Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to take on a cause which I know is close to the hearts of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, which is to assert the privilege of pay-go. I have heard innumerable arguments made on the other side of the aisle about the importance of the pay-go mechanisms in this Congress: how pay-go will be used to discipline our spending as a Congress and how pay-go is the way we get to financial and fiscal responsibility as a Congress. In fact, 2 weeks ago, I believe it was, the majority leader came to the floor and offered a brandnew pay-go resolution as a matter of statute and said that this is one of the key pillars of the majority party and the President in the area of how you discipline spending and bring our spending house in order. The President has mentioned pay-go on numerous occasions also.

Why all this talk about pay-go? Because I think people are beginning to realize--certainly our constituents--that the government is spending too much money; that we are running up too much debt; that we are passing bill after bill after bill in this Congress which we are not paying for. The cost of those bills is going to our children. We are going to double the Federal debt here in 2013. We are going to triple the Federal debt in 2019 under the President's budget and the budget

passed by the Democratic leadership in this Congress. The Federal debt increases by $11 trillion over the next 9 years of this budget that is being proposed by the President--$11 trillion. We get to a point where our Nation is basically spending so much and borrowing so much that our financial house is unsustainable.

Those are not my words. Those are the words actually of the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of OMB. They both said their own budget that they sent up here was unsustainable in its present form because it spends so much more money than we have, and those bills get passed right on to our kids.

Well, in defense of their sending up a budget that spends all of this money we don't have and doubles the debt in 2013 and triples it in 2019, they said they were going to assert pay-go rules which would discipline this Senate on the issue of spending. At the time they made that assertion I said, Oh, come on, give us a break. Over the last 3 years that this Congress has been under Democratic control, under liberal control, in over 20 instances, pay-go as it presently exists in the law was waived, costing over $\1/2\ trillion in new spending. Approximately $\1/2\ trillion that should have been subject to pay-go rules was waived--simply waived--by the other side of the aisle: We are not going to pay attention to pay-go rules, we are going to spend the money and add the debt to our children's backs.

I think the American people notice this and are certainly frustrated about this, because they intuitively understand--it is called common sense--if you spend all of this money you don't have, the debt is going to come back to roost on our children's backs and it reduces their quality of life. Obviously, if you have a government that runs up deficits which exceed the capacity of our ability to repay them, it is our children who end up paying the cost of that profligate spending. It is our children who end up with these bills. Their standard of living will be reduced as a result of all of this new deficit and debt this Congress has passed and which this Congress has proposed.

So for political cover, they called up a couple of weeks ago this pay-go resolution and said we are going to assert pay-go around here on everything that comes through this Congress. We are going to make sure the financial house of this Congress is disciplined by the rule of pay- go.

Well, that is why I want to help them, because here is a new bill on the floor of the Senate.

It violates pay-go. It violates their own rules. It violates this great sanctity that they claim was going to be the cause of fiscal discipline--the pay-go rule. Just a few weeks ago, we passed a pay-go resolution here. What did we get? Within 2 weeks, we have a bill that violates the pay-go rules.

The pay-go rules, as we have them--and they are the law, the rule of the Senate today--say that pay-go will apply for any legislation that increases the deficit in the first 5-year period or in the first 10- year period. This bill has been scored by CBO as violating that rule. It increases the deficit by $12 billion, unpaid for, in the first 5- year period. This bill is, therefore, subject to a pay-go point of order.

We are going to hear a specious argument from the other side of the aisle that, well, in the year 2020 we account for all this and we get the money back. Well, I don't believe that. I don't believe the check is in the mail either. The American people don't believe that. More importantly, the rules of the Senate don't allow that. The rules of the Senate make it very clear that if it adds to the deficit in the first 5 years, it is subject to a pay-go point of order. And this is not a small amount here; $12 billion is a lot of money. I know that under the way we function here, and we talk about trillions--and the President rolled out just yesterday a new $100 billion or $200 billion package of health care, added to a $2.4 trillion package of health care--I know that billions become lost sometimes in that debate. But $1 billion is a lot of money, and this is $12 billion added to our children's backs in the way of deficit and debt. Most Americans see that as a lot of money. You could run the entire State government of New Hampshire for about 3 years on that. Yet we are going to run up the deficit by $12 billion, in violation of our own rules.

There is something even more outrageous about this bill. It is pretty outrageous that we would have all the sanctimonious discussion from the other side of the aisle about how they are going to live by pay-go 2 weeks ago and then have the first bill they bring forth violate the rules of pay-go. That is pretty outrageous in and of itself. But this bill, in an act of gamesmanship that really deserves a special award-- maybe a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics for gamesmanship in fiscal policy and how you basically pass on to your children a major new debt without telling them it is coming--certainly this bill would deserve a gold medal in that category.

On top of the pay-go violation, this bill creates $140 billion of deficit and debt. Now, even on the other side of the aisle, that has to be considered a lot of money. Maybe they don't consider $12 billion a lot of money, but $140 billion has to be big money. So $140 billion of deficit and debt is built into this bill even though the bill, on its face, states that it only spends $12 billion or $15 billion, something like that. How do they do that? How could that possibly be? Because what they have done here--and as I said, this deserves a gold medal for manipulating the financial house of the Senate and the Congress in a way that is avoiding actual accountability for the debt you are adding onto our children's shoulders--is they have put into the baseline the highway money. So the billions in highway money for this year in this bill, multiplied out over 10 years, comes to $140 billion, and then they have claimed that is all offset, all that money is offset. How do they claim it is offset? Well, it is tactical, but follow this because it is the ultimate game in double bookkeeping--something Al Capone might have done were he running the books of the Senate. There is a highway trust fund that doesn't have enough money to pay for the roads they want to build--the highway committee in this Congress, the EPW Committee. They want to build more roads than the trust fund has money coming in for, so they take money from the general fund and transfer it to the highway trust fund.

They allege that 10 years ago or so, the highway trust fund lent money to the general fund and no interest was paid on that money lent to the general fund. First off, at the time they passed the law that said no interest was to be paid on it--but it would be ridiculous to pay interest between the two funds anyway--even if you accepted that argument, you couldn't get to the numbers they are talking about. What they have done is claimed that any money that comes out of the general fund to fund the highway fund is an offset. That is an interesting concept. Therefore, it doesn't get scored against the deficit by the highway fund.

Where do we get the money we took from the general fund to fund the highway fund? The answer is pretty simple: We borrow it from China, from Saudi Arabia, from Americans, and our kids get a bill called a piece of debt that they have to pay off. This double-entry bookkeeping, in the tradition of Al Capone basically, when simplified, means that it adds $140 billion of new deficit and debt to the general fund, which has to be paid by our kids--not offset, unpaid for, simply money spent.

Do you know something. We are spending a lot of money around here that we don't have, and it is not right. I think the American people would like us to stop that. If we are going to spend this money on roads, then let's pay for it. Don't hide the fact that you are not paying for this with some gamesmanship called offsetting highway fund with general fund money. I think that is a pretty cynical act. If you don't have the courage to stand before this Congress and say publicly that we want to spend $140 billion and don't want to pay for it, then you are not fulfilling your responsibility to your constituents, because that is what you are doing. You have an obligation not to try to hide what you are doing in some sort of bookkeeping manipulation, which gets you a gold medal for bookkeeping manipulation but certainly doesn't do anything for transparency and honesty in government, on top of having a pay-go violation--$12 billion as scored by CBO.

This point of order lies. There is $140 billion of new spending proposed in this bill, which isn't paid for. It is spending

that isn't paid for, and it is authorized and going to be spent. That is pretty inexcusable because it is claimed that it is paid for, which is the real hypocrisy of what we are seeing.

My colleagues on the other side may vote against this point of order. I cannot understand how they can do that, and I cannot understand how, when the majority leader comes down here--and I am sure he will or one of his representatives will--and says pay-go should not lie here because in 2020 we are going to pay for all this, that they can claim anything other than the fact that a pay-go point of order lies. I mean, it does lie.

What is a pay-go point of order? It is the CBO telling us that we have violated our own rules, called pay-go, and we are spending money that goes to the deficit--in this case, $12 billion.

So as a very practical matter this is a pretty black-and-white situation: either you are for enforcing fiscal discipline here with a pay-go point of order or you are not. I have to say, if this pay-go point of order fails, then I think we ought to follow it up with a unanimous consent that says we are going to rid ourselves of pay-go as an enforcement mechanism because we are then saying it doesn't mean anything. Clearly, that would be the only conclusion you could reach.

A pay-go point of order makes it clear: There is $12 billion of deficit spending in the first 5-year window, which violates the pay-go rules set up by this Senate and specifically proposed and promoted by the Democratic majority as a way to give us fiscal discipline, and we are ignoring it, overruling it, and we are bypassing it with this piece of legislation if we do waive the pay-go rule.

At this point, I make a point of order that the pending amendment offered by the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, would increase the on- budget deficit for the sum of years 2010 to 2014. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to section 201(a) of S. Con. Res. 21, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2008.

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

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to remember and honor Army SPC Marc Paul Decoteau of Waterville Valley, NH, for his service and supreme sacrifice for his country.

Specialist Decoteau demonstrated a willingness and dedication to serve and

defend his country by joining the U.S. Army. Just as many of America's heroes have taken up arms in the face of dire threats, Marc dedicated himself to the defense of our ideals, values, freedoms, and way of life. His valor and service cost him his life, but his sacrifice will help spare millions from lives under tyranny and oppression.

An exceptional student-athlete, Marc played an integral role in two Plymouth Regional High School State football championships and was also a standout lacrosse player. Marc graduated from Plymouth High School in Plymouth, NH, in 2008 and, sensing a call to duty, enlisted in the Army shortly thereafter.

Tragically, on January 29, 2010, this brave 19-year-old gave his life for this Nation while in support of combat operations in the Wardak Province of Afghanistan. At the time of this hostile action, Specialist Decoteau, a member of the 6th Psychological Operations Battalion out of Fort Bragg, NC, was serving his first tour in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

A beloved member of the Waterville Valley community, Marc was respected and admired by all those around him. As a loyal member of the U.S. Army, he continually performed above and beyond all expectations. Specialist Decoteau will live on as a decorated hero and a patriot.

Marc was recognized for his service several times, receiving the National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Campaign Star, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, and Parachutist Badge. He was also posthumously awarded the Army Commendation Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, and NATO Medal.

My condolences and prayers go out to Marcs parents Mark and Nancy, his brother Andrew and sister Maddie, and his family and friends. I offer them my deepest sympathies and most heartfelt thanks for their sacrifice. Marc exemplified the words of Daniel Webster who said, ``God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.'' Because of his efforts, the liberty of this country is made more secure. God bless Marc Decoteau.

Madam President, first, I thank the Democratic leader, the majority leader, for his endorsement of the Conrad-Gregg initiative, although that is not what this amendment is about.

This amendment is about pay-go. Pay-go is one of those terms of art around here that has a political life of its own, and its political life is independent of its substantive action.

Yes, pay-go worked when we had it in the nineties. We had a Congress which was willing to enforce it. Regrettably, over the last 2 years, when pay-go has been in place as a budgetary item--not much different than doing it statutorily--pay-go has been waived by the majority of this Senate and specifically by the majority party on an incredible number of occasions. It has been waived. It has been gamed. It has been gone around. It has been stepped on. It has been ignored to the tune of $1 trillion. Madam President, $1 trillion of spending has occurred in the last 2\1/2\ years which should have been subject to a pay-go point of order, which should not have survived a pay-go point of order but against which no pay-go point of order was made because pay-go was gamed.

The idea that pay-go is a substantive exercise around here is politically inaccurate. It is political fraud. I mean, basically, pay- go is used to make a statement that you are going to be fiscally responsible, but it does not happen.

This is a nice political cover vote. I am going to vote for pay-go, and I am going to be tough on spending when, in fact, we know that whenever an item comes to this floor for all intents and purposes that should be subject to a pay-go point of order, it is not. Pay-go is not pay-go. Pay-go is Swiss-cheese-go. It is full of holes.

I have great respect for the other side of the aisle. So if they will rename this Swiss-cheese-go, I may vote for it. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that we change the name of pay-go to Swiss-cheese-go, and then I might be willing to vote for it.

I am not the leader, so I do not get leader time. I ask unanimous consent for another minute so I might respond to the leader.

Madam President, a little humor even in serious times does not hurt things, I do not think. The point is substantive, even if it was humorously presented, which is that pay-go around here has become farcical. It

is not used to discipline our budget process at all. That is why over $1 trillion of spending has resulted which should have been subject to pay-go points of order.

I do not think you can present a pay-go statutory point of order as being something other than what it will be, which is basically something so full of holes it will have virtually no effect on our capacity to discipline ourselves because we have already shown we do not discipline ourselves under the present pay-go rules we have. From my standpoint, this proposal does not hold water as a way to discipline ourselves and bring our fiscal house in order.

