Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, since my time is about expired, I will say this is one of the best statements I have seen recently, by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, where they write about the result of the death of bin Laden, not offering an excuse to end the war in Afghanistan or our other efforts against terrorists but, rather, that success will come to us when we understand the nature of the threat and maintain our efforts to root it out wherever it may be, whether that be in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or wherever. I think it is an excellent piece. I commend it to my colleagues as suggesting the way forward as we continue to fight the radical Islamists who would continue to visit ill on the United States and other western powers.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, in a few minutes, we are going to be voting on the continuing resolution which our House colleagues are voting on literally as we speak. I wish to address that briefly, but I must comment on one of the things my colleague from Pennsylvania said. He is critical of the Ryan budget but does not appear to have read the Ryan budget because I know he would not deliberately mischaracterize it. He is wrong in several respects, and I will cite one example. He said the Ryan budget will end Medicare as we know it and that millions of seniors will be directly affected. That is simply not true, unless we count someone as a senior who is 53 or 54 years old. The Ryan budget does not affect anyone above the age of 54 with respect to Medicare. It says, if you have Medicare and you are 55 or older, nothing changes for you. All we do is provide premium support for those age 54 and below. It is simply incorrect to say millions of seniors would be directly affected by the Ryan budget with respect to their Medicare coverage. Let me go back to the point of our discussion right now. As I said, we will be voting very soon on the continuing resolution. This is the final continuing resolution, we can finally say, for the fiscal year 2011, that funds the government for the rest of this fiscal year. It does mark the end of a long and hard-fought process. I am pleased we have been able to cut billions of dollars from the Federal Government and avoid a government shutdown. It is true $38 billion in spending cuts represents a tiny fraction of the Federal budget, and it is less than many of us would have liked. But those who have been critical of the deal, saying it does not go far enough, should keep three points in mind. First of all, our fiscal problems were not created in a day and will not be solved in one budget. It is a good start. It is like the weight I put on. It took me a long time to add the 10 or 12 extra pounds, and I am not going to get them off overnight. It will take me time to get them off. The budget agreement begins a process that is critical to beginning the reduction of our deficit. The agreement will enact the largest nondefense spending cut in dollar terms in American history, just months after President Obama asked Congress for a spending freeze that would have provided no cuts whatsoever. The Wall Street Journal points out: Domestic discretionary spending grew by 6 percent in 2008, 11 percent in 2009, and 14 percent in 2010, but this year will fall by 4 percent. That's no small reversal. I believe they are correct. Second, no one got everything they wanted. Some wanted more in cuts, some wanted less. I would have preferred we cut more, but this was the best deal we could get that could pass both Chambers of Congress and signed by the President. Third, this debate has altered the conversation about spending, and that is a good thing. As columnist William McGurn wrote Wednesday, during the budget negotiations, Speaker Boehner helped change the national debate over spending ``from `stimulus' and `investment' to `how much spending we need to cut'--which is why [the President] press[ed] the reset button'' in his speech this week on spending and debt. I think Mr. McGurn is correct. We have changed the fight from how much money we are going to spend on stimulus to how much we are going to cut from this and future budgets. Once the final 2011 budget passes, and we move on to the much larger discussion about the 2012 budget, we will be talking not about saving billions but about saving trillions of dollars. The problem, as we all know, is a $14 trillion debt, with a large amount of that owned by China and by other foreign countries. It also represents over $53 trillion in unfunded liabilities. In May, our Nation is expected to hit its debt ceiling, and the President has asked us to increase that ceiling. Senate Republicans and House Republicans--and I believe many Democrats as well--have said that in order to raise the debt ceiling, we need to do something significant about the debt and about constraining future spending. The longer we wait, the worse the problems will get. They are exacerbated over time. And we are not going to raise the debt ceiling without ensuring we don't have to keep on doing it in the future. Raising taxes, as the President proposed, will not be helpful in this process. It is disappointing the only specific proposal the President laid out in his speech yesterday was, in fact, this call for higher taxes. Speaker Boehner has said raising taxes is a nonstarter, and I imagine the vast majority of Senate Republicans will take that position as well. Most Americans do not believe that we are undertaxed but that Washington has a spending problem. I will briefly go over a few of the better ideas our conference has been discussing, which I think could attract support from both sides of the aisle. First is a balanced budget amendment, which all Senate Republicans have cosponsored. This should not serve as a means to raise taxes but as a mechanism to ensure the Federal Government has to live within its means each year, just as most American families do. Second, I believe there is strong support in the Republican caucus for a constitutional spending limitation at 18 percent of the gross domestic product. Why 18 percent? Because that is roughly equal to the revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product over the last 40 years. An 18-percent spending limit would stop Washington from spending more than it takes in each year. And third--and I am glad to see the Senator from Missouri in the Chair while I pass on this compliment--Senators Corker and McCaskill have sponsored the Commitment to American Prosperity Act, known as the CAP Act. I strongly support their legislation. It would cap both mandatory and discretionary spending and put all government spending on the table. Beginning in 2013, the CAP Act would establish Federal spending limits that would, over 10 years, reduce spending to 20.6 percent of the gross domestic products. That is the average of the last 40 years. To reduce any gamesmanship, the bill codifies the definition for emergency spending. I know some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle wish to see even more dramatic reductions as a part of the CAP Act. I will note the Corker-McCaskill proposal is responsible and mainstream and it could, hopefully, attract a good deal of support from both sides of the aisle. Over in the House of Representatives, there are also some good ideas. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has been a leader on fiscal issues, and that Chamber will soon consider his budget plan for the next fiscal year. Chairman Ryan believes this blueprint could reverse Washington's trend of spending beyond its means and passing the debt on to our children and grandchildren, and I believe he is on target. His budget reflects the kind of difficult and politically unpopular choices lawmakers will need to make in order to do something about our unsustainable spending and debt. Perhaps that is why Democrat Erskine Bowles, head of the President's deficit commission, praised the Ryan budget as ``a serious, honest and straightforward approach.'' Notably, Mr. Bowles and his cochairman Alan Simpson said the President's budget ``doesn't go nearly far enough in addressing the Nation's fiscal challenges.'' Chairman Ryan's budget would return Federal spending--specifically what is known as nondefense discretionary spending--to 2008 levels. That is the level before the massive spending unleashed by the Obama administration. The spending cuts proposed in Ryan's budget total $5.8 trillion over 10 years. In a recent article, John Taylor, an economics professor at Stanford, Gary Becker, a Nobel prize winner, and George Shultz, former Secretary of Labor, Treasury, and State, wrote: Credible actions that reduce the rapid growth of Federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the unemployment rate. They also said: Higher private investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way to increase prosperity. Reducing government spending can increase economic productivity and jobs. President Obama has sought to stimulate the economy and create jobs by spending trillions of government dollars. What has that gotten us? Record deficits, excess borrowing--about 40 cents of every dollar the government now spends will have to be borrowed--and it has gotten us stubbornly high unemployment. Chairman Ryan's budget also calls for tax reform through sensible and growth-promoting policies. The budget contemplates a top tax rate of 25 percent for individuals and businesses. Currently, the tax rate on business is 35 percent, the highest of all of the countries in the developed world. That rate, by the way, discourages investment, it discourages job creation, and it makes America an expensive place in which to do business. In effect, it encourages business to move their operations overseas, something all of us are very concerned about. What we need are solutions that emphasize the strength of American entrepreneurs and our private sector, not the government; to spur the economy and help put people back to work. In the debate ahead, I hope we can engage in serious discussions about how to take on our fiscal problems in a responsible way--to bring down the cost of government, boost our economy and promote economic growth. That is what Americans are looking for, and it is what our country needs.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, at this very critical time in our country's history--a time when we have over a $14 trillion debt and we are desperately trying to find ways to reduce government spending and there looms the possibility of a government shutdown--I think we would be best served trying to provide some information to our constituents and, as politicians, resisting the temptation to throw rotten apples at each other. I also think it would be wise for the media to not hype or overhype a situation regarding a government shutdown but to try to put things into perspective. So let me try to do that for a moment this morning. In the first place, obviously we are trying to reach agreement. I compliment the majority leader, Senator Reid, who just spoke, and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, for their efforts to get together and bridge the differences between the two parties--the two bodies--and to reach an agreement. In the last 2 or 3 days, the President has also weighed in on the issue, and I think he too is trying very hard to help the parties reach an agreement. Notwithstanding that fact, under the law, tonight at midnight, the funding for much of the government stops, and the question is, What can be done about that? The House of Representatives has passed a bill. They passed it yesterday. The Senate could take up that bill and pass it. It would keep the government running for another week. It would provide full funding for the military, not just for another week but for the entire rest of the year. That is a reasonable measure to keep the government running. It also, by the way, reduces $12 billion in spending, and most of that spending, I am informed, has already been agreed to by the administration and would be included in any longer range continuing resolution. Well, what happened? The President said he would veto that bill. That is very puzzling because if we are all seeking to fund the government, at least until there can be an agreement on a long-term resolution, one would think we would try to keep it going for another week and adopt what the House did, especially since it provides funding for the military. The President, in his veto message, said that the bill was a distraction. I do have to take issue with that. It is not a distraction, it is what is necessary to keep the government running. Let me get back to that in a moment. What would happen if we were able to reach agreement by tonight? If we are able to reach agreement before midnight then at least theoretically both bodies, both House and Senate, could pass a very short term, 2 or 3 days, stop-gap measure in order to have the time to complete the work on the full measure and then adopt that sometime next week and that would avert a shutdown. It is possible also, because in the Senate it would require unanimous consent; somebody might disagree with that process and would object. In that case, it would take a few days for us to do, in effect, the paperwork to get this done. That would then result in a government shutdown during that time, at least over the course of the weekend. That should be avoided if at all possible. But while there would be some dislocations and inconveniences, I do think the media exaggerates a little bit the result of a shutdown over the weekend. The biggest problem from my perspective is that the military doesn't get paid during that period of time. They will get paid but it is a disruptive thing when you have young military families trying to make ends meet and sometimes living from paycheck to paycheck to have that disrupted. That is why I think it makes so much sense to adopt what the House passed yesterday so we have the time, the week to complete the work on the continuing resolution that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, that is to say through the end of September, and then not have to worry about a government shutdown and especially funding the military. There is a question that has been raised that is very logical. Why can't the parties get together? Why can't you split the difference? In ordinary times it might be possible to reach an agreement that way, but these are not ordinary times. We are talking about a country that is on the verge of not being able to pay its debts. The President himself has asked us to raise the debt ceiling--I believe sometime next month. In effect, we run out not only of money but of the capacity to borrow. Our credit card in effect, the government's credit card, is full up and we cannot get any more credit unless we go to the credit card company and say: Would you extend the amount of money we can borrow? In that case, it is the Congress passing a bill. We are in a very difficult position in this country and everyone knows we are passing a lot of our debts on to future generations. We need to get a handle on that and I don't think anybody disagrees with the proposition that means we need to cut spending. That is what this exercise is all about. So it is not the usual thing of splitting the difference. We are talking about big spending cuts. I was disappointed in the comments of the majority leader just now. He said this debate is about saving money. Indeed it is. Yet it appears the one thing--this is what he said. I do not tend to believe this is correct, but in effect what he was saying is it all boils down to a $300-and-some million subsidy for Planned Parenthood. I do not believe that is what is keeping us from allowing the government to continue to operate. The majority leader has been in the negotiations. He is in a position to say that. If that is the case, then it seems to me we are in a very untenable position here, at least the majority leader is, because Planned Parenthood is not the only entity that can provide medical care in this country. It gets a subsidy of something like $300 million-and-some a year. To shut down the government over that would be absolutely unthinkable. The majority leader never said Planned Parenthood, you know, he said title X. Title X does not receive the subsidy, Planned Parenthood receives the subsidy. Everybody goes to clinics and hospitals and doctors. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don't have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that is what Planned Parenthood does. So this is a red herring. To say that somehow the government is going to be shut down over the fact that Planned Parenthood will not get a $300 million gift from the taxpayers of America would be absolutely irresponsible. If that is what the majority leader is saying, it is irresponsible. I cannot believe that is the fact of what is holding up this agreement from being reached. As I said, we have the bill before us which would provide for a week- long continuation of the government with a $12 billion reduction in spending and a funding of the military through the end of the year. It seems to me that is a very reasonable proposition. We don't have to worry about shutting the government if we adopt that. I said I would get back to the President's message. He said it would be a distraction when he said he would veto that bill to keep the government running, and to fully fund the military. He said it would be a distraction. His exact words, ``this bill is a distraction from the real work that would bring us close to a reasonable compromise.'' I don't see how it is a distraction if it provides another week for us to complete the work to be done. It is obvious we are going to need time to get the work done because neither the House nor the Senate can get everything that would have to be done completed by midnight tonight. The House has a requirement that they have any bill pending for 72 hours before it is adopted. This continuing resolution clearly would have to be posted for 72 hours. Do we want to shut the government down during that period of time because the President thinks the bill to do so is a distraction? I find that incomprehensible, frankly. I also will make this final point. The discussion about reducing government spending is not just because we are having trouble borrowing from borrowers now. Over half, about 42 cents on every dollar we spend now, is borrowed from someone. About half of that is from foreign entities. It is also because, as the government spends more and more money, the private sector has less money to invest and spend. It is the private sector that creates jobs. What we need to do is spend less government money, not only to get ourselves out from under this huge debt burden but also to allow the private economy to have the resources to grow. Included in that, of course, is to hire more people. On April 4, the Wall Street Journal had an op-ed by Dr. John Taylor, a noted economist from Stanford, Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, George Shultz--three different Secretaries, serving in two different Cabinets--all experts in financial, fiscal matters. What they wrote in this, which they called ``Time for a Budget Game-Changer'' is the following two sentences: Credible actions that reduce the rapid rate of growth of Federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the unemployment rate. Higher private investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way to increase prosperity. What we are talking about here is not drastic cuts for austerity's sake, but rather sensible reductions to create prosperity in this country. That is what we are talking about doing here. That is why I support what Speaker Boehner has been trying to do. I urge my colleagues, instead of, as I said, throwing rotten apples at each other here and trying to preach a doom-and-gloom game, let's focus on what this country can do in a positive and constructive way to get our economy going again and get our people back to work.

Mr. KYL

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

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, throughout this day a lot of our constituents back home have been watching the debate. I wonder maybe if they are a little frustrated. I talked earlier this morning about throwing rotten apples at each other. There has been a lot of that today. I am not going to do that tonight. I suggested this morning one of the things we could do while we are waiting to see whether an agreement can be reached to fund the government over this fiscal year is to try to shed some light on the process which undoubtedly is a bit confusing to people: What exactly is it that we are arguing about, how did we get here, and what do we have in the future. We talked a little bit this morning, and what we are talking about today, and what we are hoping to achieve tonight, is an agreement that would determine how much we will spend to fund the Federal Government for the next approximately 6 months through the end of September, which is the end of the fiscal year that begins each October 1. That is an important proposition. It is important enough that there has been a lot of very difficult debate about that, as people have seen over the last several days, and certainly today. It appears there is still a bit of a deadlock over exactly how much money should be saved in the last 6 months of this fiscal year. But when we have concluded this particular debate and determined how much we are going to spend to fund the government through the end of September, we are going to turn to some even more important issues, and they are going to require our concentration, our reaching across the aisle to talk to each other, to the other body, and both bodies of the Congress to speak to the President. We are going to have to listen to the American people and try to reach important understandings because then we are talking about funding the government for the entire fiscal year for 2012 and also trying to figure out what to do with the President's request to extend the debt ceiling. As I mentioned this morning briefly, extending the debt ceiling is a little bit like going to your credit card company and saying: All right, I have used up all of my available credit, but I want to buy something else. Will you let me spend a little more on the credit card? That is what the President has asked Congress to do, to extend the debt ceiling. We will have a robust debate about that. Let me see if I can put what we are doing here in this context. At least for the year 2011, which we are halfway through, we will have reduced spending by a pretty dramatic amount, somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 and $50 billion. I don't know exactly how much until we are done, but when we add that to what we call around here the baseline, and multiply it by 10 years, we get substantial savings. Just on the $10 billion we saved earlier this morning, over 10 years that $10 billion equates to $140 billion saved over the 10-year period. So we are talking about substantial money. But that probably pales in comparison to what we are going to need to save in the entire budget for the fiscal year 2012. There is no shortage of problems that have attracted our attention--for example, the trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities coming from the mandatory spending side of our ledger, in addition to the way that we are trying to save money just to keep the government running. By mandatory we mean the programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, some veterans spending, and so on. I talked about the estimate of hitting