Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I also ask unanimous consent that after Senator Alexander, Senator Coburn be recognized to talk about his motion to instruct.

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Not yet.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk on behalf of Senator Johanns and ask that it be reported.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield, I would suggest that he send his motion to the desk at this time and set aside the pending motion.

Mr. GREGG. For the information of our colleagues, we have three more speakers on our side who will take 10 minutes each, offering motions to instruct. There may be other speakers but I do not know of them. I hope we can sort of start voting here, depending on what the chairman desires to do, at some point in the near future.

Mr. GREGG. We may not need all of the time on our side either.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I send a motion to instruct to the desk.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, as we have discussed earlier at some length, there are three essential problems with the President's budget. The first is that it spends too much, the second is it taxes too much, and the third is it creates too much debt. It is the third issue I think many of us find to be the most severely distressing issue. Of course, it is driven by the first two issues. But the idea that we are going to double the debt in 5 years, triple it in 10 years; we are going to have, on average, a $1 trillion deficit every year for the next 10 years, and that we are going to build up the national debt to a point where it is 80 percent of the gross national product, the public debt is disturbing. It basically is on an unsustainable path. It means our Nation will be put at risk by that type of debt. Now, the Congress is not doing a very good job of disciplining itself. This problem is driven primarily by spending. But the fact is, the result of that spending is this explosion in debt. As I have held up before this chart that shows the picture of the Presidents since the beginning of our Nation, President Washington through President George W. Bush, they generated this much debt on this country, $5.8 trillion. President Obama's budget just in the first 4.5 years essentially is going to double that debt. All the debt added to the United States, to the backs of American citizens since 1776, or actually 1789 when the Government started creating debt, over 200 years, all of that debt is doubled now in just 5 years. That is not tolerable. Then that debt, after doubling in 5 years, triples in 10 years. Our children end up with this debt. Our children are the ones who have to pay for this. The people who will be working in America are the ones who are going to have to pay for this and bear the burden of this debt. They are going to suffer either massive inflation, massive devaluation of the dollar, massive tax increases or a dramatic disruption in our capacity to sell debt as a nation because of this. The chairman of the committee has said this is an unsustainable path. Yet nothing in this budget addresses the fact that this path is one we have chosen to follow. It is akin to saying: We know we are going to go off a cliff. We are on a path that takes us off a cliff, but the budget does nothing to change the direction we are walking and, in fact, accelerates our pace toward that cliff. That makes no sense at all to me. Why would we pass a budget which we know will create so much debt and so much of a burden on our children that our Government will not be able to be sustained and our children will not be able to afford the Government. It is counterintuitive to do something that is certainly not correct. One generation has sort of a fiduciary responsibility to the next generation. In the history of our Nation, each generation has passed on to the next generation a better nation, a stronger nation, a more prosperous nation. Yet this budget locks in place a path that absolutely guarantees, absolutely guarantees, that our generation will pass onto our children a country that is not as prosperous, is not as strong as what we received from our parents. That is not right, not fair, inappropriate. It is a totally inappropriate thing to do. It can be corrected. It is not as if this is not an uncorrectable event. There has been a decision made on the other side of the aisle and by the President in bringing forward this budget to significantly explode the size of the Government. That is a conscious decision that was made. The President is very forthright about this. He thinks that is a way to create prosperity. It does not happen if at the same time you are running up the national debt at rates which are unsustainable. The debt, the public debt will double during the term of this budget--double from 40 percent to 80 percent. We have the public debt so high under this budget, or the President and the Democratic Members of this Senate and the