David Perdue

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, sadly, the State of Georgia has said goodbye to one of its finest sons, COL (ret) Gary Allen Jones of Columbus. Bonnie and I offer our deepest condolences to Gary's family, friends, and colleagues. Gary served as a member of my Georgia strategic military advisory group, where he provided me and my staff with valuable insight, advice, and encouragement. I first met Gary during a visit to Fort Benning in 2016, and I had the good pleasure of meeting him many times after that. I was always struck by Gary's warmth, his wisdom, and his stalwart dedication to service. No matter who you are, Gary treated you like a friend. He always went out of his way to help. Gary was the epitome of a servant hero. Like many brave Americans, Gary heeded the call of duty and entered the Armed Services. While in the Army, he received many prestigious awards, including the Silver Star, for his bravery and dedication to service. In 2018, Gary was awarded the Fort Benning Commanding General's Award for Public Service. Gary's dedication extended far beyond his time in the military. He was always a tireless advocate for his community, holding leadership positions in organizations like the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce, the Historic Chattahoochee River Club, and the Columbus Uptown Board, among many others. In addition, Gary was a leader in his local church. The Columbus area and the entire State of Georgia have been made better thanks in large part to people like Gary. As we mourn Gary's passing, we should recognize his incredible legacy. It is one of warmth, decency, service, and honor.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I rise to talk about a topic that is boring at times but is absolutely critical, as you just heard in the last few minutes. My good friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, is a certified public account. He lived in the real world before he came here, like I did. He is chairman of the Budget Committee. When he speaks about this, he speaks with the level of experience and current information that we all should listen to. I want to highlight some things he has already talked about but then talk about the potential we are looking at this week in terms of having our 187th continuing resolution since the 1974 Budget Act was put into law. Why is this important? As Senator Enzi just pointed out, our problem in America is twofold; one, we have a global security crisis, and we have a financial crisis. I use the word ``crisis'' in both because the world has never been more dangerous in my lifetime. Today we have $22 trillion in debt. Let me put a little history behind it. In the year 2000, we had $6 trillion on about a $12 trillion economy. At the end of President Bush's time, it went to $10 trillion of debt--again, on something like a $14 trillion or $15 trillion economy. At the end of President Obama's term, it went to $20 trillion. Under that administration, this government doubled America's debt to $20 trillion. After just a couple of years of President Trump, we are now at $22 trillion. The projection is very draconian over the next decade, even though, by growing the economy in the last couple of years, the Trump administration has actually lowered the debt curve by an estimate that CBO says is about $3 trillion over the next decade. That is not good enough. That is only a fraction of our problem. This chart on the right talks about the problem. I call it the Lamar Alexander chart because when we talked about it 2 years ago, we started bringing this chart up. Working on the budget process is one of the ways we deal with this. This burgeoning debt that we have to talk about is really made up of one major contributing factor; that is, mandatory expenses. This chart tries to explain that. It shows that the top line here is total U.S. spending. Today we spend about $4.5 trillion--a little bit more--but about $4.5 trillion funding the Federal Government. That includes everything: Military, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid--the whole bit. The Federal Government spends about $4.5 trillion on everything. The red line is today. Today, however, we only spend $1.3 trillion on discretionary spending. Yet in terms of the total, in 2000 we spent less than $2 trillion. Now we are spending more than $4 trillion. That has doubled in the last two decades. These are constant 2019 dollars. In the next 20 years, this is projected to go from $4 trillion to $12 trillion per year, each year. In 1 year projected out here, we would almost double the amount of debt we have. This is untenable under anybody's estimate. It can't happen. It will not happen. Here is why. The world can't let it happen. Today we have about $200 trillion in total debt. Only $60 trillion of that is sovereign debt, which is government debt. We have one-third of that. This says that because of mandatory spending, primarily, we will go to almost half of the world's debt with 5 percent of the population. That is not going to happen. Yet what will happen to keep us from doing that or becoming that will be really draconian unless we act today. Senator Enzi is right. The sooner we act, the more alternatives and options we have. Let me try to explain the situation. We are actually spending less today in discretionary spending at $1.3 trillion as a percentage of our economy than we did in 2011. In 2011, we were spending 9 percent of our total GDP on discretionary spending. What is in discretionary spending? That is the military, most of the VA, and all discretionary spending, such as Health and Human Services, Labor, Agriculture, Justice Department, Treasury. All of the above are included in that. That is $1.3 trillion today, which is about 6 percent. We have gone from 9 percent GDP to 6 percent GDP. Discretionary spending has actually been brought down. What is the problem? The problem is in mandatory. What is in mandatory? As Senator Enzi just said, mandatory is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension benefits on Federal employees, and the interest on the debt. Just in the next 2 years alone, mandatory spending goes up $420 billion. I can project that. That is within range of understanding. What I don't understand is how this really explodes out of control. This is because the baby boomers are maturing and going into the later years of their lives. As you just heard, both Social Security and Medicare--major trust funds--go to zero in a very short period of time. Medicare happens in 2026 and Social Security in 2032. I am here to tell you this is the crisis of our time, and we have to deal with it. Yet today we are about to go into our 187th continuing resolution. Why? Because we don't have an agreement to fund the government. We are at the end of our fiscal year, which is September 30. We have 2 working days left, the way the Senate works, before that happens. It could still be fixed, but the reality of today is that we have not appropriated one dime for the Federal Government yet. Last year, going into August break on July 31, we had only funded 12 percent of the Federal Government. Because we stayed here in August, we funded up to 75 percent of the government. That was the first time in 22 years that we had gotten that far. As a matter of fact, in the last 45 years, this Congress has only funded the Federal Government on time four times. We have actually shut the government down 21 times because of the lack of funding. That is almost once every 2 years. It is unbelievable. This year, in July, we had an agreement. We did a caps deal between the Democrats and Republicans. It was a bipartisan deal. Everybody went kumbaya and said: Yes, this is what we agreed to. We agree to this topline number. Appropriators had already been working all year. We had agreements in committee. All we had to do was come back in September and appropriate these bills, go to conference on the NDAA, and get the Defense Department funded along with the other major departments and go ahead down the road and get the government funded. Here we are at the end of September. That obviously did not happen. Why? Our good friends across the aisle violated what we thought was a good-faith agreement in July that there would be no poison pills when we started appropriating. We see clearly now that wasn't the case. They are holding this up over $5 billion that the President wants to move from military spending over to border security spending. It is almost like they want open borders. I just don't understand this. We know President Obama built 135 miles of wall, and we know one thing now. We know that where President Obama built a wall, where President Bush built a wall, where President Clinton built a wall, where President George H. W. Bush--in every single case, illegal crossings at the border went down 95 percent. By voting no on this spending bill, we are now getting into a situation where we have to go into a continuing resolution. Last week, we voted on the Defense bill, and Democrats voted it down. They voted against a 3.1-percent pay increase for our military brethren. What is even worse than that, by going into a continuing resolution and by voting no last week, the Democrats are encouraging the Defense Department to actually spend $4 billion. We did an audit last year. It was the first one in the history of the United States. President Trump ordered it. We had a law in 1991 that required it. Now we had that audit. This is the first pass. This is the tip of the iceberg. Because of that, we know that we found at least $4 billion that they don't want to continue spending, yet are going to be obliged to continue to spend against those obsolete programs under a continuing resolution, in addition to not getting a pay raise to our people in the military. We should not have been here in the first place. We had a joint select committee last year, and we have been working on this for 5 years. It is time to fix this budget process once and for all. We have to hold Congress accountable, though. In most States, we don't have this problem. In 44 States, No. 1, you have a balanced budget law, but more importantly than that, in States like Georgia, if the legislature doesn't fund the government by the end of the legislative session, by law, the legislators don't go home. Senator Lankford and I and others have bills that would require the same thing here. As a matter of fact, some of us have actually put in bills that would stop the pay for staff and employees and would stop Members' compensation until we get this done. A requirement of our job here is to get the government funded. It is very simple. It is time for Congress to do its job. I am chagrined that we face another continuing resolution that we have educated people about and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade because of the damage it will do to the supply chain when we are trying to get readiness and recapitalization back in our U.S. military and talk about rationalization. It keeps us from doing each of those three things right now. Anybody in the military who is before us in committee tells us over and over and over of the damaging effects a continuing resolution has on our military at the very time when we are trying to stand up to peer pressures in a unique, new way. We have five threats across five domains. We have never faced that before. Yet here we are, hamstringing our military once again. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I want to commend my good friend from the great State of Utah, Senator Mike Lee, for his work on putting this bill together and pulling the people together to support this bill. I support this bill. We have some language that needs to be clarified, and I still have some concerns about the impact this legislation would have on some specific industries in not only my State but in the country. I want to work with Senator Lee in addressing these concerns and come to a resolution on this very quickly. I commit to working with him and his team to make sure we get to a resolution because we want the exact same thing, and this is totally consistent with what President Trump is trying to do in his long-term work to fix our broken immigration system. With that, I object.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I rise today with mixed emotions. I rise to recognize an incredible Georgian, a true statesman, a titan of the United States Senate, and, maybe most important, a friend to me and many people here in this town and back home in Georgia: Senator Johnny Isakson. Like everyone, I was surprised and saddened to hear of Johnny's upcoming retirement. Since my very first day in the Senate walking through this door back here to be sworn in with Johnny escorting me, I have come to revere this guy. He has been a mentor that I have looked up to. He has been a great leader for our State for many years. He has been a reliable and effective colleague. Most of all, he has been a friend whom I deeply cherish. It will be hard to see him go, but the reality is he won't go. He will still be involved here. I am sure I will get the phone calls about when we might have disagreed on a vote or why didn't I think about this. He has been a tremendous partner for me these last 4 years. However, Johnny has left a profound legacy that is worth celebrating. It is one that we should all strive to follow here in this body. He epitomizes the best of this body, the United States Senate. His legacy can be summed up in one word: service. No matter what he does, Johnny puts other people before himself, and this has continued since the first day I knew him back when he was running a real estate company in Atlanta, GA. Johnny puts other people first before himself. He doesn't do it for recognition or fame. Many times, he does it when people don't even notice or know he did it. He does it because it is the right thing to do. He served his country as a member of the Georgia Air National Guard. He served his community as a Sunday schoolteacher for 30 years. I have done that, and I know that is a labor of love. That takes a lot of work. He served the people of Georgia in the statehouse and the State senate and later in both houses of the U.S. Congress. In fact, he is the only Georgian to ever have done that. No matter what role Johnny has been in, he is always focused on helping others. His dedication to service is even more impressive because it has produced incredible results for our country. This town has a lot of activity, but it is short on results. Johnny knew the difference. For example, one of Johnny's top priorities in Congress had been to take care of our country's veterans. Georgia is home to over 700,000 veterans today. As a veteran himself, Johnny treats each one of them as his own sister or brother. When Johnny saw the shameful conditions and mismanagement happening at the VA, he immediately sprang into action. Fixing the VA seemed impossible, but no challenge was too large for Johnny Isakson. Thanks to him, as chairman of the Senate Veterans Administration Committee, we have made incredible progress on this and many other fronts relating to the VA. His efforts, such as the VA MISSION Act, have helped bring accountability, efficiency, and trust back to the department. As the junior Senator from Georgia, I have had the great pleasure of working directly with Johnny on a number of other issues affecting our State. Each time, I saw firsthand how effective Johnny Isakson really is. I have likened him to the Howard Baker of our era. He speaks softly, but when he speaks, people listen. Working with Johnny, we broke the politic logjam to provide much- needed disaster relief for farmers in south Georgia just this year. We secured funding for the deepening of the Port of Savannah after 20 years of trying to get that port deepened just 5 feet. We solved the tax problem under his leadership for Plant Vogtle, which secured funding for the first two nuclear reactors built in this country in the last 30 years, and he helped pass the First Step Act, which makes our justice system fairer, while still deterring criminal behavior. These achievements would not have been possible without Johnny's steady hand and his leadership. When he speaks, people listen. He gets the job done. He understands what priority means; yet Johnny isn't the kind of leader who gives orders and makes demands. He is someone who leads from a place of respect, compromise, and understanding with both sides of the aisle. With Johnny, it doesn't matter who you are or what party you are in or where you are from. He is always there to talk and always ready to listen. Johnny Isakson is exactly the kind of servant leader that the Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers envisioned for our country. It is what makes him a true statesman, and it is a model I am sure our Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers would indeed be very proud of today. Of course, the road has not always been easy for Johnny--not every battle has been won, not all news has been good. What I have always admired about Johnny, though, is his stalwart resilience. Whenever circumstances have tried to knock him down, he always gets back up with a smile, and he keeps serving others. You know you feel guilty when you are around Johnny Isakson when you are having a bad day and Johnny says: How are you doing? You better say great because he is going to give you that same answer. As he and Dianne head into this next chapter of their life, I have no doubt that Johnny will continue to serve others and help make our world a better place because that is exactly who he is. Scripture tells us in Matthew 23 that ``The greatest among you will be a servant.'' When you consider all that Johnny has done, it is clear to me that Johnny Isakson truly is the greatest among us. I yield the floor.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, in 1974, Congress passed a new Budget Act. It was revolutionary and comprehensive. It was supposed to streamline how Congress appropriates money to fund the business of the Federal Government every year. Unfortunately, now 45 years later, we know that bill was an unmitigated disaster. Only four times in the last 45 years since that Budget Act was passed has Congress funded the government through the appropriations process before the end of the prior fiscal year--four times. Today is the end of July. We are about to leave Congress today, hopefully--if our Senate today gets these bills passed. Then we will go back to our States, and we will work in August. We heard a lot of people talking yesterday about what they were planning to do in their States. It is a busy month. I wish it were a vacation month, but it is not--nor should it be--given the things we have to do today. When we come back in September, there will be 10 working days left before the end of this fiscal year, September 30--10 working days. As I stand before this body today, this is not a partisan observation. As I stand here today, we have not appropriated $1 for next year's budget to run the Federal Government of the United States of America. That is an indictment. It is an indictment of the process, an indictment of the Members, and an indictment of the fact that we have no consequences by not funding the government by September 30--not one. So today we are about to do something that could cause us to actually use a continuing resolution for the 187th time, potentially, since the 1974 Budget Act passed. We now know how draconian these continuing resolutions are. I will talk about that in a minute. Hopefully, we will vote today on a bill that is a compromise bill that actually sets the stage. It sets the upper limit. It doesn't do the appropriating at the detail level. It sets the topline number for the fiscal year 2020, which starts October 1, 2019. That number is roughly $1.375 trillion. I have a debt clock in my office. I can watch the national debt spin about $100,000 a second--going up every single minute of every single day. This bill actually begins to address that. President Trump had a couple of priorities here. Before I talk about that, I want to put in perspective what this bill actually does. We talked before about mandatory spending and discretionary spending. Again, the problem is in our Federal Government. This whole budget drama we have seen this year and every year for the last 45 years only deals with the discretionary budget, which is $1.375 trillion for 2021. The dotted line here is where we are for the 2019 discretionary budget. Discretionary budget is 30 percent. That is the blue line here. The green line is the total spending of the Federal Government. Today we spend $1.3 trillion in discretionary spending. We spend $3.3 trillion in mandatory spending. That is a total of $4.6 trillion. What is in discretionary spending? Military spending and all other discretionary spending is in there: health, education, agriculture, labor, the Attorney General's office, State. All the discretionary spending is in there. Some VA expenses are in there--$1.33 trillion. In any business, any enterprise, or your personal budget, if you only dealt with 30 percent of what you spend in your budgeting process, wouldn't we all have a good time? It wouldn't matter how much we did on discretionary spending because we could just go borrow more money. That is what the Federal Government does. Let me remind everybody today that we are also borrowing about 30 percent of what we spend every year--a little less than that, but we are borrowing between 25 percent and 30 percent. Mandatory is like your home mortgage, car payment, and insurance payment. It is automatically deducted. So all these mandatory expenses that today are 70 percent of what we spend, get spent with no debate in Congress--none, zero. Why? Because it is mandatory. It gets spent like your home mortgage gets automatically deducted. Once that is done, just a few pennies are left to take care of discretionary. The point I am trying to make is, all this drama we had this year-- and every year--is over a piece of the budget that is totally borrowed. Over 90 percent of what we spend in our Federal Government's military expenses today--our national defense--is borrowed money, by definition. Right now, what we are talking about is a spending bill that actually reduces spending for discretionary items. We are not even talking about the mandatory side, the 70 percent. If you look at the 70 percent over the next decade or the next two decades, discretionary spending is relatively flat. These are aggregate numbers--total numbers adjusted for inflation. The orange line is the mandatory expenses. They are projected to skyrocket