Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor here to give an even simpler argument as it applies in many different areas in addition to education.

Senator Scott came to the floor to ask for choice, opportunity, and competition all mixed in together. When you have got that, you have got the description of a perfect marketplace, whether it is for healthcare, whether it is for education. And, ironically, the two places in our country where expenses keep going up and up would be in healthcare. Most families would put that up there right along with education.

K-12, having that ability to choose where you would want your own kids to go to school is something that you should never be afraid of. If you are not interested in it, you are probably trying to hide something. That would be, in many cases, where you are not mustering what it takes to minimally educate your own child properly.

I was on a school board for 10 years--2004 through 2014--in Indiana, a public school system in one of the most Catholic places in the State of Indiana. I will never forget, a high school tried to start that was Catholic. Our public school system was so good it couldn't get to first base, but at least the attempt was made. Not all areas are blessed with a public school system, as we traditionally know it, offering that top- notch education.

Whenever you do fear competition, transparency--which doesn't necessarily apply here, but choice, it does--you are probably trying to cover up something that is not performing.

And, sadly, here is where you need the choice more than any other place, where folks can't afford to have the choice. And if you are trapped in one system, what does that say for your kids' future?

I ran a business for 37 years. So many businesses tried to do the same thing, get involved in markets. It gets concentrated. That is what is happening in our healthcare industry. It is like an unregulated utility, and it disguises itself as free enterprise. That is restricting competition, restricting transparency, restricting choice.

Costs have been going up for decades with no end in sight; postsecondary education, very similar. Here, all we need to do is take a system that still has a pretty good value to it, it just is not producing the results.

Indiana has been one of the leaders in charter schools and choice. We have over 100 charter schools. I reflect back--I think it was when I was a State legislator--on a neighboring county, there were three grade schools. The smallest of the three had to be shut down because of cost cuts--well, best performing of the three. Those kids would have had to travel 10, 15 miles to get to one of the other two public schools, elementary. This place worked as hard as it could over 2 years, scraped together the resources, and kept their Otwell Miller Academy open. It was the choice of the parents. They were part of a system that wasn't working, and they were able to do it. Had it not been for the charter school policy in our State, that community would have been out of luck.

We have some of the best charters in the country in Indiana because we are a place that generally embraces competition, transparency, choice, and no barriers to entry. Whenever the healthcare industry is trying to lobby for not having more competition, for instance, through physician-owned hospitals, when public school systems want themselves to be the only option, sometimes you get lucky, like I did, and went to a great public school system, but many times you don't, and you are trapped in a bad system.

Our schools, too, that are charter sometimes are a little more experimental. They focus on things like STEM, CTE, particular education that community might need, where if you are brought into the same old curriculum, the same old process, the same thing that is not generating even the basic results, you are trapped in something that should never be the case.

Be for choice. Be for competition. Be for a successful education.

I yield the floor.

It is going to be real easy, real short.

In November, the House of Representatives was returned back to Republicans. It was in a much wider kind of popular margin when you add up the votes that we won across the country through the House of Representatives, slimmer in terms of the number of seats we picked up, but we got it back.

Why would Republicans go along with a huge spending bill like this one? It has happened every year since I have been here--no budgeting, no appropriations that even an appropriator like myself can look at because it is done behind closed doors.

And all we have got to do is get this into the next Congress.

Congress funds the government through CRs all the time for the wrong reason--because they don't do the homework; they don't do the regular order. It kicks the can down the road consistently--standard operating procedure.

It is a slap in the face to those voters to let the outgoing House majority set the agenda for the next 10 months.

We shouldn't fund the government with huge omnibus bills in the first place, and we shouldn't give Pelosi--current Speaker Pelosi--a going- away present when she has been part of the process for all these years. We should actually do a budget like it is supposed to be done, and we should not do this as we are heading into a new Congress.

I yield back to the Senator from Utah.

I ask unanimous consent that I, Senator Leahy, and Senator Schumer be permitted to complete our remarks prior to the scheduled vote.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 5765 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, my home State of Indiana is America's heartland. I have traveled to every county, listened to businesses, schools, churches. I think that is where we need to get our cue in terms of what needs to be done. Farmers, as well, are in the middle of something they never faced before--probably the toughest job and business out there. It has never been tougher.

