.

The Senate historically has been the place where people come to talk, to discuss, to air out an issue, and then to have amendments on that issue. That is the whole function of the Senate in our constitutional process. I find it incongruous, to be kind, that the House of Representatives would be trying to dictate to the Senate the rules of operation of the Senate in a manner--first, it is inappropriate to begin with, but they are dictating them in a manner which basically goes at the fundamental purpose of the Senate, which is that the Senate be the place where debate, discussion, and amendment occurs on policy issues of great substance.

I do not argue that reconciliation is not a useful and appropriate tool to be used around here. There are many reconciliation initiatives for which I voted. But in the area the Senator has noted, which is a massive change in industrial policy, a huge tax on every person who turns on a light in every home in America, that should not be done under reconciliation. Equally important, the House of Representatives should not be explaining to the Senate or telling the Senate what the rules of the road are in the Senate. They have enough issues on their own over there.

At this point, I think the Senator from Michigan wanted to be recognized. At the completion of the remarks of the Senator from Michigan or the chairman's comments, unless the Senator has further comments, the next Member to be recognized on our side will be Senator Grassley.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I totally want to identify my position with the Senator's argument as to the purposes of reconciliation and the fact it should not be used for major public policy initiatives which require debate and hearings in the Senate and an amendment process. Are we to presume, therefore, that your logic on cap and trade applies also to major health care reform?

If the Senator will yield for a further question, I will make this a rhetorical question. The Senator is one of the most influential Members of the Senate and of the Congress. When he says he wants something to happen, especially when it deals with the budget, I know it will.

Is this all coming off of your time?

I will be yielding my time on this side.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the next two speakers on our side to be recognized--and, of course, there be an alternative speaker possibly from the Democratic side--the next two speakers on our side are Senator Vitter for 10 minutes and then Senator Alexander for 10 minutes to talk about their motions to instruct.

Madam President, I also ask unanimous consent that after Senator Alexander, Senator Coburn be recognized to talk about his motion to instruct.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Not yet.

If the Senator will yield, I would suggest that he send his motion to the desk at this time and set aside the pending motion.

For the information of our colleagues, we have three more speakers on our side who will take 10 minutes each, offering motions to instruct. There may be other speakers but I do not know of them. I hope we can sort of start voting here, depending on what the chairman desires to do, at some point in the near future.

We may not need all of the time on our side either.

Mr. President, I send a motion to instruct to the desk.

Mr. President, as we have discussed earlier at some length, there are three essential problems with the President's budget. The first is that it spends too much, the second is it taxes too much, and the third is it creates too much debt. It is the third issue I think many of us find to be the most severely distressing issue.

Of course, it is driven by the first two issues. But the idea that we are going to double the debt in 5 years, triple it in 10 years; we are going to have, on average, a $1 trillion deficit every year for the next 10 years, and that we are going to build up the national debt to a point where it is 80 percent of the gross national product, the public debt is disturbing. It basically is on an unsustainable path. It means our Nation will be put at risk by that type of debt.

Now, the Congress is not doing a very good job of disciplining itself. This problem is driven primarily by spending. But the fact is, the result of that spending is this explosion in debt.

As I have held up before this chart that shows the picture of the Presidents since the beginning of our Nation, President Washington through President George W. Bush, they generated this much debt on this country, $5.8 trillion.

President Obama's budget just in the first 4.5 years essentially is going to double that debt. All the debt added to the United States, to the backs of American citizens since 1776, or actually 1789 when the Government started creating debt, over 200 years, all of that debt is doubled now in just 5 years.

That is not tolerable. Then that debt, after doubling in 5 years, triples in 10 years. Our children end up with this debt. Our children are the ones who have to pay for this. The people who will be working in America are the ones who are going to have to pay for this and bear the burden of this debt. They are going to suffer either massive inflation, massive devaluation of the dollar, massive tax increases or a dramatic disruption in our capacity to sell debt as a nation because of this.

