Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to express my opposition to the nomination of Mark Bennett to be a circuit judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Bennett has had a long legal career and has served as the attorney general of Hawaii. My concerns lie not in his resume, but in his public history of opposing constitutionally protected freedoms essential to our way of life.

I have been and always will be a defender of the right of people to keep and bear arms. Wyoming is a State full of law-abiding gun owners who grow up learning to respect firearms and how to use them responsibly. Folks use them for a variety of purposes, everything from self-defense to hunting to work.

As Hawaii's attorney general, Mr. Bennet joined four other State attorneys general in an amicus curie brief on behalf of the District of Columbia in the Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief argued that the Second Amendment protects no individual right to bear arms. This position worries me that he would not uphold Supreme Court precedent on the Second Amendment.

At a time when so many critical issues are being litigated in our courts, I cannot vote to confirm a nominee with a background of opposing fundamental constitutional rights. Therefore, I must oppose the nomination of Mr. Bennett.

Thank you. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.

Madam President, I am so glad that you are presiding at this time because I know you are part of the Joint Select Committee on Budget Reform. I want to address that a little bit.

Earlier this week, the Senate passed its version of the fiscal year 2019 Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs spending bills. Prior to this week, the last time the Senate had passed its version of a regular appropriations bill--not a supplemental or an omnibus bill--was more than 2 years ago.

I commend Chairman Shelby and the members of the Appropriations Committee for their work in getting us this far and for their commitment to restoring a more regular process for the consideration of appropriations measures. I hope that in the weeks to come, we will be able to process more such measures in a similarly productive manner.

It was a long road getting to this point. Last February, after a brief government shutdown that followed an immigration policy dispute and a yearlong stalemate on appropriations, Congress and the administration agreed to legislation establishing new discretionary spending caps for this fiscal year and the next and providing a process for budget enforcement--something normally done by the Budget Committee.

This latest budget agreement follows a string of 2-year budget deals, each reached under the threat of a shutdown. In fact, frustration with the current process has grown so great that through the February legislation, Congress created the Joint Select Committee tasked with improving our broken budget and appropriations process. I commend the Joint Committee and its leaders, Co-Chairman Womack and Co-Chairwoman Lowey, for their work on this subject. Our budget and appropriations process is clearly in need of reform, and I wish them success in this effort.

Today, I rise to share some of my thoughts and experiences on this subject, having led bipartisan efforts in the Senate Budget Committee to explore and reform the budget process.

As my colleagues know, the Senate Budget Committee sets the top-line spending levels that the Appropriations Committee then divides each year among the various departments and accounts. The Appropriations Committee does the specific spending. While there are many potential improvements we could make in this process, I will focus my remarks at this time on just three points.

First, the annual spending process will never truly improve so long as we are willing to hold it hostage to larger ideological or political battles. Both sides have been guilty of this in the past, and until we are willing to say ``no more,'' no process reform will succeed. I am hopeful that the progress we are seeing now on fiscal year 2019 appropriations bills is a sign that we have reached a tipping point and are willing to work together, as the American people expect us to do.

The second topic I want to address is the need to move to a biennial funding cycle. I have been pleased to hear some members of the joint committee voice support for this concept, and I hope that consensus on this point continues to build.

The appropriations process--the spending process--has rarely worked as intended. In all but 4 years between 1977 and 2018, continuing resolutions, or CRs, were enacted because of the failure of Congress to complete all of the regular appropriations bills before the beginning of the new fiscal year. We have actually had more than 180 continuing resolutions signed into law over the last four decades. In this fiscal year alone, we required five.

These short-term continuing resolutions keep the government funded while we continue our work, but their recurring nature demonstrates the problems with our current process. The individual agencies have to operate on last year's budget until something new is approved. All too often, by the time Congress can agree on how to appropriate money for a given year, the result is a massive omnibus that funds the entire government. Members are

then presented with a choice--either pass the bill or shut down the government.

I have long believed that one of the most important things we can do is fix this process. The way to do that would be to move to a biennial appropriations system. By providing funding for 2 years instead of 1, Congress would immediately make the consideration of regular appropriations measures more likely. Instead of subjecting itself to a nearly perpetual annual cycle of developing and attempting to pass 12 appropriations bills for the next fiscal year, which starts October 1, Congress could spread those bills over 2 years, allowing more time to develop and scrutinize them and give 2 years' worth of planning to everybody.

Not only would a biennial appropriations process help Congress execute its power of the purse, it would also benefit the Federal agencies too. Agencies would have more time to devote to developing and to executing long-term strategies and would finally have some certainty in their budgets.

Nowhere is the need for this more obvious than at the Department of Defense. The Budget Committee has heard repeatedly from Defense Department leaders that the one thing they want more than anything is budgetary certainty. Annual spending fights and the inability to plan under continuing resolutions have wreaked havoc on the Department's workforce and contracting efforts.

Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer recently delivered public remarks in which he identified $4 billion in waste due to a lack of financial stability. He said:

Since 2001, we have put $4 billion in a trash can, poured

lighter fluid on top of it, and burned it. It's enough money

that it can buy us the additional capacity and capability

that we need. Instead, that $4 billion of taxpayer money has

been lost because of inefficiencies [caused by] continuing

resolutions.

Transitioning to a biennial appropriations process could help solve that problem.