The American people are strong and resilient, but they are represented by a government here that is not necessarily the same. Sometimes they get scoffed at, but they live within their household budgets. State and local governments have guardrails. But, naturally, they do it anyway because they know you can't borrow money from future generations and spend it today--bad business plan.

For this reason, I think the U.S. Congress is broken because we have kept shoving this issue down the road. We haven't done a budget that we adhered to in nearly 20 years. The last time we did it, we were most ingenious about how to unravel it--roughly 10 years ago.

When they look at our capital, they see a twisted knot of lobbyists, corporate interests, and a mountain of debt that just gets higher and higher.

We now spend over a trillion dollars more each year than we take in, and, recently, that has gone up to $1.5 trillion. To normalize that just does not make sense. We are here twiddling our thumbs while our kids' and grandkids' future goes up in smoke. Every American family is paying for our failures here.

Congress, as a whole, and particularly this body, seem to have no interest in turning this big ship away from the rocks. In the past year, I have brought to the floor four chances to do something. I offered a complete Federal budget that would match our spending and our revenues that are historical in nature. Only 34 Senators voted for it. It would have preserved Social Security, Medicare, and defense, just bringing it in line with what is sustainable.

I offered an amendment that if we fail to get our budget and appropriations bills done on time, by the deadline, which is like in a few days for this year, we don't get paid until we do so. Forty-seven Senators voted for it--close, but still not there.

I offered an amendment to cut pet projects through earmarks from our huge spending bill. It only got 35 votes. And we were doing that for almost 10 years, and now we have actually backslid into that bad behavior.

I offered an amendment to require a balanced budget, like so many States have--they live in fiscal sanity--47 votes, short again.

The Framers of our Constitution saw this coming. They had to raise revenue, especially back then, to do whatever they wanted to do. There were also checks and balances.

Congress isn't just balanced by the Supreme Court and the President, but also by the States. Article V of our Constitution gives the States the power to pick up the slack when Congress refuses to act, where it doesn't exercise discipline, good behavior, what all of us expect.

I believe the House and the Senate desperately need two things: term limits--the Founders never imagined people would come here and like that better than what they did before. Washington and Jefferson hurried back to their farms and their businesses. That is not the case anymore.

If we keep doing it the way we are, we are going to get increasingly, increasingly deeper in the hole. With term limits, we get a class of political entrepreneurs here who have actually done something in the real world, before they think they can run the biggest business in the world and deliver such poor results.

If two-thirds of the States petition to call a constitutional convention, we could take power away from the DC establishment and put it back in the hands of the American people. You are not going to believe how close that has come and how close it is currently. But the swamp, I think, knows it. That is why each time the right number of petitions have been filed, Congress refused to call the convention.

The last time was as recently as last year. Today, 32 States have active applications for the convention. We need 34. It was actually at the level or above until a few States rescinded that.

This plan is extremely popular because it makes sense. It puts political will and backbone into this place that we don't normally have. And a recent poll by Trafalgar found that 65 percent of likely voters agree with that. If you take either term limits or balanced budgets by themselves, it gets up close to 85 or 90 percent, and, in this poll, 81 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of Independents--who I think elect the swing State Senators and the President; so we ought to be really paying attention to them--and 50 percent of Democrats.

There is no Federal Government body managing this process. It is too easy for Congress to ignore what the States have done.

My amendment would be very, very simple. It would direct the Archivist, who has all of these petitions somewhere in a drawer, to publish them as they come in so all of us can see what the people are thinking.

We have conveniently just overlooked it or ignored it. It adds what we should all be for: transparency, having people be able to see what is going on here, and especially for something like this.

America is the most powerful country in history because we are founded on the rock of the Constitution. So simple and direct, it can all be right in here. We need to pay more attention to it.

The Framers were also wise to have a tool for the people and the States when Congress refuses to act on things so critical. Considering how broken and dysfunctional this place is currently and the dire threats we face from our debt and inflation crisis, you would think now, more than any other time in our country's history, that this would be at the forefront and we would at least give it to the States to weigh in and not hide it in a drawer somewhere.

