Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am here this afternoon to discuss our work toward addressing the national debt and staving off a collision with our debt ceiling or a default on our financial obligations.

First, I wish to commend Majority Leader Reid for putting forward a proposal which would make a very serious $2.4 trillion downpayment on deficit reduction and, most importantly, end the impasse over the debt ceiling. I encourage my Republican colleagues to support it or offer some reasonable changes that would allow them to support it.

But let me also address some developments on the other side of the Capitol, where an extremist group of House Republicans is continuing their ``my way or the highway,'' what President Lincoln called ``rule or ruin,'' approach to these negotiations.

Amazingly, news reports indicate that Pell grants--Pell grants--may be put on the chopping block in Speaker Boehner's latest effort to appease the most extreme members of his party. This is getting ridiculous. Rhode Island's great Senator Claiborne Pell first proposed the grants that now bear his name. He envisioned a grant that would enable low-income students to attend our country's wonderful colleges and universities so they too could share in the American dream. Why do these far-right extremists in the House want to snuff that out?

In 1976, the first year Pell grants were fully funded, a full Pell grant paid 72 percent of the cost of attendance at a typical 4-year public college. Today, a full Pell grant covers 34 percent of those costs, and even that they are willing to attack. This vital assistance from Pell grants can often mean the difference between being able to attend college or not. With many families in Rhode Island and across America still struggling in this struggling economy, we should be looking for ways to strengthen Pell grants, not weaken them. America needs more college graduates, not fewer.

During my time in the Senate, we have taken steps to improve the Pell grant program. After 4 years of level funding under President Bush, we began to increase the maximum grant from $4,050 in academic year 2006- 2007 to $5,050 for this coming academic year. We also increased the minimum family income that automatically qualifies a student for the maximum Pell grant, a change which better reflects today's economic realities.

Despite the clear need for continued investment in our future through Pell grants, a need that has long had bipartisan support and backing, a group of House Republicans this year began an outright assault on Pell grant funding. These grants are needed more than ever, as the economic downturn has led more people to seek higher education in an effort to find a job. But not to this band of extremists. The House Republican budget would have slashed Pell grants, reducing the average award by $1,775, and cutting off more than 1.3 million Americans, including nearly 5,800 students in Rhode Island.

I understand the need to find savings in the Federal budget and to make difficult choices, and Leader Reid's proposal offers up $2.4 trillion worth. But we could also make bad choices in going about this, and of all the bad choices we could make, cutting Pell grants is among the worst. America needs a highly trained workforce, and Pell grants help make the promise of a college education a reality.

After America spoke out and the Senate defeated the extreme House Republican budget, I hoped the assault on the Pell grant was behind us, at least for a while. Yesterday, however, The Hill, a newspaper here in Washington, reported that some Republican House Members are opposing Speaker Boehner's debt ceiling increase bill over funding if it provides for Pell grants. In this article, someone called Pell grants welfare. Some welfare, helping kids afford college and pursue their dreams. Today there is talk that cuts to Pell grants are being discussed as the pound of flesh required by the most far-right Members of the Speaker's caucus as the price of supporting his bill. Remember that these House Republicans continue to protect every tax giveaway to special interests, every one, while they want to cut off access to college for regular kids.

The simple fact is Pell grants help lower income people achieve dreams of college and improve those young people's prospects for careers and employment. It is good for them and it is good for America. The Pell grant program doesn't give a free ride, but it does give a boost and is a wise investment in the future of our country, a future where the fates of nations will depend on the education of their people.

Earlier this week, student and education advocacy organizations, including the Education Trust, Campus Progress, the National Council of LaRaza, and the United States Student Association, joined together to ``Save Pell.'' I applaud their advocacy and commitment in fighting for Pell grants, and I am proud to join their effort. I strongly urge the far-right extremists who are pulling their party and the House of Representatives and this country over the cliff to end their reckless attack on the American middle class, take the victory you have been offered, and stop the damage.

Ronald Reagan in 8 years I believe raised the debt ceiling 18 times. The Tea Party has been here 6 months and has put the country on the brink of default days away. Instead, I ask my colleagues to work with Democrats on a bipartisan solution that does not attack the fundamental underpinnings of a successful middle class, such as Medicare, Social Security, Pell grants. Avert the looming debt ceiling collision and reduce our deficits.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I am about to yield the floor to my distinguished senior Senator Jack Reed. I ask unanimous consent at the conclusion of his remarks I be granted recognition.