The chairman of the committee has said this is an unsustainable path. Yet nothing in this budget addresses the fact that this path is one we have chosen to follow. It is akin to saying: We know we are going to go off a cliff. We are on a path that takes us off a cliff, but the budget does nothing to change the direction we are walking and, in fact, accelerates our pace toward that cliff.

That makes no sense at all to me. Why would we pass a budget which we know will create so much debt and so much of a burden on our children that our Government will not be able to be sustained and our children will not be able to afford the Government.

It is counterintuitive to do something that is certainly not correct. One generation has sort of a fiduciary responsibility to the next generation. In the history of our Nation, each generation has passed on to the next generation a better nation, a stronger nation, a more prosperous nation. Yet this budget locks in place a path that absolutely guarantees, absolutely guarantees, that our generation will pass onto our children a country that is not as prosperous, is not as strong as what we received from our parents.

That is not right, not fair, inappropriate. It is a totally inappropriate thing to do. It can be corrected. It is not as if this is not an uncorrectable event. There has been a decision made on the other side of the aisle and by the President in bringing forward this budget to significantly explode the size of the Government. That is a conscious decision that was made. The President is very forthright about this. He thinks that is a way to create prosperity. It does not happen if at the same time you are running up the national debt at rates which are unsustainable.

The debt, the public debt will double during the term of this budget--double from 40 percent to 80 percent. We have the public debt so high under this budget, or the President and the Democratic Members of this Senate and the House have it so high under this budget that if we tried to apply it to the European Union as a country in Europe, for example, we would be rejected because, under the terms of the European Union, a country cannot have as high a debt as we are going to have after this budget runs its course.

Actually, it is about the middle of the budget that we hit that threshold. Can you believe that? Countries such as France are going to be more fiscally responsible than we are. But that is the truth. That is the way this budget plays out. As I say, this is a path over a cliff for our Nation.

I have offered this motion to instruct. I call it the 1789 motion because that is the date when we started running up debt in this country. In essence, it says this: We cannot pass a budget here in this 5-, 10-year cycle that adds more debt to the backs of our children than the total debt that was added to this country from 1789 through January 20, 2009.

I think that is a fairly reasonable standard. We are going to say you cannot exceed the amount of debt that is being added by this budget-- that amount of debt cannot exceed the amount of debt that has been added to this country since our beginning, 230-some-odd years.

We have to have some standard to live by. That seems like a reasonable one, that in 5 or 10 years we do not take the debt up so quickly and so horrifically that we actually exceed all the debt put on the backs of the American people since the beginning of our Nation, from 1789 through January 20, 2009.

This standard, if it is passed, will be a standard that will be enforced under the budget. The effect of it will be that we will have to figure out some way to

reduce debt or the rate of growth of debt under this budget. That is reasonable. If it is the desire of this administration to radically expand the size of Government, as it appears to be the desire of this administration to take spending in this Government up to astronomical levels in the context of our historical spending at the Federal Government, to go from 20 percent of GDP up to 25, 26 percent of GDP, if that is the purpose of this administration, and it appears to be their purpose, it is their purpose, it is what they said they are going to do in this bill, in this budget, well, then they cannot do it by passing those bills on to the next generation and creating this massive debt.

They have to come up with some other way to do it. My suggestion would be that they do not spend that much money. That would be the suggestion from our side of the aisle. But maybe from the other side of the aisle is that they raise taxes radically on all working Americans, which they do anyway in this bill, but they would have to raise money in any event. We should not put the burden on our children by creating all this additional debt.

This is a simply fairly reasonable test as to how much debt this budget should be able to run up on our people. It should be less debt in 5 years than has been run up on the American people in over 200 years.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we are going to start voting shortly. I ask unanimous consent that the votes be in the order as listed in the original unanimous consent request under which we are functioning, which would be Senators Stabenow, Johanns, Gregg, Sessions, Ensign, Cornyn, Alexander, Coburn, DeMint, and Vitter.