I appreciate the courtesy of the leader in allowing me to take an extra minute. I did not hear him object to my offer, but I will withdraw it.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

The Senator from Montana is right. We have to pay our bills. But we also have to make it clear we are not going to continue to run up bills we can't pay for. It is not responsible to raise the debt ceiling in this manner if we aren't going to put in place any responsible activity to bring under control the rising debt, and there is no proposal here to do that--in fact, just the opposite. The proposal from the administration, and passed by this Congress, was a budget that will increase the debt every year for the next 10 years by over $1 trillion, on average.

There is no proposal to bring that down. The debt will double in 5 years. It will triple in 10 years under the budget passed by the Democratic leadership of this Congress and the President's budget. That is not fiscal discipline.

To raise the debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion while doing nothing to address the debt and how it is being added to is totally irresponsible. It is like a drunken sailor asking to have the bar open all night.

Why are we going to this number, by the way? Why $1.9 trillion? So that the Congress does not have to face up to the debt ceiling before the next election. We ought to have to face up to it again before the next election because the people of this country have a right to know whether this Congress is going to do something about controlling the rate of growth of the debt before the next election.

Instead, we are seeing this attempt to try to take this off the table by moving it past the next election. The American people do not believe it should be off the table. That is what Massachusetts was all about. They are worried about this debt. They are worried about what we are doing to the next generation of Americans--to our children--by running up this debt.

This is not correct. We should not vote for this massive increase in the debt ceiling until we get some responsible action around here on the issue of how we are going to control the debt and deficit.

Madam President, if the Senator will yield, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to manage the time on our side.

After the Senator from Illinois, I will yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Alabama.

Madam President, I also wish to express my appreciation to the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Colorado, Senator Bennet, for supporting this effort by myself and Senator Conrad.

It is important to note what we are trying do is address what is coming at us as a fiscal crisis of inordinate proportions which will probably leave this Nation in a situation where it will either be fiscally bankrupt or confronting a massive reduction in the standard of living for our children.

It is a serious issue. I am glad there is a coming together on both sides on the need to address it. At this time I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Udall.

Mr. President, would the Chair advise us as to the status of the time?

I yield 5 minutes of my time to the Senator from North Dakota.

I yield the Senator an additional 4 minutes.

What is the time situation?

Did the Senator from Montana wish to speak?

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, let me first address to my colleagues the issue of the Baucus amendment, as modified now by the Grassley language. I think it is an important amendment.

A lot of my colleagues on our side of the aisle have come up to me and said: We are concerned about the tax issue. I know a lot of people on the other side and our side of the aisle said: We are concerned about the Social Security issue. As I understand the Baucus-Grassley amendment, it essentially says: There is a 60-vote point of order now on Social Security benefits and taxes, so that before you can proceed to the commission's up-or-down vote, you will get two more votes--one on Social Security benefits and one on payroll taxes. So there can be no question but that those two extraordinarily sensitive issues are raised and are aggressively handled in a bipartisan way because you would have to waive it with 60 votes.

That is an important point. The reason I raise it is because I don't think there is a real issue here with Social Security benefits or taxes. I know the interest groups out there are ginning up the issue. That is what they do. That is how they make their money. That is how they get to drive around town in limousines. They send out fundraising letters and say: Conrad-Gregg is going to destroy Social Security or it is going to raise taxes. But that is not going to happen. Who is on the commission? There are eight people appointed by our leadership, Senator McConnell and Congressman Boehner, and there are eight people appointed by your leadership, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi.

So we are giving them a gun. Do you think they are going to put the gun to their head and pull the trigger on taxes or on Social Security? Of course not. They are going to act responsibly. The proposal they come back with is going to be bipartisan. That is the whole purpose. It is fair, it is balanced, and it will make progress. It will not completely resolve the problem, but it will make progress, and it will say to the world: We are making progress on this absolutely critical problem; which is the fiscal insolvency of our Nation that we are headed toward.

We know, without question, our country goes into what amounts to fiscal bankruptcy probably within 7, maybe 10 years. We will be unable to catch up with the debt we have put on the books. We will be unable to pay for that debt in a reasonable way because, basically, people are going to start saying: I am not going to lend you guys any more money, except at outrageous interest rates.

So we have to take action. We can wait until the time happens. We can wait until we hit this wall. We can wait until we go off this cliff, where our debt goes to 100 percent of GDP, which we know will happen. Today it was reported our deficit this year is going to be at least $1.34 trillion, and for as far as the eye can see it is going to be $1 trillion-a-year deficits and the debt will have doubled in 5 years and tripled in 10 years.

The practical implication of that is our Nation is on a path that is absolutely unsustainable, where our children will get a country where they cannot afford to pay down that debt or, if they do pay it down, it is going to basically take away the resources they would have used--our kids would have used--to buy a house, send their kids to college or get a new car.

Something should be done now. Why wait until we hit the wall? Isn't it our job, as responsible people, as the people who have been entrusted with the governance of this Nation, to do something? If you want to look at the scene of the crime where this has happened, it has happened in the Congress. We are the ones who have put on the books the policies which have led to this crisis, this looming crisis. So it should be our job to straighten it out. That is what this commission, this task force does. It is balanced, it is fair, and it is structured in a way that will be bipartisan because it requires a supermajority-- 14 of the 18 people--just to report the proposal. Then it requires a supermajority to pass it in both Houses. Then the President has to sign it or it comes back for a 67-vote veto override vote, which is a true supermajority.

So this proposal will be absolutely bipartisan, it will be balanced, it will be fair, it will address the outyear fiscal insolvency of this Nation, and it is the only game in town. There are a lot of other proposals floating around this place, but they are all political cover. That is all they are. They are all political cover. They are structured basically to give people a vote so they can go back and run a campaign ad and say: I was acting responsibly. I voted for the XYZ proposal. But none of those proposals work. We know they do not work. We have been here before. We have seen this before. We have seen this story before. Regular order does not work around here.

So unless you have fast-track approval, unless you have an up-or-down vote, unless you have no amendments--for the reasons the Senator from North Dakota has outlined--unless you have a balanced commission with a supermajority to report, you do not get bipartisanship, you do not get fairness, and you do not get action. So what we propose leads to action.

I wish to say, again, especially to people on my side, if you are concerned about this tax issue--which I think is a straw dog because I know Mitch McConnell is not going to appoint four Senators to this group who are for some sort of massive expansion in taxes, and certainly Congressman Boehner is in the same camp, so I think it is a straw-dog argument being ginned up by people who basically have other agendas, in my opinion--but if you believe it is a serious argument, then the Baucus amendment takes it away. It essentially takes it away, the Baucus-Grassley amendment.

So I would hope people would look at that amendment and agree with the chairman of the Finance Committee, the Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, that this is an appropriate amendment because it redresses the concerns around here on the issue of taxes and on the issue of Social Security and it makes this whole process even stronger.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I am sorry, what is the time again?

No. I will yield my 20 seconds to the Senator from North Dakota to complete our presentation.

Mr. President, first, let me congratulate the Senator from North Dakota. First, he was a ``voice in the wilderness,'' as we say in New Hampshire. That is the motto of one of our colleges. Then he moved from being in the wilderness to being on the side of the wilderness, and people were starting to listen. Now he has become the clarion call.

The simple fact is, his statement, which summarized it all, presents the problem as it is. The debt is the threat. He, in his statement he just made, outlined the implications of the debt. You cannot deny it. It is there. It is coming. It exists. It is being added to. The numbers simply cannot be ignored any longer. We are, as a nation, on a path where, if we continue to spend and run deficits as we have and as are projected, our Nation will not be able to maintain its standard of living. We will not be able to finance our debt. The value of our currency will come under acute threat.

The burden of taxes to pay for the cost of government will overwhelm the ability of people to live productive lifestyles. Inevitably--and this is not hyperbole, unfortunately--inevitably, we as a nation will go into insolvency of some form. Either we will have to inflate our economy radically or we will have to bear a burden that simply stifles the capacity of our children to have a high quality of life because of the cost of the government and the cost of the debt.

The Senator from North Dakota has cited the figures. We go to a public debt that is 100 percent of gross national product within the next budget window cycle. We crossed the 60-percent threshold, which is the tipping point, where, similar to a dog, we have trouble catching our tail because we have so much debt on the books, potentially, this year but certainly by next year.

These numbers are staggering. They are hard to understand--trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. As the Senator from North Dakota has also pointed out, the debt is owned not by Americans but by foreign nations. Today, China owns almost $1 trillion of our debt. Oil- exporting nations own, as a group, almost $1 trillion of our debt. We are shipping overseas the dollars which we should be reinvesting in the United States to create a more productive and vibrant economy and a better lifestyle for our Nation.

By the year 2017 or 2018, the interest on the debt alone will exceed every other account in the Federal Government. It will be approximately $900 billion a year, almost $1 trillion a year, more than what we spend on national defense, massively more than what we spend on education, on building roads, on doing the things a government is supposed to do.

Where does that interest go? It does not stay in the United States to benefit America and make us a stronger nation. It is going to go to countries such as China--not that I have anything against China-- countries that have bought our debt.

So we are on an intolerable path, a path of unsustainability, a path which leads us down the road to a nation which is less prosperous and has a lower standard of living than what we received from our parents. That is simply not acceptable. So how do we address this? Well, for years we have said: Let's do it by regular order. Let's come up with ideas and run them through the committee process, run them up the political flagpole, let the community of interest that wants to speak out on issues speak out on it. Then we will evolve solutions that work on these very difficult problems.

Most of the issue, by the way, is driven by the cost of the entitlement programs and, for years, nothing has happened. Nothing has happened. There is a reason for that. Our political system is inherently prejudiced against doing substantive activity on issues as big as entitlement reform. We have a system where, whenever anybody puts a policy on the table, a substantive, thoughtful policy or even a policy that is not thoughtful, as a presentation of the way you should address the cost and the burden of our government, it is immediately attacked either from the left or from the right.

They almost never even make it to the starting line. We have instance after instance of seeing this. So Senator Conrad and I decided you cannot do this by putting policy on the table. There are too many interest groups in this town that make their living off poisoning the will either from the right or the left because that is how they generate their income. They send out these letters to their constituent groups. If it is a Social Security group, they send it out in a Social Security-type envelope and say: if you do not send this money soon, tomorrow, somebody is going to ruin Social Security for you or, if they are a tax group, they send out the same type of letter that looks similar to an IRS form letter: If you do not send this money tomorrow, your taxes are going to go up radically.

So as a very practical matter, nothing ever gets past the starting line around here. Regular order does not, has not, and will not work on those issues.

We decided, rather than using that process, which we know leads nowhere, let's set up a process that does lead somewhere. We came up with what is basically, to thumbnail it, a procedure which is totally and absolutely bipartisan and fair, where neither side may game the other, which leads to a policy position, which then leads to a vote on that policy. That is the task force we have. The key components are that it is totally and absolutely bipartisan. Neither side can game the other. It takes 14 of 18 people to report out the proposals. They don't have to be proposals for everything, but the proposals that are agreed to have to have a supermajority; that is, 78 percent of the people on this task force have to vote for it. Since the membership of this task force is appointed by the leadership of the two parties, a majority of the party membership of both parties on this task force has to vote for the final proposal.

One presumes that whoever goes on this task force, if chosen by the leaders of their party in the Senate, whether Senator Reid or Senator McConnell, or leaders of the party in the House, Ms. Pelosi or Mr. Boehner, is going to reflect fairly aggressively the viewpoints and the philosophies of the different parts. It will be a bipartisan report or it won't be a report at all. Then it comes to the Congress, and it has to be voted up or down on a supermajority vote. Once again, it basically moots the ability to game it. One side can't game the other. The proposal must be bipartisan and fair.

Why did we choose that path? Because the American people have shown very definitively that they will not accept proposals in these very big areas, especially Social Security and Medicare, that are not reached on a bipartisan agreement. They want fairness. They want to make sure nobody is gaming anybody around here. That is why we have these supermajorities. Then, it is on fast track, so the proposal has to be voted up or down and it cannot be amended. Why is that? Because, as we all know around here, amendments are for hiding in the corners. Amendments are offered not for the purposes of accomplishing anything but for the purposes of giving political cover. In fact, we are going to see a couple of amendments just like that on this issue, one from our side and one from the other side, so that people will have political cover if they vote against this task force approach.

The simple fact is, if you really want to do something here, you have to have an up-or-down vote on a fast track, and everything has to be on the table, all entitlement and tax reform issues. Why is that? Because this has to be bipartisan. It is that simple. I would be happy to have a commission that focused only on spending reductions or adjustments to Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security programs, but there isn't anybody on that side of the aisle who will agree to that. They would be happy to have a proposal that addresses tax reform, such as has been proposed on occasion by the Senator from North Dakota, which is to try to collect the $300 billion of taxes owed and not paid every year. Nobody on this side is going to accept that. Everything has to be on the table. The key to protecting both sides' interests in this exercise, so that Social Security isn't treated inappropriately and so the tax increases aren't done inappropriately, if there are tax increases, is to make sure that the product has to be bipartisan and it has to be reported on supermajorities, which this does. That issue is addressed.

