Floor Statements

Mr. President, yesterday I spoke about the matter of tax expenditures, and I would like to expand on that topic today. They are becoming a critical issue in negotiations over the debt ceiling.

First, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to finish my remarks.

Mr. President, Democrats say they want to eliminate tax expenditures. They refer to them as loopholes or spending through the Tax Code. This might be a good political argument, but it bears little relationship to the understanding of tax expenditures and tax law or tax policy.

Yesterday, I outlined a general definition of tax expenditures. They are most definitely not spending through the Tax Code, as President Obama so creatively put it, and they are most definitely not, by and large, loopholes. Rather, they were intentionally included in the Tax Code by Congress in order to realize certain policy goals.

Tax expenditures are an opportunity for families and businesses to keep more of their income. Unfortunately, rather than have a serious conversation about tax expenditures and tax policy, President Obama and his liberal allies are intent on setting new ground for juvenile public discourse.

Faced with a $14.3 trillion debt--and going up every day--Social Security and Medicare Programs that are set for bankruptcy--ruining America's seniors--and a legitimate fiscal crisis that poses a clear and present danger to the Nation's security and the security of America's families and businesses, President Obama is again talking about shared sacrifice. Well, I like the term. The only thing is, I would prefer to have shared prosperity because all we are going to get out of this administration is shared sacrifice, which means everybody is going to suffer. I would like to have shared prosperity where everybody is lifted.

The first time we really started hearing about this concept of shared sacrifice was in the debate over ObamaCare. For those who are unfamiliar with Washington-speak, this is what the President meant by shared sacrifice: I am going to raise taxes on families and businesses by over $\1/2\ trillion, and I am going to do it by shaking down businesses.

He made them an offer they couldn't refuse: Pay up now or pay up more later. So when we started hearing again about shared sacrifice, we knew what was coming: more proposals for tax increases. But I have to say I remain shocked at how ham-fisted most of these proposals are. They are nothing but a series of bad talking points that can be used for the President's reelection campaign. These talking points were tired by the end of the 1936 Presidential election.

I would not be surprised to see President Obama dust off Franklin Roosevelt's speeches and start railing against economic royalists by the end of the debt limit negotiations.

Sadly, the Senate's leadership has followed suit. After making a big to-do about keeping the Senate in session to address the fiscal crisis, we are spending this week debating a nonbinding resolution demanding higher taxes on millionaires. Really? The Democrats' solution to $14.3 trillion in debt is to attack corporate jets. Seriously? Three billion dollars over ten years. The last time they did that, they wound up with their tails between their legs in 1990, and in 1993 had to reverse the whole thing because it cost thousands of jobs.

I never underestimate liberals' lack of respect for the intelligence of the American people, but this is a new low. Do they think that ordinary Americans are so consumed with class hatred that they will respond like Pavlovian dogs to the criticism of corporate jets, and forget that it was programmatic liberalism, not bonus depreciation of corporate jets or tax benefits to energy companies, that got us into this debt crisis?

This is how the left perceives Republicans. They want to score some cheap points against Republicans by going after corporate jets, as though all Republicans love corporate jets. I would venture to say that an awful lot of corporate jets are owned by very wealthy Democrats. What are we going to get next week, a tax on monocles and top hats? Maybe we will spend next week debating a nonbinding resolution on the need to tax madras blazers for the good of the country.

Unfortunately, not all of the Democratic proposals are a laughing matter. They have been down this road in the past pushing tax increases on luxury items such as yachts. Today, the press ridiculed Republicans for ``defending the yachting class.'' There is no yachting class in this country, unless you count the Democratic party of Martha's Vineyard.

But there is a class of people who build yachts. This is what happened to those people the last time the Democrats engaged in class warfare of this kind. In the 1990 budget deal, a new luxury excise tax was created applying to yachts, aircraft, jewelry, and furs, first applying to the 1991 year. The similarities are eerie.

Faced with soaring deficits, Democrats insisted that revenues be part of the equation. And how did this work out? The tax was repealed in 1993 because, as the Democratic-controlled Senate Finance Committee report, as reported by the Budget Committee, explains:

During the recent recession, the boat, aircraft, jewelry,

and fur industries have suffered job losses and increased

unemployment. The Committee believes that it is appropriate

to eliminate the burden these taxes impose on the interest of

fostering economic recovery in those and related industries.

Republicans are not defending the yachting class. They are defending the people whose jobs will be lost to Democratic class warfare.

Of course, the left cannot contain themselves to these targeted tax increases. Today we read in the paper that the President is eager to reform Social Security. Yet it appears he is only willing to do so if we let the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire, tax cuts which only last December the President acknowledged were necessary components of our economic recovery.

I would not be surprised to see the old Democratic hobby horse, an increase in the Social Security tax max, make an appearance in the Democrats' list of demands.

These are nonstarters, and everyone understands why. These broad- based tax increases would be a weight around our economic recovery.

But the issue of tax expenditures continues to cause confusion and must be addressed. Those who advocate limiting or eliminating these tax expenditures suggest that they are spending and loopholes that benefit wealthy individuals.

Yesterday, I offered a grown-up definition of what a tax expenditure is. Today, I wish to highlight what are in fact the top tax expenditures. What we will find is that the tax expenditures that would generate the largest amount of revenue are also those that are available to the middle class, enabling them to give to their churches and synagogues, and to save for a home, for college, and for retirement. To get at meaningful deficit reduction, Democrats would have to eliminate these expenditures. Is that what they want to do? That might be a good question at the President's next press conference. Maybe someone could give him

a copy of this chart right here, and ask which of these tax expenditures he is willing to eliminate in the interest of deficit reduction:

No. 1, exclusion for employer-provided health care. Is he going to get rid of that? That is 13 percent of all tax expenditures.

How about home mortgage interest deductions? Is he going to get rid of that? That is 9 percent.

How about preferential rates for dividends and capital gains? That is 8 percent.

Exclusion of Medicare benefits. Are they going to do away with that? That is 7 percent.

Net exclusion of defined benefit pension contributions and earnings. Are they going to attack our pensions? That is 6 percent.

And earned income tax credit. My gosh, that is 5 percent.

Deduction for State and local taxes, except real property. That is 5 percent.

No. 8, net exclusion of defined contribution/earnings. That is 4 percent.

How about No. 9, exclusion of capital gains at death? That is 4 percent.

And how about No. 10, deductions for charitable contributions? That is 4 percent.

I venture to say hardly any American is going to want to do away with all of those in the interest of getting more revenue so the Democrats can spend it back here.

Look at that chart. It is a list of the top 10 tax expenditures. Maybe someone can give him a copy of this chart and ask which of these tax expenditures he is willing to eliminate in the interest of deficit reduction. I encourage all my friends to look at this chart. It is a list of the top 10 tax expenditures.

With the rhetoric coming out of the White House, you might be surprised to learn that tax benefits for yachts and corporate jets are not in the top two. Not only do they not make the top 10, they don't even come close.

If you take the so-called savings that would come from the corporate jet tax approach of the President, it would take us 3,000 years to even reach the approximately $800 billion stimulus package. In the context of the President's trillion-dollar deficits, they are statistical noise.

So what are the big tax expenditures?

No. 1 is an issue from the ObamaCare debate. It is the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance. The exclusion of employer-provided health insurance from income is the single largest tax expenditure, representing 13 percent of tax expenditures.

Yesterday a Member of the other side's leadership pointed out that the largest tax expenditure is one for corporations. Boy, is he wrong. Here is what he said:

The biggest single deduction is the employer's exclusion

for health care premiums. So employers are able to exclude

from income the amount of money they spend for health

insurance for their employees. That's the biggest.

Well, that is an incorrect description of the law that they are arguing. Employers always have been allowed, and should be allowed, a deduction for the cost of benefits they provide to their employees. Employee compensation, including the provision of health insurance to one's employees, is a cost of doing business and thus properly deductible by the employer so as to accurately measure the income, or profit, of the employer. That has never been considered a tax expenditure. The exclusion at issue, which is a tax expenditure, refers to the employee's tax treatment, not the employer's tax treatment. That is, most compensation that an employee receives from his employer is includable as taxable income. One of the few exceptions to that general rule is that employees do not include in taxable income the value of employer-provided health insurance.

Coming in at No. 2 is the home mortgage interest deduction. This expenditure alone accounts for 9 percent of all tax expenditures.

The third largest? There we have the lower rate on capital gains and dividends. Do away with this expenditure, and the rate on capital gains and dividends will almost triple in about 18 months. Capital gains and dividends represent about 8 percent of all tax expenditures.

What is No. 4? Here we have an untaxed piece of Medicare benefits. Imagine that. I wonder how many folks on the other side realize this or even if the President does. When my friends on the other side categorically talk about cutting back tax expenditures as the yellow brick road to deficit reduction, I wonder if they know that hiding behind the curtain is an increase in the aftertax cost of Medicare.

Do my friends on the other side realize this? A few months ago, a liberal group ran an ad showing my friend, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, pushing an old woman in a wheelchair over a cliff. His crime? Recommending policy changes that would prevent the inevitable bankruptcy of Medicare.

I am not going to hold my breath waiting for this same group to pull the fire alarm, because the Democrats' talk of eliminating tax expenditures might result in seniors getting hit with higher taxes on Medicare benefits. But this is what the President and the Democrats are talking about. If they are serious about using tax expenditures to reduce the deficit, these are the things that will have to be on the table. These are the big expenditures. This expenditure is real. You can look it up in the handy tax expenditure publication from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. It is significant, representing 7 percent of all tax expenditures, to the exclusion of Medicare benefits.

At No. 5 is the pre-tax treatment for defined benefit pension plan contributions and the inside buildup on the accounts. This is a tax benefit that reduces the cost for those workers who make the decision to save for retirement. This represents 6 percent of all tax expenditures.

What is No. 6? It is the refundable earned income tax credit, the EITC. When folks describe tax expenditures as spending through the Tax Code, this is one that could properly be labeled that way. Under congressional budget rules, this one, for the most part, scores as spending. That is not the case with the other tax expenditures on this list. Refundable tax credits score as spending because the government cuts a check to the taxpayer. With the other tax benefits on this list, the taxpayer is receiving a portion of the money back in the form of reduced taxes. There are some serious tax hikes there. This tax expenditure accounts for 5 percent of tax expenditures.

