Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I want to speak today about the series of votes that are going to be taking place this afternoon on gun rights. I wanted to start off by telling a little story and explain why there are some difficulties with some of those amendments that are here. I had a person in Cheyenne come to me and say: I advertised a gun I wanted to sell. The guy was from southern Colorado, so he had to drive about 300 miles. But he was former FBI and had a concealed carry permit. He was willing to drive up to Cheyenne and wanted to do it the right way--both of them wanted to do it the right way. The person from Colorado was willing to pay the fee for doing a gun check. The person in Cheyenne arranged for a federally licensed dealer to do that. So they met at the gun store with the gun. Of course, credentials as a former FBI agent is probably good enough to get through a gun check. Concealed carry permit, there is reciprocity in Wyoming for that. They did not think there would be any problem. They looked at it and put it into the system and got word back that he would know in 5 days. Well, it is a long trip to get a gun. The person had a gun that was just like it. He was convinced of the credentials, so they went to his house and finished the transaction. The fellow from Colorado went home. The fellow from Cheyenne went down to retrieve his other gun. He found out that it is now in the Federal system. So he can have a background check done on himself to get his own gun back. So there are difficulties with the gun check. They are not immediate. There is not a computer that immediately says: This person is not in there so go ahead and sell them a gun. It can be a 5-day process, which, for a 3-day gun show can be a bit of a problem, or even a shorter one than that. I want to talk a little more broadly about gun rights because the Senate will be voting on proposals today that affect rights not created by the law but, rather, were created by the Constitution that last a lot longer than anything we do in this body. Wyoming is a State of gun owners. A large number of Wyoming residents grow up learning to respect and lawfully use firearms. As a matter of fact, many schools and youth organizations build hunter safety and gun safety into their curriculums so that young people become familiar with the responsibilities of gun ownership at an early age. Therefore, it should be no surprise that a majority of Wyoming residents have called on me to oppose any legislation that puts additional restrictions on the freedoms they enjoy and use daily. I have been saying for some time that the bill before the Senate does not focus on the problem. There is no doubt that we need to do more to curb the senseless acts of violence which continue to occur in this country. One of the things we need is parents to be more careful and more repetitive at telling their kids it is not right to kill people, it is not even right to bully them, and it is definitely not right for them to kill themselves. Until we can get that message across to our kids, I hope that we do not rely on a few votes by this body to make everybody feel comfortable that all of the problems are taken care of. They will not be. The Senate should focus on making sure current laws are enforced; they are not. Finally, our Nation and its communities should be doing more to foster the idea that life has to be respected. However, the problem with several of the proposals we will vote on today is that they add to programs with track records of failure. Additionally, I oppose limiting the rights of gun owners to transfer their firearms to their neighbor or loan hunting rifles to their family members. The underlying bill the Senate is debating would restrict that right in many areas and would only make gun ownership more burdensome on lawful citizens. My colleagues in other States may not realize this, but in Wyoming guns are not used just for self-defense and recreation. They are a tool. Ask the rancher who uses a rifle to defend his livestock from predation or the outfitter who uses a gun to protect clients in the back country. Firearms do have everyday uses in Wyoming. Sometimes it is necessary to transfer or loan a gun to a nephew, a niece, or an employee. But under what is being considered, that right may be severely infringed. I do not condone acts of gun violence. I am a father and a grandfather and will do everything I can to keep guns out of the wrong hands. However, I am not willing to infringe on the constitutional right of lawful gun owners when the laws already designed to protect us are being unenforced. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, today I wish to share a startling fact with the American public. For the first time since the President has been required to submit a budget--since 1922, 91 years ago--the President failed to provide a budget proposal before the Senate passed one. This year the President's budget proposal was submitted to Congress 65 days late. And even with that extra time to find solutions that would jumpstart the economy, the budget proposed by the President continues the policies that have led to anemic economic growth and stagnant job creation--more taxes, more spending, more government. The last time we voted on the President's budget, it received zero votes. Let me repeat that--zero votes. Not even the members of his own party supported his budget. Since the President's budget is arriving after we have already taken up a budget here in the Senate, I doubt that we will vote on this proposal. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that a vote on this budget might obtain the same result. We have already heard cries from members of his own party that he is included proposals they don't like for example, a provision called ``chained CPI'' that changes the inflation measurement for many Federal programs, such as Social Security, and for certain provisions of the tax code. The President's budget estimates that this provision will reduce the deficit by nearly $230 billion over 10 years. And a budget such as the President's that raises taxes by nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years--and that is in addition to the $600 billion in tax increases that went into effect earlier this year certainly will not win over any members on my side of the aisle. While there are some provisions in this budget I might support, the budget taken as a whole is a far cry from what we need to get the country on the right fiscal path. The President and his party like to talk about a so-called ``balanced approach.'' But there is nothing balanced about a budget proposal that raises taxes by nearly $1 trillion and can't even balance. That is right the President's budget does not balance in any of the next 10 years. What we really need is a budget that gets us to balance and puts us on a path to start paying down our country's $16 trillion debt. We have to start paying down the debt. The President's budget proposal would