Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. COBURN. I would add one thing and then yield back to my colleagues. Inside the Defense Department, over the next 10 years, we are going to spend approximately $60 billion on things that have nothing to do with defense. Ten percent of that is health care research conducted by the military which doesn't have anything to do with the military. We have the NIH, the world's premier leading research organization, and we ought to transfer that out of the military. As a matter of fact, the guy who started that was a friend of mine, Ted Stevens. One of the last things he told me is one of the biggest mistakes he ever made is putting medical research into the Pentagon, because now it gets funded, and we are duplicating things at the Pentagon which we are doing at NIH on diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer. I happen to have a little experience with that one. The fact is we are not spending the money wisely. We are spending money we do not have duplicating what we are already spending money on. I yield to my senior colleague.

Mr. COBURN. If people are interested, coburn.senate.gov, and they can get that information. Everything we have, every study we have published, all the waste, all the duplication. I have one other item. There is at least $200 billion a year that the GAO--not Tom Coburn-- has identified in waste and duplication in the Federal Government. We have not acted. Only one committee of Congress, Education and The Workforce, in the House, has acted on one of the recommendations as far as duplication. So the problem is us.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. COBURN. This is a very important bill for our country in terms of authorizing the defense of this country. Many of us have relevant amendments--not amendments outside the scope of this bill, but relevant amendments--which will actually markedly improve the way we conduct policy in the Defense Department. Without the assurance that those amendments are going to be able to be offered--they can be tabled, but without that assurance, it makes it difficult to agree to a consent not knowing whether or not we will have the opportunity to represent the people we represent in offering amendments which will make positive improvements to this bill. So I put forward that we are really not conducting the business of the country if we are limiting the ability of Members of the Senate to offer amendments. Absent that guarantee, I will object.

Mr. COBURN. I would like to object.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. COBURN. First of all, the amendment we are talking about isn't pending because the tree has been filled. So we don't even have an amendment pending. Seventy-six times the majority leader has filled the tree, more than two times all the rest of the Senate majority leaders in history. Last year, under Senators Levin and McCain's leadership, we considered 125 amendments or thereabouts, some in a manager's package with others. There were over 300 amendments offered. The average length of time to consider this bill is about 2\1/2\ weeks. We have had it up less than 1 week, and the fact is this is the consideration for an authorization bill in excess of $500 billion, and we are not going to have amendments on it. So there is not a unanimous consent that I will agree to, until we agree to open the Senate to allow Members to offer their ideas. Table them. The fact is, if we run this just like we did last year, we will be through with this in 5 to 7 days. If we continue to do what we are doing now, we won't finish it, and it won't be because we don't want to finish it. It will be because we won't have the opportunity to have input into a bill that is over 50 percent of our discretionary spending in this country.

Mr. COBURN. I object.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to express support moving forward with the Drug Quality and Security Act but want to express my concern that this legislation should not be used by the FDA to interfere with a doctor's ability to practice medicine and choose the best therapy for his or her patients. Patients have allergies, conditions, and diseases on an individual basis. So often drugs in the form made by manufacturers are not the best option for an individual patient's needs, especially in some specialties such as ophthalmology. A varying strength or dose may need to be made by the pharmacy and many States have laws permitting physician compounding as well. I understand and have received assurances from my colleague Senator Alexander that limiting access to necessary treatments by providers and patients was not the intent of this legislation and look forward to working with him should any unintended consequences arise.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it has now been about 1 year since the fungal meningitis outbreak last fall associated with the tainted sterile compounded drugs from the New England Compounding Center. This week on the floor of the Senate, we have a bill that is, in many senses, Congress's response to the lack of policy clarity that many have suggested failed to prevent that tragedy. As I have watched the Senators and their staff who have been working on this bill over the past several months, I applaud the bipartisan manner they have used in creating legislation that could help prevent similar tragedies in the future. I am planning on voting for this legislation because I do think Congress needs to legislate. The courts have not been clear. However, I want to note that, despite the strong bipartisan collaboration, this legislation leaves some regulatory oversight concerns outstanding that I want to comment on and make clear today. There has been a lot of concern that by reaffirming section 503(a) of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, office use of compounded drugs is not recognized as permissible compounding activity. Therefore, I want to make clear that this legislation does not change current State law or authority over the dispensing or distribution of medications by pharmacists, compounded or manufactured, for a prescriber's administration to or treatment of a patient within their practice. Currently, the compounding and dispensing of prescription drugs for in-office administration by a prescriber to their patient is governed by State boards of pharmacy, and States have determined what is best for their State regarding office use. In fact, more than 40 States have passed laws over the last 15 years related to current practices of using compounded drugs in the office context. The issue of office use, indeed all of pharmacy practice regulation, is best left to the States. So the omission of office use from 503(a) should not signal to the FDA that it has the authority to encroach upon State authority to regulate office use. In addition, there have been concerns whether the provisions within the legislation that grant authority to the FDA to set up systems of procedure for the direct communication between State boards of pharmacy and the FDA will give FDA more authority over compounded prescriptions shipped across State lines. I want to also take this opportunity to make clear that these provisions within the legislation require ``appropriate investigation'' on complaints and other issues that arise by the FDA and in no way provide some new expansive authority to the FDA to restrict interstate commerce or regulate intrastate commerce. Finally, the legislation does not change the ability of ophthalmologists to administer drugs in their office to individual patients for the purposes of reducing macular degeneration. Under this legislation, physicians retain the ability to use compounding drugs in their office for their patients. This is a practice-of-medicine issue, so the art and science of medicine should not be impeded by the FDA. I will continue to monitor the implementation of section 503(A) in consultation with physicians, medical professionals, and pharmacy professionals. I also strongly encourage the FDA to ensure that these provisions are not used to restrict office use and restrict interstate sales of compounded pharmaceuticals within all applicable laws and regulations. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin.) The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I understand that the order of the day is that time is divided equally until 7 o'clock, with the majority setting a limitation of 10 minutes but no limitation on the minority?