Mr. President, I am very pleased to follow Rhode Island's distinguished senior Senator with remarks about our friend and our former Governor, Bruce Sundlun. As Governor, he served with some of our colleagues who are in the Senate today, including Ben Nelson, who was Governor of Nebraska, and Tom Carper who was Governor of Delaware. They served with Bruce, and he was one of those irrepressible characters they remember very distinctly to this day.

Bruce Sundlun had a remarkable Rhode Island life. He was the son of a jewelry store owner, who was the son of an immigrant watchmaker. It turns out that he had real athletic talent. He was a track star, breaking record after record around Rhode Island. It was as a competitor in that era that he first felt the sting of discrimination over being Jewish, and that gave him a lasting characteristic to stick up for the underdog.

As I mentioned at his funeral service, he was the opposite of a fair- weather friend. He became a better friend the stormier the weather got around you.

He went on, with his great generation, to defend our country and fight for freedom around the globe in World War II. He was a pilot of a B-17, the Damn Yankee, at a time when the life expectancy for bomber crews over Europe was not very long. Unfortunately, his aircraft was shot down and crashed in Belgium. He was able to survive the crash, although, as the pilot, he was the last living person out. When he went back to Belgium years later, people who remembered that day remembered being astonished at the parachute that appeared out of nowhere just above the ground, just before he hit, just in time to save him. But he was injured and hid in the manner of the purloined letter. He hid in plain sight as troops swept the area looking for the survivors of the bomber crash. He laid out in the middle of the field in a deep place in the plowed furrow where you could only see him if you got down at the end of the furrow and looked.

As the Nazi's were poking through the hay bales and prowling through the sheds and looking under whatever they could find, there he lay more or less in plain sight. But still, he was shot down on December 1, 1943. You can imagine how cold it was lying in that field in Belgium while the search went on around him for hours. For the rest of his life, he hated the cold. There was no weather that was too warm for him.

I remember when First Lady Hillary Clinton came to speak in Rhode Island when he was Governor, he was wearing this enormous black sheepskin coat--very thick and warm--as he prepared to step outside of the statehouse and go out on the stone deck looking out over downtown on a cold winter afternoon. Mrs. Clinton started needling him and saying how Jack Kennedy didn't need a coat and it was not really very fashionable and people would question how tough he was if he went out with this big coat on.

So he ended up taking off the coat. He went outside into the bitter cold, made the introduction of the First Lady, turned to welcome her to the podium, and out she came with a smile from ear to ear wearing his coat. He loved that kind of exchange with people. I think he immensely loved the Clintons. He was one of the first Governors--if not the first--to endorse President Clinton, and the Clintons never forgot it.

Bruce did not get to Switzerland until May 5, 1944. He spent 156 days as an American Jewish bomber pilot behind Nazi lines in Belgium and France. No greater testament to this man's resourcefulness and drive could be imagined than succeeding for that long in that circumstance.

When he came back from the war, he went to Harvard Law School and became an attorney at the Department of Justice. He was an assistant to a Rhode Islander who became Attorney General, J. Howard McGrath. He began a successful career in the law. It was also at a time when President Kennedy came to office representing that ``greatest generation''--then a new generation--and he trusted Bruce Sundlun to run his inaugural parade, which was the kind of logistics feat that Governor Sundlun loved.

The fact that it snowed like crazy the night before didn't phase him a bit. The entire parade went off on schedule and without incident, as planned, in very inclement weather because Bruce prepared so well in advance.

He was appointed to the board of COMSAT by President Kennedy. He was the longest serving director of COMSAT, a public-private partnership that helped open the skies to the space age. His business career was remarkable. He took a foundering airline, called Executive Jet, and turned it into the largest private and charter airline in the country. He took a department store in downtown urban Providence, at a time when New England cities were in decline, at a time when cities across the country were losing ground to the suburbs that were sprouting up around them--he took this dying business, I guess you would say, and he saw in that downtown department store a media empire. He went off and began buying radio stations and TV stations and created this remarkable company, the Outlet Corporation, as a media empire. He also turned it into a refuge from time to time.