House have it so high under this budget that if we tried to apply it to the European Union as a country in Europe, for example, we would be rejected because, under the terms of the European Union, a country cannot have as high a debt as we are going to have after this budget runs its course. Actually, it is about the middle of the budget that we hit that threshold. Can you believe that? Countries such as France are going to be more fiscally responsible than we are. But that is the truth. That is the way this budget plays out. As I say, this is a path over a cliff for our Nation. I have offered this motion to instruct. I call it the 1789 motion because that is the date when we started running up debt in this country. In essence, it says this: We cannot pass a budget here in this 5-, 10-year cycle that adds more debt to the backs of our children than the total debt that was added to this country from 1789 through January 20, 2009. I think that is a fairly reasonable standard. We are going to say you cannot exceed the amount of debt that is being added by this budget-- that amount of debt cannot exceed the amount of debt that has been added to this country since our beginning, 230-some-odd years. We have to have some standard to live by. That seems like a reasonable one, that in 5 or 10 years we do not take the debt up so quickly and so horrifically that we actually exceed all the debt put on the backs of the American people since the beginning of our Nation, from 1789 through January 20, 2009. This standard, if it is passed, will be a standard that will be enforced under the budget. The effect of it will be that we will have to figure out some way to reduce debt or the rate of growth of debt under this budget. That is reasonable. If it is the desire of this administration to radically expand the size of Government, as it appears to be the desire of this administration to take spending in this Government up to astronomical levels in the context of our historical spending at the Federal Government, to go from 20 percent of GDP up to 25, 26 percent of GDP, if that is the purpose of this administration, and it appears to be their purpose, it is their purpose, it is what they said they are going to do in this bill, in this budget, well, then they cannot do it by passing those bills on to the next generation and creating this massive debt. They have to come up with some other way to do it. My suggestion would be that they do not spend that much money. That would be the suggestion from our side of the aisle. But maybe from the other side of the aisle is that they raise taxes radically on all working Americans, which they do anyway in this bill, but they would have to raise money in any event. We should not put the burden on our children by creating all this additional debt. This is a simply fairly reasonable test as to how much debt this budget should be able to run up on our people. It should be less debt in 5 years than has been run up on the American people in over 200 years. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are going to start voting shortly. I ask unanimous consent that the votes be in the order as listed in the original unanimous consent request under which we are functioning, which would be Senators Stabenow, Johanns, Gregg, Sessions, Ensign, Cornyn, Alexander, Coburn, DeMint, and Vitter.

Mr. GREGG. As I understand from the chairman--and certainly it is our sentiment--we can pretty much begin voting whenever anybody is ready.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the time between now and 7 be equally divided between the two parties under the leadership of myself and Senator Conrad, and that should Senator Ensign be here, he has the last motion to instruct which we need to discuss. So he gets 10 minutes from our side or such time as he may desire from our side that is still remaining.

Mr. GREGG. I send a motion to the desk on behalf of Senator Ensign and ask that it be reported.

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Is this all coming off of your time? I will be yielding my time on this side.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me begin by saying I think it is terribly unsportsmanlike of the chairman of the committee to say such nice things about me, to disarm my ability to effectively attack his budget, but I wish to join his thoughts because he and his staff are very good to work with. He is a professional. They are committed. He genuinely believes, as I do, that this country's outyear fiscal situation is not a sustainable event. We are trying to work together to address that situation. We hope we can gather others to join us in this effort. I respect he has water to carry around here, and he carries it extraordinarily well on behalf of his constituency, which is the Democratic caucus and the President of the United States. I congratulate him for the exceptional job he does. That being said---- Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG. Is the debate over?