Mr. COBURN. I rise to speak about the issue in front of us. I want to spend a few minutes putting things in context. I won't repeat things I have said routinely on the floor, but I think it is important for the American people to understand where we are in our country. Using generally accepted accounting principles--these aren't my numbers--we have almost $126 trillion in unfunded liabilities and we have $17 trillion worth of debt. We have a lot of obligations in front of us. If we add up every asset in the United States--all the bank accounts, all the lands, all the possessions, everything we own, plus what we own outside of the United States--it comes to $94 trillion. In essence, we are almost $50 trillion in the hole. That is called a negative net worth. I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Delaware. I have the greatest admiration for him. I am not one of those who think we should be in shutdown. I also am not one of those who think we should just, without any solution to our problem, raise the debt limit. I would also note that we don't have to have a budget right now in the Senate because we agreed to the Budget Control Act, which sets the discretionary spending levels for the next 10 years in this country. They are set by law. What is important is that appropriations bills come through the committees--the House first and the Senate second--so that we can address the issues. We didn't do that in the Senate. They did about half of them in the House. We wouldn't have a continuing resolution--which, by the way, I think all of us agree is very difficult for our Federal employees to operate under. But I wanted to make a couple of points. One is that in July of 2011, after 7 years of oversight, I put out $9 trillion of what I think are commonsense eliminations and changes we could make that today would put us at a $200 billion surplus instead of a $750 billion deficit. Those savings were $3 trillion total in discretionary spending, $1 trillion in defense spending, $2.7 trillion in terms of modernization of our health entitlement programs, and $1 trillion from the Tax Code. We actually have earmarks in the Tax Code for those who are well-heeled and well-connected--a benefit--and the average American gets nothing. There are interest payment savings of $1.3 trillion and a 75-year solvency for the Social Security. That was put out 2\1/2\ years ago. Very little of it has been used. As a matter of fact, most people haven't read it. It was put out in a binder. We didn't print many binders because I am so tight, I don't want to print that many binders, but this is what it looks like. It is online. People may read it and see if it makes common sense. Most people won't. I am going to spend some time outlining some of the things that came from that and some of the excesses of the Federal Government. Most Americans know we are not efficient. They understand that we are not doing a good job spending their money, but they have no idea how bad it really is. I have actually spent the last 9 years in oversight of almost every segment of the Federal Government. None of us can be proud of the way we spend the money. Most of it is very well intentioned, honorably intentioned, with minimal oversight, minimal control, with over $150 billion of fraud every year, and I am talking pure fraud, and with $250 billion of real duplication--programs that do exactly the same thing, run by different agencies, with no consideration to streamline those. None of those things have been considered. We won't even do tax reform to get rid of unemployment for millionaires. What people don't realize is we paid $60 million out over the last 2 years to people who were making $1 million a year. We are paying them unemployment. They hardly need the unemployment check. Yet we won't even regulate those kinds of things. I think we have failed to do our job, and that is a Republican and Democratic thing. That is us. That is not a partisan statement. The last time the President signed an individual spending bill into law--an individual appropriations bill--was 4 years ago. Four years ago was the last time he signed an independent appropriations bill into law. That tells you Congress hasn't done its job. We haven't passed them. According to studies, if you poll the American people in terms of the sequester, less than one in four felt any impact at all from the sequester. And I think the sequester is a terrible way to determine spending. I voted against the Budget Control Act for that very reason, because we are not responsible enough to do the management and the oversight. But most Americans see no impact from it, and that is because in what we do there is so much waste and mismanagement. There is so much duplication, there is so much error that we could easily take that out and most people wouldn't notice it. They haven't noticed it. Some of our Federal employees have noticed it, but the average American, 76 percent of them have never felt any impact from it whatsoever. They do not even know it happened. There has been no impact on their daily life. Increasing the debt limit and passing another CR isn't going to do a thing to eliminate government waste, fraud, or duplication. It is time we kind of reassess where we are. One of the reasons I am against a debt limit increase is because it takes the pressure off Members of Congress to make the hard choices. If we raise the debt limit, that means we don't have to make the hard choices and we will run a deficit again and again. Toward the end of this decade, just 7 years from now, the deficits start climbing well above $1 trillion again--$1 trillion a year. Our deficit is growing twice as fast as our economy is--our debt is. It is growing twice as fast as our economy is. So we are going down in a hole. We ought to be about--Democrats and Republicans--holding hands and saying let's stop this nonsense. Let's put some brakes on ourselves. Let's put in some limitations so we don't continue to fall prey to ducking the very difficult decisions facing this country. Households do that, businesses do it all the time. They assess where they are, they assess how deep the hole is, because nobody gives them the ability to say: You don't have to make those hard choices, we will give you more borrowing power. What they do is make those hard choices. We refuse to do so. Another example. We just finished year end and there is this syndrome in Washington called ``use it or lose it.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the Washington Post with the lead-in ``As Congress fights over the budget, agencies go on their `use it or lose it' shopping sprees.''