here, going from about 70 percent today to almost 85 percent of every dollar the Federal Government spends in the next 20 years-- from 70 percent today to well over 80 percent--to almost 85 percent by 2035, 20 years from now. I argue that is the problem. Until we address the mandatory side of our spending and save Social Security and save Medicare, we will never be able to solve this debt crisis we see before us in very real terms today. Let's move to this bill we have today. I ran for the Senate because of the debt crisis and because of the global security crisis. This debt issue is real. I have been working on it for 4\1/2\ years. Yet this bill today actually lowers spending as a percentage of our economy. This bill proposes $54 billion increases in discretionary spending over 2 years--2 percent per year for the next 2 years. That actually lowers spending as a percentage of our economy. As a matter of fact, since 2011--the last 10 years--what we have seen, if we do this budget, is Federal spending on discretionary items goes from 8.7 percent of our total economy down to 6 percent. When I ran a business, I looked at my overhead. That is what this is. Overhead is declining on discretionary items as a percentage of what we spend totally and a percentage of our total economy. President Trump had two goals. One is he wanted to continue to reduce discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP. Check that box. This bill does that. All the so-called debt hawks out there and all the budget hawks who say: I am voting no to any new spending, need to recognize that this bill actually lowers spending as a percentage of the economy. The second objective the President had--and the Senate is just now coming to realize how draconian these 186 CRs have been over the last 45 years. The Obama administration reduced spending in the military by 25 percent. So readiness had been reduced to a point by January 1, 2017, when President Trump was inaugurated--readiness in the military had been devastated. Two-thirds of our F-18 lead fighter jets could not fly. Only three of our Army brigades could go to war that night. I saw that. I am on the Armed Services Committee. You can see when you travel the world how absolutely gutted our military had been. For the last 2 years, we have been rebuilding that, getting readiness back. In the month of June, the FA-18s got back to 80 percent readiness. The second thing this bill does is it continues, in the second and third year, to rebuild the military after it had been gutted by the prior administration. Focus of the military today is readiness and recapitalization, which means rebuilding burned-out equipment and absolutely rationalization. We had the first DOD audit--thanks to President Trump--in the history of the United States. Last November, President Trump, after telling the DOD we would have that--by the way, there was a law that passed in 1981 that said we would have a DOD audit. President Trump is the first President in U.S. history that provided that. We now have that and understand opportunities to rationalize our spending. When you look at this vote, you look at making decisions in life. There are two choices--two votes--that lead to three potential outcomes today. A ``yes'' vote continues to support the military and defend our country at a level that meets the near-peer competitors' level of volume. When adjusted for purchasing power parity, China, today, is actually spending the same amount on their military as we are. They can get there quicker because they don't have the regulatory overhang that we have in the United States, but a vote yes means that we continue to do that; we continue to lower discretionary spending as a percentage of our economy; and we set the stage to, then again, begin to have the hard conversation of how we save Social Security and save Medicare. The major thing it does is it avoids the drama around not funding the government. It gives us a chance, anyway, to fund our government before October 1. Remember, September 30 ends this fiscal year. A ``no'' vote has two potential outcomes. A ``no'' vote could lead to a sequestration. People say that cuts 10 percent out of all spending. That sounds good to me. The reality is that happened over the last decade. We see now the draconian impact that had on certain parts of our discretionary spending like military--veterans and so forth--so we had to come back and rebuild. When you come back and have to rebuild it, it costs dramatically much more. That is the point. If we take a long-term view of this, we have to end up voting yes to this. The second outcome of a ``no'' vote is actually more of the same. Well, we will avoid sequestration, but we will pass a continuing resolution and kick the can down the road again for the 187th time. It sounds easy. Everybody gets to go home. We pass a CR. Yet the military gets gutted again--devastated. It disrupts the supply chain and keeps our vendors from hiring people. Imagine if you are a midcareer military officer or noncommissioned officer--imagine what that tells you about what we think of our military and our men and women. I hear people on both sides beat their chest: ``I love our military.'' ``We have to support our military.'' Then they vote no on a bill like this. We cannot let that happen. Ironically, because of the two alternatives, a ``no'' vote is actually a vote to increase spending dramatically--not just a little bit but dramatically--over the next decade or so. This bill is a compromise. People back home tell us to come here and work with the other side and compromise and make decisions and get to a result. We just did that. President Trump and Speaker Pelosi just did that. That is what this is reflective of. I am here to tell you today that it is our job to back that up. In closing, it is imperative that we get this bill passed, allow our appropriators to get busy and start appropriating, so by September 30-- the end of this fiscal year--we have a chance to get the government funded. We know a ``no'' vote leads to more spending. It is our responsibility to be fiscally responsible, and I think a ``yes'' vote here does just that. I yield the floor.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, today I wish to recognize the members of the Greenbrier Middle School STEM Competition Team from Evans, GA: Jordan Epstein, Emily Forshee, Kendall Schneller, Carissa Veriato, and Sam Weinstein, as well as their teacher, Mr. David Phillips. Last October, the team competed in the STEAM competition at Augusta University. The team designed, built, and launched a rocket that was powered by water pressure and carrying a chicken egg. The rocket successfully landed in the landing zone that was only 30 feet in diameter. The team won grand prize in that competition for middle school engineering, and received an invitation to the International Young STEM Maker Competition at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. They were the only American team to have received an invite. The team worked to design a house that was powered by water as well as a new concept for electric vehicles. Out of 111 teams from around the globe, Greenbrier was awarded second place for their work. On top of that, the team's faculty leader, Mr. David Phillips, was awarded second place in the Best STEM Teacher competition. These bright young people and the teachers who guide them have made the State of Georgia and all of America very proud. Please join me in congratulating Mr. Phillips and all members of the Greenbrier Middle School STEM Competition Team for their incredible achievements. Thank you.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, thank you for your accommodation today. I rise to talk about another responsibility we have in the Senate; that is, to fund the Federal Government. Our Nation was built on debate and compromise. If you read what the Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers debated in Chambers just like this and then later in this Chamber through the first 100 years of our existence, there was hot debate and many disagreements, but somehow they found a way to find a compromise. Our Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers believed rightly that to get the best results, both sides had to come to the table to make a deal. This week, the Trump administration and congressional leaders, including Speaker Pelosi, reached a critical 2-year compromise on spending levels and the debt ceiling. Like any compromise, this funding agreement is not perfect. Neither side got everything it wanted. It accomplishes three important things, however. First, it will provide certainty to our military. This is critical after the last decade, when 2 years ago, two-thirds of our F/A teams couldn't fly. Only 3 of our Army brigades could fight that night out of the 58 Army brigades we have. Our readiness was terrible. This deal will continue to reestablish readiness for our military, provide our troops with the compensation and benefits they deserve, and take care of our veterans here at home. Before this, three Democratic Presidents disinvested in the military. That is just historic fact. It was done in the seventies, it was done in the nineties, and it was done by the prior administration. Second, none of the liberal poison pills or riders actually ended up in this final bill. Going forward, President Trump and congressional Republicans will ensure that we keep those out but in the spirit of compromise and hard negotiation. Third, and most importantly, this deal keeps the ball moving on the process of funding the government on time to avoid another devastating shutdown or continuing resolution. However, despite these benefits, this deal highlights two significant problems. These are not new. First, Washington's funding process is broken. The current system is inefficient and time-consuming. It has actually only funded the government on time four times in the last 45 years since the 1974 Congressional Budget Act was put into place. We now have just 13 working days between now and the end of this fiscal year. We are supposed to have 12 appropriations bills and $1.3 trillion of funding appropriated by the end of that time, by September 30. Good luck with that. So here we are in the eleventh hour. We just made a big agreement, and I believe now the pressure is on to get defense and some of the domestic spending appropriations done certainly by September 30 so we can avoid the draconian impact of continuing resolutions on our military. The lack of time means that for the second year in a row, Congress has had to rush in order to fund the government in the last moments of the fiscal year. Last year, we stayed here in August during the work period, and we went from 12 percent funding to 75 percent funding, and this year we have the opportunity to do that. I believe the plan is in place, when we come back this September, that we can actually get upward of two-thirds done by the end of September, which would include the military, which would avoid this CR issue we have been talking about. This process has been the norm in Washington for decades, however. This is nothing new. Since the Budget Act of 1974 was put in place, we have only done this four times, as I said. We cannot allow this process to continue this way. Last year, we had a joint select committee, as you know. I believe we have four things that we can move on this year in terms of bills and possibly change this going forward. The American people sent us here to get this job done. It is time we break through all this--the logjam of politics--and face the fact next year that our No. 1 priority is to fund the government. The second problem this budget deal has highlighted is the most important issue facing our country, in my opinion--the $22 trillion debt crisis. While this deal provides for all discretionary spending, the current budget deal does not include mandatory spending, nor does any other prior spending bill include mandatory. By law, all the budget does and all the appropriations do is deal with the discretionary budget, which is only $1.3 trillion of $4.6 trillion in total money that we spend as the Federal Government. So you say: Well, what is the difference? Well, we spent $1.3 trillion. Well, what is in that? That is military, Veterans' Administration, and all domestic discretionary spending. Well, what is in mandatory? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension benefits, and the interest on the debt, which, by the way, has gone up over $450 billion in the last 2\1/ 2\ years. Let me put this into perspective. This budget deal only increases discretionary spending from last year's level over the next 2 years by $54 billion. That is 2 percent per year for the next 2 years. That is lower growth in spending on discretionary items than the growth of our economy at the moment. That means that in 2 years, the spending on discretionary spending items will be less as a percentage of our economy than it is today. This is an incredibly important point and was a major goal of President Trump's going into this process. The problem is, the CBO projects that mandatory spending and interest payments will grow in that same period over the next 2 years by $420 billion. That is our problem. This is what is driving the huge increases on our debt over the next two decades. In these 2 years, ironically, half the increase in the mandatory spending is in interest expense. Even with interest rates being historically low, that is the case. Imagine what we would have if interest rates were at their 30-year average of 5 to 6 percent. Right now, 70 percent of what the government spends is made up of mandatory spending, as I said: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension benefits for Federal employees, and the interest on the debt. Many of these programs are in dire need of reform. The Social Security Trust Fund goes to zero in 16 years. The Medicare trust fund goes to zero in 7 years. It is imperative that we save these important programs. Yet nothing is being done when we deal with the discretionary part of this budget. Instead, Congress has been wrangling over the discretionary budget, which makes up just 30 percent of all spending. The whole situation shows just how shortsighted Washington is. Rather than address the long-term problems facing the country, Congress keeps kicking the can down the road. Fortunately, there are five steps, ultimately, we can take to address this long-term fiscal problem. First is we have to grow the economy. Check that box because the economy is moving. Regulatory work, energy, taxes, and Dodd-Frank have kick-started this economy, creating 6 million new jobs. The economy is growing at about twice the rate it did under the prior administration, so the economy is growing. Second is to root out redundant spending; third, fix the funding process; fourth, save Social Security and Medicare; and lastly, we have to finally address the underlying drivers of our healthcare costs. Thanks to President Trump's leadership, we already have the first part covered. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in 50 years. Our energy potential has been unleashed. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has brought new investment to our country. I want to highlight again the driver here. I am going to show a chart just as I close. Mandatory spending is the No. 1 problem we have with our debt crisis. The bottom line here is discretionary spending. The vertical dotted line is today, 2019. You can see, over the last decade or so, that discretionary spending has been relatively quiet. We have had some increase. The green line is total spending, but the orange line is the total mandatory line. You can see the explosive nature of growth from today forward. That is why this conversation today is so timely because, in the past, while it was going up, it is going up geometrically in the next 20 years compared to what it has been. That is a function of the growth of the size of the debt itself and also because of the aging demographic of our population. As more and more people retire and go into Medicare and Medicaid, you will see these numbers continue to rise. These are Congressional Budget Office numbers. This highlights how serious this is and why all the drama is on the 30 percent down here and why we have to change the rhetoric here, change the predicate of discussion and start talking about the mandatory expenditures and how we save them. Solving the debt crisis is the right thing to do and the only thing to do. The world needs us to do this, and the time is right now. Given that, this budget deal is a reasonable compromise, and we now need to make sure we appropriate to avoid any continuing resolution for our defense funding. Going into the next year, now that we have an agreement on a topline for discretionary spending for 2020, we need to expedite appropriations to ensure we avoid the unnecessary drama next year. This is one reason why I ran for the Senate. We have to get serious about the long-term implications of our debt. The world knows that. Our people know that. The problem is the political will has been missing in Washington. We passed one milestone, hopefully, with this agreement on the topline, and we will move to appropriations, but we have to move, starting immediately, to change the process so we don't have this drama next year and we begin the dialogue about how to save Social Security and Medicare. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I rise to do something I rarely do. To start, I want to talk about a very special Georgian and a good friend of mine--a man by the name of Billy Payne. Billy is a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great Georgian, and, yes, a great American. Recently, he was one of five individuals to be inducted into the 2019 World Golf Hall of Fame. It is quite an honor. Billy Payne is a riveting storyteller, a creative thinker, and an effective leader. Golf Magazine once wrote: ``Wherever he goes, Payne is the most interesting person in the room.'' Billy was born in Athens, GA, and he went on to play football for his hometown team, the Georgia Bulldogs. He earned a law degree from the University of Georgia and went on to open a small practice in Atlanta. After helping to raise money for a new sanctuary at their church, Billy and Martha, his wife, were inspired and started looking for ways to make a difference in their community. The day after the new sanctuary was dedicated, Billy Payne came home from work and said to Martha: I've got it--we're going to bring the Olympics to Atlanta. Billy was undaunted by the magnitude of this decision. He didn't have many connections at the time, but he called up city and State officials and formed a team to make a bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games. Billy spent the next 3\1/2\ years personally traveling to 110 countries to convince Olympic officials to bring the games to the city of Atlanta. On September 18, 1990, Atlanta won the bid for the 1996 Olympics all because of Billy Payne's leadership and his vision for the city. The 1996 Olympics put Atlanta on the world map. It transformed the city and allowed us to build infrastructure that later helped Georgia to become the No. 1 State in the country in which to do business. To this very day, my alma mater, Georgia Tech, actually uses dormitories that were built to house the athletes in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. After serving as President and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, Billy was invited to join Augusta National. In a very short period of time--actually, in 2006--he was selected to be the club's chairman, which is a role he served in for 11 years. Billy oversaw the Masters Tournament and turned it into a global brand with worldwide reach. When Billy took over at Augusta National, the club's membership was all male. Under his leadership, Augusta National broke the gender barrier and allowed women to join the club for the very first time. He also started two major amateur events--the Latin America Amateur and the Asia-Pacific Amateur. The winners of these tournaments are invited to play in the Masters each year. As a result, young people from all over the world now have a chance to actually compete in the Masters every year. In 2014, Billy launched the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship--a junior golf competition that gives 7- to 15-year-olds the opportunity to develop their golf skills, to compete with their peers, and to earn the opportunity to actually play and compete at the Augusta National on the Sunday before the Masters. I have seen this. It is an exciting event to see these young people compete at the very home of the Masters. Probably the greatest achievement, however, for amateur golf may have been this year's first Augusta National Women's Amateur tournament. When the final pair walked onto the 18th green arm in arm--one the winner, the other the runner-up, two women, arm in arm, cheering each other--it was a highlight in amateur sports. In my opinion, Bobby Jones, who is the hero of amateur sports in America, was in Heaven and probably stood up and cheered. Finally, Billy had a hand in naming his alma mater's football field, Sanford Stadium, after his coach at the University of Georgia, Vince Dooley. Last month, the university's athletic board approved the name change, and now the field is officially known as Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium. I would be remiss if I didn't say ``Go Dogs'' this morning. Clearly, Billy Payne's impact on Georgia and the entire country is hard to measure, but I want to tell you a story that really tells the true heart of this leader from our State. After he announced his retirement from being the chairman of Augusta National, he was at a private dinner and was asked by no less than Bret Baier what he was going to miss the most. Without hesitation, Billy said, ``The people.'' Well, those of us at the table thought he might have been talking about the members, but he wasn't. He was talking about the employees at Augusta National. Its employees have been there for their entire careers, and they adore this man because he loves them. He treated them right, and he built their careers there. His tenacious spirit, his love for humankind, and his steadfast leadership serve as an inspiration to us all. I thank Billy Payne for his lifetime of service to the State of Georgia and to the United States, and I congratulate him, his wife, and their kids on this induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Border Security Mr. President, on another topic, there is a growing crisis at our