increase taxes as a percent of the Nation's total output, or GDP, each year over the next 10 years, resulting in revenues as a percent of GDP at 20 percent in fiscal year 2023. The average rate over the past 40 years has been approximately 18 percent of GDP. The U.S. has balanced the budget 12 times since World War II. The average revenue for those 12 years was 18 percent of GDP. These numbers tell the story--our problem is not that we tax too little but that we spend too much. I have introduced a bill called the Penny Plan that cuts spending by one percent for each of the next three years, and balances the budget in 2016. Our Nation owes over $16 trillion and no one is talking about reducing it. We have to get to balance--the sooner the better--and start paying down the debt. I am very disappointed, but not surprised, that the President yet again has not taken the opportunity to fully address the drivers of our growing deficits and debt spending programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The President won his re-election last year. The time for campaigning is over; it is time to start governing and make the tough choices to save these programs for current and future beneficiaries. I said this during the debate on the majority's budget resolution a few weeks ago, and it is worth repeating now we need to grow the economy, not the government. One of the ways we can grow the economy is by reforming our outdated tax code. We have to lower tax rates and broaden the tax base and make the tax code simpler and fairer for all taxpayers. I was happy to see the President's budget call for revenue- neutral business tax reform. But then I read the fine print and realized the President was calling for lowering the corporate tax rate only and by paying for it by increasing taxes on U.S. multinational companies and oil and gas companies. I agree we need to lower the corporate tax rate. We also need to fix our outdated international tax system so we don't hamper our U.S. multinational companies from competing globally. And I have an international tax reform bill that addresses those issues. But in addition to lowering the corporate tax rate, we have to ensure we address the taxes paid by so-called ``flow- through'' businesses these are the partnerships, S-corporations, and limited liability companies. Just fixing the corporate side doesn't help the millions of businesses structured as flow-through entities. I appreciate the President wanting to do revenue-neutral corporate tax reform. But that only addresses part of the problem. I generally don't like to do things ``comprehensively.'' We should do legislation in smaller parts so people can understand what is in them and can vote for and against the things they support and don't support. But given the interaction between the individual and corporate side of the tax code, we really need to look at them together and make sure changes we make in one area don't make things worse in another area. So now we have finally seen the President's budget proposal. And while there are a few good things in it, I am sorry to tell my constituents back in Wyoming and the American public that the President has yet again failed to seize the opportunity to move the country's economy forward. It is more taxes, more spending, more government. That is not the recipe for growing the economy. I hope that over the coming months the President and his party will work with me and the Members on my side of the aisle to fix our tax code, both individual and corporate, and reform our spending on programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The American people deserve nothing less.

Mr. ENZI

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

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I allot myself 5 minutes of the time allotted to Senator Cornyn.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the spending decisions that are crippling the long-term budget outlook and the futures of our children and grandchildren. I am one of two accountants serving in the Senate, so the purpose of the budget resolution makes a lot of sense to me. It is like an accounting ledger--a blueprint that lays out spending priorities for the country for the next fiscal year. Back in my accounting days, I made sure that the ledger balanced. I would look carefully line by line at what was being spent and where it was being spent. If the ledger didn't balance, I looked at what could be trimmed from the overall budget. To do that, I would sit down and prioritize what was needed to make the business work, and what could be cut with the least impact on the business or its customers. I would also look at where the business might be duplicating some of its efforts and what could be cut there. But that is not what we are doing in this exercise. We are not taking a serious look at spending and making the necessary and tough choices about what we can afford. We aren't even able to vote on spending items that both sides agree are duplicative or wasteful, as we saw during the weeklong exercise with the continuing resolution that passed yesterday. What we should be doing is asking every agency to prioritize what it does from the best to the worst, and then we would be able to compare that list to the wasteful and duplicative items that have been identified, including some by my colleagues, such as Senator Coburn. He has been tireless in his effort to identify these spending items and bring them to the attention not only of his fellow Senators but the American people. Then we should cut what the Federal Government isn't doing well. We can also use the principle behind my One Percent Spending Reduction Act--also known as the penny plan. This is a bill that has a simple and direct plan to achieve the spending cuts necessary to balance the budget. It would accomplish the task by cutting a single penny from every dollar the government spends every year for 3 years and end with a balanced budget after those 3 years. Taking this approach, each agency and program within that agency could determine its priorities and decide where to cut 1 percent of its budget. Guaranteed, if given the choice, agencies and programs--I hope--would cut the least important, the least likely to affect staff and overall operations. In other words, they would cut what they could do without, and every business and every agency has those things. The problem is that every program has a constituency. Every program has folks who are telling me or my colleagues: Yes, we understand the need to cut spending, but my program is an integral part. So don't cut me, cut someone else. At this point we have to step to the plate and say that there are no easy choices left. If we all feel a little bit of pain now, we can avoid the pain we will face if we continue to kick the can down the road when it comes to our long-term budget outlook. We have to get serious about providing a blueprint for future spending that provides a path to a balanced budget. We need a blueprint that funds the government and necessary programs but takes an honest look at where taxpayer dollars are going and makes changes to spend less and spend more wisely. Some of my colleagues across the aisle have talked about providing for future generations in the budget resolution. With this budget we are providing for future generations--we are providing them with less prosperity and fewer opportunities by refusing to make some hard decisions and saddling them with unpaid trillions of dollars in bills. I have three children and four grandchildren who live in Wyoming. Many of my colleagues have children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. It is because of them and families across the country that we have to make tough choices on our spending priorities, and we have to make them now. This budget resolution doesn't do that. Instead, it is another missed opportunity, another ledger that just doesn't balance. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 656 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. ENZI. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I appreciate the compliments from the two people who are from States that don't have the sales tax. We are not on the bill. This is an amendment to find out if a majority of the Senate is in favor of making sure we go through with some legislation that will actually solve the problem that is over 20 years old. This is a problem the Supreme Court decided on and said Congress was the one that needed to fix it. They didn't say States should fix it, they said Congress should fix it. What we have been trying to do is fix it. I had a complicated bill before called the streamlined sales tax bill. It took care of a lot of the problems we are talking about, such as multijurisdictions, and allows for one check to be dispensed to one location and then distributed to those who are participating. Senator Alexander had a better idea, and that is the one which is in the bill that is before us, and that is one which makes it States rights. It is where States can decide what they are going to do and how they are going to do it provided they follow a certain number of rules. This is not as definitive as that bill yet because that bill would have to pass through this body as well. I can assure everyone that no person in a State that doesn't have a sales tax now would have to pay a sales tax. If there is a business selling into a State that does have a sales tax, yes, they would have to collect that sales tax and forward it to that State. If there are complexities or conflicts with that, those can be worked out as the legislation goes through too. Nobody mentioned that there is a $1 million exemption in the bill. So when we talk about small businesses, if they have less than $1 million in sales, they don't have to do this. Once they reach $1 million in sales, they have to do it the next year so it doesn't become a problem that starts in the middle of the year. It also requires that the States provide the information and the programs for them to do this. So it is a States rights issue, and that is what the Supreme Court suggested when they suggested we needed to fix this. If Senators talk to their small businesses, they will find that they want it fixed because there is not fair competition anymore. People will come into a store--I was in the shoe business--and try on shoes. They get all the help they need, find out what they want, and then just order it over the Internet. I think it is kind of interesting when they say: Well, I got free shipping. When someone goes into a store and tries on shoes, they can get it that day. There is not even a day's delay; express shipping is not even needed. I hope we are able to work on the bill and actually complete a bill and take care of the difference that is taking money away from States. They are not asking the Federal Government for a single dollar. They are not asking for the Federal Government to enforce this. They are asking for the right to have their States rights. I yield the floor, and I will keep the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I thought my colleagues from New Hampshire and Montana might share with us a little bit about the amendments they are proposing, but in light of them not doing that, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. ENZI. We have heard a lot of complaints from primarily the non- sales-tax States about the amendment we have proposed, but we haven't heard about the amendments they have proposed. I thought they would use part of their time to make the case for what they were proposing. I am still expecting them to do that, and when they do that, then we ought to have some time for rebuttal. That is why we have saved some of our time. So I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee and then my final minute to the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENZI. I move to lay the motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 597

Mr. ENZI. I have an inquiry. I would like to make a unanimous consent request that we be able to use our electronic devices while we are sitting at our desks on the floor so that we might get any communication that we need from our staff, and also so we can be productive.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I rise with Senators Durbin, Alexander, and others to discuss an amendment I am filing to the fiscal year 2014 budget resolution. The amendment establishes the deficit-neutral reserve fund that allows States to enforce State and local use tax laws and to collect taxes already owed under State law on remote sales. The amendment captures the bipartisan, bicameral--the House and Senate--policy my colleagues and I are pursuing in S. 336, the Marketplace Fairness Act. I did hear my colleague from Utah mention he would like that to go through regular order. This does not preclude regular order. This would not be a final determination for the bill, but it would give us some kind of indication of the strength behind this idea. As a former small business owner, I believe it is important to level the playing field for all retailers--in-store, catalogue, and online-- so an outdated rule for sales tax collection does not adversely impact small businesses and Main Street retailers. The Supreme Court case earlier encouraged Congress to solve this problem. Thousands of local businesses are forced to do business at a competitive disadvantage because they have to collect sales tax and use tax and remote sellers do not, which in some States can mean a 5- to 10-percent price advantage. We should not be subsidizing some taxpayers at the expense of others. Sales taxes go directly to State and local governments--that would be counties and cities and towns--which bring in needed revenue for maintaining our schools, fixing our roads, and supporting local law enforcement. If Congress fails to authorize States to collect tax on remote sales and electronic commerce continues to grow, we are implicitly blessing a situation where States