Mr. COBURN. Let me give the American people a little taste of what we spent in the last week. In the last week, the State Department spent $5 million on new glassware for all our embassies. Was that something we needed to do? No. Was it an absolute requirement that we couldn't operate our embassies without another $5 million worth of glassware? No. The State Department had $5 million, and if they didn't spend it, they would be accused of not needing all their money. So they spent $5 million on something that was not absolutely necessary. In the last week, VA spent more than $560,000 on artwork. As a matter of fact, in the last 2 days. I mean, we are bankrupt. We are running three-quarters of a trillion dollar deficit and we are going to buy a half million dollars worth of artwork because if we don't spend it on something we won't get it next year? Where does that fit in with any common sense? Where does that fit with the integrity or the honor that will preserve the future of our country? It doesn't. We have to change that. We have not done things that incentivize Federal employees not to spend it and we will give you part of it next year for your budget and the rest of it against the debt our kids will have. The Coast Guard, in the last day, spent $178,000 on cubicle furniture rehab. They signed a contract on the last day and sent the check out the door. It may be it needed to be rehabbed, but they made sure they got it in this year to consume the money. The Agriculture Department, in 1 day, spent $144,000 on toner cartridges. Think about it--$144,000. These are all small amounts relative to Washington numbers, but the principle is exactly the same. On the night before the government closed, the last day of the fiscal year, the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts right before midnight. I can't get the information on what they were yet, but I will. I will find out if they were necessary, if it is something that we needed to have in light of our debt and our dysfunction. They also spent $5 billion on everything from robot submarines, Finnish hand grenades only hours before the closing of the fiscal year. So they spent the money, not saying it was a priority, other than it was a priority to spend all the money we have because we are afraid we might not get enough money next year. The Defense Logistics Agency spent $65 million for military helmets on the last day, $24 million for traveling wave tubes to amplify radio signals. How do we think the hundreds of thousands of people who are furloughed right now feel about us spending money that way when that could be paying them and they could be working? We are sick. We need a wakeup call. Let me cite a couple others from the Department of Defense just to show you how parochialism plays into this. Twelve brandnew--brandnew-- airplanes, C-27J Spartans, were delivered right before the end of the year. Guess where they are. They are in mothballs in Arizona in the desert because we don't need them. But we spent $567 million for something we didn't need. So what do we do? We store them in the desert because the humidity is so low. So we take them right off the manufacturing line and fly them right to storage. They are not needed. We have the same problem on the C-27As in Afghanistan. We spent $596 million for those. We finally canceled the contracts because the supplier couldn't supply the spare parts. And you know what the military is getting ready to do, rather than bringing them home or giving them to somebody else? They are getting ready to cut them into pieces in Afghanistan--$\1/2\ billion worth of airplanes. Where is common sense in this country? Why wouldn't we think about maybe selling them to somebody else and getting some of our value back? But we are thinking about cutting them up. Then there is the M1A1 Abrams tank. We had testimony from Secretary of the Army John McHugh saying this is the most modern piece of equipment the military has. Its average age is less than 2\1/2\ years old. We don't need any more M1A1 Abrams tanks, but they are still being produced this year to the tune of $3 billion so we can keep people employed in a factory making something we don't need. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that a great way to steal the future of your kids? But I am sure the politicians where they are made are very happy we are continuing to buy something we don't need because it helps the economy in their area. Despite the sequester, the National Science Foundation is still funding hundreds of products and studies that do not fit with common sense or a priority. Even if they fit with common sense, they do not fit the priority of where we find ourselves financially. The Department of Agriculture grants that were announced in the last week before we shut down, before we went to the next fiscal year and don't have a continuing CR--let me read this and see if you think this is how we should be spending our money: 35 wine-tasting projects, wine trail smart phone apps. We are going to supply the money for these. The Federal Government is going to supply the money for these so you can have a good time when you go to whatever vineyard it is. We are going to take Federal taxpayer money. Those are private businesses. Yet we are spending our grandchildren's money on that? Four Christmas tree initiatives: Virginia Christmas trees, Michigan Christmas trees; training seminars on how you sell Christmas trees. You know, Christmas trees are in pretty good demand around Christmas. I am not sure you are going to markedly increase the demand for Christmas trees by learning how to sell them better. The USA pear road show to China; social media for apples, radio advertisements--paid for by the Federal Government--for blueberries from New Jersey, strawberries, organizing a maple weekend in the state of our Presiding Officer--Massachusetts. We are spending our grandkids' money, money we are borrowing, to do things that are not a priority. They may be a priority to those folks who get the money, but in terms of our national priorities, they are not anywhere close. Other examples of ongoing government waste and duplication not eliminated but instead funded by the CR: $30 billion for 47 job training programs that aren't working. They are not working. The GAO says they are not working, we know they are not working, and all of them duplicate one another except for three. But we are continuing to spend $30 billion a year on them. The House has passed a skills act which consolidated all of them. We won't even take it up over here. We won't even look at it. It would save us about $7 billion or $8 billion a year. They read the GAO report, they acted on it, but we won't. We have 20 Federal programs across 12 different Federal agencies and offices for the study of invasive species. I think we ought to study invasive species, but I don't think we need 12 different Federal agencies involved in it. And I don't think we need 20 programs on it. I mentioned the unemployment for millionaires. That is in the CR. We didn't do anything to fix that. There is $30 million for 15 different financial literacy programs at 15 different agencies. We just created a new one at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Rather than eliminate the ones that are not working, we are creating more of them. There is $947,000 in the NASA budget to talk about foods that can be eaten on Mars. We are 30 years away from going to Mars. Yet we are going to spend $1 million