Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, tonight we will welcome the President to the Capitol to deliver his State of the Union Address.

As I mentioned yesterday, Republicans will be listening with great interest to see where the President plans to take the country over the coming year. Some media outlets are already reporting we will be subjected to another litany of leftwing proposals, with plenty of red meat for the President's base. I sure hope not. The campaign is over, and the fact is that if the President plans to accomplish anything good for the country in the coming months, he is going to have to go through a Republican-controlled House.

So this morning I would like to humbly suggest once again that it is time for the President to reach out to Congress, including Republicans, and make divided government work. That is how he will actually address the issues Americans are most concerned about right now, and it is the only way.

The first issue many of us will be listening for tonight is the President's plan for controlling spending and replacing the Obama sequester. The record is clear that the President and his aides came up with that sequester, and they got it. It is a little puzzling to see them now trying to pass it off like a hot potato.

Republicans have been very clear about the fact that we would rather enact smarter spending cuts. House Republicans even voted on the plan-- not once but twice--to do just that. But Washington Democrats so far have failed to put forward a serious proposal of their own. They ignored the issue for more than 1 year before finally showing up to the debate last week with the usual gimmicks.

This is the President's chance to rally the American people around a real set of spending cuts and reforms. I will be interested to see what he plans to offer because what we have been hearing so far, frankly, isn't very encouraging. He needs to understand the American people will not accept attempts to replace deficit reduction both parties have already agreed to with tax hikes. We already agreed to reduce spending in the amount the sequester would reduce spending when we voted for the Budget Control Act back in August of 2011 and the President signed it.

What we expect the President will be offering are tax hikes we all know would be used to finance even more spending, when we promised the American people we would spend less. If the President does try to do that, then he shouldn't expect anyone else to go along, least of all the American people.

Many on both sides of the aisle support eliminating tax loopholes in the context of fundamental bipartisan tax simplification that lowers tax rates, and we hope to have a chance to do that in the months ahead. But it is bad policy to punish this industry or that one so Washington can fund 1 more week of government spending and cause more Americans to lose their jobs.

Remember, due to the operation of law, the President already got the tax increases he wanted back on January 1. Because the law expired, the President got the tax increases he wanted--not with any votes, but he got it by the operation of law. So we are done with that part of the equation. The tax issue is over.

If the President wants a balanced approach, now is the time to show his hand on the spending cuts and reforms he will accept. That is how compromise works. But when we hear the White House suggest the challenge of controlling spending is essentially complete or when we hear the House Democratic leader echo the President's claim that we don't have a spending problem, it is hard to know where to start after a ridiculous suggestion such as that.

Over the weekend I spent some time in Nelson County, KY, and I can assure everyone the folks I spoke with there strongly disagree with the President's assessment.

The truth is the President knows better than that himself. Deep down he knows spending is completely out of control. He knows the debt has already grown by $6 trillion over his 4 years in office. He knows that without spending reform, the national debt will increase to double the size of our economy in just a few decades. He knows something must be done now to save Medicare and Social Security before they go broke. Tonight is a chance to show it, to be straight with the American people, and to reveal what he plans to do about all this.

The good news is that many of the things we need to do to control spending and many of the things we need to

do to get the economy moving again are all one and the same. So I was pleased to read the President might pivot to jobs again. Unfortunately, we have seen that headline so many times before. We will have to wait to see how serious it actually is. I have lost count of how many times the President has made one of those pivots. He has pivoted so many times, reporters covering the White House must be getting completely dizzy.

I also hope the President doesn't call for more Washington spending tonight. Not only is that an ineffective way to create jobs, but it is also the very reason our debt continues to climb to such completely unsustainable levels.

If the President does want to do something about job creation for a change, he should leave aside the things we know haven't worked and try some things that will, such as getting the government out of the way. Not only will that help jump-start the private economy, it will help us get spending under control at the same time. It would be a twofer. Jump-start the private economy and get spending under control at the same time is the best way to inprove this economy.

I also hope the President will use the big stage he will have tonight to finally level with the American people about the consequences of ObamaCare. They deserve to know what is about to hit them--the cost increases, the premium hikes, the taxes. They deserve to know that not only may they not be able to keep the health plan they have and like but that CBO tells us there will also be fewer jobs. I know these things will not be easy for him to say, but that is what it means to be a statesman; to be honest with the people you represent, to admit when something doesn't turn out the way you said it would.

Even if we don't hear the President speak directly to the issues Americans are most concerned about tonight, I am confident the man who is set to follow him with the Republican's response will do just that. In some ways, Senator Rubio embodies the American dream. As the child of immigrants, he is uniquely positioned to speak to the aspirations of the middle class. Unlike our rather easily distracted President, Senator Rubio has never had to pivot to jobs. He has kept a laser focus on job creation and the economy ever since he got here.