As I understand from the chairman--and certainly it is our sentiment--we can pretty much begin voting whenever anybody is ready.

I ask unanimous consent that the time between now and 7 be equally divided between the two parties under the leadership of myself and Senator Conrad, and that should Senator Ensign be here, he has the last motion to instruct which we need to discuss. So he gets 10 minutes from our side or such time as he may desire from our side that is still remaining.

Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk on behalf of Senator Johanns and ask that it be reported.

I send a motion to the desk on behalf of Senator Ensign and ask that it be reported.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, this motion is fairly simple but very important. Since our country began in 1789, we have been adding debt to the American people. All this says is that all the debt that has been run up, from 1789 to 2009, through January 20, 2009, that that total debt should not be exceeded during the term of this budget. It seems like a fairly reasonable request. If we do not follow it, we are going to end up passing on a debt to our children that they cannot support. I hope people will support this limitation on the addition of debt to our Nation and to our children.

Mr. President, with my additional time, I would simply note if that is the position the majority takes, then everybody should vote for it.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I yield the Senator 3 minutes.

How much time is still pending for the various parties?

I see the Senator from Oklahoma.

Madam President, I will yield myself a few minutes.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, we had represented to our colleagues that we would begin voting at 11:30. We have an inordinate number of votes already in the queue. I hope people will appreciate the fact that the number of amendments pending right now is going to take us well into the evening tonight, headed toward midnight. I recognize everybody wants to get their amendment up, and that is their right, but I would simply counsel that if we are going to complete this bill--which probably I should not counsel for since I am not for it, but as a practical matter, if we are going to complete this bill, we need to be a little bit judicious as we ask for votes on amendments; otherwise, we will be here well into Friday, if not into Saturday at this rate.

At this point, in order to recognize the fact that we are already behind schedule a little bit, I would suggest to the chairman that we yield back all time, even though I had a brilliant statement in opposition to the bill.

I do have 10 minutes left, so I will yield the Senator 5 minutes.

I, first, wish to take a minute, however, to say I appreciate Senator McCain's full substitute. I think it is a very positive substitute. It does what the American people need to have done. It controls spending in the outyears.

The essence of the problem with the budget that has been brought forward by the President and by the Senator from North Dakota is that in the outyears, the debt explodes and it explodes as a result of an explosion in spending. Senator McCain has taken an aggressive effort to try to change that course of action so our kids have an affordable Government. I congratulate him for it.

I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Nevada.

Madam President, 33\1/2\ hours.

Madam President, will the Senator yield?

I know the Senator mentioned this, but I wish to reinforce it. This was a proposal that came from President Obama's administration and it was in his budget; is that correct?

Madam President, I wish to speak in support of the Ensign amendment. It should have been done long ago. There is no reason that people who are working in a restaurant or at Wal-Mart in New Hampshire should have to subsidize Warren Buffett's drugs, which is what happens under present law. There is no requirement that people who are wealthy have to pay anything on Part D premiums.

I certainly hope we will approve the Ensign amendment.

At this point, I suggest that we yield back all time.

We yield back all time, and we will go to the vote on the Ensign amendment.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

The next amendment is Senator McCain, I believe.

Amendment No. 882, as Modified

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Reserving the right to object, we do not have copies of the side by sides. I suggest we hold those four that are involved until we get a copy of the side by sides. That would be the Democratic side by side to Bennett, the Bennett, the Democratic side by side to Enzi, and the Enzi.

Reserving the right to object, the wrong number was announced on Brownback. The number is 840.

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

Will the Senator allow us to do a unanimous consent?

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

What about voice votes?

No. 788.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that they be agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to send a modification to the desk on behalf of Senator Brownback to his amendment No. 840.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of Senator Graham, to withdraw amendment No. 898.

Mr. President, if the Senator would be willing to let us pass over this amendment for a minute, we have some questions on our side, and hopefully we can clear them up.

