Floor Statements

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 821.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be waived.

Madam President, this amendment will secure funds for preparing our Nation's bridges. I have stood with the President in the shadows of our crumbling bridges. I told the President personally that I would help to rebuild the bridges.

This amendment should be bipartisan. This amendment should be noncontroversial. This amendment spends no new money and raises no new taxes. This amendment simply takes funds from beautification and puts them into bridges.

As legislators, we need to prioritize and spend money on what is most important to us. Some on the other side may like the beautification projects. We like them also. But we are running a $1.5 trillion deficit, and we must prioritize.

If we wish to fix our Nation's bridges and if we are serious about it, we will pass this amendment, which will immediately create a fund to begin fixing our Nation's bridges.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Three million dollars was spent on a turtle tunnel. Do you want to keep spending on turtle tunnels or fix our bridges?

I ask for the yeas and nays, Madam President.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I find it a tragedy that in the Senate we are operating in a way that allows an 868-page bill to be offered with only 48 hours to read it and approximately 1,000 pages' worth of amendments to this bill with virtually no time to even think about the amendments. I think it is precisely what is wrong with this body, that we would try to rush things through.

I have been here since January, and there have been no hearings on No Child Left Behind. I have had no hearings that involve teachers, no hearings that involve superintendents, no hearings that involve principals. I think this is an affront to the process.

As I go around my State and I talk to teachers, I have yet to meet one teacher who is in favor of No Child Left Behind. They abhor it. They hate all the stuff we are telling them to do from Washington. They want more local control.

I am one of the old-fashioned conservatives who believes that schools are and should be under local and State control. There is no provision in the Constitution for the Federal Government to be involved, period. This was part of the Republican platform for nearly 30 years, that we didn't believe in Federal control; we wanted to have local control.

I met with six teachers recently from Marion County. Some of them are special ed teachers. They like what they do. They like teaching kids who have difficulty learning and have to be taught in a different fashion in order to get through to these kids. But they showed me a cute little boy of 15 years old who has a three-word vocabulary. He was tested in world geography and then the teacher was told she is a bad teacher because the child, who has a three-word vocabulary, did poorly on testing.

This is insane, and it needs to be discussed in a rational fashion. We need to have teachers involved in the process, for goodness' sakes, principals, superintendents.

I have a letter here from the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Education Association, the National School Boards Association, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and they said:

We . . . hope that the important work of getting policy

right will not be pushed to the side in a race against the

clock. . . .

I feel pushed aside--an 868-page bill and 48 hours to read it. It is wrong. All I am asking for is a hearing to listen to teachers--should we not listen to the teachers--a hearing to listen to the superintendents, a hearing to listen to the principals. Let them read the bill and find out what is in the bill.

I am not going to accept what Nancy Pelosi said: You can read about it after the fact. That is the process that is going on here. Mr. President, 868 pages--when are we going to read it? After they pass it. Who has been involved in crafting this legislation? I am on the committee. Nobody asked me. Nobody consulted with me. And I think that is the same with most of the people on the committee.

The letter from this group also says:

. . . we note that the proposed law . . . is still heavily

reliant on the idea of testing every child, every year

through one single high-stakes summative assessment. . . .

There are many problems. I would be in favor of getting rid of No Child Left Behind. No teachers are for it. I would like to see a survey of teachers. I would like to have the teachers do a survey of their population to ask who is in favor of No Child Left Behind before we act. I would like teachers to propose amendments to my office to fix No Child Left Behind if we are not going to scrap it. I would like to hear from the superintendents: What do you think of this 868-page bill we got yesterday or on Monday? What do you think of this bill, and how could we make it better?

We will not have time to hear from them because we are struggling to get through the 868 pages and another thousand pages of amendments. This process is rotten from the top to the bottom.

What I would ask for is that we have a hearing. Let's invite teachers to

Washington, let's invite superintendents, let's invite principals to Washington. Let's find out what they think of No Child Left Behind before we rush through an 868-page bill that no one has had time to read. This is what is wrong with Washington. This is the type of arrogance about the way Washington works that is really making us unpopular in the public's eyes.

I say fix No Child Left Behind. I say repeal it or fix it, but at least give us time to read the bill.

I object to this unanimous consent request.

Will the Senator yield?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I do have a question. Several Senators on the committee have said they would be happy to have meetings 24 hours a day. Why do we not have a hearing on the bill? Why do we not invite teachers, superintendents, and principals? There has been no hearing since the last election. There is no reason why we cannot.

The other question we have and we need to answer is: What do we say to the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Education Association, the National School Boards Association, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals that say: Let's do not get pushed aside in this race against the clock.

I am not opposed to much of what is going to happen with the bill. I think No Child Left Behind has many errors and we can fix some of them. What I am opposed to is the process of giving us an 868-page bill yesterday and saying take it or leave it. We need more time to read the bill. We need these organizations that are very interested in education--it is their livelihood--to come in and make comments on this bill. That would be an open-hearing process. Anything else to me is disingenuous.

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing:

In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend Rule XXII, including germaneness requirements, for the purpose of proposing and considering amendment No. 678 to S. 1619.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak against the process by which this body is passing major legislation as we approach the end of this fiscal year. Last week we were asked, without debate or amendment, to pass at least a half dozen bills reauthorizing or extending expiring laws and spending authorities--some of which authorize the expenditure of billions of dollars over the next year.

Actions such as this are a big part of what gives Washington a reputation for being dysfunctional. The fact that authorizations for many programs expire on September 30 each year is not a secret. Nor is it a secret when September 30 will come around each year. But instead of planning ahead, working for weeks or months to address a foreseeable need, and actually doing its work on time, Congress resorts to passing massive bills at the last minute when there is not time for serious scrutiny or changes.

