Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ENZI

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ENZI. I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate the Senator from Georgia on the content of his speech as well as on his enthusiasm and also on how he follows through on what he says. I get to serve with him on the Budget Committee, and I have been extremely impressed. At his first meeting, I introduced him as someone who has balanced budgets. He corrected me. In the private sector, one can't just balance the budget; you have to do better than that. He has that kind of experience to bring to the Budget Committee and to this body, and I look forward to working with him diligently on the budget. We only had 6 weeks to do what hadn't been done in 6 years, and he was a tremendous help in getting through that process and understanding some of the complexities. He is a good numbers man. So when he talks about what we need to do with the budget and paying down the debt and the ways we can do it, I look forward to working with him to get those things accomplished. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to make some comments about the budget and the process. Last month, the Senate Budget Committee took an important first step in helping to change the way we do business in Washington by reporting out a balanced budget. This is crucial as we begin to restore the trust of the American people. This week, we will take the next step and start to work on a joint balanced budget resolution with our colleagues in the House that will expand America's economy and increase opportunities for hard-working families. A balanced budget approved by Congress will help make the government live within its means and set spending limits for our Nation. A balanced budget will also boost the Nation's economic output by more than $500 billion over the next 10 years. That is according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Why the urgency? Hard-working families are fed up with the President's spend-now-pay-later policy and are closely following our efforts to produce a balanced budget. Senate Democrats could only muster two budgets in 8 years, and we will soon have one after only 4 months. It is time to show taxpayers that Congress is committed to a balanced budget to make our government more effective and accountable, but we are running out of time. Recent media reports note that the lawmakers in 27 States have passed applications for a constitutional convention to approve a balanced budget amendment. I have to add that there are new applications to do that same amendment in nine other States, and they are close behind. Now, if just seven of those nine States approve moving forward on the balanced budget issue, it would bring the number of applications to 34 States. This would mean the two-thirds requirement under Article V of the Constitution would force Congress to take action. It is no wonder hard-working taxpayers across the country are feeling anxious. Federal revenues have hit record highs. Yet we are on track to overspend by nearly $1 trillion a year. I think we are at the $560 billion level of overspending this year. How much does Congress get to make decisions on? Congress spends about $4 trillion a year, but only gets to make decisions on $1\1/10\ trillion. Now, if we overspend by over $500 billion, we are spending half more than what we take in. No family can exist very long by spending half more than they take in year after year after year. We looked at the President's budget and the President increases taxes by $2\1/10\ trillion and still gets a wider and wider and wider gap of overspending as time goes by to that trillion-dollar mark out there in 10 years. Just this week, headlines around the country reported: ``Budget Deficit in U.S. Widens as Spending Exceeds Record Revenue.'' On Monday, the Treasury Department reported that spending by the Federal Government exceeded its revenue by more than $439 billion from October through March, which is $26 billion more compared to the same period last year. In fact, CBO is forecasting that for March our Nation spent more than $44 billion, up 19 percent from last year. We are getting more money, and we are spending more money. American taxpayers understand we overspend. The more we overspend, the more debt we owe, and the more debt our children and grandchildren will owe. In fact, we have done this so consistently that it is not just our grandchildren and our children who are faced with the crisis, it is us as well--everybody in America. I mentioned that we get to make decisions on $1\1/10\ trillion dollars a year, which is $1,100 billion. If anybody knows how big $1 billion is, they know how big $1,100 billion is. But that is all we get to make decisions on. The amount of interest we paid last year was $235 billion. Interest doesn't buy you a thing, but we spent $235 billion on interest. Now, that is pretty close to 1 percent for the fee for that borrowing. So if $235 billion is 1 percent interest, what would the normal 5 percent cost? Every single dime we get to make a decision on. That means no defense, no education, no HELP. Everything will be by the wayside just so we can pay the interest on our debt. That is why we have to be concerned about the overspending that is happening. American taxpayers understand that the more we overspend, the more debt we owe and the more debt our children and grandchildren owe. If that tax rate goes up, we will soon be responsible for paying off that debt at the expense of everything else America expects. This is why Republicans in Congress are focused on passing a balanced budget that will ensure that Washington will once again live within its means, just like hard-working families do every day. Now, we don't get that balance for 10 years, but it moves toward that goal every year. Ten years is too long. For next year's budget, we are going to have to figure out better things to do to get it back into a framework where our interest will not exceed our