southern border, and we are told, next week, we are actually going to vote on an appropriations package for humanitarian aid at the southern border. Recently, I and a colleague of mine, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, traveled down to the McAllen sector of the border in Texas. We went out on patrol overnight with the Customs and Border Patrol agents--we were out all night with them--and then went on patrol in the early morning hours just as dawn broke on the river. We saw firsthand that we don't have just an illegal immigration problem--we have a national security crisis right there at our southern border. My biggest takeaway was that the drug trafficking down there has now risen to being a full-blown crisis. Between fiscal year 1997 and fiscal year 2018, the CBP saw a 22-percent increase in heroin, a 38-percent increase in meth, and a 73-percent increase in fentanyl seizures. In that year alone, fiscal year 2018, enough fentanyl was brought into the country illegally to kill every woman, man, and child in America. The Border Patrol agents we spoke to estimated that they are only able to interdict between 7 and 10 percent, however, of the drugs that actually cross the border in the McAllen sector. That is a crisis. If for no other reason, we have a crisis. In addition, the amount of human trafficking we are seeing at the border is unprecedented. Last month alone, 144,000 individuals were apprehended at our southern border. This is the highest number of apprehensions in over 13 years. In just the first 8 months of the fiscal year, 411,000 unaccompanied children and family units were apprehended at our southern border, including 84,000 family units and 11,000 unaccompanied children, just last month--11,000 unaccompanied children. How does an unaccompanied child get all the way from Honduras or Guatemala to our border? This is a conspiracy led by the cartels. I have seen it firsthand. We heard the gunfire across the river the night we were on patrol. It is real. If this trend continues, 800,000 children and families could be apprehended at the southern border by the end of this fiscal year alone. To put that in perspective, we issue 1.1 million legal green cards a year that are a pathway to citizenship. This year alone, just the family units alone could be 800,000 people apprehended at the southern border. Clearly, our Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed. When an unaccompanied child arrives at the border, they are cared for by Border Patrol agents until they can be placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the number of children arriving today greatly exceeds HHS's capacity to deal with them. As of last week, 1,900 unaccompanied children were in CBP custody awaiting placement in HHS's care. But Health and Human Services had less than 700 beds in which to place them. Now, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol agents are spending more than half of their time caring for families and children, providing medical assistance, driving buses, and acting as food service workers instead of performing law enforcement duties. Pulling Border Patrol agents away from their law enforcement duties only exacerbates the crisis at the border. We saw that firsthand on our overnight patrols. The Acting Commissioner of CBP said recently: ``We are in a full- blown emergency, and I cannot say this any stronger: the system is broken.'' On May 1, the Trump administration requested $4.5 billion in funds to help address the growing crisis at the border. At the time, we were debating disaster relief for my home State of Georgia and a dozen other States across the country. On May 23, President Trump broke the logjam and agreed to separate border humanitarian aid from the disaster relief question and it allowed us, then, within hours on this floor, to pass the disaster relief bill. Now we have to do the same thing for this humanitarian aid to the border. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis at the southern border has only continued to escalate, and we have to do something about it right now. This week, Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to every Member of Congress. It said: ``Absent an emergency appropriation, we anticipate running out of funding as soon as later this month.'' The Department of Homeland Security has already started pulling resources away from critical missions in order to try and keep up with this surge of human traffic. Without additional funds by August, the Department of Homeland Security says they will have to redirect manpower and funding from TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard in order to address the crisis at the border. The Acting Director of ICE just recently said: ``We are begging. We are asking Congress to please help us.'' This should not be a political issue. I am hoping that it will not be. This is about giving Federal agents the resources they need to care for children and families in their custody and respond to this crisis situation. Even the New York Times editorial board said this: ``Congress, give Trump his border money.'' That is the New York Times, not a big fan of our President. The Senate will vote on this emergency funding next week, and I hope it will receive bipartisan support. It absolutely should. Going forward, we have to address the underlying cause of this crisis, however. Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at the southern border has skyrocketed because of loopholes in our asylum and immigration laws. Minors and family units can easily assert broad and unspecific asylum claims. Then, they are released into the United States while they await formal removal proceedings, which could be months or years down the road. These loopholes, combined with programs like the DACA Program, have led to a staggering increase in the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at our border. Oftentimes, these kids and families are exploited by cartels on their journey to the United States and are in dire need of human services by the time they get here. It is truly heartbreaking what some of these people go through. These cartels profit off the most vulnerable. They fuel the drug trade and endanger communities across our country-- indeed, the world, for that matter. We have to put the cartels out of business. We have to close these loopholes that encourage illegal immigration into our country. Finally, we have to give the Border Patrol officers the tools they need to do their jobs and protect our country. This means more technology, more personnel, and more barriers. In conclusion, I want to say thank you to the women and men who protect our border. Their job isn't easy, but I will say this today: The best--and I mean the very best--are in our military uniforms around the world and doing our business, they are our Border Patrol people, who are protecting our border every day and night on our southern border here in the United States. We appreciate what you all do. God bless you. I yield the floor.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, the national debt is what actually pulled me and you and others, to some degree, into this political process. I have come to this floor many times over the last 4\1/2\ years to talk about this. Today, again, it is very timely. It is why I ran for the U.S. Senate. Today, we have--I just checked--$22.3 trillion, and it is going up $100,000 a second, as we speak. I have a debt clock in the reception area of my office, in the Russell Senate Office Building, and that thing spins all day long, 24 hours a day. Even more concerning, we have more than $130 trillion of future unfunded liabilities coming at us like a freight train over the next 30 years. That is $1 million for every household for every American. What we have learned is that we can't cut our way out of it, we can't tax our way out of it, and we can't grow our way out of it alone. Any one of these three will fall short. It has to be a combination. We have to have a balanced approach over the long haul to solve this $22 trillion of debt problem. I believe we will not solve this debt crisis unless and until we fix the way Congress funds the Federal Government. The current funding process is designed to fail. It really is. It doesn't work. It hasn't worked. It will never work. Since the Budget Act of 1974 was put in place, Congress has only funded the Federal Government on time four times. That means that by the end of the fiscal year, Congress has only funded the Federal Government four times by the end of that fiscal year. Let me say that again. It has been four times in 45 years since the 1974 Budget Act was put in place. The last time it was actually done was in 1996, some 23 years ago, under President Clinton. Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills to fund the government. Over the last 45 years, we have averaged just 2\1/2\ per year. Because of that, Congress has used a little known tool up here called a continuing resolution. In the last 45 years, Congress has used a continuing resolution 186 times. It is a release valve that lets the government continue to operate and on the surface doesn't really sound that onerous. You just keep spending at the same level you did last year. The problem with that is that it is devastating to some Agencies and, particularly, the Department of Defense, with regard to long-term contracts, long-term training, purchases, and maintenance over the end of the fiscal year, and so forth. They are devastating to our military. They create inefficiencies and uncertainty that hurt the bottom line and increase our procurement costs by dramatic amounts. The end result of that is that it lowers our readiness, and it causes the ability to fight to be reduced. In addition, Congress has shut down the government, over the last 45 years, 21 times because they couldn't get together and agree on how to fund the government that year--21 times. This funding process, in my opinion, is an unmitigated disaster, based on the actual results that have led to $22 trillion of debt today, which, in my view, is indeed a crisis. Over the last 4\1/2\ years alone, we have looked at practices in States, other countries, and businesses to find best practices. No one else in the world funds their operation the way the U.S. Congress funds our government. The problem is, we have a three-step process. We do a budget, an authorization, and then an appropriation. There simply are not enough days in the year to get all of those done. It is a 14-week budget process. We have 16 authorizing committees. If you did one a week, that is 16 weeks. And then you have 12 appropriating bills. Even if you did one a week, which is very hard to do, that is not enough time in the calendar year to do that. Right now, Congress has yet to pass this year a single appropriations bill for the next year. This is not the appropriators' problem. They do their jobs. They proved that last year and the year before that. If given enough time and information, they can get their job done. The problem is that this year we have not even agreed with the House and with the White House on what the top-line spending should be. As I stand here today, there are 17 working days until 31 July, when Congress leaves for a State work period called the August recess. When we get back, there are only 10 working days