Last Congress, I introduced legislation that would continue the budget resolution process on an annual cycle in order to allow for top- line adjustments and reconciliation instructions as events warrant but would move toward a bifurcated biennial appropriations process. Under such a proposal, appropriations would continue to be divided among 12 different bills, 6 of which would be adopted in the first session of Congress, and 6 would be adopted in the second session. Maybe we could even make it so the six toughest ones would be done right after an election and the six easier ones, just before an election, to take more of the politics out of it.

By cutting in half the number of bills required to be adopted annually, Congress could create space for itself to devote more time and attention to oversight and other national priorities. If adopted, I believe this proposal would yield a more sustainable and successful budget and appropriations process--a goal I believe both parties share.

I thank Speaker of the House Ryan for his comments this morning in which he suggested that we should do it on a biennial basis and that they should be divided into two segments of six, each for a 2-year period, so they would stagger how they are approached.

My third suggestion is a minor one but could have some of the most significant impact on the budget. The first one is, change the name of the Budget Committee. People think that we actually make all of those spending decisions. We don't. We set the top line for the Appropriations Committee, which is also improperly named, so they can do their work. My suggestion would be that we stop calling the Budget Committee the Budget Committee and call it the Debt Control Committee. We ought to be and are responsible for seeing how much revenue is coming in and what some of the different allocations are and doing a lot of reviews of that and checking to see what the debt-to-GDP ratio is going to be and how much the debt limit is going to go up, which becomes another subject of debate. If that were the Debt Control Committee, all of that could be done in committee, with one approval here on the floor.

The other half of that suggestion is that the Appropriations Committee ought to be called the Budget Committee because they really are the ones in control of the spending, in control of the budget. In every State in the Nation, the committee that actually does the appropriations is the budget committee. That would stop the flood of people who come in right after the President's budget comes out and before the Senate Budget Committee does their work, where they think they have to come in and ask for the details on their expenditures at that time. If it was the Debt Control Committee, they would have a whole different perspective on what it was that committee is trying to do, and they would take their suggestions to the appropriate committee, which would be the Appropriations Committee, renamed the ``Budget Committee'' so they would understand what they are doing.

As the Joint Select Committee continues to work, I encourage my colleagues here and in the other body to consider biennial appropriations as a necessary reform. I wish them success in their endeavor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, section 251 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, BBEDCA, establishes statutory limits on discretionary spending and allows for various adjustments to those limits. In addition, sections 302 and 314(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 allow the Chairman of the Budget Committee to establish and make revisions to allocations, aggregates, and levels consistent with those adjustments.

The Senate is considering S. Amdt. 2910, a ``minibus'' spending measure

covering programs within the jurisdiction of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and the Legislative Branch. This legislation includes funding for military construction designated as overseas contingency operations funding pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(ii) of BBEDCA. These provisions provide $921 million in budget authority for fiscal year 2019. The inclusion of the overseas contingency operations designations with these provisions makes this spending eligible for an adjustment under the Congressional Budget Act.

Accordingly, I am increasing the fiscal year 2019 budgetary aggregate by $921 million in budget authority. Further, I am revising the budget authority allocations to the Committee on Appropriations by increasing revised security budget authority by $921 million in fiscal year 2019.

I ask unanimous consent that this notice and the accompanying tables, which provide details about the adjustment, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I wish to submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report for June 2018. The report compares current-law levels of spending and revenues with the amounts the Senate agreed to in the budget resolution for fiscal year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71, and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (BBA18). This information is necessary for the Senate Budget Committee to determine whether budgetary points of order lie against pending legislation. The Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee and the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, prepared this report pursuant to section 308(b) of the Congressional Budget Act, CBA.

This is my fourth scorekeeping report this year and the first since I filed new enforceable levels on May 7, pursuant to BBA18 requirements. My last filing can be found in the Congressional Record for April 12, 2018. The information included in this report is current through June 4, 2018.

Republican Budget Committee staff prepared Tables 1-6.

Table 1 gives the amount by which each Senate authorizing committee exceeds or is below its allocation for budget authority and outlays under the most recently adopted budget resolution and the Fiscal Year 2019 enforceable levels filing. This information is used for enforcing committee allocations pursuant to section 302 of the CBA. For this reporting period, 10 of the 16 authorizing committees are in compliance with their allocations. Two committee allocation violations were recorded since my last report. The first violation stems from passage of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, S. 2155, P.L. 115-174, which increased direct spending within the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee over the Fiscal Year 2019, Fiscal Year 2019-2023, and Fiscal Year 2019-2028 period. The second violation resulted from passage of the VA MISSION Act of 2018, S. 2372, which increased direct spending within the Veterans' Affairs Committee over all enforceable periods.

Tables 2-3 give the amount by which the Senate Committee on Appropriations is below or exceeds the statutory spending limits. This information is used to determine points of order related to the spending caps found in sections 312 and 314 of the CBA. Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2018, shown in table 2, are consistent with the statutory limits. Table 3 shows that the Appropriations Committee is currently compliant with spending limits for Fiscal Year 2019. As of this filing, subcommittees have only been charged with permanent and advanced appropriations that first become available in Fiscal Year 2019.

The Fiscal Year 2018 budget resolution contained points of order limiting the use of changes in mandatory programs in appropriations bills, CHIMPS. Tables 4, 5, and 6 track compliance with these points of order. Tables 4 and 6 show compliance with Fiscal Year 2018 limits for overall CHIMPS, $17 billion, and the Crime Victims Fund CHIMP, $11.2 billion, respectively. Table 5, which tracks the CHIMP limit of $15 billion for Fiscal Year 2019, shows the Appropriations Committee has not passed a bill with a CHIMP for Fiscal Year 2019. This information is used for determining points of order under sections 4102, overall limit, and 4103, Crime Victims Fund CHIMP, of H. Con. Res. 71.