When each one of us swore in as Senator, we didn't swear our allegiance to our political party. We did it to the Constitution. We didn't promise to support the Washington establishment. We did it to the people, to the Constitution.

It is in support of the American people and in defense of the Constitution that I come here to the floor today. It is not going to be litigated on the floor today, but I can tell you, for the time that I am here, I am not going to let the American public forget it.

And we have another critical date in the middle of December, 2\1/2\ months away, and I think that will be a place where it will even be more important, and I am going to try to make the case in the meantime that we at least don't keep in a drawer, hidden away somewhere, what the American people want.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the 200th anniversary of the founding of Montgomery County, IN, and the unique contributions that the Montgomery County community has made to the United States.

This December, Montgomery County celebrates the bicentennial of its foundation. Montgomery County is a place one could characterize as quintessentially ``Indiana:'' the mellow bends of Sugar Creek crossed with covered bridges; the buzzing hometown feel of Crawfordsville; and the ambitious energy of Wabash college--all hallmarks of Indiana that make my State such a wonderful place to live. Over two centuries, this county has steadily grown from a handful of log cabins into a historic community, contributing greatly to American history and culture.

Consider, for instance, Lew Wallace, a highly accomplished citizen who spent much of his life in Crawfordsville. Wallace left his career as a lawyer to fight for the Union in the Civil War, rising to the rank of general. Later, he served as Governor of the territory of New Mexico. After completing his service to the United States and returning to Crawfordsville, Wallace published his highly acclaimed and influential novel, ``Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.'' It soon became the best-selling novel of the 19th century and is still adapted for stage and film today.

Now, I could not commemorate Montgomery Country without mentioning its important role in the story of Indiana's favorite sport, basketball. Indeed, according to many historical sources, Montgomery County served as the launch pad for the sport of basketball in Indiana. The first Indiana High School Athletic Association basketball championship was won by Crawfordsville High School in 1911, and the following eight Indiana high school basketball champions were located within thirty miles of Montgomery County. Piggy Lambert, one highly influential basketball coach from Purdue University, played basketball at Crawfordsville High School and Wabash College. Even scenes from the legendary movie ``Hoosiers'' were filmed in New Richmond, cementing Indiana's relationship with basketball in American culture.

Finally, I want to address Wabash College, my alma mater. The time that I spent at Wabash College impressed upon me the qualities that make Montgomery County not only special, but representative of Indiana. Founded in 1832, on what was then our Nation's western frontier, Wabash College has produced thousands of influential graduates across many fields. As president of the student body at Wabash College, I had plenty of experience to prepare me for my careers in business and public service.

In closing, I am delighted to honor Montgomery County, and I want to congratulate the communities of Montgomery County for 200 years of meaningful contributions to American history and culture. Thank you.

Mr. President, reserving the right object, I am glad the Supreme Court has returned the issue of life back to the people's elected representatives, where it should have stayed 49 years ago.

This legislation denies State representatives the right to make laws protecting life. This bill is an attempt to undermine State laws that protect life by allowing abortions for anyone who crosses State lines and is not a resident of the State.

Moreover, it gives the Department of Justice $40 million in grant funding to help people sue States--to help people sue States--that enact policies to protect life. The Department of Health and Human Services is given another $40 million in funding for any eligible center at Secretary Becerra's discretion. This funding is not protected by the Hyde amendment, and most likely, we are going to borrow every penny of it, like we do for most things in this place. We should not spend $80 million to undermine State laws on life or impose a legislative backdoor for abortion-on-demand across our Nation.

For these reasons, I oppose this bill, and I do object.

I thank Senator Scott.

Mr. President, President Biden's student loan debt transfer does not cancel or forgive anything. These debts will still be paid. It is not like they go away.

What else does it say about the whole idea that, when you take on an obligation and you agree to it, you can just shirk it or get rid of it? There are many people across the country who would want to be in on that gambit as well. He has simply shifted the cost of repayment on to everyone, including to the 65 percent of American workers who chose not to get a college degree. What about the aspiring plumber or electrician who borrowed $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000 for his or her own business? There would be no end to it.