of taxpayer money we don't have to think about foods we might eat 30 years from now on Mars? I don't think that is a priority for us right now. There is $3 billion on 209 science, technology, engineering, and math programs at 13 different agencies. Think about that. We all know we need to get it together when it comes to education in our technical and scientific areas. But why would we have this many--209--programs, with 209 different sets of administrators and 209 sets of reporting? There is billions of dollars in bonuses and Federal payments to contractors who fail to pay their own taxes. We have tried to pass in here multiple times that if you are a contractor with the Federal Government and you are not paying your taxes, you are either going to lose your contract or that tax debt is going to be reduced from what we pay you. But we can't get that through. So people who aren't carrying their fair share are still reaping the benefits of contracting with the Federal Government even though they are tax cheats. Here is one small one, but this one really gets me. It is bigger than you would think. We have an agency that spends $66 million a year. It is the NTIS. I asked GAO to study them. They studied them. In their report this year, GAO explained there is an office in the Department of Commerce, which is this office, that sells reports to other agencies. When we had GAO study this, we found 74 percent of the reports they sell to other agencies you can get from this one Web site for free. Their budget hasn't gone down, it has expanded. But the need for the agency is going away. So why are we continuing to spend $66 million-- which is what we directly spend and doesn't count what they collect from all the other agencies--for only 26 percent of the information that is not available other than at Google? It makes no sense. It is called the National Technical Information Service, and it was established in 1950, tasked with collecting and distributing certain reports. GAO noticed this 10 years ago; they noticed it again now. Congress has done nothing. What GAO estimates is 621,917 of the 841,000 reports this agency puts out are available for free on the Internet. Go to Google and every American can find it for free. All the agencies that are paying can find it for free. But we haven't eliminated this agency. I will stop with that, and I will make a couple points. It is wonderful that we have a difference of opinion in the Congress, but we can't have a difference of opinion about where this country is headed. We are bankrupt. People don't like to say that word. This is America; we couldn't be bankrupt. But from a balance sheet standpoint and from an income sheet standpoint, we are bankrupt. So what are the American people to do about this? Are we to continue to spend money every year to the tune of $500 billion to $1 trillion and not make the tough choices or should we do something about it? Should there be a resolution to this addiction of spending money we don't have on things we don't need? As a physician, for every person I have ever encountered who had an addiction, the first step in confronting that addiction is to recognize the reality of the addiction. Quite frankly, Members of Congress haven't done that. The American people have. They are figuring it out. The reason I know we haven't recognized the addiction and we are not worried--we can say our debt can be such a percentage of GDP. We don't have to live within our means. We can handle it as long as we don't get above a certain percentage. That is the rationalization of an enabler in a family who allows somebody to continue to be addicted. Every addiction needs a 12-step program, and the first step is recognizing that we are addicted. And we are. So one of the things the American people are starting to ask about us, given that we can't even pass a CR--and we are going to pass a debt limit increase and not make any of the hard choices. They won't be made this year. They won't be made next year. The only time we are going to make the hard choices is when the international financial community forces us to make those. But what Americans are asking now, the confidence is so low, is who decides? Do we really represent their thoughts about spending, about priorities, about waste? If we recognize that all this is there--these trillions and trillions of dollars over 10 years that could be changed without any marked impact on America, and we don't do anything about it--what they are asking is who is deciding? Who decides? Do I represent my constituents if I won't try to change these things? The confidence level in us, as reflected in the polls, and when you talk to anybody, is they don't have any confidence in us because we won't admit to our addiction, come together, get on the wagon and solve the addiction. A long time ago in this body I said there was a rumble out in America. It wasn't long after that the tea party came along. I know they are thought about with some disdain. They are not crazy. What they have done is lost confidence and they want something changed. But it is not just the tea party anymore. It doesn't matter your political persuasion. They think we don't get it, that we are not willing to make the sacrifices of our own political careers to solve the problems. What we need to be doing, in my opinion--and my prescription for us is, American people, don't let us get out of the box by letting us raise again the shackles that are going to be increased by increasing the debt in this country. Because if we do--and we will--what will happen is we won't perform. We won't make the tough decisions. We won't make the sacrifices. There will be no sacrificial leadership on the part of Members of Congress. Their sacrifice will be, How do I get reelected, rather than I don't care if I lose; our country needs to be fixed, and we need to be about addressing that even if it costs me a political position. When it is all said and done and America has blown through and we see the real results of our profligate spending and the hyperinflation and the marked decrease in the standard of living in this country, what they are going to remember about us is there was a challenge and we didn't rise to it. We didn't rise to the occasion. We saw short term and we forgot and ignored the long-term consequences of our actions. My hope is that will change on both sides of the aisle; that we would truly embrace a long-term picture and recognize the tremendous difficulty. We have heard all this talk about how we have to raise the debt limit; otherwise, we are going to default. We are not going to default on our bonds, ever. It requires less than 7 percent of our total cashflow that comes into this country. We use that as a scare tactic. I am not saying we should necessarily not increase the debt ceiling, but we sure shouldn't increase it until we have made a commitment that we are going to solve the problem, because we will be back here in 1\1/ 2\ years doing exactly the same thing with exactly the same excuses that say why we can't. What America is wanting to hear from us is why we can. They are not wanting to hear about division. They are wanting to hear about unity. They are wanting to hear about what pulls our country together rather than tear it down. The best way to show them is that we are serious about solving this problem. I hope that is so. Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the time to be on the floor. I want to continue talking about what I think are the real problems with where we are today. What we are hearing in the press is that there is no agreement on a continuing resolution, that there is conflict and lack of discussion in Washington, that the debt limit is coming up, yet Washington is not capable of solving its problems. I made some points yesterday about the reason we are not capable of solving our problems is that there is an absence of leadership. We are not only bankrupt financially, we are bankrupt when it comes to our leadership. I want to dispel the rumor that our problems are not insolvable. They are imminently solvable. We have $126 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities for which Americans are responsible. We have $17 trillion worth of debt, and we have $94 trillion of total assets in this country if you add what the Federal Government and everybody else owns. So the difference between $128 trillion and $94 trillion is $34 trillion, and then another $17 trillion--that is $51 trillion we are going to have to account for. What is in front of us--and by the way, the Affordable Care Act will add $6.7 trillion to those outstanding liabilities net of any tax revenues and tax increases it collects. So what are we to do? What are the American people to think? They see impasse, lack of conversation, lack of compromise, lack of resolution, and no reconciliation. So I wanted to take a few minutes today to kind of give a little history, first of all, and then outline what is possible--I am not saying we must do it--over the next 10 years that we could do that would put us on a pathway to where we would be solving the problems and not leaving our children an inheritance of debt. I made the point yesterday that the median family income in this country today in terms of real dollars is exactly where it was in 1989. We are going backward. We are going to go backward this year. What that really means is that the standard of living is declining. The American public is getting further and further behind. One of the quotes I use--and I don't know if it is accurate--has been attributed to Alexander Tytler, a Scottish historian. Let me read it: A democracy-- In this case a constitutional Republic-- is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It will continue to exist until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes with the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. Where are we in that line? Is $50 trillion in negative net worth not a sign that we are going there? Is declining median family income not a sign that we are going there? What we have seen in this last so-called recovery is the wealthy have done very well but nobody else has. So what we are seeing is history repeat itself in terms of what has been outlined and observed in the past. Alexander Tytler was also accredited with this, but nobody can prove it: The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During these 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage. I think we are somewhere in here, if history speaks accurately, or at least his observation of history. So what we ought to be about is making sure we cheat history--all of us, together, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Independents--we ought to be about cheating history. How do we do that? Are the problems we have in front of us so big that we can't solve them? I don't think so. Are positions so hardened that we can't think in a long-term way about solving the problems that are in front of our country? When we talk about the debt ceiling--I have been accosted a lot in the news media in the last 48 hours because I don't believe the debt ceiling equals default on our obligations in terms of our sovereign debt. It just so happens Moody's, the rating agency, agreed with me today; that, in fact, they are not the same thing and they say there should be no effect. That doesn't mean we should. I am not proposing we should. But the scare tactics of saying the Earth is going to collapse if we somehow fail on time to raise the debt limit is not true. The Earth will collapse for Americans if we don't address the underlying problems facing our country--this $50 trillion in unfunded liability and negative net worth. Here is what we know has happened in the last few years, and it proves the point. It is why median family income is going down. It is because our debt is growing twice as fast as our economy. Here is our GDP increase over the last few years: $1.199 trillion. Here is our debt: It went up $2.405 trillion. To say that another way, that is 2.4 billion millions. These numbers are unfathomable, but the graph shows it all. Our GDP has increased. So what is happening is that for every $1 in debt we go into, we are getting a deepening decrease in return in our economy, and it is continuing to go down. So the more we borrow, the less well off we are in terms of being able to grow our economy. So the problems in front of us and what we see is what I would say as careerists don't want to solve the problem because the thing that comes to the careerist's mind is how does that effect the next election. I don't care what happens in the next election in this country; what I care about is whether we are going to address the real problems and secure the future for the country. Whether they be Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, I don't care. We are all in this together. When our living standard goes down, we all go down together. So how do we solve this problem? The first thing in any addiction-- and we have an addiction to spending--is to recognize we have an addiction. We have an addiction to spending. We have an addiction to not living within our means. We just passed $600 billion in January of increased taxes on the American economy, most of that coming from the people who are doing much better during this tepid recovery. Will that solve our problems? Can we tax our way out of this? Can we have confiscatory tax policies that will not hurt our economy and get us out of this? The answer is no, and everybody recognizes it. What else does everybody recognize? They recognize that a big portion of the problem is entitlement spending, and no political party wants to be blamed for being the person who ``fixed'' entitlement spending unless we do it together. So we have a great opportunity to, together, modify our mandatory spending programs and make significant savings. But having spent the last 9 years with my colleague from Delaware who is on the floor oversighting the Federal Government, I can tell my colleagues there are more things we can do other than that. So I thought I would spend a few minutes to go over a publication I put out a couple of summers ago, and it is called ``Back in Black.'' It is not perfect. I will be the first to admit it. I know we will not ever pass $9 trillion worth of savings over 10 years. But here is $9 trillion worth of options we could look at and take half of them and actually get on the road to health. What would getting on the road to health look like? It would be rising personal incomes, not declining personal incomes as we are seeing today. It would be rising median family incomes. It would be faster economic growth. Mr. President, am I out of time?

Mr. COBURN. My request was for 30 minutes when I came to the floor. Evidently, that wasn't made. Is the order of the day 10 minutes?

Mr. COBURN. I would ask for just a short period of additional time if my colleague from Delaware would allow it.