No. 7 is the deduction for State and local taxes. My friends on the other side need to be particularly careful with this one. So far, they would hit seniors, families who have health insurance through their employers, people with mortgages, and anyone who owns stocks and bonds. But with this, many Democrats risk alienating every last taxpayer in their States. Removing this deduction is going to hit high-tax States hard. If you are from a so-called blue State, it is likely that constituents are already heavily burdened with State and local taxes. Take away this and you will, in effect, drive up the marginal rate of your constituents who take their deduction by as much as 35 percent.

I am convinced that many of the inroads Democrats made between 2006 and 2008 were due to carefully crafted Trojan horse campaigns. Skillful operatives ran Democratic campaigns promising moderate tax and spending policies that would be respectful of families and businesses. But once that Trojan horse got inside the Capitol, and former Speaker Pelosi and President Obama took charge, frustrated liberals spilled out and started taxing anything that could move to pay for the largest expansion of government since Lyndon Johnson was in office.

Removing the deduction for State and local taxes might be the final act that restores purple America to its traditional red hue. At 5 percent of all tax expenditures, this would represent a massive tax increase, this net exclusion of defined benefit pension contribution. And that is No. 7, after State and local taxes, except for real property.

What is No. 8? This is the pre-tax treatment for the contributions workers make to their defined contribution plans and the inside buildup on the accounts. Many of us know of these retirement plans as 401(k) plans. At 4 percent of tax expenditures, this is a significant incentive to families to save for retirement.

No. 9 is a bit more obscure but no less critical for families. It is the tax expenditure for the step up in basis at

death. We all know the saying that nothing is as certain as death and taxes. Well, if this tax expenditure were eliminated, this step up in basis at death, this saying would take on an even darker meaning. Death could now be taxed twice. First, the decedent's estate might get hit with the death tax. Then the decedent's heirs would be taxed again on the gain embedded in any inherited asset should they decide to sell. This accounts for 4 percent of tax expenditures.

We close with No. 10, the tax expenditure and probably the most important one to my constituents in Utah. It is the tax benefit for donations to charities other than education and health care institutions.

When you make your weekly or yearly donation to your church, you can now deduct it for tax purposes. This charitable deduction represents 4 percent of all tax expenditures. The folks in my State all pay tithing--almost all of them. That is 10 percent of their gross income. I do it every year. I have to tell you, you would hit a lot of very charitable people and a lot of churches with the loss of that one, No. 10. Yet that is the smallest of the whole 10.

As the chart shows, these widespread everyday tax policies account for almost two-thirds of tax expenditures. We are not talking about yachts or corporate jets.

Now, I have already suggested it, but rolling back many of these expenditures would have an immediate adverse impact on American families and taxpayers.

It would also undercut longstanding Federal policies promoting saving, home ownership, and charitable giving.

Let's turn first to retirement security.

About half of Americans save for retirement. The overwhelming bipartisan consensus is that this number is way too low. Ideally, all American workers would be saving for retirement.

More savings means less financial stress on Social Security and Medicare. Most importantly, it means retirees can enjoy their retirement if they can rely on a nest egg. That is why there has been a bipartisan desire to incentivize retirement savings through worker participation in retirement plans.

A time-honored method has been to offer a tax benefit up front in the case of the traditional defined benefit plan, traditional defined contribution, or traditional IRA. The benefit remains untaxed during the individual's working years. It is only taxed when received in retirement. By contrast, Roth pension plans and IRAs provide a tax benefit on the back end, when a worker retires and begins drawing on the account.

Former Finance Committee Chairman William Roth captured the policy rationale best by noting the deliberate tax policy bias toward savings. Chairman Roth used to make the point with a rhetorical question. He would ask: ``Is there any bad saving?''

Of course, the answer is no.

One thing we know for sure. Curtail or eliminate the tax expenditure for retirement savings and the after-tax cost of savings will rise. Savers will react. It is true that some will continue to save. But it is also true they will have less to save if they choose to do so. For middle income taxpayers, it will probably mean lower savings rates.

Is that a good policy to put in place?

Consider this: According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, for 2009 over half of households paid no income tax. Forty-nine percent of Americans shouldered 100 percent of the income tax burden.

The half shouldering the income tax burden are also, generally speaking, the part of the population making sound personal decisions like saving for retirement. That behavior is good in both a micro and macro sense. In the micro sense workers are sacrificing current consumption for security and a better standard of living in the future. In a macro sense, the collective behavior of these citizens stabilizes our aging society.

To encourage this kind of sacrifice, our tax policy provides a tangible tax benefit. Take away that tax benefit and, as with raising taxes on anything else, you will get less of the behavior. Take away the tax benefit, and you will get less saving for retirement. Does that make any sense?

In order to avoid restraining the rapid growth in government spending, our friends on the other side would have us send the wrong policy signal to the half of our population that saves. They would add to the burden of those who are already shouldering the entire burden of funding the Federal Government. At the same time, by discouraging saving and personal responsibility we would further unleash the appetite of those who want us to spend more.

Take another look at the chart. Add up the tax expenditures from defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans. They account for 10 percent of tax expenditures. Over 5 years, the revenue from these expenditures amounts to almost $700 billion. On a per-year average basis, it is $140 billion. That is an annual policy shift of $140 billion in incentives for private savings to $140 billion in incentives for growing government spending.

Do we want a society where more saving is encouraged? Or do we want a society where dependency and more government spending are encouraged?

Do we want to look more like Switzerland or do we want to look like Greece?

The answer to this question is clear to the citizens of this country.

Unfortunately, not all of their representatives seem to have thought through the implications of going after tax expenditures.

To get at this from another angle, I would like to discuss the impact on taxpayers of cutting back some of these tax expenditures that come in the form of itemized deductions.

I am going to examine the effects of cutting back these itemized deductions by applying President Obama's budget proposal to cap itemized deductions at 28 percent.

It is clear that some in the White House are pushing this 28 percent cap hard in the negotiations over the debt limit.

As noted before, itemized deductions generally are considered tax expenditures. But itemized deductions impact a number of basic, longstanding features of American life. Itemized deductions include the home mortgage interest deduction, the charitable contribution deduction, and the State and local tax deduction. The President is proposing to chisel away at these itemized deductions, and we should carefully reflect on what that would mean.

President Obama has proposed repeatedly ``to limit the tax rate at which high-income taxpayers can take itemized deductions to 28 percent.'' It appears that this proposal is designed to lessen the benefit to higher income taxpayers of itemized deductions. The Joint Committee on Taxation says that this provision would mean the Federal Government would collect an additional $293 billion in taxes over 10 years.

True to form, this is just another version of the same soak-the-rich play that the left has been running for decades. From their perspective, it is unfair that higher income individuals get a more valuable tax benefit than lower income individuals? But this perspective mischaracterizes a critical issue. The 35 percent bracket was established by Congress with an understanding that itemized deductions would allow a significant tax benefit. Had Congress known that higher income taxpayers would be disallowed some of their itemized deductions--as the President now proposes--undoubtedly Congress would have set that bracket at lower than 35 percent.

So, taking away some of the benefit of itemized deductions for higher income taxpayers, while leaving the high-income tax rates at their current levels, upsets the balance struck by prior Congresses. Obviously, Congress is allowed to do this, but let's not pretend that these expenditures are loopholes or oversights by prior Congresses. The President and the Senate's Democratic leadership are free to do this if they choose, but they should at least come clean about what they are doing. They are significantly raising taxes on the people who are already shouldering the lion's share of the Federal income tax burden-- 98 percent of them, as a matter of fact.

Even aside from the staggering character of this tax increase--one that would clearly violate President Obama's campaign pledge not to raise taxes on middle class Americans the macroeconomic impact of this cap is negative at best.

President Obama's 28 percent cap would reduce the benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction. For 5 years now, our Nation has been experiencing a bursting of the real estate bubble. Current headlines indicate that this trend will continue for a time. Limiting the value of the home mortgage interest deduction would apply additional downward pressure on home prices--not only for high end homes, but for all homes. By repeatedly proposing to limit the benefit of the home mortgage interest deduction, is it the President's intent to further depress housing prices, or is this mere collateral damage from his desire to raise taxes.

But the damage from this cap does not stop at the housing market. President Obama's 28 percent cap would also reduce the benefit from the charitable contribution deduction. This would almost surely reduce the amount of contributions people would make to churches, synagogues, temples, soup kitchens, shelters, universities, and museums. Is that the President's intention? Does the President know that these revenues might never materialize because the elimination of this deduction will step up pressure for direct government assistance for the poor, for students, and for the arts?

Finally, this cap would reduce the benefit of the State and local tax deduction. I touched on this point earlier. High-tax States are able to soften the blow of their high taxes by pointing out to their citizens the Federal deductibility of such taxes. So, my colleagues from high- tax States might want to talk to their governors about the impact the President's proposed cap would have on State and local public finance.

I want to be clear about something. Our Tax Code is a colossal, awful mess. And tax expenditures must be a part of any conversation about tax reform. But I want to emphasize that the conversation about tax expenditures should happen in a conversation about broad based tax reform--reform that flattens the code while lowering rates.

The conversation about tax expenditures should be a sober one in the context of a meaningful discussion about tax policy. Unfortunately, the President has chosen instead to target tax expenditures willy nilly with little regard for the policy implications of these tax hikes.

Make no mistake, whatever the President wants to call it--reducing spending through the Tax Code, closing loopholes, or making people pay their fair share--these are tax increases plain and simple. And they are tax increases on the middle class.

There has been some criticism in recent days about Republicans for their commitment to a pledge many of them took against any net tax increase.

I have to admit I am at a loss here.

Conservative Republicans, convinced that taxes are already high enough, promise their taxpaying citizens that they will never support a net tax increase.

They gave their constituents their word, and are sticking to it.

Meanwhile, President Obama, who promised not to raise taxes on the middle class when running for office, vows to break this promise at every opportunity.

And yet it is the conservative Republicans who are somehow lacking integrity? Hardly.

I don't care how many blows I take from sophisticated Washingtonians and professional leftists for sticking by my pledge to the people of Utah. I will resist any effort by the President to include tax increases as part of the deal to increase the debt ceiling. I will do so for a number of reasons. First, our Tax Code needs a fundamental overhaul. It is a complicated mess that is lacking in fundamental fairness. Yet the President's proposal to reduce tax expenditures for deficit reduction, is a proposal to maintain a tax code that grows more burdensome by the day. The President's proposal essentially robs the government of the revenues that it might use later to flatten the Tax Code and lower rates.

More importantly, I oppose the President's proposed tax hikes as a matter of principle. Flattening the tax base without any offsetting rate reduction is a tax increase.

