Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, the Veterans Jobs Corps bill creates a new mandatory program that would cost $1 billion over 5 years. As the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee and someone who is committed to ensuring that we honor our commitments as part of our process in the Senate, I am concerned about the cost of the bill and the fact that it violates our budget agreement entered into last year. The spending on this new program is to be offset by, we are told, $119 million in direct spending reductions and $1.132 billion in new taxes. So it is a tax-and-spend bill. My staff on the Senate Budget Committee has confirmed that there is a 302(f) Budget Act point of order against the Veterans Jobs Corps Act with the managers' amendment as it is presently. So that is the situation. So when I say we have confirmed that, what I mean is that we have talked to the Budget Committee chairman, Senator Conrad, and his staff, and they have confirmed our conclusion that this violates the Budget Control Act. The 302(f) point of order lies against this bill because the Veterans Jobs Corps bill, as amended, would cause an increase in the budget authority and outlays above the Veterans' Affairs Committee's allocation that was deemed by the Budget Control Act. The Veterans Jobs Corps bill would specifically cause an increase in budget authority and outlays above the Veterans' Affairs Committee's allocation by $61 million in 2013 and $480 million between the 5 years of 2013 and 2017. So the budget gimmicks in the Veterans Jobs Corps Act are significant and very troubling. The CBO accounting procedures don't catch this, but it is very real. They don't catch it because the people who wrote the legislation wrote it in a way so they could avoid the proper score from the CBO in this process. The bill shifts the timing of corporate income tax payments so that it appears to collect $135 million in additional revenue in 2013. What does that mean? A month or so before these payments are due, they accelerate the receipt of those payments. The payments fall in this year, and bingo, we say we have another $135 million we can spend. Isn't that wonderful. We just accelerate the date and the time that it would be paid. However, this is simply a smoke-and-mirrors scheme since the timing shift in payments will lead to exactly $135 million less in taxes collected in 2014. In other words, if we were planning on collecting $135 million next year and we collect it this year, the people who owed the money next year don't owe it anymore; they have already paid it. So there is a hole in next year. I have offered under the Honest Budget Act, along with Senator Olympia Snowe and other colleagues, legislation that would end this pernicious gimmick. It is worse than a gimmick. This bill uses the exact same mechanism in 2017 and in 2018. The bill collects $392 million more in tax payments in 2017, but--and I have the chart from the Congressional Budget Office--it collects $392 million less in 2018. Do my colleagues follow me? We just accelerate the money, we spend the money, we get it this year, but we don't get it the next year. So over a period of time, this is a gimmick. It creates no new real money, but it creates the appearance of having real money and it is the appearance of money that is being spent, not real money. This is just one of the examples of how this country is going broke. If this gimmick was not included, the Veterans Jobs Corps bill would increase the deficit by $38 million in 2013 and by $324 million over the period of 2013 through 2017. About one-third of the total expenditure of the bill is based on this gimmick. Our Democratic colleagues have used this budget gimmick to claim that it decreases the deficit by $97 million in 2013 and by $68 million in 2013 through 2017, a 5-year period. I believe these points about the Federal budget process are indisputable. I know what CBO says about it. If we look at their numbers and we examine it over a period of 6 years, we see clearly that the money is not there. I invite any member who wants to suggest that this is real money the U.S. Treasury is receiving to come to the floor and explain how they think they are correct. I don't believe that I am in error. To put it simply, the money my Democratic colleagues claim in the bill as revenue isn't there. It appears to be there on paper, but that is not the truth. The American people need to know the truth. We simply spend more money on the Veterans' Affairs Committee allocations than was agreed to in the Budget Control Act. We are already violating that. We have done it already this year. As a result, we have eroded the small, but significant steps we took to bring some spending under control. The Budget Control Act would have reduced spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years for the entire U.S. budget. Well, how much is that? We know that $2.1 trillion is a lot. It is a lot, but we plan to spend $47 trillion over that 10 years. So we would be reducing our projected spending from $47 trillion to $45 trillion over 10 years. Surely we can do that. That is not a cut, because if we spend for 10 years at the current level of spending, we would be spending $37 trillion, so we are still increasing spending from $37 trillion to $45 trillion, just not $47 trillion. And the Republic is not going to sink into the ocean with those kinds of cuts, but it would begin to put us on a path of honesty and responsibility and end the unsustainable debt course we are now on. I am not happy about this. I will make this budget point of order formally when we get back on the bill. I don't know when that will be because for right now we have