In addition to the tables provided by Budget Committee Republican staff, I am submitting CBO tables, which I will use to enforce budget totals approved by Congress.

Because legislation can still be enacted that would have an effect on Fiscal Year 2018, CBO provided a report for both Fiscal Year 2018 and Fiscal Year 2019. This information is used to enforce aggregate spending and revenue levels in the budget resolution under section 311 of the CBA. CBO's estimates show that current-law levels of spending for Fiscal Year 2018 exceed the amounts in last year's budget resolution by $157.4 billion in budget authority and $106.3 billion in outlays. Revenues are $3.2 billion above the revenue floor for Fiscal Year 2018 set by the budget resolution. Social Security outlays are at the levels assumed by the resolution, while Social Security revenues are $446 million below the levels in the budget.

For Fiscal Year 2019, CBO estimates that current-law levels are below the Fiscal Year 2019 enforceable aggregates by $1,142.2 billion in budget authority and $646.1 billion in outlays. The allowable spending room will be reduced as appropriations bills are enacted. Revenues are $5 million below the level assumed for Fiscal Year 2019, a result of enacting S. 2155. Finally, Social Security outlays and revenues are at the levels assumed in the Fiscal Year 2019 enforcement filing.

CBO's report also provides information needed to enforce the Senate pay-as-you-go, PAYGO, rule. In my enforcement filing on May 7, I reset the Senate's PAYGO scorecard to zero for all enforceable periods. While two bills that increase the deficit have passed since the reset, only S. 2155's budgetary effects will be recorded, as the VA MISSION Act included a provision excluding its deficit increases, $4.5 billion, from the scorecard. As such, the PAYGO scorecard shows deficit increases in Fiscal Year 2019 of $22 million, $5 million revenue loss, $17 million outlay increase, over the Fiscal Year 2019-2023 period of $329 million, $47 million revenue loss, $282 million outlay increase, and over the Fiscal Year 2019-2028 period of $490 million, $108 million revenue loss, $382 million outlay increase. The Senate's PAYGO rule is enforced by section 4106 of H. Con. Res. 71.

Also included in this submission is a table tracking the Senate's budget enforcement activity on the floor since the May 7 enforcement filing. No points of order have been raised.

All years in the accompanying tables are fiscal years.

I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, as we approach Memorial Day weekend, we will soon pause to honor and remember the members of our Armed Forces who have paid the ultimate price in service to our country.

As Americans, we honor all our veterans who have sacrificially fought for our freedoms--certainly those who have paid with their lives but also those who have returned home, determined that we not forget their fallen brothers- and sisters-in-arms.

Among the most meaningful ways Congress can honor our veterans is to uphold the promises that have been made to them. One such promise and responsibility is to ensure that America's veterans have access to the quality medical care they earned through their service.

I thank Chairman Isakson and his staff for all the effort they have put into the bill before us. His tireless work on behalf of America's veterans has produced the compromise legislation now pending that aims to reform the VA's broken community care programs.

I particularly appreciate Chairman Isakson for sending his staff to Wyoming to understand the problems our veterans and providers have had with VA Choice.

Since the VA Choice Program was enacted in 2014, I have received hundreds of letters and calls from people across Wyoming who were so frustrated with the program that they felt they had no other choice but to call their Senator. I have been contacted by veterans who could not access timely followup care or critical screenings because of unpaid claims, leading to providers dropping patients. Some veterans are even facing collections from the Choice Program's failure to pay the providers' claims.

Similarly, many providers have not been paid for medical services they have provided. That has led some of Wyoming's physicians to stop participating in VA Choice. We are the least populated State in the Nation, but earlier this month, we had 3,130 pending claims in Wyoming, with 1,025 of them being over 30 days old. To get those numbers to even that level has required multiple meetings with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the administrator of the VA Choice Program for Wyoming. At the end of March, there were 5,319 pending claims and 3,214 more that were more than 30 days old. A number of my colleagues have participated in those meetings, and I appreciate their shared interest in improving care for our veterans in rural States.

Despite those meetings, I still hear reports about how difficult it is to get simple questions answered. Whether dealing with the VA directly or with contractors who are supposed to administer the program, the process of receiving and paying for healthcare services is broken.

I believe the problems faced by Wyoming's veterans and doctors will be improved by this bill. I thank the Senator from Georgia for including provisions related to healthcare providers, veteran education, prompt payment to providers, tools for the VA to resolve payment issues, and VA flexibility to enter into agreements between VA facilities and healthcare providers. However, I do have one disappointment. I do have one concern with the bill. It is not paid for. I believe we must acknowledge that borrowing more money to pay for this program isn't an ideal way to honor our veterans. CBO estimates that Federal outlays will total more than $56.6 trillion over the next 10 years--that is $56,600 billion--and yet nowhere in that budget can we find $4.5 billion to offset the cost of this program?

I believe we should care for our veterans in a fiscally responsible manner. In fact, I believe this is the best way to ensure their care long term, as well as the care for veterans of the next generation.

I ask for support of the bill.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, P.L.115- 123, included an instruction to the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget to file allocations, aggregates, and budgetary levels in the Senate before May 15, 2018. Today I rise to submit the required filing found in that act.