our debt limit. The Treasury Secretary estimates we will hit that debt limit--in other words, the amount we borrowed on our credit card and cannot exceed; that is the total amount of the U.S. legal debt--no later than May 16 of this year. So May 16, the President says we need to address the debt ceiling. If you are not keeping track, the current debt limit is about $14.3 trillion. So we are going to be pressing up against $14.3, in other words, and we are going to have to borrow more money if we are going to spend more in the next year. Republicans have offered a variety of ideas. I want to alert my colleagues to what some of these ideas are so we can begin thinking about them and hopefully acting on them in the runup to the debate about what to do about the debt ceiling. There is very little enthusiasm around here for increasing the debt ceiling if we do not also do something to constrain future spending, because we do not want to come up against the debt ceiling every few years or months. We need to decide this is going to be it, we are not going to incur any more debt. In fact, we are going to begin to lower the debt. But to do that, we will have to constrain ourselves in some ways to rein in our appetite for spending. One of the ways to do that almost passed about--well, a few years ago in the Senate here; I have forgotten the year. But it failed by one vote. That is the balanced budget amendment. A lot of people think that would be a good way for Congress to tie our hands so we cannot spend more than we take in. Every single Republican has cosponsored a balanced budget amendment. We hope we will get a lot of support from our friends on the other side of the aisle as well, because it clearly would require the Federal Government to live within its means each year, as most American families have to do. There is also something that I believe is also a very good idea, and that is a constitutional spending limit. In other words, you do not have to require that the budget is balanced if you limit spending to, in this case, 18 percent of the gross domestic product. The advantage of that is there will be a desire on the part of everyone who wants to spend more money to have a more robust economy, because every percentage of growth or every dollar of growth in the gross domestic product means more money you can spend at the Federal Government level. So I would imagine if we wanted to spend more money at the Federal Government level, we will be supporting regulatory policies that do not wipe out whole industries such as the coal industry, we will support tax policies that promote growth, that try to keep tax rates at a lower level, and do not punish companies here in the United States so they have to move operations abroad, and so on. In other words, these are things we can do to promote economic growth that mean we have a bigger GDP. If you have a bigger GDP, then you can spend more money at the Federal Government level. But if you do not have a bigger GDP, then you cannot; we can only spend 18 percent of the GDP under this proposal. And that, by the way, is about the historic average of what we have spent. In the last year and a half, unfortunately, we have gone way above that. We are spending around 22 percent of GDP. It is going up to 24 or 25 percent. That is not sustainable, and almost everyone agrees. Another idea that is sponsored by Senators Corker and McCaskill, a Republican and a Democrat, is the--they call it the CAP Act. That CAP Act would cap both mandatory and discretionary spending. It would put all government spending, in other words, on the table. It would not just take the discretionary spending we are talking about tonight to keep the government funded, we would also include all of the other spending. Beginning in the year 2013, the CAP Act would establish Federal spending limits that, over 10 years, would reduce spending to 20.6 of the gross domestic product. Calculated a little differently, that is an average of the last 40 years of spending. What it would do is create a glide path by which we could gradually reduce the spending so you do not have to do it all at once. I mean the reality is, if we try to be too strong here in the way we are going to reduce spending, we are not going to be successful because people will not stand for it. Have you already seen the debate yesterday and today: Oh, my goodness, you are going to cut money from this and that? We cannot do that. There will always be resistance to reducing spending. So it has got to be done, in my view--I think both Senators Corker and McCaskill agree--it has to be done in a way that Members also agree to each year, rather than simply deciding this is too hard, we are going to give up. And, of course, since it is only statutory, we could give up. We can waive it by 60 votes and say: Too hard. We are going to give up. So it has to be at levels that are tough, but over a 10-year period gradually we can reduce. It is a little bit like going on a diet. You did not get the weight you have overnight, and you are not going to lose it overnight. It makes more sense to do it in a way that keeps you healthy, keeps a consensus around here, but for sure gets us to the goal we want to achieve so that our kids and grandkids do not have to pay for all of the things we have purchased. This CAP Act, by the way, has a lot of good provisions, such as a definition of emergency spending so we cannot game it every year when we decide we want to spend more. If we just say, well, this is emergency spending, then we do not have to count it in our calculations. I would like to see more dramatic reductions. I know other people would too. But, as I said, this is the kind of Main Street proposal that should attract a lot of attention on both sides of the aisle. These are three ideas: the balanced budget amendment, the constitutional spending limit, and the statutory CAP Act. There are a lot of other good ideas. And we, frankly, are going to have to have a good debate about these ideas, because I will predict there is no way the debt ceiling will be increased without Congress adopting some of these constraints and the President signing those into law so we will know that in the future we do not have to keep raising the debt ceiling. The last point I wish to make is there are two big reasons why we are trying to reduce the deficit. First, we all know we cannot keep spending what we are spending. The interest on the national debt, in a little over 10 years, is going to approach $1 trillion a year. It is over $200 billion this year. It will be close to $250 billion next year. It keeps going up about $60, $80 billion a year, to the point that in the tenth year, it is $900 some billion. Think about that. You want to spend money on education. You want to spend money on health care. You want to spend money on defense. Sorry, we have to spend it on interest on our national debt. This is money we are paying to the Chinese or to anybody else who happened to purchase American debt. But it is going to crowd out spending in other areas that we want to spend money on. That is not good. And as a result, we have got to get this spending under control while we still have an opportunity. But there is a second reason it is so important, and that is, the more money, in effect, that is sucked up by governments--that includes the Federal Government--the more money out of the economy the Federal Government demands, the less money there is for private sector growth and investment. And it is, of course, in the private sector where most of the new jobs are created. That is why we need to leave more money in the private sector. We are not reducing Federal spending in order to engage in some big austerity program to try to punish people by providing less for them, and so on. We are doing it to create more prosperity. The whole idea is prosperity. I ask unanimous consent for a couple more minutes of time.