can be forced to raise other taxes, such as income or property taxes, to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue. Do you want that to happen? I sure don't. Now is the time for Congress to act. Many Americans do not realize when they buy something online, order something from a catalogue from a business outside their own State, they still owe State sales taxes. It is just very difficult to comply with that. For over a decade, Congress has been debating how best to allow States to collect sales taxes from online retailers in a way that puts Main Street businesses on a level playing field with online retailers. On February 14, 2013, the bicameral, bipartisan Marketplace Fairness Act was introduced to close the 20-year loophole that distorts the American marketplace by picking winners and losers, by subsidizing some businesses at the expense of other businesses, and subsidizing taxpayers at the expense of other taxpayers. All businesses and their retail sales and all consumers and their purchases should be treated equally. The bill also empowers States to make the decision themselves. If they choose to collect already existing sales taxes on all purchases, regardless of whether the sale was online or in-store, they can, but it takes their action. If they want to keep things the way they are, it is the State's choice. The Marketplace Fairness Act does not tax Internet use, it does not tax Internet services, and it does not raise taxes. It gives States the right to collect what is owed by the purchasing individual. I wish to provide some highlights of what the Marketplace Fairness Act accomplishes. The bill gives States the right to decide to collect or not to collect taxes that are already owed. The legislation would simplify and streamline the country's more than 9,000 diverse sales tax jurisdictions and provide two options by which States could begin collecting sales taxes from online and catalogue purchases. The bill also carves out small businesses so they are not adversely affected by the new law by exempting businesses with less than $1 million in online or out-of-State sales from collection requirements. This small business exemption will protect small merchants and give new businesses time to get started. Do not let the critics get away with saying this kind of simplification cannot be done. The different tax rates and jurisdictions are no problem for today's software programs. As a former mayor and State legislator, I strongly favor allowing States the authority to require sales and use tax collection from retailers on all sales if the State chooses to do so. We need to implement a plan that will allow States to generate revenue using mechanisms already approved by their local leaders. We need to allow States the ability to collect the sales taxes they already require. If enacted, it would provide approximately $23 billion in fiscal relief for the States for which Congress does not have to find an offset. This would give States less of an excuse to come knocking on the Federal door for handouts and will reduce the problem of federally attached strings. The Marketplace Fairness Act is about States rights and it is about fairness. I strongly encourage my colleagues to vote for the Enzi- Durbin amendment to support the goals of States rights and a level playing field for all businesses. I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I just want to thank the Senator from Ohio for his usual very clear way of explaining things. I know that comes from the tremendous background he has had, not just in the House but actually putting together a White House budget before. I guess the Senator has had access to these different sources of information before and knows how they could work if we could get access to them. It is hard for me to believe that somebody would not want more information. They can analyze themselves whether they think it is useful. But more information is always better. So I thank the Senator for bringing that amendment here, and his other amendment as well. But as to that one, it is just incredible to me that anybody could oppose it. So I thank the Senator for the thought he put into it and for the great presentation he did.

Mr. ENZI. I wish to thank the Senator from Alabama for all the work he has done on the budget. He worked on a budget for 2 years previous to this which never materialized. I am so pleased he and his staff are working on a budget. I understand his disappointment. I am an accountant, and I hope Senator Johnson, who is the other accountant in the Senate, will have an opportunity to come to the floor and talk about some of the numbers because there seems to be some discrepancies in the numbers. He has tried to pin those down by asking questions of the staff and, as a result, has come up with some demonstrations that show where the budget we are currently talking about goes. I wanted to just briefly share an article I ran across today. It is called ``Mr. Penny vs. a dragon: Hey kids, it's the national debt!'' How are kids across America going to understand the debt? We are having a lot of problems understanding it in this body. Washington's budget squabbles and financial fights are enough to tangle up anyone's head, so one can only imagine how it might confuse children. So enter Mr. Penny and the Dragon of Domeville. Let's see, that would be the dome? Yes. This children's book by Lucile McConnell seeks to raise awareness of fiscal irresponsibility and the national debt for those who are just out of diapers. The book's hero, Mr. Penny, is introduced as ``quite an individual and not a follower,'' and begins: Once upon a penny, in the Land of Us''-- That would be U.S.-- in the little town of Meville, lived a little penny. In fact, a whole lot of little pennies were scattered all over the Land of Us, but our story is about one particular penny: Mr. Penny. He was a singular fellow, quite an individual and not a follower of the crowd. The antagonist, a dragon--a black dragon--if this had been a western story, it would be the guy with the black hat--a dragon designed to represent a bloated Federal Government that will not stop growing and loves to eat currency. In fact, he developed a taste for charred bills . . . dollar bills. Within no time, the dragon had devoured $15 trillion-- You can tell the book is a little old, otherwise it would be $16.6 trillion, which is where we are now-- and was always looking around for more to consume. Eventually, Mr. Penny scores a one-on-one with the dragon and does his level best to convince the dragon just how reckless Federal waste can be. I don't think you know what effect you are having on the whole land of Us by eating the money that we send to Domeville. . . . Our schools are closing; our youngsters can't go to college; our oldsters can't get medical help; our businesses are failing because there is no money for loans; our roads and bridges are falling down; our towns and industries are not safe; our citizens do not have jobs; and we are running