John McCain

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. I thank the manager. I would like to say for the benefit of my colleagues on this side of the aisle that----

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, obviously, if we have Members from that side who are waiting and none are on this side, we will adjust that, as we have the last several days. I thank the Senator from Montana for all of his courtesies in making sure we have had balanced debate on this very important issue. Also, I would like to say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that speakers from my side, if they would come to the floor, I think there would be time to recognize them. We have signed up Senators Kyl, Enzi, Alexander, Inhofe, Thune, Graham, Chambliss, Bond, Sessions, and Coburn. If others wish to speak, if they would notify the cloakroom. Madam President, many of my colleagues are claiming that the ``compromise bipartisan bill'' that is before us is a product and result of serious negotiations, and it is neither. It is neither bipartisan nor is it a compromise. It is not bipartisan in that 3 Republican Senators, after not a single Republican Member of the other body, the House of Representatives, plus 11 Democrats voted against this legislation. Now, there continues to be touted that there were meetings that Republican Senators attended. There are meetings that take place all the time, all the time around here. There are meetings, both informal and conversations about it. But the fact is, we ended up with 3 Republican Members of Congress out of 178 in the House and 40 here in the Senate. So it is not ``bipartisan.'' To say otherwise belies history. I am proud to have been a member of a number of bipartisan resolutions of issues that have come before this body, whether it be the Gang of 14, on campaign finance reform, or whether it be on other important issues as far as national security and other issues are concerned. That is when Republicans and Democrats have sat down together and came out in equal numbers--roughly equal numbers--to achieve bipartisan agreement. This is not a bipartisan agreement. This is three Members of the Senate--none on the House side--who have joined Democrats for a partisan agreement. It is unfortunate that has happened because we are now committing an act of generational theft. We are robbing future generations of Americans of their hard-earned dollars because we are laying on them a debt of incredible proportions. We have already amassed over a $10 trillion debt. Apparently, we will pass this legislation, which is another, when you count the interest, about $1.1 trillion dollars. The House is about to take up a $400 billion Omnibus appropriations bill. It has been put off until tomorrow, probably wisely. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, is going to recommend somewhere around $\1/2\ trillion to $1 trillion for another TARP package. So we are talking about trillions of dollars. This morning, one of my colleagues, the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, said: ``Why quibble over $200 million?'' I am not sure the American people would agree. What has been the result of this compromise? Ten out of hundreds eliminated items: $34 million to renovate the Commerce Department; $100 million for governmentwide supercomputers; $14 million for cyber security; $55 million for historic preservation; $20 million for Bureau of Indian Affairs; $5.8 billion for prevention wellness programs, $870 million for pandemic flu; $16 million for school improvement programs, construction; $3.5 billion for higher education facilities; $2.25 billion for a neighborhood stabilization program. Ten have been eliminated from the hundreds which totals $12.6 billion of the $140 billion being touted as having been cut from the more than $900 billion bill. What we have done is, we have eliminated 10 items, reduced others, which will probably be restored, reaching basically the same level, a ``compromise'' of about $827 billion which is a little more than that passed by the House of Representatives. The total is over a trillion dollars. Both the distinguished majority leader and the Senator from Montana have emphasized the need for speed, that we have to act quickly, right away. We will, I am sure, because a seminal moment was when the two or three Republican Senators announced they would vote for this package. So it is a matter of time. Last week, the overseer of TARP I announced there had been $76 billion wasted in paying for assets over their actual value. We acted in speed, with haste, and it cost the taxpayers $76 billion. Again, this is an unusual circumstance we are in. These circumstances we all appreciate. We appreciate the fact that millions of Americans are without a job, without health insurance, without the ability to educate themselves and their children, and without the ability to stay in their homes. We need to act. We need to act responsibly. It is being said that every economist says we need to adopt this package. That is not true. I even hear one of my advisers during the campaign, Marty Feldstein's name, being mentioned as being for this package. I ask unanimous consent that Martin Feldstein's Washington Post op-ed be printed in the Record.