expenditures. That is the interest exceeding the expenditures, not the revenue, and again we had a record revenue. That is why we are focused on passing a balanced budget, just like hard-working families do every day. What does the Senate-passed budget do? Well, here is what it does: It balances the budget in 10 years with no tax hikes. It protects our most vulnerable citizens. It strengthens the national defense. It improves job growth and opportunity for hard-working families. It slows the rate of spending growth. Now, it doesn't recede the spending growth, it slows the spending growth. That is the best we have ever been able to do in Washington. When we talk about a cut in Washington, what we are talking about is giving them less than what they asked for, not less than what they have. It preserves Social Security by reducing spending in other areas to fully offset Social Security's rising deficit and encourages our Nation's leaders to begin a bipartisan, bicameral discussion on how to protect Social Security and avoid the across-the-board Social Security benefit cuts that will occur later under the law unless we take action, but that is something that has to be done jointly. There would be too much blame otherwise, and as far as the budget, the reason we have to preserve Social Security by reducing spending in other areas to offset Social Security is because we are not allowed to do anything with Social Security in the budget. This budget will also protect our seniors by safeguarding Medicare from insolvency and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund by 5 years. It ensures Medicare savings in the President's health care law and makes sure those savings are dedicated to Medicare. If it comes from Medicare, it ought to go back to Medicare instead of seeing it go to more overspending on new programs that are outside of Medicare. Our balanced budget continues funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program and creates a new program based on CHIP to serve low- income, working-age, able-bodied adults and children who are eligible for Medicaid. It increases State flexibility in designing benefits and administering Medicaid Programs to encourage efficiency and reduce wasteful spending, and it provides stable and predictable funding so long-term services and support are sustainable both for the Federal Government and the States. As the Senate and House begin budget negotiations next week, it is worth noting that the strong economic growth a balanced budget can provide will serve as the foundation for helping all Americans grow and prosper. One of the goals of a Republican balanced budget is to make our government more efficient, more effective, and more accountable. If Congress does its job, we can have some flexibility and eliminate what is not working, starting with the worst first, and then we can eliminate and streamline what is left. The reason I emphasized ``the worst first'' is because one of the things we talk about constantly is the need to prevent the sequester. In some cases, it is absolutely essential to prevent a sequester, but the sequester should have been done in the efficient way of eliminating the worst first. Instead, there was a memo that went out that said: Make it hurt. That should never happen in America. That is why we saw some of the decisions that came down that seemed pretty ridiculous. One of the decisions that affected Wyoming was--I hope everybody will come and see the Grand Tetons--marvelous mountains that look like part of the Alps were transplanted over there and made a little bit taller. A lot of people like to stop and take pictures there regardless of the season--whether it is snow covered or the aspens are golden in the foreground or whether everything is lush and green, and, of course, you see wildlife all through that valley. Naturally, people like to stop and take pictures. Well, a bunch of signs were printed up that said you cannot use the turnouts. A bunch of barricades were bought so you could not pull onto the turnout, and the sign said it would be illegal to park along the highway. Where did the money come from for the barricades? Where did the money come for the signs that said we could not use the parking lots to take pictures? Well, I called to find out whose brilliant idea that was and why parking lots would be closed, and I was told that there would not be any garbage pickup. I suggested they just remove the garbage cans. When people in Wyoming and across the Nation visit a national park, they can haul their garbage another 20 miles before they throw it out. That way the beautiful vista could still be photographed instead of people still parking along the highways to take those pictures and then getting ticketed. That is just one small example of cutting the most important first instead of the worst first. I am sure there are examples in every State. It didn't just happen with facilities like that. The people at Head Start came to see me and said they got a 7.5-percent cut in the sequester. It was supposed to be 2.3 percent. How did it get to 7.5 percent? After checking into it, it appears the Washington bureaucracy decided to keep more than their share of the money instead giving it to the kids across America who were supposed to have it. It did get restored, but the discouraging part was that when I asked the people who talked to me before how things were going, they said: Well, we got the extra money, but in order to meet the employer requirements in Wyoming for ObamaCare, we had to spend all of that money, so none of the kids happened to go back to Head Start. That was very disappointing. That is not the way to run a government and it is not the way to run a business. It should never have happened. We need a budget that can eliminate waste and streamline what is left and start with the worst first. Of course, another of my suggestions is that we have a biannual budget. Mr. President, $1,100 billion is too much money to look at in 1 year. Twelve bills to allocate that money to