The Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. THUNE. I am happy to cosponsor the legislation of the Senator from Texas. She is absolutely right, there is no more deserving group of people in this country than our military and we need to make sure under no circumstance they are not paid, and her legislation would do that. I hope we can get it to the floor and that it is acted upon very quickly.

We are a week away now from the time in which we would have to request additional borrowing authority in order for our Federal Government to pay its bills. We have known it is coming for some time. We know generally at least when that date is. It strikes me as most Americans observe this debate, the thing they are probably most concerned about is how this is going to impact them and their economic circumstances. Frankly, I think all of us ought to be looking at this with an eye toward how is this going to impact the economy. What is this going to do to get people back to work and to grow the economy? There has been a lot of discussion about that. The President made yet another speech last night in which he tried to claim the high ground in this debate. Frankly, I think the President has relegated himself to the sidelines in this debate simply because many of the things he was proposing to do as a part of this debt limit increase would be very counterproductive when it comes to the economy. I would also add that the President continues to sort of assign blame and blame the previous administration for the circumstances in which we find ourselves and, clearly, he inherited a difficult set of economic circumstances. I think we would all concede that.

What I would argue is the President has made that situation worse. He has made it much worse. If you look at since this President took office, we now have 2.1 million more people unemployed than there were when he took office. We have seen the Federal debt grow by 35 percent since this President took office. The number of people receiving food stamps today has gone up by 40 percent since this President took office. He has added $11,000 to the debt of each individual in this country since he took office. Gas prices are up. They increased almost 100 percent since this President took office. The cost of health care has gone up 19 percent since this President took office despite assertions during the debate on the health care bill last year that it was actually going to reduce health care costs. We have seen all of these economic circumstances worsen on this President's watch.

It strikes me as we look at this debt debate that we ought to be thinking about what can we do to get out of this economic downturn. We are growing at a very sluggish rate, a little under 2 percent. We have unemployment that is over 9 percent, 9.2 percent. As I said, there are 2.1 million more people unemployed than when the President took office. Clearly the focus of our discussions as we lead up to this vote on the debt limit ought to be about the economy, getting people back to work, growing the economy.

Frankly, I think there are a couple of things we have to do to get out of the debt situation. One is we have to cut government spending. Secondly, we have to get the economy growing and expanding again.

So, clearly, that ought to be the focus.

When I said the President, in his proposal--at least as it has been reported because we haven't seen any proposal from him, but in the reporting about his discussions with congressional leadership, it has been suggested that the President has consistently advocated for more revenues, more taxes, and, in fact, as recently as last Friday, when there was still ``a big deal'' on the table--we were still looking at a possibility of actually striking an agreement--the President upped the ante even further. He moved the goalpost yet again. He wanted $400 billion more in higher taxes.

It strikes me, and I think most Americans right now, that the worst thing we can do in an economic downturn and when we have 9.2 percent unemployment is raise taxes. There isn't a tax I can think of that will create a single job in this country. It would only make it more difficult and more expensive for our small businesses to create jobs. So that was a nonstarter. I think it became clear over time that it was going to be a nonstarter despite the President's insistence that tax increases be a part of whatever deal gets struck here.

As we find ourselves where we are now, I think it is important to think about where we have come from and to look at the time that has now passed and where we stand today. I think it is important to point out, as we talk about budgets and we talk about spending and we talk about debt, our job is to pass a budget. That is where it all starts. We haven't passed a budget now in 818 days. In fact, the last time the Senate approved a budget was back on April 29, 2009. So it has now been 818 days since the most recent budget was approved by the Senate.

So we are operating without a budget. Imagine how complicated it would be for any State government, any business in this country, if they continued to operate without a budget. That is what we have been doing in Washington now for 818 days.

So January 6 of this year came around and we knew this debt limit vote was coming and was out there. Secretary Geithner wrote to Congress asking that the debt limit be increased. That was back in January. At that time, the Obama administration was also pushing for a clean debt limit increase; in other words, a debt limit increase that did not include any kind of spending reductions or spending reform. He just wanted a $2.4 trillion blank check to raise the debt by that amount.