Mr. KYL. In other words, the idea here is to spend less money at the Federal Government level, thereby allowing more for the private sector to invest in job creation, thereby growing the economy, making us a more wealthy nation, and helping our families and job creators in the process. I have cited a Wall Street journal op-ed many times. I will close with this: It is an op-ed that was written by Gary Becker, George P. Schultz--he was Secretary of three things including Treasury--and John Taylor, who is a Stanford economics professor. The three wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. I will quote two short paragraphs. They start out by saying: Wanted: A strategy for economic growth, full employment, and deficit reduction--all without inflation. Experience shows how to get there. Credible actions that reduce the rapid growth of Federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the unemployment rate. Higher private investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way to increase prosperity. When private investment is high, unemployment is low. Above all, the federal government needs a credible and transparent budget strategy. It's time for a game-changer--a budget action that will stop the recent discretionary spending binge before it gets entrenched in government agencies. And they conclude by saying: We need to lay out a path for total Federal Government spending growth for the next year and later years that will gradually bring spending into balance with the amount of tax revenues generated in later years by the current tax system. Assurance that the current tax system will remain in place-- pending genuine reform in corporate and personal income taxes--will be an immediate stimulus. I think this is an excellent strategy for a long-term growth policy. It is predicated on the fact that Congress will work in the short term, i.e. tonight, to reduce the spending for the remaining 6 months of this fiscal year. We will then begin work on a budget that will reduce spending over the course of the next 12 months and, in the context of the debt ceiling debate, will also act on other programs to constrain government spending. It could be a balanced budget amendment, a constitutional spending limit, the CAP Act I talked about, or any other idea people can bring to the Senate and House floors and get passed here, to begin to constrain the spending, not just so we will have the money to spend in the government on the things we want to do, but also so we can free up the great energy of the private sector so investment can once again flow, people can be hired, we can have economic growth and a real sense of prosperity in this country in the years to come. That is the challenge we face after the agreement is reached tonight. I know you share my hope that an agreement will soon be announced and we can then move on to the other items I am talking about here this evening.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted: ``nay.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want to compliment my colleague from Oklahoma for the leadership he has exercised with respect to the rogue Environmental Protection Agency attempting to regulate, in effect, what we breathe and the job-killing program that would result from the regulations that would be prohibited from being adopted were the Inhofe-McConnell amendment to be adopted by this body. I share his desire that we be able to vote on that and stop these onerous regulations from being put into effect. I ask unanimous consent to speak not to exceed 15 minutes in morning business.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want to address two things but start with health care. I recall that during the debate over health care--and we celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the signing of the health care legislation a little over a week ago. But I recall then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saying: We will have to pass the bill in order to find out what is in it. I do not think she realized how true her statement really was. I just read something over the weekend from a March 31 edition of the Washington Examiner. I ask unanimous consent to have this article by Byron York printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. KYL. I will read the first sentence and then a couple of other items from it. The headline is ``Uncovered: New $2 billion bailout in Obamacare.'' Here is the first sentence in the story: Investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee have discovered that a little-known provision in the national health care law has allowed the Federal Government to pay nearly $2 billion to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees. Then the article goes on to point out that they discovered this in oversight hearings of an obscure agency known as the CCIO, or the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. The idea under the law apparently was to subsidize unions and States and companies that had made commitments to provide health insurance for workers who retired early. They point out that there was a $5 billion appropriation in the bill, and at the rate of spending by this agency they will burn through the entire $5 billion as early as 2012. And where is the money being sent to? Well, by far and away, the biggest single recipient is the United Auto Workers Labor Union, which so far had received well over $200 million. Other recipients include AT&T, Verizon, General Electric, General Motors Corporation, and a few State public employees retirement systems. But, by far and away, the contribution to the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters and United Food and Commercial Workers was more than the amount of money sent to the State pension funds--the point being that we learn something new almost every week about Obamacare. As I said, it was just a little over a week ago that it celebrated its first anniversary, and we are only now discovering some of the things that were hidden away in it, which I think had we been able to debate the bill in a more appropriate fashion--remember, it passed on Christmas Eve day of the year before last--we probably would have been able to discover these things. Had the bill been read, had we had time to read all of the fine print, these are the kinds of things that we would have discovered; and I suspect the proponents of the bill, those who voted for it, might not have been so quick to vote for it. Maybe we will have a chance to repeal this particular provision of the bill if there is any money left that has not been spent by the time we get around to doing that. I will propose to my colleagues that we try to accomplish that. The second point with respect to Obamacare that continues to trouble me is something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This is troublesome for three reasons, two of which have to do with process and the third the substance. The Independent Payment Advisory Board goes by the acronym of IPAP, and it was created in order to try to find savings in the Medicare Program. Now, obviously, we have read a lot about the billions, tens of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare. The problem is, this board is not likely to get at that waste, fraud, and abuse because its primary mission--and, in fact, it is restricted to finding cost savings only as a result of reducing the payments to providers. In fact, James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has done some very good writing on this subject, and he notes that the board is strictly limited to what it can recommend and implement and that the board can