Bob Corker

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the Tester-Corker amendment that, hopefully, will be before us shortly. I have to say I have just witnessed a great discussion of populism, and that is, if an institution is making some money, let's take it from them and give it to others in the name of fairness. I think everybody knows there certainly are tremendous numbers of small institutions across America that are very concerned about the Durbin amendment and its effects--and a number of small retailers. And there is no question, let's face it, the big boxes, my friends-- Walmart, Home Depot, and Target--have funded this effort, as was mentioned, on K Street with the lobbyists. There is no question a lot of the larger financial institutions have funded the effort on the other side. There is no question. But the people who Senator Tester and myself and others listen to are those folks who come in from our home States--the small community banks and credit unions around our country that are very concerned. Let me talk about a couple of things. No. 1, the Senator from Illinois talked about timing. Well, we have been trying to find some vehicle to attach this amendment to for some time. The fact is, the Senate hasn't done any business this year. We come in from time to time and vote on a noncontroversial judge, but we have been trying to find some vehicle to attach this to, and we have been trying to do that for months. Secondly, the Federal Reserve, which has been asked to put forth this rule, is the one saying what they have been asked to do is not appropriate. They have testified publicly saying the Durbin amendment is inappropriate. Let me describe what the Senator said about reasonable and proportioned. That means if you went out and built a debit system--you invested in all the technology, the computers, the marketing, the fraud prevention, all the things that went into that--the Fed can now look at setting the price. After you have set all that up, and you are processing millions of transactions a year, if you send one more transaction across the wire, what does that cost you--after you have invested? That is what he is saying about reasonable and proportional. There is no way any business in America could possibly operate under that scenario. Again, retailer after retailer after retailer has been in my office and said: We know the criteria laid out by the Durbin amendment is absolutely inappropriate. We couldn't function with that criteria. We don't know of any other way of solving this problem, and we hate to have the Fed involved in price setting. So all of us set out to try--many of us set out to try--to solve that problem. What we have come up with is, in fact, a compromise, and this is what it says: We agree the debit card industry should be regulated. We agree retailers are having difficulty in negotiating with Visa and others. Let's get the Fed to set the prices based on the cost of the transaction, which do include, I hate to say, some fixed costs in technology and other kinds of things, such as fraud prevention. The Fed has asked us to do that. It is not as if we are usurping the Fed coming in and making a rule. They have testified publicly the way the Durbin amendment is written it is going to be terrible for community banks and rural banks. I think we all know the Senator from Illinois likes to use these larger institutions, but all of us know the big guys just get bigger-- they just get bigger--when we do these kind of things, and that creates hardships for the smaller institutions. The fact that some two-tiered system was set up and won't work--I mean the FDIC has come in and said, look, you cannot make it work where the small banks and small credit unions are held harmless. It won't work. The OCC has come in and said it won't work. Market forces will take over. This will not work. They are going to get crushed. The State examiners, the State bank commissioners have come in and said the Durbin amendment, as written, is going to be disastrous for consumers. It is going to be disastrous for the smaller institutions with which we all deal. I am not trying to carry water for either side. I am trying to come up with a solution that is fair. I have worked with Senator Tester, Senator Crapo, Senator Hagan, Senator Bennet, Senator Brown, and numbers of other people, trying to come up with language that hits that sweet spot. The Senator from Illinois is right, we have probably never developed a perfect law. But I think we have a responsibility, when we know something is about to happen that won't work, that is going to be devastating, to come up with something that meets the test of trying to be fair to both sides. And I think that is what this amendment does. The Senator talked about all kinds of things being added. The banks can't just add it. The Fed is regulating them. The Fed will decide what is reasonable and proportioned. The Fed will decide, but they will use all of the costs that it takes to actually do those operations and the cost, which the Durbin amendment did not do. I think this amendment meets the test. I know there are numbers of people who voted for the Durbin amendment in the past who have now coauthored this. They coauthored this because they realize the Durbin amendment was far too narrow; that the Durbin amendment didn't take into account anything but, again, the cost of adding one transaction on top of an infrastructure that had already been built. There is no business that could operate that way. The Presiding Officer used to be part of a weekly broadcast. If all that was charged was the incremental cost of that going out and being broadcast to other television stations around the country, and that was the only cost he could get, there is no way our Presiding Officer would have been known to America the way he is now known because there is no way that operation could have succeeded. This is a very commonsense solution. People who supported the Durbin amendment during this debate--even though there was never a hearing held; and it was a pretty major issue to never have a hearing in the Banking Committee--and it was passed at a time when many people around this country were rightfully upset with some of the larger players in our financial system--have now woken up and they realize this is a bad piece of policy. But if we tweak it, then the retailers still end up with a regulated market where they are not overcharged. The institutions are providing this service. By the way, it is a service or people wouldn't use it. Retailers like getting their money instantly and people like being able to carry around plastic to pay their bills instead of cash. But what this amendment does is puts it in the middle of the road where it is fair to the retailers, fair to the institutions involved, and most of all it protects consumers around this country. I think we have seen the letters that were sent out as to what is going to happen to consumers if the Durbin amendment goes into effect as it is now laid out. The Senator does a great job, I know, in taking a few of these institutions that no doubt behaved badly, and causing the whole thrust of this to be about poking a stick in the eye of these institutions that have paid bonuses and made bad decisions. But the fact is, this is a bad policy as it exists. The Tester-Corker amendment, with many other cosponsors, is something to bring that into the middle of the road. So I ask each Senator to please spend 10 minutes with your