It is unconscionable this body would avoid debating such programs in a meaningful way. I would ask my colleagues, can you be sure these programs are working as efficiently as possible? Can you assure the American people the Federal Government is maximizing value for their tax dollars? Are these bills taking meaningful steps to eliminate waste and duplication within these programs?

We would know the answers to those questions if these bills had gone through the normal process of consideration in committees and on the Senate floor. Senators would have the chance to ask questions to the officials administering the programs and propose changes to them. Instead, we are faced with bills that have had very little--if any-- process in the Senate at a time where even a week's delay to consider the bills will result in the programs expiring. That is unacceptable and should be embarrassing to the Senate as an institution.

We need to change the way Congress does its business. Part of that is reining in excessive spending and having more robust debates regarding the allocation of scarce taxpayer dollars. We must do better in the future.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 613.

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

Mr. President, this is an amendment to pay for the emergency funds. I think for too long in this body we have just simply added on funds, often for good causes, but we keep spending money we do not have. I think the mark of a good legislator is making priorities. If we choose to spend some money on an emergency, we should take the money from somewhere else in the budget.

In this amendment we have proposed to take the money from foreign aid. When the American people are asked if they think we should be sending welfare to other countries or building bridges in other countries when our bridges are falling down in this country, 77 percent of them think we should not be sending money overseas when we have problems at home. This amendment would take unspent foreign aid money from this year and apply it toward the disaster funding. It would also take some unspent money from the State Department.

I think it is responsible budgeting. It is essentially taking money from another area, spending it, and not adding to our debt. There are repercussions to the debt we have. I tell people the debt has a face. Every time we drive to the store our gas prices are rising or our food prices are rising. The reason our prices are rising is because we have to pay for the debt by printing new money. As we print new money at the Federal Reserve to pay for our debt, we diminish the value of the dollar so our gas prices rise and our food prices rise.

Also, economists have said up to 1 million jobs a year are being lost to pay for our debt. What I ask for is, as we pay for these natural disasters we take the money from elsewhere in our budget.

I also rise in support of the plea of Senator Coburn not to target the transportation funds. Right now we are asking that highway funds, 10 percent of them, go to beautification projects--turtle tunnels, movie theaters. In our State of Kentucky, we have a bridge that was closed this week, the Sherman Minton Bridge. Of three bridges in Louisville, one of them is closed. Traffic is stacked up for hours and you are telling me we need to have turtle tunnels? Something is seriously wrong with government when we are forcing State governments to spend 10 percent of their transportation money on turtle tunnels, white squirrel parks, and movie theaters.

Another bridge is needed in the northern part of our State, Brent Spense Bridge, where debris from the bridge is falling. Four years ago we had a bridge in Minneapolis that fell into the river and killed 13 people. We, as a nation, need to set our priorities, but I think it is incorrect and a real problem that we are telling people they have to take 10 percent of the transportation funds and put them into bike paths.

I am a bicyclist and I like bike paths as much as anybody. But when bridges are falling into a river and a major metropolitan area such as Louisville, KY, has one-third of it's bridge capacity closed because the bridge is dangerous to travel on, these are emergency problems.

It also buys into what I am talking about with foreign aid. We cannot send welfare to other countries that we do not have. We are not sending them money that is from our savings. We are sending money that we are borrowing from China or that we are printing. There are ramifications to this debt. We are borrowing money at $40,000 a second. There are ramifications to this borrowing. It has a face. It is just not an empty number.

When we say our national debt is $14 trillion or that we are adding $1.5 trillion to the debt every year, there are ramifications to that, and there is a face. The face is unemployment. The face is people losing jobs. We see it in the grocery store with our prices rising. The debt has ramifications.

In Europe, we are seeing the end stages of this in some cases. We are seeing chaos and rioting in the streets. We had rioting in London recently. We had rioting in Greece, Portugal, Spain. All of these countries are tumbling under a burden of debt, and it has been predicted that this is coming to the United States. It is coming soon. It is a contagion of debt that is sweeping the world, and it is all pyramided upon the U.S. dollar.

Once upon a time, banks in Europe held gold as their reserve. They now hold the dollar as reserve. When the dollar tumbles or when we have trouble paying for our debt, there will be massive worldwide problems. We are in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and there are no signs that any of the policies coming from the White House are working. In fact, the first stimulus package did not work. Two million more people are out of work since the President came into office. The price of gasoline has doubled. Our debt has been downgraded. We are set to accumulate, under this administration, more debt than all 43 previous Presidents combined. It is not working.

Recently, the President came over to a joint session of Congress and presented to us the ``son of stimulus''--the son of a stimulus that did not work in the first place. He said we are just going to tax those rich people.

Rich people hire poor people. Most of us have jobs because rich people hired us. They are talking about adding $400 billion in new taxes on those who make $200,000 a year or more.

You say the rich ought to pay their fair share. The rich are paying for the income tax--47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So half of Americans are already paying for all of the income tax. The Bush tax cuts actually made the Tax Code more progressive because they dropped off more people from the lower end. If we look at those who make more than $200,000 a year, it is 3 percent of the public. They earn 30

percent of the income and pay 50 percent of the income tax.

If you are saying the Tax Code needs to be made more fair, it would probably be that we would have to make the Tax Code less progressive.

The bottom line is, if I thought it would help people, we could do it. It is going to hurt people. The head of the Congressional Budget Office is an objective spokesman who analyzes government. He testified before the supercommittee yesterday that it would be a mistake to raise taxes. The preponderance of economists say it would be a mistake to raise taxes in the middle of a recession. It will lead to more joblessness.