only ``cut Medicare payment rates for those providing services to beneficiaries.'' Well, that is a problem because it does not get to the real heart of a lot of the waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare. Secondly--and I will conclude my remarks with this main point--when we cut the payment rates for the doctors, for example, who are taking care of Medicare patients, what happens? We get fewer doctors willing to take care of Medicare patients. We are all familiar with the stories in our own States of more and more physicians either not taking any Medicare patients or at least not taking any new Medicare patients. As a result, there are far fewer doctors available to treat folks, which means there is a much longer waiting time for people to get the care they need. The end result of that is, of course, care delayed is frequently care denied. That is the problem that exists in other countries such as Great Britain, our neighbor to the north, Canada, and it is coming to your own community pretty soon as a result of the fact that we are not paying the physicians and other providers enough as it is. That is the only thing that IPAP can do to further reduce the costs. But I mentioned two procedural problems. The first is that this board is comprised of 15 unelected bureaucrats. The President makes the appointments. He does not have to balance them politically, so they can all be members of one political party. He can make recess appointments so the Senate may not even have an opportunity to pass on these individuals. The second procedural problem is, when they make their recommendations it comes to the Congress in a take-it-or-leave-it procedural posture; that is to say, either Congress adopts the recommendations of the board or at a number equal to that, with what we decide ourselves is the appropriate way to achieve that amount, or the Department of Health and Human Services must implement the board's original recommendations, period. That is it. So we are ceding authority to an unelected board of people whose political views could reflect, for example, only those of the President of the United States, and whose recommendations almost automatically become law. Only if the Congress, within a specified period of time, is able to recommend an alternative that can get the votes, and it would have to be a 60-vote majority, would the recommendations of the board be overridden. So for procedural reasons this was not the right way to tackle the problem of costs of the Medicare Program that we do need to get a handle on. It is a very undemocratic approach. But as I said, the procedure is part of the problem. The real question is, how are we going to address costs in Medicare? Now, we are going to see some very innovative ideas from the House of Representatives, from the Budget chairman, Paul Ryan, this week when the House budget is released. He will tackle the tough problem of helping to constrain the costs of Medicare. One of the ways I find very unappealing to control Medicare costs is putting a cap on how much we can spend and reimbursing the providers, in particular physicians, with that particular cap in mind. As I said, the reason is because it is going to cost physicians a certain amount of money to take care of each patient. If they cannot be reimbursed in an amount sufficient to cover their expenses and a little bit more, they are simply going to turn to other kinds of patients. They have already turned away from Medicaid patients because Medicaid does not reimburse at a level that meets their requirements. As a result, it is a dirty little secret in the medical profession that Medicaid is rationed health care. That is not right. These are the poorest in our society. They need support. They need help. But they have to wait a long time. A lot of times, there just aren't the people to take care of them. Now we are going to convert the system that takes care of senior citizens into the same kind of whatever-we-have- available kind of service because when we begin reducing payments to providers, we will get fewer providers, with the result that we will get less care. It is a simple matter of economics. This is being recommended not by physicians, not by the patients groups, and so on, but by people who are unelected bureaucrats appointed to this board. According to Mr. Capretta, under the law this is all the board can do. This is what it is restricted to doing. By cutting Medicare patients, the board will only delay and deny care. That is the critical point. I am painting this picture of physicians not being paid enough. The reality is that today Medicare already pays physicians 20 percent less than private insurance companies do. Part of that is because private insurance companies are cost shifters. When a physician can't make enough money serving government-paid-for patients--Medicare--then they charge more to private sector-paid patients. We therefore are paying more in the private sector for our insurance than it really would cost, but that is in order to subsidize the payment of physicians who don't make enough under Medicare today. What the IPAB would do is reduce those payments even more. This, in turn, will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, and reduced access to care means rationed care. I quoted James Capretta before. He says: In a very real sense, seniors will be the ones holding the bag from these cuts when they can't access care due to a lack of willing suppliers. I will close this point by noting that there is another government health care program I am very familiar with because of the large number of Native Americans in Arizona who have access to health care from the Federal Government under the Indian Health Service. In Indian Country, they have a saying that is not really facetious. They say it with a bit of a wry smile on their face, but they are not at all happy. They say: Just get sick before July. The reason is, there is a definite limit on how much the program will pay out. They set a cap at the beginning of the year, and when enough people have gotten sick enough to a certain point in the year, that is the end of the coverage. So they wait until money is available the next year. That is an oversimplification, but it is what a total single-payer government system does. When we need to cut costs, we reduce the amount of money available. And who suffers? The people to whom we promised care. We see it in the Indian Health Service. We are seeing it now in Medicaid. We are going to see it in Medicare if we are not careful. That is why we need to repeal the IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board established under ObamaCare. There is legislation introduced to do this. Senator Cornyn and I cosponsored the Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act, S. 668, which would eliminate the IPAB. I hope we will have an opportunity to bring that legislation to the floor so that my colleagues can join us in excising this piece of ObamaCare so that our seniors don't suffer from rationed health care. There is a long group of organizations which joins us in our opposition to IPAB, groups such as the American Health Care Association, the American College of Radiology, National Senior Citizens Law Center, National Association of Social Workers, Volunteers of America, and others. I hope that when the time comes, we will have an opportunity to have a debate about this aspect of ObamaCare. I know the supporters of the health care reform act did not intend this negative result. I am not suggesting that colleagues who supported ObamaCare love seniors any less than I love my mother, and they love their