Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will be raising a budget point of order against this legislation. But I do want to thank my colleague, Senator Tester, for his hard work and the efforts of a lot of people to put this legislation together. I would hope my colleagues would listen to why I think it is important this bill--with a lot of good points in it, which I favor strongly--needs to be sent back and fixed. The reason is this: The bill violates the Budget Control Act that we passed August a year ago. That has been certified by Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and his staff. It plainly, as often is the problem, spends more than the Budget Control Act allows to be spent. Chairman Conrad, as I said, has agreed with that assessment. No. 2, now this is the fourth bill brought before this Senate by the majority leader in the last 15 months that violates the budget. It is the fourth time. This is a time in which our country has never faced a more serious systemic budget crisis. We are on an unsustainable course. We know that. One of the things we need to do is figure out a way to constrain ourselves, and the Budget Control Act was a step in that direction. To raise the debt limit in August 2011--we had borrowed all the money we could borrow, and to raise the debt ceiling, the debt limit, the Budget Control Act was passed. It limited spending, and that was all part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling. These violations of the Budget Control Act lower respect for the Senate by the American people. It hurts our Nation because it impacts our debt situation and our spending, and it cannot be justified. It should not happen. We can avoid this. I disagree with Senator Tester on this point. Of course, sustaining the budget point of order will not kill this bill unless in some manner of pique Senator Reid were to say: I am not going to bring it up if you do not pass it just like I said it ought to be passed and you will not waive the budget and just violate the budget and do it like I said. I do not think Senator Reid will do that. Surely, he will not do that. So what would happen is it would go back to committee, and Senator Reid would review it and see what we could do to fix it, which will be easy compared to some of the difficult problems we have around here. The need would simply be to find $14 million a year. I have suggested a number of ways already, but those have not been used. If we would think about it this way, we are talking about finding savings somewhere in this monumental government of $14 million when we plan to spend $370,000 million this year. By Alabama standards that is a lot of money. Another problem: The bill is subject to a House blue slip. Under the Congressional Budget Office analysis and the President's own Office of Management and Budget in the White House, the duck stamp is a tax. It simply is a tax. People can say it is not a tax. It is a tax. They have defined it as a tax. We do not have the ability to redefine the meaning of words around here, and a tax cannot originate in the Senate. So the House, as it is presently written, is likely to object and will object to this, I am certain. Another easily fixed problem in the bill is this: The Environment and Public Works Committee brought up the legislation. The question of whether the duck stamp tax should be set by law, by Congress, or be given to a member of the President's staff to set at whatever level he wants was discussed. Senator Boxer agreed with those who shared the view that we should not be delegating to an unelected Cabinet person the power to set taxes in the United States of America. He can set the duck stamp under this bill at any level he wants to set it at. That is not good. This is a constitutional issue. I feel strongly about it. Congress must never cede its power to tax to a single person not even accountable or any other entity, the U.N. or any other entity. The Constitution gives Congress the power to tax and only the Congress the power to tax. That can easily be fixed. There is not a problem here. It has been argued that the point of order is only technical. Do not worry about this point of order. It is only technical because the new spending in it is paid for. How? By tax increases. So the Budget Control Act drafters, 15 months ago, and the budget rules of this Senate understand this argument. This is not a new argument. They knew this kind of gimmick would come up under the Budget Control Act, and they prohibited it. They understood it, and that is why they prohibited it. Under the Budget Control Act, a spending limit is a spending limit. I know Senator Reid seems to think if he raises taxes he can spend more, and he does not have to pay attention to the Budget Control Act he supported and the President signed and negotiated 15 months ago. He does not have to do that because he has paid for it, he thinks, by raising taxes. But the truth is the Budget Control Act does not deal with taxes. It deals with spending, and it prohibits more spending than the amount above the EPW allocations. I note my friend, Senator Tester, and my friend, Senator Warner, earlier--they are fine Senators--said there is no problem. OK. There is no problem, Sessions. It reduces the deficit by $5 million over 10 years. We should not worry. So you say: OK, Sessions, why are you complaining? You are worried about the deficit. It reduces the deficit by $5 million. CBO says that. That may be the case. I think it is the case. But what is the answer to that charge? The answer to it is simply this: This legislation, as it is now written--and can be changed-- raises taxes $145 million and spends $140 million, and they pat themselves on the back and say: We pay down the deficit $5 million. Give me a break. Think about this, though: If the spending limit of the Budget Control Act were complied with, we would not have a $5 million reduction in the deficit. We would have a $145 million reduction in the deficit at least. We would have $145 million in deficit reduction instead of $5 million. So let's ask: Has anyone looked around to see if there is any spending that can be reduced to pay for this? The Interior Appropriations bill spends $29 billion a year. We cannot find $14 million? Well, the answer is, nobody has looked to save any money to pay for this bill. Nobody, really. Well, why not? Because it asks the Members of the House and the Senate--the Congress--to choose, make priority settings, and that is hard. We do not want to do hard things. There are over $900 million spent in wetlands programs like that in the bill that advance duck causes and hunting and so forth, according to the Congressional Research Service. Has anybody ever looked to see if that multiplicity of programs might be consolidated and save, out of $900 million, maybe $14 million right there? Plus, any other spending in this government could be utilized to keep within the spending limits and not violate it. But the fact is the Budget Control Act said we must choose. If we want to have a new program in one of our areas of the government, fine and dandy, but we have to do it within the limit of spending we have agreed to. This bill does not do that. Under this rationale, we would have to assume, would we not, that the needs of this bill are so little that there is not a single other program in America, not a single one, that is less valuable. Therefore, the only way we can proceed with this bill is to raise taxes, raise revenue. That is just simply not correct. We know better than that. There is no reason these problems cannot be fixed. Slowing down, complying with the Budget Control Act, not delegating to an unelected Cabinet Member the power to raise taxes, not violating with a blue slip by commencing a revenue bill in the Senate, is not hard to deal with. So I say to Senator Tester: Thank you for your work. I am not sure the way this was done precisely was something you suggested. I believe we can work this out. I have made some suggestions. I am open to a lot of suggestions, but I will just say to my colleagues, I will continue to object to any bill brought before this Congress that violates the solemn agreement we made 15 months ago in the Budget Control Act. And this one does. Senator Conrad has verified that. If my colleagues will adhere to the limits of spending that we agreed to 15 months ago by supporting this budget point of order, this popular bill, with a lot of good values in it, will be quickly fixed and passed--there is just no other way to see it--and in the future, committees and Senator Reid, perhaps, will stop sending budget busters to the floor of the Senate. Mr. President, I was going to make the budget point of order at this point, but I see Senator Tester. I do not know if he wants to speak. Let me say again how much I appreciate the hard work Senator Tester has put into this. He is a friend. I know he has worked hard, and I hate to cause him heartburn at this point in time, but I really would say I have raised this budget point of order on other bills and it is not that I am complaining particularly about his. His, in fact, will be a lot easier to fix than some of them. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate the vote we just concluded. I think what the vote said is that we want the bill on the floor to be in compliance with the Budget Control Act that was passed 15 months ago. This bill, even though it was not a lot of money, violated that. Senators have voted not to waive the budget and spend the money anyway. They decided we should comply with the budget. I talked with Senator Tester and Majority Leader Reid and assured them that the fundamentals of this bill are good. I like what they have been trying to do with the Sportsmen's Act and I have been supportive of so many of the provisions in it. We had several little problems. First and foremost, it attempted to spend more than the EKW Committee was entitled to spend under the Budget Control Act. Second, we have a blue slip problem with it. Thirdly, we have given the Interior Department Secretary the power to raise taxes unilaterally without a vote of Congress, and I think that is bad policy. All of those, however, compared to the many other provisions in the legislation are small, and we should be able to work them out. So I hope we can, and I will be working in that regard. However, I do wish to say to my colleagues, this is the second bill that has had a lot of support on both sides of the aisle but has failed because they violated the Budget Control Act agreement on spending. Some on the other side might think they can simply say Republicans are obstructionists, they are killing bills just because they want to kill them and they don't like them. That is not correct. Republicans want to deal with many of the issues before us, such as veterans jobs, such as issues important to sportsmen, and we are supportive of them, but we want them to be done according to the agreement we reached on spending limits last year, and that can easily be done. We spend almost $3700 billion a year. We ought to be able to find $14 million from waste, fraud, duplication--savings that can be utilized to pay for this new program. What the bill suggests by the way it is written is that we have looked at all of the spending in the entire U.S. Government and we can't find $14 million less valuable than to spend it on migratory bird conservation. I think that is not true. Of course we can find waste, fraud, and abuse right there. We can find other ways to consolidate programs to fund this. We have to honor the agreement we reached, because it looks to me as though we will soon be headed to some sort of late-night, end-of-the-session monumental bill, and it will be like what we had 15 months ago when the debt ceiling was increased and spending was limited and we promised to raise the debt ceiling but limit spending growth, basically. We voted on that. The majority voted for it. The President supported it. He signed it. It became law. Here we are now 15 months later, having had four bills brought to this floor that violated that spending limit. So we have to be careful. The American people are not going to be very confident, if we reach some sort of other spending limit agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, that we won't, before the ink is dry, start violating it. After all, it only takes 60 votes. I think it is a very important issue. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. When we make an agreement, I think we ought to adhere to it, and this is why we had difficulty with the bill. I enjoyed working with Senator Tester on it. I have had a good conversation with Senate Majority Leader Reid. Hopefully, something can be worked out to fix this problem. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the Reid substitute, S. 3525, the Sportsmen's Act of 2012, is legislation that has a lot of very good things in it. Senator Reid attempted--although outside the normal committee process--to put together a package of bills that could do some good things. I generally am supportive of the package. I think it has some very good qualities to it, and I very much want to support it. But there is a problem with it. It is a small but important problem, and it needs to be fixed. That is that, once again, after the Budget Control Act agreement reached in August, 15 months ago, the majority has brought forth a bill that violates the Budget Control Act, in which we agreed to a deemed budget as part of that process, and we are now spending more than we agreed to spend. Fifteen months ago, we agreed to limit spending each year for the next 10 years and to stay within a limited amount of spending. Because we are borrowing virtually 40 percent of every dollar we spend, this country has a debt crisis staring us in the eye. Without any doubt, the most obvious threat to America's future is the surging debt: $4 trillion-plus increased debt in just 4 years, and the end is not in sight. So we agreed, as part of raising the debt ceiling, to limit spending. This bill violates that agreement, and we need not do that. This is not the first one; it is the fourth one. That irresponsibility is one of the things that has placed us into this fix. We looked the American people in the eye 15 months ago and said, Okay, we will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion--because the administration had reached the limit of borrowing that the United States can incur--but we will reduce our projected spending increases over 10 years by $2.1 trillion. Part of the agreement in the Budget Control Act limited spending in various accounts, and this violates it. You might say, Jeff, that is your opinion. No, it is not my opinion. I raised this with Chairman Conrad of the Budget Committee, of which I am ranking member. He and his staff have looked at it, and they certify that this budget violation actually occurs; therefore, the legislation is subject to a budget point of order. It cannot go forward because it violates the deemed budget that we agreed to. If the budget point of order is raised, which will happen, then my colleagues will have a choice: They can either place the bill on a sound financial path that does not violate the Budget Control Act; or, they can say, Well, we won't pay any attention to that objection. We will waive the budget and just spend more than the budget allowed, because this is really important. It is really important that we raise revenue and spend more on the duck program. I have been supportive, and the duck stamp is important. But this is not the right way to do this. If you are going to spend more money, you need to reduce spending somewhere else. Also, I would point out the legislation was changed from the time it came out of committee. Part of the legislation at least when it was proposed in the Committee on Environment and Public Works of which I am a member, we observed that the proposal was to give bureaucrats-- government officials, unelected--the power to meet with special interests, or whoever they chose to meet with or not meet with, and set the amount of fees--taxes, you might call it--that would be required of Americans before they could hunt ducks. That has never been so. Previously, the Congress set how much you could charge for a duck stamp. So this was raised in committee, and our able chairwoman Senator Barbara Boxer agreed and by a voice vote it was accepted that Congress would set the limit on how much you could raise for duck stamps and burden duck hunters with. That is an important principle, in my opinion. That is violated by the bill that was brought up--not the one that passed committee, but the one brought up by the leader. I grew up in the country. When I go back home, I love to be in the woods. I don't hunt anymore, but I have been a big supporter. Many of my friends are hunters and fishermen and conservationists. So it is sad that we are having a dispute over this legislation, because we are so close to being able to work out the problems. My request to Senator Reid and to our colleagues would be: Let's fix this. Now it looks as though the bill will not be brought up until Monday when we come back, and I hope there will be ample opportunity for us to fix this problem so we are not passing a bill that violates the budget. Under the bill, it would authorize $142 million in new direct spending over the next 10 years. Some may say that is not a lot, but if that is so, they have been in Washington too long. Mr. President, $142 million is a lot of money, and it is a very important principle because this is not the first time we violated the Budget Control Act. If we stay with our agreement that we made with each other, that we made with the American people 15 months ago when the Budget Control Act was agreed to, we will at least save $2.1 trillion over 10 years. But if we keep nibbling away at it and eroding what we agreed to, we not only undermine our own credibility, but we weaken our ability to balance the budget. And if we reach a new agreement--which we need to do as we deal with the fiscal cliff then don't the American people need to know we will stand by the agreement we make? Don't they need to know an agreement is something more than a momentary event to get past a crisis and then the next year we can just ignore it? There is too much of this attitude in this Congress. That is one reason this country is in such a dire financial condition. The Reid amendment would violate the committee spending allocations in the deemed budget and would do it not only next year but every year over the next 10 years. This violation does not need to happen. You say: This is technical. It is technical because it is paid for. We raise the revenue and we spend the revenue, but new spending is paid for by revenue--the tax increase on duck hunting--and therefore what are you worried about, Sessions? What are we worried about? The agreement was that this whole area of spending would be capped at a certain level. The way to do this is, if you are going to spend more on the duck program, then reductions ought to be made somewhere else in this vast spending program or else you tax and spend. That is what we are doing. It is just tax-and-spend. They say: We cannot cut anything else in the budget in dealing with interior, environment, and those issues. There is no way we can save another dime. We can't save $14 million a year over ten years anywhere. Of course we can. There are plenty of places to save it there and in any of the other items of this government that waste money. What are they really saying? What they are saying is that of all the money we are currently spending, all of that is more important than finding $14 million to spend on more duck preservation programs. I am not sure that is correct. I am a believer in the duck stamp program, and I would like to see if we can figure out a way to do more to make sure we preserve those migratory bird habitats and the duck population in America, and I am prepared to be pretty aggressive as a Member of the Senate in developing policies to do that. But you do not have to tax and spend more. That is the point. If you look at it and say that we cannot cut any other spending in the entire Federal Government to find $142 million for the duck program, I will just say to