I have laid out the issues the President needs to address if he is interested in working with Republicans to get some good things done for the country in the days and months ahead. I sure hope he is listening.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I stand before you today to honor and recognize a man whose legacy of service to the community, both as a physician and a citizen, is completely deserving of such recognition. I am speaking of Mr. Dennis Meyers of Clay County, KY. The Clay County Days Hall of Fame has chosen to induct Mr. Meyers for his excellent leadership of Manchester Memorial Hospital over the past 12 years.

Mr. Meyers' record of service can be traced back to 1969, when he served as a pastor in the Nebraska and Illinois conferences. After close to two decades of pastoral service, he pursued an occupational change that allowed him to aid others in the field of recreational therapy. He continued to pursue opportunities in medicine, moving into a registered nurse position at Hanford Hospital in 1986. Mr. Meyers then accepted the role of vice president of nursing at San Joaquin Community Hospital in 1990 and continued success brought him to Manchester Memorial, where he eventually served as president and chief executive officer.

Dennis Meyers' involvement in and care for his community have been immeasurable, especially when one considers the many community outreach initiatives he fostered. He helped the community by initiating Mission in Motion, public health screenings, Live It UP, and mission outreach programs.

Mr. Meyers' family shares his devotion to helping others, as his wife Susan also works for the hospital and his three children hold nursing degrees. He has recently retired from his lead role at Manchester Memorial Hospital but plans to stay involved through outreach and church programs.

At this time, I would like to ask my fellow Senators to join me in honoring Mr. Dennis Meyers for his induction into the Clay County Days Hall of Fame. The Commonwealth of Kentucky is all the richer because of his tireless spirit and his willingness to work, heal, and serve.

I also ask unanimous consent that an article in praise of Mr. Meyers that appeared in the Bell County-area publication The Manchester Enterprise be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, over the past few weeks I have come to the floor to urge the President and Senate Democrats to act on the huge fiscal challenges facing our Nation, starting with the Obama sequester. Unless Senate Democrats allow a reasonable spending cut alternative to pass this Chamber before March 1, the President's plan will go into effect. The House passed legislation to avert the Obama sequester months ago, but Senate Democrats have yet to pass an alternative bill that could actually go to conference. In fact, it took until this week for them to even say they would do an alternative, and the alternative they have come up with is clearly--clearly--designed to fail. Look, they knew this was coming more than a year ago. Yet they still haven't put forward a serious proposal of replacement spending cuts. What a colossal waste of time.

At the beginning of the year Democrats promised that things would be different. They promised to get their work done ahead of time instead of 5 minutes before the deadline, that legislation would get committee consideration and that we were going to go through the regular order.

Instead, we find ourselves in sad and familiar territory. It goes something like this: Republicans identify a challenge and propose a solution well in advance. Democrats sit on their hands until the last minute, and then they offer some gimmicky bill designed to fail. Then comes the final act: President Obama rides in to blame everyone else. Obviously, tomorrow's State of the Union Address will provide a perfect forum for that, so we will see if history repeats itself. But, frankly, this whole routine is getting quite old. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the President and his Democratic friends are willing to break the cycle this time. If so, my party has said from the beginning that we would much prefer to replace the Obama sequester with smarter spending cuts and reforms.

Even though Republicans already passed legislation to solve the problem a long time ago, if the President wants a different solution he can call his own, that is fine. We are happy to give him the credit. But however we get it done, the time has come to finally take on Washington's spending problem in a bipartisan way, and that means the President will actually have to move beyond the gimmicks and the taxes and propose real spending reductions because I assure you that my constituents in Kentucky will not accept a tax hike in place of spending cuts already agreed to by both parties.

Remember, we agreed to reduce this amount of spending in October 2011 without raising taxes. We have already made this agreement. The question is, What are we going to do about it? I think Democrats' continued avoidance of their responsibility to deal with the huge threats to our economy and our future lies ahead.

As I said, I strongly suspect that instead of bipartisan action, the White House will subject us to yet another campaign blitz. Frankly, I could write the scripts myself. We will all be told that the President's hands are tied by the very sequester he himself proposed, signed, and now refuses to get rid of. We will be told he has no choice but to furlough civilians throughout the Defense Department, to cut off training for forces next to deploy, and to order a battle carrier to stay at home, which would diminish our presence in the

Persian Gulf, when the reality is that he has responsibilities as Commander in Chief.

Let's be clear about something: If the President does choose to strike fear into the hearts of folks whom he should be reassuring, then that decision will be his alone. And that is why the next time the President delivers some over-the-top speech, flanked by some pollster- approved voter group, I hope someone on the stage taps him on the shoulder and asks, Mr. President, if you are truly worried about this issue, why aren't you working with the Congress we elected to prevent it?

