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Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, you will notice that the senior Senator from Vermont didn't talk about overall spending numbers.

I would ask the President--I would ask anybody listening to these floor speeches today: Do you know how much the Federal Government spent last year?

I have been asking that question of my colleagues. I have been asking that question of journalists here in Washington, DC, people who report on the dealings on the floor, and the vast majority cannot answer that question.

So the question you all ought to be asking yourself is, Why can't you answer that question?

It is not your fault. The reason nobody knows how much the Federal Government spent in total last year--virtually no one knows it--is that we never talk about it. We are the largest financial entity in the world, and we never talk about how much we spend in total. We talk about little bits and pieces. We talk about $6 billion here, $76 billion there--no doubt, necessary funding for top priorities. But we don't spend the time talking about how we are mortgaging our children's future.

I have got a couple of charts that I would like to display.

This first chart shows over 20 years of spending history, going back to the year 2002, when the Federal Government spent, in total, a little more than $2 trillion.

If we would have just increased spending from that point by population growth and the rate of inflation, last year we would have spent a little under $3.8 trillion.

If you go to the year 2008, when we spent just under $3 trillion, and once again just grew spending by population and inflation, last year we would have spent $4.4 trillion.

If you go back to 2016, when we were spending $3.8 trillion--under $4 trillion--and grew that by just the rate of growth and the population rate of inflation, last year we would have spent about $4.8 trillion.

Instead, last year, we spent $6.3 trillion.

Now, I realize--and you can see on this chart--that, the last 3 years, spending was heavily impacted by COVID relief, close to $6 trillion worth.

But in 2019, before the COVID pandemic, we spent about $4.4 trillion.

I have another chart I would like to put up here that puts this all in perspective.

This breaks down spending between discretionary and mandatory plus interest, and then you have total outlays.

Again, if you look at 2019, total outlay is $4.4 trillion. So because of COVID, the next year we spent an additional $2.1 trillion--$6.5 trillion. In 2021, $6.8 trillion; last year, $6.3 trillion.

Now, I heard President Biden say the pandemic is over. I think most of us have gotten back to our normal lives. That is a good thing. Why haven't we gone back to a normal spending level?

I don't know exactly what the total spending will be for fiscal year 2023. I do know that we are 2\1/2\ months into the fiscal year. We have not brought up one appropriations bill on the floor of the Senate for debate, for amendments--not one. We are operating on a continuing resolution.

I hear all the time that these continuing resolutions are such a terrible way to do business. I agree. It shows the dysfunction--the complete dysfunction--which is leading to these out-of-control spending numbers.

You would think, now that the pandemic is over, that we would return to a more normal level of spending.

Had we just grown the 2019 level by, again, the rate of population growth, the rate of inflation, we would be spending about $4.8 trillion this year, but it appears--again, we don't know; there are a couple of people negotiating this; the rest of us are completely outside of the process--that we are going to have some massive omnibus spending bill dropped on our desks, and we expect to vote on it in a day or two, or maybe just hours. But it is going to be somewhere around $6 trillion.

Have we literally just increased the baseline since the beginning of the pandemic by $1.6 trillion? That is a 36-percent increase.

I will just put this in perspective. Again, had we grown this just by inflation and population growth--that would be a reasonable way to put some kind of constraints on what we are spending--that would be $4.8 trillion.

Last year, the Federal Government raised in revenue $4.9 trillion.

Again, I can't predict what revenue is going to be in 2023, but based on 2022 revenue, if we are only talking about $4.8 trillion, we would actually have a surplus as opposed to a massive deficit almost guaranteed to be more than $1 trillion.

My final point is this. And I know Senator Scott also is in the business world, and a number of Senators have been. If we were looking at this as, let's say, a division that had a problem, that had to spend a lot more money--a fire, some kind of real issue with the business where they had to drag increased spending over the last 2 or 3 years-- but that spending issue had been resolved, and that division came to us having spent $4.4 million in 2019 and now that the problem has been resolved, now they want to spend $6 million, I can guarantee you we would be looking for a lot more detail. We would be spending a lot more time in terms of why in the world would we be increasing our base budget by 36 percent now that the danger or the problem has passed.

So in the business world, in the private sector, where I and Senator Scott came from, we would be spending a lot of time analyzing this. But here, in Washington, DC, the world's capital of dysfunction--of monetary and budgetary dysfunction--we don't even know what we are spending, and we are not even supposed to know because the powers that be are negotiating some massive omnibus bill, and they are going to jam us up against the Christmas holidays and ask for an up-or-down vote. That is outrageous.

This process--this horribly broken, dysfunctional process--must end, which is why I completely agree with Senator Lee's amendment.

Let's pass a continuing resolution. As much as I hate them, as much as that signals dysfunction, it will allow us the time to actually take a look at, debate, and question: Why in the world are we talking about $6 trillion of spending when, at most, looking back to 2019, growing that by inflation and population growth, we ought to be talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.8, certainly under $5 trillion, and maybe looking at the prospect for the first time in many, many years of balancing a budget?

That is the attitude we ought to be taking. That is the debate we need to have. We need to have time for that debate, which is why I support Senator Lee's amendment.

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