We should focus on getting more value out of colleges rather than giving them another reason to hike prices. Sadly, the only place where that has been focused on is in my own home State, where Mitch Daniels, the ex-Governor of Indiana, froze tuition into 10 years. That is getting more value out, and that is why their enrollment has gone way up.

With a national debt of nearly $31 trillion, we can't continue to pile on more debt. When Senator Scott and I got here just a little over 3\1/2\ years ago, we were $18 trillion in debt. We throw ``trillions'' around now like we used to ``hundreds of billions,'' and it is on the backs of our kids and grandkids every time we do it.

Today, Federal Student Aid owns $1.6 trillion in outstanding Federal assets--in other words, student loans. The loan program needs to be completely redone so that colleges will be motivated to lower costs. This is an excuse to do the opposite.

Finally, President Biden's actions are illegal in the first place. The President doesn't have the authority to cancel all of this debt. I am hoping it gets taken to court, because what does it say, again, for future generations or anyone who makes a commitment to take on debt who can shirk it with the stroke of a pen?

Even Speaker Pelosi agreed on this point, saying she didn't think it was legal. Yet it doesn't make any difference in this day and age as we plow forward.

This is why the Debt Cancellation Accountability Act requires the Department of Education to get express appropriation from Congress to pay for any Federal student loan the Department proposes to waive, discharge, or reduce.

I yield the floor to Senator Scott.

So the plan that the Democrats are going to give you, not only on this, was put out clearly in President Biden's blueprint for our country to put us $45 trillion in debt in 10 years, where we will be paying as much on interest as we do on discretionary spending domestically or the military budget. That is no business plan.

How do you think they are going to pay for the debt forgiveness? They are going to borrow the money to do it, to backfill to pay the people who are owed the money.

One other point of clarification. When you had a practical bill--the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was done before Senator Scott and I got here--it was a plan to grow economic activity, a way to pay for it. Had COVID not come along, the CBO was ready to say that it was paying for itself because we were growing the economy at 3 percent. And the $150 billion per year over 10 years, which is chump change now compared to the $3 trillion the Democrats have put us in debt over the last year and a half, was growing the economy with zero inflation, raising wages in the toughest spots for those wage earners. We have always tried to do it without borrowing it from our kids and our grandkids.

I yield back the floor to Senator Scott.

I yield myself five minutes from the bill time.

I rise today to honor the life of Congresswoman Jackie Walorski. Three others were lost in the tragic accident.

Like I said last week, it is a real gut punch to any of us who knew Jackie and to Hoosiers across the board. The outpouring of grief for the lives lost has been immense in our State. As Hoosiers share their memories of them, you can see just how important all those lives were.

Let me talk about Jackie. I got to know her early on when I was entertaining running for Senate. She was up in the north central part of Indiana, a place that I had been very little, and she was engaging. I spent get-togethers with her before and then after I was elected, and Todd said it well: Whomever she came across, she was their friend, full of enthusiasm. She never really knew a stranger.

I got to know her better over the years since then, and I can tell you that faith, family, and community were the principles that guided her, and times of mourning show us just how important those things truly are.

As the friends and family grieve for the four lives lost in this tragedy, I hope they can find consolation in their

faith, in their families, in their communities, and in the memory of their loved ones.

Zach Potts was a rising presence in Indiana politics. He was the district chair, also the Republican chair of St. Joe County, an up-and- comer. He is remembered by friends as someone who truly cared, who didn't ask, ``What's wrong?'' but instead asked, ``How can I help?''

Emma Thomson, Jackie's communications director, is remembered by those who knew her as creative, funny, driven, committed to the idea that people are the most important thing in politics.

Edith Schmucker is remembered as a loving mother and a big-hearted friend to all at the assisted living facility where she worked and served others.

I hope you will join me and Todd in praying for their friends and their families. As we honor the lives of Jackie, Zach, Emma, and Edith, their legacies will live on in those whose lives they touched.

And Jackie was a living testament to what it means to be a ``good and faithful servant.'' She lived it out every day, and she will truly be missed.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, many

Americans are not going to see eye to eye on the issue of abortion. I am glad to see that the Supreme Court did what it did and returned that decision to the people, to the State legislatures. Currently, Indiana is debating that issue.