In the blizzard of 1978, the State of Rhode Island was clobbered by snow. People were trapped downtown for hours and hours, in some cases days. He saw to it that the Outlet Company stayed open, that the cafeteria kept serving, and that the department store that sold clothing gave clothing to whoever needed it. The part of the store that sold bedding was spread all over the store so people could sleep on the bedding. He responded to a crisis better than anybody I know. It brought out his best characteristics, which were certainly necessary when he was elected Governor, because on the very first day of his administration, he was obliged to close more than 30 different lending institutions across Rhode Island, serving more than 300,000 of Rhode Island's 1 million population.

He went from being sworn in, to the receiving line where he greeted all his happy supporters and all the welcoming officials and the well- wishers who came from Rhode Island, and rolled immediately from that into a press conference in which he announced they had to close these institutions because the deposit insurance provider ended up having been crooked and had failed and they could not operate without deposit insurance. So they had to be closed. That was a heck of a way to start a governorship.

He also found out that he had inherited the biggest budget deficit the State had ever seen, and we could never find a State with a bigger percentage deficit than he inherited. The compensation system melted down, and every worker's compensation insurer said: I am leaving the State.

A lesser person might have failed under all that pressure. Not only did Bruce meet all of those exigencies of the moment, he also worked very hard to set a better ethical tone and restructured our State government so that it would be lasting because most of those things went wrong because of failures

in ethics in the Rhode Island State Government.

That was a pretty remarkable added accomplishment on top of solving all those underlying problems. He had confidence in Rhode Island and in America, and we were in a terrible recession. So he went to work and got things done. He built a new airport terminal, he got a new mall started that would be built, he built a new hotel that allowed for the convention center to go forward and so he built a new convention center. He changed the skyline of Providence. He moved one of our universities to a downtown campus. He understood that in times of economic distress, activity was good and positive activity that brought jobs was better still.

In his personal characteristics, he was a remarkable individual. He was relentless, determined, and decisive when issues were presented to him. With his staff, he was demanding and abrupt and terse. I asked him once why he didn't bother to say hello. When a person got a phone call from him, he just started talking at them, and when the conversation was over, he hung up without saying goodbye or any pleasantries. I said: Don't you think it would go a little further if you said hello and goodbye in your telephone conversations? He said: How much time do you think I would waste in my entire life? Add up all the times you have wasted saying hello and goodbye. Doesn't do anything that is productive. He had that kind of attitude. But he was bold and he was willing to take big leaps. I guess, back to his early days as a broad jumper, he was willing to take big, big leaps.

As a staff person, he was extraordinary to work for. I have told the story of opening day. A few of us were in on that news, but it had to be very closely held because it would have created a run on all those banks if word had leaked. So even many of his staff people had no idea this was going on until he announced it. So that was kind of a shocker and made for an interesting time to be a staff person.

On another occasion, he had a couple of raccoons on his property and they were bothering a den of baby foxes. He didn't want the baby foxes to be killed by the raccoons, so he took out a shotgun, went down to the end of his property and shot the two raccoons. He then climbed in the car with his State trooper and headed off to work and, of course, he described the exciting episode of his morning and the trooper said to him: Governor, don't you realize it is against the law to fire off a weapon in the city of Newport? In his customarily brusque and decisive way, he said: Well, take me to the courthouse.

A trial was going on in the Newport County Courthouse, but into the trial walks the Governor and he interrupts the trial and tells the judge: I would like to plead guilty. The judge, thankfully, said: I am not going to accept your plea, I am doing something else right now. Plus, you don't have the benefit of counsel. To which he tartly responded: I am as good a lawyer as there is in Rhode Island. The judge responded: Well, a lawyer who is representing himself has a fool for a client, and on your client's behalf, I tell you I will not accept that plea.

So there is the Governor's staff. The phone rings and the message is: Your boss is in court trying to plead guilty to a criminal offense. One can imagine how that lights up a staff's day. So down we went to help take care of that.

Another day saw the arrival of his daughter. When he was elected Governor, Sundlun had three sons--Tracy, Stuart, and Peter. It turned out there was also a daughter, and at age 16--in midterm--Kara arrived and was recognized as Bruce's daughter from a relationship he had years before. She was taken into the family and is now--and was to the end of his days--as beloved as any of his sons.

But that was an exciting day for staff members, when suddenly the boss turns up with a brandnew 16-year-old daughter nobody knew about before.

He had five wives, in addition to those four children. He led a rich, full, exciting, passionate life, and I miss him very much. He died on Thursday. He died very peacefully, with his family around him. He was 91 years old. I think he probably put about 151 years of living into those 91 years, and he left a family who loved him, a State he had served incredibly well, and staff members who had their lives changed by their exposure to this remarkable, hard-driving, affectionate, bold man.