my colleagues, that is what we are paid to do. We are paid to make those tough choices. I don't like them sometimes, but it should not be hard in this instance to find this kind of payment. The idea that we can just up a fee and spend more money and violate the budget and nothing is going to happen and we are going to just go along and do that without objection, that time is over because we are in a debt crisis. We have run up trillion-plus deficits for the last 4 years. President Bush's last deficit was huge. It was one of the largest we had in-- maybe ever, $470 billion. We have averaged about $1,300 billion the last 4 years. The year before he left office, there was a $160 billion deficit. So we have $160 billion, $470 billion, a trillion-plus, 4 consecutive years. We are on the road in just a few years to double the debt of the United States again. This cannot be sustained. That is all I am saying. We have had similar budget problems on the postal reform bill, the highway bill, and the veterans jobs corp bill. We have had problems with spending violations on those bills too. I really hope we will use this period of time to work out some language that fixes this problem. My budget staff can provide a long list of things that would save us this much money and have no real impact on the productivity of our government. The Migratory Bird Habitat Investment and Enhancement Act--that is a good name, sounds like something we should be for--would actually give the Interior Department a blank check to increase the price of the duck stamp. It gives the Interior Department--unelected bureaucrats--the power to set how much we pay. Currently, it is $15. They could make it whatever figure the Secretary decides it should be, without any limit whatsoever. We discussed this in committee. The committee said: No, this is not the way we want to go. We have not done this before. Congress has stepped up to the plate and been responsible and decided how much we are going to extract from the American people before we allow them to go duck hunting. Granting that power to the Secretary is a significant change from what the committee voted on. The duck stamp is purchased by all duck hunters in the United States. It was established in 1934. Since its beginning, it has always been set by Congress, not somebody in the bureaucracy. This is an unchecked power. I think it is a delegation of power to a person not accountable to the people, and it might violate the Constitution because only Congress can appropriate money and raise taxes. If it doesn't violate the Constitution explicitly, it violates the spirit of the Constitution. Moreover, by increasing the price of the duck stamp, if you think about it, in this amendment--it is an amendment, a revenue- raising amendment to an S. numbered bill. Senator Reid, therefore, by doing that, has put up a revenue enhancement bill originating in the Senate. The Constitution says revenue bills have to originate in the House. That places the bill in jeopardy. The House is very jealous-- rightly so--of their constitutional prerogative of commencing all tax revenue bills in the House. The Congressional Budget Office, our objective analysis team, scores the duck stamp provision as an increase in revenue. If the House exerted its privilege under the Constitution, this bill would be subject to a blue slip, a rejection based on the revenue clause. Also, amazingly, we have no amendments. There is no process to even bring up amendments to vote. So we are stuck with the position of either supporting the bill as is in all its complexity or not. If we fixed this matter, I would be supportive of the bill. We tried to study it. I think it is OK and pretty good, actually. It is a positive step in the right direction if we simply fix this. So the proper remedy for this situation is to allow amendments or send the bill back to committee and figure out how to pass legislation that is within the budget limit. I will not mention all the good things about this bill. There are a lot of them: the National Fish and Wildlife Act; the North American Wetlands Conservation Act has some good provisions in it. A number of the other pieces of legislation are excellent. I do not think that is in dispute. It is supported by a lot of great wildlife organizations. I support that. On September 22 the Senate voted 84 to 7 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed, with the full expectation that when the Senate returned this month, an opportunity would be provided to address the budget concerns and to improve the bill. But now we see that my friend the majority leader has decided to move forward without confronting these issues. I hope we can figure out a way to avoid this situation. Maybe people did not think about it clearly. Maybe they just thought it is paid for, therefore it cannot be a problem with the budget. But even though it is paid for, it really is a problem with the budget, and we do not need to delegate to some unelected official, even if it is constitutional-- about which I have doubts--the ability without limit to raise fees for a normal historic right of Americans to go hunting ducks. I believe that has to be fixed, too, and we should do that. Finally, I understand the intent is to recess for the rest of the day and all next week. However, in the Armed Services Committee yesterday, we were told we can get the armed services authorization, the Defense authorization bill up for a vote. We can actually bring it up and we can have a vote, and this is great news, and we have to do it in 3 days and very limited amendments, but if you Republicans will agree with that, we can get the bill up. This is the first time in 50 years we have not passed a Defense bill prior to the September 30 fiscal year end. We are already into the new fiscal year. It should have been passed long ago. More than that, we could have spent 3 weeks on the Defense bill. We did nothing in September. We are doing nothing next week. What is this about? It is about the management of the Senate defeating the historic ability of Members of the Senate to actually participate in the great issues of our time. One of them is the Defense Department budget and policy. The Defense authorization bill came out of the Armed Services Committee unanimously, but several of us in committee said that we have amendments we want to bring up on the floor. Other Members not on the Armed Services Committee have a right to talk about this $540-some-odd billion expenditure, the largest single expenditure outside of Social Security and Medicare in the entire budget. We are supposed to be thankful we did nothing in September, we are going to do nothing next week, but you now only have 3 days and just a very few amendments, and Senator Reid will pick and choose which ones you Republicans get to offer. That is why we are having problems. Senator Reid continues to assert that Republicans are filibustering. What Republicans are saying is we are prepared to move to these bills, but we would like the leader to tell us how many amendments we can get. He has figured out a way to fill the tree--what we call the amendment tree--to a degree that has never been done before, and that allows him to pass legislation without any amendment. So we say we would like to have amendments, Mr. Leader. This is the Senate. OK. Submit a list of them to me. You can have two, and it can't be this amendment, it can't be this amendment, and it can't be this amendment. It can only be these kinds of amendments. We will be nice to you. Well, maybe three. Ok, you get three--on a $540 billion defense bill that sets the policy for our military, that decides what weapons systems we are going to invest in with billions of dollars? Some people in this Senate have opinions about it and they want to come to the floor. Maybe when they were campaigning they said: I am against such and such in the Defense bill, and they want to come here-- and it is in the bill and they are against it and they want to offer an amendment and explain why it shouldn't be in the bill. They want to offer an amendment to take it out. Sorry. We don't have time. I think this is a dangerous trend. I believe we shouldn't be recessing today. I believe we should be working. We have the fiscal cliff. We have the defense sequester. We have monumental tax increases about to occur. We have the death tax going to 55 percent of virtually anything somebody has. All these things are going to happen if we don't take some action. We have all these people talking, secretly planning and talking and working, and so about Christmas Eve I suspect they will walk in here with a plan we will be told we have to support or else we will work through Christmas or on January 1 we will be here, and we will have a catastrophe if all these bad things happen. The President will not even say what he is for. He will not even lay out a plan. Congressman Ryan laid out a plan. He has defended it all over the country and is prepared to discuss it and explain it. What is the President's plan? What is Senator Reid's plan? Does the majority leader have any plan to confront our pension programs for Social Security and Medicare that are going broke? Does he have any plan to fix them? What is it? Isn't this important? Does he have any plan to get us off this trillion-dollar debt course? What are we going to do? Growth is going down. We were at 2.4 percent in 2010; we had that much GDP growth. We have had a very slow recovery from the 2007-2008 recession. But then did it go up in 2011? No; it dropped to 1.8. What about the first three quarters of this year? It was 1.77. The growth is not occurring. We are borrowing and spending, but we are not creating growth. I think we need to deal with this crisis we face and the uncertainty of policies is hurting America's economy also. I am disappointed we are not dealing with these important issues. I am disappointed we are recessing, and we need to do better.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Wicker just talked for a minute about this. What does the Senator think? Would it be great to have the chairman of the Finance Committee be named Senator Orrin Hatch?