until the end of the fiscal year. That means we have 27 working days to reach a budget deal, pass 12 appropriations bills, and bring them to conference and get this government funded. If we started today, we would need to pass an appropriations bill about every 2 days in order to pass all 12 bills by the end of the fiscal year. We are already behind, and I am afraid we are staring down the barrel of another CR unless we start taking these bills up immediately. The minority leader and the majority leader in the Senate have been working diligently, along with the appropriations minority leader and chairman of the appropriations committee. They all have been working very well to get to a top-line number with the White House and the House of Representatives. I am told we are very close to a deal today. I hope we are. Last year, when we paid attention to it, we got to 75 percent funding. But by 31 July, we had only done 12.5 percent of total government funding. Again, this is just for the discretionary part of our spending, which is only about 25 percent of the total spending that we have in the Federal Government, which includes mandatory expenses. Last year, 16 of us wrote a letter to Leader McConnell, who agreed, and to his credit, kept us here in August, and we went from 12 percent to 75 percent funding by the end of August, including the Department of Defense and HHS, two of our biggest line items. By staying here in August, we did the people's work and did something that hadn't been done in 22 years. I hope it doesn't come to that this year. It shouldn't. We have time to do what we need to do. I know the people in charge are doing everything they can to make that happen. That is not what this conversation is about today. I am hopeful that even this week we can get agreement on the topline number, move past the budget cap issue, and get to appropriating these bills so we can avoid any more CRs in our future this year. The unfortunate reality is we have reached this same predicament almost every year since 1974. Einstein once said that ``insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.'' That is what this Congress has done continually over the last 45 years, with different Members and different colleagues. We keep doing the same thing. I am convinced more than ever that we need a politically neutral platform to fund the government on time every year without all of this drama. It can be done. I think both sides want to do it. Both sides have talked about it when they were in the minority and majority at different times, but it is time to move on it. Today 25 percent of our budget is discretionary. That is all. That is defense, the Veterans' Administration, and all domestic discretionary spending. That is 25 percent. That is what this is all about. This debate and drama is about 25 percent of the Federal Government. What is the rest of it? We all know that is the mandatory expense side of our budget; 75 percent of what we spend in the Federal Government, over $3 trillion, is for things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension and benefits for Federal employees, and the interest on the debt. The interest alone has gone up $450 billion over the last 2 years with nine Fed fund rate increases, and it is projected that by 2023 we will be spending more on the interest alone on this debt than we do on national defense. If we borrow about 30 percent of what we spend, that means, by definition, every dime we spend on discretionary spending is borrowed money. What is discretionary again? Our defense. So every time we are spending on defense, it is technically borrowed money. I believe it is time to fix this, and the way forward is pretty clear. The way I see it, there are three things we have to do to fix this funding process. No. 1, we have to change the budget process and appropriations process to make it streamlined, as most States do. Yesterday I introduced a bill called the Fix Funding First Act, which I hope will start a dialogue. It is not the end result, but I am hopeful it will start a dialogue here and that we will be able to work through the details, take individual items one at a time, pass some bills, and start moving toward a solution. Second, we have to address mandatory spending. We need to save Social Security and Medicare. Third, we need to adjust the current committee structure so that the same committees on both sides can both authorize and appropriate. This is a chart of what we have today. This is reality. We have on the left 16 authorizing committees, and on the right we have 12 appropriating committees. You can see for one appropriating committee you may have five or six different authorizing committees that have to provide input, in theory, to the appropriating committee. When I came to Congress I was asked to head the Subcommittee on State Department Oversight inside Foreign Relations. My responsibility was to provide oversight. Interacting with the person who was the chair of the subcommittee in appropriations--we never talked and there was very little input, but we found out that the State Department at that time had not been authorized in over 13 years. We changed that and got it authorized the very next year. But this is an archaic structure that will never work. It creates all of the confusion that we have right now and the time delays in trying to get this done. The Fix Funding First Act I introduced yesterday does five simple things. First, it changes the Federal Government fiscal year to match the calendar year. Why is that important? Well, in the first year of a new Congress we always start 3 months behind; we start in the fourth month. Second, this bill establishes biennial budgeting. A lot of States do that. It is not the end-all solution, but it is a great place to start and will make things a lot easier here. Third, this bill makes the budget a law. Simply put, today the budget is a resolution. Fourth, it creates milestones with consequences to hold us accountable as a body when we don't do our jobs. There are 44 States, including my State of Georgia, that have a balanced budget law, and if they don't pass a budget by the end of their 44- or 45-day session, they don't go home. In most States that is a law. What we are proposing here is essentially the same thing. We have broken the appropriations process into four tranches and set deadlines before Congress's scheduled work break. If we don't make the deadline, we don't go home until we get that part done. It is just that simple. Last, our proposal requires the Budget Committee to complete a 5-year strategic plan--something we have never done--just as people in the real world do. This gives us a chance to start talking about the long- term debt-to-GDP ratio that my colleague Senator Whitehouse has been talking about for the last several years, and I fully subscribe to what he is trying to do. That is what the bill that was introduced this week will do, and I think it is the first step to fix the funding process. Once we complete the first phase, we need to tackle mandatory spending, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and pensions and benefits. Right now, mandatory spending makes up about 75 percent of what Congress spends every year, but costs are expected to explode over the next 20 years. The next chart shows the projection from the Congressional Budget Office, and these are generally agreed-upon numbers based upon the baby boomers maturing in age. What we have is the green line, total expenses of the Federal Government, going from just above $4 trillion today to almost $12 trillion in just 20 years. In 10 years, we are talking about it being over $8 trillion--almost double what it is today. These are in constant dollars, not inflated dollars. This is our crisis. What is causing that crisis in the green line are total expenses. The blue line is discretionary expenses, which are what we spend most of our time arguing about here on the floor of the Senate and the House. But look at this. This is the mandatory chart. We go from a moderate one until we see cataclysmic geometric growth. We know that the Social Security trust fund goes to zero in 12 years. The Medicare trust fund goes to zero in 7 years. We have to save these programs and turn these curves down. There is no way the world is going to allow us to borrow that much money. Until Congress works up the political courage to deal with the mandatory spending issue, we should make all expenditures discretionary, bring them under the budget process when they need to be subsidized, and that is going to happen within a few short years. I believe the answer is very simple. Even if we pass this bill and the Appropriations Committee still has to write down its own defense authorization, defense bills and so forth, we have to streamline this process. Last year we did, and it almost worked. What we have now is totally dysfunctional. I hope this proposal that we are putting on the board today will help start the dialogue about how we can fix this funding process. America always does well in a crisis, but we are not always the first to decide that we are in a crisis. I personally believe we have been in a crisis for the last 15 years. Either we can wake up and face it now or I think we will regret it later. There are Members on both sides of the aisle who recognize this crisis. I am encouraged by the conversations we are having together. This is not a partisan issue. This is one of those ways that people back home expect us to compromise and work together to solve this. I am encouraged today. It is time we did this, and this is the time, this year. In the next few weeks, hopefully we will get past this impasse and make it happen this year. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. PERDUE

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