gotten off of it. But I want my colleagues to know what the situation is, because it may be at 1 o'clock tomorrow morning when we have that done. I wish to say this: This Congress has had the worst record in decades, maybe in 100 years. We haven't had a budget for over 3 years. We haven't dealt with the sequester that has to be dealt with before the end of the year. This Senate--not the House but this Senate--has not passed a single appropriations bill. To my knowledge, I say to my colleague Senator Hatch, I don't believe we have ever failed to have a single bill, although several times we have only had a few. But now we have none, and they have made it a policy of the majority party not to bring up a single bill so we can cobble it all together in some big omnibus CR and pass it in the dead of night, maybe on Christmas Eve, after the election is over. We should have been doing that all year long. We haven't dealt with the tax increases that are going to hammer the economy in January, and we haven't passed a budget in over 1,000 days. The House has passed a good budget which would change the debt course of America and put us on a sound path. They sent over a Defense authorization bill. They sent over a Defense appropriations bill, and most of the appropriations bills, until it became clear Senator Reid said we are not going to pass them anymore. They sent over other good legislation that is dying in the Senate. There are ways to help veterans get jobs. There are already six jobs programs for veterans now--six of them now. Maybe they could be improved or fixed, and if we do it right, we could create a bill that helps veterans get jobs without violating the budget. Before I yield the floor, I am pleased to see my colleague Senator Hatch, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. His leadership on the Judiciary Committee and Finance Committee is well- known in this body and I am honored to serve with him. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Ayotte. She is a great member of the Budget Committee and a very active and aggressive member of the Armed Services Committee. She is the wife of an Iraq veteran, and knows and cares about these issues and contributes greatly. She and some of our other new Members have been flabbergasted to see how little has been accomplished in the 2 years they have been here. In my experience, Senator Ayotte, this is the worst performance in the 16 years I have ever seen in the Senate. It may be the worst performance in 100 years. As the Senator mentioned, the House passed the Defense authorization act in May. They passed a Defense appropriations bill in July. We have had all summer and done nothing. The Senator is so correct. We had some intense and good debate in the Armed Services Committee over that bill. Yet when it finished, we had a unanimous vote. I thought that was special. So why did the bill not get brought up? I do not know. I feel as if we have missed an opportunity to do our duty. Not only have we not had a budget, not only have we not had a Defense Authorization bill or a Defense appropriations bill, we have not had 1 of the 12 appropriation bills brought to the floor, not 1. I believe that has never happened perhaps ever before, at least in maybe a century. The decision that was made by the Democratic leader was supported by his conference. He cannot just do things that his conference does not support, so they have decided not to do this. We end up at the end of the year with this massive CR with multiple changes. They say it will be a clean continuing resolution to fund the government for 6 months at the same level of funding. That is not exactly accurate. There are some things in it. But it is not the way to do business--to have every one of the bills cobbled together, all 12 appropriations bills cobbled together, in one 6-month, half-year, appropriations bill. Because, you see, as of September 30, if we don't pass the appropriations bills, the government shuts down. Under the law and the Constitution this government cannot spend a dime that Congress has not appropriated. That is the way the government works. We have to appropriate money before some bureaucrat can spend it. The House has done their duty but not the Senate. We have not passed a single one. So what will happen to avoid the entire government being shut down, the entire Defense Department being hammered? What will we do? We will pass a continuing resolution that continues to fund the government. For now, we understand it will be 6 months, and that would be a substitute for doing what we should have done. What will we do 6 months from now? Will we have another 6-month CR or will we actually pass appropriations bills? I appreciate the leadership of Senator Ayotte and her participation. I have heard her express her frustration as a new member of the Budget Committee that we haven't had a budget and didn't bring one up in the Budget Committee and didn't vote on it. As the ranking member of the Budget Committee, it was a deeply disappointing thing for me. That was a decision made by the majority leader, Senator Reid, who said it would be foolish to have a budget. Now we have gone about 1,233 days without a budget in this country and it has created this kind of dysfunction in our government. I don't think it is acceptable. I don't believe there is an excuse for it. I believe it has been done purely for politics, and that is not good, not when the men and women in uniform are serving us, at risk of their lives, losing life and limb on behalf of this Congress because we sent them there and asked them to undertake a dangerous job. Yet we can't even get together and get a bill to the floor. I would say we worked