My friend, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Sessions captured the point well in an interview the other day. I will quote Senator Sessions:

We have to be honest and recognize that if you are going to

eliminate systematically a host of deductions and keep the

money or spend it for new programs, then you've raised taxes.

. . . It just is unless we've changed the English language.

The campaign against tax expenditures is a campaign for a tax increase.

It is a tax increase that could send the wrong signal to those Americans who sacrifice current consumption and save for retirement. It could raise the bar for those Americans who want to experience the American dream of home ownership. It would mean the residents of high tax States would face even higher State and local taxes. And it could mean a cutback back in the volume of charitable giving.

This is shared sacrifice that the Nation cannot afford.

I prefer shared prosperity by cutting taxes and giving the small businesses and businesses the opportunity to use that money to hire people and get people working and get more people paying taxes. I think it is abysmal that the bottom 51 percent do not pay income taxes, and 23 million of them get refundable tax credits from the government that are far more than the payroll taxes they might have to pay, which are Social Security payments.

I listened to my colleague from Vermont saying we cannot do anything on Social Security, we cannot do this, cannot do that, the poor people are going to be hurt. Where are they going to be when Social Security is bankrupt? Where are they going to be when Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt? The way we are going, that is where they are going to be.

We cannot keep spending like this, and we have to quit playing the phony game with tax expenditures.

All I can say is we have to get with it around here and we have to start working together as Democrats and Republicans in the best interests of the American people, and that is reforming this awful Tax Code, getting taxes down for everybody, and taking care of the poor but also expecting everybody to have some skin in the game--except the really poor--and help our country pull out of the mess we are in.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak.

Mr. President, it is nice to hear asking for a fair budget plan. We haven't had a budget from this administration now in almost 800 days. They have control of the Senate. Yet we haven't seen a budget from this administration.

I get a little tired of the Obama approach toward shared sacrifice. Shared sacrifice is something. It sounds good. But I would prefer the Republican approach to shared prosperity, and that is what I think we are all about.

When we talk about what shared sacrifice is, think about this. It is pretty irrefutable that the bottom 51 percent of all wage earners of all households do not pay income taxes. The top 1 percent of the so- called wealthy pay 38 percent of all income taxes; the top 10 percent are paying 70 percent of all income tax; the top 50 percent pay somewhere near 90 percent of all income taxes; 51 percent don't pay anything.

But Democrats say, well, they pay payroll taxes. Everybody does that because that is Social Security, and they pay about one-third of what they are going to take out over the years in Social Security. On ObamaCare, a family of four earning over $80,000 a year gets subsidies. Think about that. And that is what we call the poor? We wonder why the money doesn't go far enough? When are we going to wake up and realize that the other side just spends and spends and spends. They want to tax and tax and tax so they can spend some more. My gosh. When are we going to wake up in this country and realize they are spending us into oblivion?

I hear how they are so caring for the poor and so forth. The poor need jobs, and they also need to share some of the responsibility. We don't want the very poor people who are in poverty to pay income taxes--but 51 percent of all households? That is going up, by the way, because of our friend down in the White House and his allies.

I wish I didn't like him so much. I would like to be able to let go here. I like him personally, and I want him to be successful, but he is not going to be successful by just taxing the daylights out of everybody around here.

This Congress is currently engaged in as consequential a political debate as this Nation has seen in decades. Whether and what we raise the Nation's debt ceiling is a question that has consumed the markets in the Nation.

I serve the people of Utah and I hear about this issue every day and the sustainability of a government that has grown far beyond any reasonable or constitutional limit and the cost of paying for all this government is foremost on the minds of tax-paying citizens who will be left holding the bag, even when President Obama is back in Hyde Park and Members of Congress no longer serve. The decision to spend less is only for a moment, but the debt incurred to pay for these government programs lasts forever. Fifty-one percent of all households don't pay income taxes.

The Democrats say: Well, they pay payroll taxes. Yes, they do-- everybody does because that is Social Security--and 23 million of them get refundable tax credits that are more than they pay in payroll taxes.

I wish I could report to my constituents that Washington is serious about addressing this spending problem. Unfortunately, in the last week, we seem to have hit a new low. President Obama's contribution last week was a press conference temper tantrum, where he offered policy proposals that might appeal to his leftwing base but will do nothing to avoid our coming national bankruptcy.

Not to be outdone, Democratic leadership in the Senate has offered a nonbinding resolution designed solely to score some cheap political points that will jazz up the activist left through demagogic class warfare against individuals with high incomes. He is going to raise $3 billion over 10 years by taxing jet planes. It would take 1,000 years to reach what we have as a deficit for this year just from that one tax to jack up enough money to pay for just the deficit this year.

Facing a full-blown debt crisis, this is how the Senate Democrats, following the President's lead, have chosen to spend this week, debating a nonbinding resolution. Episodes such as this leave me convinced the only real solution to our Nation's spending problem is a balanced budget constitutional amendment. Only a specific constitutional restraint will force Congress to make the tough decisions necessary to restrain the size of government, restore the integrity of the States, and protect the liberties of the American citizens and taxpayers.

To demonstrate my commitment to restoring constitutional limits on the Federal Government, I have signed the cut, cap, and balance pledge. Along with a growing number of my colleagues in the Senate, Members of the House, grassroots groups, and Presidential candidates, I have committed myself to cutting spending, capping spending, and passing a balanced budget constitutional amendment as a condition for any debt limit increase.

As this debate over how best to address our growing debt and annual deficits continues, I wish to address a technical but critical matter in these negotiations. I am talking about tax expenditures. I am ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee and I know a little bit about these. Over the next few days I am going to discuss

this matter of tax expenditures and debt. Today, I am going to talk in general about what a tax expenditure is and what a tax expenditure is not. I will next turn to the tax policy areas implicated by current tax expenditures.

For instance, home ownership is favored in our tax base with a tax expenditure. There is a deduction for home mortgage interest, a deduction for real property taxes, and an exclusion for income from home sales. These are tax expenditures.

The Tax Code also encourages charitable contributions. Charitable deductions are available to citizens when they give to a nonprofit crisis pregnancy center, when they put money in the basket at church or when they give to their alma mater, just to mention a few charitable donations.

In a third speech, I will attempt to shed some light on a widespread misconception about tax expenditures. That misconception is that tax expenditures disproportionately benefit high income taxpayers. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

My remarks are remarks about what a tax expenditure is. Unfortunately, my remarks are also largely about Democrats' plans to increase taxes. President Obama and his liberal allies are calling for a balanced approach on a revenue piece to deficit reduction. They want shared sacrifice. I want shared prosperity.

We hear this from the press all the time. New revenues need to be a part of any deal to reduce the deficit. These are simply code words for a tax hike. I guarantee this. If we raise taxes, my friends on the other side will spend every dime of it. That is how they have kept themselves in power. Yet claiming they are helping the poor. Are 51 percent of our households so poor they can't participate in saving this country?

It is clear the professional left is insisting that President Obama include tax increases in any negotiated agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Threading this tax hike needle through an electorate resistant to giving the government more money to spend is no easy task. Although his campaign team talks a big game about the popularity of tax increases, the President's own words suggest otherwise.

Last week, in a shameful display of class warfare, the President did specifically call for some tax increases on the rich. That includes 800,000 small businesses, by the way, where 70 percent of the jobs come from. But that is the exception that proves the rule. By and large, the President avoids the effectual truth of his mission to get rid of tax expenditures--massive tax increases on the middle-class American families, to whom he promised immunity from tax increases when he was running for President. Instead, he and other members of the party of tax increases refer to tax expenditures as spending through the Tax Code. How seriously should we take his rhetoric?

When the President said he wanted to address the Nation's debt by reducing spending through the Tax Code, it proved too much for even Jon Stewart. This is Stewart's analysis of the President's contention that we could reduce the deficit by attacking spending through the Tax Code:

You manage to talk about a tax hike as a spending

reduction. Can we afford that and the royalty checks you are

going to have to send to George Orwell? That's the weirdest

way of ``just say tax hike.'' That's like saying, I am not

going on a diet. I'm going to add the calories to my excluded

food intake.

That was Jon Stewart. He hit the nail on the head. For sure it is easy to make fun. But what the President is trying to do with tax expenditures is no laughing matter.

Liberals talk about tax expenditures as though they were just getting rid of wasteful spending. First, as a legal matter, tax expenditures are not expended. Outlays are checks cut from the Treasury Department and are defined as spending under the Congressional Budget Act. Yet most tax expenditures only lose revenue and do not include an outlay portion. Tax expenditures that only lose revenue contain no spending as defined by the Congressional Budget Act and as scored by the official scorekeepers for Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office.

Second, as a policy matter, when it comes to tax expenditures, one person's loophole is another person's opportunity to save for college and retirement, finance a home, and tithe to your church.

Here is the bottom line. Taking away or reducing tax expenditures is a tax increase, unless a tax cut of an equal or greater amount is enacted.

One crucial myth I would like to dispel is that tax expenditures are spending. This chart, ``Revenue Loss Does Not Equal Spending,'' the Federal Government cannot spend money it never touched and never possessed.

What tax expenditures do is let taxpayers keep more of their own money. The American people are the ones who earn their money through their ideas, their risks, and their labor. Whether we are talking about a successful business owner or a part-time worker just starting out, the money they earn is theirs. It is their money, and only by their consent is the government permitted to take some of it in taxation to pay for certain public goods.

But Democrats have a different view. It is this view--one that is fundamentally at odds with our classical liberal Constitution and our Founders' respect for property rights--that contributes to the confusion over tax expenditures.

Liberals think that all of the money that you earn belongs to the government. You have no independent right to the fruit of your own labors, because only by dint of big government are you ever able to make something of yourself. This view is foreign to most Americans-- Republicans or Democrats. It is a view that Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln would take issue with. But this is the political philosophy of the modern left.

So when you hear tax hike proponents come to the Senate floor and say we are giving these businesses and individuals all this money in tax expenditures, they are incorrectly assuming that the government has that money to give in the first place. The government does not have this money to give. That money belongs first to the people that earn it--those businesses and individuals who are the American taxpayers.

There are critical differences between spending and tax expenditures. For one thing, the government never touches the money that a taxpayer keeps due to benefitting from a tax expenditure; whereas, with spending the government actually collects money from taxpayers and then spends it.

Here is a more telling difference. Reducing or eliminating a tax expenditure without lowering rates enough to reach a revenue neutral level will cause the size of the Federal Government to grow, while reducing or eliminating spending causes the size of the Federal Government to shrink.

