Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG. This is a pretty simple amendment. It comes about as a result of one of the elements that I see as the core of the problem with the President's budget, and that is that we, under the budget as proposed by the President, are going to pass on to our children an unsustainable Government and a debt which will essentially put them in a position where their quality of life will be dramatically reduced because of the burden of the debt they have to pay relative to the Federal deficits that have been run up. The President's budget doubles--you have heard this before--doubles the national debt in 5 years, triples it in 10 years. These are massive expansions in debt. It is hard to put these numbers into context, but they represent the fact that every household in America, by the year 2019, will have $130,000 debt on its back added as a result of this Presidency, and $6,000 of interest payments that they will bear as a result of this Presidency. That means the debt added to their backs and the interest added to their backs probably will exceed their mortgage payments--to pay for the Federal Government. So it doubles it in 5 years, triples it in 10 years. The burden will be extraordinary on our children because they are the ones who will have to pay the cost of this. It will lead to a decrease in the quality of life of our Nation because the burden of paying this will lead to one of two options: Either we inflate the currency, thus reducing the value of the dollar--and inflation is a dangerous thing for society to have happen to it; it makes everybody's work less valuable and it makes the products they produce more expensive--or, alternatively, the tax burden to pay for this will have to go so high on all Americans--this is not just the wealthy; the wealthy already are going to be taxed under this budget--it will go so high on all Americans that their discretionary income which they might use to buy a house, which they might use to send their children to college, which they might use to buy a car, to live a better lifestyle, will be eliminated or significantly reduced, anyway, because they will have to go through the burden of paying taxes to cover the debt that we are running up now. We are, our generation, running it up and we are handing it on to the next generation. It is very wrong for one generation to do this to another generation. We will be creating under this budget, or the President is proposing to create under his budget, a wall of debt which goes up and up, a wall of debt which will be sitting on top of the American economy and the people of this country. The American people are not going to be able to get over this wall of debt. They will run right into it and the economy is going to run right into it, and it is going to have a devastating impact on us. Other countries are going to be worried about this. Other countries that buy our debt and support our ability to function as a nation are going to be worried about the size of this debt. In fact, the Premier of China has already said--and he is the largest holder of American debt instruments outside of the United States--has already said that he is concerned about this. If China or other nations start to get concerned and are not willing to buy our debt, then that puts us in a difficult position because if we are going to run up all this debt and we have nobody who can buy the debt, that is when you hit inflation. That is when serious things happen. We do not have to look too far to see it already happening in other nations. Ireland. Ireland got its debt so out of kilter it just had its credit rating reduced. A whole nation, which is considered to be a pretty vibrant nation and which for a period was considered to be the most vibrant economy in Europe, had its credit rating reduced. That is a huge event for Ireland and it reflects the fear that the Irish economy will not be able to support the deficits and the debt that are being run up. How large was the Irish debt and deficit that led to this credit rating--credit downgrade? Their deficit was 12.4 percent of GDP. You say that is pretty darn high, no wonder the credit rating agencies said the Irish debt may not be sound or as sound as other nations. How high is our deficit going to be? Under this budget resolution, this year it is already going to be 12.2 percent. We are closing in. Under the President's budget proposal, it will exceed 13 percent this year if the proposals in his budget are enacted. We are closing in on the Irish situation. We are spending a lot of money we do not have and we are running up a lot of debt we can not afford. In fact, stated another way, if you look at all the debts, all the deficit and all the debt run up on the United States since the beginning of our country-- 1789, when we began running up debt, that is when George Washington was President--this is a picture of all the Presidents here. If you look at all the debt they ran up on our Nation from George Washington through people such as Buchanan, Polk, Lincoln, of course, Grant, Garfield, Wilson, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, right up through George W. Bush--all the debt run up by all these people, all these Presidents throughout all their administrations, the President of the United States, President Obama, is suggesting that he, under his budget, we should double that--double this cumulative debt run up on our country since 1789 in about the first 5 years of his Presidency. That is incredible. That is an incredible explosion in debt. It gets back to this chart I held up that says we are going to double the debt in 5 years under this Obama proposal--President Obama's proposal--and triple it in 10 years. It is incredible. I do not think that is affordable. I don't think our Nation can do that. So I have offered the amendment I call the 1789 amendment. We are going to refer to it as the 1789 amendment. Actually it says there will be a point of order against a budget that proposes that the debt of this Nation should be doubled during the period of that budget--that if that debt would double, that a budget which would propose that debt would double the amount of debt run up since 1789 through January 20, 2009--if a budget comes to this floor which doubles the debt of the United States, which has been run up since 1789, through 2009--run up under all the Presidents of the United States prior to President Obama, there would be a point of order against that budget. Does a point of order mean the budget can't be passed? No. The budget can be passed. It is just going to take 60 people to pass it rather than 51. That seems reasonable, that if you are going to leave our children with a doubling of the debt in 5 years and a tripling of the debt in 10 years, that you ought to be willing to get 60 votes to do that. The reason for this, of course, is to highlight and make it clear to the American public what we are doing to ourselves. I do not expect to win the point of order very often--especially if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have 58 votes. But that point should be made so the American people see in a very clear way what is happening to them. That is what this is about--making it very clear to the American people that if the deficits are going to go up in this way, that if a President proposes to run a $1-trillion-a-year deficit for 10 straight years on average--$1 trillion, think about that for a moment, a $1 trillion a year deficit for 10 straight years on average--wow. We used to get concerned around here, and rightly so, whether we were running a deficit in the range of $200 billion. We are now talking about $1 trillion a year under this President's budget, as the deficit that is proposed. Five to 6 percent of the gross national product will be deficit spending, with the practical implication that it adds to the debt almost $9.3 trillion, tripling the debt, taking the debt as a percentage of GDP up past 80 percent, which is an unsustainable number. It is so unsustainable, in fact, that we wouldn't even be able to get into the European Union if we wanted to because they don't allow countries in that have that amount of debt. Can you imagine that? We are worse off than all the countries in Europe that are part of the European Union because of the level of debt being proposed in this budget. Nobody wants to use Europe as an example, but that is a pretty significant benchmark. We will be headed toward a situation where the value of our currency is at risk, where our ability to sell debt will be limited or affected, where we have a potential for massive inflation, and where we essentially will pass on to our children a country they cannot afford because the tax burden to support the government will be so overwhelming. We should not do that. I don't think we should do it. The history of this Nation is that every generation passes to the next generation a better and more prosperous country. The implications of this budget are that we will be unable to pass to the next generation a better and more prosperous country. This amendment, which we call the 1789 amendment, says, if we want to pass a budget that doubles the debt over all the debts that have been run up in this Nation since 1789, we need to get 60 votes rather than 51. We have to get nine more people to agree. That seems a reasonable threshold and, hopefully, a transparent event that will make it clear as to what the budget is doing to the next generation. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I was going to put them in lights, but they don't allow that as part of the rules.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, is it not true that under the rules of reconciliation, an instruction to the House Energy and Commerce committee that is contemplated for purposes of health care, for example, would not prevent that committee's ability to use the reconciliation process for the purposes of climate change legislation because a reconciliation instruction cannot specifically state which matters within its jurisdiction a committee should address to comply with its reconciliation instruction, which is only a dollar number?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I would agree, and I am wondering why we would need reconciliation instructions. I ask the Senator this question: Why would the House need reconciliation instructions? Do they not have a Rules Committee? Would not the only purpose of reconciliation instructions in a House bill be to have a conference report approve a reconciliation instruction, which would tie the hands of the Senate? It certainly wouldn't tie the hands of the House, would it? In tying the hands of the Senate, it would allow Senate committees to reconcile the issue of a cap-and-trade bill and create a carbon tax--or a national sales tax--every time somebody turns on a light switch in America; and there would be no way to limit that once there is a reconciliation instruction in a conference report.