We are here again. I don't know that we will get the 60 votes needed to pass this. It has obviously been attacked from the right and from the left, which usually means you are on a pretty good course. Regrettably, the President put out his Executive order proposal which I think undermined it, but then he has come to support it. But it may be a little late to the dinner here. On our side of the aisle, some of our major interest groups have come out against it.

I know this much: We are getting to the point where we don't have too many alternatives around here. If we don't do something like this fairly soon, I genuinely believe that somewhere between 5 to 10 years from now, probably between 7 and 10 years, we as a nation will find it very hard to sell our debt. Countries will look at us and say: You cannot sustain your situation. You have run up a debt that you cannot pay back, and I am not going to lend you money or, if they do, it will be at a very high price. At that point, the options for us will be very few. They will all be horrific options for our children because they will all lead to a lower standard of living for us as a nation. They will all make our country less competitive in the world economically, competition which is very aggressive and totally global now.

We can wait. We can punt this thing one more time, as we have done year-in and year-out. We can say there is not a problem out there or if there is a problem, if you don't address it the way we want to on our side or the way you want to on your side, then we won't vote for it. In the end, we will not have been responsible as people who have been given the mantle of government. We will not be fulfilling our responsibility to govern. Instead, the postwar baby-boom generation will be the first generation in history to pass on to our children a country with less prosperity than we received from our parents. That will not be a very good testament to our responsibility as people in charge of governance.

This is a chance. This is the closest we have ever gotten to this opportunity. I don't believe we will get this close again at any time in the future. We can either take it or we can allow it to pass. I have often said that Congresses are good at handling the next election but they are terrible at handling the next generation. Unfortunately, for years this issue used to be over the horizon. It is not any longer. It is not only on the horizon, it is closing fast. The red flags are everywhere. We have even seen Moody's, the rating agency, put the United States in a special category with England, not on a watch list, but they have given us a new definition compared to the rest of the industrialized countries. There is no question but the clock is ticking and the hour is late. If we don't proceed to action that leads to actual activity, that leads to actual policy, in my opinion we will not be fulfilling our responsibility as people who are elected to govern and to pass on to the next generation a stronger America rather than a weaker one.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator be willing to yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized after the Senator from California.

Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment offered by Senator Conrad, of which I am a primary sponsor, to address what is the second biggest threat our Nation faces. Clearly, the largest threat our Nation faces is the fact that terrorists who wish to do us harm might get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction and use it against us. That is our Nation's greatest threat. But after that, the biggest threat to this country is our fiscal situation and the fact that we are on a path where our Nation will go into bankruptcy because we will not be able to pay the debts we are running up.

You do not have to believe me on that point. This is not exaggeration any longer. This is not hyperbole for the purpose of political events. This is just the way the numbers work.

By the end of this year, our public debt will exceed 60 percent of GDP. That is known as a tipping point, when you owe that much money compared to how much you produce as a nation. Sixty percent is considered the tipping point toward an unsustainable situation.

Within 10 years--I actually think it will occur sooner--our public debt will cross the 90-percent threshold. When you get into those ranges, you are basically in a situation like a dog chasing its tail. There is no way to catch yourself. There is no way to catch up with the amount of debt you are putting on the books. The cost of bearing that debt eats up your resources as a nation. It takes away from your productivity and your prosperity.

This is not hyperbole, as I said. This is just real, honest projections on numbers which we already know exist. The proposal from the President in the last budget, under which we are now functioning, projects $1 trillion of deficit every year for the next 10 years.

Today we are taking up a debt ceiling increase which is proposed to be $1.9 trillion--that is the increase--taking the debt of our Nation up to $14 trillion. And it is not the end of these requests for debt ceiling increases because we know the debt is going to continue to jump by over $1 trillion a year every year as we move forward.

This chart reflects the severity of the situation. Historically, the Federal Government has used about 20 percent of the gross national product of what we cost the American people as a government. Just three programs--Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid--by the year about 2030 will represent spending that exceeds 20 percent of the gross national product. Everything else in the Federal Government, if we were to maintain our usual spending level, could not be done. Our national defense, education, building roads--all those sorts of things could not be done. But that does not stop there. With those three programs, the costs go up astronomically as we go out into the future.

To pay for those costs, we have to run up the debt of the United States at a rate that we have never seen. It will double in 5 years. It will triple in 10 years. Those are hard numbers. Our debt, as I said, will pass the 60-percent threshold.

Why is that considered a tipping point? Because to get into the European Union, which is a group of industrialized states, they have a threshold which a nation cannot have a public debt that exceeds 60 percent of GDP. It cannot have deficits that exceed 3 percent of GDP. Our deficits for the next 10 years will be between 4.5 percent and 5.5 percent of GDP and, as I said, the public debt will be up around 90 percent of GDP by 2019.

We know we are on an unsustainable course. What is the effect of that? What happens when we get our debt up so high? There are only two scenarios for our Nation. One, we devalue the currency. That means inflation. That is a terrible thing to do to a nation. It takes everybody's savings and basically cuts them by whatever the inflation rate is. It means your currency cannot buy as much as it used to. It means you cannot be as productive as a nation because you have an inflationary problem. Or, alternatively, you have to raise taxes at a rate that you essentially suffocate people's willingness to go out and create jobs, to be productive, take risk. And you take the money that should have been used for the purposes of taking risk and building that local restaurant or that small business and creating jobs and you move it over to pay debt.

Where do you send it? You send it to China because they own most of our debt or you send it to Saudi Arabia because they are the second biggest owner of our debt, instead of investing in the United States to make us more productive. Either scenario--a massive increase in tax burden to pay debt or inflation--leads to a lower standard of living for our children.

So as a very practical matter, what is going to happen to our Nation, under the facts which we know already exist, is that we will, for the first time, pass on to the next generation a nation which is less prosperous, where there is less opportunity for our children, and where the standard of living goes down rather than up. That is not acceptable. It is not fair and it is not right for one generation to do that to another. So we have to get our fiscal house in order.

Many would argue: Well, that is your job. That is why we sent you to Congress. Do your job. Get the fiscal house

in order, limit spending. That would be the position of our side. The other side's position would be to raise taxes. But we know that doesn't work. We know regular order does not work. Why? Because we have seen it doesn't work. We know that when you make proposals around here on these big issues of public policy, specifically entitlement programs or tax reform, you are immediately attacked. If you make them on entitlement issues and if you are a Republican, you are attacked from the left as trying to savage senior citizens. If you make a proposal on tax reform, you are attacked from the right as trying to increase taxes on working Americans.

Usually, those attacks are filled with hyperbole and gross misrepresentations, in many instances. People send out these fundraising letters. If you ever say anything about Social Security as a Republican--as to how it should be reformed and made more solvent-- immediately, it seems, there is a letter that goes out from this group called Citizens to Protect Social Security--or some other ``motherhood'' name--that looks like a Social Security check, and it goes to all these Social Security recipients. It says: If you don't send us $25 today, Senator Gregg is going to savage your Social Security payments. So that little group here in Washington takes in a lot of money. It doesn't do anything to affect Social Security policy, but they sure have a good time wandering around the city with all that money. In the process, of course, the well gets poisoned and nothing can happen around here. That is what happens. Nothing happens.

Well, that was maybe manageable for a while, but it is not manageable any longer. We are headed toward a wall as a nation. We are headed toward an event where we will essentially be insolvent as a country. We will become a banana republic type of situation, where we simply can't meet the obligations of our debt, or, alternatively, the people who lend us our money--many of them are Americans but a lot of them are Chinese--are going to say: I am not going to lend you any more money, America, or if I do, I am going to charge you an outrageous interest rate because I don't think you can pay it back because you have too much debt.

That is where we are headed, and we know it is there. It used to be over the horizon, so the Congress never worried about it and so nothing ever happened. It is not over the horizon anymore. It is well inside the horizon and it is closing fast. As I said, we passed the 60 percent threshold just this year. We will pass it this year, and we will hit 90 percent within this 10-year budget cycle. So regular order has not worked.

Some may argue: Well, the health care bill was regular order. That sure didn't work. Folks, that didn't work. It sent the cost curve up. It took resources which should have been used to address the Medicare insolvency situation and moved them over to create a new entitlement. It didn't work. Regular order has not worked around here because the politics don't allow it to work. The intensity of the community that defends these various issues will not allow constructive activity to occur under regular order.

So Senator Conrad and I came to a conclusion that, since regular order doesn't work and since we know we are headed toward this cliff, we should do something. We asked ourselves: Shouldn't we try some other approach, think outside the box? The conclusion Senator Conrad and I came to, in a bipartisan way--obviously, because he is the chairman of the Budget Committee and I am ranking--was let's set up a procedure which leads to policy, which leads to a vote, and guarantee that procedure is absolutely fair, absolutely bipartisan in its execution so nobody can game the other. I can't game Members of the Democratic side and Democratic Members can't game the Republican side. So the American people will look at the product of this commission and say: That is fair. That is bipartisan. I have some confidence in that.

So this commission, which is proposed in this amendment, does exactly that. It sets up a fair, bipartisan process, requiring supermajorities to produce policy and get a vote on those policies under fast track. Let me get into a couple specifics.

There are 18 members on this commission. They all have their fingers of responsibility on the buttons around here. There will be 16 people from the Congress and two people from the administration--10 Democrats and 8 Republicans. The Republicans will be appointed by the Republican leadership, the Democrats by the Democratic leadership. So the membership of this commission, everybody knows, will be people who reflect the philosophical views of the leadership of the two parties. That group will meet and have public hearings, and they will have an advisory group that has all the different constituencies who want to be heard on that, and who will give them input, and there will be a lot of public input. Then the group will have to come to a conclusion on the big issues that affect fiscal policy in this country.

The point is, neither side is going to come to the table on this unless everything is on the table. Let's be honest. If I say no taxes on the table, why would anybody on the other side come to the table? If they say no entitlement reform on the table, why would anybody on our side come to the table? So everything is on the table. But, of course, the interests of the different parties on issues such as taxes and entitlements are protected by the way the membership of the commission is appointed. Obviously, the Republican leader isn't going to appoint to this commission people who are going to go off on some tangent on tax policy which would be unacceptable to Republicans, and the same is true of the Democratic leader relative to entitlement reform.

So the commission is made up of a balanced and fair approach, and when it reports, 14 of the 18 people have to vote for it--14 of the 18. So neither side can game the other because the majority of both sides have to be for whatever the report is. Then it comes to the Congress, and 60 percent of the Congress has to vote on it. So neither side can be gamed. It has to be balanced and it is an up-or-down vote on the proposal. No amendments.

Why no amendments? That has been a point of controversy. People say: Well, you have to be able to amend it. No amendments. Because we all know what amendments are for on an issue such as this. They are for hiding in the corners. That is what Members do with amendments. They offer their amendment, and if it doesn't pass, they say: Oh, I can't vote for this; my amendment didn't pass. It is called a hide-in-the- corner approach.

Well, that is why we don't have amendments. It is up or down. The theory, of course, is the membership of this commission is going to be balanced, which it will be. That is not theory, that is reality. It will be balanced and bipartisan players who will understand these issues in a very substantive way. Two of those Members are on the floor right now, who I am sure will be members of the commission--and I am not one of them.

As a very practical matter, the result will be something that is politically doable. Will it be a magic wand that corrects the whole issue of this pending outyear insolvency of our country? No, absolutely not. But it will be a significant statement by the Congress of the United States that we recognize the seriousness of the situation we are in as a nation; that we recognize it is not fair for one generation to do this to another generation; that we recognize we will be unable to sell our debt as a nation--or sell it at a reasonable price in the fairly near future unless we take action. It will be a message on all those points, and it will be a positive message. The markets will react by saying: They are trying. The American people will react by saying: Thank God, there is finally a bipartisan effort to try to do something around here on this issue. Sure, it will not be the magic wand or the magic bullet that solves everything, but it will be a significant step, I suspect. I have confidence the people who will serve on this commission will be committed to that.

I realize this is a process that affronts many because it is outside the regular order. But the simple fact is, if we stand on regular order around here, we are going to go through a trapdoor as a nation because we are not going to stand up to the issues that are critical to putting us back on the road to solvency. So this is a proposal that is serious, it is bipartisan, and it has a fair amount of support--34 cosponsors. It is very unusual to have that many cosponsors around here on anything, and they are bipartisan. It is about half and half. Well, I think it is 14-20.