I am open to looking at eliminating or reducing some tax expenditures as part of comprehensive tax reform but only if tax rates are lowered enough to reach a revenue neutral level. Alternatively, reduction or elimination of tax expenditures could be balanced with new tax cuts that are of equal or greater value to the revenue generated by the eliminated expenditures. But if tax expenditures are reduced or eliminated without tax rates being lowered enough to reach a revenue neutral level, that is a tax increase, plain and simple.

We have made clear that as a matter of law and political theory, tax expenditures are not spending.

Now let's turn to an examination of what they are.

Fortunately, we have definitions available.

The Joint Committee on Taxation generally defines tax expenditures as deliberate departures from generally accepted concepts of net income, usually by way of special exemptions, deductions, credits or exclusions. Therefore, tax expenditures generally arise for individual income taxes and corporate income taxes.

The Treasury Department differs from the Joint Committee on Taxation slightly in how it defines a tax expenditure. For example, the Joint Committee on Taxation labels deferral as a tax expenditure but Treasury does not. But whichever definition one uses, it is clear that the President and the liberal proponents of tax increases are using their own politically motivated dictionary.

Tax expenditures have been erroneously described by many as loopholes. This is deliberately inaccurate.

A loophole is something that Congress did not intend and would generally shut down, at least going forward, once it learned of the loophole. Tax expenditures, by contrast, were generally placed by Congress into the tax code deliberately. For example, the largest tax expenditure is the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance and benefits. The second-largest tax expenditure is the home mortgage interest deduction. We all know why they are there, and they are there for good reason.

Tax expenditures are not loopholes. We are not talking here about some fancy tax scheme that a lawyer or accountant has discovered and now promotes to his clients as a way to game the system. These are broad-based tax incentives that benefit many Americans. The deduction for charitable contributions is not some loophole. It was a deliberate inclusion in the code that acknowledges the need for religious citizens to contribute to their churches.

Even some of the smaller dollar tax expenditures were designed by Congress to go to particular industries or types of taxpayers--for example, the tax expenditure to encourage the purchase of corporate jets that Democrats included in the stimulus and that the President is now criticizing.

Whether you agree with these particular tax expenditures or not, an honest debate requires recognition that they were designed by Congress with economic or social goals in mind and are not inadvertent loopholes.

As a matter of law, policy and constitutional government, I fundamentally disagree with those who are pushing these tax increases as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Our problem is spending that has grown out of control, not a lack of revenue.

According to CBO's June 2011 long term budget outlook, taxes are already heading higher than they have historically been. From 1971 to 2010, revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged 18 percent. Since the post-World War II era, from 1946 to 2010, revenues have averaged 17.7 percent of GDP.

Yet CBO also projects that revenues as a percentage of GDP will exceed 20 percent by 2021. Even if all the bipartisan tax relief contained in the 2001 and 2003 tax acts is extended, revenues as a percent of GDP will increase to 18.4 percent.

So I ask the question: With taxes already going higher than where they have historically been, should we raise them even more?

For me, the answer is no.

I know that most Utahns would agree, I believe most people in this country would agree, and I suspect that even most Democrats would as well. They certainly would if President Obama and the liberals who pose as advocates for the middle class came clean about just how high taxes on working families would have to go to pay for the hard core left's preferred level of government. The numbers do not lie.

The deficit is a symptom of out-of-control spending that has grown dramatically in recent years and is reaching crisis levels.

It is not a result of too little in taxes. Democrats can close all the loopholes they want, and it still won't balance the books.

And the Democrats who are talking about the need to close loopholes and eliminate spending through the Tax Code need to be asked which middle class tax relief they want to get rid of as part of their deficit reduction plan.

Do they want to get rid of the charitable deduction or maybe the mortgage interest deduction?

Maybe they want to go after people's 401(k)s or IRAs or 529s.

What is it going to be?

Let me say something here. I am very concerned about where we are going. We have risen this year to 25.3 percent of GDP in spending. The last time we hit that figure was in 1945 at the height of the Second World War, when the government was taking over almost everything to keep us from losing that war. It is certainly over 23 percent right now. What is it going to be?

At a press event tantrum last week, the President answered absolutely none of these questions. He needs to. He needs to get serious about cutting spending.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the division of time under the quorum call be divided equally.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to help protect children from Internet predators and pornographers. I am joined by the distinguished senior Senator from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, with whom I serve on the Judiciary Committee and who is herself a former prosecutor. The same bill has been introduced in the House by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Technology can do so much for us today, but it also has a dark side. Students and Senators can use it, but so can predators and pornographers. Sadly, in some ways children are more at risk than ever and we must do whatever we can to protect them. This means equipping law enforcement with the tools they need to combat the sexual exploitation of children wherever it occurs.

This bill does several things. First, it makes it a crime to financially facilitate access to child pornography. Second, this bill requires companies such as Internet service providers to retain information such as subscriber network addresses for at least 18 months. Third, it expands existing authority to issue administrative subpoenas while investigating federal offenses involving the sexual exploitation or abuse of children. Fourth, it provides for protecting from intimidation or harassment child witnesses and victims in criminal investigations and prosecutions. Finally, it provides for enhancing criminal penalties or sentences for crimes such as the sex trafficking of children or child pornography.

Several of these provisions may look familiar. The provisions relating to subpoena authority, protection of child witnesses, child sex trafficking, and sentencing come directly from S. 2925, the Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2009, which Senator Wyden introduced in the 111 Congress.

In preparing this bill for introduction today, Senator Klobuchar and I met or spoke with law enforcement groups, financial institutions, communications companies, and child advocates. Many of them are stepping up their own voluntary efforts through coalitions such as the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography and the Family Online Safety Institute. I have worked with many of these organizations and companies for years and look forward to doing so again on this important legislation.

This is a strong bill, a balanced bill, which will provide effective tools for addressing these threats to our children. I know that many divisions exist today, in the country and in the Congress, on many issues. But I trust that those divisions will disappear when it comes to protecting children from sexual exploitation. That must be an ongoing commitment and I hope that all of my colleagues, on both sides of the aisle and across the political spectrum, will join me and Senator Klobuchar in supporting this legislation and helping us get it enacted into law.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to help protect children from Internet predators and pornographers. I am joined by the distinguished senior Senator from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, with whom I serve on the Judiciary Committee and who is herself a former prosecutor. The same bill has been introduced in the House by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Technology can do so much for us today, but it also has a dark side. Students and Senators can use it, but so can predators and pornographers. Sadly, in some ways children are more at risk than ever and we must do whatever we can to protect them. This means equipping law enforcement with the tools they need to combat the sexual exploitation of children wherever it occurs.

This bill does several things. First, it makes it a crime to financially facilitate access to child pornography. Second, this bill requires companies such as Internet service providers to retain information such as subscriber network addresses for at least 18 months. Third, it expands existing authority to issue administrative subpoenas while investigating federal offenses involving the sexual exploitation or abuse of children. Fourth, it provides for protecting from intimidation or harassment child witnesses and victims in criminal investigations and prosecutions. Finally, it provides for enhancing criminal penalties or sentences for crimes such as the sex trafficking of children or child pornography.

Several of these provisions may look familiar. The provisions relating to subpoena authority, protection of child witnesses, child sex trafficking, and sentencing come directly from S. 2925, the Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2009, which Senator Wyden introduced in the 111 Congress.

In preparing this bill for introduction today, Senator Klobuchar and I met or spoke with law enforcement groups, financial institutions, communications companies, and child advocates. Many of them are stepping up their own voluntary efforts through coalitions such as the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography and the Family Online Safety Institute. I have worked with many of these organizations and companies for years and look forward to doing so again on this important legislation.

This is a strong bill, a balanced bill, which will provide effective tools for addressing these threats to our children. I know that many divisions exist today, in the country and in the Congress, on many issues. But I trust that those divisions will disappear when it comes to protecting children from sexual exploitation. That must be an ongoing commitment and I hope that all of my colleagues, on both sides of the aisle and across the political spectrum, will join me and Senator Klobuchar in supporting this legislation and helping us get it enacted into law.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleagues.

Madam President, today we are beginning what might prove one of the most consequential debates in American history. The American people are demanding that Congress debate and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. They are going to get that debate, and I am confident that if Congressmen and Senators listen to their constituents, the citizens of this Nation are going to have the opportunity to ratify a balanced budget amendment this year. All 47 Republican Members of the Senate are of one mind on the need for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We have listened to our constituents who are pleading with us to take action that will permanently resolve our debt crisis and keep us from getting into this situation again.

The situation is a disaster. We all know the numbers: three straight trillion-dollar-plus deficits; $14.5 trillion in debt and rising every day; $62 trillion in total liability that this government owns. Since Democrats last passed a budget--that was over 790 days ago--our national debt has risen by $3.2 trillion, and now the administration is asking for more.

We simply cannot do this anymore. Madam President, 100 percent of our tax revenues are spent on mandatory spending and interest on the debt. Every other penny is borrowed. The money is simply not there to finance a government of this size, and everyone knows this, although not everyone will admit it. They know deficit spending and skyrocketing debt have come to an end. Our Nation's current debt-to-GDP ratio is 95 percent. Countries with debt above 95 percent of GDP have growth that is 1 percent below normal, resulting in a loss of 1 million jobs. Our debt is a lead weight around the neck of the economy.

But in the current negotiations over the debt limit, the administration insists that it is Republicans who, by refusing to pass an increase of the debt limit that does not include meaningful efforts to address our fiscal situation, are holding back the economic recovery and undercutting the stock and bond markets. This has things exactly backward. The markets understand that our long-term deficit projections are moving toward a full-blown debt crisis. The markets understand that we are currently on the glidepath to Greece. The markets would respond like gangbusters to spending cuts, spending caps, and a balanced budget amendment that brings our long-term fiscal problems under control.

I am more convinced than ever that a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is essential if we are to right our fiscal ship. This is not the first time we have been down this road, but the stakes could not be higher this time, and the amendment could not be better designed to address the crisis. Our amendment is not just an amendment for fiscal balance, it is an amendment that takes on the root cause of our current debt crisis; that is, government spending. Our amendment requires a balanced budget. It establishes a spending cap of 18 percent of GDP, and it establishes supermajority requirements for tax increases or future debt-limit increases.

We will hear a number of tired arguments against the BBA. Its opponents will say the amendment is not properly vetted. We have been talking about the balanced budget amendment for decades, and if we had passed it back in 1997, when it fell by 1 vote short of being sent to the States for ratification, we would not be in the mess we are in today.