Mr. COBURN. I will spend some time tomorrow then going through what this is. But it is solving our problem in such a way that it doesn't kick the can down the road, which is what we are getting ready to do. What I would say in conclusion is by increasing the debt limit, we let the politicians off the hook because then they don't have to make the hard choices required for us to live within our means.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I would just inquire if there are other speakers after Senator Carper.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Chair. I truly thank my colleague. He is a great colleague to work with. People are always telling stories about how people don't work together. I can tell my colleagues that the Senator from Delaware Mr. Carper and I work together. He is my chairman, and I am the ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where most of this information came from, and he helped dig it up. What I say is we have an opportunity to do that. We have an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to come together, forge a compromise, make major changes that are necessary and absolutely required if we are going to have a secure future. I think we ought to look at it. So we put together a plan that has $3 trillion--that is $300 billion over 10 years--in discretionary spending; that is nonmandatory. It has $1 trillion in defense spending, which is about what we already have. Health care entitlements is $2.7 trillion, and we can go into the details of that. Tax Code simplification, $1 trillion to come back to the Federal Government. Interest payment savings of $1.3 trillion, and Social Security reform that says it will be healthy for the next 75 years. That comes to $9 trillion that our kids aren't going to have to pay back. That is $9 trillion in money we are not going to borrow. So even if we just took half of that--$4.5 trillion--and said we are going to get on the path to health, we are going to float that $3 trillion that is sitting in cash in Americans' bank accounts and give them the confidence back to invest it in our country, it would make a massive difference in our country because what is going on right now is a crisis of confidence. The American people don't trust Congress. I think we got a pretty low rating this week and deservedly so. The approval rating of President Obama is at his alltime low. So how do we fix that? We don't fix that individually. We don't fix that by pointing out what is wrong with the other person. We fix that by coming together and solving real problems that will give the American people confidence that we have their best interests at heart--not in the short term, as Alexander Tytler was talking about, but in the long term; that, in fact, we want to secure the future for our kids and grandkids. I think we ought to be about cutting up the credit card. I know I am in the minority in the Senate. I don't believe we should have another debt limit increase. I think the thing to force us to make these hard choices--because there is certainly not the political will to do it--is to put ourselves in the position where we are forced to make the hard choices. We are going to make them eventually. Everybody agrees with that. We are basically going to make these changes because there will come a time when we will not be able to borrow money no matter what interest rate we pay. So we are not talking about defaulting on our sovereign debt. We are not talking about not paying interest on our sovereign debt. We are talking about forcing ourselves into a position where we have to prioritize what we spend. What do the GAO reports tell us? In the last 3 years, the GAO has given Congress wonderful information which Congress has not acted on. What have they told us? They have told us we have 91 different health care workforce training programs--91. They have told us we have 679 renewable energy initiatives, none of which have a metric on them. They have told us we have 76 different drug abuse and prevention programs run by the Federal Government. They have told us the Department of Defense has 159 different contracting organizations, none of them being held accountable. They have told us that at Homeland Security, where Senator Carper and I chair and vice chair the committee, they have six different R&D facilities, three of which are doing exactly the same thing. We have 209 science, technology, engineering, and math programs--209. We have 200 different crime prevention programs. We have 160 homeowners and renters assistance programs. We have 94 private sector green building assistance programs, none with a metric, and the agencies don't even know how much money they are spending on them. They told us we have 82 teacher quality programs run by the Federal Government, half of which are not in the Department of Education. I will not continue, but my colleagues get my point. What have we done about those things? Nothing. Where is the oversight on them? There is none. So the whole idea for me--I am thinking about the future more than I am a political career--is I think we ought to be working on those things. I think the American public expects us to work on them. I will finish by saying we have been running the credit card for a long time. Do we, in fact, have the right or the privilege or the ability to ask for an extension and a raising of our debt when, in fact, we have not acted responsibly with our spending? Nobody else in the country gets their credit raised when they have not acted responsibly. They actually check your credit score. They know what kind of bills you are paying, whether you are getting further behind. So should we, in fact, tear up the credit card? Should we force some good old adult supervision on Congress, where we will actually be forced to make difficult decisions about priorities on how we spend America's money? When I say ``America's money,'' I mean the people out there working hard every day. They may not be the highest tax payers, but it is unconscionable to me that when we spend their money, we are wasting 15 to 20 percent of it all the time. So I think we ought to tear it up. The way we tear it up is we just tear it up. We tear the credit card up. We shred the credit card, and we say: You are going to live within your means. You are going to start making the hard choices. You are addicted to spending. You are addicted to not being responsible with the dollars you have. Congress needs to be in a 12-step program, and it should start with us. Mr. President, I thank my colleague the Senator from Delaware for his patience and his friendship. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I have listened very carefully to the two previous speakers on the floor, and I understand a lot of their frustration. We are where we are. I think we have two big problems. Actually, we have two major problems. One is our country is bankrupt. People don't like to hear that, but let me give the facts. The total unfunded liability of the United States of America is $126 trillion. If we add all the net worth of everybody in the country and all the assets of the Federal Government and all the assets of the States and combine them, we have $94 trillion worth of assets. We are already in the hole $30 trillion. That doesn't include the $17 trillion in debt we have. So I would like to correct a couple of things. One, the Senator from Michigan mentioned that we were downgraded because of the impasse in Congress. No, we were downgraded because Congress has failed to address the real problems of our debt and deficits. Go read their statements. It had nothing to do with action here. It had to do with the fact that we will not address the biggest problems in front of us. I ask unanimous consent to have some scissors on the floor because I wish to make a point in a minute.