Mr. GREGG. I think the Senator from Alabama is absolutely right; that could be the only conclusion. Is there any other conclusion that can be reached? I don't believe there is. The only purpose of a reconciliation instruction in a House bill is for the purposes of controlling the floor of the Senate--not the floor of the House--and set up the possibility of passing it in a conference report.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I would ask the Senator from Alabama this: The Senator from California has correctly stated that reconciliation has been used often in this body before. It was used by President Clinton, since I have been here. It was used by President Bush. I voted for most of the different reconciliation bills. But is it not true that reconciliation, when it has been used before--even though used for significant events--has always been used for already existing policy; whether it is changing the rates of taxes, whether it is changing the way the welfare system was adjusted relative to who was covered or whether it was changing the way we deal with student loans? It was always used on existing policy that had been pretty well aired on the floor of the Senate. It has never been used for the purpose of creating, ab initio, a brand new major tax, which would essentially tax every American every time they turn on their light switch--a national sales tax--which would introduce industrial policy and which would affect virtually every American as to their jobs--sending many of them overseas--and as to the ability to be competitive. Has it ever been used for such a broad, extensive public policy event of creating massive new taxes that don't exist today--a national sales tax--and massive new industrial policy? It would mean that policy and those taxes would come across this floor without amendment, with 20 hours of debate, and an up-or-down vote. Has it ever been used in that context in the Senate?