staffers and understand what the third round of revisions does. Look at this commonsense solution that has been put forth by the best efforts of this body, with people working together to get here, and hopefully we can end up with a piece of legislation of which we are all proud. We can continue to have a financial system that is strong and that includes the many small players we depend upon in small communities across this country, and we can also continue to have a viable retail industry that counts on the additional sales they get from having access to these types of transactions. With that, Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I rise today to speak about something that is affectionately known as the Durbin amendment. During the Dodd- Frank debate that occurred about a year ago and upon its passage, there was an amendment brought to the floor called the Durbin amendment which dealt with debit cards and regulating debit cards. This was an amendment that never had been debated. There had never been a hearing on this amendment. In the height of people being very concerned about the large financial institutions in our country, this was an amendment that passed. I voted against it. I thought it was bad for us as a country to allow the Federal Reserve to begin setting prices for specific industries as the Durbin amendment called for. In any event, the Durbin amendment became law. I know numbers of people in this body have been contacted since that time about the effects of the Durbin amendment. What the Durbin amendment did was tell the Federal Reserve to set prices on debit cards based on incremental cost. Let me say that one more time: based on incremental cost. In other words, when a business does business, there are fixed costs and there are incremental costs. It would be like saying to a pizza company that sells pizzas across the counter that the only thing they can charge for is the dough. They couldn't charge for anything else that went into the cost of the product that was being sold. I am obviously opposed to price setting. I realize we don't have 60 votes in this body to do away with price fixing in general as it relates to debit cards. I also realize a lot of people in this body believe there is a problem, if you will, with an almost monopolistic- type atmosphere as it relates to debit cards in general. So what I have tried to do is seek a better solution than the one that has come forth. Senator Tester and I have worked together. We have made actually three revisions to an amendment that I hope we will be voting on over the course of the next 48 hours, maybe 72 hours. It has been crafted in a way to bring people together. What it does, the essence of it, is that it directs the Fed to--instead of setting prices on debit cards based solely on the incremental cost of the transaction--consider all costs, both fixed and incremental, which is something that anybody in this body who happened to be in business certainly would want to be the case. I know there has been a lot of populism in this body and a lot of people have tried to rail, if you will, against financial institutions. I know a lot of people have empathy with retailers who find themselves in a situation where it is difficult for them to negotiate prices as it relates to debit cards. What this would do, though, is still leave debit cards as a regulated entity. It is not the solution I would ultimately like to see, but I think it is a solution we may be able to agree to in this body. It would leave that regulated, but it would direct the Fed to consider all costs, fixed and incremental. Again, it is a very commonsense measure. I know there have been lots of discussions about a solution to this Durbin amendment. I know it is an issue most people in this body wish to see go away. A lot of people feel as though they are being pitted, if you will, between the financial industry and retailers. I think the solution Senator Tester and I, working with Senator Crapo and others, have come up with is one that meets the commonsense test. It brings people together around a policy of solving a problem that was created, again, without a lot of discussion on the Senate floor, and certainly no hearings. So I ask Members of the body to please talk with their staffs about the most recent changes that have been put forth in this amendment. This is not something that is trying to stave off or keep the effects of the Durbin amendment from taking place, but what it does is put a more fair structure in place where the Fed can actually look at all costs relating to a transaction. Again, think about it. If someone is selling pizzas in a pizza restaurant or a retail establishment and they were told the only thing they could do is charge for the dough that went into the pizza and nothing else--none of the rent, none of the other costs that go with operating the facility--obviously they wouldn't be in business very long. I think all of us want to see the financial industry continue to be innovative. I think all of us see a day when we are going to be able to basically pay bills with our electronic devices, and continued innovation is going to take place, which causes our economy to expand. I believe this amendment, which has been shaped by a number of people in this body, meets the commonsense test. I think it provides a good solution for those people who actually voted for the Durbin amendment on the floor and realized afterwards what was happening, which was putting in place a price structure that is not sustainable for debit cards and over time, no question--over a very short amount of time-- quickly--is going to be very adversely affecting consumers all across this country. I thank the Chair for the time. The Tester-Corker amendment is designed to create a more productive solution than was offered under the Dodd-Frank debate and the Durbin amendment. I hope all Members of this body will look at this seriously. I know everybody has been contacted. I understand this is a very contentious issue. This solution is being put forth to solve a problem, not to take one side or another. It leaves the debit card industry as a regulated industry, but allows the Fed, as it should, to take into account both fixed and incremental costs as they look at what the pricing structure ought to be. In addition, I know a lot of people have been concerned about what is going to happen with small financial institutions. Obviously, their costs for debit transactions are much higher than the larger institutions in this country. People have been concerned about the impact on them. What this would also do is give the Fed the ability every 2 years to see if the policy they put in place is adversely affecting the smaller and rural banks or the community banks or smaller credit unions, to make sure that if they are being affected adversely, then they can recommend--not prescribe but recommend--some legislative fixes for that. Again, I hope Members of this body will see this as a reasonable solution. I urge all of my colleagues to contact me personally or Senator Tester personally to talk this through if they have any questions, and hopefully we can bring to an end this contentious debate over an amendment that was passed on the Senate floor without any hearings, and which I think all of us know is going to create a lot of unintended consequences for people all across this country. With that, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Thank you very much, Madam President.