Mr. COBURN. We have a credit card. I want you to think about your own personal life that if, in fact, you have a limit on your credit card and your financial situation worsens, you are still paying the payments, but you are not bringing down the principal on your credit cards and you are not earning significantly more money and you go to Citibank or American Express or Chase and say: I want you to raise my limit. The first thing they are going to ask you is: What have you done to improve your financial situation so we might consider raising your credit limit? That is what happens to every other American. We have this big talk about a debt limit. There is no debt limit in this country. We have increased it every time it has come up. There is no limit right now in this country on the debt we have. We hear all of these speeches about the risk. You know what the real risk is? The risk is continuing to do nothing to address the underlying problems of our country. The risk is continuing to add entitlement programs that have no way to pay for themselves and no reform of the entitlements we have today. That is the risk. How does that play out? We have heard all of these dire warnings of what will happen. What is going to happen to your children and grandchildren is what has happened over the last 15 years in this country. Do you realize that the average median income in real dollars now is at the same level it was in 1989? We are going backward right now. We are not addressing the real problems. Since I am a doctor, I will put it in medical terms. If, in fact, you treat symptoms of disease by raising the debt limit rather than treating the real disease, which is reforming the problems, reforming our spending, quit having 100 percent involvement by the Federal Government in everything Americans do, if you continue to borrow the money and treat that as the symptom, when there is a lack of oversight by Congress and lack of real work by the Members of this body to actually eliminate waste, which is over $250 billion a year as outlined by the Government Accountability Office, we ignore that for the political arena we have seen over the last couple of weeks in Washington. The real disease is not fixing the real problem. All of the politicians--Republicans and Democrats alike--want to give you a soft answer. Here is the answer: If you are $30 trillion in debt that you cannot pay for, what you have to do is have everybody have some pain, but we refuse to do that. There is no leadership in Congress to address the real disease we are facing. This is a government that has totally ignored the enumerated powers, totally ignored the 10th Amendment. We have a Justice Department that ignores the rule of law in terms of how they decide what they will enforce and what they will not enforce on a political basis rather than on what the law says. Those are the real problems in front of us. We have heard all the dire warnings about how we cannot raise the debt limit. What does default mean? They always say we can't raise the debt limit, but they will not talk about what default means. Default in the international financial community means you will not pay the interest and you will not pay back the principal on your bonds. That will never happen to us. It would require less than 6 percent of the cash we are taking in now to manage the debt we have right now--less than 6 percent. So only somebody who wants to hurt us further would play the political game if we ever got there. I am not saying we should get there, but if we got there, it would only be to play the political game to not pay Social Security or not to pay Medicare. We have more than enough money to do that. But what we have is a bloated, oversized, inefficient, ineffective Federal Government that nobody wants to hold accountable except the American people. So the question is, Who gets to decide? Congress obviously is not deciding very well. The President has not shown any leadership. Maybe it is time for the American people to decide. Maybe it is time to take some of the power away from Washington and restore it to where our Founders thought it should reside: by respecting the enumerated powers very specifically listed by our Founders with great commentary so it would not be distorted, but we have distorted it anyway. We need to reembrace the 10th Amendment which says: Everything that is not specifically enumerated in these powers is left to the power of the people and the States. We find ourselves with a credit card. This happens to be our debt. The number I chose to put on here was our debt this morning: $16,747,458,528.90. We need to cut this up just like we would do for an adolescent or young adult kid when you are responsible for their credit card. If they are not responsible, you cut up the credit card. You fix the real problem. You don't continue to ask for an increase in their propagate spending. Members of Congress who will not do oversight and get rid of $250 trillion of fraud, waste, and abuse every year should not be rewarded, but that is what we will end up doing because we don't have the courage, nor the leadership, to address the real problem in front of our country. The real problem is cowardice. The real problem is to not recognize where we are and not act on making decisive decisions. We heard how bad it will be if we don't raise the debt limit. I agree, it will be tough. There will be ramifications. How bad will it be if we do? What happens to your children? What happens to the declining family income in this country if we continue to let the Federal Government run uncontrolled and out of control? What happens if we continue to not hold Congress accountable for forcing efficiencies on the Federal Government. I know what could be done. There was an agreement called the Budget Control Act, and what it did is it forced sequester. Sequester is a stupid way to cut funding in the Federal Government, but it is far better than not cutting it at all. What has the sequester done? The sequester has forced agencies-- because Congress will not force them because we are afraid we might offend somebody--to start making choices. They are still making tons of bad choices. For instance, on the last day of the State Department's budget, they spent all the remaining money. They just spent $5 million for new crystalware for all of our embassies. Do we have $5 million? What is wrong with the crystalware we have now? They had to spend the money because they couldn't come back to Congress and say we saved $5 million. We are addressing the wrong problems. We are not holding people accountable. Consequently, maybe it is time for the States and the people to exert some common sense on us. I dare say there is not one Member of this body who would let their adolescent child run up a bill and then not eventually try to intercede on a credit card but just let them continue to run it up. Congress and the U.S. Government is that adolescent child. We are the adolescents and the people and the States are the grownups. We are at an impasse, and it does kind of sound like a kid. I am not going to talk to you. I don't like the way you did that. We had the majority leader the other day claim that the House was out of bounds because they got to pick and choose what we pay for. It just so happens that in the Constitution, that is what it says. The House of Representatives gets to pick and choose. All spending bills start in the House. They have to start in the House. They get to pick and choose. We don't have to accept it, but they get to pick and choose. So there is a lack of understanding on the basic concepts our Founders set up. We know the history and they know the history of republics. Republics always die. There isn't one that has survived as long as we have. They decline and die over the same thing: They get in trouble financially. We are in trouble financially. We are $30 trillion in the hole, plus another $17 trillion in debt. Wouldn't it be smart if we started addressing that problem before we blankly allow an increase in the level of the credit card? Actually, what we should do is cut this credit card up, which is what I am going to do because that is the