Motion to Discharge--H.R. 3

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, pursuant to title X of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, I have a discharge petition at the desk and move to discharge from the Senate Committees on Appropriations and Budget H.R. 3, to rescind certain budget authority proposed to be rescinded in special messages transmitted to the Congress by the President on May 8, 2018.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, over the next 10 years, our national debt is set to balloon from $21.16 trillion today to more than $33.9 trillion in 2028.

With interest rates set to increase, the payments on the debt will also likely double over the next 10 years as a percentage of total economic output. Consider for a moment the fact we are paying a little more than $300 billion a year to service our debt. It is not that much more than we were paying a couple of decades ago when our national debt was roughly one-fifth, one-sixth of its current size. The only reason our debt service payments are as low as they are today is that our interest rates are at all-time historic lows. Our Treasury yield rates are artificially, historically, aberrationally, severely low. The situation gets a lot worse if our artificially, historically low interest rates increase or start to return to their historical averages at a pace quicker than has been projected, as is easily possible. For example, if interest rates were to return just to historical norms--I am not talking about a rebound above the historical average, just a rebound to historical norms--taxpayers would soon be drowning in trillion-dollar annual interest payments just for the interest on our debt, which means just the difference between what we are paying in our debt service payment now and what we would be paying then, possibly a few short years from now. It is more than we spend on the Department of Defense. This is really frightening, and this is why it is such welcome news that there is some movement on this front.

That is why it is such welcome news that on May 8 President Trump sent to Congress a request to rescind $15.4 billion worth of extraneous spending. This is something Congress used to do all the time. This is something that in decades past would occur dozens, even scores of times, during a single Presidential administration, and it was a bipartisan matter, of course. Returning unused taxpayer money isn't just good government; in a republic, it should be expected, and it should be the norm. In 1981, President Reagan and a divided Congress rescinded more than $15 billion in Federal spending and another $16 billion in 1985 and 1986. President Clinton made three rescission requests in 2000, totaling $128 million.

Now we have the chance to take up the mantle again. President Trump's specific proposals draw back unused funds from expired programs, obsolete programs, and accounts that the Congressional Budget Office says are wildly, needlessly overfunded. In fact, according to CBO, none of the funds in the requested rescissions would alter current Federal programs in any way. For instance, CBO has certified that the $7 billion CHIP rescission would not affect either outlays or the number of Americans with health insurance. And I should note that Congress has rescinded CHIP funding in every enacted Labor-HHS appropriations bill since 2011, more than $50 billion in total during that time period.

The spending targeted for rescission is either expired or rendered unattainable by current eligibility requirements. The $15 billion is just sitting, unused, in agency accounts. So how does it help to cut spending if this money is just sitting there? This is the real sticking point, for Congress has this cute little habit of paying for new spending by raiding these unused funds. It is a budgetary trick, a gimmick, if you will. The money may not be used this year, but it can be recycled into budget gimmicks in future years. Rescinding it now takes the $15 billion out of circulation for those kinds of shenanigans in the not-too-distant future, and, of course, that is the real reason why it will not pass unanimously.

Now, to its credit, the House of Representatives has stepped up. On June 7, the House of Representatives passed its own $14.8 billion rescissions package. Now it is our chance. Now we have the opportunity to do the same. This is the Senate's chance to show the American people that we retain some modicum of attention and of seriousness when it comes to the spending habits of the Federal Government and when it comes to fiscal restraint in Washington, DC.

Cutting spending that isn't actually going to be spent may not be a profile in courage, but it is at least a sign of a pulse, and in Washington that is something. That is something important that we can and we should show today. It is a step toward fiscal responsibility and away from the cynicism and the waste that has turned this city into what is known as ``the swamp.''

In Congress we face a lot of difficult decisions--gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching decisions--but this is not one of them. President Trump's request is as reasonable as can be imagined. Now, $15 billion may be a drop in the bucket compared to $15 trillion or $21 trillion, but that is a reason to support this legislation, not to oppose it. Congress needs to retrain its atrophied muscles in preparation for the far larger tasks that lie ahead.

If we do not find the will--if we can't somehow muster the willpower necessary to reduce Federal spending ourselves now, long before the laws of mathematics and economics force us to do so--we will regret it. If we wait until those laws catch up with us, it will be a whole lot more painful later than it will be if we start making more modest adjustments now.

Every day that passes without action represents more of our national debt being thrown onto our children's backs--another line item on the fiscal indictment that we are writing, however unwittingly or unknowingly, against ourselves.

We have to change course. This bill provides us with a good chance to take one small step toward sanity.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the motion to discharge. Discharge Petition--H.R. 3

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with title 10 of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, hereby direct that the Senate Committees on Appropriations and Budget be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3, a bill to rescind certain budget authority proposed to be rescinded in special messages transmitted to the Congress by the President on May 8, 2018, in accordance with title X of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act 1974. Mike Lee, Patick J. Toomey, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, David Perdue, Jeff Flake, Joni Ernst, Ron Johnson, John Kennedy, Marco Rubio, Thom Tillis, Steve Daines, Mike Rounds, John Cornyn, Ben Sasse, James Lankford, Tom Cotton, John Barrasso, Mike Crapo, James Risch.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, our national debt stands at about $21 trillion. The interest costs on this alone are more than $300 billion every single year. That is money that can't go toward shoring up our national defense or shoring up Social Security or Medicare or some other Federal program. That is money that goes to our creditors. Now, it has to, but the scary part is that that is just a drop in the bucket compared to what it could be just a few years from now. The only reason it is even this low is that our Treasury yield rates--the rates at which we pay interest on our national debt--are at an alltime, historic low. As soon as they return to their historic averages, we will see that interest payment increase manyfold. If we wait until that moment arrives, this will be a very difficult process not just for the Federal Government, not just for Congress, but for the entire country.

It is time for us to start taking gradual steps in the right direction now. This opportunity--this rescissions package that has been proposed by the President--provides us with a meaningful step in that direction. I applaud President Trump for proposing these rescissions. It is time for Congress to get back in the practice of taking these things up, of considering them, and of passing them.

I respectfully urge all of my colleagues to vote for this measure.

Mr. President, I yield back all time.
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