the different agencies are too many bills for us to handle in 1 year, particularly if they are going to get scrutiny. I suggested we write the number of bills that we do and separate them into two packages of six and that we do the six tough ones right after the election, because we have a little more appetite for doing them then, and the six easy ones just before an election. Then we would be able to get all 12 of them and be able to scrutinize all 12 of them. Why is that important? Well, in going through this budget process-- and like I said, I only had about 8 weeks to start to put the budget together--one of the things I discovered was that we have a whole bunch of programs that are out of authorization. The ability to spend for them has expired, but that doesn't stop us from spending on them. It should at least constrain us a little bit. Some of those programs go back to 1983. They expired in 1983, 1987, and on up to the present day. How many of them? Two hundred and sixty programs. There were 260 programs that we haven't looked at to see if we ought to continue to spend money on them or if we ought to revise how we have been spending the money. If they have expired--most of them had been in existence for 6 years before they expired, and in those 6 years, we should have been able to find if there were any flaws or changes. Hopefully, there was somebody who was looking out for it and found some efficiencies that helped with the spending. So there were 260 programs. Do we know how much that amounts to that we are still spending and there is no authority to spend? It is $293 billion a year. That is a year. Usually, when we talk about the budget we are talking about over 10 years. So that would only be $29 billion a year if it were over 10 years, but it is not. It is $293 billion a year of expired authorizations, expired permissions to spend money. We have to get that corrected as well. One of the ways we can do that is through a biennial budget, so that we are looking at half of them in a year instead of everything the government does every year. The dollars have gotten so big that we can't get through them efficiently, effectively, and scrutinizing them as good accounting in a year. There is one exception on that, which is that we look at defense every year. Defense is the most important constitutional requirement given to this body. So we would continue to do that each year. Incidentally, defense is the one authorization that is not out of authorization, and that is because we do it every year. I don't know how many decades we have done the authorization--the permission for spending--for defense. Another troubling situation I discovered through this process was that there are some items that are not authorized that were in defense that we are spending money on anyway. I get comments from the people on the committee that looks over defense saying: How can they spend that money when we just did an authorization that said no, that is not one of the authorized items? So there are some problems we need to definitely work on with budgets. That is what we have done while putting this budget together, in trying to eliminate some of the inconsistencies we have, but we have not touched that $293 billion in unauthorized spending. So when people say we need more money for the nondefense items, I want them to take a look at that $293 billion and see if they can't find $29 billion, $90 billion, whatever, out of $293 billion that they think might be more effectively spent in a different way. I know when I came to Congress there were 119 preschool children's programs. Everybody has ideas for preschool programs, and they are good ideas. We know that if we teach kids better before they go to school, they do better in school, there are fewer dropouts, there is less crime, and the whole world is better. There were 119 programs. Senator Kennedy and I worked on that, and we got it down to 69 programs. The ones we got rid of are the ones that were under our jurisdiction. So that left a whole bunch more. In the meantime, I have been able to work that down to 35 programs. And in the child care grant program last year, I got an amendment passed--it was one of 14 amendments that we considered--which required that those 35 go down to just 5 and that all 5 be put under 1 department. I am hoping that is what the administration is doing. That would save enough money to fund the truly preschool education programs really well, and that is what we need to do. There is a lot of money right there. So if Congress does its job, we can have some flexibility and eliminate what isn't working, starting with the worst first, and then we can eliminate waste and streamline what is left. But to do this, first, Congress must do what it has not done in the past 8 years. It has to scrutinize every dollar for which they have a responsibility. If government programs are not delivering results, they should be improved, and if they are not needed, they should be eliminated. It is time to prioritize and demand results from our government programs. When these programs are reauthorized, I am hoping there is a matrix in there that says this is what we plan to do and this is how we will know if we got it done. Then we will have an easy evaluation of whether they are getting their job done. That is mostly what happens in the private sector, and it is an efficient way of doing it in the public sector as well. I have made enough speeches about efficiency in government that I had someone come up to me and say: I hate to say this, but the job I am doing isn't worth having anybody do. He said: I am reluctant to mention it because if they eliminate that job, I am probably fired. Well, I took his suggestion, and I spoke to the right people and that job got eliminated, and he got promoted. That is what has to happen. We have to take the people who are innovative in government, who are figuring out ways to do things better and more efficiently and more effectively and move them into the positions where they can really