out of money. On the book's Web site, McConnell describes herself as ``a tax/ commercial transactions attorney'' practicing in Washington and New York and says--and this is very important--all funds from the book--all funds from the book--will go toward paying down the national debt. In an author's note in the book, McConnell writes: Our beloved Country is in trouble . . . big trouble. This is the kind of trouble that cannot be solved unless we all pitch in and come to the aid of our country immediately. She adds: My hope is that after reading this book, young people are energized about the possibility of what we can accomplish together through cooperation and teamwork. So, Madam President, I had an amendment in the committee that would have taken care of some of those charred bills and converted them to metal coins--dollar coins. If we were to do that, it would probably save about $1 billion. That maybe doesn't sound like much around here, but $1 billion would be a good start and would put a little punctuation in this book. We are getting to the point where if we don't do something, we will not have money to spend. If interest rates go up--and if people lose confidence in our economy, the interest rates will go up--the only thing we will be able to pay is interest. Doesn't that sound like somebody who has used their credit card too much and can't afford to pay the credit card down? Of course, we are not even worried about paying the credit card down. We are not even talking about doing that. We are not even talking about balancing the budget at this point, and we need to do that or maybe we need to pass out copies of ``Mr. Penny and the Dragon of Domeville.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to share with the American public exactly what they are getting with the majority's budget for the coming year. I will be blunt. It is not good news. In fact, after 4 years of not bringing up a budget for consideration by the Senate, what the majority has offered is a severe disappointment. We have to grow the economy, not the government. But, unfortunately, the majority's budget focuses on growing the government--more taxing, more spending, more government. During our last break, I had an opportunity to travel around Wyoming. I did about 2,000 miles, and I did a bunch of listening sessions. That is where I just take notes while people tell me what is on their mind. They are not going to be pleased with this budget. In fact, they think the best way to grow jobs is to cut government. And they were very adamant on making sure the sequester happened, which would be the first real cut in government we have had in forever. They recognize that what we usually call a cut is when an agency asks for a billion dollars, and they only get a half a billion dollars in new money. They call that a half billion dollar cut. It is not a cut, it is an increase of half a billion dollars. But around here that would be a cut. So we do not really do cuts. Sometimes we slow the growth of government, but we do not do cuts. They actually want to see some action to cut, to balance the budget, and eventually to pay down the debt. They recognize that if interest rates go up, $16 trillion is going to be tough to pay the interest on, let alone pay back any principal, let alone do any other function of government. So this is a budget that looks out over the next 10 years. It provides for significant tax increases, upwards of $1.5 trillion. But it also provides for significant spending increases. It is not as though we are increasing the revenue so that we could decrease the deficit and eventually decrease the debt. It is so we can add to spending--$162 billion next year alone. It provides for spending increases of 62 percent from today's budget levels. Any savings are being claimed after the first year--after the first year. We never get to the second year, so the savings never make it-- never pan out. It reminds me of a sign I saw on a restaurant. It said: Free drinks tomorrow. Of course, if you came in tomorrow, they said: No, no. Read the sign. It says: Free drinks tomorrow. That is the way we budget around here. We are always promising these things, but the real things do not happen. Our problem is not that we tax too little but that we spend too much. A budget should serve as the blueprint to get the revenues and the spending aligned. Individuals have budgets. That is what they do. They see how much revenue they have coming in, and they see how much they can spend. They do not see how much they can spend and then see what the revenue is going to be. You cannot live in that kind of a world, but we do here. Unfortunately, the majority's budget fails miserably in that respect. In fact, it does not balance the budget in any year over the next 10 years. The budget that was offered by the House Republicans, on the other hand, balances the budget in 2023. And, of course, the other side of the aisle talks about what a terrible budget that is. But they got it to balance. They have even introduced and passed budgets in the House for the last several years, and that takes a lot of courage when you know all that is going to happen over in this body is for it to get shot down by the majority. But those budgets have gotten some votes in favor of them. The President has presented some budgets. The last 2 years, he has not gotten a single vote for his budget. I mean, he was not able to talk a single Democrat into voting for his budget--not one--let alone a Republican. So the budget that was offered by the House Republicans balances in 2023. I have introduced a bill. It is called the Penny Plan. That cuts spending by 1 percent from every dollar for each of the next 3 years. If we could do that--true cuts--1 percent for each of the next 3 years, the budget would balance in 2016. I really think that is where we need to be--not 2023--2016. And, hopefully, we would not stop the cuts of 1 cent for every dollar. Families across America are having to cut more than that. When I present this in Wyoming and other places, they say: Well, my wife just got laid off. We had to do a 20-percent cut, so why can't the Federal Government do a 1-penny-out-of-every-dollar cut? That would balance it by 2016. If we kept it going a little more, we would actually be paying down the debt--not just reducing the deficit but paying down the debt. Our Nation owes $16 trillion, and no one is talking about reducing it. We have to get to balance--the sooner the better--and start paying down the debt. And do not get confused by the language the majority will use. They will say that their budget takes a ``balanced approach.'' But it does not balance. There is a big difference. ``Balanced approach'' to them means ``fair'' tax increases. I am not sure what that means, but that is what they mean by ``balance.'' And it is tax and spend, it is increasing deficits, and increasing debt as far as the eye can see. This is not the plan America needs to get its fiscal house in order. Next year alone, the majority wants