hard in the Armed Services Committee. A bill Senator Levin and Senator McCain led us to pass was passed unanimously. It was bipartisan. There were some things I would have liked to have seen done differently, and Senator McCain and Senator Levin may have had different ideas, but we couldn't get everyone to agree with everything we liked. We did, however, get a pretty good bill and it was within the budget and it was the kind of legislation we need to pass. So the House has passed their authorization bill, within the budget, and similar to our bill. We should be able to conference and produce legislation in a reasonable amount of time. But when a bill such as that comes to the floor, people are entitled to have amendments. They are entitled to offer an amendment, as Senator Paul wants, to cut off funding for some foreign aid we have been putting out. But some people don't want to vote on that. It might not be an easy vote, but this is the Senate. People are entitled to offer amendments, they are entitled to have votes on issues they believe in and they campaigned on and they advocate and they are entitled to get their vote. But if it is a tough vote, it seems around here the leadership on the other side doesn't want us to talk about it. They do not want to be on record as voting. So that is a disappointment to us. I think Senator McCain spoke with clarity. He spoke as a man who served his country, who has been in harm's way, who suffered on behalf of our country, who understands foreign policy, who understands the Defense Department, and understands Congress. His comments were solid, on point and correct, and I hope all Americans listen to him. I appreciate the opportunity of sharing my disappointment at this point and just want to make one last point before I yield the floor. Senator McCain, earlier today, and I and others, talked about the sequester. That has to be fixed by the beginning of next year. It needs to be fixed now. We can fix it now. We will fix it, in my opinion, sometime between now and the end of the year. It would be so much better if we brought it up, confronted the difficulties of the sequester and fixed it now rather than leaving a cloud over the Defense Department. If we somehow fail to alter this sequester, this bill that is currently on the floor--the Veterans Jobs Corps Act--becomes very insignificant because we are going to be laying off so many members of our military who maybe just recently got back from a deployment overseas, in harm's way, who would like to make a career in the U.S. military. Maybe that is their plan and they all of a sudden get a blue slip. All of a sudden they hear Congress couldn't confront the sequester, we don't have money, and we are going to have to lay them off. Don't think that is not possible. Because if this sequester goes in place, we are going to have to reduce personnel numbers in our military significantly. We have already taken almost $500 billion out of the Defense Department over 10 years. The sequester would take even more-- an additional $492 billion in this sequester--and it cannot be done without more personnel reductions. We have already assumed a decline of military personnel with the overseas deployments going down--some decline. But this would be a rapid, dramatic decline to meet the demands of the cuts of the sequester that are unwisely being imposed at this point, and it would cause substantial layoffs as well as substantial procurement problems. So I hope we will think about that as we go forward. If we can't get it done before we recess, it needs to be done promptly. It should have been done this summer, and I feel like the leadership of the Senate should have been active in that. I think the President of the United States should have talked to his Secretary of Defense, who said the sequester would be catastrophic, would hollow out the military. He should have talked to Secretary Panetta, and he should be over here with Congress providing some leadership, saying: Mr. Reid, fix this sequester. We cannot allow it to happen. I am the Chief Executive of the U.S. Government, I am the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, and you are going to do damage to the military of the United States. It is my responsibility as President to insist that you and Congress get this thing done. I am prepared to provide leadership and suggestions and help to get it done. Has the President done that? No. He has not said one word about our advancing or putting any effort into leadership that would lead us to fix this problem. I think that is disappointing. I have to say it is. Maybe others think it is all right for him to lead from behind, to sit in the White House and go make speeches and not worry about the sequester and not worry about the fact we haven't passed a Defense bill. I don't think so. I think you are still President of the United States, even when you are running for reelection. I think a phone call or two to the Senate leadership would get the ball moving. That is about all it takes, frankly. It seems to me the White House is perfectly happy with inaction. That is the bottom line, in my opinion. They are perfectly happy. They want to tell the Republicans: If you don't raise taxes, like we want taxes to be raised, we are going to hammer the Defense Department. But he is Commander in Chief. He has a moral obligation to those men and women, to make sure we are safe and they are treated fairly. I don't think that is responsible. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, earlier our colleague, Senator Murray, complained that objections to the Veterans Jobs Corps bill was political--I think that was the thrust of part of her remarks--and that we should just pass it and move on. My sole problem with the legislation--and Senator Murray, as a member of the Budget Committee understands this--is it violates the budget and is subject to a budget point of order. It would spend more money on this legislation than the veterans committee is authorized to spend. If we do that, we are supposed to vote on it, and a budget point of order would lie, and those who want to waive the budget would move to waive the budget and we would vote. It takes 60 votes to waive the duly agreed upon spending limits we have in that regard. That was part of the Budget Control Act in which we raised the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. We agreed to put some limits on spending--not much but some. Here we are already, after several different prior violations of the budget, back at it again. So that is the concern. Senator Burr has offered legislation that would help solve the problem of unemployment among veterans, and his doesn't violate the budget. We could support it. I would note that the veterans committee never had a hearing on this. Therefore, nobody ever: studied it, called expert witnesses, had hearings in public, or examined witnesses to find out if this plan is the best way to help veterans who are unemployed. We have six programs already that do this. Maybe it would be better to consolidate some of them and add a little to it. Maybe some of them ought to be eliminated and a new program that is outlined in the Murray amendment could be utilized to do that. But we have had no real opportunity to do that. So what is the politics? I would say the politics is that the majority party and the majority leader, do not want to talk about real issues of great importance, so this bill is brought up and utilized to fill up the whole week. So we are not going to take up several other pieces of legislation that are important. It was suggested that those Republicans who don't favor this way of dealing with unemployment of veterans--if we don't do that, we don't like veterans and we don't like people who have served our country and we are insensitive about that. Let me ask a question. If those on the other side care about veterans--if they say this bill, which would cost $900 million, which is a lot of money but not that much in terms of what we deal with--so if we don't support this bill, they say we don't care about veterans. So let me pose this question: If my democratic colleagues care about our men and women in uniform who serve our country and veterans, how could they oppose authorizing the Defense bill? Senator Reid, the majority leader, blocked bringing up the bipartisan-approved Defense authorization bill. It has been passed every year for over 50 years. That amounts to $631 billion. If we don't pass that, we are not taking care of the pay raise for military men and women and a lot of other initiatives that are in there. I would just point out to my colleagues that it passed the Senate Armed Services Committee on a bipartisan basis--not just on a bipartisan basis, unanimously. Yet Senator Reid will not bring it up. The House has passed the Defense authorization bill. They passed it in May. We have never brought it to the floor. The leader has refused to bring it to the floor. I suggest if my colleagues have a question about the jobs bill for veterans for us, why don't we ask this question: What do they think of the military if they will not bring up a military authorization bill? Do they care about them? What about the Defense appropriations bill? The House has passed the Defense appropriations bill. The Appropriations Committee of the Senate has passed the Defense appropriations bill. It is on the Senate floor waiting to be called up and voted on. It is not being voted on, and we are, again, talking about $600 billion. But this $900 million bill is taking up the whole week and the other bill will not even be brought up. One more question: If my Democratic colleagues are concerned about veterans and jobs, what about the sequester? We are on track to hammer the Defense Department with half of the budget cuts. The Defense Department makes up about one-sixth of the Federal Government spending. It is going to take half of the cuts. It has already taken almost $500 billion in cuts. This would be another $492 billion in cuts to the Defense Department. Secretary Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, has told the President and the whole world this would be catastrophic. It would hollow out the military. It would endanger our ability to fulfill our mission, but we are on track to have that go into effect--those cuts take place in January--and we are going to have military officials reduce dramatically, if that occurs, the number of men and women in uniform. We are going to have people coming off the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places wanting to make a career out of the military, thinking they could make a career out of the military, and all of a sudden, because of this sequester, they are going to walk in and they will get a pink slip. ``Sorry, we don't need you anymore. Good luck.'' We have plans under the cuts that are in place in the Defense Department to draw down the number of personnel. This would be dramatically more. Where are they going to get jobs? Many of the people who would also lose their jobs in that process work for defense contractors or civilian employees of the Department of Defense who also are veterans, who got jobs as civilian employees in the Department of Defense. They will be laid off. Why aren't we dealing with the sequester? Earlier today Senator McCain said it was a shame that we are not dealing with these issues. ``Shame, shame, shame,'' Senator