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, it is my understanding I have 10 minutes; is that correct?

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. I was on the floor last week as we talked about the continuing resolution. I said that the most frustrating thing to me coming to this body--I have been here now 4 years--is we never know where we are going. It is an amazing thing to have 535 people serving in Congress, and there is no roadmap whatsoever as to what we are going to do. I think it is pretty evident, by the time we have this debt ceiling vote--that I think most people perceive to be the real line of demarcation--I think it is evident we are not going to have a budget passed again even for that. So I have been working with the Senator and the other Senators on the floor and people on the other side of the aisle. I think one thing I can say is that, on this issue and candidly on every issue, I have no desire to message. I want to solve this problem as you do. I know you have been a leader on this fiscal issue, as have Senators Isakson and Barrasso and others. I want us to solve this problem. I think if you have not even had a hearing yet on the budget, it is likely that we will not have a budget this year, which is pretty amazing. So what I am trying to do is put in place something called the CAP Act. I have worked with a number of Senators on that, where what we will do is take where we are spending, our national spending relative to our economy, and we will take it down to the 40-year average of 20.6 percent in the post-entitlement period. If we do that, we can save our country 7.6 versus existing policy over the next decade, which goes a long way toward solving the problem. It totally reverses the amount of indebtedness we are accumulating as a country. So I am working--since I do not think we are going to have a budget, which is pretty amazing--working on another route so we actually know where we are going. Generally to the American people, they have to watch us and think, what in the world is going on in this dysfunctional body. We have got $3.7 trillion being spent, $2.2 trillion coming in. There is no plan whatsoever to deal with that. We are going to have to create other vehicles to deal with that. So I am generally working with people on both sides of the aisle to come to that end. I thank the Senator for his efforts on the budget, but I will say to you and say to the American people, as I have said many times, I have never been in a place that is more dysfunctional. No matter what the American people think about the way we handle their money, I promise you it is even worse. And I do hope--I am glad the President, by the way, is going to address this issue at 1:35 today. I know that Paul Ryan has put forth a budget which is a roadmap, and I appreciate so much his effort. But as a country, I think we all know we have to deal with this issue in a serious way. Spending is at all-time highs. We have not been here since 1945, on Federal spending relative to our economy. I know others want to speak and have other appointments and I will stop. I thank the Senator for his leadership. This is the No. 1 issue for Americans. It threatens our national security. It threatens our economic security. And between now and the time we vote on the debt ceiling increase, it is my hope we will solve this problem and move into a different direction. Thank you.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, if the Chair will please let me know when there is a minute left, I would appreciate it. I rise to speak about the current issue. I am always glad to speak after my friend from Virginia, whom I have enjoyed working with on so many issues. I appreciate the work he is doing now to try to deal with the bigger issue we have to deal with. I will not waste a lot of emotion or say things that might--look, we are involved in a powder puff right now. We are dealing with a small amount of dollars. We add $4.1 billion a day to the deficit--$4.1 billion a day. So probably, with the negotiations we are involved in today, maybe we are separated by 1 day of deficit spending. I know there has been a lot of talk about what might happen with the government shutdown. I don't believe that is going to happen. I believe that when we come in on Monday morning, an agreement will have been reached. I am not going to waste time on the Senate floor talking about all the bad that might happen in this country because I cannot believe that, over the small ball we are dealing with right now, we are going to have a government shutdown. I think we will resolve this over the next few hours or maybe sometime over the weekend possibly. Maybe there will be a minor disruption this weekend. I have faith that this will be worked out. What I want to spend time talking about is the fact that we do have a crisis that is looming. I don't think it is this weekend, and I don't think it is over a continuing resolution that goes for the rest of this year. I hope we are actually able to move beyond majoring in the minors, which is what is happening now, to majoring in the majors; that is, talking about trillions of dollars in less expenditures, not billions of dollars. Each day that goes by, with the $1.5 trillion deficit we have, we are spending $4.1 billion that we don't have. I am convinced that negotiators on both sides of the aisle very soon will work out their differences, and when Monday morning rolls along, the government will be operating. To me, the big picture is this: We have a debt ceiling vote that I think will be coming up sometime between Memorial Day weekend and the July Fourth recess. To me, that is the opportunity we have to really do something great for our country. I know Senator Warner alluded to the Gang of 6. I know there are a number of people on both sides of the aisle who are working toward a long-term solution. Claire McCaskill and I have offered the Cap Act, which is gaining momentum and has a number of Republican cosponsors. We picked up another Democratic cosponsor yesterday. It is very simple. It would keep us from doing the kind of thing that is happening right now. One of the things that is most fascinating is today--and I know you just came from State government, Mr. President--today we are dealing with last year's business. The thing that is most frustrating for those of us who come from the business world or who come from State government or who have been a mayor, in this body, we never know where we are going. We are always debating issues that should have been resolved a long time ago. What we need to do in this body for this country is to figure out where we are going over the longer haul and then both sides of the aisle need to sit down together and figure out how we get there. We need to somehow create a fiscal straitjacket where we know--we know we are at an all-time high with spending today relative to our economic output. We had the same thing back in 1945 and, candidly, even in the eighties. We got up to levels that were higher than they should have been. We have the ability to get back to the norm. We know that. We have to make some tough decisions to do that. The CAP Act is a 10-page bill. Basically, it says we will go from where we are today in spending over a 10-year period to our 40-year historical average of 20.6 percent of our GDP. There are a lot of people in this body--and I am not going to point fingers--who use the word ``extreme.'' There is nothing extreme about this. It is common sense. It puts everything on the table. What is fascinating to me is that today we are debating minor amounts of cuts in discretionary spending. Everybody in this body knows that if we cut all discretionary spending--discretionary spending, by the way, includes defense--if we cut all discretionary spending, including defense, we still could not balance our budget. What we need to do as a body is look at everything--all the entitlements, all the mandatory spending, and we need to cap Federal spending relative to our economy and take it down to the 40-year average over the next 10 years. I think everybody in this body is aware that would save our country per projected policy $7.6 trillion. By the way, I think it would force us as a body to have the discipline to take up many of the issues on which the gang of six is working. We already had Paul Ryan from the House show us that it can be done, and there are people who criticize that, and that is fine. There are multiple ways of solving this problem. The problem we have is politicians in Washington do everything they can to avoid making a tough decision. Back home, what we want to do is get the pain out of the way. Let's make the tough decisions so we can have blue sky in front of us. Here everybody wants to wait until the next election and hopefully move beyond their own election to deal with the tough issues with which we have to deal. That is just the way this body is. It is amazing, here we are in April dealing with last year's business. Again, both sides are involved in that. I am not pointing fingers. But if we had a plan that we adopted, a statutory bill where we agreed we were going to go from where we are to where we need to be, our 40-year average--not extreme, over a 10-year period--it would force us to sit down and in a bipartisan way look at the big picture. Everybody knows cutting discretionary spending is small ball. Let me say, that is powder puff. It is powder puff. We have our Nation at stake, and we are sitting here yelling at each other, saying things we should not be saying to each other that take us nowhere over powder puff. It takes us no place. I feel as though here our Nation is getting ready to have a fiscal crisis at some point--in a year or two--and we are all here trying to score points with each other over something that at the end of the day and in the scope of things are important, certainly, but there is no question that today we are majoring in the minors. I hope we can get by this and move beyond this without creating even further divides between the two sides and people saying silly things about who is to blame and who is not to blame. It is silly. It is beneath us. The American people have to be watching us with embarrassment. I am embarrassed. This is the most dysfunctional place I have ever been a part of in my life because, again, we never know where we are going. It is a privilege to serve, do not get me wrong. It is a privilege to represent and get involved, but it is dysfunctional because we major in the minors. We can cut all the discretionary spending and not get where we need to go. Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, a State very different from Tennessee, agreed that we have to deal with mandatory spending. We have to deal with entitlements. We want those programs to exist for our seniors down the road. We want them to exist for these pages, and we know on today's course, it cannot happen. We know without dealing with them, we cannot solve our country's fiscal issues. Let's move beyond this episode that is beneath us, that is silly, that is small ball, that is powder puff. Let's move beyond this over this weekend and reach an agreement. The cuts we are making are the biggest cuts that have been made, and I applaud people on both sides of the aisle who are trying to get us there. No doubt it will pass through the budget for a decade. It could be $300 billion or $400 billion in savings. That is great. But we all know we need to be dealing with $7 trillion or $8 trillion over that decade. If we do not do that, we know that our country's fiscal future is in great jeopardy, and we lose in that the ability to display American exceptionalism that all of us want to see us do. I hope we will stop talking about Republicans and Democrats. Candidly, I hope we will talk about the future or something else because this debate is almost beneath us. I see my time is up. I yield the floor to my great friend from Delaware who has been a sensible advocate on so many issues. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I understand I have up to 10 minutes.

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, if the Chair will let me know when I get within 1\1/2\ minutes of my time.