Mr. GREGG. That being said, let's begin where the chairman leaves off accurately and correctly in saying that the course we are on is unsustainable. What does ``unsustainable'' mean? It is one of those terms of art we use around here. It means that by the time this budget runs its course--not necessarily the chairman's budget but the President's budget because the President's budget is a 10-year budget--by the time the President's budget runs its course, we will have passed on to our children a debt which will have tripled--tripled--a deficit which will have averaged every year for the 10 years a trillion dollars or more and a national public debt--that is the debt we owe to the Chinese, to the Japanese, and to our own people who own a fair portion of our debt--a national public debt which will have doubled as a percent of our gross national product, going up to 80 percent of our gross national product. What does all that mean? It means essentially we will have built a debt in this Nation which our children will not be able to afford to pay down. Just the interest on that debt alone, as we move into the later years of this budget, will exceed anything else in the budget as a line item on the discretionary side of the ledger. It will exceed, for example, all the money we spend, the interest alone will exceed all the money we spend on national defense. It will exceed by a factor of three or four or maybe even eight accounts such as education, housing, veterans affairs, and health. The deficits will have been so large for so long that the debt will have grown to a point that there is no logical way or fair way that our children and our children's children, who will have to pay this debt, will be able to do it in a manner that would leave them with a nation that is as strong and as prosperous as the Nation that was given us. Putting it another way, at the end of this budget, after these 10 years are over and beginning in about the third and fourth year of this budget, the spending will be so out of control at the Federal level, the growth of the Government will have occurred at such a rapid rate that we will have created a debt structure which will mean that our children will have about three choices in their future. The first is that there will be a dramatic increase in inflation. We will try to pay this debt off with inflated dollars. There is no more regressive or harmful tax that a society can put on its people than to have uncontrolled inflation or massive inflation. But that is what one of the choices is. The other choice is that we will raise taxes to a level that they will be so high we will essentially tax away the opportunity of our children to do things which were considered to be commonplace for our generation--buy a home, send their kids to college, invest in a small business, take a risk, create a job. All of that will be taxed away because the tax rates would have to get up to such a level to pay this debt off that we will no longer be able to have that type of prosperity. The third course of action, equally untenable, is that the dollar gets devalued--which is to some extent an inflationary event-- and people stop buying our debt. They simply say: I don't believe you can pay this debt off--you, the people of the United States. You are not going to be able to generate enough productivity to do it. That, of course, leads to some level of implosion of our economy which I can't even calculate or comprehend, but it is much worse than what we even confront today. So nobody is arguing or debating--at least I am not, though there are some who are--I am not coming to this floor and saying it is irresponsible for this administration, for President Obama to have inserted a large amount of Federal spending into the economy this year and next year. We recognize that this economy is in stress and that the only source of liquidity for our economy is our National Government and that the Federal Reserve, for all intents and purposes, has become the lender of first resort. But that is a short-run issue. The problem with this budget is that the type of spending which has to be done now is not curtailed after 2 years. It is not reigned in. It is not reduced or even leveled off. It continues up and up in the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year, the sixth year of the budget the President sent up here. The spending continues to go up on a path that is extraordinarily steep, so that the cost of the Government, which today and historically has been about 20 percent of GDP, jumps to 21 percent, 22 percent, 23 percent, and 24 percent. In fact, if you go outside the window and you presume these numbers continue to compound, you get to a cost of Government that ends up around 28 and 29 percent of GDP. You cannot sustain an economy with that type of cost. I have a few charts to try to put this in perspective. The first chart is on the issue of debt. The budget, as proposed by the President--and why do I keep talking about the President's budget rather than the chairman's budget? Because the President's Director of OMB said they are essentially the same, and they are essentially the same. We can get into the differences, but the differences are at the margin and they are really not arguable. The biggest difference is that the chairman's budget only goes for 5 years, not 10 years. Well, there are other big differences, but that leaves off the second 5 years, and by leaving off the second 5 years, you don't talk about and you essentially hide some of the most dramatic effects of this spending binge. The President's budget increases taxes by $1.5 trillion, it increases discretionary spending by $1.4 trillion, and