Pitting one group--class envy--pitting one group against another gets us nowhere. Years ago we tried this. We said we will have a special tax on those who own yachts. Guess who lost their jobs. The men and women making $40,000 and $50,000 a year lost their jobs. It does not work. It is unhealthy. It is not good for America to blame one class of people versus the other. We want to lift everyone in America. We want a thriving economy. When we lowered tax rates in the 1980s, we had 6 percent and 7 percent growth in a year. We are at 1 percent growth and we look like we are headed in the wrong direction. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

This new jobs plan by the President is the ``son of stimulus.'' It is the son of a stimulus that did not work the first time. When we calculate it, it cost $400,000 per job. It did not work. We should not be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I would say in conclusion that my amendment is the responsible budgetary amendment, and it pays for the new disaster funding. If we wish to help people and we think our Federal Government should be involved with disaster funding, it should be paid for. It should not be borrowed from China, and it should not be simply printed up at the printing press. We should pay for it.

I urge other Senators to support my amendment which would offset the disaster funding by reducing a corresponding amount from foreign aid, the welfare we give to other nations, many of them rich nations. I would ask serious consideration of it.

I would also ask serious consideration of Senator Coburn's proposal that when we have bridges crumbling in our country, we not force States to build turtle tunnels, squirrel sanctuaries, and movie theaters. We have crumbling bridges and we need to get this through and we need to say we are not going to force the States to decide to have these beautification projects.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I think we ought to make just one clarification of fact. Israel gets all their foreign aid in the beginning of the year. They get it differently than any other country. This amendment will not affect any funding to Israel. This funding will take away a percentage. It is about 10 percent of foreign aid.

Foreign aid or welfare is opposed by 77 percent of Americans. Even if you thought it was a good idea to give welfare to foreign countries, you do not have it. So you are borrowing this money from China or you are printing it up and you are adding to the debt. Our country faces a debt crisis. We are borrowing $40,000 a second. I think it is unwise, when bridges are falling down and being closed in Louisville, KY, to send money to other countries, particularly money we are borrowing and printing.

I urge the support of my amendment to eliminate the 10 percent of foreign aid. I think it is a very reasonable proposal.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up en bloc my amendments Nos. 621 and 622.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendments be dispensed with.

Mr. President, we are considering today the highway bill and the

FAA bill. The highway bill is a trust fund. When we hear the words ``trust fund,'' we should have trust that money is only spent on highways. Unfortunately, that money has been spent through the years on other items. The same applies to the Social Security trust fund and with the Medicare trust fund. It is all sent to the General Treasury, and it is not protected.

What I am asking today through this amendment to the highway bill is that we keep the trust fund separate and the trust fund spends only money that comes in from the gas tax. If we continue to spend money that is not coming in from the gas tax, this will be money borrowed from China or simply printed, and there are ramifications to borrowing $40,000 a second.

So my amendment to the highway bill would say we only spend what comes in through taxes. I consider this to be responsible budgeting and what we should be doing and likely what we were probably obligated under the original trust agreement to do. So I urge passage of this amendment which would limit the highway trust fund to that amount of funds coming in through taxes.

My second amendment is to the FAA bill. This amendment says spending in the FAA bill go to 2008 levels. Since 2008, spending in our government has gone up 25 percent. We are mounting a deficit of $1.5 trillion. Our Nation's debt is $14 trillion. There are significant ramifications to incurring so much debt.

The debt does have a face--it is the face of unemployment. Economists have said our debt burden is leading to our losing 1 million jobs a year; that 1 million people are out of work because of the debt we carry. Economists have also said this debt burden, when it is paid for through the printing of money, leads to higher prices in the stores. Our gas prices have doubled not because gas is more precious but because our dollar is less precious. Our dollar is less precious because we are paying for a debt by inflating the currency.

What this amendment asks is that we go back to 2008 levels, which, believe it or not, if we did this through the entire government, will still not balance the budget. This is a modest proposal. It is the very least we can do if we believe in a responsible budget and that we must balance our budget.

The second amendment would take spending to 2008 levels, and I encourage the Senate to pass these amendments.

Mr. President, I am satisfied, and I would ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask that the unanimous consent request be modified so once we are on the bill I can offer an amendment related to the Secretary of the Treasury and that a vote on that issue be reported.

Mr. President, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We now have been in 3 years of a policy that is not working. Joblessness is up and our debt has been downgraded. Our country is on a precipice, and yet we continue with the same people giving the same ideas that are not working. It is important to know how we got here.

We are in a great recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression. How did we get here? We got here through bad economic policy and bad monetary policy. This policy originated with Timothy Geithner when he was at the Federal Reserve in New York. It originated with Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve.

What did we do? We reappointed these people to higher office. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I would respectfully ask at this point we have a vote in the Senate. I think the American people have given a vote of no confidence to the Secretary of the Treasury. I think the American investors and worldwide investors have given a vote of no confidence to the debt ceiling deal and to what has been going on.

Over and over we are doing the same policy. We have now appointed as head of the Council of Economic Advisers someone who brought us Cash for Clunkers. We spent $1 trillion--money we don't have--trying to stimulate the economy and unemployment is worse. Gas prices have doubled. Economic growth is anemic, if at all. We are in the process, perhaps, of sliding into another recession and something has to be different. We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

For the first time in our history our debt has been downgraded. This came after a policy that came from the Secretary of the Treasury and from this administration. It came from a deal the American people and the world public, world class of investors, judged and deemed to be inadequate.

This country needs a shakeup. We need new ideas. We need different propositions. The same propositions, the same tired, old proposals are not working. We are set during this administration to accumulate more debt than with all 43 previous Presidents combined. We are accumulating debt at $40,000 a second. We are spending money at $100,000 a second.

When a policy doesn't work, we need new policy leaders. There will not be a new President until 2012, but this President could choose new advisers because the advice he has been getting is not working. We are languishing. We are on the precipice of possibly going into another recession, and I would suggest at this point we need a new Secretary of the Treasury.

How did we get into this problem? We got into this problem because we had a housing boom. This came from bad monetary policy. It came from the Federal Reserve setting interest rates below the market rate, and that signal was transmitted out into the economy and we got a housing boom. Then we had a housing depression. We are still in the midst of a housing depression.