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I rise today to speak also on the matter of our country's unlimited spending, the fact that this last month, February--I don't know if many people know this; it was just published--we had the largest budget deficit for 1 month in recorded history of $223 billion. Those numbers were just released. I know we have some measures we are going to vote on this week regarding reductions in spending. I realize the Republican version likely will not pass and the Democratic version likely will not pass. Hopefully, we will then sit down and work out something to allow government to be open with, hopefully, a long-term CR. I know we are having a lot of difficulties in our departments as they try to manage their budgets not knowing what we are going to do. As the Senator from Nebraska mentioned, $61 billion is a drop in the bucket as it relates to trying to solve our country's problems. That is why I have brought forth something called the CAP Act. I have tried to do it and I have done it in a bipartisan way. There are numbers of people in this body who have supported the CAP Act. I think the Chair, a former Governor, and other people here--and Tennessee families who have to live within a budget--realize that around here we have absolutely no construct. We do not know where we are going in the future. We never have a plan. What we do is what we are doing this week: we fight and debate over issues that take us almost nowhere. Yet we do not have a long-term plan as it relates to spending. I think everybody in this body knows when we have $3.7 trillion in spending this year, and we have $2.2 trillion in income, trying to solve this problem by only dealing with discretionary spending makes no sense. If we did away with all discretionary spending during this year--all discretionary spending including defense--we still would not have a balanced budget. All of us know it is the mandatory programs that have to be added into this. What we need to do is create a comprehensive budget, a straitjacket for Congress. I, along with others, have offered something called the CAP Act. It takes us from where we are today over a 10-year glidepath to the historical average of spending in this country relative to our country's output. That is about 20.6 percent of our country's economic output. I have tried to not message. This is not a messaging bill. It is a bill that I truly hope to pass. I have been meeting with numbers of my Republican colleagues and Democratic colleagues. I have numbers of meetings set up over the course of the next several weeks to try to build consensus. Here is the way it would work. We would pass it as a statutory bill. What it would do is take us from where we are today--and that is a little over 24.5 percent of spending relative to our country's output, which is way out of line. By the way, I am not here to cast blame. I think both parties can recognize some of the contributions they have made to getting us where we are as a country. But the fact is, we know we cannot continue on today's path. We know that. We have to not just look at discretionary spending. I have heard so many of my colleagues talk on the Senate floor about trying to solve this entire problem with only a very small percentage of the budget. That makes no sense. Everybody understands that. I know everyone here wants to ensure that the entitlement programs seniors benefit from are here for the long term. We want other seniors to benefit from them. Yet we know the way these programs are set up, they are not sustainable. There is not a person here, I don't think--there may be a few, but I think most of it would be rhetoric, though I don't want to cast judgment--who doesn't know these programs cannot continue as they are. So this bill would require us to start today, working ourselves down to 20.6 percent of our GDP. Again, that has been the historical average for 40 years. This isn't something to try to overreach. For what it is worth, what that would mean to our country is that over the course of the next 10 years--as opposed to the course we are on now, the alternative CBO scenario and what they deem most likely to occur without our action--we would spend $7.63 trillion less than we are now spending. This is how it would work. There is a formula in here. This is a 10-page bill. There are not a lot of ``whereases'' in this bill. It is just a business document, something the former Governor from New Hampshire might be accustomed to looking at. It is a business document that puts in place statutory limits that are formula driven to take us from here to there. If we don't meet those requirements, then after 45 days--and there are targets each year of spending relative to our economy. By the way, this joins everybody at the hip in wanting our economy to grow because if our economy grows rapidly, those targets are much easier to hit. But if Congress doesn't act, if we don't have the courage to act, then there would be automatic sequestration on a pro rata basis, depending on the enumerator, what the size of that particular budget appropriation is relative to the overall budget. So on a pro rata basis, we would have sequestration that would take out those monies. Now, none of us wants to see that happen, so that would force us to actually do what any Congress acting responsibly needs to do; that is, to actually work together each year to meet those requirements. I have heard so many people recently, especially on the other side of the aisle, talking about focusing on discretionary spending only, basically cutting out some of those things that might make our country stronger. There are some things certainly in all of these bills, as the Senator from Nebraska was mentioning, where I might have differing priorities. But the fact is, when we try to do it all only on discretionary spending, we are not only not solving the problem but it prevents us from actually looking at some aspects that might otherwise make our economy grow. Again, this bill, the CAP Act--with Claire McCaskill signed on as an original cosponsor with me, and others are looking at it--would cause us to look at everything. So, again, first, a comprehensive look at spending relative to our economy at historical levels. Everything is on the table and on budget. Sequestration would be in place, and it would take a two-thirds vote of Congress to override these spending limits. Again, I did not come here to message. I didn't come to move the bar beyond what the other side might be doing just to make a name for myself or create publicity. I came to solve our country's problems. I look at these young people in front of me, and I don't think they have any idea what our irresponsibility is doing to them. We talk about future generations, but I think all of us know we are actually at a point now where we have been so irresponsible that this is not just going to affect future generations, it is getting ready to affect us. There is a lot of turmoil in this world today. For that reason, the United States has been perceived as a safe haven. Our interest rates continue to be low because of the rest of the world's turmoil. The fact is, if and when--and we hope that when is soon--everything settles down, as people begin to again look closely at where we are as a country, and if we continue to not act responsibly and show the world we have the ability to at least put in place this framework that causes us to work together and get to the place we all know we need to get, then I fear interest rates, over time, are going to run from us, and that interest relative to our debt payments is going to continually consume more. In closing, Madam President--and I appreciate the time--I have gone around the State of Tennessee and conducted 43 townhall meetings talking about this type of approach. I know numbers of Members on the other side of the aisle have talked about what they believe is an appropriate level of spending relative to our country's economy. I believe this bill is not out of line. I know this bill is at least appropriate. There are a number of people who think it should be lower, but this is something that would cause us to first agree on where we are going. It is difficult for a body such as this, with 100 Senators and 435 House Members on the other side, to agree on little matters when we don't have any idea where it is we are trying to go. This would create a target for us. It would create a straitjacket for Congress. It would cause us to prioritize. So I am going to continue talking about this until, hopefully, we pass it and actually have a process that causes us to work together in a constructive way. With that, I yield the floor, and I thank the Chair for the time.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, as in morning business, I rise to speak on another topic that is actually related to us being competitive. I think everybody understands that we had another bipartisan event that just occurred recently where we kept government funded, if you will, for another couple of weeks beyond the deadline that was coming in the next day or so. I applaud the efforts of both sides to work together to make that happen. Speaking of competitiveness, it is very difficult for a government to function having short-term CRs every 2 weeks. What I urge, while this work is going on on the floor, is that the House and the Senate, both sides of the aisle, work toward a longer term CR. I know we are working on reductions in spending which have to take place to keep our government in check and keep our country in the place it needs to be, but the work we need to do to fund the government for the rest of the year is actually the easy work we are going to be facing as it relates to spending. Today, I saw where Vice President Biden has been asked by the White House--the President--to take the lead on this issue. I take that as a good sign. I saw Secretary Geithner today. He is planning on engaging on this issue. I urge that we do the work we need to do. We all know there are going to be painful and tough decisions coming. A lot of people have been arguing and debating against spending cuts and are talking about the havoc it is going to create for government. I imagine that Secretary Gates over at the Defense Department is trying to deal with overseas operations and trying to deal with investing in the future, and other agencies of government would much rather see what these cuts are going to be and plan accordingly versus working on a 2-week CR. I am just urging that we do the tough work we have to do. All of us know it will be painful. All of us know we are going to have to prioritize. All of us know there will be a number of constituencies around the country that will be less than happy. But for the good of our country, let's go ahead and together, Democrats and Republicans, Independents and the administration, work together toward a solution. I know the House sent over a continuing resolution bill that takes us through the rest of the year. We have not yet seen what the Democratic majority in the Senate might offer. It is my hope that something is being worked on. I think the American people in the functioning of this government--those who cause this government to function--need to know what those cuts will be, where we are going. Speaking on that note--and I will close with this--one of the things most frustrating to me as a Senator who came from the world of business is that we never know where we are going. We debate the current issues. We never plan for the future. I hope that as a part of all we are doing this spring, this incredible opportunity we have in this body to deal with the issue of spending, with the issue of deficits, it is my hope that as a part of this, what we will do is pass a global cap on spending, a comprehensive cap that takes us from where we are today into a place that has been a 40-year historic average. Senator McCaskill and many others have joined me in something called the CAP Act. It is the type of responsible legislation we need to pass to get our country back where it needs to be. We know we have a huge spending problem today. There are many explanations for that. But as a country, to make ourselves competitive, as the Senator from Vermont talked about and I am sure the Senator from Iowa is getting ready to talk about, we also need to make sure we keep our fiscal house in order. Let's deal with these tough issues and solve this problem for this year and move on to the longer term issues. I thank the Chair, and I thank the Senator from Vermont. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORKER. I will speak briefly. I apologize. The chairman has done such a wonderful job working this bill through. I came down earlier, but I wasn't able to speak.