So I would hope my colleagues would vote for this. I understand my colleagues are hearing, on our side of the aisle, from a number of very credible people who oppose this because they are concerned or worried about the tax side. I understand the other side of the aisle is hearing from a considerable number of constituency groups of theirs who oppose it because they are concerned about the impact on entitlements. Maybe that means we have it right, that we have all these interest group- driven folks who are opposing it. I think it means we have it right, and I believe this is pretty much coming to be our last clear chance of getting something done; that the course we are on now is coming to the point of being irreversible, unless we do something such as this.

I don't believe it is correct, as I said, for one generation of political leaders to pass on to the next generation a country that will be in total fiscal disarray. We have a responsibility to act, and this is a way to act.

I appreciate the courtesy of the Members on the floor, and I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes, and that after my speech Senator Thune be recognized, unless the Senator from Montana has somebody in between he wishes to be recognized.

I ask unanimous consent that the next Member to be recognized on our side be Senator Thune.

I wish to thank Senator Thune for his courtesy.

Mr. President, I wish to speak a little bit here on this debt ceiling issue because it is critical. It is critical because of the size of it. We as a nation are running up debt at a rate we have never seen in history. The budget which we are presently functioning under will add approximately $1.4 trillion of debt from last year and potentially another $1.2 trillion next year. Under the budgets that were brought forward by the President, it looks as though we are going to have $1 trillion in deficits every year for the next 10 years. That is an expansion of our debt at a rate we have never seen before, except in a time of war.

What is the implication of that? Nobody understands what $1 trillion is. I don't understand what $1 trillion is. It is very hard to conceptualize $1 trillion. So I wish to try to put it in context.

We know for a fact that certain nations get into trouble when they allow their debt to get so large that their economy doesn't have the capacity to pay it down in an orderly way. We are regrettably seeing that today in Greece. There are other nations in Europe that appear to have the same types of problems, including Ireland, where their national debt, their sovereign debt, has gotten so large they are basically in a position where their capacity to pay it off is at risk. So the value of that debt gets adjusted by the marketplace and it becomes much more expensive for those nations to borrow, and at some point, even, potentially they can't borrow and they end up in what amounts to a national bankruptcy.

That has never been a threat to us as a nation because we have always had a vibrant economy, and because the dollar, ironically, is the currency of world reserve, we have been able to basically what is known as monetarize our own debt. There have always been people out there willing to lend to us as a nation because they have always presumed that the United States, because of our resilience, because of our economic strength, will always pay our debt, and that is why Treasurys are considered to be one of the safest investments in the world, or traditionally have been. That has been a great strength of our Nation, of course, to have this sort of integrity to our currency and to our ability to repay our debt. However, on the course we are presently pursuing, all of that is going to be called into question and called into question much sooner than we had expected, I suspect, or anybody had anticipated who had looked at this objectively 2 or 3 years ago.

We know there are certain thresholds that generate huge warning signs where red flags go up and say, your Nation is in trouble. A couple of those thresholds have actually been adopted by the European Union as they have looked at their membership and said, What is the proper deficit of an industrialized nation? What is the proper public debt ratio to GDP of an industrialized Nation? In Europe what they say is, You can't be a member of the European Union if your deficits exceed 3 percent of GDP and your debt exceeds 60 percent of GDP, your public debt. Well, our deficits are around 12 percent of GDP right now. They will ultimately go down, but there is no time in the next 10 years where they are projected to fall below 5 percent of GDP under President Obama's budgets. Our public debt is going to cross that 60 percent of GDP threshold probably within the next year. So arguably, as I said before on this floor, we would not be able to get into the European Union if we wanted to, because we would not meet their standards for fiscal responsibility as a nation. That is pretty serious.

What is even more serious is there is no end in sight to this. We are looking at a deficit and debt situation which will continue to expand and become even more and more problematic for us as a nation for as far as the eye can reasonably see which, for the purposes of discussion around here, is about 10 years.

We know that the public debt-to-GDP ratio, under the President's budget as proposed last year before this health care bill was taken up--and I would argue that this health care bill is going to radically aggravate the public debt issue in the outyears, and there will be debate about that because CBO will debate that point, but I don't think all the pay-fors will ever occur--independent of that, we know that under the budget as it is presently presented, the public debt is going to exceed 80 percent of GDP--80 percent of GDP--by the year 2019. In fact, there are some estimates that say it will exceed 100 percent of GDP before we hit 2020. Those are intolerable situations.

What is the practical implication of our adding that much debt through deficit spending over the next few years to our economy? A few things occur, and they are undeniable. They will occur on the path we are presently on. The first thing that will occur is it will be much harder for us to sell our debt because nations will start to say-- people around the world, including our own public, I suspect, will start to say, Can they really pay that back. When they cross that 60- percent threshold, which is basically a key tipping point on the ability of a nation to manage itself, and they start heading up towards 80, 90, 100 percent of GDP as the public debt ratio, can they really pay back their debt? People are going to say, Well, I am not so sure. I am going to charge them a fairly significant premium before I am going to lend them any money. So the cost of our interest will go up dramatically. In fact, it is projected that in the year 2019, interest on the public debt alone will exceed $800 billion a year. That is more being paid out in interest which goes to people all over the world-- people in China, people in Saudi Arabia, all over the world--that interest will be higher than any other item of Federal spending. What a waste of money that is. What a waste of money that is. What a misuse of money. All of that money could be used for something constructive in the United States--building infrastructure, building schools, assisting education, whatever. If you are going to spend it, why would you spend it on interest?

So we will be in a position where it will be harder for us to sell our debt. Actually, we will probably get to a position fairly soon--and I am willing to bet on this; I won't be in this Congress at the time, but before we hit the year 2020--where we will actually have to take some radical step as a nation in order to deal with our debt. Because if we allow it to go up under its present scenario, it becomes totally unsustainable. It is like a dog chasing its tail; it can't get there. We can't pay down the debt.

The practical implications of that are twofold: Either, No. 1, you inflate the economy and devalue the currency, and that is a very harsh thing to do to the American public because it devalues their savings and it makes it harder for the economy to be productive or, No. 2, you radically raise taxes to try to reach the obligations of the debt, and that also dramatically impacts the economy. It makes us less productive. It means less jobs will be created. Either one of those scenarios, or only one of those two scenarios, or maybe a combination will occur if we continue on our present course, which means that the next generation will actually have a lower standard of living than our generation. It means it will be much more difficult for the next generation of Americans to buy a house, send their kids to school, buy a car, to live the quality lifestyle we have had as a nation. In fact, it will be the first time in history, if we stay on our present course, that one generation has handed to another generation a lower standard of prosperity and quality of life. It is inexcusable to do that. It is unacceptable. Nobody in this body who has a public responsibility to the next generation--and we all have that responsibility--should do that to our children.

So what are we going to do to address it? Well, put very simply, we need to stop spending so much money. That is the bottom line. We need to stop spending so much money. Under the projections in this budget as it presently exists and was passed in this Congress, over my objection and over the objections of everybody on this side of the aisle, it is projected that we are going to be in a situation where, as I said, there will be $1 trillion deficits for as far as the eye can see and the size of government spending will go from 20 percent of GDP up to about 24, 25 percent of GDP if the health care bill is also passed. That will be the highest level of Federal spending that has occurred in this government since World War II. We have never had those types of levels of spending. So it is not a revenue issue--although right now it is a revenue issue because, obviously, right now the economy is in a recession--but over the long run it is not a revenue issue.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

It is a spending issue. It is not a revenue issue. It is primarily a spending issue. The fact is that we are spending a great deal more than we can afford as a nation, and this government has committed to a great deal more than we can afford. So we need to do something on the spending side of the ledger.

There is going to be a series of proposals brought forward by our side, and Senator Thune is going to offer one in a minute, to try to get to the issue. They won't solve the whole problem, but they will at least make significant steps down the road of restraint and show that we are starting to get serious about it, and they are reasonable ones. Senator Thune: End TARP. End TARP. We don't need it anymore. We should take those dollars and put them toward debt reduction. Freeze discretionary spending. That will be Senator Sessions' amendment, or something like that. Rescind some of the stimulus spending that is going to occur after 2011; that may be one of our amendments. I know Senator Coburn is going to suggest a series of other issues. All of these are steps in the right direction.

So I think on our side of the aisle the basic philosophy is this: It is irresponsible to increase the debt ceiling if you

don't do something responsible about addressing what is driving the debt ceiling, which is spending. So we are going to suggest a series of initiatives around here that we believe are responsible on the issue of controlling spending, and I hope those initiatives will be passed so we can begin to put this country back on the road toward fiscal responsibility.

Mr. President, I yield the floor. Again, I wish to thank the Senator from South Dakota for his courtesy and the Senator from Montana as well.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I understand I will be yielded time off the leader's time?

Mr. President, I want to speak a little today about this issue of the tax burden the Reid bill is putting on people with incomes under $250,000, $200,000. We all know the President said he was not going to allow taxes to increase for people who have incomes under those numbers. We know there are all sorts of proposals in the Reid bill which significantly increase taxes. We also know there are a lot of proposals in the Reid bill that significantly increase fees. We also know there are a lot of proposals in the Reid bill which will significantly increase premiums--all of which people under $200,000 pay.

Why is this? Primarily it is because, if you look at the Reid bill, it exponentially increases spending and grows the size of government. Government is increased by $2.5 trillion under the Reid bill when it is fully phased in. It goes from 20 percent of our gross national product--that is what government takes out today in spending--up to about 24 percent of our gross national product, a huge increase in the size of government.

When spending increases like this, at this type of explosive rate, there are a couple of things that occur. One of them is that taxes also go up. It is like day following night. If you are going to increase the size of the government at this rate, you are going to have to significantly increase taxes--whether you call them fees or whether you call them premium increases or whether you call them outright taxes. That is what is happening. That is because the goal is to grow the government dramatically. That is the goal. When you grow the government, you inevitably increase the taxes. In fact, in this bill it is estimated, when it is fully put into place, that there will be about $1.6 or $1.7 trillion in new taxes.

There is also, when it is fully phased in, about $1 trillion of reduction in Medicare spending. We have had a lot of discussion on that matter on the Senate floor. I have been here a number of times talking about that. But the burden of taxation goes up in order to allegedly pay for these new entitlements.

Why do the taxes have to go up? Because when you increase spending this way you have to pay for it--or you should pay for it. This bill attempts to do that by raising taxes dramatically. But the presentation that you can get all this tax revenue out of people who are making more than $200,000 a year simply doesn't fly. It doesn't pass the commonsense test. It is like saying when you cut Medicare $1 trillion you are not going to affect benefits.

We heard for a week from the other side of the aisle that no Medicare benefit cuts would occur with $1 trillion of Medicare cuts. Of course, that is not true. We just heard yesterday from the Actuary--the President's Actuary, by the way, the Actuary of CMS--that when you make these significant reductions in provider payments under Medicare, which is where most of the savings occur, that means there are fewer providers who are going to be able to be profitable. In fact, 20 percent of providers will be unprofitable under the Reid bill as scored by the Actuary for CMS, and, as a result, providers will drop out of the system. Clearly, that will affect benefits to seniors because they will not be able to see providers because they will not exist anymore.

It is like telling somebody--someone said; the Senator from Nebraska, I think, said--you can have keys to the car, but there is no car. In this instance there will be no providers or many fewer providers.

Along with that problem there is this claim--along with that claim that was totally inaccurate, which is that Medicare benefits will not be cut--there is this claim that these new revenues to pay for this massive expansion in spending are going to come from just the wealthy.

Again, we have independent sources that have taken a look at this, in this case the Joint Tax Committee. They have concluded that is not the case. That is not the case at all. The argument from the other side of the aisle is we have all these tax credits in here which, when you balance them out against the tax increases, meaning that people earning under $200,000--because some will get tax credits, some will get tax increases, but they balance out so there is virtual evenness, so that the tax credits in the bill to subsidize people who do not have insurance today mostly are balanced by the tax increases on people earning under $200,000.

Of course, if you are one of the people earning under $200,000 who doesn't get the tax credit, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Your taxes are going up. But more importantly, Joint Tax has taken a look at this, and by our estimate, what Joint Tax has said is essentially this: 73 million families, or about 43 percent of all returns under the number of $200,000, people with incomes of under $200,000, will, in 2019, have their taxes go up.

So there is a tax increase in this bill, and it is very significant on people earning under $200,000. In fact, if you compare that to those people who will benefit from the tax credit, what it amounts to is for every one person who is going to benefit from the tax credit, three people earning under the income of $200,000 will see their taxes go up. That is a real problem, first, because it significantly violates the pledge of the President when he said:

I can make a firm pledge no family making less than

$250,000 will see their taxes increase--not your income

taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gain taxes--

not any of your taxes.

That is what the President said. That pledge is violated by the Reid bill, violated very fundamentally for the 73 million people whose incomes are under $200,000 and whose taxes go up.