Where did that policy come from? That policy came from Secretary Geithner and Ben Bernanke.

What have we done? We have reappointed these people and reapproved their policies that got us into the problem in the first place. If we want our country to thrive again, we must diagnose the problem correctly before we try to fix it. Because they didn't understand how we got into this recession, they also passed a whole bunch of new regulations. The Dodd-Frank bill heaps all kinds of new regulations that make it harder to get a home loan.

In the midst of a housing depression, we have heaped all these new rules on community banks. You know what? In my State of Kentucky, not one bank failed. The problem is at the Federal Reserve. The problem is with the policy. The problem is with the people we still have running this country and advising the President.

What I am asking for today is a vote of no confidence on Timothy Geithner. I see no reason and no objective evidence that any of his policies are succeeding. I have come to the floor today to ask for this vote, and we will continue to try to get this vote. We have introduced a resolution in favor of voting a vote of no confidence on Timothy Geithner, and I hope this body will consider it.

I yield back the remainder of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

I will.

Madam President, America will not default on her debt today. In fact, there was never any doubt that America would pay her bills. But mark my words, America will default. America will default, not by not paying its bills, not by not raising the debt ceiling, but we will default in a more insidious way. America will default by increasingly paying our bills with money that is worth less and less each year.

A nation pays for its debt in three ways. We can either tax people, we can borrow the money, or we can simply print the money. They all have repercussions.

We are approaching our borrowing limit as a nation. We now owe China over $1 trillion. We owe Japan nearly $1 trillion. We even owe Mexico. As we reach our borrowing limit, interest rates will rise and the prices in the stores will rise. You are already seeing this in your grocery stores. You are already seeing this in your gas prices. They are not rising de novo, out of nothing. Your prices are rising because the value of your dollar is falling. The value of your dollar is falling because they are printing up money to pay for this exorbitant debt.

In 2008 we went through a banking crisis and we doubled the monetary supply in 4 months. We bought things. The Federal Reserve bought toxic assets. They bought bad car loans and bad home loans. Where once upon a time your dollar was backed by gold, your dollar is now backed by toxic assets--not a very comforting thought.

Many pundits are arguing that the tea party has won this battle. They misunderstand the debate. This battle is not about winners and losers, it is about the future of our country. It is

about saving ourselves from ourselves. We are headed toward ruin if we continue on this path of spending money we do not have.

For decades, America has lived beyond her means. A nation that lives beyond her means will eventually live beneath her means. That day is coming. A day of reckoning looms. That day was never August 2. That day is when the dollar teeters and falls from its perch. That day is when prices soar. That day is when unemployment and a declining standard of living foment discontent and unrest in the street.

As Erskine Bowles put it, there has been no more predictable crisis in our history. We have been given all the warning signs. It comes, and this deal will not escape the facts that are looming for us. The President thinks that we need a balanced approach. America thinks we need a balanced budget and that we should not spend money we do not have; that since American families have to balance their budgets, why in the world would we not require our Government to balance its budget? What America needs is a balanced budget in an economy that grows and thrives and creates jobs.

Yes, a malaise hangs in the air. America is a ship without a captain. Instead of the President chastising job creators and preaching class envy, we need a President who will show us leadership. The President needs to accept responsibility for an economy that has worsened under his failed leadership. Unemployment is up, gas prices have doubled, and this President will add more debt than all 43 Presidents combined.

America got a deal on August 2 but not a solution. What America wants is a solution, not a deal. I hope in the next 6 months the President will find it within himself to lead the Nation, the courage to lead and embrace reform, the reform that is necessary to get this great country going again.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleague.

Mr. President, we are in the midst of a debt crisis, I think some of it created by the President because he has refused to take off the table the fact we would default on our debt. I think that is irresponsible, and without a doubt the President should come forward and say he will pay the interest on the debt.

On our side we have been willing to compromise all along. We have been offering plans. We passed two plans in the House. Now we have a plan before us, a Democratic plan, to raise the debt ceiling, and there are some of us who would vote for this Democratic plan who might require some amendments or some compromise. There would have to be some input from our side. Yet even though this bill was introduced yesterday and Republicans said they would vote for it, the Democrats are now filibustering their own bill. What is funny is, they filibuster their own bill and then point fingers and say we are trying to stop things. We are here today to try to move things forward.

In the spirit of trying to reach a compromise before the deadline comes, I would ask unanimous consent that the vote on the pending cloture motion occur immediately or as soon as possible, 5 p.m. today.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would remind the Senator that there is a difference between the Senate and the House. Our Founding Fathers gave great power and leeway to the Senate. We were meant to be a check and a balance against unbridled enthusiasm sometimes from one party or another. So I would object to that motion.

Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to present an amendment. This amendment would be an amendment to the Reid bill. Under this amendment what would happen is, I have at least 10 Republicans who will vote for the Harry Reid bill which would allow a compromise, which allows the debt ceiling to rise.

I know the President is worried about having campaign time. He is worried about getting back out and doing some fundraisers. He does not want to consider the debt ceiling again before his reelection campaign. So this amendment I would offer would allow us to move forward in a bipartisan way.

All Republicans are asking for is that we balance our budget gradually over a 7- to 8-year period. What this amendment would do that I am asking unanimous consent to present is an amendment that says we will raise the debt ceiling contingent upon passing a balanced budget amendment.

I would ask unanimous consent I be allowed to present this amendment to the Reid bill.

What I think this illustrates is compromise--the pundits say compromise is the mark of an enlightened person. We are trying to compromise. I just offered to pass the leader's bill. I have offered to work with them. I am from the tea party. They say we will not compromise. I am willing to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, we worked on a motion that has gotten more votes than any other motion that has been set forward, and that was cut, cap, and balance that would have required a balanced budget amendment to be passed but would have raised the debt ceiling.