They will say it stacks the deck by requiring spending cuts rather than tax increases to balance the budget. This is an issue I will address at length, but the American people understand the solution to a spending crisis is not to give the government more money to spend, especially this government.

They will say a balanced budget amendment is unnecessary and Congress just needs to do its job. But we have heard this over and over before, and the American people know that waiting for Congress to balance the budget and shrink the size of government without a constitutional amendment is less fruitful than waiting for Godot.

They will say the spending cuts required as a result of this BBA will hurt children and the elderly. But the real harm to our children will be when we hand them a future of national indebtedness and dim economic prospects, and the real harm to the elderly will be the coming bankruptcy of the Nation's entitlement programs--the guaranteed result of the President's failure to lead on entitlement reform.

Finally, they will say the Constitution should not be amended. I agree that it should not be amended lightly, but the Founders themselves expected that changing circumstances and national emergencies would demand amendments to the Constitution from time to time.

The American people understand that this is one of those times. In this country, the people are sovereign, the Constitution is their Constitution, and they are demanding that Congress pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to them and the States for ratification.

My hope is that the party of Thomas Jefferson will listen to their constituents and follow their founder's lead,

keeping faith in the people and their good sense and stewardship over the Constitution.

Later this summer we will vote on a balanced budget amendment. God willing, this fall the people in the States will start down the road to ratification.

I am proud to be joined this morning by several of my colleagues who have been critical leaders on the balanced budget amendment. Each brings a unique perspective to this debate, and I think it is great that they are standing up to lead on this issue.

I yield 5 minutes to my colleague, the junior Senator from Kentucky. He is a remarkable spokesperson for limited government, and I am glad to have him on my side in the coming fight for the balanced budget amendment.

Well, that should go way beyond partisanship. If we pass it here by the requisite two-thirds vote and we pass it in the House, which we will, this will be submitted to the States, and then the States can make their determination whether or not we have a balanced budget amendment. The Democrats who hate the balanced budget amendment--some of them; in fact, most of them--all they have to do is get 13 States to defeat it. We have to get 38 States to win. Frankly, we will win this because the American people are with us. And this is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do at this time. It is the only thing that is going to get us to right this fiscal ship.

Gramm-Rudman lasted all but a year and a half, 2 years, before the same people went on a spending spree again, although it was a light spending spree compared to today. Today it is multitrillions of dollars.

I have to tell you that has never worked. We have to put a straitjacket into this matter where the Congress has to live the way 49 States have to live. There is only one State that doesn't require a balanced budget in its State constitution. Why should we have a requisite desire--not only desire but rule to have a balanced budget as well? I am convinced that we have to do it after being in the Senate for 35 years and seeing, year after year after year, people unwilling to do this.

I agree with the Senator. I think the Senator makes very good points there. Frankly, I know this body very well. I am the most senior Republican. I have been here 35 years. I have seen year after year after year excuses to go into debt, excuses to deficit spend, excuses for why they are putting our country into this terrible state of bankruptcy--just plain excuses. And, of course, they hide behind the fact that they are trying to do it for the good of the people. It is not for the good of the people. It is not good to not live within your means, and unfortunately that is what has been going on here all of the time I have been here.

Madam President, I wish to thank the distinguished Senator from Kentucky. I think he states it very well. That is the whole purpose of the balanced budget amendment. So I thank him for his cogent remarks and his erudition.

Last week, I signed a pledge that many people in this body are hearing about from their constituents. It is called the cut, cap, and balance pledge. Those of us who signed this pledge committed ourselves to significant spending cuts, a cap on government spending, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution as a condition for supporting any increase in the debt limit. I was pleased to work with my colleague from Utah, Senator Lee, in developing a balanced budget amendment that is supported by every Republican in this body. Of course, we worked with many others as well, especially Senator Cornyn. I am now pleased to be working with him on the goals of the cut, cap, and balance coalition, a remarkable group of grassroots activists committed to getting our Nation's spending under control.

Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to my friend and colleague from Utah, Senator Lee.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Utah. He is a wonderful Senator and he serves as a leader in this area.

I don't have enough good words to say about my friend from Texas, my colleague, Senator Cornyn, who was a judge on the Supreme Court in Texas before coming here. From the minute he set foot in this Chamber, he has been a strong conservative, committed to constitutional government. From the beginning of this Congress, he knew we needed to pass a balanced budget amendment, and we are going to need him in this fight.

I yield 5 minutes to my friend and colleague from Texas, Senator Cornyn.

The Senator did. Back in 1997, we lost by one vote. I was leading the fight on the floor. We had 67 votes and one of our Senators flipped on us at the last minute and we lost it by one vote.

Madam President, I thank my colleague for those cogent remarks.

My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven, knows a thing or two about balancing budgets. As a former Governor, he knows this is something States have to do every day. Governors and legislatures balance their books by making the tough decisions the Federal Government is too often unwilling to make.

So I yield the remaining time to my friend and colleague from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven.

Madam President, I thank my colleagues. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute and to give the other side an additional minute.

I thank the Acting President pro tempore.

I thank my colleagues. They have made some very prescient points on how important this balanced budget amendment is.

By the President's own Actuary, by 2020, our national debt will be over $20 trillion. The interest alone will be over $1 trillion. We will not have any money for the poor, the sick, and the needy because we have not lived within our means. We simply have to get spending under control. The only way to do that is to do what all these 49 States have to do every year; that is, balance our budget through a requisite constitutional amendment.

Let me make one last point; that is, I do not know why the Democrats--some Democrats--fight against this. Because literally, even if we pass it through both Houses of Congress by the requisite two- thirds vote, there is still going to be a big battle in the States, and if they hate it, they can fight it out there in the States.

I think the reason they fight it is they know if we pass it here, it is going to pass through the States very fast because almost every State knows what we have to do. Almost everybody of intelligence knows what we have to do.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the great city of Perry, UT, on the 100th anniversary of its incorporation.

Today, Perry is a beautiful city of nearly 4,000 residents nestled at the foot of northern Utah's majestic Wasatch Mountains. Its fame and acclaim are extensive for a variety of reasons.

First, it is the apple of many a person's eye because of its location on Utah's famed Fruit Way. Its fruit stands along highway 89 are laden with apples, cherries, apricots, peaches, pears and other produce. I have never found any fruit nearly so sweet in all my travels.

Perry is also home to the legendary Maddox Ranch House, where succulent steaks, fried chicken, homemade rolls and other fare have been food for thought and the palate for locals and many a weary traveler--this Senator, included--for more than six decades.

Best of all, though, are the wonderful residents of Perry. I have always been unfailingly impressed with their work ethic and civic- mindedness their eagerness and willingness to pitch in and build a better future and community for their children and grandchildren.

They also are warm and welcoming. Whenever people pop in, they never seem to be put out. It has been my experience that they are always eager to lend a hand or extend the hand of friendship. I always feel better for being there. It doesn't hurt that my wife Elaine hails from nearby Newton. Little wonder that every time I am in Perry I feel right at home.

Great places like Perry don't just happen. It takes vision and hard work--a trait Orrin Porter Rockwell and his brother Merritt undoubtedly had in abundance when they laid claim to a piece of land in the area adjacent Porter Spring. They were followed in 1851 by the Mormon pioneers, settlers of faith and fortitude who befriended the Native Americans there and founded what became known as Three Mile Creek.

Many milestones have come and gone since then. In 1861 the first school was built, followed by the groundbreaking for the Northern Utah Railroad 10 years later. And the settlers also weathered some adversity, including harsh winters and the Great Flood of 1896. Two years later, Three Mile Creek was renamed Perry in honor of Orrin Alonzo Perry, who served as an LDS bishop there for more than two decades.

June 19, 1911, the date of Perry's incorporation, was another major event and marked a new beginning. Over the ensuing years, the people of Perry, under the guidance of some remarkable and visionary leaders, kept right on building, bringing electricity, drinking water, a town hall and more schools to the city. Just this year, Perry added a wastewater treatment plant and a soccer park to the mix. And I trust many more chapters remain to be written in Perry's illustrious history.

As Perry celebrates its centennial over the Fourth of July weekend, I salute its visionary and hardworking citizens, both past and present, who have made the city what it is today. I am sure Orrin Porter Rockwell and Orrin Alonzo Perry would be proud. You can be certain that this Orrin is.

Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Nation's premier regional theater and one of our State's crown jewels, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

Great things often evolve from small or modest beginnings. That was certainly the case in 1961 when Fred C. Adams and his late wife, Barbara, founded the event in Cedar City with lofty goals, a bargain- basement budget of $1,000, and 21 volunteers. They envisioned what few others could see--that the 150,000 tourists who flocked to the area each summer might also be gathered for a theater festival.

Today, the Utah Shakespeare Festival is the proud recipient of a Tony Award for being the ``outstanding regional theatre in America.'' It operates year-round, boasts a $6.6 million budget, employs 26 Equity actors and has another 300 community volunteers. Its repertoire has also expanded. Yes, Shakespeare is still the main attraction, but the festival also stages plays from three centuries of playwrights from all across Europe and the United States.

Not bad for a festival that is 250 miles from Salt Lake City, the State's largest metropolitan area.

Geography, though, can hardly be the sole consideration for theatre aficionados who wish to attend the festival. It is simply too good and too glorious to miss, for mileage's sake. That is why I and millions of others have eagerly gone the distance many times to take in Shakespeare's plays at the open-air Adams Memorial Theatre--modeled after the playwright's famed Globe Theatre in London--and other offerings at the indoor Randall L. Jones Theatre. Every time I have gone, I have been thoroughly entertained and richly rewarded.

But the past is past, or, as Shakespeare put it, ``What is past is prologue.'' I look forward to many more productions there, and for the event to capture ever-more acclaim and captivate ever-larger and more appreciative audiences. Perhaps the Bard of Avon's words best sum up the festival's future: ``The golden age is before us, not behind us.'' I firmly believe that to be true.

On this, the 50th anniversary of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, I salute the visionaries like Fred and Barbara Adams, Executive Director R. Scott Phillips, and the scores of organizers, performers, and volunteers who have and continue to make this wonderful event possible.

I commend them for a wonderful 50 years and wish them well as they embark on the next 50 and continue to carry out the festival's mission to ``entertain, enrich and educate.''

Madam President, I will be happy to be interrupted by the managers of the bill if they decide to come.

imf bailout

Madam President, there have been several recent warnings of large and growing risks in global markets from the European debt crisis.