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent the Senate continue to debate this issue under the bill until 12:40, and that the 10 minutes from 12:30 to 12:40 be allocated to the Senator from South Dakota and the Senator from Oklahoma, and the time from now until 12:30 be for the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, first I appreciate the Senator arguing for our case, which is that we should not use reconciliation in the Senate for the purposes of pursuing a vehicle such as a massive new sales tax on all Americans on their electric bills, and specifically whenever they turn on their light switch they are going to get hit with this tax. I would point out as an aside, he may have misrepresented what I said. I didn't say we hadn't used it for significant things; we have used it for significant things. But we have never used it for creating, ab initio, a national sales tax or any tax, for that matter, ab initio, and that is where the rubber meets the road. I do believe strongly, listening to the Senator, that he has basically admitted a conference report could carry in it reconciliation instructions which would allow for reconciliation to be used to create a new national sales tax on everybody's electric bill. So it seems perfectly reasonable that what the Senator from Alabama has requested should be agreed to here. Because he essentially is asking for what the Senator from North Dakota has suggested he supports, which is that reconciliation will not be used that way after the Senator from North Dakota has said the reconciliation may be able to be used that way. There is no reason for the House of Representatives to put reconciliation in their bill. It is a touch cynical for the other side to represent that, because the bill before us today doesn't have reconciliation in it, that reconciliation is not being considered as a vehicle before this body because the only reason the House of Representatives has put reconciliation in their vehicle--because they don't need it, they have a Rules Committee--is because they can bring it out of conference and stick it to the Senate and put it into the Senate procedure here. It means, on a purely procedural event, that the House of Representatives is actually going to be controlling the floor of the Senate. How outrageous is that? But independent of that there is a procedural point--which affronts me as a Senator and I think would affront the tradition and history of the Senate--there is the more substantive issue that reconciliation should never be used to create a brand new national sales tax. And that, of course, is what the Senator from North Dakota has said is true, it should not be used in that way. So why do they object to the fairly benign request here of the Senator from Alabama, which is to ask unanimous consent that we not use reconciliation on the floor of the Senate for the purposes of creating a national sales tax, or what is euphemistically called a carbon tax? I don't understand the opposition myself. It seems very strange. Under the bill----

Mr. GREGG. I yield for a question.

Mr. GREGG. It seems as though the Senator from Alabama is expressing through his unanimous consent request the exact thought process of the chairman of the committee as stated here on the floor. Mr. President, I know Senator Thune wishes to speak off the bill. I see the assistant leader is here. I wish to sort of line up time so everybody gets time before we go into adjournment.

Mr. GREGG. We can go until you finish.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent to change that. How much time does the Senator need?

Mr. GREGG. Give 5 minutes to everybody in sequence until they finish.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that when we return at 2:15, after Senators who have the right to speak have completed their statements, the time between 2:15 and 2:30 be divided between the Senator from South Dakota and the Senator from California.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I call this the 1789 amendment because it simply says that if there is a budget brought forward after January 2009 that raises the debt of this country more than all the debt added up by all the Presidents since 1789, starting with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Pierce--to remind a few of you folks-- Franklin Roosevelt, all the Presidents since 1789, all the debt they added to this Nation--if there is a budget that brings forward more debt than that in one 5-year period, as regrettably President Obama's budget does--it doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10 years--then there will be a point of order against that budget so it will take 60 votes in this body to pass that budget rather than 51. It is a reasonable request.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if the Senator wishes to make this retroactive, we will accept it.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the Senator would yield for the purposes of a question, I will try to make it rhetorical. First off, I congratulate the Senator for his amendment because it is a serious amendment addressing what I consider to be the most serious problem with the President's budget, which is that the amount of debt that is being put on the books by this budget is a result of incredible expansion of the size of the Government and the spending of the Government. It is going to put us in a situation where, as the Senator noted, we will probably not be able to sustain the payment of that debt or we will be forced into a position similar to some of the countries the Senator mentioned, which is serious inflation or an inability to borrow money because people will worry about the ability to be able to pay it back and our concern about the devaluation of the dollar. It is hard, I think, and inappropriate for one generation to put that much debt on the back of another generation. So what the Senator is proposing is--not that you can't pass a budget, but when you do pass a budget that raises the public debt and grows debt, in this case up to 90 percent of GDP, at a level of countries such as Cuba and Aruba--what were the other countries?

Mr. GREGG. That is correct, as a result of this budget proposed by the President, because the budget proposal is a dramatic expansion in spending--an expansion of spending up to levels we have not seen since World War II in terms of gross national product. Huge numbers. The Senator asked how can this--these huge numbers, which nobody can understand, $1 trillion or 90 percent of GDP--how does that translate to the person who lives on Main Street? Well, basically it means at the end of this budget, every household in America will have an obligation relative to the Federal debt that is owed of $133,000. That is probably going to exceed a lot of mortgages they have. So not only do you have your mortgage on your house, but you are going to have a Federal debt which you are responsible for of $130,000. The service on that debt--in other words, the interest costs to pay for that debt--will be $6,200 a year.

Mr. GREGG. Well, China regrettably. They are the primary mortgage holder, although other nations also hold our debt. Russia owns a lot of it, and Middle Eastern countries, such as oil-producing emirates and Saudi Arabia. Obviously, America also owns some of its debt. But the countries outside our Nation, regrettably, have raised their level of ownership of our debt. It has actually been good for us because some people have been able to borrow from us; we have borrowed from people who lent us money--primarily, China, Russia, and other countries in the Middle East have been lending us money. When we pay back this debt, which is going to be run up dramatically--doubled in 5 years and tripled in 10 years by this budget--we are basically going to be sending hard-earned money from Americans to these other nations.