Mr. CORKER

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

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I had the opportunity to speak with you in the last several moments, and you had a couple questions about the CAP Act that I was just discussing on the floor. The Presiding Officer had some great questions about what it takes to overcome the CAP Act, in the event we were able to pass it. It is just a 10-page bill. It is very eloquent. It doesn't have a lot of ``whereases.'' It is just a business document that takes us from where we are to where we need to be. But, in essence, to override it, it would take a two-thirds vote. It would take two-thirds of the House and the Senate to actually override or get out of the straitjacket, if you will. There were previous bills, such as Gramm-Rudman and other types of bills that tried to keep Washington fiscally focused, and those bills required 60 votes. So this would be a higher threshold. So, yes, if there was some type of national emergency and we needed to move beyond this straitjacket for 1 year or 6 months or something like that, a two-thirds vote could do that. I mean, 67 votes is a pretty tough threshold, and hopefully it is the kind of threshold necessary to keep the kind of discipline in place that we need. So it is a 10-page bill. Again, it is very eloquent. I think it lays out a solution for us that hopefully will be a part of anything we do over the next several months. I understand, after talking with the Presiding Officer over the last several days, while traveling to these various countries, that he, along with many of our other colleagues--I know I did myself--came here to solve problems, not to message. In a body such as this, it is tough to solve these kinds of problems, but the only way to do it is to offer a pragmatic solution. I know there are some people who are interested, sometimes, in messaging. I have tried to offer something that I think will take us from a place that is very much out of line in spending to a place that is more appropriate. I might also say I thought the President's deficit reduction commission had some very good points as it relates to tax reform. I think all of us are aware of the $1.2 trillion in tax expenditures that exist. I was doing an event over the last several days, and a gentleman raised his hand and asked me: What do you mean by tax expenditures? Isn't the money ours until we give it to the Federal Government? Why would you call it a tax expenditure? I think people realize in our Tax Code there are all kinds of exclusions and subsidies and favored companies and favored this and favored that. If we did away with all of those, there would be $1.2 trillion we could use to lower everybody's rate, and we could make our Tax Code much more simple. The deficit reduction commission says we could take our corporate rates from where they are down to a level of about 26 percent--somewhere between 23 and 29 percent--and lower everybody's rates individually. I think most Americans, instead of filling out all these forms to see if they benefit from these various subsidies and credits, would much rather know that everybody is on the same playing field; that some favored company is not in a situation where they are more favored than another; that everybody is on the same basis. I think there has been some good work done there. I hope we are able to take votes on that over the next several months. But there is a very elegant, pragmatic solution that has been offered that would go hand in hand with these types of measures and would cause us, over the next 10 years, to exercise the kind of fiscal discipline this country needs to confront what I think threatens our national security, certainly our economic security, even more than the things we saw on the ground in the Middle East last week. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about our dilemma in the Federal Government. The American people are watching as we try to deal with our spending issues. I know there is a big debate over the 2- week spending issue, an issue where we are trying to cut $4 billion. Hopefully, some resolve will come to that. What the American people are seeing is that unless there is some type of gun to our heads or some type of urgent situation in front of us, we do not have the ability in this body to deal with spending issues in a disciplined or courageous way. Everybody understands that, and they understand that the only way we are looking at whatever spending cuts will take place--I know right now there are discussions over what they might be, but the only reason this issue is being addressed is that we have this deadline of government funding ending in the next week. I know the Presiding Officer is someone who served as a county executive and had to balance budgets each year and had to figure out a way to live within their means. I know that upon arriving here a few months ago, he had to be totally aghast at the fact that we are taking in $2.2 trillion this year and spending $3.7 trillion this year. If we put all the discretionary spending we have, if we took every bit of nonmandatory spending or discretionary spending off the table, we still would not have a balanced budget. Everybody in this country knows that where we are is totally out of line. We are spending a little over 24 percent of our country's economic output today. Over the last 40 years, we have spent about 20.6 percent of our country's GDP. I, along with Claire McCaskill from Missouri, have put a bill in place. We have a number of cosponsors. We put in something called the CAP Act. We hope that over the course of this next year--over the course of the next several months--this is a bill that will actually pass. What it does, I think in a very logical way, is it says we are spending at levels relative to our economy today that are out of proportion, and let's go from where we are today to the 4-year average over a 10-year period. Mr. President, you have to agree that this is just a logical thing that gives us time to go from where we are today over the next 10 years to where the country has been, spending relative to our country's output for the last 40 years. What this also does is it puts Congress in a straitjacket. Again, I think everybody who is watching knows that if we didn't have this CR-- this continuing resolution bill--that is ending this week and if government wasn't going to shut down if it wasn't funded, there would be no negotiations taking place right now over spending. We all know that. So this puts in place a straitjacket on Congress--one that is very needed, unfortunately--to take us from here to there over a 10- year period. What happens if we don't meet the requirements of this declining spending relative to our economy is that sequestration comes into play. On a pro-rata basis--based on the relative weight of certain accounts to the overall spending levels, the OMB comes in and takes from every account of government on a pro-rata basis. One of the problems we have had in this country is we want to deal with those things that are easy, and that is discretionary spending, in many cases. Nondefense discretionary spending ends up being about $600 billion, roughly, of the $3.7 trillion we are spending. Everybody in the world knows there is no way for us to solve our problem by only dealing with discretionary spending. So what this bill would do is put all items on the balance sheet. In other words, it would include all the entitlements. I don't think there is a person in this body who believes if we continue as we are, if we don't redesign the programs the seniors are counting on--Medicare and Social Security--if we don't redesign these programs so they will be sustained for the long haul, then seniors are not going to have them. So this bill will force us in Congress to deal with designing these programs in such a way they will be here for the long haul. It puts everything on the table. Again, there is not a thinking person in Washington who doesn't know we have to address these issues. There are a lot of people who say: Well, we cannot do these draconian things right now because we are in the middle of a recession. Hopefully, it looks like it is changing and hopefully changing very rapidly, but these changes would begin from where we are in the year 2013. So we would have a year or so to redesign these programs. We could act in an appropriate way to ensure they were here for the future but also put them in place in a manner that doesn't kill the American taxpayer, and we would cap spending. We have a multiyear averaging process in this bill to make sure, if there is a change in the economy in 1 year, we don't just have this volatile situation, but we would have the ability, 1 year in advance, to know what the appropriate spending levels are. It gives Congress the ability to act upon that throughout the year. Again, if Congress doesn't act, then 45 days after a year ends, OMB comes in and puts in place something called sequestration-- automatically takes money out of these accounts. I think that gives us the impetus to want to make sure we actually act. I don't think there is anybody in Congress who wants OMB coming in and taking money out of accounts. So that would be, in essence, the thing that would give us the sense of urgency we badly need in this body. This is a problem that exists on both sides of the aisle and that is why I have sought bipartisan support for this bill. I have tried to put something in place that is very logical--I know that is not often the case here--something Americans across the country can understand and also those here in Washington will see as something that works toward a solution and gets us to where we need to go. I think all of us understand the demographic changes that are taking place in our country. I think all of us know that over the next 10 years, 20 million more Americans are going to be on Medicare and 20 million more Americans will be on Social Security. We are right on the cusp of that bubble. I am certainly getting ready to be a part of that. The Presiding Officer may not necessarily be there yet, but the point is this is something that has to occur for the good of our country. So this is called the CAP Act. Again, what it will do is ensure that long after the point in time when the CR window opens and closes, long after the time the debt ceiling vote happens a little later this year-- long after those occur and the American people have moved on to other issues and, obviously, Congress has moved on to other issues--we keep in place this fiscal discipline, this straitjacket, to take us where we need to go. The Presiding Officer and I were in Pakistan and Afghanistan last week, and we witnessed some of the problems we are having there. We also witnessed the brilliance of our men and women in uniform and also many hard-working individuals at the State Department. While those threats are threats we are dealing with that are very important to the American people, I think most of us know the biggest threat today to our country is our inability to deal appropriately with our financial circumstances. I think we all know if we don't deal with that pretty soon, we are going to be putting our country's future in jeopardy. We will be putting in jeopardy the future of these wonderful pages who sit in front of me. The thing that is fascinating about this issue is, unlike what we saw in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, where we are relying on other people, this is something we can do ourselves. We have 100 percent control over spending in Washington--100 percent control of this is held in the hands of 100 Senators and 435 House Members. This is not something where we are depending on other countries or we are concerned about what might happen elsewhere. This is something we ourselves can deal with. So what I have tried to put in place, along with Claire McCaskill and others--and there are growing numbers of other people who are part of this process--is something that causes us to be responsible to the American people. So I hope others will join this. It is my hope we will do three things: I hope we will vote and pass on cuts in Federal spending today. I hope that will happen over the next short period of time. Whether it is some of the things we are looking at on the CR or maybe it is recommendations that have been put in place by the President's deficit reduction commission, I hope what we will do as a body is go ahead and vote to pass real cuts now. Secondarily, what I hope will happen is that we will put in place something like the CAP Act to make sure we continue that fiscal discipline long after people move on to other topics; that we keep that straitjacket in place so we do those things that are, again, responsible not only to this generation but future generations. Thirdly, I hope we figure out a way, through some type of amendment, to ensure that, on into the future, we have put something in place at the Federal level which causes us to be fiscally responsible in this country. All of us know what it means to have to make choices. All of us have households. Many of us have led cities and States. Many of us have had businesses. We all understand what happens in the real world, and it is something that certainly needs to happen here. That has been sorely lacking for a long time. So I thank the Chair for the time on the floor today, and I hope to talk about this many more times. I have been doing it, I assure you, throughout the State of Tennessee and in multiple forums in the Senate. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORKER

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

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont, and I will be very brief. I know today the President has put forth the administration's proposal on the budget, and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle have spent a tremendous amount of time over the course of this last year----

Mr. CORKER. That is correct, Mr. President, and I thank the Senator from Vermont for being so fastidious. Back to what I was talking about. I know a lot of people on both sides of the aisle have spent a great deal of time looking at ways for us to lessen, if not close, the tremendous amount of the deficit we have in this country. I think everybody understands what a threat this is to our economic security--candidly, to, I believe, our national security--and I think many of us have paid close attention to what has happened to other countries in this type of situation. There is a strong sense on both sides of the aisle, and becoming even stronger, that this is an issue we as a country have to deal with. What is unique about the issue of this fiscal deficit our country has is that it is something totally within our hands. In other words, we can deal with this. This is not like some of the situations we deal with in Afghanistan or other places, where it takes others, if you will, working with us to ensure our efforts there are successful. This is something we as a Congress can solve. Again, the economy requires private sector investment and people doing work outside of this body to create the kind of prosperity we would like to see. But this is totally within our control. So, Mr. President, I really do try to look at the bright side of things. On the other hand, I was disappointed to see the President's budget today and the lack of urgency that was displayed there and the lack of concern. I think what that means for those of us in this body and in the House who are going to have to--as we should--deal with this issue, it is much more difficult when dealing with a national crisis not to have the administration pulling along with you. It is my hope, even though I think the President did miss an opportunity to lead on this issue, that over the course of the next several months he will come to the table and deal with this issue in a responsible way with both the House and Senate. I know the House is wrestling with these issues right now. My guess is that by the time they get ready for recess this weekend, they will send over something that deals with some cuts in discretionary spending. I think we all know we have to deal with the entire budget if we are actually going to make the type of headway all of us know needs to be made. But I do hope what we will do this spring, early on, is go ahead and vote to pass on some very large reductions in spending. I hope we will pass something like the Cap Act that Claire McCaskill and I have cosponsored, which takes us from where we are in spending relative to our country's economic output down to the 40-year average. I would think most people in this body would consider that to be a reasonable approach over a 10-year period that would be a straitjacket on Congress to ensure that we actually make those cuts. So those are two steps that need to occur, and it is my hope the administration, after putting forth what has been put forth, will join us in this effort. Mr. President, I think all of us know that in order to deal with the big issues of this country, it is going to take the executive branch, the House, and the Senate. We have divided government, but this is a perfect opportunity for us, as a country, to deal with this huge issue that threatens certainly the future of the young people sitting before me, but threatens our country's economic security and our national security. So, Mr. President, I thank you for the time. I hope all of us will deal with this budget in a serious, sober, and responsible manner. I think we have several months over which we have a tremendous opportunity to come together and do the right thing as it relates to our country's economic and fiscal situation. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I am glad to be here today with the Senator from Missouri, my friend Claire McCaskill. We are introducing a bill called the Commitment to American Prosperity Act, the CAP Act. It is a 10-page bill designed to limit spending in Washington and set our country back on a sustainable fiscal path. We have cosponsors in Senators Alexander, Burr, McCain, Isakson, Chambliss, Inhofe, and Kirk. I thank them for joining us in this effort. I hope many more will do the same. I spent a lifetime in business, and I came to the Senate not to score political points, not to be involved in messaging, but to solve our country's problems. Everyone in this body understands we have tremendous fiscal and financial issues with which to deal. This morning I was happy to see 33 Senators meet over at the visitor center from both sides of the aisle to listen to people involved in the financial industry talking about the path we are on and what that is going to lead to as far as the ruination of our fiscal situation and our ability to borrow money at low rates as we are today. All of us know what that will mean to our citizens. There is no one who doesn't understand how problematic our financial situation is. I know the Congressional Budget Office just said that this year alone we will have a $1.5 trillion budget deficit. I think everyone in this body is very aware that we cannot continue on that path. For that reason, Senator McCaskill and I have crafted a 10-page bill, a very simple bill. It does a lot, but there are not a lot of whereases. One of its purposes is to cap spending relative to economy. Most people understand that when we look at economies in other countries of the world, people look at the amount of spending their government does relative to their economic output. Senator McCaskill's husband is a businessman. When he looks at the amount of debt he has in his company, he looks at that in relation to revenues and the amount of income he has and his ability to pay the debt. That is the way the world looks at the health of countries. For the last 4 years--this is the post-entitlement period--our country has been spending 20.6 percent of our GDP or economic output at the Federal level. Everybody knows that right now we are way above that number, at over 24 percent. So again, not to try to create some messaging tool but to solve this problem, Senator McCaskill and I have joined to say we need to get back to the norm over a 10-year period, on a glide path that takes us back to fiscal health and to that 20.6 percent of our economy being spent at the Federal level. The legislation calls for multiyear averaging so we can make sure that economic differentials don't create volatility, so we know exactly what those targets are in advance, so we can go about our work in appropriations in a methodical and thoughtful way. In addition, it creates something called sequestration. That means if Congress does not have the courage, which we recently have not shown, to do the things it needs to do to make those cuts to live within this glide path we have laid out, then sequestration will take place. The Office of Management and Budget, 45 days after the end of the year, if we have not done those things we need to do to make sure we are on this glide path, will, on a pro rata basis, take money out of the accounts of both mandatory and nonmandatory spending. In addition, if there is an emergency that comes up, it would take a two-thirds vote by both Houses of Congress to overcome those spending limits. To my knowledge, this is the first time in the entitlement era that we have ever tried to put in place a total spending limit on government. Many of us talk about discretionary spending. All of us know that discretionary spending is less than a third of all Federal spending. All of us know that if we don't redesign the entitlement programs that are about two-thirds of our spending at the Federal level, then there is no way for us to deal appropriately with this issue. So for this reason, this bill would kick in, if it is implemented, in 2013, giving us time to redesign the entitlement programs, especially Medicare and Social Security, so that we know they are here for future generations, so we know that seniors have the benefits they need. This is the first time we would be putting everything on the table in a comprehensive way as we look at the Federal budget. Simply, this bill will cause us to live within our means. The problem we find ourselves in today is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. Both parties have contributed to the situation. What this bill would require us to do is to set priorities. It would mean that we would have to