It is a good question, and it is one only he can answer. We will welcome him to Capitol Hill tomorrow, and I hope he will provide an answer. Will the President lay out a serious plan to avert the Obama sequester or will he simply use this as another excuse to fire up the campaign machine? If it is the latter, he will have to live with the consequences of his choice.

Another issue we have been reading a lot about lately relates to the consequences of ObamaCare. I could stand here and tell you that Republicans warned about most of these things until we were hoarse, that we saw it all coming and said so--the higher costs, the higher premiums, the tax hikes, the lost jobs, and the potential for millions to lose their plans. The President dismissed all of that, and he got his legislative win. The question is, What is he going to do to help folks now that our predictions are all coming true? Will he be open and honest with the American people about the consequences of ObamaCare? Will he use tomorrow's speech as an opportunity to prepare them or will he simply ignore it and hope people simply don't notice?

These are just a couple of the issues Americans are worried about right now. I hope the President addresses both of them tomorrow. There is pretty broad agreement that the President spent most of his first term avoiding the issues Americans cared about most. What I am suggesting is that he not do the same thing this time around.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to proceed on my leader time.

Mr. President, a report this week from Harvard's Institute of Politics reveals just how devastating the President's policies have been for Americans under 30. Despite the fact that most millennials have attended college, only about 60 percent of them have been able to find a job, and half of them are only working part time.

For many young Americans, this suggests the American dream is already drifting out of reach. It should not be this way.

Previous generations of Americans faced great challenges, but until now younger Americans could always expect they would eventually achieve greater prosperity than their parents, and that their children would do even better. Now the opposite appears to be the case. This should be shocking to all of us, especially considering that this generation of young people came into its own in an era of relative peace and prosperity. For many of us, just going to college was a pretty big deal. For today's younger generation, it was the obvious next step.

Many of us watched our parents save diligently for the simplest of luxuries. A lot of today's young people couldn't relate to those stories until now. They grew up in an age of dot-com booms and easy credit.

As college degrees no longer translate into fulfilling careers and as the Obama economy continues its year-long stagnation, much has changed for a generation that once seemed to have everything going for it. Recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office help tell the story. According to CBO, in 2014 the United States will see a sixth consecutive year of 7.5 percent-plus unemployment. The last time the United States jobs picture was that bad, Americans were still huddling around the family radio.

For 2 years, the President has been saying that raising taxes on the rich would solve our problems. Yet CBO notes that while taxes are set to jump above their historic level, the added revenues from taxes that rose due to operation of law last month will mean almost nothing when it comes to dealing with America's long-term fiscal challenges. This is because CBO has also warned that spending, which already exceeds the historic average, will continue its unsustainable climb in the years ahead.

In fact, over the next decade, red ink will spike by trillions to levels unseen in peacetime America. If interest rates go up, as most expect, it will be even harder for young Americans to purchase a home. The CBO warns that if interest payments on our debt skyrocket, it will be even more difficult to guarantee the eventual availability of Social Security and Medicare for today's graduates. If wages fall as a result of the smaller economy that comes from the government's increased debt payments, then we can be quite certain that today's generation will know less prosperity than their parents do.

These are some of the negative consequences of failing to get spending under control. Things are set to get much worse unless we act quickly.

Has the White House reached out to Republicans to solve these pressing economic and fiscal challenges? I wish. Instead, it has turned once again to gimmicks and tax hikes that only serve to delay solutions. Earlier this week the President even proposed more tax hikes to offset a sequester that he himself proposed and he already signed into law. If he agrees with us there is a smarter way to make these cuts, he should propose it, not just call on others to act.

I will tell you this right now: My constituents in Kentucky and the American people will not accept another tax increase to put off a spending cut that the two parties have already agreed to. We have already agreed to cut this much spending. It is the definition of dysfunction that it might not happen.

This morning I am again calling on the President and his congressional allies to put politics aside at least for once. The election is over. The time to govern is right now, to make divided government work for the American people who chose it. We owe Americans action, not rhetoric. We owe it to the millions of college graduates out of work. We owe it to the strivers who find themselves still living in their parents' basement. They are all counting on us to enact real bipartisan solutions, solutions that can get our economy moving again today and can ensure greater prosperity tomorrow.

Is Washington up to the task? Republicans are, and we are still here ready to work for the President as soon as he is prepared to get down to business.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it has been my honor to have served with the senior Senator from Michigan for almost three decades now, and I too want to rise and congratulate him on achieving this milestone. There is no Member of the Senate who is brighter or more hard working. We have had a good example of that here in the last couple of months of Senator Levin's respect for the institution and his desire to protect the traditions of this institution. I want him to know that he is widely respected all throughout the Senate, and particularly on this side of the aisle.