What do we hear from the other side? Intransigence. Who is refusing compromise? It sounds to me like the other side is refusing compromise.

I have with me my distinguished colleague from Utah and would like to hear his thoughts on where the fault lies and where we could come to if we were to compromise to try to find an agreement.

No. From going to hundreds of tea party rallies and grassroots rallies with voters across America, what I see is they want what is best for America. I don't think they particularly care whether it is a Republican plan or Democratic plan. They want what is best for America. They want a solution.

The problem with the debate in Washington is all of the proposals seem to want to add more debt. We have $14 trillion worth of debt, and both the Republican and the Democratic proposal will add $7 trillion to $8 trillion more in debt.

What I think the folks in the tea party want--and those who are concerned about passing on the debt to their kids and grandkids want-- is to spend less. I think a great contrast and what illustrates the problem is spending is going up 7 percent a year. Nobody is talking about cutting that spending. They are talking about cutting the rate of growth of that spending.

There is a new plan out called the one penny plan. It would have real cuts of one penny on every dollar spent. The other side pulls their hair and says: Oh, you are so radical.

We say: We want to cut one penny out of every dollar of government spending. Is that radical?

The President has said it is a dysfunctional place. He is right in that sense. I think some of the dysfunction comes from the hypocrisy or from the other side not really listening.

For example, the balanced budget amendment. They say polls show routinely 75 percent of Americans are for it. Routinely, about 14 percent of Americans seem to be approving of this body. The question I would have is--maybe it is we are not listening well enough. Maybe we are not doing what the people want.

When people talk about Washington being dysfunctional, and they are upset with what is going on in Washington, I think one of the things that upsets people is hypocrisy--people who say one thing and do another. That is a sad state of affairs. People run on one idea and then they completely change their ideas.

The President was a Senator, and he spoke on the Senate floor. Here are his words in 2006.

The fact that we are here today debating raising America's

debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

He was sort of pointing fingers. Everybody's pointing fingers. It is someone else's fault. I call that sort of the empty partisanship. His conclusion, then, is voting to raise the debt limit would send a bad signal. It would send a signal to our leaders that they are doing the right thing.

I have often said there is no objective evidence that Washington or Congress is spending our money wisely.

The Pentagon says they are too big to be audited. They cannot balance their books. There was $100 billion unaccounted for in the budget last year. There are $5 billion worth of duplicate programs the GAO found. There are, I believe, 82 different programs to train workers. Could we not deal with one Federal program training workers instead of 82 different ones doing the same thing? But this is it. The President said raising the debt ceiling would be a mistake. Now that he is President, he has changed his mind. I think the hypocrisy of that is what makes Americans unhappy.

The President said the same thing on war. He said no President should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority, and here we are at war in Libya with no vote in Congress. He said he has a piece of paper from the United Nations. We didn't elect the United Nations. We have a Constitution, and it requires those issues be debated in Congress.

People are unhappy because we are not doing the people's business. We haven't had a budget in 800 days. Do you know what. It is against the law. It is against the law not to have a budget. We haven't had a budget in 800 days, but the budget law says we should have a budget every year. We are supposed to match our appropriations bills with the budget. We are not doing it.

The American people are unhappy we are dysfunctional and that we are not doing the people's business. We have also become profligate spenders--spending money we don't have. I think we risk great dangers.

I ask the question to this Senator from Utah: What is the answer? How do we get out of this when we seem to be so far apart, and even on both sides we don't seem to be tackling the issues in a way that would allow for significant cuts in spending?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an extension of 2 minutes to finish our thoughts.

Mr. President, I would say that what Americans don't like is empty partisanship. That is what is going on today. Democrats are standing and beating their chests saying: Republicans will not let us have a vote. It is untrue. I have offered to have the vote. We have seen the objection before our own eyes. They would not vote on this.

Let's dispense with the empty partisanship. Let's move forward and have a vote. If they would let us have one amendment--an amendment that would gradually balance the budget over 7 to 8 years--I will vote for their proposal and I will ensure enough votes that it will pass.

Thank you.

Madam President, I am voting no on S. 1103, a bill to create a second 2 year term for the FBI Director. I am opposed to changing the term limits on this important position, which serve as a safeguard and check against the significant power of the position. I am not opposed to Director Mueller and will not oppose his renomination, but I do oppose the idea that term limits should be changed when it is convenient. I thank him and the Bureau for their cooperation and answers to my questions over the last few weeks.

I wish to join in the sort of the outrage that we would consider spending money without having a plan. Who spends money with no plan as to how much you are going to spend or a plan as to what the repercussions are for spending money you do not have? We are spending $100,000 a second. By the time I finish this sentence, we will have spent $\1/2\ million.

Of that $100,000 a second, we are borrowing $40,000 a second. The President is asking us now--you all heard about it, the debate is on-- the President is asking us to add $2 trillion of spending and borrowing, of borrowing and spending--$2 trillion. How long will it last? We do not know because there is not a budget, but there is going to be an estimated $2 trillion that will be spent in the next year that we do not have.

What does that mean to a country? There are estimates that our deficit now, which approaches the size of our economy, is costing us 1 million jobs a year. What does that mean? That also means less revenue, which means worse deficits. It is all compounding upon itself.

We have a rule and a law within the Senate--is it called the budget resolution from 1974?

In this, it had some rules. Right now we are discussing: Do we need new rules to do something about the deficit? This was a rule they thought about back in 1974. It was supposed to make things better. But it shows the rules only work if we obey them. We will be in defiance of this rule. That is the question I have for Senator Sessions: Will we be in defiance of our own rules if we go forward with an appropriation without a budget?

What was the intention, though? What was the intention that rule would do? By having a budget was it supposed to limit, then, what each appropriations bill for each subject would be allowed to spend?