We are in Washington, as I close, and we are in a situation in which one party is holding the economic future of the country hostage in order to force changes the American public doesn't want, wouldn't vote for, and wouldn't accept if they were consulted on them. But by virtue of having, in effect, a gun to the head of the economy, they want to force these things, such as killing off the Medicare Program.

Americans are wildly opposed to that in huge numbers, and when they found out that was in the House Republican budget, they rejected it by 4-to-1 margins. The response to that was to bring back something called cut, cap, and balance, which had hidden beneath the slogan an even worse cut to Medicare. They didn't learn their lesson the public didn't want this, so they insisted on doing even worse and doing it by holding the economy hostage.

That is the kind of thing Governor Sundlun would not accept. He was, first and foremost, a patriot. As hard as he worked and as much as he challenged everyone around him, he always had the purpose of making America better, making America stronger, making Rhode Island better, making Rhode Island stronger, and building toward the future. He had incredible confidence. The notion of holding an economy hostage and threatening the well-being of people to force down their throats something they would not want would be completely alien to his patriotic character, and it makes me miss him a lot as we are trapped in this day.

The other party appears to be, in large part, acquiescing to this. Governor Sundlun's streak of willfulness and determination to do the right thing, I think, is missed on the other side of the aisle as much as his patriotism and desire to put the well-being of people first is missed on the first. So he was a man whose life and accomplishments made a great difference in Rhode Island and have great relevance and resonance as we stand here today.

As I said, I miss him very much. He was very important to me, and I wish we had his forceful, patriotic, buoyant, and determined spirit with us today.

Mr. President, I mentioned in my remarks the speech I gave on behalf of Governor Sundlun, which was delivered at his funeral service. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record those remarks.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has presented a plan to address our deficits and to end the debt ceiling impasse that threatens to cripple our economy.

The Treasury is projected to run out of money next week and time is running short. Senator Reid has shown great leadership with his pragmatic package. Leader Reid's proposal would give the Treasury the authority to ensure the United States does not default on its debt, while at the same time cutting $2.7 trillion from our budget.

The unprecedented set of cuts would have a significant effect in balancing

our budget and restoring fiscal sustainability to the Federal Government. I wish to highlight one key fact. Unlike the House Republican budget and unlike the so-called cut, cap, and balance plan, Leader Reid's plan will preserve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits is particularly important. The Republicans have long coveted Social Security and wanted to turn it over to Wall Street. George Bush tried and failed to do this because the American people wanted none of it, but they tried.

The House Republican budget attacked Medicare, effectively turning it over to the private health insurance industry in 10 years. When the American people found out this was hidden in the Republican budget, they wanted none of it. Huge majorities of the American public disapproved of the Republican budget attack on Medicare.

But instead of relenting, the Republicans came back with cut, cap, and balance. Hidden behind that slogan was an even worse attack on Medicare. The House budget would have raised senior's costs more than $6,000 a year. Cut, cap, and balance would have gone $2,500 beyond that. Cut, cap, and kill Medicare was a better name for it.

Against that relentless Republican effort to go against the will of the American people and kill off Medicare, Leader Reid's proposal protects this vital program and the freedom and security it provides to American families.

Make no mistake about it, our deficit reduction plan will not be easy. It will cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. These budget reductions will require some tough but necessary choices. The plan would also count for an accelerated wind-down of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, saving $1 trillion in the process.

Our troops in the Middle East deserve our admiration and praise for so successfully carrying out their missions. We must, however, continue to press for a strategy that will bring our troops home as soon as we safely can.

The Reid deficit plan would find an additional $40 billion savings by cutting fraud and abuse in tax compliance and a number of nondefense Federal programs and $60 billion in other savings, including cutting unnecessary spending on agricultural subsidies and auctioning off electromagnetic spectrum that the government currently holds.

Finally, by cutting the budget by over $2 trillion, we will have to borrow less money than anticipated, and that will save an additional $400 billion in projected interest costs. In total, the Senate Democratic plan on which we will vote would cut the deficit by $2.7 trillion over the next 10 years.

While Senator Reid's proposal would not address the tax gimmicks and loopholes throughout our Tax Code that help favor the well-connected, this omission does not mean Democrats have given up on ensuring that there is shared sacrifice as we work to balance the budget.