Mr. McCAIN. The Washington Post op-ed is entitled ``An $800 Billion Mistake.'' Martin Feldstein and many other economists believe this is an $800 billion mistake. He says: On the spending side, the stimulus package is full of well- intended items that, unfortunately, are not likely to do much for employment. Computerizing the medical records of every American over the next 5 years is desirable, but it is not a cost-effective way to create jobs. Has anyone gone through the long list of proposed appropriations and asked how many jobs each would create per dollar of increased national debt? Well, since Mr. Feldstein wrote that column, the Congressional Budget Office did, indeed, go through the list. They found out it would increase between now and the bill then, which has been changed somewhat but basically will end up over a trillion dollars, it says it would increase employment at that point in time by 1.3 million to 3.9 million jobs. At $885 billion, 1.3 million jobs would work out to $680,769 per job. And at 3.9 million jobs, the cost would be $226,923 per job. Several of my colleagues have celebrated the reduced cost of the compromise from $885 billion to $827 billion. So let's do the math for that amount. It is only $636,154 per job for 1.3 million jobs, and $212,000 for 3.9 million jobs created. If you add the cost of interest to the total for the compromise, we have $1.175 trillion. There are numerous policy changes which have nothing to do with jobs in this bill. This legislation was delivered to our office at 11 o'clock on Saturday night. My staff has been hard at work scrubbing this bill, 778 pages, I believe, for the changes. One of them that is very interesting, which has been added, is a new, far-reaching policy with respect to unemployment compensation. Specifically, the title is Unemployment Compensation Moderation. It would allow a person to collect unemployment insurance for leaving his or her job to take care of an immediate family member's illness, any illness or disability as defined by the Secretary of Labor. This was originally sponsored legislation in the 110th Congress and did not succeed. Each State would need to amend their unemployment insurance in order to receive $7 billion in funds. Again, that may be a laudable goal to fundamentally change unemployment compensation. What in the world is it doing on what is supposed to be an economic stimulus package? I see my friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, is here. I will conclude. This is neither bipartisan nor is it a compromise. It is generational theft, because we rejected a proposal on this side to establish a trigger that when our economy improves, we would be on a path to a balanced budget and reducing spending. These spending programs will remain with no way of paying for them. What are we doing to future generations of Americans? We need a stimulus package. We need to create jobs. We certainly don't need to lay a multitrillion dollar debt on future generations of Americans, once our economy has improved. We found out when we received 44 votes on a triggering mechanism what a lot of this is all about. It is increasing spending, increasing the role of government in a Draconian and unprecedented fashion, and laying a debt on future generations of Americans of many trillions of dollars. I urge colleagues to rethink their position. I still believe if it had not been a process that started with ``we won and we wrote the bill,'' we could have had a truly bipartisan approach which the majority of Americans would not only support but benefit from. I yield the floor.

Mr. McCAIN. I yield such time as he may consume to the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask the Senator from Montana, he does not like tax cuts?

Mr. McCAIN. Good.

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I urge my colleagues on both sides who wish to speak to come over and speak. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the Senator from Nebraska, followed by the Senator from Iowa, will have 5 minutes. If I can ask the distinguished manager, my understanding is that after the 20 minutes, there will then be a period for filing amendments and debate.

Mr. McCAIN. I thank the manager.

Mr. McCAIN. I thank the manager. I tell my colleagues that if it looks as if we will not vote until 1, there will be time to come over and speak.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Am I correct that, for the benefit of our colleagues, now the votes will be put off until 1?

Mr. McCAIN. I do not object.