I congratulate him for this important achievement and look forward to working with him in the future.

Mr. President, the American people are deeply unhappy with the way Washington operates these days. They are tired of people telling them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. They are tired of all of the political games and gimmicks that substitute for real action on the problems we face as a Nation. Given what we have seen from the White House and Congressional Democrats, frankly, it is hard to blame them. As I have said repeatedly in recent weeks, we need to find a way to control runaway Federal spending and debt. We need to do it quickly. This is absolutely essential if we are to avoid a European-style catastrophe. It is what we need to do if we are serious about removing government obstacles that stand in the way of a robust recovery and new jobs.

Reducing the debt will throw off a wet blanket that has been weighing on our economy for entirely too long. This is a serious challenge. It demands serious spending reforms from both parties here in Washington. Yet if you were to listen to the Democrats, you would think all of our ills could be solved by raising taxes on private jets or energy companies.

These are not real solutions. They are poll-tested gimmicks. Just take the tax hike on so-called corporate jets. It would not raise enough revenue to offset more than 1 week--1 week--of the decade-long sequester--1 week. Of course, anytime you have a tax hike, there are going to be negative repercussions for growth and jobs. We do not have to look too far into the past to see how disruptive those consequences can be. In 1990, Washington politicians tried to enact a ``luxury tax'' on just about everything you could associate with the upper class, including yachts and aircraft. It was a total failure. Not only was it linked to the destruction of literally thousands of jobs in the boating industry, but, according to one study, the government actually--listen to this--spent more in unemployment benefits and in lost taxes than it was able to raise through the luxury tax itself. In other words, while the tax may have seemed to serve as a useful wedge issue for Democratic politicians, it made just about everyone worse off than they were before it passed. Workers, consumers, taxpayers, and the government were all worse off. That is why a number of Members of today's Senate Democratic caucus voted to repeal that particular tax a few years later in 1993. They even agreed to send refund checks to some of those impacted by it.

So why are they proposing to go down this same sorry road one more time? Well, in a variation of the old saying, you can conclude that they do not want the facts to get in the way of a good political talking point.

But the larger point is this: The challenge we face right now is the fact that government spending is completely and totally out of control. So to focus on a tax of any kind is to miss the point entirely. The amount of revenue we bring in as a percentage of GDP is set to return to the historical average of the past few decades. Spending, on the other hand, is way above historic norms, and spending is projected to actually get much worse in the years to come; that is, unless we do something about it today.

The American people elected a divided government. They expect it to work. That means both parties need to engage and offer serious solutions. Proposing a return to failed tax gimmicks of the past is not by any measure a serious solution. If White House officials want to replace the same sequester they themselves proposed in 2011, it is their responsibility to lay out what concrete spending cuts they would be willing to consider as potential offsets, as House Republicans already have. If they do, then we Republicans are happy to hear them out and to work collaboratively on effective reforms. But if this is just another opportunity to trot out the Democrats' focus-group- approved policy stunt, if this is another fake fight designed by the White House to push us to the brink, then Republicans are not interested in playing along. We are going to keep fighting for real spending reform, because that is what the American people expect us to do.

Every day spent talking about corporate jets is a day wasted. Given that the President again missed the deadline to submit a budget on time this year, there is not much time to spare. The clock is ticking. It is past time to get serious.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the majority leader has suggested that I go ahead, and, therefore, I will.

Mr. President, yesterday, we learned our economy contracted for the first time in more than 3 years. This news comes, of course, after President Obama spent an entire election promising Americans that a return to robust economic growth was right around the corner and little more than 1 week after the President said in his inaugural address that ``economic recovery has begun.''

I am not so sure the people of Kentucky would agree with that assessment, given that the unemployment rate there is still above 8 percent. But this is not the first or the second time this White House has oversold the recovery. It is not even the third or fourth time. A lot of us remember the ``summer of recovery.'' A lot of us also remember when the Vice President promised the stimulus would ``literally drop-kick'' us out of the recession.

Look, if the White House spent nearly as much time trying to actually fix the economy as it did claiming it was fixed--and then finding excuses and scapegoats when its premature pronouncements turned out to be false--I suspect the economy would actually be doing better than it is today. But the President seems not to have learned that lesson because, just yesterday, he tried to pin the latest negative economic news on congressional Republicans once again.

The President can make any excuse he wants, but it is not going to help Americans find jobs.

One thing the President could have done instead of wasting so much time blaming others would have been to convene the Jobs Council he created amidst so much fanfare. He has not done that for more than 1 year. In fact, from what I understand, the Council is expected to actually disband today after having met only four times since 2011.