Specifically, section 30103 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 requires the chairman to file: No. 1, an allocation for fiscal year 2019 for the Committee on Appropriations; No. 2, an allocation for fiscal years 2019, 2019 through 2023, and 2019 through 2028 for committees other than the Committee on Appropriations; No. 3, aggregate spending levels for fiscal year 2019; No. 4, aggregate revenue levels for fiscal years 2019, 2019 through 2023, and 2019 through 2028; and, No. 5, aggregate levels of outlays and revenue for fiscal years 2019, 2019 through 2023, and 2019 through 2028 for Social Security.

The figures included in this filing are consistent with the discretionary spending limits set forth in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and the most recent baseline from the Congressional Budget Office, CBO. CBO's most recent baseline was released in April 2018.

In addition to the update for enforceable limits above, section 30103(c) of the act allows for the deficit-neutral reserve funds included in title III of H.Con.Res. 71, the fiscal year 2018 congressional budget resolution, to be updated by 1 fiscal year. Pursuant to this authority, all deficit-neutral reserve funds in the aforementioned title of last year's budget resolution are updated and available for use.

For purposes of enforcing the Senate's pay-as-you-go rule, which is found

in section 4106 of H.Con.Res. 71, I am resetting the Senate's scorecard to zero for all fiscal years.

All years in the accompanying tables are fiscal years.

I ask unanimous consent that this statement and the accompanying tables detailing enforcement in the Senate be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I wish to submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report for April 2018. The report compares current-law levels of spending and revenues with the amounts the Senate agreed to in the budget resolution for fiscal year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71. This information is necessary for the Senate Budget Committee to determine whether budget points of order lie against pending legislation. The Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee and the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, prepared this report pursuant to section

308(b) of the Congressional Budget Act, CBA.

The enforceable levels included in this report reflect all of the numerical adjustments made to the resolution since its passage. The information contained in this report captures legislative activity from passage of the budget resolution through April 9, 2018. The only law enacted with significant budgetary effects since my last filing, on February 28, 2018, was the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, P.L. 115-141.

Republican Budget Committee staff prepared tables 1 to 4 of this report.

Table 1 gives the amount by which each Senate authorizing committee exceeds or is below its allocation for budget authority and outlays under the most recently adopted budget resolution. This information is used for enforcing committee allocations pursuant to section 302 of the CBA. For this reporting period, 10 of the 16 authorizing committees are in compliance with their allocations. As previously reported, the Senate Veterans' Affairs; Energy and Natural Resources; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Finance; and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committees are in breach of their allocations. Since my last report, several committees' allocations were affected by changes in the nonappropriations provisions included in the omnibus appropriations bill. Still, the only new committee creating a breach was the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which spent $100 million more in both budget authority and outlays through Division P of the omnibus, Ray Baum's Act of 2018, than allowed under the budget resolution.

Table 2 gives the amount by which the Senate Committee on Appropriations is below or exceeds the statutory spending limits. This information is used to determine points of order related to the spending caps found in sections 312 and 314 of the CBA. Appropriations for 2018 are consistent with the statutory limits as modified by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.

The budget resolution contains two points of order limiting the use of changes in mandatory programs in appropriations bills, CHIMPS. Tables 3 and 4 show compliance with fiscal year 2018 limits for overall CHIMPS $17 billion, and the crime victims fund CHIMP, $11.2 billion, respectively. This information is used for determining points of order under sections 4102 and 4103 of H. Con. Res. 71, respectively. CHIMPS included in the 2018 omnibus comply with the existing limits.

In addition to the tables provided by Budget Committee Republican staff, I am submitting CBO tables, which I will use to enforce budget totals approved by Congress.

CBO provided a spending and revenue report for fiscal year 2018, which helps enforce aggregate spending levels in budget resolutions under CBA section 311. CBO's estimates, which now include the full effects of appropriations for this year, show that current-law levels of spending for fiscal year 2018 are above the amounts assumed in the budget resolution by $152.2 billion in budget authority and $105.5 billion in outlays. For fiscal year 2018, Social Security outlay levels remain consistent with the budget resolution's assumption

Current-law revenues continue to be in excess of the levels assumed by the budget resolution. On-budget revenue levels currently exceed assumed levels by $3.2 billion in fiscal year 2018, $39.8 billion over the fiscal year 2018-2022 period, and $94.2 billion over the fiscal year 2018-2027 period. For fiscal year 2018, Social Security revenues are $446 million below levels assumed in the budget resolution.

CBO's report also provides information needed to enforce the Senate pay-as-you-go, PAYGO, rule. The Senate's PAYGO scorecard currently shows deficit reduction of $24 million in fiscal year 2018, but deficit increases of $10 million over the fiscal year 2017-2022 period and $11 million over the fiscal year 2017-2027 period. For fiscal year 2018, legislation has been enacted that would reduce outlays by $24 million. Over the fiscal year 2017-2022 period, legislation has been enacted that CBO estimates will decrease outlays by $13 million and decrease revenues by $23 million. Over the fiscal year 2017-2027 period, legislation has been enacted that CBO estimates will decrease outlays by $11 million and decrease revenues by $22 million. Consistent with recent congressional practice, the direct spending and revenue provisions included in the non-Appropriations Committee portion of the fiscal year 2018 omnibus, which increased deficits by $2.8 billion over 10 years are being excluded from PAYGO calculations. This is due to provisions in the omnibus that mandated the exclusion of those budgetary effects both from the Senate and statutory PAYGO scorecards. The Senate's PAYGO rule is enforced by section 4106 of H. Con. Res. 71.