We have some questions on our side. Hopefully, we can clear them up. I ask the Senator, can we move on to the next amendment and move back to yours?

Mr. President, the Senator has used her minute.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Reserving the right to object, and I will not, I want to point out that in New Hampshire we have no sales or income tax. If people want to escape these taxes, they should come to New Hampshire.

Madam President, obviously, this is not the appropriate vehicle to legislate a national usury law. Even if a national usury law made sense, which it does not, because this is clearly a States rights issue, I am not sure what we would use here. Would we use the Koran or the Bible for setting this?

Let's be honest, a national usury law is not a good idea. Its time has not come and this amendment should be defeated.

Would the Senator take a voice vote?

We will vote on both.

Is the germaneness well taken on this?

I didn't even make the motion to waive, but I am happy to have the question be on the motion to waive.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, if the motion was agreed to, then we have to vote on the amendment.

Yes. I ask unanimous consent.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendments Nos. 913, as Modified, and 875, as Modified

No, Durbin.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of organizations opposing this budget resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I would like to take a minute to thank the majority leader and Republican leader for their assistance in helping us move this bill in a reasonably expeditious way, considering it is the budget.

I especially wish to thank the chairman and his staff, headed up by Mary Naylor. They do an extraordinary job. They are extremely professional and very courteous to the minority. It is always an open and fair process when we take up the budget, and they set an excellent standard.

I additionally wish to thank my staff, headed up by Cheri Reidy and Jim Hearn, Allison Parent, and they do a fabulous job. I also wish to thank the folks up there on the dais because they stay here all day and make sure we are in order and keeping things on the move and we thank them very much for their time.

Mr. President, I rise today with a heavy heart and a deep sense of gratitude to pay tribute to Cpl Michael Ouellette of Manchester, NH, for his service and the sacrifice he paid for his country.

Michael exhibited willingness and enthusiasm to serve and defend his country after visiting hurricane-ravaged New Orleans in 2005. He subsequently joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Iraq before deploying to Afghanistan. Tragically, on March 22, 2009, Michael paid the ultimate sacrifice. In support of his brothers in arms and the country he loved, Michael was killed by an improvised explosive device in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Corporal Ouellette will live on as a decorated hero and the epitome of a patriot.

Michael graduated from Manchester Memorial High School in 1999. A beloved member of the Manchester community, Michael was the embodiment of selflessness. With the same sense of altruistic integrity that led him to help an unfamiliar and unsuspecting Memorial High classmate fix a flat tire; Michael answered the call to help his country.

In giving his life to protect our freedoms, Michael personified our greatest attributes as citizens. His hard work and dedication was paramount to his unit's success and places him among the great heroes and citizens our state has known. Michael was regularly recognized for his courageous actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, receiving the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, the Iraq Campaign Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal. He will always be remembered for his courage, kindness, and unwavering devotion.

My thoughts, condolences, and prayers go out to Michael's family. I offer them my deepest sympathies and heartfelt thanks for Michael's service. We will keep his memory alive knowing that his efforts have made us safer and have preserved the liberties we enjoy every day. God Bless Michael Ouellette.

Yes.

Mr. President, we still have to work on this, but I would like to be recognized to offer an amendment after Senator Kerry completes his amendment.

Only if it passes.

Mr. President, it would only be at risk if it passes?

Well, only if it is adopted.

Would the Senator yield on this point? If I might inquire of the Chair, ``at risk'' does not mean the resolution has necessarily gone over the level of being--of losing its privileged status?

This is, by the Chair's definition, a corrosive amendment. There would have to be a series of corrosive amendments to meet the point where the bill loses its status as privileged. One single amendment that is corrosive does not necessarily mean the bill has lost its privileged status. It simply means it is moving in the direction of being at risk of losing its privileged status; is that true?

So it is possible this amendment could pass. If passed, it would be--could be deemed corrosive but would not be deemed fatal to the privileged status of the bill?