ensure that programs are being run as effectively and efficiently as possible. I know our main cosponsor, Senator McCaskill, has spent a lot of time looking at waste and abuse within the Federal Government. One of the best things about this bill is, if we want to limit spending relative to the country's economic output, it is obviously easier to do so if the economy is growing. So what that would mean is that both parties would be joined at the hip to put in place policies that promote economic growth. I thank Senator McCaskill for her courage in stepping forth with me and others on this bill. It is my hope that we will have people from both sides of the aisle who will join us in this effort. Again, this is being put forth as a serious bill. It is a bill that has no ideology base, simply a bill to solve a problem. We are going to a 40-year average of spending relative to our country's gross domestic product. We are not trying to do things differently than in the past. Both of us know we have not had the courage in recent times to live within our means, to set priorities as they need to be set. This bill is something that will take us toward that end. We have a very monumental vote that will be taking place a little bit later in the year regarding the debt ceiling. All of us know it would be irresponsible not to be responsible prior to that debt ceiling vote. We offer this bill as a responsible way to put us on a glide path toward a place that is reasonable for this country, giving us time to redesign the programs that need to be redesigned. It is my hope this bill or something of its nature will pass prior to the debt ceiling vote. It is also my hope that we will go ahead and vote on actual cuts to the Federal budget prior to that time so we can show markets around the world and the American people that we have the ability to work together to solve what I think is our most pressing domestic issue and that is getting our fiscal house in order. I again thank Senator McCaskill. She has been a leader on fiscal issues since she has been here.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I am glad to be here today with the Senator from Missouri, my friend Claire McCaskill. We are introducing a bill called the Commitment to American Prosperity Act, the CAP Act. It is a 10-page bill designed to limit spending in Washington and set our country back on a sustainable fiscal path. We have cosponsors in Senators Alexander, Burr, McCain, Isakson, Chambliss, Inhofe, and Kirk. I thank them for joining us in this effort. I hope many more will do the same. I spent a lifetime in business, and I came to the Senate not to score political points, not to be involved in messaging, but to solve our country's problems. Everyone in this body understands we have tremendous fiscal and financial issues with which to deal. This morning I was happy to see 33 Senators meet over at the visitor center from both sides of the aisle to listen to people involved in the financial industry talking about the path we are on and what that is going to lead to as far as the ruination of our fiscal situation and our ability to borrow money at low rates as we are today. All of us know what that will mean to our citizens. There is no one who doesn't understand how problematic our financial situation is. I know the Congressional Budget Office just said that this year alone we will have a $1.5 trillion budget deficit. I think everyone in this body is very aware that we cannot continue on that path. For that reason, Senator McCaskill and I have crafted a 10-page bill, a very simple bill. It does a lot, but there are not a lot of whereases. One of its purposes is to cap spending relative to economy. Most people understand that when we look at economies in other countries of the world, people look at the amount of spending their government does relative to their economic output. Senator McCaskill's husband is a businessman. When he looks at the amount of debt he has in his company, he looks at that in relation to revenues and the amount of income he has and his ability to pay the debt. That is the way the world looks at the health of countries. For the last 4 years--this is the post-entitlement period--our country has been spending 20.6 percent of our GDP or economic output at the Federal level. Everybody knows that right now we are way above that number, at over 24 percent. So again, not to try to create some messaging tool but to solve this problem, Senator McCaskill and I have joined to say we need to get back to the norm over a 10-year period, on a glide path that takes us back to fiscal health and to that 20.6 percent of our economy being spent at the Federal level. The legislation calls for multiyear averaging so we can make sure that economic differentials don't create volatility, so we know exactly what those targets are in advance, so we can go about our work in appropriations in a methodical and thoughtful way. In addition, it creates something called sequestration. That means if Congress does not have the courage, which we recently have not shown, to do the things it needs to do to make those cuts to live within this glide path we have laid out, then sequestration will take place. The Office of Management and Budget, 45 days after the end of the year, if we have not done those things we need to do to make sure we are on this glide path, will, on a pro rata basis, take money out of the accounts of both mandatory and nonmandatory spending. In addition, if there is an emergency that comes up, it would take a two-thirds vote by both Houses of Congress to overcome those spending limits. To my knowledge, this is the first time in the entitlement era that we have ever tried to put in place a total spending limit on government. Many of us talk about discretionary spending. All of us know that discretionary spending is less than a third of all Federal spending. All of us know that if we don't redesign the entitlement programs that are about two-thirds of our spending at the Federal level, then there is no way for us to deal appropriately with this issue. So for this reason, this bill would kick in, if it is implemented, in 2013, giving us time to redesign the entitlement programs, especially Medicare and Social Security, so that we know they are here for future generations, so we know that seniors have the benefits they need. This is the first time we would be putting everything on the table in a comprehensive way as we look at the Federal budget. Simply, this bill will cause us to live within our means. The problem we find ourselves in today is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. Both parties have contributed to the situation. What this bill would require us to do is to set priorities. It would mean that we would have to ensure that programs are being run as effectively and efficiently as possible. I know our main cosponsor, Senator McCaskill, has spent a lot of time looking at waste and abuse within the Federal Government. One of the best things about this bill is, if we want to limit spending relative to the country's economic output, it is obviously easier to do so if the economy is growing. So what that would mean is that both parties would be joined at the hip to put in place policies that promote economic growth. I thank Senator McCaskill for her courage in stepping forth with me and others on this bill. It is my hope that we will have people from both sides of the aisle who will join us in this effort. Again, this is being put forth as a serious bill. It is a bill that has no ideology base, simply a bill to solve a problem. We are going to a 40-year average of spending relative to our country's gross domestic product. We are not trying to do things differently than in the past. Both of us know we have not had the courage in recent times to live within our means, to set priorities as they need to be set. This bill is something that will take us toward that end. We have a very monumental vote that will be taking place a little bit later in the year regarding the debt ceiling. All of us know it would be irresponsible not to be responsible prior to that debt ceiling vote. We offer this bill as a responsible way to put us on a glide path toward a place that is reasonable for this country, giving us time to redesign the programs that need to be redesigned. It is my hope this bill or something of its nature will pass prior to the debt ceiling vote. It is also my hope that we will go ahead and vote on actual cuts to the Federal budget prior to that time so we can show markets around the world and the American people that we have the ability to work together to solve what I think is our most pressing domestic issue and that is getting our fiscal house in order. I again thank Senator McCaskill. She has been a leader on fiscal issues since she has been here.