Instead, this package acknowledges the political realities of the moment. Many House Republicans have flatly refused to entertain raising any revenue: not one tax loophole, no cutting of taxpayer subsidies to profitable oil companies, no closing down of offshore tax havens. That is wrong. The Reid package reserves the tax side of budget reform for another day.

We look forward to a robust discussion in the weeks and months ahead over Republican priorities that put special interest loopholes ahead of the interests of American families and ahead of the interests of the American economy.

The Reid plan would establish a bipartisan commission to recommend budget changes and those recommendations would then be guaranteed an up-or-down vote in both Houses of Congress before the end of the year. These recommendations should focus on cutting the unjustifiable tax giveaways--the tax earmarks--that allow profitable companies to avoid taxes entirely and permit megamillionaires and billionaires to pay lower effective tax rates than do middle-class families.

The Reid plan meets the Republicans' initial demands in the debt ceiling negotiations. It cuts $2.7 trillion from the budget--greater than the amount by which the debt limit would be increased--and leaves tax reform for the next round of budget reform. But it does not yield to the Republican attack on Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

I hope Republicans in the Senate and the House will appreciate the balance of Senator Reid's approach and support it. But what if they do not? The House is in disarray. The Speaker does not appear to have the votes. Some of the extremists will not take yes for an answer, and some of the most extreme appear to relish the prospect of America's economy colliding with the debt ceiling.

Let's consider what should occur if Congress fails to lift the debt ceiling. Congress will have sent President Obama three different messages, and they create an irreconcilable conflict. Think about it. Message 1 is: We want him to spend money on all these things. We want him to conduct our wars and our national defense. We want him to send out Social Security checks. We want him to pay the doctors and the hospitals that provide Medicare services. We want him to keep guards on our borders and in our prisons, keep air traffic controllers in the towers, run the rest of the Federal Government.

We tell the President to do that by passing laws. It is by law that the President does these things. Message 2 that we send is: Here is the money we will allow him to collect for the Treasury to pay for all those things. Again, it is by law that we authorize the President to collect that money for the Treasury--by law.

There is a slight problem. The things we have instructed the President to do by law add up to a lot more expense than the money by law we allow him--the executive branch--to collect. So the executive branch has had to borrow--and borrow they have--up to $14 trillion.

If we do not lift the debt ceiling, we send message 3: Do not borrow any more. We do not change message 1, and we do not change message 2. We just add message 3: Do not borrow any more.

As anyone can see, there is no way to reconcile those three instructions. One, by law, we tell the executive branch to send out all these checks and make payments; two, by law, we appropriate too little money to pay for what we have told the executive branch to do; and, three, by law, we would tell the executive branch of government they cannot borrow the difference.

That creates an irreconcilably mixed signal. Do this, but there is not enough money, and do not borrow. This is irresponsible and it is bad government. If Congress wants to stop paying the troops, stop sending out Social Security checks, shutter agencies of the Federal Government or defund Medicare, we should have a proper debate and say so and be responsible for it.

But we have not, and that failure creates an impossible situation for the executive branch under our constitutional principles of separation of powers. Remember why officials in the executive branch pay the soldiers and contractors who support our war efforts. Because Congress has told them to. Congress has the power of the purse.

Remember why the executive branch sends out Social Security checks and payments to doctors and hospitals for providing Medicare services. Because Congress has told them to. Congress has the power of the purse. Remember why the President pays the salaries of Border Patrol agents and prison guards and air traffic controllers and FBI agents and staff in our veterans hospital. Because Congress has told him to do that. Congress holds the power of the purse.

Who is responsible for not giving the President enough money to pay for all of this, for forcing the Treasury to borrow? Congress has set how much the executive branch can collect because Congress has that power of the purse.

Now we are telling the President to do all we have told him to do but without enough money and do not borrow. We all learned in civics that Congress has the power to make laws and the power of the purse. We learned that the President has the solemn obligation to faithfully execute the laws Congress has passed. That is the basic structure of American Government.

Outside of a few narrow and specific areas that are assigned exclusively to the executive or judicial authority by

our Constitution, the constitutional rule is clear: Congress instructs the President by law what to do, and the President faithfully executes those laws.

But what happens if Congress will not instruct clearly? What happens under our Constitution when faithfully executing one law Congress has passed requires the President to fail to faithfully execute another law? How can the President faithfully execute irreconcilably conflicting instructions from Congress?