This bill denies State legislators the right to make laws protecting life in their own States. The bill appears to be dealing with traveling freely across the Nation to get an abortion, but a literal reading of the text proves the true intent of the bill. It is, I think, a backdoor into trying to upend what should be neighboring State legislatures' responsibility. It should be the people in their State that make the decision.

Let's look at section 3(a)(3) of the bill, stating ``no individual, entity, or State may restrict . . . a health care provider or any individual entity from providing or assisting a health care provider with reproductive health care services for an individual who does not reside''--who does not reside--``in the State in which the services are to be provided.''

Sections 3(a)(1) and 3(a)(2) of the bill specifically include the phrase ``lawful in the State.'' Why is that omitted from the previous clause? I think it is because this bill is an attempt to undermine State laws that protect life by allowing abortions for anyone who crosses State lines and is not a resident of that State.

Not to belabor it, I want to read it one more time, slowly. Once again, this bill reads:

No individual, entity, or State may prevent, restrict,

impede, or disadvantage . . . any individual from providing

or assisting reproductive health care services for an

individual who does not reside in the State.

Senator Murray did not mention that it also gives the Department of Justice $40 million in grant funding to help people sue States that enact policies to protect life. The Department of Health and Human Services is given another $40 million in funding for any eligible center at Secretary Becerra's discretion. This funding is not protected by the Hyde amendment.

We should not spend $80 million to undermine State laws on life or impose a legislative backdoor for abortion on demand across the Nation. For this reason, I oppose this bill, and I do object to it.

Mr. President, earlier today, in the normal course of the day, I get the tragic news that my good friend, one of the first persons I met when I was exploring the idea of becoming a Senator, Jackie Walorski, was tragically killed in a car accident.

All of us are on the road a lot, and you spend those hours--endless, sometimes--and you never imagine that one day that could happen. When I heard that, it is like the ultimate gut punch.

Emma Thomson, Zach Potts, died along with her--three Hoosiers whom we will miss. It is hard to come up with the words to say: How did that happen and how do you get through it?

But for most of us, and especially in my case with Jackie, she was one of the first great Hoosiers I got to know on my own journey. She will be missed and our condolences to all of the families.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the memory of the victims of a senseless act of violence in Greenwood, IN, a southern suburb of Indianapolis.

The lives taken that day were enjoying what should have been a fun July day with family and friends. In a moment's notice, lives were changed forever when a deranged killer tragically took the lives of three people. This is happening far too often, and so often it seems to have something to do with mental illness. This is just another example of how it plays out in the real world.

They will never be forgotten.

This resolution also expresses hope for the full recovery of those injured in the attack as well.

I want to mention the victims by name. I think that is important: Pedro Pineda, Rosa Mirian, Rivera de Pineda, and Victor Gomez. You have to remember the people, their names, because this happens far too often.

Within a mere 15 seconds of the shooter opening fire, a citizen by the name of Elisjsha Dicken, a 22-year-old from Seymour, IN, down in my part of the State, rose and stopped the rampage. Thank goodness for him. If not for his courageous action, the violence surely would have been much worse. I am proud to acknowledge the man, the young man, for defending himself and others in a valiant act of bravery in the face of unimaginable danger.

Hoosiers are united in mourning for those lost in this senseless attack, and we pray for their families to find peace in the memory of their loved ones.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 740, which is at the desk. I further ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I rise today to fix a troubling loophole in our earmark rules. Earmarks are something I strongly oppose. I believe they breed corruption, overspending, waste, and abuse.

There has been bipartisan concern about the earmarking process for decades. In 2007, the process got so out of control that even earmarking's biggest supporters decided we needed guardrails.

The Senate passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. The bill created Senate standing rule 44, which requires the authors of any bill considered by the Chamber to do this: identify each earmark contained in the bill and ensure that the text is publicly available at least 48 hours prior to proceeding to the bill.

These two protections helped shine light on the earmarking process. There was significant bipartisan support for the protections in rule 44.