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, May is Military Appreciation Month. In light of that, I come to the Senate floor to remind us all just how important our military is to our way of life. One of the blessings of being a U.S. Senator and being on the Armed Services Committee and a past member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I have had the privilege to travel, as you have, around the world, visiting with our men and women in uniform. I have concluded that the best--and I mean the very best--of what we produce here in America is in uniform around the world, worn by our women and men, protecting our interests and defending freedom around the world. There are only six reasons in the Declaration of Independence why 13 Colonies got together in the first place, and one of those was to provide for the common defense. Today, the world is more dangerous than any time in my lifetime. Today, the United States faces five threats across five domains. This is much more complicated than the world has ever seen. Today, we measure the threats in this manner: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and terrorism across five domains. It used to be air, land, and sea. Unfortunately, today, it is air, land, sea, cyber, and now space. The tragedy, frankly, of our time is we have treated space as a scientific endeavor over the last 30 years, and others who we now consider potential threats have treated it as a military domain. I grew up in a military town. My father served in Germany during World War II. When World War II was ended, he joined the Reserves and then was called up again in the Korean war. He spent a couple of years in Korea during the Korean war. I have his dog tags today in my office. They serve as a constant reminder of his commitment to defending our ideals and upholding our way of life here in America. It reminds me that every single woman and man in uniform in our services today do the same thing. Today, I am humbled to represent our men and women in uniform in the United States Armed Services Committee. I take that very seriously, as I know every member does. One of my greatest honors as a member of this committee and a former member of the Foreign Relations Committee, as I said, is to travel overseas. The highlight in every one of those trips is not meeting with the head of state or the head of the military or the foreign minister; it was having dinner with people from my home State who were in uniform around the world. When President Obama was in office, the No. 1 request I heard from heads of state around the world was: We need America to reengage. At that time, America had withdrawn. We had created a vacuum. People weren't asking us to be the world's policeman. They were asking us to basically reengage and have a seat at the table and lead again. After a decade of withdrawal from the world stage under the prior administration, America is now leading again. President Trump is reengaged with the rest of the world. He has made it clear that America's interest comes first. When we say America first, it doesn't mean America alone. Today, our allies trust us again, and our adversaries fear us again. President Trump has also taken action to rebuild our military after it was gutted during the prior administration. Under President Obama, spending on the military was cut 25 percent, and we saw the resulting drop in our readiness. In the last 2 years, we have updated defense spending by $80 billion a year. As a result, in addition, we have avoided the use of continuing resolutions in each of the last 2 years, thanks to people on both sides of the aisle--Senator Leahy and Senator Shelby, who are the ranking member and the chair of the Appropriations Committee--who worked diligently last year and made sure that we got defense funding done before the end of the fiscal year and without a continuing resolution. Because of that, readiness is on the rise again in the military. Modernization efforts and rebuilding our military are underway, and our men and women in uniform are safer around the world, No. 1, and have the resources they need to carry out their mission. I am proud of the progress that we have made in just a very short period of time. Just in the last 2 years, our readiness has dramatically improved. However, a continuing resolution of any length for fiscal year 2020 will erode and undo a lot of progress we have made just in readiness over the last couple of years. I am really very concerned that this is a primary responsibility of ours here in the Senate and, indeed, in Congress, and it is one we have not stood up to in the past. We have got to do better than that this year. I believe that Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, said it best when he described the impact of continuing resolutions. Since the 1974 Budget Act was put into place, Congress has used 187 continuing resolutions as a release valve to fund the government in a temporary manner. Let me say that again, since 1974, 45 years, we have used 187 continuing resolutions. Each one of those continuing resolutions is devastating to our military in so many ways that I will get into in just a minute. Continuing resolutions are absolutely devastating to our military, both in readiness and the ability to rebuild our military. It is the most insidious thing Congress can do to our men and women in uniform. Many of us here don't even realize the damage that continuing resolutions do to our military. I have questioned all three current service Secretaries and their chiefs of staff, both publicly and in private meetings, about the operational impacts of continuing resolutions and funding uncertainty. Here are some of the responses: A continuing resolution ``would be like a punch in the gut,'' according to ADM John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations. A continuing resolution ``would stall our progress on readiness and modernization,'' said Gen. Bob Neller, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. Heather Wilson, Secretary of the Air Force, said that the defense budget sequester ``did more damage to the United States Air Force and our ability to defend the nation than anything our adversaries have done in the last 10 years--and we did it to ourselves.'' Secretary of the Army Mark Esper said: Fiscal uncertainty has done a great deal to erode our readiness and hamper our ability to modernize. . . . If we do not modernize the force right now, we risk losing a future conflict against Russia or China. It's just that simple. Finally, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer said, and this is classic: Continuing resolutions have cost the Department of the Navy roughly $4 billion. . . . Since 2011, we have put $4 billion in a trash can, put lighter fluid on top of it and burned it. I don't know how to put it more clearly than that. CRs have a direct and immediate impact across the entire Department of Defense--from training, to readiness, to maintenance, to personnel, and, yes, to contracting. During a CR, training must be rescoped, scaled back, or discontinued entirely, which means our warfighters are less prepared for battle and don't have the resources to defend themselves properly when in the heat of battle. Depot maintenance and weapons development are delayed, resulting in costly delays, less lethality, and higher costs. Hiring and recruitment are put on pause, leaving critical gaps in workforce skill sets. We have the development of cyber capability and space capabilities now. We are just ginning up those capabilities, and CRs absolutely devastate these young, developing capabilities. Change-of-station moves for servicemembers and their families are halted, creating unnecessary turmoil for families. Can you imagine that you have kids, and you are going to be deployed overseas. The timing has to be right to get your kids in schools over there. Well, if a CR happens to occur--and guess what happens around September 30. The end of our fiscal year. If your family is moving around that period of time, it could be held up because of that CR. That is very disconcerting to families already stressed by increased deployments and rapid turnarounds. The DOD cannot start new contracts or in many cases has to cancel existing ones. That devastates the supply chain. When we look at the supply chain in the military, after the devastating disinvestment of the last administration, one of the things that have to be rebuilt is the supply chain. The consistent funding of the supply chain is critical to the long-term defense of this country, and it is one we have taken for granted and have devastated over the last decade. Additionally, the Department of Defense has outlined hundreds of critical projects that would be disrupted or even discontinued if a current CR is used this year. I can think of one right now. A very much in demand helicopter has been under development for the last few years. It is ready to go. It is ready to be sent to the troops in the field. Yet, if we have a CR come September 30, it will be delayed 1 full year. We cannot allow this any longer. Clearly, CRs create inefficiencies and uncertainty that hurt the bottom line and our ability to fight. These funding disruptions weaken our strategic capability and shake the confidence and foundation of our Nation's industrial base. Until 2018, the Department of Defense started 13 of the last 17 years under a continuing resolution. Thirteen of the last 17 years, they started their fiscal year under a continuing resolution. Fortunately, for the last 2 years, despite other funding failures of Congress, we did not have to use a CR to fund the military. That has been a major factor in boosting readiness and our reinvestment and recap efforts. I hate to say it, but I believe we are staring down the barrel of a potential CR on September 30 this year. As we sit here tonight, there are only 25 working days between now and July 31. Why is that important? Because in the month of August, this body, along with the House, goes back to their States, and it is a work period in those States. That means we will not be able to pass appropriations bills here because we will not be here. If we don't move this appropriations bill and get it passed by the end, I believe, of July, when we come back in September, there will be only 10 working days, legislative working days, and there is no way we are going to get it all funded in that time. Last year, on July 31, we had only appropriated about 12\1/2\ percent of the Federal discretionary budget. We stayed here in August, to the credit of the leadership, Senator McConnell. I believe that because of that, we went from 12\1/2\ percent to 75 percent funding, including the Department of Defense, and therefore we were able to avoid a continuing resolution last year, as I have said. Other people have said that the greatest threat to our national security is our own national debt--General Mattis, Admiral Mullen. There are various other people who have said that who are in a position where they should know. I would add one thing to that that is devastating to our ability to defend this country, and that is the use of continuing resolutions. When we look at the domain threats and the natural threats that have evolved in the world right now--China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorism--I don't think any of that damages the military, potentially, as much as our inability here to provide consistent funding for our military. During Military Appreciation Month, I can think of no higher calling than for Congress to work diligently on passing a defense appropriations bill. First, we have to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, which we are working on this week. All the subcommittees are passing their markups this week. We hope to move on that immediately. I believe that will get passed here without much controversy. I know that leadership right now is talking about moving in a very intense manner, with a critical sense of urgency, to get this Defense appropriations bill done. I applaud those efforts. I want to support it in any way I can. I call on everybody in this body to be supportive of making sure that we can have, for the third year in a row--this is not a partisan issue; this is about our men and women in uniform. Given that this month is Military Appreciation Month, what better time to face up to this potential and make sure that we don't have a continuing resolution come September 30 of this year. That is the least we can do for our women and men in uniform. And we can fulfill the responsibility our Founders laid out in the Declaration of Independence when they outlined those six reasons why we were coming together, and the No. 1 reason we had at that time was to provide for the security of the United States of America. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the nomination.