Mr. SESSIONS. It is amazing. We do not have a defense bill. The Senator serves on the Armed Services Committee, as I do. It came out of committee unanimously, bipartisan vote, and for some reason, the Democratic leadership has failed to bring the bill up to the floor for the first time in 50 years. Is that not amazing?

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, it is a challenge we have to face, and it is not easy. It will be a challenge and it will be difficult and it will force us to make difficult choices. But I feel very frustrated. We are from small towns in America. Where we grew up, if you had a tough choice to make, if somebody came up with an idea and defended it, you respected them, even if you didn't agree with it. If you didn't have a better plan, and all you did was criticize their plan, people wouldn't think much of you, would they?

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Wicker asked a very good question, and every American needs to be thinking about that. I have given a lot of thought to it. We have not had a budget in 3 years--1,241 days. We have not had a budget passed on the floor of this Senate. They did not even report one from committee this year. If we are blessed by the American people--we the Republican Senators--and have a majority in this body and if I am honored to have the opportunity to lead the Budget Committee, we will have a budget. Failure is not an option. It cannot be that we will not comply with the law. But more than that, Senator Wicker, we have to have a plan to get us off the course to financial disaster, and the budget is the way you lay out that plan. Does the Senator not agree that the difficulty our Democratic colleagues had is that anything they thought they could agree on and bring forth would not be popular with the American people? And they did not want to subject themselves to having it debated on the floor and having a vote on amendments, as the Budget Act allows, even though you can pass a budget with a simple majority, cannot be filibustered? I guess what I will ask the Senator, when you do not write a budget because you cannot agree or are unwilling to step forward with a plan, what you are really doing is failing to provide leadership. We were elected to lead, to have a plan that we are willing to announce to try to get us on the right course, a budget. Would the Senator not agree to sort of have a plan to deal with the crisis we are facing? We have not seen one in this body.

Mr. SESSIONS. So what we did in this body, when the budgets were brought up--they brought up the House budget--called the Ryan budget-- and we brought up the President's budget, and Senator Toomey and others had a budget, and every one of them was brought up--our Democratic colleagues voted against every one of them. And not in one instance did they set out before the people what they believed in, what they would advocate for, what they would fight for, what they believed would fix the American economy and put us on the right track. But they have invested a tremendous amount of effort in attacking Congressman Ryan and the House budget. Let me say this about that budget. Any budget is going to be subject to some complaint here and there, but it was historic. It would change the debt course of America. It would reduce our deficit by $3.5 trillion and it would create economic growth. It was designed not just to be a budget-cutting, frugal budget, but also to try to create growth and prosperity in this country and get this country moving again and get businesses hiring again. It was a historic and good budget that would change the debt course of America and put us on the right path, yet all we have heard from our colleagues, without offering anything themselves, is criticism of him. And I believe the House, as the Senator said, fulfilled their duty.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Wicker for raising this point because we need to discuss this, and the American people need to ask themselves who is telling the truth about this and who is accurate about this. A group of us spoke--40 or more Republicans--and we expressed frustration with the lack of action in this body, the likes of which we have never seen perhaps in our history, with regard to not passing an appropriations bill. Historic research has been done, and we have not passed a single appropriations bill only two times: 2010 and this year, both under this Democratic leadership. Those are the only times in history that no appropriations bill has passed. Yesterday, however, Senator Reid used this language. It kind of hurt my feelings, because I said we didn't have a budget, and I am the ranking member of the Budget Committee. Maybe 10 or 15 Republicans talked about our not having a budget, and Senator Reid said: ``It is a lie to say we don't have a budget.'' I don't know if that violates the rules of the Senate about personal attacks, but I try not to use that word--lie. I try not to say a colleague is lying. Even if I ever would say something like that, I would want to be sure I had absolute proof to back it up. And that is a responsibility. You know, we like Harry Reid. I consider him a friend, I really do. He has always treated me fairly on the floor. But I have to say, the majority leader shouldn't have said that. First of all, it is not accurate. For example, Senator Reid announced unequivocally that he had no intention of passing a budget. This is what he said last year. He said: ``There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion.'' It is a statutory requirement. Unfortunately, it doesn't say you go to jail if you don't pass one. The people are crying out for a plan to get out of the financial condition we are in, but he said there is no need to have one, in his opinion. He said at another time, ``It would be foolish for us to do a budget.'' Foolish for us to do a budget. And they did not do one. There is no budget. So for him to say it is a lie when we say we don't have a budget, well, that is inaccurate. I will point out, as Senator Wicker knows, the Budget Act, the United States Code, defines what a budget is. It lays out some of the things that have to be a part of the budget and the process by which one is produced. It has to be reported by the Budget Committee by April 1. It sets out the date as April 1. Then we have to have a floor vote by April 15. And when it comes to the floor, the rule says we have unlimited amendments, with 50 hours of debate, and it can't be filibustered. So 50 hours would mean about 1 week. It can be done in 6, 7 days at most.

Mr. SESSIONS. Absolutely. The party with the majority, 53 Senators, ought to be able to pass a budget. We passed a budget with 51 senators one time. A budget allows us to control everything but Social Security. We can't touch Social Security but we can deal with Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, pensions, as well as the discretionary accounts. So that was all avoided. My friend has been around here and in the House for a number of years, but it seems to me it would have been a healthy thing indeed for the Democrats to have brought to the floor a budget, even if I didn't agree with it. We then could have had a national public debate about these difficult choices the Nation faces and Senators would have to vote as to whether they believed that balancing the budget was worth cutting some spending here, and how much they believed in taxes we ought to raise, and how much would they be cutting in spending. We could read the fine print and ask how much we are cutting and actually debate and vote on these things. But that is what the majority leader and his colleagues wanted to avoid.

Mr. SESSIONS. I couldn't agree more. In my hometown of Mobile, AL, they fell one vote short of raising the sales tax because of the financial challenges they were facing, and they had a big debate about it, but they didn't duck the vote. They had the vote and they decided they didn't need to raise the taxes. But it wasn't a question of the city council being able to avoid a vote. We in the great United States Senate, we travel the whole of our States over and over and over again and we ask for this tough job. My wife has a good phrase for it when I complain. She says: Don't blame me. You asked for the job. Well, we asked for this job. Nobody said it was going to be easy, and this is not easy because we have never faced a more fundamental financial crisis. Because of demographics and history and trends that are going on in our population, the situation is such that it is going to be difficult to meet these challenges.

Mr. SESSIONS. Exactly.

Mr. SESSIONS. My colleague is so right. We are not going to have to cancel these programs.