In 2007, on the Senate floor, Senator Hillary Clinton said that rule 44 would help curb wasteful spending by creating greater transparency ``in the earmark process.'' It was nearly unanimous, including the two Senators from New Hampshire.

I want to read a portion of her comments.

I believe we can improve accountability by mandating

publication of the earmark for a minimum period of time prior

to any vote on the underlying measure, ensuring that both

other elected officials and the general public have the

opportunity to scrutinize the sponsored outlay. Taking these

common-sense steps would ensure that legislators are made to

answer for the spending they cosponsor.

A quote from Hillary Clinton. I couldn't agree more, in this case. But the drafters of Senate rule 44 left something out. The rule does not apply to legislation brought to the floor as an amendment from the House.

This means that a determined majority can ignore the protections offered under the rule simply by using a common procedural mechanism.

The bill I seek to pass today closes this loophole. Senator Durbin commented about how important it was back then as well.

Congress should abide by the rules it created for itself. We recently saw the consequences of this loophole. The Omnibus appropriations bill considered in March contained nearly 5,000 earmarks, totaling nearly $10 billion. The Senate passed the bill less than 48 hours after receiving the text, in violation of the spirit of rule 44.

As Dr. Tom Coburn used to say in this Chamber, earmarks are a ``gateway drug.'' We must close this unintended loophole before the situation gets worse. In fiscal year 2010, the last year of earmarking before the congressional ban, Congress passed 11,000 earmarks at a sum of $32 billion. We cannot go back there.

Earmarks give Congress a personal incentive to vote for the huge spending bills that are dragging America into bankruptcy. I talked about it last night when I introduced my own budget to try to go the other direction.

Return of earmarks will mean the return of earmark scandals and earmark corruption much sooner than you think. Let's do the minimum to prevent this.

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 687; further, that the resolution be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, with all due respect to the Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Shaheen, back in 2007, both New Hampshire Senators Gregg and Sununu as well as all 98 Senators who voted back then I think intended not only for the letter of the law but they wanted the spirit of the law to be aligned with it.

We now have a new way, something that can come over here that violates a standing rule of the Senate. I am guessing it will probably be used again down the road where we have to get something, we have no time to look at it. I think the spirit of the law would say that we need the 48 hours and the ability to know who is on it and who isn't.

And then in the bigger picture, I would ask this question--and the American public ought to listen, ask it themselves--is this place getting more responsible or are we giving better value to you? Do we budget? Do we use regular order? And most importantly, are we creating more and more deficit and more and more debt?

We know what the answer is. I talked about it for 15 minutes yesterday evening. We are doing everything we can to avoid the rules, pay attention to the spirit of the law. And in what we are delivering, it is a product I think that shows less and less responsibility out of a body that should not be making rules that make it easier to run deficits and go into debt. It ought to be the opposite.

And if we don't, I think future generations will hold us accountable for the things that we seem to do best, which are the gimmicks to get around budgeting, avoiding the rules on a technicality.

The American public deserves better.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I come to the floor this evening--I have been talking about this subject for nearly the 3\1/2\ years I have been a Senator. And I will tell you why I think it is important.

We have grown the Federal Government to a level where all the people who look to it, where they are dependent upon it, try to work with it, need to know honestly where this all ends up if we do not change the trajectory.

I think the easiest way to understand how we have gotten to where we are now is to look to what we used to do in the past.

The country was never founded upon the principles that you borrow money to consume it. Any household, any local or State government knows you can't be successful doing that.

Money should only be borrowed if you are going to invest it or get a tangible return on it; even maybe an intangible one, when you look at investing in education or something like that.

But there has been no system that has ever worked that ends up borrowing money from the future, from its kids and grandkids, to where that is a good business plan. You get immediately derailed in the real world. Imagine in a household, if you take in money and you spend 20 percent more than whatever that is, you will go to a financial counselor. They may get you out of trouble. You keep doing it, you end up in bankruptcy court.

Businesses have the rigor of competition in addition to earning revenues, balancing their own budgets, and being able to invest into the future.

If you follow principles that work everywhere else, it can work here, too, and we owe it to the American public. Like I said earlier, so many look to this place to be their partner in some fashion, and it ought to be one that is going to be there in the future.