way I vote. I think it is time we quit borrowing money--actually, I think I better tear it up--it is time we quit borrowing money for the future of our kids. It is time we quit mortgaging their future. It is time we start taking responsibility for the actions of the Federal Government rather than giving excuses on why we can't get together and address the real problems of this country. Congress fails to do the oversight. We just had a hearing yesterday where we showed one of the problems inside the Social Security and disability system. It was a bipartisan hearing, with lots of work done. There are real problems. The trust fund for those people who are truly disabled in this country will run out of money within 18 to 24 months. The Finance Committee hasn't offered any bill to fix it. The House Committee on Ways and Means hasn't offered any programs to fix it. Yet it is going to be bankrupt. What does that mean for somebody who is truly disabled? It means their check is going to get cut. Now tell me whether we would rather spend $5 million on new glassware for our embassies--crystal--or $5 million for someone who is truly disabled. That is where the real decisions need to be made, but we won't make them. If we talk about our national debt--when I came to the Senate in 2005 every American owed $24,000 on the national debt. It is now almost $53,000--in a little over 8\1/2\ years. So we now owe 2\1/2\ times what we used to owe. How did we get there? Why did we let that happen? Why don't we learn to live within our means? Is there always a political reason? Is there always a reason where we can game somebody and say they don't care if they don't want to do this? They certainly couldn't care about Americans if they want to spend money we don't have on things we don't need. If we look at the $125.8 trillion, that works out to $1.1 million per family. Think about that. That is our unfunded liabilities, and that is going to come due over the next 50 years. If a person has children or grandchildren, as I do, I really don't want their opportunities to be totally limited by this debt load we have. So we have all of this politicking and posturing and political expediency going on in both bodies, and nobody is talking about what the real problem is. The real problem is we are spending a lot of money we don't have, and we are borrowing from other countries for things we don't absolutely need. The second part of the problem is we have programs that are designed to benefit people which are riddled with waste and fraud--$100 million in Medicaid and Medicare. Nobody really questions that number. It has been authenticated by four separate studies outside of the government, and inside the government we say it is $80 million. Why would we continue to let a system run that has that kind of fraud in it? We are getting ready to crank up the Affordable Care Act--we are cranking it up--and we have now said we are not going to authenticate somebody's reliability as to their income? What do we think the fraud rate on that is going to be? We know what the fraud rate is with the child tax credit. It is well over 20 percent. In the earned-income tax credit, we know it is well over 20 percent. So $1 out of every $5 we pay out is to people who don't deserve it. We are going to see the same thing with this. Why would we do that when we have this kind of problem in front of us? In the last 2 years our debt limit has increased twice what our economy has grown. For every dollar of new debt we take in, we are getting about 2 or 3 cents of economic growth out of that new debt. It used to be that when America borrowed a dollar, it would get 35 or 40 cents of growth out of that debt. So in the last 2 years we have increased the debt limit $2.405 trillion and the economy has grown less than $1.2 trillion over the last 2 years. We are adding $26,000 to our national debt every second--every second. There is no question that our economy is growing some--some-- far less than marginal. Why isn't it growing? It isn't growing because the American people don't have confidence in the future. How do we restore confidence in the future? We restore confidence by modeling a behavior that says we are going to act responsibly with our future, which means we are going to make the hard choices, even if it costs us our political career, to solve the problems in Washington so the generations that follow us will not suffer a lower standard of living but also so we can instill confidence in the American economy. There is $3 trillion in cash sitting in this country right now--not Federal Government money, private money--$3 trillion. Why is it sitting there and why is it not being invested? That $3 trillion would create 700,000 or 800,000 new jobs a year--that $3 trillion. Why is it not being used? Because people don't have confidence in the future. I want to tell a story about Virgil Jurgensmeyer. Virgil grows mushrooms and other vegetables in a business. This past August he told me he was thinking about expanding his business, a $5 million expansion, adding a couple hundred jobs in a very small town in northeastern Oklahoma. He was afraid to do that. He has plenty of business. He is buying $50,000 to $100,000 of product from his competitor every month because he can't produce it. He says: I don't think it is worth the risk right now given where our country is. That is happening all across this country. There is no confidence. It brings me to another point I wish to speak about. We are not just bankrupt as a nation. Our leadership is bankrupt. Leadership is about creating a vision and bringing people together, not creating controversy and dividing people. It is not about pointing out the worst flaws of somebody. It is about reinforcing the best flaws. It is about selling the confidence that we can do this together. Do my colleagues realize we can do this together as a nation? There isn't a problem in front of us that we can't solve if we choose to solve it. Do my colleagues remember the debt commission? I was a member of that committee. We voted on some big plans that would have solved a lot of the problems we are facing this very week in this body. I didn't like every bit of it, but it was a chance to try to solve--bring together both sides and solve it. Not once was it taken up on the floor by the majority leader. The President never embraced it--his own commission, his own fiscal commission--never embraced it. It was the greatest failure of leadership I have ever seen. We had conservatives and liberals agreeing that here is a plan we can work out. Yet it was thrown away. With the politics we see in Washington today, the only time we are going to solve these big problems is when both political parties take the pain evenly. Nobody wants to do that. Everybody wants to win. It is all short-term political expediency. In the words of my friend Erskine Bowles, where we are today is the most easily predictable problem we ever would have seen. All we have to do is look at the path of the numbers. It is true that our deficits are down a little bit, that we raised $70 billion in taxes last year, and the economy is growing. It just shows what potential there is if we would put the economy on steam, where we had confidence. We could have had $500 billion, $600 billion a year in revenues to the Federal Government. But we won't do that. Today we find ourselves in worse condition than we were in 2011, and in 2011 we were told we can't do big things. We have to wait. So we had a debt limit increase. So tell me how we have gotten better since then. We have unfunded liabilities that are growing faster every year. Our true debt-to-GDP ratio is now over 100 percent, counting all debt, internal and external. We have not done it. Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers right now are furloughed because Congress--not Republicans, Congress--has failed to do its job, has failed to compromise, has failed to reach a meaningful agreement that gives both groups something they can claim they actually worked on the real disease. Madam President, how much time have I consumed?

Mr. COBURN. I will finish. Would the Chair let me know in about 28 minutes?