Mr. SESSIONS. We can save these programs. It is just going to require us to confront reality and make some changes in how we do business. I wish to say one more thing about this budget, before I forget. My Democratic colleagues claim the Budget Control Act was a budget, but it only dealt with discretionary spending. It didn't deal with all the other spending. It only set limits on expenditures and it didn't have any debate on the floor. It was a secret agreement. There was a budget limitation placed on spending as a result of Republicans insisting we had to reduce some spending before we would allow the President to raise the debt limit. That went on into the wee hours of the morning and they put together a horrible deal and now we are paying the price for it. It did cut some spending, and it limited how much spending we could do, but it didn't go through the budget process, it didn't cover all the government programs, and it doesn't have anything like the indices of a budget. An attempt was made--and successfully--to bring up the President's budget for a vote. The motion was believed to be legitimate because there was no budget, and we were going to have a vote on it. Our Democratic colleagues ran to the Parliamentarian to try to argue that this cap on spending that was agreed to last August was a budget. They picked the Parliamentarian. The majority hires the Parliamentarian. And very courageously and properly the Parliamentarian said: No, it is not a budget. So there was no budget in the Senate, and President Obama's budget was brought up and got zero votes. I wanted to share that.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Olympia Snowe, who is not running again, is frustrated with this body and pointed out yesterday on the Senate floor that we voted in this body a few years ago up until November 1. We act like we have to be out by the middle of September. We aren't going to do any work during October, and we will come back maybe after the election in a lameduck circumstance and see how much junk can be shoved through here without real votes. Isn't it true that we have had plenty of time since September to bring up the Defense authorization bill, to bring up a budget, to bring up some of the appropriations bills, at least some of them?

Mr. SESSIONS. We have heard it said that 40 percent of what we spend every day is borrowed. Really, $4 billion a day is what we borrow. People probably think that can't be true, that 40 cents of every dollar we spend and put out the door has to be borrowed from countries around the world and from others who will loan us the money, and we pay interest on it. In a recent interview in July on CNBC, Mr. Erskine Bowles--President Clinton's Chief of Staff, appointed by President Obama to head the debt commission--said this about the state of our finances: If you take last year, 100 percent of our revenue that came into the country, every nickel, every single dollar that came into the country last year was spent on our--what's called mandatory spending and interest on the debt. Mandatory spending is principally the entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. What that means is every single dollar we spent last year on these two wars, national defense, homeland security, education, infrastructure, high-value-added research, every single dollar was borrowed. And half of it was borrowed from foreign countries. That is crazy. Crazy. It's a formula for failure in any organization. That is the man President Obama chose to head the debt commission, a businessman who understands the threat this Nation faces. We can get off this path. Congressman Ryan laid out a plan that would get us off this path. We have to get off this path. As we head out from this Senate to return to our States and visit with our constituents, and as we head into an election, I would just like to ask, Is there one Senator on the other side of the aisle who can defend to the good people of this country the decision of this body to withhold a budget, withhold a financial plan from the country? Can you defend that? Can you defend not even attempting to do the fundamental requirement of Congress, which is to appropriate the money to run the government--not even bring up a single bill--for the second time in the history of the Republic? What about the Defense authorization bill? It came out of our Armed Services Committee unanimously. The leadership has refused to bring it up on the Senate floor. Can you defend that? Really, can you defend failing to deal with the fiscal cliff, the deep defense cuts and huge tax increases that will occur January 1? Wouldn't the economy be better if that uncertainty had been removed? We could have already brought up those bills and voted on them. Instead, you know how they are going to do it: The leadership will meet over here, and it will be December 23. The majority leader said we may be here until December 23. That is when they will bring it all up. That is when the health care bill was passed. Christmas Eve is when the health care bill was passed. So that is the plan: Bring it up at the end. Everybody will have to vote for it, or the government will shut down and it will be a disaster. That is the kind of thing we should be avoiding. I believe the complaints that have been made today are not just political rhetoric, not just talk, but represent a legitimate, honest criticism of the leadership of the Senate. I think the American people should weigh that as they go to the polls.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, as the Chairs of the debt commission-- Simpson and Bowles--told the Budget Committee, this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. I would say this Nation has never faced a more difficult financial challenge. We have deep, systemic demographic problems. They need to be addressed. Yet today marks the 1,240th day since the Democratic leadership in the Senate adopted a budget. For 3 years, in a time of financial crisis, the Senate's Democratic majority has failed to comply with the U.S. Code that requires us to bring up a budget and bring it to the floor of the U.S. Senate. Politico observed on May 15: Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their own vision for how to deal with federal debt and spending. I believe that is a colossal failure of leadership, a failure of fundamental responsibility, and puts them in a position, in my opinion, of being unable to ask to be returned to leadership in this Senate.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, Senator Reid was, I think, stung this morning when remarks were made about the failure of the Senate to pass a budget or to move a single appropriations bill. For the first time in over 100 years, I understand, not a single appropriations bill was brought to the floor. This was a decision made by the Democratic leadership, to not bring up even a single bill, so that we end up with a big omnibus CR. The leadership also didn't bring up the Defense authorization bill for the first time in 51 years. Senator McCain explained that yesterday and the day before and he expressed his frustration about it. I was disappointed this morning to hear comments from our budget chairman, Kent Conrad, about this frustration and, I believe, truth-telling from Republicans. Senator Reid said: ``It's a big lie for the Republicans to come here and say we haven't passed a budget.'' Let's look at the facts. The law requires the Senate majority to produce a budget, a financial plan, every single year. It is in the code of the United States--a plan that covers taxes, entitlement spending, and debt. It is fundamental to the future of our country, and that is why it is required by law, because people saw the need for it. That plan must be produced and voted on in committee and brought to the Senate floor. The Republican House put together such a plan. They moved it and passed it, but Senate Democrats have no plan. They have proposed nothing, offered nothing, put nothing on paper. Senator Reid, our Nation is facing a debt crisis. Surely you agree. What is your plan? Where is your budget? What is your proposal to rescue the finances of this Nation? I haven't seen it, but I am just the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. The American people haven't seen it. It doesn't exist. The House has a plan. Where is your proposal? Have you forgotten that you canceled our Budget Committee markup on this spring and refused to bring up a budget to the floor last year? What do you plan to do on taxes, on entitlements, on welfare, on spending, on debt? How does your majority plan to balance the budget of this Nation? Do you have a plan? Surely you know the spending caps in the Budget Control Act are not a financial plan for America. As the magazine Politico put it: ``Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their own vision for how to deal with Federal debt and spending.'' Let me say that again. Is there any problem greater for America today than debt and spending? This is what Politico reported not too long ago. ``Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their own version of how to deal with Federal debt and spending.'' That is exactly right. It is indisputable. We have had the worst performance of a Senate on financial matters in the history of the country, in my opinion. I can't imagine any Congress being less fulfilling of its duty. Speaking on FOX News earlier this year, Chairman Conrad said: What we need, I believe, is at least a 10-year plan. That's why I am going to mark up a budget resolution the first week we are back in session. That was in April. That markup never happened. This is what The Washington Free Beacon reported: Conrad stunned observers Tuesday when he announced that he would not follow through on his expressed intention to offer, mark up and pass a Democratic budget resolution. Many suspect that Conrad's plan was derailed at the last minute by Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats who did not