Well, we came to February of this year--of 2011--when it came time for the President to submit his budget to Congress. That budget seemed to be in complete denial of the reality we find ourselves in today because that budget would spend $46 trillion and add almost $10 trillion to the publicly held debt over the next decade, as well as increase taxes by somewhere on the order of $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion. So it had more spending, more debt, and higher taxes at a time when we are in an economic downturn, when we have high unemployment, and we have year over year deficits that are adding massively to the debt in this country. So the President's budget was met with a thud, as one would expect, when it was presented to the Congress.

As we went on in the year, in March of this year--March 31 to be exact--the Senate Republicans introduced a balanced budget amendment. We recognized that in order for us to get our fiscal house in order, to start living within our means, to quit spending money we don't have, we have to have some kind of a discipline imposed on the Congress, a requirement that we balance our budget every year, as do so many States. There are 49 States in this country that have some form of a balanced budget amendment in their constitution, some sort of requirement that forces them to make their books balance at the end of the year. So we introduced a balanced budget amendment, and we still hope at some point to get a vote on that. That hasn't happened yet, but that is certainly something we want to enter into this debate because we think it is important not only to deal with the spending in the near term, but also to come up with a solution in the long term, and a balanced budget amendment would certainly accomplish that.

On April 11 of this year, Chairman Paul Ryan of the House Budget Committee introduced his budget in the House of Representatives. Of course, on April 13, right after the submission of that budget, the President then gave a ``revised budget'' speech. It was interesting because Congressional Budget Office Director Elmendorf later stated that the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--doesn't score speeches, so they really couldn't attach any sort of numbers to the President's speech because they don't score speeches. We have yet to see any kind of an actual submission of a plan from the President prior to his provisional budget submission, which, as I said, came in with higher taxes, higher spending, and higher debt.

On April 15, in accordance with the schedule required under the Budget Act, the House passed their budget. So the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee asked the President to submit a revised budget based upon his speech. That revised budget was never submitted. We had a House-passed budget. We had the President's sort of on the sidelines, out of the debate, and then in May of this year Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee--and I am on that Senate Budget Committee--were told to expect a budget markup which never materialized. So we still didn't have a budget in the Senate. The budget passed by the House of Representatives was roundly criticized by the Senate and by Democrats in Washington. But it is the only budget proposal--actual proposal--that has been voted on and that we have literally seen in over 818 days now.

We knew this vote on the debt limit was starting to get closer, so discussions picked up in terms of having some meetings to determine how we might proceed and what we might do to put a package in place that would allow us to raise the debt limit, but do it with significant spending reforms and spending reductions. Vice President Biden held his very first meeting on May 5 of this year--2011--and those discussions continued on for some time.

We also had on the floor of the Senate on May 25 of this year the President's budget he submitted to Congress back in February. So we actually had a vote on that. That vote was 97 to 0 in opposition to the President's budget. There wasn't a single Republican or a single Democrat in the Senate who said the President's original budget submission was something they wanted to be associated with or wanted to support. So not a single vote in the Senate for the President's original budget submission.

So we continued on into June, and I think there was hope there would be some agreement between the President and congressional leadership on how to proceed with this debt limit vote that comes up ahead of us now sometime next week. Those discussions continued, as I said, as recently as last week and finally started to unravel and fell apart, at which point it became clear we were going to need a solution and an answer.

So, again, the House Republicans put together and passed a proposal called cut, cap, and balance which would have cut spending now, immediately, capped spending in future years, and put in place a balanced budget amendment which would ensure that in later years we would have the kind of discipline that is so important and so lacking in Washington. That was on July 19, 2011, when the House passed that legislation.

So it came over to the Senate. We had a vote on it in the Senate on July 22, last week, and the Senate Democrats voted to table the cut, cap, and balance approach and denounced it as not a serious effort to do anything about the fiscal circumstance in which we find ourselves.

We didn't get a chance to debate it and get to an up-or-down vote. We had a tabling motion and a vote on a tabling motion by the Democratic leader and as a consequence it was defeated. So we don't have anything yet in place that would deal with the debt limit coming up ahead of us next week.

So that is where we are today. As I said, the House Republicans have again taken the leadership and put forward yet another proposal, and I expect they are going to vote on it sometime later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. We evidently now have before us something the Senate leadership, Senator Reid, has put forward we may end up having a vote on this week. But somehow, some way, we have to get to where we solve this before next Tuesday.