If Greece defaults, which investors see as likely, and European officials are unable to agree on how to restructure Greece's debt, lack of confidence in sovereign debt could spread.

Investors could run away from liabilities issued by other highly indebted Eurozone countries or even the debt of the United States.

Unfortunately, the President continues his disengagement in our debt problems.

The administration continues to advocate more runaway deficit spending, continuing down the path toward European-style big government.

Our debt-financed unsustainable debt is pushing us toward our own fiscal crisis. Yet the President has failed to lead us to a sound fiscal solution.

My concern about the European debt crisis is about the possible exposure of the U.S. to a European-led contagion that could lead to catastrophe in the global market for U.S. Treasury securities.

The U.S. financial system has exposures to liabilities of the public sectors, the banks, and the private sectors of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, four highly indebted Eurozone countries.

The extent of the exposure is unclear but is potentially greater than half a trillion dollars. Given the interconnectedness in global financial markets, ultimate risk exposure is difficult to disentangle.

Most importantly, I am concerned about what all of this means for American taxpayers. Americans have made it crystal clear, they do not want more bailouts.

Let me remind everyone of President Obama's pledge when he signed the Dodd-Frank banking act into law last year, an act which, by the way, is turning out to be a job-killer and is itself a threat to our financial markets. The President clearly stated, ``[t]here will be no more tax- funded bailouts--period.''

Unfortunately, that promise has proven hollow. Recall that a Democrat-led Congress, urged on by President Obama, upped the U.S. ante with the International Monetary Fund in 2009. Additional funding of up to $108 billion was provided to the IMF which can now be used to bail out profligate European governments. Make no mistake, bailouts are continuing and there are threats of even more on the horizon.

Let me be clear now, before any crisis hits. There can be no further bailouts, of banks or foreign countries or private companies or unions or states that are funded by innocent American taxpayers.

The people of Utah, whom I represent, and the vast majority of Americans want to hold the President to his promise. They are done with taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The administration and the agencies responsible for oversight of our financial system need to bring some sunshine to this situation, and make clear to the American people just what the bailout risk is from the Eurozone or anywhere else.

I am proud to cosponsor with Senator DeMint and several of my colleagues an amendment that will roll back the funding provided to the IMF in 2009. To make the President's pledge of no more tax-funded bailouts meaningful, and to do what the American people are clearly demanding of Congress, it is imperative to protect taxpayers from bailouts of profligate European countries through the IMF.

American taxpayers deserve assurance now that they will not be again forced to assume risks and losses that they did not create. Taxpayers deserve to know that they will be protected from future bailouts.

That is precisely what the amendment that I am cosponsoring will do. It is a simple amendment and its message is clear.

No more taxpayer bailouts.

If the President is unwilling to fulfill his pledge on his own, there are those of us in Congress who are happy to hold him to his word.

I urge my colleagues to stand up for taxpayers and vote for this critical amendment.

So far I have been speaking about this administration's abuse of power with regard to the IMF. I would like to switch gears for a few minutes and talk about another series of abuses that are no less outrageous. I am speaking about the Obama administration's labor agenda.

Over the last month or so, many in this Chamber have expressed concern about the National Labor Relations Board's complaint against Boeing. That complaint has been almost universally criticized, if not outright condemned, from all corners of the country. Just last week, the Washington Post, not exactly known for having an anti-union bias, had some harsh words for the board's case against Boeing. I ask unanimous consent to have the Post's editorial printed in the Record.

Also last week, the NLRB released a notice of proposed rulemaking, aiming to drastically reduce the time between the filing of a union election petition and the vote to

certify the union. The motivation behind this proposal is simple, the less notice the employers have regarding a union election, the less time they will have to make their case to the workforce.

Unions and their democratic allies have sought these kinds of so- called reforms for decades. I want to be clear. For all of their talk about representing the little guy, and standing for the people, these reforms are an affront to the spirit of democracy. They show disrespect for employees by attempting to deny them critical information that could inform their choices in these elections. Their genesis is not in a concern for the common man but in the unholy alliance between union apparatchiks who want to grow their power and union dues, and the latte left that depend on those dues to elect representatives who have little in common with the workers whose paychecks get docked to elect them.

Unfortunately, now that President Obama has packed the NLRB with former union lawyers, they look poised to get these rules. Let us be clear. This is a win for union bosses. But it is a big loss for the workers they purport to represent.

I will have much more to say about the NLRB in the coming days. But, today, I want to focus on another runaway Obama agency that is setting aside established rules and procedures in order to pay back the President's union supporters.

The National Mediation Board, which has jurisdiction over labor relations in the railroad and airline industries, has, like the NLRB, aggressively pursued a unionization-at-all-costs agenda. While the NMB's activities have not received the same attention as those of the NLRB, their actions are every bit as egregious.

Last summer, the NMB, at the behest of big labor, changed the voting procedures for all union elections under its jurisdiction. For 75 years, an airline or railroad union had to win the support of a majority of the entire workforce in order to be certified as the representative. Under that system, workers who did not vote in an election were counted as no votes.

The logic of this rule was sound. Unions do not seek to represent just the workers that vote in an election. A union claims to represent the entire workforce. The established rule ensured that the results of an election accurately reflected the will of a true majority of a given workforce.

Unfortunately, logic and common sense often stand in the way of the big labor agenda.

So in 2010 the NMB unilaterally changed the rule to lower the bar. Now these elections are decided by a majority of those voting in an election, regardless of how many workers actually voted. In other words, under the new rule a union could be certified even if a majority of the workers did not support it.

Given the timing of this decision, one can only conclude that the pro-union appointees on the NMB were specifically targeting Delta Airlines for unionization after its merger with Northwest Airlines. I think it would be naive to assume otherwise.

But here is the remarkable thing.

The stage was set for a union cakewalk. Shortly after the NMB fixed the rules to secure a pro-union outcome, there was an election among Delta's flight attendants to determine if they wanted to be represented by the Association of Flight Attendants or AFA.

All the rails were greased for the union.

And the union still lost.

The result was a triumph of employees over the union bosses.

The employees had three options.

One, voting yes to certify AFA representation; two, voting no to reject certification or, three, writing in an alternative choice for representation.

The NMB did its best to fix this for the union. They counted the write-in votes, votes clearly supporting an option other than the AFA, as votes in favor of the union.

But when the dust settled, with 94 percent of Delta's flight attendants voting in the election, the union still lost. Of course, the unions cried foul and have challenged those results. The NMB, which has shown little desire thus far to vindicate the rights of non-union workers, let alone those of employers, is currently investigating the AFA's claims that Delta interfered in the vote.

I think we can guess how this investigation will turn out.

This recent election was not the only setback the unions have received at the hands of Delta employees. Last fall, three other Delta workforces, the ticket agents, the bagging agents, and the reservation agents, all held separate union elections, all of which ended with similar results. The NMB is also investigating claims of interference in those elections, even though no substantive evidence has been presented.

With these latter three elections, the union suitor was the International Association of Machinists, the same union whose interests the NLRB is serving with its absurd complaint against Boeing. If the Obama administration's commitment to serving IAM is consistent between agencies, and there is absolutely no reason to assume otherwise, I think we can predict just how those investigations will turn out.

There is no time limit on the NMB's investigations. Delta has no way of knowing whether it is in the clear or whether it needs to prepare for more elections. More importantly, Delta's workers, who have repeatedly rejected unionization, will likely see no end to the bothersome pressure that comes with a union election campaigns.

I think it is safe to say that, with the Obama NMB in charge, the number of union elections among Delta employees will be limited only by the time it takes for the unions to finally win one.

The NMB is behaving like the bureaucratic equivalent of the scorer's table at the 1972 men's basketball gold medal game.

They are going to give the unions as many chances as they need to win this fight.

Labor law and policy plays an important role in our economy. In many respects, it determines which businesses will succeed and which will fail. It plays a significant role in decisions as to whether companies should invest in the U.S. or somewhere else.

Sadly, it has become customary to expect pendulum swings in labor law each time the White House changes hands and appoints new government officials to lead the Federal executive branch and independent agencies. While this should not be the case, I do not think we've ever seen the pendulum swing as far as it has under the Obama administration.

Unions represent less than 8 percent of the private sector workforce. Yet with President Obama in office, the union influence has been virtually immeasurable. This should not be surprising. During the 2008 campaign, President Obama addressed a gathering of the SEIU, probably the most politically powerful union in the country. During his speech, the President told the crowd if he were elected, ``we are going to paint the Nation purple with SEIU.''

Apparently, Madam President, this is the one campaign promise President Obama intends to keep.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he produced an argumentative masterpiece. He announced to a candid world that all people--regardless of their circumstances-- are created free and equal in their natural God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

After announcing these fundamental principles, this great lawyer then turned to proving his case--that King George III and Parliament had violated these principles so repeatedly, and so extensively, that Americans were justified in a revolution that would secure us as a free nation committed to the principles of the Declaration.

Though it does not compare to the ringing rhetoric of the philosophical commitment to rights in the Declaration, we should not forget Jefferson's listing of the colonists' grievances--the long train of abuses that justified our revolution against King George.

Among those grievances, Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress claimed that the King ``has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.'' Since 1776, even before our Constitution was conceived of, much less written, Americans have resented their subjugation to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. Americans strove to establish an accountable government that left them free to build their own families and livelihoods.

King George had fair warning. A government that views the people as a draft horse to be exploited for power and resources will be bucked off, and that is what the colonists did.

Following the Revolution, our Founding Fathers sought to construct a government consistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In an effort to keep their new republic accountable to the people, and to provide for the balance of powers between our three branches of government, our forefathers were careful in their assignment of powers regarding executive branch personnel in article II, Section 2 of our Constitution. In speaking of the powers of the President, that section reads in part, ``he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law:''

Let me repeat that.

By and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

In our country, the people are sovereign, and that sovereignty is reflected in the accountability of executive branch officials not only to the President but to the people's elected representatives in Congress.

Even with these constitutional safeguards, we have met with only mixed success in making sure that government officials are accountable to the people. In remarks originally delivered in 1980, former-Senator James L. Buckley--who also went on to be one of our Nation's great appellate court judges here on the DC Circuit--issued the following lament about the growing power of government bureaucrats. ``We have, in short, managed to vest these individuals with a degree of authority over others that the Founders of the Republic went to great pains to prevent anyone from acquiring.''

Things have only gotten worse since Senator Buckley gave that warning, and I think that in no small measure this growing lack of accountability is reflected in citizens' growing despair, and occasional anger, about the responsiveness of their government.