So it clearly is not a tax-neutral event for middle-income people. It is a tax increase event for a large number of middle-income people. Forty-three percent of all people paying taxes whose income is under $200,000 will have their taxes increased.

What is the thought process behind this? The thought process essentially seems to be we are going to explode the size of government, we are going to dramatically increase the taxes on the American people, and somehow that is going to make life better for Americans. I do not see that happening. I don't see that happening. We know from our experience as a government that growing the government in this exponential way probably is going to lead to people having a tougher time making ends meet because their tax burden is going to go up.

Discretionary dollars they might have used to send their kids to college or they might have used to buy a new house or they might have used to buy a new car or they might have just simply saved--those discretionary dollars they don't have anymore because they come to the government to fund this massive explosion in programs and this increase in the size of government.

I think we do not need to look too far to see how this model does not work. All we have to do is look at our European neighbors.

This idea that you can Europeanize the economy, that somehow if you grow the government you create prosperity, that is what is basically behind this philosophy: You grow the government, you create prosperity. That does not work. We know that does not work. All we have to do is look at our neighbors in Europe who have used that model to find out and conclude that does not work.

It would make much more sense to put in place an affordable plan, one which did not raise the taxes of 73 million people who file income taxes under the income of $200,000, 43 percent of the people paying taxes. It would make much more sense not to grow the government in this extraordinary way that we know we cannot afford and that we know ends up passing on to our kids a country which has less of a standard of living than we received from our parents.

So I hope we take another look at all the taxes in the bill, recognizing that the commitment the President made on the issue of taxes is not being fulfilled by this bill, and go back to the drawing board and reorganize it so we can come closer to what the President wanted, which was a bill that did not raise taxes; which was a bill that did insure everyone; which was a bill that did create an atmosphere where if you wanted to keep your present insurance, you could keep it; and which was a bill that turns the curve of health care costs down.

None of those four goals of the President are now met in the bill. In fact, according to his own Actuary and according to Joint Tax, for all four of those goals, just the opposite occurs. The number of people uninsured remains at 24 million people, the cost curve goes up by $235 billion, taxes go up for 73 million people, and we end up with 17 million people who have insurance today in the private sector losing that insurance. So I believe we should take another look at this bill and try to do a better job.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from Tennessee for opening this discussion on the issue of Medicaid. But I did want to ask a couple questions relative to what the Senate leader just said about the bill that is before us.

We have to remember the bill that is before us--all 2,074 pages, as I understand it--is not the bill we are going to actually consider. There is somewhere in this building a hidden bill, known as a managers' amendment, which is being drafted by one or two or three people on the other side of the aisle, and which is going to appear deus ex machina on our desks fairly soon. We do not know what is in it. A lot of the people on the other side do not know what is in it. The press does not know what is in it. The American people do not know what is in it.

The President does not know what is in it. Nobody knows what is in it. But they are designing this bill, which is going to be represented to expand Medicaid even further and to also offer the ability to people age 55 and over to buy into Medicare, which is going to have a huge impact.

But what the Senator from Nevada said, which I want to ask the Senator

from Tennessee about, is, he said this bill before us--this 2,074-page bill, which we know is what we are working off of--is going to reduce health care costs.

Is it not true that the President's Actuary--the Actuary for CMS, who is the President's Actuary--sent us a letter last week which said that health care costs in the first 10 years would go up by $235 billion?

The majority leader also said people will be able to keep their insurance. Is it not true that the President's Actuary said millions of people will lose their own insurance under this bill?

Further, is it not true, in the area of Medicare, that the President's Actuary actually said that the expansion in Medicare and the Medicare cuts in this bill that are before us in the Democratic bill would actually lead to a massive reduction in the number of providers for Medicare; that up to 20 percent of the providers in Medicare would become unprofitable and therefore they would have to leave Medicare, making Medicare unavailable to people because there would be no recipient?

Didn't the Actuary also say, in the area of Medicaid--and I am quoting--``it is reasonable to expect that a significant portion of the increased demand for Medicaid would'' be difficult to meet, particularly in the first few years, and that is because providers would no longer be profitable and would have to leave the business of providing--doctors groups, hospitals, small clinics?

Are not all those three points true relative to what the President's Actuary has told us--not us, not the Republican side but what the President's Actuary said? And don't all three points contradict the representations of the majority leader?

Mr. President, I thank all of the Senators here for their comments. I say this--and I think the Senator from Tennessee was alluding to this at town meetings--this expansion of Medicaid isn't good for people. It is not good for people on private insurance. Their insurance will go up, and a lot of employers will have to drop insurance because it is too expensive. It is not good for people getting Medicaid because the number of providers willing to see them will go down. That is what the Actuary tells us, and that is what common sense also tells you. When you are only paying 60 percent of the cost of seeing somebody, people will stop seeing them. It is not good for everybody in all those red States up there on the chart because their taxes will go up because the States are going to get the bill for this. States can do nothing but raise their taxes. So it is not good for people and not good for health care in this country, in my opinion.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

Madam President, I appreciate the explanation of the Senator from South Dakota of the effects of the bill on small business--especially the description of the gimmicks played in the bill in order to make it look fiscally responsible, which it is not--the fact they use 10 years of revenues in Medicare cuts to offset 5 to 6 years of spending and then they claim somehow it is in balance.

I wish to turn to another part of the bill. I think it is important to recognize it is not our side so much that is representing the failures of the bill. It is actually the administration itself. The administration's Actuary came forward with a letter analyzing the Reid bill. You have to remember the Reid bill isn't necessarily the bill. This is sort of like a ``where is Waldo'' exercise here. We have a bill called the Reid bill--it is 2,074 pages--which we got 10 days ago. It took 8 weeks to develop it, in camera, by Senator Reid and a few of his people.

Now we are told there is going to be a new bill. Nobody has seen it. Nobody on our side has it. I understand most Members on the other side have not seen it, but it is supposed to be a massive rewrite of the Reid bill. We can only project what that is through news reports. News reports are not very good. They represent they are going to expand Medicaid which will be a massively unfunded mandate to States and lead to letting people into a system that is fundamentally broken, and you are going to let people buy into Medicare age 55 and over.

Medicare is insolvent today. It has $35 trillion of unfunded liabilities on the books, and they are going to let people buy into Medicare. What sort of sense does that make? It means that seniors who are on Medicare--and, by the way, Medicare gets cut significantly under this bill--will find Medicare under even more pressure when you put people into it.

Turning from those two obvious problems to the potential bill that we have not seen but will be asked to vote on before the week is out, it appears, I want to turn to this actuary report done by the CMS Actuary who works for the Department of HHS and whose job it is to evaluate this bill. He works for the President. He is a Federal employee. He is in the administration.

The CMS made a number of points. Remember, when we started down this road, the President said he wanted to do three things, all of which I agreed to: One, he wanted to expand coverage so uninsured would get covered. Two, he wanted to bend the outyears cost curve of Medicare and of health care generally in this country so we could afford it. And three, he wanted to make sure if you had insurance, you get to keep it. If you like your insurance, if you like the employer plan you have, you get to keep it.

What did the Medicare Actuary--this is not the Republican side, this is an independent, fair analysis of the Reid bill--what did they say on these three points the President held up as his test for what health care should be?

On the issue of whether this bill bends the outyears cost curve-- which we have to do, by the way. If we do not get health care costs under control,

there is no way we are going to get our Federal budgets under control. What did the Actuary say:

Total national health care expenditures under this bill

would increase by an estimated $233 billion during the

calendar period 2010 to 2019.

Instead of going down, they go up. The chart that Senator Thune showed is totally accurate. There is no bending down of the outyear health costs. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I will go into it in a second. Primarily they did not put provisions in the bill I would support and should have been in this bill, such as malpractice abusive lawsuit reform, such as expanding HIPAA so companies can pay people to live healthier lifestyles--if you stop smoking, your company could pay you; if you lose weight, your company could pay you--which is not in this bill, which would have bent the cost curve down. Those were taken out of the bill because the trial lawyers opposed the first one and the unions opposed the second one.

On the second point the President set out as his test, which was there would be coverage for everybody who is uninsured, what did the Actuary say after he looked at this bill? There are 47 million people uninsured. Some people say there are 50 million. The Actuary said after this bill is completely phased in, there will still be 24 million people uninsured. So for $2.5 trillion--that is what the cost of this bill is when it is totally phased in--for the creation of a brandnew entitlement, for cuts in Medicare which will be $1 trillion over the 10-year period when the bill is fully phased in, $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, $1 trillion when phased in, $3 trillion of Medicare cuts in the first 20 years--for that price, $2.5 trillion, what do you get? You still get 24 million people uninsured. Why? Because they set the bar so high on the insurance level people still cannot afford to get into it and people will be pushed out of their private insurance. That is the third point.

The President said if you like your private plan, you get to keep it. That was his third test. I agree with that. I agree with all these tests. We should bend the outyear cost curve and get everybody covered. The third test is if you like your private insurance, you get to keep it.

What does the Actuary say? Once again, the Actuary works for the President through HHS. The Actuary says 17 million people will lose their existing employer-sponsored insurance; 17 million people will be pushed out of their private plans into this quasi-public plan. Why is that? Because the way this bill is structured, there is so much cost shifting that is going on as you put people in Medicaid, which only pays about 60 percent of the cost of health care of a person getting Medicaid, and you put more people into Medicare, which only pays about 80 percent of what it costs to take care of a Medicare recipient, that difference--that 40 percent in Medicaid, that 20 percent in Medicare-- has to be picked up by somebody else. The hospitals have to charge the real rate of what it costs them. The doctors have to charge the real rate of what it costs them to see that patient. So they put that cost on to the private sector. They put it on to private insurance. So the private sector is subsidizing, the person who gets their insurance through their company is subsidizing the cost of the person who goes into Medicaid or the cost of the person who goes into Medicare.

In fact, today, the private sector is subsidizing the Medicare recipient and the Medicaid recipient through the cost of their insurance by almost $1,700 a year. Madam President, $1,700 a year of your private insurance, if you are insured by an employer plan, is to pay that gap in reimbursements, that underreimbursement for people who are under Medicaid and under Medicare.

When you put more people into Medicaid--and this bill assumes 15 million people are going to go into Medicaid--and you put more people into Medicare and this bill puts people age 55 and over into Medicare, you end up with even more people being subsidized. Who pays for it? Private insurance. So private employers, especially small businesses, see their insurance price going up. They cannot afford it. They figure it is cheaper to pay a penalty, a tax, essentially, under this bill than to keep their insurance for their employees. They have to say to their employees: Sorry, folks, you have to go over to the quasi-public plan. Seventeen million people, the President's Actuary has estimated.

There is another point that the President's Actuary makes here. It is critical because this Reid proposal is devastating to a program which is also under severe stress, and that is Medicare. We know today that because of the retirement of the baby boom generation, which doubles the number of retired people in this country from 35 million to 70 million, which generation will be fully retired by 2016, 2017, 2019, we know today that because of the demands of that generation for health care there is a $38 trillion--that is trillion with a ``t''--unfunded liability in Medicare. In other words, there are $38 trillion of costs we know we have to pay but have no idea how we are going to pay it. No idea. The insurance system does not support it.

That program is under a lot of stress right now as it stands. As it stands, it is under a lot of stress. But when you start cutting that plan even further, which is what is proposed in this bill--under this bill there is approximately a $500 billion cut in the first 10 years for Medicare, $1 trillion in the second 10-year period when it is fully phased in, and $3 trillion over the 20 years. When you cut Medicare beneficiaries by those amounts and you eliminate essentially Medicare Advantage for probably a quarter of the people who get it today, providers can no longer afford to provide the benefits to their recipients, to the Medicare patient. They cannot make a profit.

Again, you are going to say, oh, that is just a Republican throwing out some language here. No, it is not. That is the Chief Actuary of the President of the United States say saying that. Let me read to you: Because of the bill's severe cuts to Medicare, ``providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).''

That is a quote from the President's Actuary. The Actuary suggests that approximately 20 percent of all Part A providers--that is doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes--would become unprofitable as a result of the Reid bill. What happens when you become unprofitable? You close. People will not be available to deliver the care to the senior citizens under this proposal.

The representation from the other side of the aisle is, oh, we don't cut any Medicare benefits. They cut Medicare benefits from Medicare Advantage, but what they do is cut provider groups. If you don't have somebody who is going to see you, you can have all the benefits in the world and it is not going to do you any good. That is clearly a very significant cut in benefits. It is not me saying this. It is the Actuary saying this.

Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?

So this is a critical point, that under this bill, the Medicare Actuary has said four major things: first, that it doesn't bend the cost curve down, it bends it up. Second, it leaves 24 million people uninsured when fully implemented. Third, 17 million people will lose their private insurance and be forced into quasi-public plans. And fourth, there are a lot of providers of Medicare who are going to go under and, therefore, will not be available to provide Medicare. That is not constructive to the health care debate.