I am not among those who believe it is an option for us to get past next Tuesday and then try and figure out what happens next. I believe we need to act. We need to act in a way that is responsible, but we need to act in a way that addresses the real issue, which is not the debt limit but the debt.

I wish to point out when the President originally requested--and I think he reiterated that request in April--a clean debt limit, there was an assumption that Congress would just give him a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit without any kind of attempt to rein in the real problem, which is the debt.

So we have been consistently advocating to try to get spending reductions, spending reforms into this equation. The President has consistently advocated in favor of tax increases. To him, this is defined as a revenue problem, not a spending problem. Most of us see this as a spending problem. When we have spending as a percentage of the entire economy that is literally at the highest level since World War II, we have, fundamentally, a spending problem. It cannot be resolved by raising taxes on small businesses; it needs to be resolved by cutting spending.

When we cut spending, I believe we will also put in place the confidence the economy needs to start picking up and growing again, and we will get the other component, the other element that is so important to getting out of this mess; that is, an expanding, growing, vital economy that is creating jobs and creating greater prosperity for the American people.

So this is where we are. We are in the last week. I think the President is essentially missing in action. His proposal to raise taxes which he talked about again last night in his speech is old news. It is yesterday's news. We know that is not going to pass in the House of Representatives, and it probably wouldn't pass in the Senate. Right now, the simple math is we have to be able to pass something by next Tuesday. We have to put something forward that can secure 217 votes in the House of Representatives and 60 votes in the Senate.

Some of us maybe aren't going to like certain elements of what is going to be put forward. But what I can tell my colleagues is, we have come a long way in terms of steering this debate away from the President's original budget proposal which, as I said, doubled the debt over 10 years, massively increased spending, massively increased taxes, and from the point where the President was asking for a debt limit increase devoid of any spending cuts or spending reforms--simply a $2.4 trillion blank check that would allow him to raise the debt limit--to a time where we are actually talking about significant reductions in spending both in the near term and in the long term. Whether the proposal that passes the House this week ends up being what we ultimately vote on in the Senate, it is the only viable option out there.

The President doesn't have a plan. He never has had a plan. The Senate Democrats don't have a plan. They haven't had a budget in 818 days and have yet to put forward anything until, as I said, this most recent idea Senator Reid came up with. But we are up against the clock. We need to get this done. The American people expect us to get it done. The market expects us to get it done. Not doing so would put at great risk our credit rating and our ability as a great nation to function and to attract the type of credit we need to keep our government going, unfortunately.

I hope in the end what comes out of this is some reforms that will put us on a path where we are starting to take that debt down, where we are not literally borrowing over 40 cents out of every dollar this government spends. That is where we need to end up.

But for now at least we have to get a measure in place by next week that doesn't raise taxes in a way that would hurt the economy; that gets discretionary, nondefense spending, and, for that matter, defense spending under control in the near term and puts in place a process by which we can get a result on reforming entitlement programs and dealing with what we call the mandatory part of our budget.

So that is where we came from. It has been an interesting path to get here, but there is a lot of revisionist history that gets put forward, and I wish to remind my colleagues where we came from because I think it is important and informs the decisions we will make today.

For the President to suggest for a minute that somehow the House Republicans are to blame for where we are today is not consistent--in fact, it is completely contradictory--with the facts. It is the House Republicans who passed a budget on time back in April. It is the House Republicans who passed a plan last week, a cut, cap, and balance plan to deal with this debt limit. It is the House Republicans who tomorrow who will vote on yet another proposal put forward after the President upped the ante last week and made it clear that the only way he would accept a deal would be with significant tax increases on the American people and the American economy at a time when we can ill-afford it.

So I hope as we proceed into this week--and the days are numbered--we will get a piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate that can secure the 60 votes necessary for us to avoid having to meet that trigger next week and to do something that would address the long-term issue of spending and debt, get spending under control, and actually, in my view, put the conditions in place that would enable economic growth and job creation in this country; so we can cut spending and grow the economy, which, in my view, are the two elements we need to put the country back on a better path.

So with that, I ask my colleagues to work with us this week against this deadline to get in place a solution to this problem that deals with the fundamental issue; that is, the issue of Washington's overspending, and start to rein that in.

I yield the floor.

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