it increases mandatory spending by $1.2 trillion. And this number, this $1.2 trillion, is grossly underestimated. What does it do in the area of savings? On the mandatory side, it does nothing in the area of savings, absolutely nothing. In fact, the few discretionary savings he sent up, which I happen to support, were dropped in the chairman's mark, especially in the area of agriculture. So as we have said, and some people have heard it before--maybe not in this room--it spends too much, it taxes too much, and it borrows too much as a budget. What it doesn't do is save too much, and that is what gets us into trouble. The practical effect of this budget's structure is that it takes Federal debt and doubles it in 5 years and triples it in 10 years. Try to remember what we are talking about. We are not talking about going from $100 to $200 to $300. We are talking about trillions. Trillions. I don't know what a trillion dollars is. I can't even conceive of it. But that is what we are talking about. We are talking about taking the Federal debt from $5.8 trillion up to $17 trillion, or thereabouts. To try to put it in perspective, if you take all the spending, all the debt run up by all the Presidents since the beginning of the country--George Washington through Franklin Pierce through George W. Bush--all that debt that has been run up over 230-some-odd years by all our Presidents, that debt is doubled by this President within 5 years of being in office. There is another chart which shows this even better. It is called the wall of debt. This chart wasn't invented by me, but whoever invented it was a genius, obviously. The wall of debt shows how the Federal deficit just goes up and up and up and up. This wall of debt is what our kids are going to run into when they try to have a productive lifestyle. It is what is going to cost them their ability to be successful. By the time we get to the end of this, or even right here in the middle somewhere of this budget, the average family in this country is going to have $130,000 of new debt for which they are responsible. And $130,000 is probably more than the mortgage on the homes of most people. The interest cost on that debt, which most Americans, which all Americans are going to be responsible for, will be about $6,000. That may be more than what most people pay in interest on their homes. But that is the debt that is going to be passed on to them by this budget. Why does it happen? It happens for one very simple reason. It is called spending. The simple fact is that under the President's budget-- and under the budget proposed by the chairman--the spending of the Federal Government goes up dramatically, comes back down, and then starts back up again. It goes up dramatically, of course, in these 2 years here, which I said I have reservations about. I especially had reservations about the stimulus package, which was a misallocation of spending, even though I supported the stimulus effort. Why does it start back up again? It starts back up again because this President, in a very forthright manner--and I give him credit for this--has said not only in his budget but he has said publicly that he genuinely believes the way you create prosperity is to significantly increase the size of the Federal Government, to take it to the left dramatically. So he does. As a result, spending goes up at a rate that is simply not affordable for our children. Look at this black line here. This is the black line that reflects the average spending of the Federal Government between 1958 and 2008. Look at how much higher the spending is of this Government under this proposed budget. That is a huge gap. When you are talking about an economy as large as ours, when you are talking about 2, 3, and 4 percent--or in this case, 4 or 5 percent--that is where the massive deficits come from. That is where the massive increase in debt comes from. It is debt that is the issue. The chairman used to say: The debt is the threat. He is absolutely right, the debt is the threat, but the driver of the threat is spending. Unless you are willing to address the issue of spending, you are not going to get debt under control because you can't tax people enough to cover that. Well, of course you can always inflate the economy and try to cover it, but that leads to much more harmful events. So this is the fundamental difference we have as a party. The President has said he wants to spend, he wants to tax, and he wants to borrow. And I think it is important to note there is a little subtlety here that hasn't been focused on too much, and that is this: When President Clinton came into office, he also wanted to spend and tax, but he didn't want to borrow. He used his taxes, which he increased-- which I probably opposed--in order to reduce the deficit. This President, on the other hand, who is claiming he is going to raise taxes on just the wealthy--which is a canard if there ever were a canard around here--is using all that revenue not to reduce the deficit but to increase spending, and then he spends on top of that. So he is using it to grow the size of Government. He is very forthright about this. He is going to use those tax revenues to nationalize the health care system. That is the way I describe it; he describes it another way. He is going to use those revenues to basically create a massive expansion of spending in the other accounts of the Federal Government. But he is not going to use those revenues to try to reduce the deficit. That is the big difference between President Obama and President Clinton in the area of fiscal policy. So he doubles and triples the debt, and as a result, he leaves to our children a nation