How should we do this? I will tell you some things we should do that are not in this bill, things which are sort of a step-by-step approach, rather than this massive attempt written in the middle of the night, dropped on our desks for 8 days, 10 days, or for however long. Why don't we try to take a constructive, orderly approach? We know there are sections of insurance reform that can occur across State lines. We know we can do things if we set up the proper coverage scenario for preexisting conditions so people do not lose their insurance because of a preexisting condition. We know there is a lot of market insurance reform that can be done. We also know if we curtail or at least limit abusive lawsuits, we can save massive

amounts of money. We know there is $250 billion of defensive medicine practiced every year in this country. CBO scores it as a $54 billion immediate savings just like the plans they have in Texas and California, which work. Why isn't it in this bill? The trial lawyers didn't want it.

We know if we say to employers you can pay more to employees in the way of cash benefits if they stop smoking, get mammograms when they should, get colonoscopies when they should, reduce weight so they are not subject to obesity issues--if you do that, you get huge cost savings. Some employers, such as Safeway, have already proven that. Why don't we do that under this law? Because labor unions don't want that law, which was actually in the bill passed out of the HELP Committee, but it was out of this bill.

We know there are certain diseases that drive costs in this country-- obesity, Alzheimer's. Why not target those diseases rather than this massive bill, $2.5 trillion bill which our kids cannot afford? Change the reimbursement system so we reimburse doctors for quality and value rather than quantity and repetition. Things such as that can be done.

If you want to insure everyone, which I do, you can follow the suggestion I and other people have made around here. Let people buy into a catastrophic plan, especially the young and healthy, people between the ages of 20 and 45. They don't need these gold-plated plans or bronze-plated plans which have excessive amounts of mandated coverage in them. They don't need them. What they need is a plan that says if they are severely injured or they contract a very difficult disease, they are going to have coverage so their responsibility of care does not fall on the rest of the country. That can be done.

There are a lot of specific things that can be done to improve our health care system without this quasi-nationalization effort which is going to expand the size of the government so dramatically by $2.5 trillion that there is no possible way our kids are going to be able to afford the debt that is going to come on to their backs as a result of this because this will not be fully paid for, in my opinion.

Certainly, we can at least look at the points made by the Actuary of the President who has disagreed with four of the core proposals in this bill, saying they do not meet the tests which were set out for good health care reform and say in those areas: Let's go back and take another look; let's start over again; let's do it right. That is our proposal. Let's do it right rather than rush this bill through.

Remember, most of the programs in this bill do not start until 2014. So why do we have to pass it before Christmas, especially when we have not even seen the final bill? It makes no sense at all.

Listen to the Actuary of the President and let's get this right.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Is the Senator from Arkansas seeking recognition?

Mr. President, I still have the floor. I was just asking a question.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes and then that the Senator from Arkansas be recognized, and then we will come back to this side.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I understand that is in addition to Senator Wyden's request, which is that I should begin with my first 10 minutes, then we would go to the Senator from Arkansas, then we would go to Senator Wyden, and then we would go to the outline as represented by the majority leader.

Mr. President, thank you very much.

Mr. President, I rise to speak a little bit about this health care bill. I know there has been a lot of discussion of it already today, but I think it is important--very important--that as this health care bill comes forward, we know what it says.

Unfortunately, we received this 2,074-page health care bill about 8 days ago, after it had been worked on for 8 weeks in camera, behind closed doors by the Democratic leadership. We have only had 8 days to look at it. We now hear there is going to be a massive revision of it-- a massive revision--that is going to involve potentially expanding Medicare to people who are aged 55.

Medicare is already broke, by the way. It is broke. It has a $38 trillion unfunded liability. And we are going to add another 10 million people, maybe, into Medicare? That makes no sense at all.

But what I think is important is that what we know so far has been reviewed by a lot of different people, but some of them have not been all that objective. So there was a request made to CMS, which is an arm of the administration--therefore, one would presume it was not necessarily biased toward the Republican side of the aisle; in fact, maybe just the opposite; I do not think it is biased at all, hopefully; but if there was bias here, it certainly would not be Republican--to review the proposal of Senator Reid.

Let me read to you what the CMS conclusion is--some of them--on the Reid bill.

According to the CMS Actuary: ``The Reid bill increases National Health Expenditures'' by $234 billion during the period 2010 to 2019. Why is this important? Well, it is pretty darn important because we had representations that the purpose of this health care reform was to decrease, to move down, health care costs. Now we find this bill, as scored by the CMS Actuary, significantly increases the national health care expenditures.

Secondly, they concluded that ``the Reid bill still leaves an estimated 24 million people . . . uninsured.'' Twenty-four million people--that is almost half of the uninsured today. Why is that important? We were told the purpose of this health reform exercise was to, one, insure everybody; two, bend the health care costs down; and three, make sure that if you have your own health care that you like, you do not lose it. Well, on two counts, it appears the Reid bill clearly fails that test and gets an F--on the issue of bending health care costs down and on the issue of insuring everyone, according to CMS, an independent group.

Third, it says:

The new fees for drugs, devices, and insurance plans in the

Reid bill will increase--

Increase--

prices and health insurance premium costs for customers. This

will increase national health [care] expenditures by

approximately $11 billion per year.

So instead of bringing health premiums down, as was represented by the President--he said it was going to go down by $2,100 per family-- your health care premiums are going to go up. What happens when health care premiums go up? People stop giving you health care insurance because they cannot afford it. Employers cannot afford it. So on the third issue, will you lose your health insurance if you like it, yes, you will. Yes, you will because the price of your health insurance is going to go up under the Reid bill.

There are a couple other points they make which are fairly important here:

The actuary's analysis shows that claims that the Reid bill

extends the solvency are shaky.

They are ``shaky''--the claims that it extends the Medicare trust fund solvency.

Quoting further:

Moreover, claims that the Reid bill extends the Medicare HI

Trust Fund and reduces beneficiary premiums are conditioned

on the continued application of the productivity payment

adjustments in the bill, which the actuary found were

unlikely--

That is their concept, ``unlikely''--

to be sustainable on a permanent annual basis. . . .

So the idea that this bill somehow assists Medicare--by the way, this bill cuts Medicare by $\1/2\ trillion, almost, in the first 10 years. When it is fully implemented, it cuts Medicare by $1 trillion in a 10- year timeframe, and over the next 20 years, it cuts Medicare by $3 trillion. The idea that this is going to somehow help Medicare is fraudulent on its face, according to the Actuary. ``Fraudulent on its face'' is my term. It is ``unlikely'' to accomplish that.

Then it goes into this issue of the CLASS Act, which we have heard so much puffery about how wonderful this CLASS Act is, which is basically another Ponzi scheme, as it was described by the chairman of the Budget Committee, not myself. The Actuary said:

The Reid bill creates a new long term insurance program

(CLASS Act) that the CMS actuaries found faces ``a very

serious risk''--

This is their term, ``a very serious risk''--

of becoming unsustainable as a result of adverse selection by

participants. . . .

In other words, only people who are probably going to need long-term care are going to opt into this program. So this plan will basically not be able to pay the costs of the benefits it is proposing because they will not have funds coming in to support the people who need it because there will be no larger insurance pool of healthy people who are using the program. Only the people who need the program will use it. So the CLASS Act representations we have heard around here have been debunked by this CMS report.

This is not our side saying these things. It is not our side saying that the cost of this bill will drive up the cost of national health care. It is not our side saying there are 24 million people left uninsured when this is fully implemented. It is not our side saying premiums will go up when this bill is fully implemented. It is not our side saying the CLASS Act will be a seriously unsustainable program. It is not our side saying Medicare will not be benefited by this program. In fact, it will be negatively impacted by this program. It is CMS saying that, an independent Actuary--not that independent; an arm of the administration. The administration's Actuary is saying it, not our side. So I think it is legitimate to have some serious concerns about this bill.

The CMS report goes on and says:

The CMS actuary noted that the Medicare cuts in the bill

could jeopardize Medicare beneficiaries' access to care.

Now, that is serious. That is serious.

It found that roughly 20 percent of all Part A providers--hospitals-- would become unprofitable--20 percent of all Part A providers, such as hospitals, would become unprofitable within the next 10 years as a result of the proposals in the Reid bill.

Well, I know ``profits'' is a bad word on the other side of the aisle, but the simple fact is, if you do not have profit in a hospital, the odds are pretty good you are going to go out of business. You are going to go out of business because you cannot pay the costs of operating that hospital. Even nonprofits have some sort of cushion in order to make it through. Now we have the CMS Actuary telling us that 20 percent of the hospitals in this country are going to go into a negative cashflow and are going to become unprofitable as a result of what this bill proposes.

Well, colleagues, Senators, why would we vote for a bill which increases the cost of health care for the country and does not bend the health care cost down, which leaves half the people in this country who are uninsured still uninsured, which raises the premium costs for Americans, which puts the Medicare system at risk, which will put hundreds of providers at risk, hospitals, and which creates a brandnew entitlement which is not sustainable? And those conclusions are come to by the CMS, the independent CMS Actuary. Why would we want to put that type of program in place? Of course, we should not.

Listen, this 2,074 pages of bill--it was put together haphazardly. It was just sheets of paper stuck together. It ends up costing us $2.5 trillion overall. Every page costs us about $1 billion. Obviously, it was not well thought out because the CMS Actuary looked at it and said it is not well thought out. It does not accomplish its goals.

So rather than moving forward with the bill, why don't we just step back and start doing things we know are going to work? Why don't we start doing a few things around here we know are going to work?

I know the Senator from Oregon is on the floor, and he happens to be the sponsor of a bill which actually would make some progress in the area. Why don't we--I would be willing to step back and start from his bill because his bill at least makes sense. If it were scored by the CMS Actuary, it would not come out like this. They would not be saying that people would be uninsured, that the price of health care was going to go up and that Medicare was going to go into a disastrous strait and create an unsustainable entitlement.

So we have ideas around here that do work or are fairly close or at least have the foundation to work. Why don't we use those rather than this bill? That is my only point. This bill is ill thought out, and that is not my conclusion, that is the only conclusion you can come to when you look at the CMS Actuary's evaluation of it.

Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Presiding Officer, and I especially appreciate the courtesies of the Senator from Arkansas.

Will the Senator yield for a question on that point?

I certainly respect that the Senator from Montana worked very hard to have a bipartisan initiative here, but this bill we are dealing with has no bipartisanship to it at all. Was this not written in camera behind closed doors for 8 weeks by the majority leader? Was there a Republican in that room at any time? And we have now been on it for what, 8 days or something, while they wrote it for 8 weeks. And furthermore, is there not rumored to be floating around this Congress somewhere, in some room, again--that we have not been invited to--a major rewrite of this bill called the managers' amendment, which supposedly is going to expand coverage to people under Medicare to 55 years of age, with Medicare already being bankrupt, and already cannot afford the people they have on Medicare? It is going to expand it. We have not seen it. Yet this is going to change this bill fundamentally and change health care fundamentally.

Is that bipartisan? I ask the Senator from Wyoming if that is the case? Was this bill written in a bipartisan manner? Were any Republicans in the room? Did it go through a committee process? Was it amended? Did it not take 8 weeks to write it, and it has now been on the floor for 8 days, and all of our amendments are being pushed to the side? And are we not hearing about a massive--a massive--rewrite of this bill that is going to appear deus ex machina from the majority leader's office and fundamentally change the way health care is delivered in this country? Is that going to be bipartisan?

Mr. Leader, if I might ask a question through the Chair.

On that last point, it does seem there is a slowdown occurring on amendments. As I understand it, we have four or five very substantive amendments dealing with taxes, dealing with employer mandates, that we are ready to go to, and we are ready to vote on; is that not correct?

I hope at some point today maybe we should propound a unanimous consent setting those four items up for votes on Saturday and Sunday.

Mr. President, I would ask, is the Senator from North Dakota recognized under an order of a colloquy at this point?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we have 20 minutes equally divided between myself and the Senator from North Dakota at this time. I see the Senator from Connecticut obviously wishes to speak also.

Do we have time remaining on our side?

Mr. President, I am privileged to join the Senator from South Dakota, the chairman of the Budget Committee, on this initiative. We have worked on it for a while, and we have come to a position of having a piece of legislation that accomplishes the goal as outlined by the Senator from North Dakota. That is good news.

The outpouring of support in the Senate--over 31 cosponsors in just a brief period of time--is a sign that there is a willingness to move in a bipartisan way. That is good news.

Right now, for this country, after the possibility of a terrorist getting a weapon of mass destruction and using it against us in the United States, the single biggest threat we have as a nation is the fact that we are on course toward fiscal insolvency. You cannot get around it. If we continue on the present course, this Nation goes bankrupt. We are already seeing the early signs of it. The early signs are devastating enough. We are seeing some of the nations who lend to us--and remember we are a debtor nation now of massive proportions-- saying: Hold on, you folks are not being responsible, especially about your outyear debt.