Let's look where we have come.

From the founding of the country, we raise revenues, generally, on the basis of need. You would go into debt; you would pay it off.

If you look at 1920, World War I--it is way over here--you borrowed money, defend the country, save others, and you paid it off.

Look what happened during the Great Depression, World War II. That is the deepest we have ever been in debt until we just eclipsed it recently. That is generally measured by how much debt you have as a percentage of your GDP--Great Depression; World War II.

Look where we went after that.

We were savers. We were investors then. We weren't consumers and spenders by nature, and we especially didn't do it through the Federal Government. We kept our debt in check. Even through the great recession, which occurred 2008, 2009, you were starting to see problems crop up. That happened when we put two wars on a credit card.

Like the other side of the aisle said: Well, if you are going to do that, there are a lot of needs in our own country, and certainly there are, from healthcare, education, across the spectrum--Social Security, Medicare.

Look what has happened since then. We have gone from being in relatively good shape pre-Gulf war, Afghanistan. We borrowed that money and then ran into the great recession and spent what

seems like very little compared to how significant that was--$800 to $900 billion.

And from that time to the present, I think we just said: We are borrowing money, and we might as well do more. And then you start doing it for things that don't make sense.

I got here 3\1/2\ years ago, 18 trillion in debt. We were just approaching the percentage coming out of World War II. Here. We have now passed that and doubling down and going way beyond that.

We are now, here, after the pandemic, where we spent close to $4 trillion in 2020--a lot of it out of uncertainty. We didn't know much about it. We should have treated that with respect. We now know a lot about it, and we probably didn't need to shut the economy down, which cost us a lot, but we are through it. We certainly shouldn't have doubled down and spent another 3 trillion in 2021.

I am not going to go over--you hear it on the news, you see it. We have got inflation embedded in the economy currently. The last time this occurred, back in the late seventies and the early eighties, when inflation peaked around 10 or 11 percent, it took 5 years to get it back to 2 percent, where we were pre-COVID. We can expect probably something similar. We don't know.

The big difference between now and then is we have got a lot more debt, especially in government, so it is going to be trickier.

So how do we get out of it?

Well, unless we turn the tide, unless we start doing things differently, Medicare, which isn't even being addressed here, has completely depleted its trust fund in about 4\1/2\ or 5 years-- automatic benefit cuts when that occurs.

Social Security, which has been around since the Depression paying into it, that is depleted in about 10 years.

Those are two large trust funds that will have no balance in them, and then you would have to borrow even more money to pay the benefits.

Let's show a comparison of where we stack up now with other major economies.

Look at that. We have known for a long time Japan, which is the third largest economy, has struggled to figure out how it is going to grow, how it is going to do for future generations what it has done since World War II. It has taken debt to where it is a stranglehold on its economy. Its debt is 237 percent of its GDP.

Now look who is in second place, and this isn't something you want to be in second place on--United States. Our debt currently is 107 percent of our GDP.

India, Germany, China--China, our main geopolitical competitor, under half of the sovereign debt as a percentage of its GDP. That is not a good place to be. They are our geopolitical competitor, and I sense they know that you need to be savers and investors if you are going to be successful in the future, if you are going to give your people what they are going to need out of a government.

Financially, we are going to be up against them, and they, to me, look like they are doing a lot of things that someday pivot to where we are caught by surprise, and then you don't have the options. We start increasing to be more indebted than what we are, it will be even harder to compete with somebody like them.

We now have a 9.1-percent inflation rate. That is a pay cut for everyone. We now know, I think, what caused it. We need to just quit digging the hole deeper. Let's get out of it. Let's go back to what we know was working, at least financially, pre-COVID. We had no inflation, nominal that is built into what is considered zero inflation, wages rising in the toughest places, and a growth rate that was better than what we had before, close to 3 percent.

We need to start spending less through government, return the productive capacity back to the private sector, and then look at--once we get the ship righted here--what we do better policywise. I am a believer. We need to fix healthcare; it is a broken system. It drives our structural deficits more than anything. Medicare each year--like Warren Buffett says, healthcare in general is a tapeworm on the economy.

