The Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am going to take a few minutes to talk about why the events of the last 24 hours drive home how valuable it would be to have a House-Senate budget conference begin to meet and to deal with the extraordinary set of fiscal challenges our country has in front of us.

As the President of the Senate knows, a number of Senators on our side have been trying to get a budget conference with the House. It has been several months since the budget resolutions in the respective bodies, in effect, have been set in motion. I want to talk about what has happened in the last 24 hours because it again drives home how valuable it would be for the Senate and the House to move to a budget conference at this time.

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office--of course, our official arbiter of official numbers and trends--made public a new report showing there has been a significant reduction in the budget deficit. In fact, their analysis shows there has been something like a 24-percent reduction from what was estimated a few months ago.

If we couple that new evidence from the Congressional Budget Office with the fact that consumers continue to spend--which is certainly encouraging--the housing market coming back, employers adding 165,000 jobs in April, all of this drives home that in the short term the economy is picking up and we are making real progress.

The point of a budget resolution, on the other hand, is to give us a chance to look long term and look at the next 10 years how Democrats and Republicans can come together, for example, on the long-term challenge of holding down health care costs. We have certainly seen progress in the last few months on that.

There is a debate about why health costs have been moderating of late. I happen to think it is because providers and others are beginning to see what is ahead, but we can have that debate. Certainly there is a lot more to do in terms of holding down health care costs for the long term, and that is what I wish to see the Senate and House go to in terms of the budget resolution.

For example--and I think I have talked about this with the President of the Senate before--chronic care is where most of the Medicare money goes. Chronic care is for people with challenges with heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. We have some ideas we believe could be bipartisan, and would be exactly the kind of thing the House and Senate should take up in a conference on the budget, which we have been seeking for some time.

I only come to the floor today by way of trying to lay out why the events of the last few days dramatize how useful it would be for the Senate and the House to start thinking about what the country cares about, which is our long-term trends.

In fact, this morning I was struck by the fact that some economic theorists say the Congress has, over the last few months, had it backwards. We have been consumed with everything short term when, in fact, we ought to say: Look at some of those positive developments I just cited--including the Congressional Budget Office numbers here recently--that would indicate maybe a little bit less of the back and forth. That is certainly what voters see as unduly partisan. We need to give way to some thoughtful, long-term efforts in perhaps a 10-year window, which is what is reflected on the budget side.

Some of the leading Republicans and some of the archconservatives with respect to economic analysis are all saying the same thing: We ought to be talking about long-term trends. I, as well as my fellow Democratic colleagues, have said that is one of the reasons for a budget conference.

Glenn Hubbard, for example, one of the most respected of the conservatives, talks continually about the long-term challenge and the dangers of waiting.

Well, on this side of the aisle, we are saying we don't want to wait anymore in terms of getting to a budget conference. We want to be in a position to tackle some of these major kinds of questions: pro-growth tax reform--tax reform that can, again, generate revenue, and we have some ideas we would like to raise in a budget conference that we think would be attractive to the other side.

So I hope colleagues who have had questions about whether there ought to be a budget conference now--an actual budget conference between the Senate and the House--will look at these matters anew, given these kinds of trends. I would point out, to tell my colleagues the truth, I am encouraged on this point. We have heard colleagues over the last few days on the other side of the aisle say they too think this is the time for an actual budget conference between the House and the Senate. They have called for it for a long time. We now have a chance to not just call for it but actually do it. If anything, the economic news I have cited suggests some of the focus on these short-term trends ought to give way to more emphasis on bipartisan concern for the long-term trends, which are, in particular, going to revolve around health care, especially Medicare, and taxes where we have an opportunity to look at bipartisan approaches for tax reform.

I commend particularly Senator Baucus and Senator Hatch, our leadership on the Finance Committee on which I serve, who have been talking with Senators in weekly sessions they have pulled together on particularly the tax reform issue.

So we couple the opportunity for the long term, looking at things such as chronic health care which is where most of the Medicare dollars go. I think there are some good opportunities for protecting the rights of seniors while having quality care, holding costs down--those are the things we can look at in the longer term, which is what a budget resolution is all about.

So it has been 2 months since the House and Senate adopted their respective budget resolutions. I think, if anything, what we have learned in the last few days is yet more evidence of why Senators and House Members of good will who want to tackle the long-term economic challenge--which, if anything, becomes increasingly important day by day--ought to go to a budget conference and go forthwith to that effort in a bipartisan way.

Later on today I intend to propound a unanimous consent request to in fact go to that conference with the House on the budget, and I urge colleagues to join me--I know Senator Coburn is here, and I commend him because he has been one who has been interested in tackling long-term fiscal challenges. Long-term fiscal challenges, in a debate between the House and the Senate over the next 10 years and the future trends we are looking at, are going to be front and center. We can tackle those questions, particularly on health care and taxes, by going to a conference, as well as looking at the long term overall. We would also be, in my view, picking up on what economists and leaders in the private sector of both political parties are saying now, which is there should be a little bit less of a focus on short-term sparring about our economy and more of a focus on the long-term economic challenges, which is what a House-Senate budget conference, looking at 10 years ahead, could be all about.

With that, I yield the floor and I note the absence of a quorum.

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