do the job. So that is what I am counting on. In the coming weeks, hard-working taxpayers will get to see something they have not had the chance to experience in the last 8 years, and that is an open and transparent legislative process. We are starting that process today with the appointment of the conferees for the conference committees, and we will have amendments this afternoon. Members of Congress from both the House and the Senate will come together as part of the Senate-House budget committee to create a balanced budget that will boost our Nation's economic output and help restore the promise of a government that is more effective and that will put more people to work. A balanced budget will allow Americans to spend more time working hard to grow their businesses or to advance their jobs, instead of worrying about taxes and inefficient and ineffective regulations. Most importantly, it means every American who wants to find a good-paying job and a fulfilling career has the opportunity to do just that. I look forward to joining my colleagues in both the Senate and the House--Republicans and Democrats--as we take this next step to deliver a government that is more accountable to each and every American. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, as part of this discussion, I want to mention something that was very significant that happened last night. It happened after the press went to bed, I think, but a very important thing, and that is a thing called the doc fix passed. The SGR passed this body last night in a very bipartisan way, after a series of amendments that were open floor amendments. That is what is supposed to happen around here. One of the reasons I mention that is, I have always said if you can't see a doctor, you don't have insurance at all. With the way we have been setting up Medicare payments for doctors, we have been driving them out of the profession. We have been eliminating doctors. We have been having doctors tell their kids don't become a doctor, because of what Congress is doing, holding them hostage every 6 months. That got taken care of last night. I don't know, we have been doing that for, I think, about 18 years, just 1 fix at a time. So it is nice that we are finally able to make that permanent. I mentioned that was Medicare. This is the first budget the Republicans have gotten to participate in in many years, but the Democrats got to work on the health care bill, and that was part of their budget. In fact, it was part of the reconciliation in the budget, which is a special way of passing something without 60 votes. In that budget they took $714 billion from Medicare, and they didn't put it into Medicare. There were just some comments about how the budget I worked on has a little over $400 million of Medicare savings. That Medicare savings is what the President suggested should be done in Medicare savings, and we put that Medicare savings back into Medicare. That is the only way you can save the fund. So we have taken into consideration a lot of these issues. The cost of college--I have been through numerous hearings in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I used to be chairman of the committee and I have been ranking member of the committee, and I expired my time as ranking member on that committee, but we did a lot of hearings on the cost of college. Probably the biggest suggestion I can have for people living in the East is send your kids West. I was checking to see why more people couldn't get into community college on the east coast. I am not talking about the big colleges, which also have a very big problem on the number of students they can take and are very selective in what they take, but I found out that most of the community colleges were filled out here. Consequently, some for-profit colleges were able to charge considerably more than community college and we looked into ways to eliminate that practice. Of course, the way it got eliminated, if you did that to the public colleges as well, we would put them out of business. But I would mention that it is less expensive for an out-of-State student to go to the University of Wyoming or one of our community colleges than it is to get in-State tuition in most of the places in the United States. There was a mention of estate tax. That is a recommendation that was put in as a deficit-neutral measure. I am not sure where the raising the taxes on the poor comes from, except for the comment that the extensions that we do annually on that weren't in there. There is a good reason why those aren't in there. We have provided a reconciliation instruction that would allow for tax reform, although the chairman of the committee said we are going to do that in a bipartisan way. We are going to have tax reform that will take care of fairness and simplicity and accountability in our tax system. This is a particularly important time to talk about that. Today is tax day, and I hope everybody in America has or will file their taxes today. I know there has been some difficulty getting through on the lines to be able to talk to the IRS about tax problems, and I want to chastise the IRS a little bit for that. They are trying to show they need more money, instead of allocating personnel to where they are really needed. If they answer more questions right now, they don't have as many things they have to do later, and they will collect more money than if they don't answer those questions. The proper committee needs to take a look at whether they have adequate revenue to do their job, but again, there are inefficiencies there. They are talking about needing more money because when they audit, they are able to get $4 to $6 for every dollar they spend. They should be embarrassed. Public auditors in a company expect to get $15 to $20 per dollar that they audit. They have got to come up with a better selection procedure for who needs to be audited, and go after the big bucks. There are a number of things the IRS ought to do. When I first came to Washington, I tried to