We have had 4 years of the Obama economy. It has not worked. This would be the time to try something new. But the President seems content to simply double down on more of the same. He wants to spend more, which would only worsen our trillion-dollar deficits. The very same President who

warned against raising taxes in a down economy is proposing to raise taxes in a down economy. He is clearly getting a big assist on that front from the chairwoman of the Budget Committee, who says she is going to include tax hikes in the Senate Democrats' budget plan. That is a bad enough idea to begin with, but it is especially counterproductive considering yesterday's dismal growth numbers, because there are two things we know about tax increases for sure; first, they reduce jobs and hurt economic growth; second, they distract us from addressing the real problem, which is spending.

As I have explained repeatedly on the floor over the past 2 weeks, government spending is completely out of control--completely out of control--and it is projected to get much worse in years to come. Even if the President got the additional tax increases he is asking for, we still would not even come close--not even close--to solving the problem. We certainly will not get there by wasting time on poll-tested PR gimmicks that will hardly bring in any revenue. Every minute the administration spends talking about corporate jets is 1 less minute we have to discuss serious ways to confront the challenges we face. Clearly, it is the spending we have to deal with, and now is the perfect time to do so.

The key to robust recovery is freeing the private sector to grow and to create jobs. We can do that by making government more efficient, by reforming spending, and by eliminating programs that do not work--which happens to be the very same things we need to do to get our fiscal house in order.

Economic growth and debt reduction can actually go hand in hand but only if we pursue the right policies. As a first step, let's stop making things worse than they already are. Threatening families and businesses with even more job-killing tax hikes is clearly counterproductive and so is trying to borrow more money from China to fund more failed stimulus packages.

The President and his allies have had 4 years--4--to put their ideas into practice. Those policies have failed. It is time for a new approach. If Democrats are ready to finally get serious--to end the blame game and pursue real growth policies--then Republicans are here to show them the way forward to a stronger economy and to a more secure future.

Madam President, a few weeks ago, President Obama reportedly said America does not have a spending problem. Well, of course, we know that is not accurate. This is completely at odds with what independent experts tell us and what is perfectly apparent to anybody who is alert. Last week, I brought this chart behind me to the floor to illustrate the point.

As everyone knows, we are running trillion-dollar annual deficits. What this chart shows is that the gap between government spending and revenue just keeps getting wider and wider and wider. So let's take a look at it.

The occupant of the chair is relatively new to the Senate but not new to the facts. The green area here represents both historic and projected tax revenue. The dark blue area--as you can see, the really kind of flat lines out here to 2040--is the new revenue the President received at the end of the year as a result of operation of the law. The tax rates sunsetted, expired at midnight on New Year's Eve. The Congress then wisely continued the current tax rates for 99 percent of Americans, made those rates permanent so we would not have another event like New Year's Eve where we came to an abrupt conclusion. Most importantly, for States such as the State of the occupant of the chair and my own, a $5 million per person exemption on the death tax was made permanent and indexed to inflation.

The President wanted more revenue than that and continues to talk about more revenue. So if we take all the revenue the President said he wants to get, over and above the revenue he got as a result of the law expiring--that is this dark blue area--if we gave him every bit of new tax revenue he wanted over and above that, we would have this light blue area like this.

So we can see, colleagues, that even if the President got all the revenue he wanted, it only produces this much in a pretty flat line going way out into the future.

So, clearly, what one can conclude from this--whether you think the revenue the President got is enough or you think the President ought to have as much revenue as he wants--factually, it does not solve the problem. It does not solve the problem because we do not have this problem because we tax too little; we have it because we spend way too much because the red area is the spending trajectory.

So it is perfectly obvious for anybody who is not going to ignore the facts that this is not a revenue problem; this is a spending problem. And until we solve this problem, we cannot leave behind for our children and our grandchildren the kind of country our parents left behind for us.

This, my colleagues, is the Europeanization of America. This is the pathway to Greece and Italy and Spain, and maybe now even France as

well--perpetual high unemployment, an economy kind of in a death spiral that just kind of bumps along like ours, which is now bumping along at a 1.5-percent growth rate.

It is time to get serious about solving this problem. This ``red'' rises like a mountain over a relatively flat plain of green.

Now, I know there is almost an article of faith on the other side with some--maybe not all--that it is a revenue problem. Clearly, it is not a revenue problem. More to the point, tax revenue as a share of our gross domestic product is today about the same as it has been over the last four decades. Spending, on the other hand, averaged just 18.5 percent over that same period but today stands at about 23 percent of gross domestic product--one of the highest spending levels since World War II. It is about to get much worse, growing to nearly 40 percent of GDP in just a few decades--40 percent of GDP. There is simply no other way to solve this problem--no other way to solve the problem--than to get our spending under control.