What I want to do is face reality. Regardless of the tax rate, over 50 years, we average about 17\1/2\ percent of our GDP in Federal Government revenues. If that is all you can get, regardless if you have high tax rates that gives you a lower economic growth or lower tax rates that maybe gives you a percent or more in economic growth, we need to acknowledge it.

My plan does two simple things: acknowledges what our revenue has been over 50 years--17\1/2\ percent of our GDP--tapers what we spend into it, takes what we have done here as a maneuver to escape budgeting and appropriating by putting spending on mandatory versus discretionary, which is nothing other than saying: I don't want to budget. I don't want to allocate resources. We are just going to do more each year.

If we keep doing it, we are not going to be able to fund the programs that we all consider important.

So it acknowledges a reasonable revenue level. It moves 375 billion that used to be discretionary that is now mandatory back to discretionary. And then it is going to be up to all of us, as stewards of the Federal Government, to see how we are going to make the right decisions to take that amount and get it down to where we cut it out of the budget.

That would put us, in 10 years, in primary balance, meaning that the only thing that contributes to our deficit is our interest. It would clearly show, too, how the big drivers of our current deficit-- Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, other mandatory spending features--are driving it.

And, yes, if we want to get to a real balanced budget that covers your interest, you would have to actually find ways to do the same things with less money.

Defense is always a topic on my side of the aisle. This spends on defense--arguably the most important thing we need to do as a Federal Government. I think there is a lot of bipartisan interest in defending our country and financing it accordingly. This spends on defense above the CBO line and gets its numbers from the Senate Armed Services Committee, plugs it in.

It is going to be more robust there than what the CBO has by a little bit because I am a believer that what has driven this issue over the long run is what I call the unholy alliance. Folks on my side, whatever it takes, will spend it on defense. I said it is the most important thing we do. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid--those are important too. They are going broke over time. So we need to work on all of that to rein it in. But defense, the most important thing, is going to be at a level that keeps us secure.

If we don't exercise fiscal restraint, if we don't make the tough decisions that everybody does in running their own budgets, whether it is in a business, a local or State government or even a household, it is going to be a hard landing someday that none of us will like.

A lot of what is about running anything successfully is having a good plan. I don't think our plan makes sense for the future.

But the other component--and I will never forget the first budget meeting I was in here. One of the Senators said: Mike, the reason this keeps coming back and back is we do not have political will.

And whether it is political will that you need to make things work here, whether it is determination, whatever you want to call it--it is the marketplace when you run a business, it is a balanced budget amendment in statute when you have got a State government--there has got to be more discipline.

Let's put that last chart up here.

And I want to re-emphasize, because I got some on my side that think we are not being robust enough on defense. We just looked at that chart where it is the most robust. But I want to go back to this one again. This one says it all. Look at where we have come from where the ``greatest generation'' left us. Remember, they paid off the debt from World War II and built the Interstate Highway System--to where we are now in literally 40 years.

That is shameful.

All I am saying is, my budget makes it to where we have got 10 years. We don't even have to cover the interest, but we need to bring it back into what is called primary balance.

I would hope we have some friends on the other side of the aisle that see that this makes sense, because we will need it for their priorities. All I can tell you

is, if we have to remediate this by running the system into the ditch, it will be a lot harder of a proposition to get it back to where it was when the greatest generation left us in good shape.

I yield the floor.

I move to proceed to Calendar No. 448, S. Con. Res. 43.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, it has come to my attention recently on a couple of the nominees whom the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission is entertaining--this body has been rife with allegations of abuse of power and a hostile work environment, resulting in several whistleblower complaints. Several of these allegations would have occurred during both Mary Lu Jordan's and Timothy Baker's previous tenures at the Agency.

The Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission was created under the Mine Act, which declared that the industry must view the health and safety and consider it the most precious resource of the miner. The Agency does not have its own Office of Inspector General to review these considerations. I think it probably needs one. This has led to ongoing efforts by both House Oversight and Senate Republicans.

It is important to shine a light on Agencies like this, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, that have little to no oversight currently.

So, until I am satisfied--and I think others as well--that we look into that, that we vet those concerns, and have some type of interim oversight, I do object.

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