talk to different agencies about inefficiencies they had. I was a freshman, so I had a lot of time to do some of those things. One of the agencies I wanted to look at as an accountant was the IRS. As a result of some of my meetings at the IRS, we had some hearings here about being taxpayer friendly. People might recall that the people who served as witnesses in the past had to be voice-modulated behind screens. That should not happen in America. We should have a tax system that people can comply with without the gestapo kinds of tactics that are sometimes used. So we need to do something to make our tax system more efficient, more accountable, and fairer. I am convinced that Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden, the chairman and the ranking member of the committee, are going to do some things on taxes, and I think the American people will like it. They are past due. They can end those complications and get more accountability, which will make the IRS's job a lot easier and also make it better for hard-working taxpayers in America. So there are a lot of things a budget can do. I am hoping we will do them. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield back all time.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I move to close morning business.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. I ask unanimous consent that any time under quorum calls this afternoon be charged equally, regardless of who spoke last.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. I yield such time as the Senator from Nebraska needs to offer two motions. Those will be the last two offered, after which I think both sides are prepared to yield back their time and begin voting on the 13 different votes which we will be asking consent on when she finishes her speech. I yield time to the Senator from Nebraska.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back except for 5 minutes equally divided between the managers and that the Senate vote on the pending motions to instruct in the order listed, with 2 minutes equally divided in the usual form between each vote, and that all votes after the first in the series be limited to 10 minutes: No. 1 would be Brown on Wall Street banks; No. 2 would be Sanders, postal plant closures; No. 3 would be Burr, student loans; No. 4 would be Warren, student loans; No. 5 would be Sanders, Social Security; No. 6 would be Schatz, same-sex marriage benefits; No. 7 would be Bennet, climate change; No. 8 would be Fischer, side-by-side to Mikulski; No. 9, Mikulski, equal pay for equal work; No. 10, Fischer, side-by-side to Murray; No. 11, Murray, paid sick leave; No. 12, Murray, eliminate sequestration; and No. 13, Stabenow, Medicare cuts.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, this bill is cosponsored by Senator Vitter from our side. If a big bank fails under the Senator's reform, there is nothing that protects the taxpayers from having to save the bank. In other words, this approach does not do what many experts believe is needed, which is to expand the bankruptcy laws to permit an orderly disposition to failed banks without taxpayer bailouts. I will note that the specific policies listed are all authorities that exist today in various financial regulatory agencies, and I believe all Senators support the goal of eliminating the risk of taxpayer bailouts. Having said that, I ask that all the Republicans support this motion and offer to take it on a voice vote.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, that passed by a voice vote, which is considered unanimous around here. You cannot get more unanimous than that. I am hoping that out of the 10 to 13 votes we are going to have this afternoon, that some can be done on voice votes. I do not think there is anybody who disagrees with what the Senator has said about closing the postal plants and the extra time it is taking for deliveries. You can add to that how little money it saves because the employees who are in one town, even though their job got moved somewhere else, still have to be retained in that town at some job. It does not amount to much in the way of savings, but it really hurts in the way of efficiency, delivery, and trust in the post office. So I think we will all be behind you on that one again. I hope that by the time we get to that, it will be a voice vote again. Motion to Instruct Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending motion and call up Senator Burr's motion, which is at the desk.

Mr. ENZI. I would mention that this is a side-by-side to Senator Warren's amendment. I am hoping that at the time we vote, we can do 1 minute on each side so they have a chance for their explanation. I now yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, there is a huge concern, particularly in rural America, about the closing down of the processing centers in States. Our State no longer has a processing center. It takes at least an extra day to get the mail. So I would urge my colleagues to accept this motion, and I would ask if the sponsor would take it by voice vote.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, under the budget rules we can't do anything to Social Security. So this doesn't provide permission or denial of anything that we can do at the present time. We cannot touch Social Security under the budget. So I ask for the Senator to take a voice vote.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, we are willing to accept it on a voice vote.

Mr. ENZI. We yield back our time, and we will take a voice vote.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, if all time is yielded back, we would be willing to take a voice vote.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Thursday, April 16; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following leader remarks, the Senate then resume consideration of S. 178, with the time until 11 a.m. divided in the usual form; and finally that the filing deadline for all second-degree amendments to the Cornyn amendment be at 10:30 a.m.