Mr. President, if I might inquire. But the amendment itself is not fatal?

Mr. President, as an aside, I think it is important to note the chairman has said this will not come back from the conference committee, which is interesting and informative. I think it is fair that he has said that. It reflects the influence the chairman has on the conference committee.

Therefore, I presume, since the chairman has said, relative to reconciliation, it should not occur in the Senate on the issue of health care or the carbon tax, national sales tax, that the chairman will use the same influence to assure us we will not see those matters come out of the conference committee.

In addition, I wish to ask a parliamentary inquiry: I understand there is a wall, not a wall of debt--although that also is involved in this bill--but there is a wall being built of corrosive activity, potentially, with a series of amendments that might be adopted on the floor that the Parliamentarian deems to be corrosive. At some point, there is the theoretical possibility, as the Chair has said, that you might even bring the budget resolution's privilege into issue on the floor.

I guess my question is: Why, if this is just one element of that wall, on the resolution as it reaches the floor, would it be definitive relative to the conference report?

In other words, why doesn't there have to be a series of amendments that are corrosive in order to make the conference report privilege fatal? Why would one amendment make the conference report fatal if it does not make the budget on the floor fatal, if the Chair understands the question?

I think my question was, to make it more succinct, if this were the only corrosive matter in the conference report and since it was not fatal to the budget resolution as a single corrosive matter on the floor, why would it be fatal to the conference report? Why isn't the conference report something that is subject to the same test of corrosiveness as the budget resolution is on the floor?

So is the Chair saying that it is possible--more than theoretical but possible--that this amendment in the conference report would not be fatal to the conference report's privilege but would simply be corrosive of that privilege and that the conference report could retain its privilege with this amendment in it, that that is a possibility?

But not theoretical?

Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, we would be amenable to taking both of the Senator's amendments by unanimous consent if she is amenable to that.

Has the Senator called up her second amendment? I suggest she call it up.

Amendment No. 774

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the two amendments recently called up by the Senator from Arkansas be agreed to.

Mr. President, just to clarify the procedure, as I understand it, we will go to my amendment which deals with a task force on how we deal with entitlement reform, tax reform, and the amendment after that will be Senator Kyl's amendment on health care rationing. Then I think we take a break. I am not sure about that, but I believe there will be a break. Then there will be a series of votes on the pending amendments. After the votes--this is not in the form of a request; it is a statement of where we are--we will be going to Senator McCain, who has an amendment. From there we still have not decided.

Correct.

Should we lock that in? Can I get the chairman's attention? Can we lock in that order?

Mr. President, I ask the clerk to report my amendment. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment.

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

Mr. President, this is actually a pretty significant amendment. In fact, it is a very significant amendment if we are able to follow through on its purposes. It is something the chairman and I have worked on a great deal for a number of years. I believe, and I think I speak correctly that the chairman believes, our problems in this Nation relative to the cost of the Government in the years to come, especially as we move into the full retirement of the baby boom population, are extraordinary; that we are facing massive amounts of expenditures to support the baby boom generation in retirement.

As we know, the baby boom generation essentially doubles from 35 million to 70 million. The cost of the entitlement programs that support that generation and others simply overwhelm the ability of the Government to pay those programs and forces us into a situation where the debt of the Government will overwhelm our children.

The discussion on this issue has been broad and extensive in our Nation, carried forward in large part by a number of citizen groups which are totally dedicated to trying to address constructive action in this area, especially the Peterson Group, which is headed by the former Comptroller General, David Walker.

This amendment is an attempt to start addressing that issue sooner rather than later through a task force procedure. But it is not your typical task force. We have all seen commissions and task forces. In fact, on these specific issues--Medicare reform, Social Security reform, and tax reform--we have seen a lot of task forces. This is a little different--substantially very different.

Essentially, what this does is create a task force which is bipartisan so there can be no question about everybody being at the table and everybody having a fair hearing of their views, which involves the players who are involved in the decision process--Members of Congress and members of the administration.