So by invoking this rule from the 1974 Budget Act, the Senator's intention has nothing to do with the bill presented before us, it has to do with whether we should be responsible as a government, have a budgetary plan, know how much money comes in, know how much money is being spent, and do the responsible things the American people expect of us.

I am concerned what happens if we keep on this path. If we keep spending money at the rate we are spending it, within about a decade entitlements and interest consume the whole budget, that is, if interest rates do not go up. As you noticed the other day when Larry Lindsey wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal, he said if interest rates go up to where they have historically been, we will add another $5 trillion. My fear is the economy will not withstand it, our country will not withstand it, and we need to have somebody to say enough is enough.

The country needs to have a plan. We need to budget how much money comes in and how much we can spend. I think this is a good first step.

I have a question before we finish. The question I have is: We have not had a budget in 2 years. When is the last time we had appropriations bills and are we working in the committees? See, the people expect us to come up here and do our jobs and I think our job is in committee. We deliberate over a budget in your Budget Committee. Over appropriations, are we deliberating over appropriations or have we had any committee hearings over the debt ceiling or how we could cut spending in order to spend so much money we do not have? Are we in the process of doing what we are supposed to be doing in committee?

Mr. President, on August 2, the United States will face the debt ceiling. I am one who thinks we should be debating it every day, every week until we find a solution. But in order to find a solution, we have to first admit we have a problem. We have a significant problem. Raising the debt ceiling is sort of like not paying your credit card bill and then saying to the credit card company: I want to increase my limit. We have been doing that year after year, decade after decade. Both parties have done it. This is not just one party's problem. It is both parties' problem, and it is the country's problem.

How big is the problem? We are spending $10 billion a day. Of that $10 billion, we are borrowing $4 billion a day. We are spending $100,000 a second, and we are borrowing $45,000 a second.

Senator DeMint, the other day, said it was akin to a drug addiction. You know that to get better from a drug addiction, the first thing you have to admit is: I am addicted. You have to admit you have a problem. That is what is going on. We have to admit as a country we have a problem. But then we get into this debate, and each side seems to have a different position. Is the problem that we are spending too much or is the problem that we are taxing too little?

You can look at the numbers and you can actually come up with an objective answer. The answer is we are spending too much. You can look at it in terms of what is spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product? What is spending as a percentage of our economy?

Spending under Clinton and under Bush, for about 16 years, was between 19 and 20 percent of our GDP. What is it now? It is about 25 percent of our GDP. So under any objective standard, we are spending more than we were previously.

Some would argue--they say: Well, the Bush tax cuts caused this. If we could just get rid of the Bush tax cuts. We are not taxing people enough. But if you look at the numbers, the numbers do not bear out. The numbers are that basically, in 1987, revenue was about 18 percent of GDP.

In 1995, revenue was about 18 percent of GDP. In 2003, Bush passed the tax cuts--Congress passed these tax cuts. In 2006, revenue was still at about 18 percent of GDP. Right now, revenue is under 15 percent. So revenue has gone down in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

But what happened in 2008? A severe recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression. When we have fewer people working, we have fewer people paying taxes. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts. They happened in 2003. Revenue stayed steady at

18 percent, which it has historically for 60 years until 2007, 2008. The recession hits, revenue goes down. So we have a lack of revenue. But if you raise rates, you will not get more revenue. If you want more revenue to try to balance our books, you need an economy that employs more people, you need a growing economy. It is all about getting out of the recession. But that is why some of us fear raising rates now, because we think that will harm us and make it more difficult to come out of a recession.

Many on the other side say: Well, the rich just need to pay more. They think the rich are not paying enough. They want to somehow say: If the rich would pay more, we could get out of this. But you have to once again look at the facts.

There is a resolution on the floor now that the Democrats are promoting. It says that the rich--the people who make more than $1 million a year--that they earn or bring in 20 percent of the Nation's economy. Well, that is true, but they pay 38 percent of the income tax. So the question is, Are the rich paying enough? Well, they bring in 20 percent of the income, and they are paying 38 percent of the revenue. I do not know.

The other question is, If you just stick it to the rich and say, well, let's make the rich pay more, what will that do to the rest of us? Do you think we will have more jobs or less jobs if we tax people more?

The question also is, Will you get more or less revenue if you do this? Historically, no matter what the rates have been, we bring in about 18 percent of GDP. For example, back in the 1950s, we had tax rates as high as 70 percent on the wealthy. When we did, we brought in 18 percent of GDP. When Reagan came in, he lowered tax rates to 28 percent for the upper limit. We still brought in 18 percent of GDP. The difference was when we brought in lower rates, we brought in a booming economy, more jobs, and we expanded the number of people paying taxes. You expand the tax base.

Now we get back to the impasse. There is an impasse up here. The other side says: The rich must share more of the burden. There is a way to do it without raising taxes. There is ultimately a compromise that I think brings both sides together, gets beyond the debt ceiling. If they would talk about it, if we would have a debate down here or an informal discussion, we could fix this tomorrow.

If you want the rich to share more of the burden, ask them to pay for their Medicare. I see no reason why the wealthy should not pay the full cost of Medicare. Ask the rich to take less in Social Security benefits. If you means test Social Security benefits--if you say: If you are a wealthy person, guess what, we don't have enough money to give you what we said we were going to give you and you will have to take less--I am perfectly willing to accept that. So there are ways you can do it without damaging the economy.

I think raising taxes damages the economy and damages jobs for the working class. We tried this before. About 10 years ago we said let's get those rich people. They put a special tax on yachts. Guess who it hurt. The guy making $40,000 a year building the yachts lost his job; the rich went to the Caribbean and bought their yachts somewhere else. It does not work. It is not good for the economy. It hurts the working class to raise taxes.