to increase spending by nearly $162 billion, and the deficit next year is anticipated to be $152 billion above current projections. Over the next 10 years, deficits are expected to total $5.2 trillion. If we adopt the majority's budget, that is $5.2 trillion in addition to the $16 trillion we already owe. That is not balancing the budget. That is not a balanced approach. None of this spending is associated with any kind of reforms to the drivers of our out-of-control deficits and debt that will bankrupt-- bankrupt--Social Security and Medicare. The majority's budget provides no path to save Social Security and Medicare. They are hoping the Republicans will do that and take all the flak that is involved for it. Well, if we do it soon enough, there is not as much flak as if we do it later. It has been a shame that we have been years without a budget, and when the majority finally gets around to doing it they do not even address the biggest driver. Earlier this evening, the majority leader commented that we can learn from the bipartisanship shown by Senators Mikulski and Shelby on their work on the bill that will fund the government for the rest of the year. I think it was a massive opportunity and expenditure of effort that they did. But what I want to point out is that they had the opportunity to work things out together--together. That is bipartisan. That means sitting down together and figuring out what both sides think are the priorities, and seeing if there is not some way to put those into a single budget. I know it has not been done in years, but it is something I imagine America dreams about. I wish the majority would have provided that same opportunity in the Budget Committee. Maybe then the majority would have brought a bipartisan budget to the Senate floor. This does not have to be a shooting match. It can be a realization of a way to match spending with the revenues we have. I was disheartened last week when I finally received the majority's budget to see that it simply continues the mantra of ``tax and spend.'' We cannot tax the American people every time Congress screws up, every time we overspend. And there are a lot of ways we do overspend. One of the favorite things around here is to propose a grand new idea, and since that grand new idea would have a huge pricetag on it, we reduce it by saying: We will just make it a demonstration project. We will just do it in five States to start with, with a very minimal budget, and that will prove the value of this project. And practically every one shows they are a valuable project. Well, at that point the local governments or the States are supposed to take them over and sell it to the rest of the country so that everybody winds up with this tremendous project. That is not what happens. They come back the next year and they say: This worked phenomenally, so we need to expand it to all 50 States because everybody deserves a great program such as this. Well, we increased it from 5 to 50, so we increased it tenfold, at least. And chances are pretty good that some of those projects are done in small States. So when you put them into big States, they are an even bigger blowup of the budget. That is the way we bust the budget around here--just one of many ways. Rather than looking for waste and abuse and duplication in government spending--and we know there is some--the majority simply decided to ask the hard-working American public to send in more of their hard-earned dollars to Washington to pay for more spending. These tax increases the majority calls for will hit the middle class. They say it will not hit the middle class. But we did some of the rich, and I noticed, in the alternative minimum tax--that is a great phrase. That sounds like everybody ought to be paying tax, and that is kind of an American principle, but it is not something that happens around here. Over 50 percent of the people do not pay any tax now. But we had this alternative minimum tax so that the rich would pay more. Well, inflation changed it so that 34 million Americans are being hit by that in the middle class. Consequently, we changed it. That is what we do when we try and mess around with classes of people. To my constituents back home in Wyoming and fellow citizens across the country, let me be clear: It is your money, not the government's money. That is what they were telling me as I traveled around Wyoming for 2,000 miles and did my listening sessions. They say it is our money. As legislators, we have to do a better job of taking care of the funds they provide us and ensuring that it is spent wisely. The majority thinks it knows best how to spend the money the American people work hard to make. The budget they have offered seeks more than $1 trillion--let me repeat that: more than $1 trillion--in new taxes over the next 10 years. And debt will still grow by $7 trillion. That would be $23 trillion. That is a lot to pay interest on. Take and figure that out, if you can, with all those zeros that are out there, how much money that amounts to--at some moderate rate, say, 5 percent, because that is what it is anticipated to grow to in that same amount of time. And I think it could go well higher than that. Because if the rest of the world that is loaning us 40 percent of our money decides we are not the best place to put that money, the interest rates will have to go up dramatically in order to encourage the kind of money to keep borrowing $23 trillion--or $16 trillion; that is, if we can balance the budget quickly. In fact, the majority wants to set up a fast-track legislative process to get $975 billion from you as quickly as possible. Now, we had the discussion earlier about taxes. We thought we had worked the tax problem for everybody and preserved people's taxes for 99 percent of the people. We thought there were going to be some spending cuts coming. Somebody sent me this little chart that I have to share. This says ``Republican'' on it: OK. I will raise taxes if you promise to cut spending. Well, Lucy says: It is a deal. But we have been watching this cartoon for years and years. We know what happens. When we go to pick up the spending cuts, the football suddenly gets lifted out of the way and we end up on our back, the American public winds up on its back. Those are not the kinds of spending cuts we are looking for. We are looking for some real spending cuts, not just a decrease in the growth but some real spending cuts. There is a way to do those. Wyoming has been faced with probably an 8-percent reduction in its income. How did they handle it? The Governor saw that coming, got a hold of every department and program and said: I need a plan from you for how you would cut 2 percent, how you would cut 4 percent, how you would cut 6 percent, and how you would cut 8 percent. When he got the four plans from every department, he took a look at them to see if they were cutting the worst first--you know, reducing the pain as much as possible. It worked that way. There was hardly a whimper and hardly anything