Two days ago, we saw one of the rating agencies, Moody's, say England and the United States now are going to be put into a special category relative to the rest of the industrialized world because their fiscal situation is in such risk, and they are not managing their fiscal house correctly.

We know, as the Senator from North Dakota has outlined so correctly, that within 10 years--maybe sooner--we are

going to get to a point where our debt has gotten so large we simply cannot pay it or, if we have to pay it, we are going to have to do some extraordinary things to do that, such as inflating the currency or raising taxes to a level where we reduce productivity and the opportunity for jobs. It is akin to a dog chasing its tail when you get your debt to a certain level. When you have spent so much more than you have taken in and you have promised so much more than you can afford to pay and your debt gets to such a level, as a nation, you only have two choices: You inflate the currency and destroy the quality of people's lives, destroying the value of their savings, and you put in an inflation economy, which is one of the worst things that can ever happen to a country or you have to radically increase your tax burden to levels that are simply going to choke off the capacity of the Nation to create prosperity because people will not be able to be productive. You will start to lose tax revenues as a result of that.

This is not a theoretical case. This is no longer something that is over the horizon. This problem is directly in front of us. We are hearing it from the people who lend us money, from the rating agencies, and we know it from intuitive common sense. Most Americans know this is an extraordinary problem.

We talked about this for a long time and we worked on it for a long time. Yes, regular order should take care of this, but we know it will not because we have seen what happens. When you put an idea on the table to deal with major entitlement programs that affect so many people, in such a personal way, immediately, those ideas are attacked and savaged, misrepresented, exploited, exaggerated, and hyperbolized by the interest groups that populate this city and other parts of the country for the purpose of making their political agenda move forward or their money-raising formula move forward.

When substantive, good ideas have been put on the table to try to correct this fiscal imbalance by dealing with questions of Social Security and Medicare or tax policy, we get clobbered on the policy side. We came to the conclusion from the right and the left that it is equally outrageous and equally destructive of constructive public policy. We came to the conclusion that the only way you can do this is to create a process that drives the policy, rather than put the policy on the table first, saying here is the policy and everybody jumps on it and kicks it and screams at it and so it never even gets to the starting line. We decided let's get to a process that leads to policy and leads to an absolute vote.

The theory is, basically, threefold: One, the process has to be absolutely fair and bipartisan. Nobody can feel they are being gamed. The American people will not allow major policy to occur in these areas unless they are comfortable the policy is bipartisan and fair. So this process we have set up is a bipartisan affair. There will be 18 people. We decided to go with people who actually have a responsibility for making decisions and understand the issues intimately; 16 from the Congress, as was mentioned--8 Republicans and 8 Democrats--and the 2 from the administration, with a supermajority to meet, to report, and there will be cochairmen from each party. That gives us the bipartisan nature.

The second part that is critical to the exercise is that it be real and that it not end up being a game. We have seen so many commissions end up being just commissions. They put their report out and it ends up on a shelf somewhere.

Something has to happen. What happens is, when this Commission reports with a supermajority and comes to Congress, by supermajority it must be voted up or down. So there is an absolute right to a vote, and the vote occurs on the policies proposed. That is critical. It is much along the lines of what we did for base closures, for many of the same reasons. You couldn't close bases politically, so we did it by fast- track approval.

Third, there will be no amendments. Why? Amendments allow Members to hide in the corners. It is that simple: Somebody throws an amendment up--even if it is well intentioned--and people vote for the amendment and then say it didn't pass or I will not vote for the final product. You have to have a policy put forward, and it will either attract a bipartisan supermajority and be a fair policy or it is not. If it doesn't attract a bipartisan supermajority, clearly, it wasn't well thought out.

That is the process we have come to. The amount of sponsors we have reflects the fact that it is viable and that it is bipartisan. We have 12 Democratic sponsors already and 19 Republicans. What else around here has that with serious legislation? This is it.

I congratulate the Senator from North Dakota for his efforts. I am hopeful we can get a vote on it. Then, I hope it can pass, and I am hopeful we can get White House support and House support to do this.

We are running out of time. If we don't accomplish this fairly soon, the outcome is very simple: We will pass on to our children less opportunity, a lower standard of living, and a weaker Nation than we received from our parents. No generation in American history has done that. But that is what we are going to do if we don't take action. That is exactly what is going to happen. How can one generation do that to another? In American history, that has never happened. This is an opportunity to avoid having that occur or at least help avoid it. I hope it will move forward.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, the Senator from Wyoming, first as a doctor and second as a Senator, raises a very important point; that is, this is the largest expansion in government in the history of the government.

Let's begin right there. This is a $2.5 trillion expansion in the size of the government when fully implemented. It is a massive growth in the size of government. Most of that growth comes from the expansion of government in two areas: the expansion and creation of a brand new entitlement and the expansion of Medicaid, as was alluded to by the Senator from Tennessee.

How is that paid for? How is this huge explosion in the size of government paid for? Well, a large part of that is paid for by reducing the amount of money in Medicare that is paid in Medicare, paid to Medicare providers, and available to Medicare recipients--$460 billion in the first 10 years, $1 trillion in the first 10 years when the program is fully implemented--that would start in about 5 years-- and then $3 trillion, by our estimates, which are linear--I suspect it will be more--over the first 20 years of this bill, a $3 trillion reduction in Medicare benefits.

We heard arguments from the other side of the aisle: Oh, that is not going to affect benefits. Well, that is not believable. We know that. You cannot reduce Medicare provider payments and you cannot cut Medicare Advantage--with the total cuts of both, combined, by $460 billion in the first 5 years, $1 trillion in the first 10 years of full implementation, and $3 trillion over 20 years--and not affect benefits.

This is money that is going to have the most significant impact we have ever had occur on our seniors in their Medicare system. This is a fundamental change in the way Medicare services are paid for and the insurance that is available to seniors under Medicare, specifically, Medicare Advantage. We know for a fact that of the 11 million people on Medicare Advantage, approximately a fourth of them will lose it--simply lose their Medicare Advantage.

We also know hospital groups, provider groups, and doctors are all going to see significant reductions in their reimbursement rates, which means, of course, they are going to change the way in which they treat seniors. Seniors are going to find it harder to find a doctor. They are going to find it harder to get a procedure they need because the reimbursement rate for those procedures is going to have been cut so significantly under this bill.

Home health care will be dramatically impacted. The Senator from Wyoming had a very interesting letter from his home health care groups in Wyoming which related to what percentage of home health care agencies would actually close. It was a very high percentage under this proposal.

There is no question but that Medicare is in dire straights. It is headed toward insolvency. It goes into a negative cashflow in 2 years, and it has $35 trillion of obligations, which we have no idea how we are going to pay for. So Medicare reform is important. I have supported it. I proposed it. In fact, I proposed it a number of times and have always been voted against by colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

But any reform to Medicare of this size--$464 billion in the first 10 years,

$1 trillion in the first 10 years of implementation, $3 trillion over 20 years--anything that is going to cut Medicare by those numbers, those savings, if they are going to occur, those reductions, should go to benefit making Medicare more solvent.

But what happens under this bill? That is not what they are used for. Those dollars which come right out of the pockets of seniors and the people who provide seniors care--and the ability of seniors to purchase insurance under Medicare Advantage--those dollars go from the senior over to creating these new major programs, these new entitlements.

In fact, I was looking at the bill. It appears to me some of those dollars go to get votes around here. Isn't that incredible? They are going to take money away from seniors and use it for the purposes of getting votes to pass this bill by sending money back to States of Members who are maybe a little wavery on whether they want to vote for this bill. That is where some of the money goes.

But most of the money goes to creating these new entitlements for people who may be deserving--probably are deserving--but who are not seniors and who probably have not paid into the insurance fund that seniors have paid into for all their life and, thus, it is totally inappropriate to do that.

I have an amendment. It is very simple. It is an amendment that has real teeth, and it is actually an amendment that follows up on a number of statements from the other side of the aisle and some sense of the Senate which were voted 100 to nothing around here, which says, simply: No Medicare money can be used to fund other parts of this bill. To the extent Medicare savings occur under this bill as a result of cuts to home health care, cuts to Medicare Advantage, cuts to provider groups, those dollars will not be taken and used to fund new entitlements for people who are not on Medicare, not seniors. They will not be taken to fund the purchase of votes around here to pass this bill.

This is a real amendment. A lot of stuff happening around here is sense of the Senate, where people stand up and say: Oh, I am for that. Exactly, what I said--let's do a sense of the Senate to that effect.

But sense of the Senate has no impact at all. It is political cover. This is not political cover. This amendment, as structured, will actually accomplish the goal of not allowing Medicare dollars--cuts in Medicare that are $464 billion over the first 10 years, $1 trillion over the fully implemented period, and $3 trillion over the 20-year period--it will not allow any of those dollars to be used to fund new programs in this bill which do not benefit seniors.

That is all it says. It seems to me, if you are going to stand up for responsible action in the area of Medicare, if you are going to live by the sense of the Senate that have been voted for here, if you are going to stand behind your word, as the sense of the Senate have called for-- that Medicare money be used for Medicare, and that Medicare money not be used to fund things that are extraneous to Medicare; Medicare cuts savings--then you have to vote for this amendment.

I would be happy to yield.

That is not related to seniors.

My amendment has force of law behind it. Those amendments have no force of law behind them. They have no effect at all. As the Senator said: a political statement, an editorial comment, a piece of paper written.

This amendment, if passed, will have the force of law behind it. It will very simply be structured in a way that the money cannot be taken out of Medicare if it is going to be used for the purposes of funding the new programs in this bill, whether they are the entitlement programs for people who are not seniors--this expansion of entitlements--or whether they are for the purposes of getting votes to pass the bill.

That is correct. This is the first and only vote Members on this floor are going to have, to make it clear that Medicare dollars will not be used for something other than Medicare.

Well, if I might interject, anybody who voted for that amendment would want to vote for mine.

Well, the Senator has made an excellent point. Essentially, the Bennet amendment has no teeth. It has no substance. It has no substantive effect. It is just a statement of purpose. If the statement of purpose is as recited by the Senator from Georgia, then you would need to vote for this amendment, my amendment, if you voted for the Bennet amendment, because my amendment has the teeth that backs up the language of the Bennet amendment.

That is, essentially, what it says. It says that CMS and OMB must certify that no funds are being used to fund the additional activity in this bill that does not relate to Medicare with Medicare funds. It does not say that Medicare savings--it agrees to the Medicare savings, but those Medicare savings would basically be used for the purposes of reducing the outyear fiscal imbalance of Medicare. So it doesn't contest the Medicare savings as proposed in this bill, although those amendments have--we have already voted on a number of those. We voted on home health care, and we voted on Medicare Advantage, but to the extent those savings go in, those

cuts in Medicare benefits go in, the revenues from those cuts cannot be used and spent to expand the size of government in someplace else which has nothing to do with senior citizens.

Well, the Senator from Wyoming is absolutely right. I think the New York Times got it right. It is a convergence of two unique forces of nature that the Republican minority in the Senate and the New York Times should be on the exact same page on this issue and both be right.

It would be virtually impossible to make that argument with a straight face.

Will the Senator yield for a quick question?

I know the Senator from Idaho wants to speak, but if I can ask the ranking member a quick question.

I heard the Senator from Montana and the Senator from North Dakota say the amendment I have pending would make it impossible for them, under this bill, to create their entitlement programs because the Medicare money that will be taken from Medicare would not be available. My amendment says they cannot do that. It says Medicare cannot be used to create new entitlements, but it doesn't say those entitlement programs cannot be created if they want to pay for them some other way. So really what they are saying is they don't have the idea, the courage, or the will to pay for them in a way other than by stealing from Medicare. Isn't that what they are saying?

I thank the Senator.

How much time remains on both sides?

I yield 11 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, what is the time situation?

Mr. President, I am not sure when the vote is going to occur. I hope sooner rather than later.

First, I congratulate the Senator from Iowa who has been involved in Medicare and the issue of how we manage Medicare for many years, both as chairman of the Finance Committee and as ranking member. His analysis of this situation relative to my amendment was absolutely dead on and accurate, as he always is. It was a breath of fresh air, common sense and plain speak in this institution, which often gets convoluted, gets tied around its own axle. In this case, it didn't. The Senator from Iowa was very precise, a Senator who used to be chairman of the Finance Committee and is now ranking.