But if you want to say the rich need to absorb more of the burden, simply have the rich pay more for their benefits or get fewer benefits. I am willing to accept that. Many Republicans are. It is the compromise. Republicans aren't willing to raise taxes. Democrats want to raise taxes. Where do we compromise? Come together and say that the rich can absorb more of the burden by paying more for their benefits or getting fewer benefits. This is a compromise that would work. We could actually get together and raise the debt ceiling.

I have said I will vote to raise the debt ceiling if and only if we decide to do something different in this Congress. Congress really has done a poor job. Do you wonder why Congress has a 14-percent approval rating? Because they have been a poor steward with your money--a poor steward. The Congress has not done a good job watching over your money. They have been profligate spenders.

So I think that in order for the American people to believe we are going to do a better job, we need a new rule. We need a balanced budget amendment. So I will propose, along with other Senators, to raise the debt ceiling contingent upon a balanced budget amendment so that we balance our budget by law.

Some have said: Well, let's just promise to cut spending over the next 10 years. Let's raise the debt ceiling $2 trillion, and then we will promise to cut spending $2 trillion.

The problem is that we are not very believable because we have not kept our word in the past and we cannot bind the next Congress. The next Congress will be elected by a new set of people. They will come up here, and they do not have to go by what we are promising. If we amend the Constitution, though, the next Congress will be bound by this, and the next Congress would have to live within its means.

I believe this is very important. There is becoming a consensus in our country that says the debt is a real problem. I think the two sides could come together--Republican and Democrat--and say: This is how we would work it out. But I think it means significant cuts in Federal spending. It means statutory caps, meaning government should have to live within its means each year. And I believe we need to amend the Constitution. But if the Democrats say they have to have it that the rich pay more somehow, let's have the rich pay more for their benefits. That is ultimately the compromise. I think you can get the vast majority of Republicans to agree to that, Democrats could agree to that, and we could fix the problem. The American people would be amazed that we got together and we fixed the problem and we moved on. That is what needs to happen. It is not happening in this body.

This body needs to debate the debt ceiling, we need to come up with a solution, and we need to move on. We have not had one committee hearing about the debt ceiling. We have not passed a budget in 2 years. We have not passed an appropriations bill in 2 years. We are not doing what we are supposed to be doing. The American people say they want results. They want us to at least have a debate. We do not have to agree on everything, but let's debate and admit what the problem is and move forward. But instead we get obfuscation, and we talk about something that is not really pertinent to what our problems are. We have to, like the drug addict, admit we have a problem. Our problem is spending. It is not a taxation problem. It is not a revenue problem. We have less revenue because we are in a recession. We have a spending problem. The numbers are clear as day.

I would say to this body and to the American people, let's balance our budget. Raise the debt ceiling, but let's go ahead and have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

I hope we will recognize those problems and move forward.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, I, as well as many Americans, am concerned about the future of our country. I am concerned we may not be able to continue to pay our bills. I am concerned one day in the near future we could look like Greece. I do not want to see America rioting in the streets because we cannot pay our bills. That day is coming. It is coming in the near future if we do not wake up to the problem.

I am not alone. Members of the President's own administration have said that the No. 1 threat to our national security is our national debt. It is out of control. August 2 is fast approaching. August 2 is when the debt ceiling is reached.

What is the debt ceiling? It is like reaching your credit card limit. If you have a $5,000 a month credit card limit, and you have reached it, do you call the company and say: Give me more credit or do you try to live within your means? Do you try to only spend what money you have? We as a country have been spending money we do not have. But it has now gotten out of control. We owe China $1.1 trillion. We owe Japan nearly $1 trillion. A spending addiction is our problem. It is out of control.

We are spending $10 billion a day. Of that $10 billion a day, we are borrowing $4 billion. We are spending $100,000 every second. Of that $100,000 a second, we are borrowing $45,000 a second.

We are paying for our debt at historically low interest rates, about 2.5 percent. But many of us have lived through a time when interest rates were much higher. The historic average is over 5 percent. If interest rates go back to the historic average, we will be swamped in debt. Interest will become, over the next 10 years, $5 trillion.

This is what looms. Our future is not a good one unless we get things under control. So last week a group of us said no more. We do not want to discuss anything else until we start discussing solutions for the debt, solutions for the looming debt crisis. We said no more. So today we will win and draw attention back to the debt ceiling. We are not going to talk about anything until we resolve this issue. But we have to have a real discussion. It has to include Republicans and Democrats and Independents and everyone. But do you know what is going on. There is a resolution before the Senate now. The Democrats say: Raise taxes and that will fix the problem.

The problem is not revenue. The problem is spending. We used to spend about 1 in 5 dollars up here. Now we are spending 1 in 4 dollars. So 1 in 4 dollars of the economy is coming to Washington. Twenty-five percent of the GDP is spent in Washington. That is money that is not left in the marketplace, not left in the hands of those who earned it, and not left in the hands of people who can create jobs. It is being wasted up here.

We are not spending the money wisely. We spend more than we take in, so the interest to finance this profligate spending is bankrupting us. The vast majority of our problem is interest, and it will grow. It is growing exponentially. You can look at this chart I have in the Chamber and you will see that interest is going to consume us. As you can see from the chart, as the debt rises, it rises exponentially in the next few years, unless we do something about it.

Unfortunately, I do not think the Democrats are serious. They have produced a resolution that says they can raise taxes, which is a nonstarter. It is a horrible prescription for an economy in the middle of a recession, and it is not going anywhere.

We have proposed a resolution that could fix the problem. Our resolution says that government can simply not act any differently than individuals, that they should have to balance their budget. We have introduced a resolution that says we, as Republicans, will vote to raise the debt ceiling if we do three things: significant cuts in Federal spending, at least back to the percentage we were before we got into this administration; statutory caps, saying we are limited as to how much money we can spend each year; and the third thing is we want a balanced budget amendment. If we have these, we will raise the debt ceiling. But short of that, we cannot possibly vote to raise the debt ceiling unless government changes its ways.