The idea is to set up a procedure where that task force reaches agreements, hopefully, on issues such as reforming Social Security, so we continue to deliver high-quality Social Security benefits to our retirees, reforming Medicare along the same lines so people continue to get high-quality Medicare and health care who are retired, reforming our tax laws so we basically have the opportunity to make sure we have a tax law that works for the Nation and produces the revenues we need.

It moves down the road, coming forward with policy in all those areas so those programs, specifically the entitlement side--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--become either solvent over their actuarial life or move dramatically down the road toward solvency.

The problem we have is those three programs alone--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--presently have an unfunded liability of $60 trillion over their actuarial life. Mr. President, $60 trillion is a massive amount. The goal is to try to reduce that unfunded liability in a constructive way that allows the benefits to still be robust and reasonable, while the cost is affordable to the younger generation that has to pay those benefits through their tax burden.

The reason we have chosen this procedure is that we have concluded that if you put policy on the table initially, if you say, OK, we are going to change this element of Social Security or this element of Medicare or this element of tax law, there are constituencies in this city who immediately surround you and start shooting at you for a variety of reasons. Some genuinely disagree with the policy. Much of it is essentially the way Washington works. There are a lot of constituency groups in the city that basically generate their revenues from the fact that they are able to create concern amongst the people who participate in their group. And as a result of our putting a policy on the table--somebody putting a policy on the table--they try to use that as a mechanism to generate concern and raise money for their organization.

It has never worked. A lot of different people tried putting the policy on the table first. All that happens is everybody goes to their corners and starts shooting away. What we have concluded is we should have a procedure that drives the policy, and it is a procedure that leads to policy action.

So this task force, which will be absolutely bipartisan in its makeup, would be required to report in a way that is absolutely bipartisan, which is what is critical, so their report would be seen and would be actually fair and bipartisan. We would have a series of initiatives, of policies, which would then come to the Congress and have to be voted on with supermajorities. It would have to be voted on what is known as fast track around here, where there is no way to avoid voting on it and where you cannot hide behind amendments. You actually have to vote up or down on the various policies proposed by this task force. Then, of course, it would go to the President. He would have the right to veto it if he did not like it, but it would get to the President because it would be a fast-track event. It would lead to action on these core issues that are really at the essence of our problems as a society relative to going forward and being fiscally sound as a nation and also being able to take care of people who are retired and make sure our children have a nation they can afford and a government they can afford. It is a pretty significant step if we were able to pursue this course.

I congratulate the chairman for being a force on this issue for many years.

That is basically the amendment, which essentially says we want to pursue that course of action. It, unfortunately, does not legally create this

event because that type of an action would require legislation, and as those who follow the budget process know, the budget is not signed by the President. It is a resolution; it is not a bill. In order to execute on this, it would require an actual piece of legislation signed by the President. But this amendment makes a fairly definitive statement that this is the course of action we need to get about doing. We do need to get about doing it. We do need to.

I think it is a positive statement on a very critical issue. If we were to do this, if we were to actually pursue this initiative on a task force as the chairman and I have talked about for a while, my goodness, we would be doing good work for the American people. We really would. We would be taking on what is so critical to making sure we pass on to our kids a better nation.

I hope it will be supported. It has bipartisan support. My primary cosponsors are Senators Lieberman and Voinovich. I have been working with the chairman. Hopefully, he is reasonably comfortable with it. As we move down the road, hopefully we can accomplish this.

Mr. President, I ask of my time--not at this point, but at some point down the road that is convenient to the chairman and myself in the debate--that 5 minutes be reserved for the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich, so he can speak on this matter.

Mr. President, I would just note on this number--because the number is important--that I disagree with the logic here that the chairman has put forth because the purpose is bipartisanship. It is not that one party controls the Government or the other party controls the Government; the whole purpose here is to get bipartisanship so that the American people are confident that whatever this task force reports is fair because this task force is going to have very significant authority and extra legislative authority, and it is not going to work unless people are comfortable.