As a matter of constitutional principle, there is only one logical resolution I can see to this constitutional predicament which Congress has created.

When the matter is sufficiently grave to merit the President's attention, and when Congress sends irreconcilable messages for the President to faithfully execute, a zone of executive discretion must necessarily open to allow the President to make the best decisions for the American people in the area where Congress has sent those irreconcilable mixed signals.

Of course, the instant Congress resolves its conflicting signals, stops speaking out of both sides of its mouth, and sends a clear direction, that zone of executive discretion disappears. Congress has the power. Congress makes the laws. Congress controls the purse. Whatever fiscal path Congress instructs the President to embark on, he must faithfully execute that instruction from Congress.

But Congress can't put the President in the untenable position of having to fail in the ``faithful execution'' of one set of laws in order to ``faithfully execute'' another. That is exactly where it seems to me we would put the President if we failed to lift the debt ceiling.

The damage to the country from such failure would be profound. At least 40 cents of every Federal dollar would suddenly stop flowing into the economy. Considering what would have to be done with the remaining 60 cents, it is not very likely that the Federal regulatory process would keep running. That means every job in the country, depending on a Federal permit or Federal approval or a Federal grant or a Federal contract, would likely grind to a halt.

There would be a jump in interest rates that would hit Federal, State, municipal, corporate, and family budgets. A lot of other stuff might also go wrong, but those three are a bare minimum, and they alone would constitute a brutal shock to our struggling economy. The damage would be grave.

Bad enough if Congress instructed the President to do this kind of damage, but do we really expect him to do that sort of damage without our clear instruction? The scale of this damage lights up in sharp contrast to the constitutional predicament Congress would create through Congress's failure and inaction to send clear direction.

The 14th amendment provision, that the public debt of the United States of America ``shall not be questioned,'' may or may not be controlling here. That specific amendment is not my point. My point is a more basic one: How, under our separated powers, when Congress gives conflicting directives, does the President ``faithfully execute'' those conflicting directives? The conflicting directives problem is ultimately a problem for Congress to solve. But until Congress sorts itself out and gives a clear directive, all that can be constitutionally expected of the President is to do the best he can for the country. He cannot ``faithfully execute'' conflicting directives.

In a sense, conflicting directives by Congress are a form of abdication by Congress--an abdication of the duty imposed on Congress by article I of the Constitution to make and pass laws. It is only reasonable and proper to infer that the constitutional duty of Congress to make and pass laws implies that the Congress will make and pass laws that are capable of faithful execution by the executive.

A Congress that cannot meet that standard is in no position to complain that the executive branch has usurped its authority. More to the point, the constitutional cure is always right in Congress's hands: Sort out your differences; give the executive branch the direction it is Congress's duty to provide.

To me, at least, this is a reading of the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution that makes sense, that is consistent with the underlying principles of that great document, that is practical and workable, and that allows for governance rather than paralysis in circumstances when congressional dysfunction deprives the President of the clear legislative direction that by clear implication is Congress's duty to provide.

I hope before we pitch over the looming fiscal precipice, the executive branch gives these views thoughtful consideration.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the debt ceiling that is rapidly approaching. But on this particular day, I cannot come to the floor and speak about anything without just making one, I guess I would say, note of personal privilege; that is, that today is a particularly sad day in my home State of Rhode Island because one of the great Rhode Islanders has passed away.

Former Gov. Bruce Sundlun, whom I worked for for many years and formed a very devoted affection for has died peacefully at home with his family after one of the most accomplished and eventful lives in Rhode Island history.

I know my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and I will be back on the floor at a later time to give Gov. Bruce Sundlun his proper due and recognition. But for all he has meant to me, for all he has meant to our State of Rhode Island, for all he has meant to the people whose lives have been made so much better or who have been protected from very bad outcomes by his courage and by his determination, I simply could not overlook that at this point. So more will follow on my dear friend, Bruce Sundlun.

So to the matter at hand. Less than 2 weeks from now, our Nation is going to hit its statutory borrowing limit, and it may begin, for the first time in its history, defaulting on its obligations.

Unless we act very soon, the Treasury of the United States of America, long the issuer of the safest and the most conservative securities in the world, will simply run out of money. Social Security checks, as the President has already said, would be at risk. Millions of American families would suddenly lose their household income. The Treasury would have to suddenly stop paying more than 4 out of every 10 Federal dollars, choking off all the economic activity supported by those funds.