A significant portion of the dramatic spending increase to come is the result of tens of millions of baby boomers reaching retirement age. We know this. Erskine Bowles, the Chairman of the Bowles-Simpson Commission, said it was the most predictable crisis in American history.

We are in a position to do something about this. We should. But that is only one part of the problem. It is the biggest part of the problem, but it is only one part of it. We need to shine a light into every corner of the budget, especially the dark corners that often evade real scrutiny. Programs that do not work should be scrapped, and when considering those that do, we still need to ask the question, Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently?

We need to root out waste, which will serve as the first real test of the Democrats' seriousness in this debate. I mean, why is the Federal Government funding Chinese studies on pig manure--why--and research into the smoking habits of Jordanian college students and reality TV shows in India? Are our friends on the other side prepared to cut this kind of waste? Because if they are not, if they demand a 1-to-1 ratio between tax increases and pig manure cuts, then there is really no hope of ever putting our country back on the path to prosperity.

The Senate will soon begin consideration of H.R. 325. If it passes, we will have a few more months to come up with the kinds of spending reforms necessary to secure a longer extension of the debt ceiling. That extra time will give us a chance to break the Democrats' other bad habit of leaving everything--literally everything--until the last minute. But we can only do it if we get to work now and return to what we call around here the regular order. Remember, regular order is how the Senate is supposed to function. Committees are supposed to be allowed to evaluate legislation. Amendments are supposed to be considered. The public is supposed to have a chance to scrutinize the proposals that are actually before us.

Look, I know that solving the debt challenge is not going to be easy. Putting our country on a sustainable fiscal and economic path is going to require both parties committing to serious spending reforms. But this is a challenge we must overcome. By doing the hard work today, we can avoid a European-style catastrophe tomorrow. By reforming the functions of government that no longer make sense in 2013, we can do more than just control spending, we can encourage private sector growth and job creation and finally get the economy back on its feet. And by ridding ourselves of this massive burden of debt, we can remove the greatest obstacle to recovery.

As I said yesterday, this is ultimately a conversation about growth and opportunity. It is not a conversation about austerity. It is one that Republicans are eager to have. For those who want to pretend our country does not have a spending problem, this is a pretense which is not borne out by the facts. Now is the time to face reality. We have known this for literally years. When are we going to face it? There is no better time than now.

We can take on this challenge together if both sides are ready to do the necessary work to reform spending, but we need to get started today--not next week, not in April--today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a dear friend of mine and a distinguished citizen of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Mr. Robert Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell--better known across Kentucky's Fifth Congressional District as Bob--recently received the William Hacker, M.D. 2013 Leader of the Year Award from Kentucky's Leadership Tri-County. This organization, which represents Laurel, Knox, and Whitley counties, recognized Bob for his decades of service to the Bluegrass State.

From 1986 until his retirement last year, Bob served as Congressman Hal Rogers's district administrator for the Fifth District. In that job, he was Hal's eyes and ears throughout southern and eastern Kentucky. He oversaw three field offices, provided constituent services, and was Hal's liaison to State and local government. It is thanks to him that many people in Kentucky now enjoy the benefits of a multitude of infrastructure, economic development, and tourism projects.

Bob has also served as Hal's top political adviser and campaign manager, and was his field representative from 1981 to 1986. He has served on the executive committee of the Republican Party of Kentucky, been a delegate to Republican National Conventions, and was twice elected magistrate in Knox County.

Bob's father, the late Murrell Mitchell, also served as a magistrate of Knox County and was a member of the Knox County School Board. It was he who inspired Bob to seek fulfillment in public service. A graduate of Lynn Camp High School in Corbin, KY, Bob first served his country in the uniform of the U.S. Army. He was in the Army's military police and served in Vietnam.

Bob has been employed in the private sector, too: He has worked for L&N Railroad, United Parcel Service, and as the owner and operator of a grocery store. He has been a member of the Corbin Rotary Club and the Lynn Camp Optimist Club. And the Mountain Laurel Boy Scouts of America District honored him with its first-ever Daniel Boone Visionary Award.

Bob enjoys politics, obviously, as well as fishing and following college sports. He is an avid fan of Keeneland Race Course and has owned racehorses. But I believe what he is most looking forward to is spending more time with

his family and spoiling his grandkids. Bob and his wife, Nancy, have two daughters: Stephanie Alsip lives in Louisville with her husband Rick and their two sons, Trenton and Ethan. Jennifer Mitchell lives in Corbin with her two daughters, Tori Beth and Taelor Jade.

Mr. President, I ask my colleagues in the U.S. Senate to join me in saluting Mr. Robert Mitchell for over three decades of service to the people of my State. He is admired and respected across the Commonwealth as an ambassador, not just for Congressman Rogers, but for everything we're proud of in southern and eastern Kentucky. I wish Bob well in his retirement, and I rest assured he will find success in whatever endeavors lie ahead.