wish to cast politically difficult votes. I haven't heard that disputed. There is no dispute that Senator Reid decided, along with the Democratic conference, frankly, we are not going to bring up a budget. We would have to vote. We would have to lay out our plan and then people can look at it and say what is wrong with it. We would rather just spend our time attacking their plan. We don't want to show our cards, provide any leadership. That is what happened. Here is what the New York Times reported regarding Senator Conrad's canceling of the markup: Mr. Conrad's announcement surprised Republicans and Democrats who were expecting him to produce a Democratic budget that, if passed by the committee, would have been the first detailed deficit reduction plan in three years. That is the way the New York Times reported it, and I say they are accurate. That is the way I saw it. Senator Joe Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats and he said he was ``disappointed by the party's refusal to confront the issue,'' and said further, ``I don't think the Democrats will offer their own budget, and I'm disappointed in that.'' Senator Mark Pryor admitted: ``We've had three years with President Obama where we're not able to get a budget resolution passed.'' But it gets worse. Not only have Democratic colleagues failed to do their duty, they have savagely attacked the House for producing a budget and laying out a plan. Here is what Senator Conrad said today. Senator Conrad is a good friend, but give me a break, Senator Conrad. He said the House plan ``fails any moral test of government.'' He said the House plan failed the ``moral test,'' and he repeated that several times. These comments are outrageous. They are inaccurate, but they are also hypocritical. I ask: What is the morality of the majority party in this Senate that has violated the law purposely and deliberately in order to avoid presenting a plan to save this Nation from financial disaster? They have deliberately refused to go forward. What about the families who will be impacted by a debt crisis? What about our military? What about our future as a nation? Where is our duty during this defining hour of our Republic--America's hour of need? Is there no response and no leadership? Every Senate Democrat in every State, I think, will have to explain why they have not stood up to Senator Reid and his proposal. Presumably, they are all in it together. None have actually come to the floor and opposed him and said they would vote to bring up a budget. I know the Senator was stung a bit this morning, but it is not a lie to say we didn't have a budget this year, and I know it was painful to listen to the litany of failures of this Congress. First, no budget in over 3 years--1,240 days; no appropriations bills this year--not one. We failed to bring up the Defense authorization bill for the first time in 50 years. We have failed to confront the sequester and debate how to fix it. We know we are going to have to do that. Yet we are going to let it wait until the end of the year, causing great turmoil at the Department of Defense. We have not dealt with the fiscal cliff. All of those are fundamental things this Senate should have done and we haven't done any of them. We don't even bring up the bills. We should have had a great historic debate for the last 2 years over the future financial status of America because it is clearly the greatest threat facing our Nation. Yet we haven't had it. We have had little groups meet in secret--gangs and groups and secret committees and special committees. But this is what I would say about this budget. If I were prosecuting a case--as I used to when I was a Federal prosecutor--I would say the defendant has confessed. This is what Senator Reid said back in May of 2011: ``There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion.'' It is not a question of his opinion. It is the law of the United States. Nobody asked his opinion. He has a duty to follow the law, I would think. How about this. He goes on to state: ``It would be foolish for us to do a budget.'' Senator Reid, I think, has moved into this modern world--postmodern world--where words mean about anything we want them to mean. We can just say it is a lie that we don't have a budget; that we produced a budget and refer to the Budget Control Act, which was simply a part of the compromise to raise the debt ceiling and set some spending limits on spending in the discretionary accounts only--not all the accounts of the United States. That is not a budget, and the Parliamentarian has already ruled that is not a budget. There is no question we don't have a budget, and we haven't had leadership. It has been very disappointing. And I was disappointed to have my good friend Senator Conrad attack the House for having the gumption to lay out a plan that would change the debt course of America and put us on a path to prosperity. I am sorry Senator Reid has overreacted and declared that it is not true what we, the Republicans, have asserted, that we don't have a budget, because we don't have a budget. It is true. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I know my colleague, the Democratic assistant leader, is here, and I will make a budget point of order now because I understand he would be objecting. Madam President, the pending amendment, No. 2789, offered by the Senator from Washington, would cause the underlying legislation to exceed the authorizing committee's section 302(a) allocation of new budget authority and outlays. Therefore, it violates the budget and I raise a point of order against this measure pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I will say to my colleague, I appreciate his eloquence and his advocacy. He gave us a real partisan speech this morning. I will just ask a few things of one of our leaders in the Senate, Mr. Durbin. What about the responsibility of this body to pass a budget? We have not had one in over 1,200 days. What about the responsibility of this body to move appropriations bills? Not one single appropriations bill has been advanced. And while we are working on legislation that could help veterans find jobs--it will cost about $200 million a year--why has this body not brought up the defense appropriations bill that funds the Defense Department at over $500 billion? We have not even brought it up for a vote, even though the House has passed one. Why have we not brought up the defense authorization bill that passed the Armed Services Committee unanimously? I am a member of it. It has been sitting here for months and not been brought up. Why? Because we would have a debate, actually have some votes around here? So that is a problem I think we have in this Senate, and I believe it is a serious matter. I was going to make some comments about the bill before us.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank my eloquent colleague. But we do not have a budget. The law requires us to have a budget--passed decades ago. The Senate Democratic leadership, of which he is a part, said it was foolish to have a budget. They were not going to have one. We have not had one for 3 years. So it resulted last year in a debate over raising the debt ceiling because we had run up more debt than any time in the history of this Republic. And there was an agreement to limit spending. It is not a budget. It sets a limit on spending--only on discretionary spending, not on the 60 percent of the government otherwise on which we spend money. It is inadequate and insufficient, and before the ink is dry on it, we are back in here with a Democratic majority advocating legislation that violates that cap. There is no dispute about it. This is the eighth time we have raised budget points of order for violation of the agreement setting a cap on spending limits. So here we go again. Public opinion of Congress is lower today than at almost any time in history. According to the most recent Gallup Poll, only 13 percent of the public approves of Congress's actions. Americans do not trust us. Why should Americans trust us when we keep using gimmicks and budget slights of hand to hide more spending and drive this country further into debt when we make a promise by passing a law that limits spending and then promptly violate that law within months of passage? And, now, the Democrats will attempt again today to violate that law? Why should the American people respect an institution, such as this one, that cannot adhere to a sound financial course for America? On August 28, our country's gross debt reached $16 trillion--$16 trillion--over 100 percent of the entire gross domestic product of this Nation. It is a danger zone, according to every expert who has testified. According to the Office of Management and Budget's latest mid-session review of our fiscal condition, our Nation's debt will increase $4.4 trillion over the next 4 years, rising to over $20 trillion. And in that period of time, we will virtually have doubled the entire debt of the United States since the Democrats took the majority in the Senate and President Obama was elected--double the entire debt. And the course we remain on does not get better. These are their budget numbers. This is a course America is on, and we are not getting off of it. It is $1 trillion a year in deficits. The U.S. debt per household is now $137,000 per household--up $80,000 since just 2002. While Americans have tightened their budgets to make ends meet, Congress has not passed a budget in 1,239 days. Erskine Bowles, whom President Obama asked to chair the debt commission, noted recently--I saw him in a CNBC interview at a conference on July 12. He said: If you take last year, 100 percent of our revenue came into the country . . . was spent on our--what's called mandatory spending and interest on the debt. Mandatary spending is principally the entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That is what the tax revenue pays for. Everything above that is funded by borrowed money. That is