Mr. McCAIN. The distinguished majority leader mentioned that economists like Marty Feldstein said we need a stimulus. He certainly did. He later said this was not the stimulus we need. There are a large number of economists saying that what we are doing is what I know we are doing, and that is to lay an unacceptable multitrillion-dollar debt on future generations. If the purpose of this legislation is to create jobs and get the economy going, why did we reject the trigger amendment yesterday which got 44 votes which said: Once we have two quarters of positive GDP growth, we are required to embark on spending cuts to stop mortgaging our children's futures. If we keep running up these debts, history shows that we will have debased the currency, printed more money. Hyperinflation takes place, which is, obviously, the greatest enemy of the middle class. There are provisions such as the ``Buy American'' provision, Davis- Bacon, a number of other provisions in the bill which have nothing to do with jobs, nothing to do with stimulating the economy. In fact, Davis-Bacon and ``Buy American'' mean additional costs to the taxpayer. The President, last night, speaking to the Democrats, said: So then you get the argument this is not a stimulus bill. This is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point. The whole point is to enact tax cuts and spending measures that truly stimulate the economy. There are billions and tens of billions of dollars in this bill which will have no effect within 3, 4, 5 or more years, or ever. We are talking about a lot of money. I used to come to the floor and object to provisions that were thousands of dollars, then hundreds of thousands of dollars, then millions--$50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. All of us are for the arts. Tell me how that creates any significant number of jobs. An afterschool snack program is probably a good idea. Do we really want to spend $726 million on it? Here we are. My other colleagues want to speak, and so I will be speaking later on. It is important that others do as well. But here we are. We are in a situation where the overwhelming majority of Republicans--in fact, all--voted for both the trigger amendment and for our alternative, which was $421 billion in spending. There are behind- the-scenes negotiations going on so that they can try to pick off two or three Republicans. You cannot call a bill bipartisan if it has two or three or four or even five Republicans out of 535 Members of Congress. You can call it an agreement, but you cannot call it a bipartisan agreement. That is not what the American people want today. Yes, unemployment is up to 7.6 percent. The American people expect us to sit down together. I see the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, the Senator from North Dakota. He probably knows as much about budget issues and spending as anybody. My recommendation is that he and others be appointed by both leaders to sit down in a room so that we can come out with a bipartisan agreement. That means leadership. That means involvement, not just of a couple or three who may be in some respects not reflective of the whole 41 Republican Members of the Senate. Maybe we have to go back to square one. Maybe we should go back to the beginning because it was flawed when it began, when the authors of this legislation from the House said: We won, so we wrote the bill. That is not bipartisanship. I urge both Senator McConnell and Senator Reid to appoint a group of Senators to sit down together and hash this out. We share the same goal, the same goal of stimulating this economy and creating jobs. We realize we have to spend money to do it. But we also realize--most of us should realize--that if we mortgage our children's future, they already have a $10 trillion debt; this is another trillion. There is going to be an Omnibus appropriations bill coming down the pike. There is going to have to be a TARP 3. We are looking at spending as far as we can see for which we do not have revenues. We can have a modest--I say modest, I take that back. We can have a bill that is $400 or $500 billion. We can have a bill that truly stimulates this economy, with tax cuts that, in the view of economists, do create jobs, not a one-time injection of sending people a check. That didn't work the last time we did it under the previous administration. I urge colleagues not to send a message to the American people that we have come out with a bill with 3 or 4 Republicans out of 535 Members of Congress. Let's try to sit down one more time, all of us, and come out with something that truly creates jobs, truly stimulates the economy, and restores the faith and confidence and trust of the American people in the Congress, which has badly eroded and is at historic lows. These are tough times. Let's act tough for a change and get something done, rather than have some partisan result which the American people--certainly a significant percentage--will resoundingly reject because it does not have fiscal responsibility. I yield the floor.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, if the distinguished manager would agree, for 5 minutes for the Senator from South Carolina, or we will go after the vote.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, what would the manager contemplate at 11:30?

Mr. McCAIN. And then would it be agreeable to go back to some more debate? There is a number of speakers who want to talk about the entire bill as well.

Mr. McCAIN. Reserving the right to object, I wish to thank the manager of the bill for his generosity. I do not object.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, for the benefit of my colleagues, on this side we have Senators Thune, Graham, Sessions, Coburn, and Alexander waiting to speak. I would imagine that, given that, between now and 11:30, hopefully, we could get most of those in between now and the time for voting, of course observing the protocol of those being recognized on the other side of the aisle. While we are here in the Chamber discussing this issue, we all know discussions are being held behind closed doors between two or three or four Republicans in order to try to get 60 votes in order to pass this legislation. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of Republican Senators are opposed to the legislation. That same overwhelming majority of Senators are in favor of stimulating our economy and creating jobs. How did we get here, and where do we go? We got here by the Speaker of the House saying: We won, so we wrote the bill. In the years I have been here, that is not called bipartisanship. Without the votes of 11 Democrats and without the vote of a single Republican, the bill emerged from the other body and came over here. Again, through the Appropriations and Finance Committees, the bill was written without significant input or with negligible input from Senators on this side of the aisle. There is an old saying: If you are not in on the takeoff, you will not be in on the landing. We are up to approximately $1.2 trillion in the piece of legislation in front of us. The Congressional Budget Office yesterday said that this legislation would increase employment by the end of the fourth quarter of 2010 by 1.3 million to 3.9 million jobs. I did the math. So $1.2 trillion, 3 million jobs, is $923,997 for each job. For 1.3 million jobs, which is the low end determined by the Congressional Budget Office, it is only $307,092 per job. The American people are figuring out that this is not a stimulus bill. It is a spending bill full of unnecessary spending, unexamined policy changes or policy changes that have been examined and rejected in the past, and, of course, tax cuts which do not stimulate the economy. I ask to have printed in the Record examples of the House spending provisions and the Senate spending provisions which I find not only questionable but obviously, in the view of any objective observer, unnecessary, unwanted, and, indeed, wasteful.