Mr. President, over the past several days, I have spoken of the need for the two parties to come together to address the Federal debt. We need to act quickly if we are going to avert a European-style debt crisis and avoid the harsh austerity that would bring.

But this is about more than just avoiding a calamity, as serious as that prospect has become. What this debate offers is a once-in-a- generation opportunity to update government for the 21st century, to modernize programs that work, and to reform ones that do not. Many Federal bureaucracies have not been reformed in any real way since the age of black-and-white television. Even if we did not have a debt crisis, we should want to reform them. This debate is an opportunity to do so.

By making government leaner and more efficient, we can sweep away outdated and heavyhanded regulations that have impeded private sector growth and the job creation we so desperately need. And by reducing the debt, we can eliminate an additional drag on our economy.

So this is not a conversation about austerity; it is a conversation about growth and opportunity. That does not mean we are all going to agree on the path forward. Americans certainly expect a serious policy debate. They expect both parties to offer competing plans to preserve and protect long-term entitlement programs, and they expect both sides to propose different plans to get our fiscal house in order and our country back to economic health.

Republicans have done their part. The budgets passed by House Republicans over the past couple of years contain fresh ideas that would help solve our fiscal crisis. Policymakers from both Chambers and from statehouses across the country have put forward a number of their own ideas and proposals as well. But from the Democrats? So far, not much. Four years on, President Obama and congressional Democrats still have yet to offer a serious plan to address the economic challenges we face. They have been content to wage political war instead.

It is my hope, however, that the debate over the debt ceiling will finally move our friends on the other side beyond their preoccupation with the horse race. Already, Senate Democrats have committed to developing a budget this year, after years of ducking their responsibility to do so. Hopefully, this will be a serious exercise and not simply an excuse for them to try to raise taxes, which, as we all know, is just another way to avoid solving core problems. Last week I came to the floor with a chart which showed that even if the President got every single tax increase he asked for, every one of them, we would still not even come close to solving the problem--not even close.

So let's not waste time with more pointless arguments about tax increases. We had that debated already. It is done. It is over. Instead, I call on Democrats to approach the spending debate with the seriousness it demands and to do it through regular order. We have to break this penchant among Democrats for putting off all important work until the final hour. We need to get back to regular order, and that takes time, and that is why we need to get started right now. Let the tough work of developing a budget and putting together long-term policies to control government spending begin today--not 1 minute or 1 hour before we come up against a deadline but today.

Americans deserve better than what they have been getting from Washington the past few years. Democrats were reelected, and I congratulate them. It is time now to get serious about actually governing.

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

Mr. President, there are many complex issues facing Congress at the moment, many of which have vexed us literally for years. But one issue that demands our immediate attention is the national debt because if we do not do something now to rein in our Nation's out-of-control debt, we may never be able to put America back on a sustainable fiscal and economic path. If that happens, then many of the other issues we face will be largely irrelevant.

We need to give this issue everything we have, and we need to start right now. We need to devote the same kind of energy to this issue that we devoted to other great national threats in the past. That means serious bipartisan negotiation, careful committee consideration, and, yes, tough decisions on the kinds of votes that reflect that. This work will take time. That is why I have been urging Senate Democrats to set the legislative gears into motion right away.

Last week the House passed a bill that would give us 3 months to work out an effective solution to the debt crisis we face. On Wednesday we will take it up here in the Senate. If the House bill passes here and is signed into law, the Finance Committee should immediately-- immediately--begin laying the foundation for a solution. Negotiations should begin, hearings should be scheduled, and legislation should actually be marked up.

Three months, as you know, is not very much time in Congress, especially considering the fiscal deadlines we have to address in the coming weeks. Let's use this additional time to develop a plan, a serious, effective, bipartisan plan that can put the debt on a downward trajectory. Let's put together a proposal that gives new confidence to the American people in our ability to work together, with an eye toward improving their lives and their prospects rather than our own. That gives new confidence to the markets and to the ratings agencies that have warned us against doing anything that doesn't address our long- term problem, which is, of course, Washington spending.

I know a number of Democrats view this exercise as little more than an opportunity to raise taxes. What I am saying is that they need to put their preoccupation with taxes aside and focus on the root problem. Raising taxes is something you do when you lack the will or the courage to reform a government that has become entirely too expensive.

It is time to make some tough decisions for a change, and we will only do it if we get started right now, in a bipartisan fashion, through the regular order. I know my constituents are tired of seeing us careen from one crisis to another around here. Regular order is how we will avoid that. Let's avoid the eleventh-hour deals, and that means getting started right now on a legislative plan that can actually pass.