Also included in this submission is a table tracking the Senate's budget enforcement activity on the floor since Congress adopted the budget resolution. Two points of order were raised since my last filing. On March 14, 2018, Senator Sanders raised a PAYGO point of order against S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. This point of order was waived by a vote of 67 to 31. On March 21, 2018, Leader McConnell raised a PAYGO point of order against Senator Wyden's amendment, S. Amdt. 2213, to H.R. 1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017. This point of order was sustained with a vote of 21 to 78 on Senator Wyden's waiver motion.

All years in the accompanying tables are fiscal years.

I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, on March 22, 2018, I filed adjustments to enforceable budgetary levels to accommodate spending in H.R. 1625, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, P.L. 115-141. Included in the spending that qualified for cap adjustments was program integrity funding that is classified as off-budget. The previous adjustment correctly increased the allocation to the Appropriations Committee to accommodate this spending but also increased the spending aggregate for fiscal year 2018. Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the spending aggregate should only reflect on-budget amounts. As such, I am reducing the spending aggregate by $295 million in budget authority and $257 million in outlays.

I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying table be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Georgia for those comments, and I would like to associate myself with all of them. We should have saved it for the concluding speech, I think.

I rise today to also honor a man who has spent the last 46 years faithfully serving the State of Mississippi in Congress.

Thad, you are the longest currently serving Member of Congress, and we are going to miss your experience and your leadership. You have left a mark on Congress that won't soon be forgotten. You have served with great distinction and made a difference in the Senate. Your time in Washington began when the people of Mississippi voted to send you to the House of Representatives, and you represented their interests in that Chamber from 1972 to 1978. Then you ran for and won the noble Senate seat.

Thad and I have found ourselves on two sides of the U.S. coin. He chairs the Appropriations Committee; I chair the Budget Committee. Even though he does the detail of spending the money and I work to set the parameters, I have always respected him and enjoyed working with him.

Former Senators have spoken highly of Senator Cochran. In fact, in 2007, while congratulating Thad on his 10,000th vote, our good friend, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, said:

Thad and I don't always agree on policy matters--and more

often than not we find ourselves on opposite sides of the

issues--but those disagreements never diminished my respect

for his thoughtfulness and nor do they diminish the

friendship I feel toward him.

I think that is a pretty common refrain for somebody who is quiet and effective and perseveres through everything.

Thad is known to hold strong opinions, but that has never stopped him from developing a close working relationship with Members of both parties. Throughout his career, he has used his experience and mastery of the issues to persuade his colleagues, but he has done so privately rather than bashing in the media. This determined, yet respectful, approach to negotiations and his passion to find solutions to the problems and concerns of the people of Wyoming and America have led to his nickname, the ``quiet persuader.'' He has been a great mentor to me. Thad has had a remarkable career, and his leadership will be dearly missed. He has inspired future leaders from his State, and in that way and so many others he has made a difference.

Diana joins me in sending our best wishes to you, to your wife Kay, and to the rest of your family, and our appreciation for your willingness to serve Mississippi and the Nation so faithfully and so long.

There are countless sayings about how politics isn't for anyone but the brave and the resilient. I think your experience, especially this past year, has shown that there is no challenge too large for you to overcome, and clearly you specialize in making the world a better place--and that is a win-win for us all, especially our children and our grandchildren.

I am sad to see you leave the Senate at the end of this month, but I wish you a well-deserved retirement and other adventures.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on February 9, 2018, the President signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 into law, H.R. 1892, P.L. 115-123. This bill passed the Senate by a vote of 71 to 28 and the House of Representatives by a vote of 240 to 186. Section 30101 of H.R. 1892 increased the statutory discretionary spending limits for Fiscal Year 2018. More specifically, it increased the Fiscal Year 2018 discretionary spending limit for the revised security category to $629 billion in new budget authority and the revised nonsecurity category to $579 billion in new budget authority. Section 4108 of the Fiscal Year 2018 congressional budget resolution provides me with the authority to adjust enforceable levels and allocations for such changes in the statutory limits. I am therefore adjusting the allocation to the Committee on Appropriations and the budgetary aggregates to reflect the new spending limits imposed by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.

In addition to the changes triggered by P.L. 115-123, section 251 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, BBEDCA, establishes statutory limits on discretionary spending and allows for various adjustments to those limits, while sections 302 and 314(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 allow the chairman of the Budget Committee to establish and make revisions to allocations, aggregates, and levels consistent with those adjustments. The Senate is considering the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 1625, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018. This measure provides full-year appropriations for Federal Government agencies and contains spending that qualifies for cap adjustments under current statute.

This measure includes $78,097 million in budget authority that is designated as being for overseas contingency operations/Global War on Terrorism pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(ii) of BBEDCA. Of that amount, $66,079 million is for spending in the security category and $12,018 million is for nonsecurity spending. CBO estimates that this budget authority will result in $43,344 million in outlays in, Fiscal Year 2018.

This measure also includes $7,366 million in nonsecurity discretionary budget authority designated for disaster relief pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(D) of BBEDCA. This designation makes the spending associated with this provision and its associated outlays of $368 million eligible for an adjustment.

This legislation provides $1,896 million in nonsecurity discretionary budget authority for program integrity efforts. This funding is designated pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(B) and section 251(b)(2)(C) of BBEDCA. CBO estimates that this budget authority will result in $1,576 million in outlays this fiscal year.

Finally, this legislation repurposes existing emergency funding increasing outlays by $1 million. This action is designated as an emergency pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of BBEDCA.