Private sector projects across the country that depend on Federal dollars or Federal permits or Federal regulatory approval, all would grind to a halt--a catastrophic triple whammy on our economic activity.

In addition, an increase in interest rates would likely freeze investments and cause the financial markets to plummet. So reaching the decent limit will not just put us back into recession, it would risk economic calamity. With the stakes so high and with time so short, it is unfortunate that the House Republicans who created this completely unnecessary crisis have sent us this so-called cut, cap, and balance bill.

This bill, which cuts no tax loopholes, not one, and puts no cap on corporations offshoring jobs or earnings and dodging U.S. taxes, would do one thing: It would kill Medicare. Consistent with the Republican 2012 budget, this bill puts the costs of deficit reduction right down on those who can least afford it: senior citizens, the disabled, and our children.

The cut, cap, and kill Medicare plan the House Republicans have proposed would begin with steep cuts to Federal programs in 2011, while we are still in this recession, slashing domestic spending by over $111 billion, and eliminating 700,000 jobs from our economy when we need them the most.

It would also require immediate cuts to social safety net programs likely reducing--or eliminating even--student loans, Pell grants, school lunches, Medicaid, and food stamps, some of the most important programs to families who are struggling to get back on their feet during this prolonged period of high unemployment. This is simply unacceptable.

The second part of the cut, cap, and kill Medicare bill would limit Federal spending beyond 2012 to levels significantly lower than during the Reagan Presidency. In fact, our Nation has not seen spending at those low levels since 1966. Mr. President, 1966 was a time when only 9.2 percent of the population was retired and drawing benefits, compared with 12.9 percent today.

So the effects of those spending levels would be even harsher. The cap on Medicare and Social Security makes no adjustment for the $2.5 trillion of Social Security reserves that Americans have paid into that system, that the government then went and borrowed. It makes no adjustment for that being their money or for the aging population that we are experiencing.

So with a fixed cap, and baby boomers retiring in greater numbers, the Republican plan forces devastating cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. There is simply no other way. It would address our deficit in the worst way possible, by taking an axe to the retirement programs on which tens of millions of retired Americans rely and which most every working person in America looks forward to.

For ordinary Americans, this approach is wrong. Frankly, it is unthinkable, although it is the goal of a few determined extremists who are

driving things within the House Republican Party.

Finally, the cut, cap, and kill Medicare bill would hold the debt limit hostage to an extremist constitutional amendment that has been widely criticized, even by many responsible voices on the right. If this dangerous constitutional amendment were to pass, the Congress of the United States would be unable to respond to an economic or national security emergency without steep supermajority votes, giving even more leverage to small extremist factions in Congress, as if it is not clear that is already not too much of a problem.

As dangerous, this constitutional amendment--this is hard to believe--this constitutional amendment would make it easier to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits than to take away tax subsidies from Big Oil, from offshoring corporations, and from billionaires. It would make it easier, as a matter of law, to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits than it would be to go after these special interest corporate tax loopholes and the gimmicks that allow billionaires to pay lower tax rates than truck drivers in this country.

It builds a constitutional preference for corporate and special interest loopholes into our Constitution, a Constitution renowned around the world for its commitment to equality. Into this great document that has shown the light of equality around the world, we would build a preference for corporate special interests over working people and the retirements they count on.

Constitutional amendments traditionally move this country forward. This would be a colossal step back. In summary, adding all those different features of the cut, cap and kill Medicare bill together, the Republicans in the House would require such severe spending cuts that the only way to achieve them--the only way to achieve them--would be to, in fact, get rid of Medicare as we know it and slash Social Security benefits for seniors.

It would hurt those who depend on government the most, while giving special protection to special interests and corporations with tax loopholes and subsidies that permit them to pay lower tax rates than middle-class families--in some cases, with some of our most profitable corporations--no taxes at all. That is what gets protected.

House Republicans know their cut, cap and kill Medicare plan has zero chance of passing the Senate. It is not going to happen--not now, not ever. It has already drawn a veto threat from President Obama. Nevertheless, as this deadline looms closer and closer, with those terrible consequences portending, the House Republican extremists have forced this piece of political theater while ignoring serious and constructive proposals for deficit reduction such as Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad's plan, which would reduce deficits by $4 trillion, more than the House's budget plan. We actually do better at solving the deficit than they do. But we do it with every dollar in spending cuts matched by a dollar in new revenue from closing tax loopholes and tax gimmicks. This plan would stabilize the budget and would reassure the financial markets, and would do so without cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits on which our seniors rely and which all working Americans are counting on. It is one of the basic freedoms we have as Americans--to know that that is waiting for us.