My amendment is simple. It says the cuts in Medicare in this bill, which are

substantial--$460 billion over the first 10 years, $1 trillion over the 10 years when fully implemented, $3 trillion over 20 years, that is how much Medicare is cut--the cuts come out of primarily Medicare Advantage and provider payments, all of which will translate into a lesser quality of care for senior citizens, that those Medicare cuts cannot be used for the purpose of financing new programs which have nothing to do with seniors. The new entitlements in this bill are significant, they are expensive, and they benefit a number of people. But they don't benefit seniors. In fact, they benefit very few people who have even paid into the hospital insurance fund from which the Medicare trust fund is funded. It is totally inappropriate to take Medicare money and use it to fund a brandnew entitlement, a series of new initiatives, the biggest of which is a brandnew entitlement and the expansion of Medicaid.

The other side of the aisle--and 100 participated in the vote-- sponsored an amendment, agreed to 100 to nothing, which said that wouldn't happen; that Medicare money would not be used for the purpose of funding new programs that had nothing to do with Medicare, the Bennet amendment. But that was a political vote. Everybody knew that was a statement. It was called a sense of the Senate. It didn't even raise to the standard of being an amendment. It is something around here that is a unique vehicle, the purpose of which is to make a political statement; not worth much more than the paper it is printed on.

This is different. This amendment, as the Senator from Iowa pointed out, is real. It has a hardened enforcement mechanism which requires that moneys which are saved by cutting senior citizen benefits and by cutting Medicare will not be used for the purposes of creating new programs at the Federal level.

I have heard from the other side of the aisle that this is an amendment that destroys the bill because all these new benefits they have plowed in here--there are benefits for a lot of new folks in here; there are benefits for Senators whose votes they need, and that has been publicly reported; all funded in large part by Medicare reductions or significantly by Medicare reductions--I have heard the other side of the aisle say that is going to destroy these new programs. No, it is not.

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

These programs are not going to be terminated by this bill. The programs will still be in the law. They will still go forward. They just have to be paid for with something other than seniors' money, with something other than Medicare. That representation from the other side of the aisle is a straw dog.

What is not a straw dog is that my amendment enforces the language which this Congress, this Senate has already voted on 100 to nothing in the Bennet amendment. It says Medicare money will not be used to fund new programs that are not Medicare related. In the end, that means Medicare money will be used, hopefully, to the extent that these cuts go into place and these changes and benefits go into place, for seniors, to make the Medicare system more solvent because it is already headed toward insolvency.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I believe I still have 15 seconds left on my time. But independent of that, I would ask that this unanimous consent request be amended and that we agree to the Pryor amendment by unanimous consent.

Mr. President, I requested that we amend the unanimous consent request and agree to the Pryor amendment by unanimous consent.

I reserve the right to object because I would like to reserve my 15 seconds.

Mr. President, I reserved the 15 seconds because it is easy to respond to the Senator from Iowa and it only takes 15 seconds.

Taking money out of the Medicare fund to fund other parts of this bill is a mistake and it is not appropriate.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield my 3 seconds. Actually, I yield it to the Senator from Iowa.

Madam President, I appreciate--although it was with a bit of hyperbole--that the Senator from Montana has made my case.

The Medicare trust fund and its recipients will be cut by almost $\1/ 2\ billion in the first 10 years. That money will be taken to fund initiatives that have nothing to do with senior citizens, and it will not benefit them.

In the end, it is going to mean the Medicare trust fund is less solvent and less capable of sustaining the benefits seniors deserve. This is the only amendment we will get to vote on that absolutely guarantees the Medicare funds will not be used to fund a new entitlement or the purchase of votes for the purpose of passing this bill or to fund anything else in this bill that isn't tied to the senior citizens' benefits.

You can either vote with seniors and protect the Medicare funds for them or you can vote to raid the Medicare fund and spend it on something else.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that during the next hour which we control we be allowed to enter into colloquies on our side of the aisle.

Mr. President, we have certainly heard a lot of talk about Medicare over the last few days, and we have actually even voted on a few amendments, but they have all had no force of law, and they have just been statements of purpose. They are called sense of the Senate. Every one of these sense of the Senate has had as its purpose to try to give political cover to Members on the other side relative to the issue of the fact that this bill reduces Medicare spending by close to $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, $1 trillion when it is fully implemented over a 10-year period, and $2.5 trillion over the first 20 years, and that those reductions in spending in Medicare are going to translate immediately and unquestionably into a reduction in service and coverage for Medicare-recipient senior citizens. The money from that--the $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, the $1 trillion in the 10 years that we are doing the implementation, and the $2.5 trillion over the next 20 years--is being taken out of the senior citizen program called Medicare, and it is going to be moved over into a brandnew entitlement program and into the expansion of Medicaid.

Those dollars will be used to create new Federal programs for people who have never paid, for the most part, into the Medicare hospitalization fund; for people who are not senior citizens and therefore do not, arguably, deserve to receive the benefit of the Medicare hospitalization fund. As a result, seniors will see their benefits reduced and other people will get a new benefit through the Federal Government. Ironically, the new benefit, this new entitlement, will not be adequately funded either, but large portions of part of that funding are going to come from the Medicare trust fund.

The problem here is that the Medicare trust fund is insolvent. It has $30 trillion of outstanding exposure to the Medicare trust fund, which we don't know how we are going to pay for as seniors retire over the next 20, 30, 40 years. Thus, there will be a reduction in the benefits to Medicare, a reduction to Medicare recipients, a reduction in the Medicare trust fund to the tune of $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, $1 trillion when it is fully implemented, and $2.5 trillion over the next 20 years.

That type of reduction shouldn't go to create new Federal programs. If it is going to be done at all, it should go to making the Medicare trust fund more solvent. Well, that has been essentially the tenure of some of the proposals from the other side of the aisle. We have heard a lot of people on the other side of the aisle say: All right, we are not going to cut Medicare. We are not going to cut Medicare. We are just going to reduce it by $\1/2\ trillion, and then we are going to create a new program with it. We are not going to do this to the seniors. We are not going to take their money and start a new program.

We have heard that statement in different levels of machinations from the other side of the aisle quite regularly.

I do, however, for the record, want to say--because I have immense respect for him, and he has been totally forthcoming on these issues, and very accurate--that the chairman of the Finance Committee has not represented that is what is happening with the Medicare funds.

He has represented on the floor that those Medicare funds that are being reduced--those reductions in Medicare spending will go to create a new program. But a lot of folks on the other side have said they don't agree with

that, that is not what they are intending to do. Some of the sense of the Senate have clearly had that implication in their passage.

So what does that amendment do that I am going to be offering? It shoots real bullets. No longer is it a political statement, a sense of the Senate, a thought process, a virtual event saying you want to protect the Medicare trust funds. This amendment is real. It protects the Medicare trust fund. It is real hard language, which says that if you vote for this amendment, you are voting not to move Medicare trust fund dollars out of the Medicare trust fund, away from Medicare recipients, over to start a new program; that any new program started in this bill must be paid for by something other than Medicare.

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

So this shoots with real bullets. It says, essentially, if you vote for this amendment, you are voting to keep the Medicare dollars with Medicare, not to take those dollars that are being cut out of senior citizen programs and move them to create a brandnew set of programs at the Federal level.

This will be the vote that I believe determines whether we raid the Medicare funds for the purpose of creating a new Federal program or whether we maintain the integrity of the Medicare system. This is a serious amendment, and it is a real amendment. There is no sense of the Senate about this. This is enforceable language. Anybody voting against this amendment is formally voting, unquestionably and unequivocally, to take $\1/2\ trillion of Medicare funds, in the first 10 years, and move them over to fund a new program; to take $1 trillion from the Medicare funds, when fully implemented, and move them to fund a new program; to take $2.5 trillion, over the next 20 years, of Medicare benefits that should be going to seniors--because they are Medicare funds and should be benefiting the solvency of the Medicare funds--and moves them to create new programs. Anybody who votes against this amendment is accomplishing that; they are cutting Medicare for the purpose of creating a new program. If you vote for the amendment, to the extent Medicare savings occur, they would not be used to fund new programs. It is a real, enforceable amendment.

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

As usual, the Senator from Wyoming is absolutely true. The sense-of-the-Senate amendments we have had from the other side of the aisle on Medicare are political amendments meant to make a political statement, but they have no substantive effect. That is why I brought forward my amendment which hopefully will be voted on in the next couple of days or so which says specifically what the Senator from Wyoming has asked for.

To the extent there are reductions in Medicare spending--and there may need to be some--that those reductions are reserved for the seniors for the benefit of their program and to make Medicare more solvent and no new programs be created on the backs of seniors by cutting Medicare and moving the money from Medicare over to new programs.

My amendment is not a sense of the Senate. My amendment is a real amendment. It is the one chance people are going to have to vote for protecting Medicare and not creating new programs with Medicare money. And that is what it is going to be.

Absolutely. It is not exactly the same in the sense that it is real. Theirs is not real. Mine is real. It says you are going to keep the Medicare money to benefit Medicare, and you are not going to use the Medicare money for the purpose of creating new programs which have nothing to do with Medicare for people who are not on Medicare.

To begin with, it is going to be reduced by $460 billion in the first 10 years. In the second 10 years, it will be reduced by $1 trillion. In the full 20-year time, it will be reduced by $3 trillion. All those funds, all those reductions, will go to create a new entitlement for people who are not seniors and who probably have not paid into the HI trust fund, not having paid into the Medicare trust fund, which is an insurance program, in part.

As a practical matter, it will take scarce resources out of the Medicare trust fund, which should be used to make the Medicare trust fund more solvent, and move them over to expand the Government in another place.

It will mean that we as a government have basically used up some of the resources which we might want to use to make Medicare more solvent because it has $35 trillion of unfunded liability out there, and we will use up those resources to create a new Federal program which will not help us address this outyear insolvency of Medicare.

It doubles the problem. First, it does not address the Medicare problems in the future and, second, it creates a brandnew entitlement which will have to be supported forever by Medicare funds, it appears.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment No. 2942.

I see the Senator from Arkansas is standing. I thought I was supposed to offer my amendment first. Is the Senator from Arkansas supposed to go first?

I will reserve.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment of the Senator from Arkansas be set aside so I may call up my amendment.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2942.

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

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, absolutely. I was chairman of the Budget Committee at the time. As the Republican leader is alluding to, we attempted to reduce the rate of growth of Medicaid by $10 billion of a $1 trillion base over 5 years, less than one-tenth of 1 percent, I believe that was. It was opposed aggressively by the AARP, and it was opposed by the other side of the aisle. Not one Member of the other side of the aisle voted for that. Do you know what that change was going to be? It was going to require that wealthy people who benefited from the Part D drug benefit would have to pay part of their premiums rather than getting them all for free. So Warren Buffett, for example, would actually have to contribute to his drug benefit, assuming he is on Part D. Maybe he isn't. Maybe he hasn't opted for it. But as a practical matter it was a very reasonable amendment.

Now we are seeing, as the Senator from Arizona has pointed out, a $460 billion cut over the first 10 years of this bill; a $1 trillion cut in Medicare, $3 trillion over the first 20 years of this bill--$3 trillion--when we already know Medicare, according to this chart, is insolvent to the extent of $38 trillion--insolvent. Yet we are going to take this money out of Medicare, as the Senator from Arizona has pointed out, and we are going to fund a brandnew entitlement.

We are going to expand Medicaid to 133 percent of poverty with this money, and we are going to create this brandnew entitlement which has nothing to do with Medicare. None of the people who are going to get this benefit probably have ever paid into the hospital trust fund, which is what funds Medicare. That seems totally inconsistent with the purposes of Medicare.

Shouldn't Medicare funds benefit Medicare recipients, I would ask the Senator from Arizona or the Republican leader? If there are going to be reductions in Medicare, should it not go to make Medicare more solvent and not to create a new entitlement?

I was wondering if that was the deal. We know there are a lot of deals around here. I know the Senator from Arizona pays a fair amount of attention to earmarks and other things done around here. I hope we will get an amendment from the Senator from Arizona that lists the special deals like the ones that exempted a few States from the Medicare Advantage cuts, like the deals that got allegedly a few votes on their side of the aisle so we could get cloture and proceed to this bill.

Do you think it is part of the deal that they would not--if there really was a deal, should we not put in here that this money would go to benefit Medicare recipients and not to create a new entitlement? If you were going to take $42 billion out of Medicare money going to home health, shouldn't it have gone to making the system more solvent rather than creating a new entitlement with that and taking that money from seniors and giving it to somebody else? Shouldn't that have been part of the deal?

Both of those are correct.

The underlying proposal is a blatant act to try to Europeanize our economy and move us to a process where the government decides what the market should do. But consistency would require that both of those organizations be included in that if the author is going to be consistent with the theme of the amendment, which is absolutely wrong in my opinion because there is no reason that we as a Congress should decide the compensation levels for people who are in the private sector.

I think the Senator from North Carolina has made an excellent point. Consistency would require for the AARP to be included in this amendment, if the amendment is going to go forward. I hope the amendment is not adopted. But clearly it should be consistent with all the different interest groups. It appears it is not included because some deal was cut. Is that the implication here?