Mr. CORKER

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

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I will speak for just a few moments on something I think is the most important issue facing our country today. I can't think of a better time than the first day of the new session in the U.S. Congress to address it; that is, the Federal deficit. I am proud to say that later this week, Claire McCaskill from Missouri will be joining me, along with Richard Burr, John McCain, Senator Alexander, and Senator Isakson in something called the Cap Act. The bill takes us, over a 10-year period, from where we are in spending at the Federal Government level as a percentage of our country's economy, the gross domestic product, at 24 percent, down to the 40-year average which we have had in this country, as I mentioned, for 40 years, of 20.6 percent. It puts in place a construct or a straitjacket on Congress that allows us, over time, to take a methodical, thoughtful approach to spending at the Federal level but to actually have to do it. This bill, which we also offered as an amendment during the lameduck session--it is now a stand-alone bill--again, we will be offering it a little bit later this week. We hope to have additional cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. What it would do is take us from where we are today down to that average. If Congress did not act responsibly, then OMB would have the ability, through sequestration, to actually take money out of both mandatory and nonmandatory accounts to ensure that we again have that discipline to take us where we need to be. I have traveled throughout Tennessee and spoken about this bill. I have made about 46 presentations of how we in Congress could act more responsibly. It is amazing that people on both sides of the aisle have looked at this and said this makes a lot of sense. So it is my hope, as we look at trying to rein in Federal spending, that this bill--I believe this bill is the vehicle--there may be other ideas, but I hope this is something we, in fact, will act upon during the spring. I know the President most recently has talked a great deal about this issue of fiscal responsibility. I thank him for that. I am hoping that tonight, when he delivers his speech, he talks about the fact that we in Washington have to have the same kind of discipline that all our folks back home have to live by. Again, this is something we have been working on for a long time. We have tried to work on it in a way that in no way points fingers. I think people understand that people on both sides of the aisle are responsible for our country ending up where it is fiscally. So we have tried to draft something that brings people together and that, for the first time since I have been here--I have been here 4 years, and I have been amazed at the lack of discipline that exists in Congress. We have no mechanism, no straitjacket, if you will, that forces us to act responsibly. So over a long period of time we have worked to put together a bill-- by the way, I think it is eight or nine pages long--that actually does that. It has a smoothing mechanism in it so that when there are gyrations in our economy--we know the Federal Government can't react quite as quickly as a State or city--that smoothing is averaged out so we know what the target is in the ensuing year. It has tight constraints. It requires a 67-vote majority or two-thirds of the Senate, two-thirds of the House to override. So it is a very strong bill. Again, I think people on both sides of the aisle are beginning to embrace this type of thinking. It is my hope, again, as the President tonight, hopefully, talks responsibly about our fiscal state here in the United States, that this type of mechanism, if you will, gains momentum. It is also my hope that we will vote and pass something such as this, along with actual budget cuts prior to the debt ceiling vote. I think all of us know it would be very irresponsible not to act responsibly prior to this debt ceiling vote which will take place sometime in April, May or possibly June. So I thank my colleagues for the time to talk a little bit about this, again, on the first day of us coming back together. I can't imagine anything more important for all of us to focus on than to get our fiscal house in order. I know the whole world is watching us. I know people have said we in Washington don't have the courage to deal with this. I know the Presiding Officer has had to deal with this as the Governor of a State. I certainly had to deal with this as the mayor of a city and a businessman and financial commissioner of my State. We all know things are awry here. I think we have a wonderful opportunity, in a bipartisan way, to do something that puts our country back on strong footing. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that cosponsors be added to Corker amendment No. 4904, as modified, as follows: Senator Lieberman, Senator Brown of Massachusetts, and Senator Murkowski.

Mr. CORKER. I would also ask unanimous consent to add Senators Johanns, Levin, and Bayh as cosponsors.

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I wish to at this moment ask unanimous consent to change the name of the amendment to McCain-Lieberman-Corker.

Mr. CORKER

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts and Senators McCain and Lieberman. There are probably still some folks making up their minds on this treaty. I think most people have debated this at length and discussed it at length off the floor. Our side has raised a number of questions. We have tried to cross every t and dot every i. This has been done in a very methodical way. I thank the chairman for the way he has worked with us. I thank Senator Lugar for his longstanding leadership in this regard. I thank the administration officials who have absolutely bent over backward to try to solve every problem that has come up. The administration has not only solved problems for people who might vote for the treaty, they have tried to solve problems for people who they know will not vote for the treaty. We have some Members on our side who I know are still making up their minds. I have been involved in this for a long time. I enjoyed this. I think this is an incredibly serious matter. I have two daughters and a wife I love. National security is something that is important to all of us. None of us wants anything bad to happen to this country. But to my friends on this side of the aisle who still may have some questions, there is no way in the world we would have the commitments we have on nuclear modernization if it were not for the process of this treaty. Now with Senator Kyl's amendment being accepted, we are even fast-tracking that. There is no way in the world the unilateral statements that are going to be presented to Russia are going to be made regarding missile defense would be occurring without this treaty being in place. I don't think there is a person in the world who has debated seriously whether 1,550 warheads being deployed in any way affects this country's national security. To those of you who may still be wavering, I believe every issue that has been raised has been answered strongly and legitimately. We have put forth what our posture is on nuclear armaments more clearly than we have done in recent times. I hope people will come to the same conclusion, that this is good for the country. I thank all those who have allowed me to be involved the way that I have. I urge support, whenever the vote occurs, for a treaty that I believe absolutely makes our country safer. With all these accommodations, at some point, it seems that the right thing to do is to say yes to yes. I yield the floor.