I was proud to introduce a resolution earlier this month which would express the sense of the Senate that ``any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should not include cuts to Social Security benefits or Medicare benefits.'' I am grateful to Senators Blumenthal, Sherrod Brown, Merkley, Franken, Boxer, and Gillibrand who have joined with me on the resolution, and I invite all of my colleagues to do the same.

The Conrad budget proves that we need not attack Medicare and Social Security to deal with our deficit. His budget is living proof that there is no reason to attack Medicare and Social Security to get through our deficit situation. That attack on Medicare and Social Security is a willful and unnecessary act by the Republicans.

Well, Rhode Islanders, in increasing numbers, have been writing to me urging me to continue fighting to preserve these retirement programs, to preserve this infrastructure of American freedom. Time is running short, and Americans are counting on their elected representatives to do the right thing. It is time to do the right thing.

Let me close by reading a piece from an editorial in The Economist magazine. The Economist is a very conservative publication, and it is very much in favor of free markets. I would say, by and large, it is a Republican journal. Here is what The Economist said about the situation we are in now:

The sticking point is not on the spending side. It is

because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the

wilder eyed members of their party and the cacophony of

conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a

single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax

take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully

cynical . . . even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed

to do so. And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the

Republicans look. Earlier this year, House Republicans

produced a report noting that an 85 percent to 15 percent

split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for

successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical

evidence. The White House is offering an 83 percent to 17

percent split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that

none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal

rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans

were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer. Both

parties have in recent months been guilty of fiscal

recklessness. Right now, though, the blame falls clearly on

the Republicans. Independent voters should take note.

So it is not just Democratic Senators coming to the floor to point out that the crisis we are at is an unnecessary one. It is a manufactured crisis, a crisis driven by extremism, and it is a crisis that threatens the survival of Medicare and Social Security--two cornerstone programs in the economic security and in the freedom of ordinary Americans.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I rise today to commend Navy HM2 Jake Emmott of Wakefield, Rhode Island for his exceptional service to our country, which earned him one of our Nation's highest military awards for gallantry during combat. Last week, I had the honor of joining Jake and his family as he was presented with the Silver Star Medal for heroic acts that went above and beyond the call of duty.

On April 20, 2010, Mr. Emmott was serving as platoon corpsman with Company C, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines in

Helmand Province, Afghanistan. That day, Mr. Emmott's squad was on combat patrol when it came under intense enemy fire. Upon seeing a marine in his squad fall from multiple gunshot wounds, he rushed through the firefight to provide first aid.

Mr. Emmott and other squad members proceeded to transport the injured marine to the casualty collection point, when a second marine was shot in the thigh. Mr. Emmott ignored the chaos around him and worked calmly to aid the second casualty. After stabilizing the second marine, Mr. Emmott was struck directly in the face by a bullet, which pierced his sinus cavity and just narrowly missed his carotid artery. The blow knocked him unconscious. His squad leader, who saw him get shot, thought he was dead.

When Mr. Emmott regained consciousness, he refused morphine in order to supervise the treatment of the injured marines. Despite difficulty speaking and choking on his own blood, he provided precise instructions to another combat lifesaver on how to administer aid to the injured. Then, despite excruciating pain, he managed to stagger to the medical evacuation helicopter, so that the other injured marines could be carried on stretchers.

Today I would like to offer my humble thanks to Mr. Emmott for his selfless service, leadership, and courage. We all admire his strength and willingness to put others before himself, especially as he faced his own life threatening injuries. He is truly an inspiration and role model for all Americans. At the young age of 22, he has already accomplished feats of excellence that few could do in a lifetime. I commend Mr. Emmott for his unwavering commitment to his comrades and to his country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans Affairs' Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1383, and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a Murray amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed; that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; and that any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 87, and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to; the resolution be agreed to; that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 234, which was introduced earlier today.

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 235, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 236, which was submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I understand that H.R. 2553 has been received from the House and is at the desk.

I ask for a second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9 o'clock a.m. on Friday, July 22; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, with the time until 10 o'clock a.m. equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees; further, that at 10 o'clock a.m., the majority leader be recognized.