noticeable to the customer; that is, the people who live in Wyoming. That is good management, not an e-mail that goes out that says: Make the cut as painful as possible. That is the sequester we are going through now. That should never happen in any kind of a managed business or a managed government. I guess that would be saying it is not a managed government. When we took up the budget in committee last week, I offered an amendment to strike the language that provided for the fast-track tax increase process. My amendment was meant to ensure that the tax reform would be conducted in a bipartisan manner, to generate a more efficient, fairer, and simpler Tax Code and spur economic growth rather than raise revenues through legislation that can be passed with a simple majority here in the Senate. A simple-majority vote would ensure that the minority party's views would receive little, if any, consideration. We would have no input. Debate time and the number of amendments that could be offered to improve the legislation would also be limited. We need to have an open process where all Members can have their voices heard. We simply need to stop dealmaking and start legislating. We have had the system around here for a while where we work from contrived crises that have very specific dates at which the sky falls and the United States is demolished. Of course, that does generate a lot of publicity and all the media and everything leading up to that crunch. A group goes off and makes a deal. We find out about that deal in the last hour. Our choice at that point is take it or leave it. Well, if the sky is going to fall and America is going to be destroyed, what is the choice? That is not the way to do it. We have to quit dealmaking and start legislating. The way you legislate is to have the chairman and the ranking member and other interested people on the committee who have a very specific interest in an issue sit down together and see if they cannot work out a basic package. It only has to be a basic package. It does not have to be a comprehensive package. This basic package would then go to committee. That is where the people can turn in amendments and improve it from their viewpoint. The reason we have so many people in the Senate and in the House is so that we can see as many unintended consequences as possible. But if it does not go through committee, we have turned those people off. We have said: Your views do not count; your amendments do not count. Consequently, we do not end up with a good piece of legislation coming out of committee. If you get it out of committee in good shape, you can get it to the floor in good shape. If you get it to the floor in good shape, you can take additional amendments and improve it maybe more. That has been my experience with this. Yes, there have to be some tough votes with that. That is what we do. That is what we get paid for-- legislating, voting. We have spent the last week working on a continuing resolution. We got to vote three times. There were only requests for 11 more votes. We did not get to vote on those until tonight. So they had it arranged in a very fast process. Some of the people did not actually get their say. We have to stop dealmaking and start legislating, particularly on big and important issues such as tax reform. We have to get back to a regular process so all Members can give input and improve the legislation. Senator Gregg and Senator Wyden worked on income taxes for a long time. Then Senator Coats and Senator Wyden worked on income taxes for a long time. Now I am working with Senator Wyden and Senator Coats on income taxes. I think we can come up with something that will work. We can do both the individual and the corporate tax rates at the same time because they are very interrelated. We would not have that big of a tax code if it were not for all of the interrelationships. It is time that we made it simpler and fairer. It can be done, but it is not going to be done on a partisan basis in a very short period of time and get it right. So we have to get back to that regular process so all Members can give input and improve the legislation. Unfortunately, my amendment was defeated. Every Member of the majority voted against it. But I will try here again on the Senate floor. Senator Grassley, who was a former chairman of the Finance Committee, and I have come together. We will offer an amendment to get rid of the fast-track process and provide for progrowth, revenue- neutral tax reform for corporate, business, and individual taxes. I have a few other amendments I plan on filing as well to improve this budget. One would provide for a phase-in or transition for any changes to the Tax Code so that people and businesses can plan accordingly and we do not inadvertently put companies out of business or add people to the unemployment rolls. Another amendment would require that each Federal agency identify and prioritize its programs, its projects, its activities so that they can cut the worst first, as I mentioned in the Wyoming example. That way we get what is the least harmful and least painful. There would be spending reductions. We might even get into duplication between agencies. Senator Coburn and I did a little study of the health, education, labor, and pension programs. We found there was $9 billion--$9 billion of duplication. You cannot get rid of all of that, but you ought to be able to get rid of half of it. Well, Senator Coburn got so enthused by it that he went and took a look at the rest of government. He found $900 billion a year in duplication. Now, how is that possible? Well, my jurisdiction was rather limited, but what I have jurisdiction over is duplicated in almost every way. Almost every department, agency, and program has something to do with financial literacy. Based on our budget process, I would say that is probably failing. Maybe we ought to get rid of all duplication. I will also file an amendment that would provide for protecting and restoring monies in dedicated funds, such as the trust funds, so we will not steal money from other areas to make up for shortfalls, as the majority did with the abandoned mine land money for 10 years that was owed to Wyoming but instead was used to pay for a 2-year highway bill. Finally, I will file an amendment reflecting the goals of the Marketplace Fairness Act so that we put all businesses, whether brick- and-mortar, online, or catalog, on a level playing field with respect to the collection of sales and use taxes. The majority's budget would severely harm my home State of Wyoming. The more than $1 trillion in tax increases would mean losses in personal income, household disposable income, and job opportunities. Over the next 10 years, the tax increases would cut personal income in Wyoming over $4 billion. You have to remember, we are a small State. We finally got past the half-million mark in people. So $4 billion is a lot. It would cut household disposable income on an average of $26,000 per household. There would be an