That is why I am very surprised that this body is considering legislation that would further eliminate the accountability of roughly 200 powerful executive branch positions.

I can tell you that I am hearing from my constituents on this. For them, this is more than an academic separation of powers, or checks and balances, issue, where Congress further delegates authority to the executive branch. For them, it is another example of Congress permitting the government bureaucracy to operate with less and less public accountability.

Quite simply, the Federal Government is massive.

And for all of the increases in its size since the founding, for all of the traditional powers of the States that it has displaced, the increases of the last few years stand out as historic.

Congress passed a $1 trillion stimulus, on a largely partisan basis.

It has passed Dodd-Frank, massively burdening our financial and banking sectors with new government mandates.

And the icing on the cake was ObamaCare, a $2.6 trillion spending bill that has resulted in tens of thousands of pages of regulations drafted secretively by unaccountable Washington bureaucrats.

And in this environment, we are urging legislation that would decrease oversight of the executive branch?

With a national debt of more than $14 trillion and deficits that have topped $1 trillion in each of the last 3 years, we are ready to give the President greater discretion?

We are going to give the administration more freedom to act without the oversight of the people's elected representatives?

It is little wonder that the American people are increasingly concluding that no matter what they say or do, Washington won't listen to them.

Commensurate with the increase in the size of government is the employment by the executive branch of unelected and unconfirmed special assistants and advisers with substantial power. These positions are commonly referred to as czars. President Obama is not the first President to appoint these so-called czars, but over the past few years their numbers seems to have increased. In a 2009 Washington Post editorial, current House Majority Leader Eric Cantor discussed his concerns with the administration's reliance on 32 identified czars who have not been examined by the legislative branch.

The legislation before us will only increase the number of executive branch staff that are beyond the scope of effective congressional oversight.

I appreciate the arguments of my colleagues who are promoting this legislation, but I respectfully disagree with their conclusions. Proponents believe that many of the positions where advice and consent is eliminated do not exercise a substantive policy role, have responsibilities that are managerial in nature, or have responsibilities that overlap or are duplicative of those of another confirmed officeholder. I am not able to speak on behalf of other committees, but as ranking member of the Finance Committee I can say that the Finance Committee was not consulted on this legislation until less than a week before the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Reform reported its bill.

I am concerned that, though well-intentioned, the architects of this bill did not have the detailed knowledge of the positions being impacted to determine fully the appropriateness of advice and consent. A list of the positions that was circulated by the Rules Committee prior to the Homeland Security markup actually misidentified several Finance Committee nominees as falling within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and to my knowledge an updated list has not been made available.

Chairman Baucus and I sent a letter to the leadership of the Homeland Security Committee before their markup, and I will ask that the letter be printed in the Record. That letter discusses the impact of this legislation on seven positions currently subject to the Finance Committees jurisdiction, and we both oppose this bill's removal of our constitutional power of advice and consent with respect to these nominees.

However, the fundamental matter of accountability that we raise in that letter is an issue far broader than the Finance Committee's jurisdiction. I would like to highlight the position of Assistant Secretary for Legislation, and Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. In light of the controversial passage, and now implementation, of ObamaCare, does it really make sense to relinquish direct oversight over the Assistant Secretary of Legislation, a position which, according to the HHS Web page, ``is responsible for the development and implementation of the Department's legislative agenda''? Regardless of how one voted on the passage of the health care law, does anyone in this body really think that it makes sense for Congress to deliberately minimize oversight of its implementation?

Additionally, I know some Members of this body have been concerned with how HHS has publicly discussed health care reform and have taken issue with the accuracy of information provided to the public. Regardless of whether this applies to any particular Senators, don't all of us want to ensure that HHS provides accurate and substantive information to the public regarding health reform?

The Constitution in general terms provides Congress with the vital function of exercising oversight over the executive branch to ensure that our laws are carried out appropriately.

Let me put that another way.

The people, in ratifying their Constitution, gave to their elected representatives in Congress the solemn duty of supervising the administration of the law.

And the constitutional power that guarantees this critical responsibility is the power of Senate confirmation.

Some justify the legislation before us on the grounds that the Senate takes too long to process nominations for various reasons. I'm not here to say that these claims are totally without merit.

However, I am confident that eliminating the constitutional requirement for advice and consent for hundreds of positions is the wrong solution. Any issues with the nomination process could and should be handled at the committee level, if not by the Senate as a whole, through the rules adopted by this Chamber. If some of us believe that we could carry out our responsibilities better, I am open to those ideas. However, I do believe that each Senate Committee should be able to determine how that committee will handle nominees, and then reexamine that decision as time passes. Enacting this legislation would significantly diminish, if not completely destroy, the possibility for reexamination of our decisions. If we surrender our jurisdiction over hundreds of executive branch positions and turn them into czars, that decision will likely be permanent.

The choice we have to make now is whether we will abdicate part of our constitutional responsibilities or gives ourselves the opportunity to examine how we exercise those responsibilities. Will we share in the madness of King George?

Or will we follow the trail blazed by or forefathers, like Thomas Jefferson?

I think it is critical that we recommit ourselves to a government of the people, one that guarantees the representative character of executive branch officials.

For that reason, I will be voting against cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous cnosent to have printed in the Record the letter to which I referred.

Mr. President, today I am proud to stand with my friend from Florida, Senator Rubio, as he introduces an important piece of legislation, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. This bill, which today is being introduced in the House by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, is based on the belief that children should not make profound life-changing decisions by themselves and that parents are generally in the best and most responsible position to help them.

One of the many disturbing ironies in the abortion debate is that parental consent is needed for such things as tattoos or school fieldtrips but not always for abortions that will end one life and change another forever. Abortion advocates say that abortion should be treated as any other surgical procedure, but many of them oppose requiring the same parental consent for abortion that is required for any other procedure.

What is worse, there are individuals and organizations out there who appear to care more about money an about kids. They are willing to help young girls get abortions by any means necessary, including taking them to other States without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Mind you, those same parents will be responsible for the aftermath, for the physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences of the abortion. If parents are to be responsible at the end, they have the right to be there at the beginning.

If it were possible, just for a moment, to take the abortion politics out of the picture, every parent knows that kids have to develop over time the judgment and maturity to make decisions. No one is more committed to them, no one has more love for them, no one has more responsibility for them than their parents.

This bill has two parts. First, it prohibits taking a minor across State lines for an abortion if doing so evades the parental involvement law in her home State. In the 109th Congress, this portion of our bill passed the Senate with 65 bipartisan votes. More than 80 percent of our fellow Americans support it. Second, this bill requires abortionists to notify parents of an out-of-State minor before performing an abortion. Fifty-seven Senators voted for cloture on this combined bill in 2006.

I urge my colleagues to read the bill. It does not apply when an abortion is necessary to save a girl's life or if the girl is a victim of abuse or neglect. Again, please read the bill. It is carefully drafted with the appropriate exceptions and safeguards in order to focus on what unites the vast majority of Americans, that parents should be involved before their child has an abortion. The majority of States have laws requiring parental involvement and, with its interstate component, this bill is a legitimate and constitutional way for Congress to help protect children and support parents.

Mr. President, today I am proud to stand with my friend from Florida, Senator Rubio, as he introduces an important piece of legislation, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. This bill, which today is being introduced in the House by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, is based on the belief that children should not make profound life-changing decisions by themselves and that parents are generally in the best and most responsible position to help them.

One of the many disturbing ironies in the abortion debate is that parental consent is needed for such things as tattoos or school fieldtrips but not always for abortions that will end one life and change another forever. Abortion advocates say that abortion should be treated as any other surgical procedure, but many of them oppose requiring the same parental consent for abortion that is required for any other procedure.

What is worse, there are individuals and organizations out there who appear to care more about money an about kids. They are willing to help young girls get abortions by any means necessary, including taking them to other States without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Mind you, those same parents will be responsible for the aftermath, for the physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences of the abortion. If parents are to be responsible at the end, they have the right to be there at the beginning.

If it were possible, just for a moment, to take the abortion politics out of the picture, every parent knows that kids have to develop over time the judgment and maturity to make decisions. No one is more committed to them, no one has more love for them, no one has more responsibility for them than their parents.

This bill has two parts. First, it prohibits taking a minor across State lines for an abortion if doing so evades the parental involvement law in her home State. In the 109th Congress, this portion of our bill passed the Senate with 65 bipartisan votes. More than 80 percent of our fellow Americans support it. Second, this bill requires abortionists to notify parents of an out-of-State minor before performing an abortion. Fifty-seven Senators voted for cloture on this combined bill in 2006.

I urge my colleagues to read the bill. It does not apply when an abortion is necessary to save a girl's life or if the girl is a victim of abuse or neglect. Again, please read the bill. It is carefully drafted with the appropriate exceptions and safeguards in order to focus on what unites the vast majority of Americans, that parents should be involved before their child has an abortion. The majority of States have laws requiring parental involvement and, with its interstate component, this bill is a legitimate and constitutional way for Congress to help protect children and support parents.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator McCain's amendment to prohibit the use of Federal funds for the construction of ethanol blender pumps and ethanol storage facilities. My vote today is not a vote against ethanol as a transportation fuel. I strongly support the greater use of alternative transportation fuels and alternative- fuel filling stations in the United States. In certain cases, I have even advocated for government support of these goals. But government support for a source of energy should create a temporary boost, not a long-term Federal dependency. It is just as foolish to attempt to build an economy on subsidized energy as it is to build a house on the sand.

I have been criticized for opposing a Democratic proposal to raise taxes on domestic oil producer, but there is a difference in the size of the Grand Canyon between allowing oil companies to keep a portion of their own profits, which they use for more domestic energy production, versus handing out

very large amounts of taxpayer cash to ethanol companies. Ethanol companies not only have a lower tax rate than oil companies on average, they also benefit from the ethanol excise tax credit, from government handouts for ethanol filling infrastructure, a large Federal mandate forcing refineries to produce ethanol whether it makes economic sense or not, and an ethanol import tariff.

I cannot conceive of any justification for a program that hands out taxpayer funds for an activity as it does for ethanol blender pumps and storage facilities when it already has a Federal mandate forcing it into what used to be the free market. In my book, there is no greater subsidy than Federal mandate, and that alone is more than ethanol deserves.

I have supported broad-based incentives for alternative fuels in the past, but enough is enough, and in the case of ethanol, it is more than enough by far. Affordable energy is basic to a strong economy just as a healthy blood supply is basic to human life, and a long-term handout is no substitute for affordability.