Some pundits claim that Washington is simply incapable of ever solving a challenge as big as this one. They say that our democratic institutions are broken, that divided government precludes us from passing things that matter to the future of our country. I say the opposite is true. History shows that divided government offers actually the best opportunity to finally surmount this challenge.

The President came to office in his first term with a promise to unify our country, to work with Democrats and Republicans to take on America's greatest challenges. Unfortunately, his rhetoric was just that. Four years later, polls show we are more divided as a nation than we were when the President first took office.

As I said last week, I believe the beginning of a second term actually presents a real opportunity to change course, to do the work so many have refused to do for the past 4 years. This is our chance. This is our chance to prove the pundits wrong and actually get something accomplished.

Let's be clear about something up front: Solving our debt problem isn't about austerity, it is about opportunity. It is not about austerity, it is about opportunity. It is about creating some space for businesses to grow and for our rising generation of Americans to feel as though they can look to the future with optimism rather than with dread. But that only comes after some hard work on the debt is done. Let's get to work.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield?

As we have discussed before, and I think it is worth repeating, divided government is actually the best time to do difficult things. We have had four excellent examples in the last 25 years: Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill raised the age of Social Security, which saved that important program for another generation. Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did the last comprehensive tax reform. Bill Clinton and the Republicans did welfare reform and actually balanced the budgets, believe it or not, in the late 1990s.

There is ample evidence that divided government is the best time to do really difficult things. When you join hands and do it, the American people understand that surely it must have been something we needed to do because these guys actually were able to agree on it.

I hope we won't miss another opportunity. Sometimes I think we are a little bit like the early Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, who said of the Palestinians that they ``never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.'' It appears as if we have rarely missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Hopefully, we won't miss this one as well.

I thank my friend from Tennessee.

Mr. President, I do not know if you know anyone who has climbed to the top of Mount Everest, but I am told it is quite an undertaking. It apparently took Sir Edmund Hillary several weeks to do it back in the 1950s. I am told my friends across the aisle could have scaled Everest almost 300 times in the nearly 4 years

that have gone by since they last passed a budget. They could have taken 179 trips to the Moon or built three Pentagons.

Well, today it looks like that is all about to change. It is nice to see that after years of playing budget peekaboo, Senate Democrats are finally ready to take up their most basic of responsibilities--and only a few weeks after the chairwoman of the Budget Committee indicated they might skip it, for the fourth year in a row.

There is an indication now that the majority is committed to passing a budget. What is unfortunate is that it has required so much pressure for them to do so. It is in stark contrast to the House of Representatives, who have taken their duties very seriously.

Over there, committee hearings have been held, budget resolutions have been marked up, amendments have been considered. More importantly, the House has passed serious budgets annually, as the law requires. They have laid out their priorities for the public to see: their plans to control spending, to save our most important social programs from collapse, to reform an outdated anticompetitive Tax Code, and to streamline government bureaucracies that are literally suffocating job creation.

They have done their jobs while Senate Democrats have tried to keep their priorities a secret.

We know Senate Democrats do not like the House budgets. And we know they do not even support the President's budgets--at least not with their votes. What we have not known for nearly 4 years is what they are for because they have refused to put their plans for the country down on paper and actually vote for them.

It is my hope the Democrats' sudden interest in passing a budget is not just another attempt to actually raise taxes. As I have said repeatedly, we are done with the revenue issue. The President has already said the so-called rich are now paying their ``fair share,'' and, of course, middle-income families are already on the hook for new taxes as a result of ObamaCare.

So the question is, Who would be in the firing line this time? And at what cost?

Look, struggling families should not have to pick up the tab again for Washington's inability to live within its means. We need to start solving the actual problem, which is spending, and we need to do it together.

So if--and I say if--Democrats are finally ready to confront the massive fiscal and economic challenges facing our country, and to do so in a serious way, I assure them they will find partners on this side of the aisle.

As for the debt limit, there is no need to wait for final resolution of the House's short-term legislation before we start putting a long- term debt reduction solution together in the Senate. If the bill the House passed yesterday is signed into law, Congress will have another 3 months to take the debt challenge--to take it on seriously--but that does not mean we should wait a minute longer to start working on it. There is no reason, for instance, that the Finance Committee should not begin preparing the critical spending reforms that will be necessary, for example, to get my vote and the vote of many of my colleagues for any kind of long-term increase in the debt ceiling.

So let's get the process moving. No more brinksmanship. No more last- minute deals. The American people have already had to wait 4 years--4 years--for a budget from Senate Democrats. They should not have to wait nearly as long for us to confront a debt that threatens the economy, our jobs, and the future of our Nation.

Yesterday I laid out the realities of the fiscal challenges we face as a country. We have delayed facing them long enough. Let's put the politics aside and finally do the work we were sent here to do.

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

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