parents and others. That is not the point. Laws have unintended consequences. When we create a mechanism to save money such as this one and constrain it the way we have, I know what we will get, and we will not like it. We will hear from seniors. And before I hear from my mother, I would just as soon get this problem fixed. Exhibit 1 [From the Examiner, Mar. 31, 2011] Uncovered: New $2 Billion Bailout in Obamacare (By Byron York) Investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee have discovered that a little-known provision in the national health care law has allowed the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees. At the current rate of payment, the $5 billion appropriated for the program could be exhausted well before it is set to expire. The discovery came on the eve of an oversight hearing focused on the workings of an obscure agency known as CCIO-- the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. CCIO, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the implementation of Section 1102 of the Affordable Care Act, which created something called the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program. The legislation called for the program to spend a total of $5 billion, beginning in June 2010--shortly after Obamacare was passed--and ending on January 1, 2014, as the system of national health care exchanges was scheduled to go into effect. The idea was to subsidize unions, states, and companies that had made commitments to provide health insurance for workers who retired early--between the ages of 55 and 64, before they were eligible for Medicare. According to a new report prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services, ``People in the early retiree age group . . . often face difficulties obtaining insurance in the individual market because of age or chronic conditions that make coverage unaffordable or inaccessible.'' As a result, fewer and fewer organizations have been offering coverage to early retirees; the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program was designed to subsidize such coverage until the creation of Obamacare's health-care exchanges. The program began making payouts on June 1, 2010. Between that date and the end of 2010, it paid out about $535 million dollars. But according to the new report, the rate of spending has since increased dramatically, to about $1.3 billion just for the first two and a half months of this year. At that rate, it could burn through the entire $5 billion appropriation as early as 2012. Where is the money going? According to the new report, the biggest single recipient of an early-retiree bailout is the United Auto Workers, which has so far received $206,798,086. Other big recipients include AT&T, which received $140,022,949, and Verizon, which received $91,702,538. General Electric, in the news recently for not paying any U.S. taxes last year, received $36,607,818. General Motors, recipient of a massive government bailout, received $19,002,669. The program also paid large sums of money to state governments. The Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio received $70,557,764; the Teacher Retirement System of Texas received $68,074,118; the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, received $57,834,267; the Georgia Department of Community Health received $57,936,127; and the state of New York received $47,869,044. Other states received lesser but still substantial sums. But payments to individual states were dwarfed by the payout to the auto workers union, which received more than the states of New York, California, and Texas combined. Other unions also received government funds, including the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Mine Workers, and the Teamsters. Republican investigators count the early-retiree program among those that would never have become law had Democrats allowed more scrutiny of Obamacare at the time it was pushed through the House and Senate. Since then, Republicans have kept an eye on the program but were not able to pry any information out of the administration until after the GOP won control of the House last November. Now, finally, they are learning what's going on.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, finally, I wish to have printed in the Record and discuss briefly an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of today titled ``Time for a Budget Game-Changer.'' This was written by Gary Becker, George P. Shultz, and John Taylor. John Taylor and Gary Becker are both economist professors, Becker at the University of Chicago, Taylor at Stanford. Of course, George Shultz is a former Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State. All three are affiliated with the Hoover Institution. In this article, they present a real answer to the two key problems that face us today. I ask unanimous consent that this piece be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. KYL. The two key problems are that we don't have enough jobs and we have a very high unemployment rate. We need to get the economy growing, and we are having to borrow far too much money because of government spending. What this piece points out is that there is a direct relationship between the two. That is not too surprising. The bottom line is that government borrowing and spending distorts the market by making less money available for the private sector to invest. If the private sector can invest, jobs can be created and we can grow the economy. What they do in this piece is create a credible strategy to reduce the growth of Federal government spending, bring the deficit down, and increase economic growth. Those goals are not only not inimical to each other, they actually fit together nicely. As they point out, the essential first step is to reduce discretionary spending in the current fiscal year, 2011. That is the work the Senate and House are engaged in right now. We will have to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of September. We can substantially reduce the spending, and they point out how in this op-ed. The second part is a longer term plan to get total spending as a share of GDP down. They have a plan to do that in a relatively gradual way but that nevertheless provides real, substantial savings over the next 10 years and longer to a point that is consistent with the historical relationship between the revenues the government has collected and the spending the government makes. Let me quote the first three sentences of their op-ed: Wanted: A strategy for economic growth, full employment, and deficit reduction--all without inflation. Experience shows how to get there. Credible actions that reduce the rapid growth of federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the unemployment rate. Higher private investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way to increase prosperity. They go on to point out: When private investment is high, unemployment is low. In contrast, higher government spending is not associated with lower unemployment. It is a piece I recommend to all of my colleagues because it establishes--and these are first-rate economists who have done the research and can demonstrate beyond peradventure the direct relationship between reduced government spending and more employment and growth. The bottom line is, if we leave more money in the private sector to be invested by businesses in the private sector, the more they will invest and hire people, and the more the economy will grow. Ironically, the more the economy grows, the more revenues the Federal Government gets because we have more taxes and a higher tax basis. Private economic