what he said. Is he correct? Absolutely. We are now borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. That is not sustainable. At that conference, Mr. Bowles repeated what he said before the Budget Committee, on which I am ranking member. Mr. Bowles said this Nation has never been on a more predictable financial crisis path. That is what he said. If we continue at this rate, we are going to have a financial crisis like 2007. Hopefully not if we can avoid it, but if we do not change what we are doing, we are going to have one. He is absolutely confident about it. He has repeated it. So has the Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. Bernanke. He said: These numbers are not going to continue. If you do not change, we will have a crisis before we get there. At the debt debate last summer--most Americans remember that; Congress should certainly remember it--we finally reached an agreement that is now being violated. We passed the Budget Control Act last August at the last minute, if you remember, to set strict spending limits over the next 10 years. It created a super committee to solve all of our problems, we hoped, or if the committee failed, which it did, to enact $1.2 trillion, at least, in cuts through sequestration. That would raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. We would have a net cut in spending of $2.1 trillion. The debt ceiling money gets spent now. We have almost added another $2.1 trillion to the debt since last August. We are getting close to the debt limit again. But the cuts were promised to be over 10 years. We will spend now, but we promise you we have got a plan. We have a law that will keep us on the right path over the next 10 years. So the questions are: Are we spending at that limit? Will we stay there? Secondly, let me note parenthetically that the $2.1 trillion is not enough in reduced spending projections. We are talking about reducing projected spending rates--the increase--not cutting spending $2.1 trillion. We are talking about cutting the projected increase in spending. So at the current rate of spending--$3.7, $3.8 trillion this year--if you carry that out for 10 years, that would be $38 trillion. Under the projections, we are to spend $47 trillion over the next 10 years--almost $10 trillion more. All the Budget Control act says is: We are going to spend $45 trillion rather than $47 trillion, that our spending would increase from $37 trillion to $45 trillion. Can the Republic sustain that? Is that going to throw us into the ocean? Will we collapse as a nation? Will children starve and people not get their Social Security? Of course not. We will still be spending more money. That is all the budget agreement called for, and we are already waffling on that commitment that occurred last summer. So here we are. While our colleagues have offered well-meaning legislation and something that we should work on to try to deal with the unfortunate increase in unemployment for our veterans--and we can help them, I truly believe--they have refused to go by the promises made under the Budget Control Act last summer--flatly refused. So I am worried about unemployment. I am worried about it especially among veterans. And there are things we can do. In an effort to find common ground, Senator Burr from North Carolina, representing Fort Bragg, where I spent a summer, offered an alternative bill, the Careers for Veterans Act, which would help our veterans find jobs while keeping the Federal budget under control and honoring the commitment we made last summer. It can be done. This is not hard to do if you want to do it. Since the Senate majority will not even allow a vote on any bill that abides by the budget--Senator Reid is obstructing the right of Members to offer amendments to the bill--I have raised a budget point of order against Senator Murray's substitute amendment. Sustaining this point of order will allow us to keep the promises made in the Budget Control Act that Senator Durbin talked about so proudly--just stay within those promises. It will allow us to continue to work on this bill in a way that helps our veterans without adding more to our children's debt. It does not kill the legislation; it simply tells the sponsors: We are not going to do this until you get it within the budget limits to which we agreed. And it can be done. Senator Burr's bill does it. It certainly can be done. The Senate majority had the opportunity to write legislation complying with the spending limits set in the Budget Control Act. Instead, they bypassed the committee process. We have not had any committee hearings on this legislation. And they have offered a substitute amendment that violates the Congressional Budget Act by increasing mandatory spending $700 million over the Veterans' Affairs Committee's 302(a) allocation. Under the Budget Act, the committee is given a certain amount of money to spend for veterans, and this amendment would violate that agreement. Specifically, the Murray amendment violates Section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act by spending $61 million above the committee's allocation for 2013 and $480 million above the committee's allocation for 2013 through 2017. It would also spend $666 million above the committee's allocation for 2013 through 2022. Surely, out of a budget that spends $47 trillion over 10 years, we can find $700 million in savings to pay for this bill. That is all that needs to be done to ensure that the bill complies with the Budget Act. As a result of exceeding the Veterans' Affairs Committee's allocation, the Murray substitute amendment violates Section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act. That has been discussed with Chairman Conrad, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee. He acknowledges that it does, and so does his staff. I am very confident that the Parliamentarian agrees and will rule that it violates the Budget Act. Now the Senate majority plans to have a vote to waive--to waive the promise they made to the American people to control spending just over a year ago. So that is the issue before us today. Do we take the bill and fix it so it complies with the budget--which can easily be done because the substitute Senator Burr has drafted does it--or will we once again waive the promises we made last August and so proudly touted that we were going to cut $2.1 trillion in spending. In effect, there is a tax increase, argued with some validity, to pay for this bill. The bill uses a tax enforcement measure to stop abuses by people who don't fully pay their taxes. This will raise revenue, and, therefore, the bill is offset, and so we shouldn't worry about it. So here we have a new idea for helping veterans: We will raise taxes and revenue and we pay for it. But this is what is called tax and spend. Tax and spend. We agreed to a limit on what we would spend. If we have discovered a method to collect more taxes or raise taxes to get more revenue, that money, under our budget agreement last summer, is to be used to pay down the debt, not to take more money to spend on a new program today because we have more revenue to spend. So that is a fundamental issue. Just because it is paid for does not mean we are not spending more than we agreed to spend. We very precisely are. Not only does the Murray amendment violate the Budget Act by spending above agreed-to levels, but it also uses budget gimmicks-- extraordinarily really--to make the bill appear to be offset. This budget sleight of hand is called a timing shift. What about this offset or pay-for idea? Let me discuss that a moment. This is one of the issues that, if the American people fully understood it, would outrage them. As a matter of fact, it is probably part of why they are not happy with us now because they have seen so much of this. This is a recurring gimmick. If a CEO offered stock based on this kind of promise of financial solvency they would go to jail. It is as bogus as a three-dollar bill. This is what it is. It shifts the payment of corporate income taxes 2 to 3 months sooner so we can count it in this fiscal year. Specifically, this gimmick would collect additional revenue over the 2013 through 2017 budget window, which is the budget window they were trying to deal with since it violates the Budget Act over that 5 year period. So this was designed to cover up more spending. But think about it. It is exactly the same amount of less revenue that will occur in the 2014 through 2018 budget window. If we ask someone to pay their taxes earlier, they do not owe it the next year when we would otherwise expect to receive it. The height of this gimmick was demonstrated years ago when I first came to the Senate. I was shocked. This is what they did: They moved a Social Security check from this fiscal year to the next fiscal year. What was the result? It resulted in having a lot of money to spend this fiscal year; right? The CBO said we have more money because we didn't pay a Social Security payment. They moved--delayed--it by 1 day. That is what they wanted to do, to move it 1 day. But what happens to the next fiscal year? Is this really a gain or a gimmick? It is a gimmick because the next fiscal year we would need to make an additional Social Security payment in that budget year. It is just a way to spend more today and push off the cost until tomorrow. That is what they did then, and that is exactly what this is today. It is a smoke-and-mirror scheme used to avoid the rules in the Budget Act and the scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office. It being used to manipulate the scoring for short-term gain. It simply speeds up the payments in the first 5 years so it appears we have more money to spend. In reality, the gimmick merely creates a hole in the budget next year because the money that was expected to come in next year--now coming in this year--is not coming in next year. So this point of order is not a technical issue, it is an issue of whether this body will uphold its