Mr. McCAIN. If the other side is granted 2 minutes.

Mr. McCAIN. How much time do I have?

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I wish to return to the Congressional Budget Office report in response to the remarks of the Senator from Montana again to the Congressional Budget Office. It says the legislation would result in a slight decrease in gross domestic product. It said it would increase employment at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010 by 1.3 million to 3.9 million jobs. I urge my colleagues to do the math. This is a $1.2 trillion bill. If it creates 1.3 million jobs, that is $923,000 per job. If it creates 3.9 million jobs, that is $307,000 of taxpayer dollars. As the President stated last night, this is a spending bill. He is right. I agree with him. It is a spending bill. Most of us were under the impression that what we wanted was a job creation and economic stimulus bill. We can pass spending bills all the time. We do it all the time. We have laid a $10 trillion debt on future generations of Americans. Very interestingly, the report continues: Senate legislation would reduce output slightly in the long run, CBO estimates, as would other similar proposals. The principal channel for this effect is that the legislation would result in an increase in government debt. To the extent that people hold their wealth as government bonds rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, an increased debt would tend to reduce the stock of productive capital. In economic parlance, the debt would ``crowd out'' private investment. CBO's basic assumption is that in the long run, each dollar of additional debt crowds out about a third of a dollar's worth of private domestic capital. This is something that has been abundantly clear for years and the reason why we don't have socialism in this country, because the Government is less efficient in using dollars than the private enterprise system is. Perhaps more alarming than anything else, the reason why it was so disappointing is we did not pass the trigger. That was an amendment we voted down, actually with a couple of Democratic votes, that provided that once the economy recovers, we have to be on a path to a balanced budget. CBO estimates that by 2019, the Senate legislation would reduce gross domestic product by .1 percent to .3 percent. In other words, we will not grow the economy in the long run unless we get our fiscal house in order. Why are the American people unhappy? Why is it that my office and others are inundated with phone calls? Because we put in unnecessary and even wasteful and nonproductive programs to the tune of billions and billions of dollars: $300 million dollars for Violence Against Women Act grants to the Department of Justice because ``as job losses loom and the economy worsens, service providers across the country are reporting an increase in calls related to domestic violence.'' I am glad to fund any program that would help address the issue of domestic violence. But it is not creating jobs. We will hear from the other side about how worthwhile this long list of porkbarrel projects is, but the fact is, they don't create jobs. That is what we are supposed to be doing in a ``stimulus'' bill. I want to comment again: We all know there are negotiations going on now of the called ``Gang of 18.'' I was one of the Gang of 14. That was 7 Republicans, 7 Democrats. That is bipartisan. Now it is 15 Democrats, 3 Republicans. That is not bipartisan. If they come up with an agreement, then it will mean 3 Republicans out of 535 Members of Congress have supported this unnecessary, wasteful bill that could have been so much better. It started out wrong, when the Speaker of the House said: We won, so we write the bill. And it is ending up wrong because we have not done what we need to do and has been the product of a true bipartisan agreement, and that is to sit down together, Republican and Democrat. Mr. President, I want to close by pointing out, again, we want to have legislation that stimulates this economy. But we want it to stimulate the economy and not mortgage the future of our children and our grandchildren by the kind of fiscal profligate spending that is embodied in this legislation to the tune--it goes higher as we speak-- of over $1 trillion. I am told Monday we are going to have another TARP proposed--another one. How many trillions? We are setting some kind of record, and there is no fiscal discipline. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to consider carefully--consider carefully--this legislation. The American people have figured it out. Let's figure it out. (Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries.)

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. McCAIN. For my side?

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma the remaining 2\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to remind my colleagues there are a number of Senators waiting to propose amendments, and I think this amendment has been very much debated. I look forward to Senator Bunning and Senator Grassley and other Senators who are waiting to present amendments.