I will continue to support reducing our dependency on foreign oil by increasing domestic energy production, increasing the efficiency of our transportation sector, and increasing the diversity of our transportation fuels. But those goals should focus on energy sources that can compete in the free market. Reliance on noncompetitive energy sources will only drag down our economy.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support more competitive America by voting for Senator McCain's amendment.

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

Mr. President, our Nation's challenges grow by the day. The citizens of Utah get this. The citizens in this country get this.

A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 62 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Only 37 percent of Americans approve of the President's job of handling the economy. I would like to meet those people, because when I talk to Utahns, the numbers are much lower than that, and I understand why.

Applications for unemployment have been above 400,000 for 7 straight weeks. Economic growth is stagnant. Job growth is pathetic. The real estate market remains in free-fall. Since 2007, housing values have dropped by more than during the Great Depression.

Medicare is going bankrupt, and when it does, it will take down this country and tens of millions of seniors with it. Yet President Obama and his Democratic allies steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem with Medicare. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when asked where the Democrats' reform plan was, responded:

We have a plan. It's called Medicare.

Meanwhile, the President's handpicked chairwoman of the Democratic

National Committee gleefully demagogs Republicans' efforts to fix this dying program.

There are legitimate fears that the Federal Reserve's loose money policy is creating yet another stock market bubble that could pop and destroy the retirement savings of millions of Americans. Most ominously, PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund manager, is looking to countries such as Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, countries without our massive fiscal problems, to invest. As I have said before, there is a genuine risk that the United States is in a debt bubble. Because of historically low interest rates, we may be totally underestimating how dangerously leveraged this country is. But the minute rates start going up, citizens are going to realize how much they are on the hook for. When the word on the street is that U.S. Treasurys are not worth investing in, higher interest rates are just around the corner.

So we have a lot of work to do, but I wish to touch on three things we should be doing now, and I mean right now. The people are demanding action, and there are a few things Congress can do that would bring relief to struggling American families.

First, the President needs to submit the Colombia, Panama, and South Korean Free Trade Agreements to Congress. They are long overdue. The failure to submit these agreements has stalled U.S. job growth at a time when it is desperately needed. There is only upside to these agreements. Consider that from Utah alone, South Korea imported more than $294 million of goods in 2009.

The former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Holtz- Eakin, has it right. This is what he said earlier this week in a letter to the President:

Opening Colombia, South Korea, and Panama to U.S.

businesses is anticipated to increase total exports by $12

billion, and will add at least $14 billion to the United

States gross domestic product, promoting increased investment

and job creation at home.

While the President is down in Florida yukking it up with rich liberals about how he wasted nearly $1 trillion on his stimulus boondoggle, he seems oblivious to the fact that he could just hit send, deliver these agreements to Congress, and have a trade-driven economic stimulus.

If given a clean up-or-down vote, I am confident these agreements would pass. I have no doubt who would prevail if that debate were allowed to happen. But old habits die hard.

The President's spend-first mentality is cluttering what should be a clean debate on the benefit of these free-trade agreements for the American economy. Rumors persist that the President may include a reauthorization of an expanded trade adjustment assistance bill into one or perhaps all the bills implementing our trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. This would be a grave mistake. That tactic raises serious procedural concerns which could jeopardize approval of these job-creating agreements.

It also raises serious concerns about the President's commitment to gaining approval of our long-stalled trade agreements with these important allies. It would send a signal that further placating unions is more important than growing our economy, a position I simply cannot understand or support. If the President chooses this course of action, he needs to know I will vigorously oppose him and reserve the right to use all procedural options available to do so. If, as the President says, there is such strong bipartisan support for trade adjustment assistance, it should be considered on its own merits and not thrust upon an unwilling Congress through procedural shenanigans.

These trade agreements are something Washington can do, and should do, to get our economy back on track. But we must also be vigilant in fighting against proposals that would undermine our economy and our sovereignty.

Standard & Poor's recently downgraded Greece's debt rating to CCC, from a B. This is the world's lowest rating, and S&P concluded that a default on Greek debt was increasingly likely.

So what was the President's response? Like the Siren's Call, a bailout beckoned. He seemed to go all in for an IMF bailout of Greece. Greece has already been bailed out once by the IMF, to the tune of $145 billion. We cannot let this happen again. That is why today I am cosponsoring the anti-IMF bailout amendment with my good friends, Senators DeMint, Vitter, and Cornyn.

This amendment, which we filed to the Economic Development Revitalization Act, would rescind bailout funds provided in 2009 to the International Monetary Fund. Under the urging of the Obama administration, additional funding of up to $108 billion was given to the IMF which it can use to bail out heavily indebted European countries such as Greece.

The amendment I am cosponsoring would roll that funding back. Now is not the time, when Americans are struggling to find work and have budget problems of their own, to tap innocent American taxpayers in order to bail out profligate European governments. Rather, it is time to stop our own runaway spending and our continued movement toward European levels of government. If we go down that route, the destination is an America very different than the one our Founders intended, and it is critical we hit the brakes now and save our limited constitutional government.

The American people are tired of bailouts. When ordinary Americans are struggling to get by and when our country faces its own debt crisis, the last thing we need is a bailout of irresponsible Socialist governments and the irresponsible investors who bet on them, which brings me to my final point.

Earlier this week, my colleague and friend from Florida, Senator Marco Rubio, gave his maiden speech in the Senate. He is certainly to be commended. I sat here and listened to him. It was a tour de force, and I recommend that all my colleagues, and, for that matter, all the citizens of this Nation read it. He made it clear that he is confident in this Nation and our ability to weather the current storm and emerge in rich and steady seas.

America's best days are ahead of it. America has been and will always be a shining city on a hill. But for there to be another American century, a century of liberty and prosperity both here and abroad, we have our work cut out for us.

America is over $14 trillion in debt. We face our third straight year of trillion-dollar deficits. We have entitlement programs that are going bankrupt. Under this Presidency, we have lifted the debt ceiling three times and the last one, if I recall correctly, was about $1.9 trillion and we have basically just given the administration an open checkbook. We have entitlement programs that are going bankrupt.

Our total obligations, according to one account, are over $62 trillion. This is a debt burden that is simply unsustainable. We need to get our spending under control immediately; otherwise, American families and citizens will be crushed under the weight of all this debt.

The other side keeps telling us the problem is a lack of revenue. They say all we need to do is raise taxes and eliminate tax loopholes. Never mind the fact that raising taxes threatens to kill the small businesses that will be the engines of our economic recovery, and never mind the fact that these so-called loopholes include the IRAs, 401(k)s, and charitable deductions of American taxpayers.

Let's not make any bones about it. The left's proposal to gut tax expenditures would put a bull's-eye on the backs of working families who have mortgages and save for the future.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, as an aside to some of my friends on my side of the aisle who seem to think all expenditures are wasteful spending, consider the following: The third largest tax expenditure is the current lower rates for capital gains and dividends. Be careful, my friends; otherwise, you might end up inadvertently finding yourselves sharing the stage with my friend, the junior Senator from Vermont, in effect, advocating for a sharp hike in the rates of capital gains and dividends.

Even if liberal Democrats did all these things, raising taxes on middle Americans and further hindering economic growth, we still would come nowhere close to balancing the budget.

This is the dirty secret of President Obama and Democratic leadership to

engage in meaningful efforts to balance the budget. As my colleague from Alabama, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, notes, it has been more than 770 days since Democrats passed a budget. That is disgraceful. For over 2 years, congressional Democrats have simply abdicated their most basic constitutional responsibility, and here is why. They have refused to cut spending, and they know balancing the budget for new taxes alone would be perceived as a full-blown assault on personal liberty and limited government. So instead of offering up a bogus budget, as the President did, and get laughed out of town, or offering up a proposal for balance that satisfies their liberal base, raises the tax burden to historic levels, and inspires the vitriol of their constituents, Democrats decided to keep their mouths shut.

Where does that leave us? The answer, to me, is clear. We need to pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment. This is where the entire Republican caucus stands in the Senate. The amendment I introduced, S.J. Res. 10, is supported by every single Senate Republican. I bet it is the first time all Republican Senators have supported it. It is a good amendment that benefited from the input of many Senators, and it is a necessary amendment.

Some people--the sophisticated set--argue this is not a serious proposal. The American people beg to differ. They know Congress will not balance the budget and shrink the size of government without meaningful constitutional restraints. The actions of Democrats and President Obama over the last few months are all the evidence we need to support this hypothesis. Facing a full-blown debt crisis, they still prefer to kick the spending can down the road.

I want to be clear that I am deadly serious about this proposal, and so are the people of Utah. I have been pleased to work side-by-side with my colleague from Utah, Senator Mike Lee, on the balanced budget amendment, and Senator Cornyn and all the other Republicans. Some people might say Mike Lee and I are an odd couple. I have a few years on him, and I don't tend to be as animated as he is. He is a great young man with a lot of energy. But we share at least one thing, an absolute commitment to passing a balanced budget constitutional amendment and sending it to the people in the States for ratification. The people are demanding that we act, and it is well past time that we recognize their constitutional sovereignty and allow them to exercise it through State ratifying conventions.

I would like to commend Senator Lee for his tireless work on this amendment. He is not the only one who deserves thanks, however. My colleagues, Senators Cornyn, Kyl, Toomey, DeMint, Rubio, Paul, and many other Republicans were essential in the development of this amendment, but it is special for me to be working with my friend, Senator Lee, on this critical constitutional amendment. He is a legitimate constitutional scholar, a steadfast advocate of our constitutionally limited government, and a hero to many. I could not be more proud to stand with him and lead this fight for the people of Utah and the taxpayers of this country.

If the American people said anything last fall, it is they want their representatives in Washington to listen to them. They know we will not get it right every time, but they know we should always do our best to represent their values and their interests. This Congress needs to listen to the people. It needs to get these trade agreements done without holding them hostage to unrelated spending. It needs to say no to more bailouts, and it needs to pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

In this country, the people are sovereign. I would have to say, if we would pass that constitutional amendment through the Senate, I believe we would get it through the House, and then it is up to the States. We still have to get three-quarters of the States to ratify it.

To the extent that Democrats hate the constitutional amendment and hate that kind of restraint on their spending practices, they can lead the battle in the States. The problem is, they know this constitutional amendment would be ratified so fast our heads would be spinning.

We need 38 States to ratify a constitutional amendment, and that is not easy under anybody's view. In this country let's let the people decide that. They are sovereign. It is well past time that Congress and the President listen to them.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.