Regrettably, under the format the chairman is talking about, you would only need two of the six Republicans. There would only be 6 of the 16 who would be Republicans, and only 2 would have to vote with the majority in order to report it, and that means that doesn't work. You don't end up with bipartisanship that way, I don't think. That is why a majority vote means you would have to have four of the six Republicans vote with it, and one presumes that is not going to be the problem. Hopefully, all 6 and all 10--all 16--will be voting for whatever the proposal is.

You can't create a situation where one side will be viewed as having the capacity to roll the other side within this task force. That is the opposite of the purpose of a task force. That is why we went to this proposal. In fact, the original concept was 16--8 and 8--back when the Democratic Party controlled the Congress and we controlled the administration, and with the 8 and 8 split, it took 4 members of either party--half of either party's membership on the task force--to vote for it. So that concept of having a commitment of the membership from both sides to the bill--at least the majority of both sides--is something we have actually had in the past.

In any event, I would regret it if the chairman opposes this because I think it will undermine our ability to move forward. But I see Senator Kyl is here, and he has the next amendment.

Mr. President, I want to make sure the Senator's rights are protected.

We are going to get a vote on the Senator's amendment prior to the vote-arama?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, traditionally--I think we ought to go back to the usual order on Whitehouse-Boxer. It being a second degree, it would go first.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, how did we decide to deal with Senator Kyl's amendment?

Mr. President, we would be willing to take the Lieberman- Collins amendment by unanimous consent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Lieberman- Collins amendment be agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we approve the following amendments, agreed to by both sides: Senator Casey, amendment No. 783; Senator Kerry, amendment No. 732; Senator Isakson, amendment No. 762; and Senator Shaheen, amendment No. 776.

Mr. President, I remind our colleagues that these are 10- minute votes. This is sort of like the hors d'oeuvre for tomorrow. Get used to this. Please try to stick around.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 835

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Isakson be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. President, this amendment is an attempt to move down the road in resolving what is at the center of the problems which we have as a nation for fiscal policy in the future, which is that we are passing on to our children a country they cannot afford, primarily driven by the cost of entitlement programs. There are $66 trillion of unfunded entitlements.

This is a proposal to start to address that issue through using a fast-track procedure, with a bipartisan task force. The debate this morning was about how that task force is structured. We believe, I feel strongly, that the task force must be bipartisan or will not be viewed as fair.

In order to be bipartisan, a majority of both the minority members of the task force and the majority members of the task force have to vote for the proposal, whether or not there is going to be a membership which gives the majority a significant number of members more than the minority. But that minority membership has to vote as its group as a majority. It is the only fair way to do this; otherwise, you could end up with a report where, let's say, there are six Republicans on the task force and only two approve it. That would not work properly. We need bipartisanship in this effort.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be approved.

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

Madam President, the pending amendment is not germane to the measure now before the Senate. I raise a point of order under section 305(b)2 of the Budget Act.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote and lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 806

Madam President, for the information of my colleagues on my side of the aisle, we intend to proceed, and I will list the speakers that we have this evening who have informed us that they wish to have time. Tomorrow, when we start the voting sequence, their amendments will be in order relative to the sequence that they are speaking here tonight; so the purpose of that being they do not have to call up their amendment tonight to protect their position in the order.

We are going to begin with Senator McCain for 15 minutes. It is understood that there will be alternating speakers. On our side: McCain, 15 minutes; Senator Vitter, 10 minutes; Senator Coburn for 10 minutes; Hutchison for 10 minutes; Bennett for 10 minutes; Senator Brownback for 10 minutes; Senator Snowe for 10 minutes; Senator Barrasso for 10 minutes.

That is not a unanimous consent request. That is for the information of my colleagues. Actually, I ask unanimous consent that this evening, as these people arrive, these Senators be granted those times.