average of nearly 1,900 job losses. You have to remember, we only have half a million people. These tax increases clearly are not the recipe for fixing our ailing economy and certainly not the answer for the hard-working folks back home in Wyoming. When you start with one party doing the drafting--and those who wrote the budget hold the majority on the Budget Committee--you can expect the bill to be one-sided. If you keep on doing what you have been doing, you can expect to get the same result. Unfortunately, I believe that is what we will see this week as we debate the budget on the Senate floor. The majority kept us in the dark on the last budget until last Wednesday evening. We had to present our opening statements in the Budget Committee before we even saw the budget the majority would offer. Now, I do have to say in the defense of the majority that is the way it has been for several years, both when the Republicans were in charge and when Democrats were in charge. That does not mean it is right. If you want a good budget, you have to share the information, and share it before people have to comment if you really want good comments. Then we had to turn around and start voting on the amendments the next morning in the Budget Committee. We were not part of that process. It was on a partisan line. I was particularly disheartened by one amendment that failed on a party-line vote that was offered by Senator Portman from Ohio. His amendment was simply asking the Congressional Budget Office to provide additional information with the cost estimates it provides on legislation affecting revenues. That is right--he was just asking for additional information. Every Member of the majority voted against it. How could a request for additional information be so partisan? We can and must do better for our constituents and our country. Several weeks from now, we may see the President's budget proposal. Of course, he will be late to the game since the House and Senate will have already acted on the budget. That would be the first time in over 90 years that would be the case. By the way, his budget was due nearly 2 months ago. I anticipate it will include many of the same things we have here in the Senate majority's budget--more taxes, more spending, more government. As we are learning all too well with the majority's drive to repeal the recent spending cuts called sequestration, taxes generally go on forever, but spending cuts seldom make it through the year. We were promised spending cuts, but the football is about to be jerked out. We have to grow the economy, not the government. Unfortunately, the majority's budget has it backward: It grows the government at the expense of the economy. I look forward to the debate on this budget and filing amendments to improve it both for my constituents in Wyoming and my fellow citizens across the country. I know the debate around here has delayed the beginning of the budget process so that we are going to be under a crunch. Perhaps it will go into the weekend and give us an opportunity to do all of the amendments rather than just trying to fatigue us on Friday. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. The Wyoming people absolutely think there should be a balanced budget. They do not think it ought to take 10 years to get there. They know how they have to operate. These are just hard-working, ordinary people with big hearts and an interest in jobs and their families. They are not seeing jobs happening. They are not seeing the economy improving. They are seeing taxes rising and people just talking about raising taxes. That is not where they expect us to go. All of them can suggest someplace within their realm of work that there ought to be a change. Most of them say the best way to improve the economy, the best way to do jobs is just to get the government out of our way. These are people sitting on a tractor, even working in government during the day, thinking of ways their job could be reinvented to maybe be a little bit better. That is how governments can improve. They come up with some commonsense suggestions. I haul it back here, but commonsense doesn't go very far around here. I will keep hauling it, continue talking to people and continue to see what their expectations are, and hopefully we can meet those expectations. It doesn't take an accountant to know we are overspending.

Mr. ENZI. They are saying there should be quite a changeover back here until we have people who understand that you are not supposed to spend more than you take in. The answer is not charging them more in taxes every time we can't meet that expectation. They already think there are enough programs out here. Sometimes I have to agree with them. When I started as the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--HELP--Committee, within my jurisdiction was preschool programs. There were 119 preschool programs. We spent more on preschool than we did on K-12. Senator Kennedy and I were able to get those down to 69 programs. People wonder why we can't get it below 69 programs. Most of them aren't handled by the departments we work with. They are handled by Agriculture, Commerce, and other agencies. We don't get to dabble in those. There are ways we can eliminate duplication and save a little money, but we are not looking for that.

Mr. ENZI. Absolutely. It looks like a tremendous manual. We have a thing called the Government Performance and Results Act, which is where every agency is supposed to list what they do and how we will know they completed it. At the end of the year, they are supposed to evaluate themselves to see if they did what they said they were going to do. Most of them don't report, and those that usually do fail, and that is a lot of what is in that report. The agency is saying: No, we didn't do what we are supposed to do.

Mr. ENZI. One of the things that happen with the programs is they usually get named after some Senator and he is very protective of his particular program. This is one of the things that make it very difficult to eliminate programs. Yes, if the duplication is eliminated, you may put the emphasis on the programs that are really working and that should succeed. That should make a bigger difference to everybody.

Mr. ENZI. That is probably the only way it can be done, is to have the President suggest this is leadership, this is management, this is what the White House is supposed to be in charge of and could do. I also know that even if the President talks about eliminating a program, there will be the 10 good examples from across the United States that actually work that will come in and flood us with comments about how that program cannot be eliminated. This is why I have the penny plan--one cent of every dollar across the board. Then you don't run into that problem. As I said, that would balance in 3 years, not 10 years.

Mr. ENZI. Yes. These are the latest figures. After the sequestration and after the fiscal cliff, it came down to that. Before that, it would have taken us 5 years.