which is not affordable. So as I said, there is a fundamental difference. You know, in the past we would get these budget debates on the floor, and they were sort of academic exercises. People would engage in them, and they would be very interesting, but I don't think anybody ever saw it as the core of the policy of the country. Even though it was important, it wasn't the core. This debate is about this country's future. This budget is about where this country ends up. The pathway that has been laid out in this budget is a pathway that leads to a debt which the chairman has openly said is not sustainable. If the chairman knows it is not sustainable and the President knows it is not sustainable, why haven't they sent a budget up here to address that fact? Instead, they have sent a budget up here which does nothing about that fact, and, in fact, it does the opposite. It increases spending, it increases discretionary and mandatory spending, and it saves absolutely zero in the area we most need savings, which is the mandatory accounts. So the difference is this: The President, as I said, has been forthright. His budget--this budget--probably the most significant document we have received here in the area of fiscal policy since perhaps the time of Lyndon Johnson or before, concludes that the way to prosperity is to expand the size of Government in an exponential manner by spending on Government programs in hopes that they create some sort of economic activity and create prosperity over the long run. Well, we believe, as a party, that doesn't work because in this case it is not paid for and it creates all this debt which we then pass on to our children to pay. We believe the way to prosperity is to have a government that is affordable and to pass that affordable government on to your children. Equally important is to empower the individual citizen and groups of citizens to go out, take a risk, and create a job, not to have the Government take from the individual the ability to create jobs because it taxes the individual either through inflation or through taxes or through a huge debt burden, as is proposed in this budget--a huge debt burden that is not sustainable. So this is a very significant debate and a very significant decision point in our Nation's history because if this budget passes in its present form, we are guaranteeing that we will pass on to our children a nation whose Government is not sustainable, and therefore we will be passing on to our children a nation which is less than what we received from our parents. No generation has the right to do that to another generation, and that is what this debate is about. Mr. President, at this point, I yield to Senator Johanns, who has an amendment or who wishes to discuss a motion to instruct.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will indulge me for about 2 minutes because I want to speak quickly on behalf of the amendment of the Senator from Nebraska? He has outlined a lot of the substantive reasons it is important. It would not be appropriate to do this type of huge policy on a 20-hour debate, no-amendment situation, up-or-down vote. But there is another issue which goes to the integrity of the Senate and the purposes of the Senate. Basically, reconciliation is purely a Senate event. The House doesn't need reconciliation. The House has a Rules Committee. They can determine how long debate is going to be, when there is going to be debate, and how many amendments there are going to be. The Senate historically has been the place where people come to talk, to discuss, to air out an issue, and then to have amendments on that issue. That is the whole function of the Senate in our constitutional process. I find it incongruous, to be kind, that the House of Representatives would be trying to dictate to the Senate the rules of operation of the Senate in a manner--first, it is inappropriate to begin with, but they are dictating them in a manner which basically goes at the fundamental purpose of the Senate, which is that the Senate be the place where debate, discussion, and amendment occurs on policy issues of great substance. I do not argue that reconciliation is not a useful and appropriate tool to be used around here. There are many reconciliation initiatives for which I voted. But in the area the Senator has noted, which is a massive change in industrial policy, a huge tax on every person who turns on a light in every home in America, that should not be done under reconciliation. Equally important, the House of Representatives should not be explaining to the Senate or telling the Senate what the rules of the road are in the Senate. They have enough issues on their own over there. At this point, I think the Senator from Michigan wanted to be recognized. At the completion of the remarks of the Senator from Michigan or the chairman's comments, unless the Senator has further comments, the next Member to be recognized on our side will be Senator Grassley.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield for a further question, I will make this a rhetorical question. The Senator is one of the most influential Members of the Senate and of the Congress. When he says he wants something to happen, especially when it deals with the budget, I know it will.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. I totally want to identify my position with the Senator's argument as to the purposes of reconciliation and the fact it should not be used for major public policy initiatives which require debate and hearings in the Senate and an amendment process. Are we to presume, therefore, that your logic on cap and trade applies also to major health care reform?