commitment to the American people on how much money we are going to spend. Congress agreed to certain spending levels in the Budget Control Act. We voted on those spending levels, and we should stick with those spending levels today. There is no reason for us to violate that agreement. The point of order exists so that Congress cannot raise taxes and spend money over the agreed-to amount. The point of order requires 60 votes to waive, and it exists so the Senate does not succumb to political pressure to spend beyond our means. Really, it is meant to try to stop spending beyond our means. The Senate majority was aware of the budget rules when they wrote this bill. They were aware of it. Instead of writing a bill that complied with the Budget Act, they decided to go above the agreed-upon spending levels. Senator Burr--a fine Senator--was also aware of the rules under the Budget Act and the spending levels set under the Budget Control Act. He drafted alternative legislation that complied with the budget rules and that would fund a veterans jobs program through discretionary spending. Unfortunately, the Senate majority took most of Senator Burr's policy suggestions but did not keep the fiscal discipline found in his bill. They will not allow us to have a vote to aid veterans within the spending agreement. Contrary to what my friends on the other side of the aisle claim, this point of order will not kill the bill. It only returns the bill to the legislative calendar. It will remain right there on the calendar, but it will allow the people who support it, if they want it passed-- and they do--to propose changes so that the bill complies with the Budget Act. We can still fix and pass this bill before we leave this week. It wouldn't take much time at all to fix this matter. A vote in support of the point of order will protect the integrity of the budget process. Supporting this point of order will allow us to change the underlying bill so that it is fiscally sound and complies with the spending levels we have agreed to. Unfortunately, while the Senate majority refuses to allow a vote on a reasonable veterans bill that complies with the Budget Act, they are neglecting the looming cuts that face our military men and women on January 2, 2013--the sequester. Given the events happening around the world today, we need to be very careful not to allow these kinds of cuts to take place in the first part of next year. There are various ways we could easily fix that, in my opinion, but we will not even confront the issue. The Senate majority has refused to address sequestration, which the Secretary of Defense--President Obama's Secretary of Defense--said would be catastrophic. Defense people have said it would hollow out the military. It is too rapid a bite, according to the experts in the Obama administration and others, but no effort has been brought forward to confront that problem--to bring it up on the Senate floor and have a full debate about it. We can do a $200 million a year bill that we spent a week or more on, but we have no time on the Senate floor dedicated to dealing with the sequester, which would take $500 billion out of the defense budget. This bill on the floor today would spend nearly $1 billion over 5 years above the budget. What about the $500 billion in cuts that are looming right now in January? We need to wrestle with that and decide how we are going to confront that. It is not going to be easy. Maybe defense can sustain some more cuts, but I don't think this much. They have already taken $500 billion in cuts, and this would be an additional $500 billion in cuts. The Defense Department, under the plan today, which represents one- sixth of Federal Government spending, would get half the cuts, and the remaining five-sixths of the Federal Government would get the other half of the cuts. This is disproportionate. It should not have been part of the Budget Act. But they slipped it in the dead of night, and it came to the floor and people went along with it so we would not hit the debt ceiling. But it is not good, and we need to fix that, in my opinion. House Republicans have confronted this matter. They realized this was a problem, and they proposed a budget and a plan to replace and undo the sequester and to do it in a way that made sense without violating spending levels we agreed to last August. How many proposals to fix this problem have we received from Senator Durbin and Senator Reid? Zero. Nothing. They are not doing anything but blocking any attempt to bring up legislation that would fix it. That is why we don't have a Defense authorization bill, which came out of my committee unanimously, the Armed Services Committee. It has been sitting here and not being brought up. Why? Because if we do, we will have a discussion about the sequester and the Defense Department and the future of America, and they do not want that. The House passed the Defense authorization bill in May, and they passed the Defense appropriations bill in June. We have passed none of them, not even brought them to the floor. They want to attack Republicans as not caring about our men and women who serve our country. Yet we are trying to fix the sequester, trying to bring up a Defense bill that will actually do some good and give a pay raise to our men and women in uniform--a small one, but a pay raise. So I am really disappointed we haven't brought up the Defense authorization bill, which came out of my committee. A few days ago--last week--Senator McCain spoke about this. He said: Shame, shame, shame. Imagine that for 51 years, every year, this Senate has passed the Defense authorization bill. This will be the first time in 51 years we haven't passed the Defense authorization bill, and we have so many important issues related to our Defense Department today. Nothing is more important than that. Yet we spent a whole week, or the last few days, discussing a bill that could have been agreed to just like that, with the suggestions of Senator Burr, because we can't wait to get out of this place. This could have already passed, and we could have been dealing with these important issues. I find it breathtaking, frankly. Let me just point out the bill is not going to go through the House since it violates the Constitution. There are revenue proposals in this bill. It will not see the light of day in the House because the Constitution says revenue bills must be generated in the House. So we have wasted all this time producing a bill that cannot and will not be received by the House. Article 1, Section 7 of the United States Constitution says: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. . . . This is a revenue bill. So what has happened? Is it just an idea? Let's see, we don't want to talk about the Defense appropriations bill. We don't want to talk about the Defense authorization bill; it involves hundreds of billions of dollars. We don't want to talk about those, so let's bring up this veterans bill. We will bring it up even though it violates the Budget Act. And do you know what those stupid Republicans will do? They will object and say it violates the Budget Act. And do you know what we can say? We can say: You don't like veterans. You don't believe in honoring those who served our country. Do you want to know the truth? That is what has happened right here today, and it is irresponsible. So let's vote for Senator Burr's bill. Let's pass legislation that will help veterans right now, or we are going to send this bill back--I am confident--to see if they come up with some other plan that would be helpful to our veterans and their employment prospects without violating the Budget Act. I want to mention one more thing because I think it is important. The two largest veterans groups, the VFW and the American Legion, have said these things. Steve Gonzalez, assistant director of the American Legion, said both bills, the Burr and Murray bills ``have ideas on how to get veterans quality jobs,'' and added that Burr's version stands a better chance of passing. What about the VFW? In the Washington Post today: ``VFW supports concepts behind the Veterans Job Corps bill, but we have some concerns about the budgetary implications,'' said Ryan Gallucci, deputy director of national legislative affairs for the VFW. We don't have to do it the way this bill has come up. Senator Burr has offered a very fine proposal that the VFW and the American Legion seem to support. Let's do that. Let's do it that way and not violate our commitment to the American people to live within our means. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, before the Senator leaves, I would ask him a question. And the reason I am asking Senator Coburn about this is because there is no one of these 100 Senators here today who has spent more hours, effort and time in dealing with the duplicative programs of the Federal Government than Senator Coburn. He has brought up these issues time and again. I just ask, according to the GAO, in 2009, Senator Coburn, I understand that 9 Federal agencies spent $18 billion to administer 47 job training programs. The Senator has looked into that. I know I have heard him speak on that specifically. I was surprised the Senator brought out that there are already six programs for veterans now, and this would be a new one added to it. What is the Senator's view of what a responsible Congress should do when we learn we are spending this much money on these programs with their own bureaucrats and so forth? Can we do better?

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma. He served on the debt commission. He is steeped in the challenges facing our country and he is working hard to fix our problems. I salute Senator Burr for coming forward with a proposal that helps veterans while abiding by the rules set forth in the Budget Act. Regretfully, I think we will end this matter today, the legislation that is coming forward, through the budget point of order. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.