As a result of the aforementioned designations, I am revising the budget authority and outlay allocations to the Committee on Appropriations by increasing revised security budget authority by $146,022 million, revised nonsecurity budget authority by $84,531 million, and outlays by $108,997 million in Fiscal Year 2018. Further, I am increasing the budgetary aggregate for Fiscal Year 2018 by $230,553 million in budget authority and $108,997 million in outlays.

I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables, which provide details about the adjustment, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I wish to honor and recognize the outstanding service of Mark Booth on his retirement after 31 years of public service at the Congressional Budget Office. Mark's expertise as a forecaster and modeler has made him an invaluable contributor to CBO's analysis of the budget outlook. Since 2003, Mark has been chief of the revenue estimating unit of CBO's tax analysis division, overseeing its forecasts of tax revenues and cost estimates of legislative proposals.

Mark came to CBO in 1986 from the private sector, where he began his career as a forecaster and analyst. He took over responsibility for CBO's corporate income tax projections and quickly demonstrated his analytic skills. As a result, Mark's portfolio continuously expanded, as he soon also became the lead analyst for CBO's projections of individual income taxes and Federal Reserve System's earnings. In addition, Mark joined the tax analysis division's cost-estimating team, overseeing assistant analysts to produce timely estimates of legislative proposals. Over those years, Mark won the CBO Director's Award for Exceptional Service, the agency's highest recognition for work by a CBO staffer, twice.

In recognition of Mark's abilities and breadth of experience, he was promoted to the position of unit chief for revenue estimating in 2003, and he has overseen the division's projections and cost estimates ever since. As head of the revenue estimating unit, Mark has led his staff in providing high-quality and timely projections of revenues and analysis of budget issues. Mark has made valuable contributions to numerous reports, testimonies, and cost estimates in just about every subject area covered by CBO, including the economy, energy, transportation, and healthcare. He also has served a crucial role in trying to make CBO's analysis more transparent, preparing several background papers that describe CBO's methods of forecasting revenues and evaluate the agency's projections record.

I know my colleagues join me in extending our thanks and appreciation to Mark for his service to our Nation. We wish him well in his retirement from CBO and hope he will continue in future years to lend his expertise to the analysis of important tax policy issues.

Mr. President, when we debated the Dodd-Frank bill in 2010, I concentrated most of my effort on talking about the third portion-- the third third of the bill; it is one of those several-hundred page bills again--but this was kind of hidden at the end, something called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, known as the CFPB.

I opposed its creation during the debate. I opposed it because it is not a government agency under any way, shape, form, or rule that we have. There is no control whatsoever over this group. The makeup of the Bureau is quite unique in that a sole Director, rather than a bipartisan commission, is the singular decision maker of the agency, and it doesn't even require approval by Congress for who that person is or the length of their term. Furthermore, the Bureau is not subjected to the congressional appropriations process, having guaranteed money from the Federal Reserve to fund the agency's existence.

How does that work? Well, they get a percentage of the revenue of the Federal Reserve that would normally come to the Federal Government and then be allocated. They get it before it comes to the Federal Government, so they are outside the control of an appropriations process. They have guaranteed money. Not only do they have guaranteed money, they have a guaranteed inflation factor built into their money. It is feasible that with enough inflation, they could control the entire revenue from the Federal Reserve. That funding source is more assured than Social Security. And if the agency is running amuck, Congress has no ability to use the appropriations process to bring oversight to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That is a great name. It seems to protect it, even if that is not primarily what it seems to be doing. I am only picking on a very small portion of that with this bill.

You may be familiar with something called the transparent General Schedule for Federal employees, often referred to as the ``GS scale.'' It is the primary way that the government ensures that Federal employee salaries are appropriate and reasonable. This pay scale, however, doesn't apply to the least accountable agency in the Federal Government--you guessed it, the CFPB.

At the CFPB, the Director has the sole discretion to determine employees' salaries. Government employees at the CFPB--if you want to call them government employees, because they are really outside any control by the government, either the executive branch or legislative branch, and it takes a court case to get it to the judicial branch-- government employees at the CFPB receive some of the highest paychecks of all Federal workers. According to data my office obtained from the Office of Personnel Management and the CFPB itself, there were over 170 employees at the CFPB who were paid salaries in 2017 that ranged from $180,000 to $259,000. To put this in perspective, in 2017, the highest paid appointees in the White House were paid salaries of $179,000-- $1,000 less than the minimum of these 170 employees at the CFPB. Over 170 employees at the CFPB receive more pay than the highest paid White House staffers, and 102 employees of the CFPB make more in annual salary than any of our State Governors. A Supreme Court Justice is paid an annual salary of $251,000. Six staff members at the CFPB were paid more than that, and there is no control, so it can go higher. It is based on what the Director approves. In 2017, approximately 47 employees had a salary higher than the Vice President's.

It is true that top executives at the big banks can make a hefty penny in their industry, but the whole of the American banking industry doesn't see this type of wealth. These are our community bankers and our credit unions and institutions that support Main Street America. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average bank employee salary is $63,000. And guess who makes more than these bankers. Their regulators, like the CFPB.

Last year, Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin and I introduced the CFPB Pay Fairness Act to rein in the CFPB's rates of pay. I am offering this bill as an amendment to the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. The amendment requires the Director of the CFPB to set the basic rate of pay in accordance with the GS scale--the same fairness scale that everybody else works under. The GS scale provides information to the public on the credentials of Federal employees, with each level requiring qualification standards, such as education and years of experience.