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

Mr. PERDUE

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

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, as an outsider to this political process, it is easy to be frustrated with how slowly the Senate moves. It is easy to find fault with colleagues. As an outsider here, it is very easy to think we are not focused on getting results. I usually try to temper that with some rational thought about, well, this is the way things work, et cetera, et cetera, but I didn't see that tonight, and I am very frustrated with the vote. What we just witnessed on the floor of the U.S. Senate was nothing but pure partisan politics. Our colleagues across the aisle blocked our disaster relief bill because they said it didn't include enough for Puerto Rico. That was one of several reasons. To date, $40 billion in Federal disaster relief aid has already been allocated for Puerto Rico, and it is eligible for another $50 billion-plus, potentially, which has already been allocated. How much aid did the farmers in the Southeast receive after Hurricane Michael just 6 months ago? Not one dime. Now, why is that critical? You say: Well, OK. It takes time. Yes, it takes time. These farmers lost their livelihoods, and it hit them at the very time when their harvests were coming due last fall, October 10. It has been 6 months now. They have not received a dime from the Federal Government. The State has moved in with minor help, but these bridge loans these farmers have been using are running out; therefore, we were hoping this bill tonight would have given them some direct relief. Let's put this in perspective. Congress appropriated $136 billion for 2017's natural disasters across our country. That was for Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Harvey, and the California wildfires--in 2017, $136 billion. Before then, in 2013, $50.5 billion was appropriated for Hurricane Sandy, mostly for New Jersey. In this bill from tonight, we were only talking about $13.45 billion for unprecedented hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfires over the last year. Listen to the number of States we were talking about: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alaska, Hawaii, California, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. That is right. This $13.45 billion included only $3 billion for farmers across five States in the Southeast. President Trump visited that damage, and Vice President Pence visited that damage. I was personally privileged, as was Johnny Isakson, to travel with him that day to see this damage. You only have to see it to understand how ravaging this was to the businesses that have been built up over generations with regard to these family farmers. President Trump has done his part. He has been very reasonable in this negotiation. He stepped up and did the right thing with regard to Puerto Rico. He agreed that because the nutrition benefits were running out under the prior allocations that we just mentioned, he stepped up and said, yes, he would support $600 million in further assistance for Puerto Rico nutrition so that those benefits would not run out and so that it would, hopefully, in the negotiations, break the logjam. It did no such thing. This $600 million was exactly what Puerto Rico needed, and President Trump saw that. I give him high marks for stepping up and taking the political risk to go ahead and do that in addition to what had already been done for Puerto Rico over the last 2 years. In fact, Puerto Rico's own Representative in Congress, Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, supports this disaster relief bill that Senator Isakson and I and others sponsored. She said: I urge for the swift Senate passage of $600 million for nutrition assistance. Over 1.3 million of my constituents are already experiencing cuts in their food benefits. Puerto Rico needs this funding and needs it now. When you listen to pleas like that, I can only think of one word for our colleagues across the aisle in this episode, and that is that it is very similar to what has happened on the border. It is hypocritical to me to think that they asked for that and then voted no against it. What we see here is pure partisan politics. The American people are not stupid. It is clear that this had nothing to do with Puerto Rico and that it really hadn't had much to do with disaster relief. This vote was really pure partisan politics. It had everything to do with obstructing this President and preventing him from keeping his promise of helping the American people recover from the tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and floods that have ravaged our communities. The Democrats ought to be ashamed. They are holding our farmers hostage right now for the political gain they foresee in their having taken this position. It is unacceptable. They are gambling with people's lives, and I don't overstate that. Some people will not recover from this. They will get out of farming. For those who stay in, it will take a decade to recover even with this government assistance, and many will have to get out of the crops they were growing to just survive in the next year. We have farmers in Georgia whom I know personally who are on their second bridge loan. As an individual businessperson, I have done those in my career. I know how hard it is to go back after one bridge loan and ask for an extension or for another bridge loan to get to the point at which, hopefully, the Federal Government will step in and provide much needed assistance to back up these bank loans. These farmers are coming to the end of their ability to do that. I empathize with the bankers as well. They have a very difficult time giving bridge loans in addition to what they have already done until they get some degree of certainty about what it is we in Congress are going to do. It is unacceptable that this intransigence in Washington continues to threaten the livelihoods the very people who sent us here to represent them. Because the Democrats chose to play politics today, farmers across the Southeast may, indeed, lose their businesses. Puerto Rican families will not have access to the food benefits they desperately need. California wildfire victims will not get any Federal assistance to help rebuild until we get this done. The list goes on. I challenge each of the Senators in this body who voted against this disaster relief bill tonight to go down to Georgia, to Florida, or to South Carolina and look the farmers in the eye and tell them that, tonight, we chose politics over helping Americans in need. It is a shameful night in the American Senate. I thank Senator Shelby, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and its ranking member, Senator Leahy. They have worked diligently to try to find a compromise in here, but it is hard to compromise when there is only one party playing. In conclusion, I want farmers across the Southeast to understand that I, Senator Isakson, Senator Rubio, Senator Scott, and many others-- Senator Tillis, Senator Burr, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, and even one of the Democrats, Senator Doug Jones--are all committed, along with Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, and are not giving up. This is not the end of this tale. I want the farmers and the bankers in these five States to understand we are going to continue this fight. I thank Leader McConnell for continuing to give us this opportunity. It took a lot of time to get to this vote on the Senate floor tonight, and I thank him for that. For the people of these States who were affected, don't lose heart. We will get this done eventually. I yield the floor.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I want to make a few remarks tonight about something Senator Isakson and I have worked diligently on for the last 6 months. Yet, before we adjourn, I do want to echo what he has just brought to the Senate floor; that being a rounding statement of praise for a personal friend of his and mine, Woody Woodside. I am a resident of Glynn County and so have gotten to know him as a personal friend over the last few years. I will have more to say about his retirement later this year. Suffice it to say, tonight, Woody Woodside is one of the greatest people to be able to get things done with whom I have ever worked, and when he disagrees with you, he does it in a way in which you actually like him for his disagreement. He is a bulldog when he gets on something, and I have the highest respect for what he has been able to accomplish in his career. I will have much more to say about that in the days to come.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res 68 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Klobuchar.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 27; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 268; finally, that all time during recess, adjournment, morning business, and leader remarks count postcloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 268.

Mr. PERDUE

Mr. PERDUE. I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I know of no further debate on the measure.

Mr. PERDUE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res 117 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.