growth is good for families and businesses and people seeking jobs as well as for the Federal Government if we are looking for more revenue. The wrong answer is to spend more money in the government, 40-plus cents of which has to be borrowed. Every dollar we spend we have to borrow 40 cents of, half of which is borrowed from countries abroad. That borrowing and spending crowds out opportunities in the private market to do the same. So there is a direct relationship in terms of how much we can reduce Federal spending on the one hand and how much we can grow the economy on the other. That is what these economists point out--the way for us both in the short term and the longer term to get a handle on both the Federal budget deficit and induce the private sector to invest more, thus reducing unemployment and increasing our economic growth. I thank the Chair. Exhibit 1 [From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 4, 2011] Time For a Budget Game-Changer (By Gary S. Becker, George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor) Wanted: A strategy for economic growth, full employment, and deficit reduction--all without inflation. Experience shows how to get there. Credible actions that reduce the rapid growth of federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the unemployment rate. Higher private investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way to increase prosperity. When private investment is high, unemployment is low. In 2006, investment--business fixed investment plus residential investment--as a share of GDP was high, at 17%, and unemployment was low, at 5%. By 2010 private investment as a share of GDP was down to 12%, and unemployment was up to more than 9%. In the year 2000, investment as a share of GDP was 17% while unemployment averaged around 4%. This is a regular pattern. In contrast, higher government spending is not associated with lower unemployment. For example, when government purchases of goods and services came down as a share of GDP in the 1990s, unemployment didn't rise. In fact it fell, and the higher level of government purchases as a share of GDP since 2000 has clearly not been associated with lower unemployment. To the extent that government spending crowds out job- creating private investment, it can actually worsen unemployment. Indeed, extensive government efforts to stimulate the economy and reduce joblessness by spending more have failed to reduce joblessness. Above all, the federal government needs a credible and transparent budget strategy. It's time for a game-changer--a budget action that will stop the recent discretionary spending binge before it gets entrenched in government agencies. Second, we need to lay out a path for total federal government spending growth for next year and later years that will gradually bring spending into balance with the amount of tax revenues generated in later years by the current tax system. Assurance that the current tax system will remain in place --pending genuine reform in corporate and personal income taxes--will be an immediate stimulus. All this must be accompanied by an accurate and simple explanation of how the strategy will increase economic growth, an explanation that will counteract scare stories and also allow people outside of government to start making plans, including business plans, to invest and hire. In this respect the budget strategy should be seen in the context of a larger pro-growth, pro-employment government reform strategy. We can see such a sensible budget strategy starting to emerge. The first step of the strategy is largely being addressed by the House budget plan for 2011, or HR1. Though voted down in its entirety by the Senate, it is now being split up into ``continuing'' resolutions that add up to the same spending levels. To see how HR1 works, note that discretionary appropriations other than for defense and homeland security were $460.1 billion in 2010, a sharp 22% increase over the $378.4 billion a mere three years ago. HR1 reverses this bulge by bringing these appropriations to $394.5 billion, which is 4% higher than in 2008. Spending growth is greatly reduced under HR1, but it is still enough to cover inflation over those three years. There is no reason why government agencies--from Treasury and Commerce to the Executive Office of the President--cannot get by with the same amount of funding they had in 2008 plus increases for inflation. Anything less than HR1 would not represent a credible first step. Changes in budget authority convert to government outlays slowly. According to the Congressional Budget Office, outlays will only be $19 billion less in 2011 with HR1, meaning it would take spending to 24% of GDP in 2011 from 24.1% today. If HR1 is the first step of the strategy, then the second step could come in the form of the budget resolution for 2012 also coming out of the House. We do not know what this will look like, but it is likely to entail a gradual reduction in spending as a share of GDP that would, in a reasonable number of years, lead to a balanced budget without tax rate increases. To make the path credible, the budget resolution should include instructions to the appropriations subcommittees elaborating changes in government programs that will make the spending goals a reality. These instructions must include a requirement for reforms of the Social Security and health- care systems. Health-care reform is particularly difficult politically, although absolutely necessary to get long-term government spending under control. This is not the place to go into various ways to make the health-care delivery system cheaper and at the same time much more effective in promoting health. However, it is absolutely essential to make wholesale changes in ObamaCare, and many of its approaches to health reform. The nearby chart shows an example of a path that brings total federal outlays relative to GDP back to the level of 2007--19.5%. One line shows outlays as a share of GDP under the CEO baseline released on March 18. The other shows the spending path starting with HR1 in 2011. With HR1 federal outlays grow at 2.7% per year from 2010 to 2021 in nominal terms, while nominal GDP is expected to grow by 4.6% per year. Faster GDP growth will bring a balanced budget more quickly by increasing the growth of tax revenues. Critics will argue that such a budget plan will decrease economic growth and job creation. Some, such as economists at Goldman Sachs and Moody's, have already said that HR1 will lower economic growth by as much as 2% this quarter and the next and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. But this is highly implausible given the small size of the change in outlays in 2011 under HR1, as shown in the chart. The change in spending is not abrupt, as they claim, but quite gradual. Those who predict that a gradual and credible plan to lower spending growth will reduce job creation disregard the private investment benefits that come from reducing the threats of higher taxes, higher interest rates and a fiscal crisis. This is the same thinking used to claim that the stimulus package worked. These economic models failed in the 1970s, failed in 2008, and they are still failing. Control of federal spending and a strategy for ending the deficit will provide assurance that tax rates will not rise-- pending tax reform--and that uncontrolled deficits will not recur. This assurance must be the foundation of strategy for a healthy economy.

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

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Texas (Mrs. Hutchison), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.