As it stands, the CFPB does not provide any qualification standards for its employees' pay, nor is it transparent to the American people or even the CFPB's own employees. This proved to

be an issue when in 2016 the Government Accountability Office investigated allegations of discrimination at the CFPB. Thirty-three percent of the CFPB employee respondents to the GAO--Government Accountability Office--indicated they believed their pay was not commensurate with their skills, work experience, and education.

Because of the way the CFPB was created in the Dodd-Frank legislation that we are working on right now, Congress failed to impose the usual constitutional checks to rein in this behavior. Congress needs to bring accountability to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and we should start with the Bureau's lavish spending on employee salaries. This commonsense amendment would ensure that the Bureau is keeping employees' salaries in line with the regular government pay scale, which promotes transparency and equity in pay across the Federal Government.

There is a lot more that I could say about this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but I want to concentrate on the fact that they are paid substantially more than anybody else in government, and we have no control over it. There is only one person who does, and that is the one who gets the job as Director--which was taken to court since even the President can't fire that person, no matter which President it is. So this is just one of the things that make it an unusual organization.

From my experience, they aren't doing what they said they would do at the time that they said it needed to be created. Instead, they are harassing different businesses until these businesses pay a fine, and that fine goes into a slush fund for them that they can give out to ones that we would never approve for any money from the Federal Government.

They have this guaranteed revenue. In checking, I find out they are supposed to spend all of it. The Director can set the salaries and has very little firing capability to go along with that. But they are paid an inordinate amount compared to everybody else in government, including Supreme Court Justices, the Vice President, and other people who work around here. The highest paid people at the White House make $1,000 less than the lowest paid of these 170 workers.

I hope people consider this amendment to bring a degree of fairness and transparency so we know what the agency is doing. It is only in the way of salaries, but that is a good starting place.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report for February 2018. The report compares current-law levels of spending and revenues with the amounts the Senate agreed to in the budget resolution for fiscal year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71. This information is necessary for the Senate Budget Committee to determine whether budget points of order lie against pending legislation. The Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee and the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, prepared this report pursuant to section 308(b) of the Congressional Budget Act, CBA.

The enforceable levels included in this report reflect all of the numerical adjustments made to the resolution since its passage. The information contained in this report captures legislative activity from the passage of the budget resolution through February 26, 2018.

Republican Budget Committee staff prepared tables 1-4 of this report.

Table 1 gives the amount by which each Senate authorizing committee exceeds or is below its allocation for budget authority and outlays under the most recently adopted budget resolution. This information is used for enforcing committee allocations pursuant to section 302 of the CBA. For this reporting period, 11 of the 16 authorizing committees are in compliance with their allocations. As previously reported, the Senate Veterans' Affairs, Energy and Natural Resources, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees remain in breach of their allocations. Since my last report on January 18, 2018, both the Finance and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committees have increased spending beyond allowable levels. Through the enactment of both the fourth continuing resolution, H.R. 195, P.L. 115-120, and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, BBA18, H.R. 1892, P.L. 115-123, which contained packages of healthcare extenders, the Finance Committee breached its allocation by $76.9 billion in budget authority and $7.8 billion in outlays over 10 years. Enactment of the BBA18 also produced the Agriculture Committee breach. That law changed the treatment of seed cotton, dairy, and livestock under Federal farm programs, increasing both budget authority and outlays by $1.2 billion over the 2018-2027 period.

Table 2 gives the amount by which the Senate Committee on Appropriations is below or exceeds the statutory spending limits. This information is used to determine points of order related to the spending caps found in section 312 and section 314 of the CBA. While no full-year appropriations bills have been enacted for fiscal year 2018, subcommittees are charged with permanent and advanced appropriations that first become available in that year and any full-year standalone provisions included in continuing resolutions. This table reflects one change from my January report. The continuing resolution portion of the BBA18 included full-year authority for the Secretary of Energy to draw down and sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, reducing budget authority and outlays by $315 million in 2018.

The budget resolution contains two points of order limiting the use of changes in mandatory programs in appropriations bills, CHIMPS. Tables 3 and 4 show compliance with fiscal year 2018 limits for overall CHIMPS and the Crime Victims Fund CHIMP, respectively. This information is used for determining points of order under sections 4102 and 4103 of H. Con. Res. 71, respectively. Notably, there have not been any full- year bills enacted thus far for fiscal year 2018 that include CHIMPS.

In addition to the tables provided by Budget Committee Republican staff, I am submitting CBO tables, which I will use to enforce budget totals approved by the Congress.

CBO provided a spending and revenue report for fiscal year 2018, which helps enforce aggregate spending levels in budget resolutions under CBA section 311. In its report, CBO annualizes the temporary effects of the latest continuing resolution, which provides funding through March 23, 2018. For the enforcement of budgetary aggregates, the Budget Committee excludes this temporary funding. As such, the committee views current-law levels as being $814.6 billion and $463.7 billion below budget resolution levels for budget authority and outlays, respectively. Details on fiscal year 2018 levels can be found in CBO's second table.

Current-law revenues continue to be in excess of the levels assumed by the budget resolution. On-budget revenue levels currently exceed assumed levels by $3.5 billion in fiscal year 2018, $41.9

billion over the fiscal year 2018-2022 period, and $98.4 billion over the fiscal year 2018-2027 period. Since my last filing both the fourth continuing resolution and BBA18 contained provisions that reduced revenues compared with current law. The fourth continuing resolution included $25.4 billion in on-budget revenue loss over 10 years related to delays in several health-related taxes. The BBA18 contained an $11.6 billion revenue loss largely as a consequence of a package of tax extenders. This BBA18 figure omits $1.8 billion in revenue increases attributable to language related to Federal Reserve Surplus Funds, which are required to be omitted under current scorekeeping rules.