Government is not spending your money wisely. People cannot account for--even the Pentagon cannot balance its books. They refuse to be audited because they say they are too big to be audited. We have to do something about a government that is out of control. But we want a serious dialog with the other side. Instead what we are getting is frivolousness.

What I would say to the Democrats today is: You want to vote on raising taxes? You think that is an answer? They have a resolution. I do not want to filibuster their resolution. I will vote on it tonight. If you want a vote on raising taxes--if the Democratic Party wants to be the party of raising taxes, I am happy to be in the party that says that is not the answer.

I call for a vote immediately, today. If Democrats want to raise taxes, let's do it. I am happy to vote on that today because it is not the answer. If the other side wants to have a full-throated debate on this issue, let's do it. Let's debate over the next 2 days, and then we have a solution. Let us vote on raising the debt ceiling. We will do it in the next 2 days. We do not have to wait. Raise the debt ceiling, contingent upon a balanced budget amendment. The American people demand it, and I think we should ask for nothing less.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I agree with Senator Johnson. I come to the floor in support of this movement, which is that we should be talking about what America says we should be talking about--the debt.

Yesterday, the President went on national television and chastised Congress. He said to Congress that Members of Congress need to cancel things. Do you know what. I agree. I am here today, though, Mr. President. Where are you?

My understanding is that the President is campaigning and has a fundraiser in Philadelphia tonight. I don't believe he is here tackling the Nation's problems today. He could send us the Vice President, but I don't think he is here either. I think he is in Las Vegas campaigning tonight.

This is a two-way street. If he is going to go on television and chastise us for not doing work--we are saying we want to be working on the Nation's problems; we are here saying the Nation's debt is a problem; his administration has said the No. 1 national security threat we face is the debt--where is the President? Campaigning.

We are here, Mr. President. We will have an offer. We don't want to raise the debt ceiling. We don't want more debt. Do you know what. As Republicans, for the good of the country, we are willing to raise the debt but only--and I repeat ``only''--if we have significant budgetary reform.

We have to balance the budget by law. Force Congress to do it by changing the Constitution. It is the only way it will ever change. There is a pathology here. The pathology is that we do not have a spine. We are spineless and cannot do what it takes to cut the spending, and we will only get there if we change the Constitution.

So, Mr. President, we are here. We are here, and we welcome you to come back to town in between fundraisers and talk about how we would fix this. But we would fix this by saying: Yes, we will raise the debt ceiling, contingent upon a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Seventy-five percent of the public is in favor of saying we have to balance our budget. Let's come back and discuss what the American people want.

I commend Senator Johnson for leading this fight, and I think this is just the beginning. But I don't plan on saying we should go to any other subject until we have addressed the debt ceiling.

Madam President, the balanced budget amendment is interesting when you look at polls and ask the American public: Do you approve of what Congress is doing? Do you approve of congressional action? Do you think they are doing a good job? It is actually 14 percent to 15 percent of the American public who think we are doing a good job. The other side of that equation is, you ask the American public: Do you think a balanced budget amendment would help Congress do a better job? It is 75 percent to 80 percent of the American public who think we would do a better job if we had a balanced budget amendment.

I don't think this is a partisan issue. I would ask the Senator from Utah--and perhaps an opinion from the Senator from Texas--do you think this should be a partisan issue or do you think this goes beyond partisanship, and can we get the Democrats to understand this isn't a Republican-Democratic issue but really an issue for the good of the country?

What does the Senator say to those who say that statutory caps would work, something like Gramm-Rudman or something like pay-as- you-go? What is his answer?

And I think what is interesting, if you look at this and you really look at polling data and say: Who is for the balanced budget amendment, it goes across all party lines. If you look at Independents, Democrats, if you look at Republicans, it is in the high sixties to the midseventies in the percentage of the public who would like to see this. And I think it goes hand in hand that they don't think we are doing a good enough job here and that we need more backbone, and the Constitution is supposed to be our backbone. The Constitution helps us to do a good job, to help restrain the size and growth of government.

I can't see an argument against this, and I really don't understand how a vast majority of the public can be for this and yet this body still refuses to act.

I think one of the alarming things we see is that on the course we are taking now, if we do nothing dramatic to reform the process--if we don't pass the balanced budget amendment--within about a decade, the budget will be entirely consumed by entitlements and interest. This is being driven by something beyond the control of Republicans, beyond the control of Democrats, and out of everyone's hands. It has to do with the fact that we are living longer and there are fewer young people and more old people because a lot of babies were born after World War II.

These are demographic facts we can't escape. When we look at some of the charts about what goes on with this, we see what happens if we do nothing. We see the projected debt way out here. Most of this debt problem is entitlements. We have to come together as parties. The balanced budget amendment will help us do this, but then we need to acknowledge that these problems exist and we need to come together-- both parties--to figure out solutions.

I think the balanced budget amendment may well be what forces us to have a discussion. To be good legislators, we need to decide priorities instead of just adding on new program after new program. We have 80 different Federal programs that are work programs. We need to think about consolidating and minimizing government. I think the balanced budget amendment would allow us to have a discussion in this body on where we can cut spending.

From that same article, it is interesting that he talks about what happens if interest rates rise. For every point of an interest rate rising, it adds $140 billion. So he talks about getting back to the historic average of 5.4 percent, that over 10 years it would add $4.9 trillion to our debt problem. But here is the rub. We are having discussions where people are saying we are going to cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years. Senator Hatch points out we cannot bind future Congresses. Senator Lee said the same thing. So when they promise us that they are going to cut $2.5 trillion, compare that to what happens if interest rates rise. One, we

can't bind future Congresses, but if interest rates rise, all of a sudden we have $5 trillion in extra expenses.

We must bind future Congresses and we must bind ourselves by amending the Constitution.