Social Security outlay levels are consistent with the budget resolution's figures for all enforceable periods. Social Security revenues, however, are $446 million below levels assumed for fiscal year 2018, $1.9 billion greater over the next 5 years, and $28.8 billion greater than assumed over the next 10 years. These revenue effects are attributable to the tax provisions from the fourth continuing resolution, BBA18, and the tax reconciliation bill enacted in December 2017.

CBO's report also provides information needed to enforce the Senate pay-as-you-go, PAYGO, rule. The Senate's PAYGO scorecard currently shows deficit reduction of $24 million in fiscal year 2018, $14 million over the fiscal year 2017-2022, and $13 million over fiscal year 2017- 2027 periods. For fiscal year 2018, legislation has been enacted that would reduce outlays by $24 million. Over the fiscal year 2017-2022 period, legislation has been enacted that CBO estimates will decrease outlays by $13 million and increase revenues by $1 million. Over the fiscal year 2017-2027 period, legislation has been enacted that CBO estimates will decrease outlays by $11 million and increase revenues by $2 million. Notably absent from these amounts are the direct spending and revenue effects from the fourth continuing resolution and BBA18. This is due to provisions in those measures that mandated the exclusion of those budgetary effects both from the Senate and statutory PAYGO scorecards. The Senate's PAYGO rule is enforced by section 4106 of H. Con. Res. 71.

Also included in this submission is a table tracking the Senate's budget enforcement activity on the floor since Congress adopted the budget resolution. No points of order have been raised on the floor since my last filing.

All years in the accompanying tables are fiscal years.

I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, section 251 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, BBEDCA, establishes statutory limits on discretionary spending and allows for various adjustments to those limits, while sections 302 and 314(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 allow the chairman of the Budget Committee to establish and make revisions to allocations, aggregates, and levels consistent with those adjustments. The Senate recently considered and passed H.R. 1892 with S. Amdt. 1930, the text of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which provided emergency funding for disaster relief.

This legislation includes language that increases security discretionary budget authority by $1,170 million and nonsecurity discretionary budget authority by $83,266 million this year. This measure contains provisions that designate these appropriations as emergency funding pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of BBEDCA. CBO estimates that this budget authority will increase discretionary outlays by $11,185 million in 2018.

As a result of the aforementioned designations, I am revising the allocation to the Committee on Appropriations by increasing the revised security and nonsecurity budget authority limits and the amount of allowable outlays by the amounts listed above. Further, I am increasing the budgetary aggregates for 2018 by those same amounts.

I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables, which provide details about the adjustment, be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I wish to submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report for January 2018. The report compares current-law levels of spending and revenues with the amounts the Senate agreed to in the budget resolution for fiscal year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71. This information is necessary for the Senate Budget Committee to determine whether budget points of order lie against pending legislation. The Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee and the Congressional Budget Office CBO prepared this report pursuant to section 308(b) of the Congressional Budget Act, CBA.

The enforceable levels included in this report reflect all of the numerical adjustments made to the resolution since its passage. These adjustments include an update to enforceable levels for legislation enacted after the June 2017 CBO baseline was released but before enactment of the resolution, October 30, 2017; a revision to aggregates and allocations to accommodate legislation fulfilling the budget resolution's reconciliation instructions, December 19, 2017; and a revision to aggregates and the Appropriations Committee's allocation for emergency spending found in Fiscal Year 2018's third continuing resolution, H.R. 1370, December 21, 2017.

The information contained in this report captures legislative activity from the passage of the budget resolution through January 11, 2018.

Republican Budget Committee staff prepared tables 1 through 4 of this report.

Table 1 gives the amount by which each Senate authorizing committee exceeds or is below its allocation for budget authority and outlays under the most recently adopted budget resolution. This information is used for enforcing committee allocations pursuant to section 302 of the CBA. For this reporting period, 13 of the 16 authorizing committees are in compliance with their allocations. First, the Veterans' Affairs and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees violated their allocations in December 2017, the former with a $2.1 billion extension of the Veterans Choice Program and the latter through a package of health extenders. Both of these extensions were included as separate divisions on the Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018, P.L. 115-96. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee violated its allocation earlier this month with the passage of the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act, P.L. 115-103, which is estimated to increase spending by $5 million over the next 10 years. The Armed Services Committee, on the other hand, reduced spending over the budget window. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, P.L. 115-91, produced $16 million in outlay savings over the enforceable window.

Table 2 gives the amount by which the Senate Committee on Appropriations is below or exceeds the statutory spending limits. This information is used to determine points of order related to the spending caps found in section 312 and section 314 of the CBA. While no full-year appropriations bills have been enacted for Fiscal Year 2018, subcommittees are charged with permanent and advanced appropriations that first become available in that year.

The budget resolution contains two points of order limiting the use of changes in mandatory programs in appropriations bills, CHIMPS. Tables 3 and 4 show compliance with Fiscal Year 2018 limits for overall CHIMPS and the Crime Victims Fund CHIMP, respectively. This information is used for determining points of order under section 4102 and section 4103 of H. Con. Res. 71, respectively. Notably, there have not been any full-year bills enacted thus far for Fiscal Year 2018 that include