McCain said. I think that is right. Yet we are having the spectacle of the majority party in this Congress attacking the Republicans for not liking the military because we don't agree to a budget-busting bill on how to create jobs. That has never been through the committee for veterans, jobs for veterans--neve been through the committee and never had a proper process. I do not agree with that. We have a serious problem in this Senate. We have a majority party in this Senate that is refusing to undertake the basic requirements of the U.S. Senate. We have not passed a budget. We have not passed a single appropriations bill. We certainly did not pass a Defense appropriations bill. The Defense authorization bill, as has been noted, was passed for 50-plus years. It will not be even brought up to have debate on, and it passed the committee unanimously. What is this? This is a fear, it seems to me, a political fear. And the political fear is, if you bring up these bills, Democrats might have to vote on amendments and things, and they do not want to vote. If you get to bring a budget to the floor, well, you have a right to offer amendments about the future financial course of America, and we get to have full debate about it, and talk about it, and offer amendments and be on record as to what we believe in, how much debt we think we can sustain in this country. They do not want to do that. Senator Reid said it is foolish to have a budget. It is not foolish to have a budget, of course. That is why we are in such a fix today, I would suggest. So can we do more for veterans? I think we can do more, and I think we can help them with their employment circumstances. I served 10 years in the Army Reserve. One of my duties was to be the representative for the employer support of the Guard and Reserve, and that was to ensure that people who were called up for our National Guard or our Army Reserve or go on active duty--to make sure when they come back they get the job they had, they will not lose their employment position as a result of serving their country. That is one of the things we did. When I was a U.S. attorney, I prosecuted some cases--and we won-- where I felt people had lost their job as a result of being called up to military service. That is not acceptable. We need to protect our men and women. I have a history of that. But this bill does not guarantee that we are going to use the money wisely that is being spent. So I am amazed we are using our last hours here to move forward a bill that violates the budget when we do not have to. Senator Burr's bill does not violate the budget, and it will, I am confident, do the job, do the same kind of job for helping veterans get jobs. This is very odd, to suggest that somehow those of us on this side are using politics to block a benefit to veterans. Give me a break. That is kind of an odd charge, isn't it? I would say that people on our side are standing and asking principled questions. Yes, we want to do more for veterans. Yes, we hope to help them find jobs. But we agreed just last August to spending limits. We agreed just last August, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling $2 trillion, to reduce some spending--not a lot, but some spending. Here we are, just over a year later, and we are already busting those limits we agreed to. It is not right, and it cannot be the kind of thing we should be doing. One more thing, and it is obvious to those of us in the Senate, if we take a minute to think about it; and that is, sustaining the budget point of order, not waiving the budget, does not kill the Murray bill or the Burr bill. It simply says, go back to committee, have a real hearing, bring a bill forward that actually stays within the budget. That is all it says do. If we continue this process--and we have done it several times already this year--of violating the budget, pretty soon the budget numbers we have are going to be worthless. That would be my concern. Let's send the legislation back to committee, let's have a hearing, let's let a bill come forward, let's consider the six jobs programs for veterans that are already in place, see if they need to be improved, expanded, consolidated, how this bill should be passed to complement those programs, and see if we do not get the maximum benefit for veterans for every dollar the taxpayers have sent to us. To the extent to which we spend a dime above the budget, it is either borrowed or paid for by new taxes. There is no doubt about it. There are new taxes in this bill, new revenue that is in this bill. Some of it is gimmicky, I have to tell you, and it is not the way we should do business, in my view. I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts. I believe the budget point of order should not be waived. We should not spend more than the deemed budget allocations allow. We should send this bill back to committee, tell them to get busy on a thorough review of the jobs situation of veterans, and come forward and produce a bill we can pass that does the job and does not violate the budget. We spend $3,700 billion. We ought to be able to find $900 million somewhere in that budget to meet this challenge. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I think we should listen to Senator McCain. Senator McCain made a point that I think he understands. He is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. He has served his Nation with a career in the military. And we have a Commander in Chief who is not leading. We have a majority leader in the U.S. Senate who is not leading. We are about to have no Defense authorization bill this year for the first time in 50 years. I would also note that this will be the first time since I have been in the Senate in maybe--I do not know how long--that we have passed not a single appropriations bill, zero, including a defense appropriations bill. It is going to be part of some massive, ominous CR for 6 months without any real oversight or thought as to how that money will be spent. I am a member of the Armed Services Committee and ranking member of the Budget Committee. I would like to point out how these cuts that, as Senator Thune established, were driven by the White House when they set up this committee last August--and we committed to reducing spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. Instead of spending $47 trillion, they would reduce it to $45 trillion. We are spending now at the rate of $36 trillion over 10. We are still increasing spending over current rates, but it would not be quite as much. But the way this fell is remarkable. I wanted to show this chart. Under the fallback sequester, the defense budget shrinks while nondefense spending soars. Under the budget as proposed and in law today, the Defense Department, unless we take action to fix this sequestration, would have a reduction of 11 percent over 10 years in its programs, while the remaining five-sixths of the Federal Government--defense is only one-sixth--would get a 35-percent increase. This is the kind of poor management we ought to not allow to happen. The Secretary of Defense said it would be ``catastrophic.'' The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said it would be ``catastrophic.'' Yet that is where we are heading. We need leadership now. It will take place in January. We need to fix it now because defense contractors and military budget people in the Department of Defense are right now trying to wrestle with what to do about it. This is not acceptable. So you say--they might say: The Defense Department has received dramatic increases. It ought to take more cuts. We have heard that said. It is really not so. Let me show you some things about spending. From 2008 through 2011, these are the increases in spending by department or major program. Food stamps has gone up 100 percent--double. Medicaid went up 37 percent from 2008 through 2011. The Defense Department has increased 10 percent and basically last year had very little increase. The perception is that the Defense Department is the one that is driving the increases in spending. That is not accurate. Let me point out that under the Budget Control Act agreement of August 1 year ago, they totally exempted food stamps from any reduction, they totally exempted Medicaid from any reduction--not a dime--and that is why the cuts fall disproportionately on defense, and Social Security has no reduction. So these are things we need to understand as we wrestle with how to manage the people's money. I thank Senator Thune for his leadership. To Senator McCain, I just would say this is not a good way to do business. I don't believe it will eventually become law. But right now it is causing disruption in the Defense Department, in our procurement for the Defense Department. We need to do something about it sooner rather than later. It is very disappointing the Commander in Chief, the Chief Executive, doesn't see this problem and begin to provide leadership right now to fix it. I see my colleague from New Hampshire, a fabulous new addition to both the Budget Committee and the Armed Services Committee, has come to the floor. I am so pleased with her grasp of defense issues and her passion about it. Senator Ayotte.

Mr. SESSIONS. The Congressional Budget Office and others, as Senator Thune indicated, have said if the tax increases are imposed and the sequester cuts are done, we could go back into another recession. The last thing we need to get this budget under control and our finances under control is another recession. It would be unthinkable for us to take action that would put us in that kind of context. As Senator McCain knows, there are requirements the defense contractors--any government contractor--has when they know they are not going to be able, under the law, to keep the number of people employed. They have to send them a notice they are going to be laid off in advance so they have an opportunity to find other work. They are preparing to send out those notices now, and that has a depressing effect on the economy as well, I think. It is a very serious matter for the economy. But most important to me is, when we start playing games with production and procurement of weapon systems and things, it costs the government more money. Wouldn't the Senator agree? If a contractor is producing 100 widgets and then they go to 50 widgets, then back to 100, doesn't the government often have to pay penalties and doesn't it drive up cost?

Mr. SESSIONS. Absolutely; that is correct. Under the law, these cuts will take place in January. That will happen unless we pass a law to change it--unless we take action to change it. What, are we going to wait until December 31? Is that when we are going to deal with this? As Senator Ayotte suggests, we should do it now because it is the responsible thing to do to fix this problem and not leave the Defense Department in turmoil. They will not even send an answer to our request--Senator Thune, myself, Senator McCain--on where the cuts are going to occur, I guess because they do not want to or they do not know yet. But this is turmoil within the Department.

Mr. SESSIONS. We are going to have a lot more unemployed veterans if we don't fix this sequester because it is clearly going to cause the Defense Department to reduce personnel in a significant number; wouldn't the Senator agree?

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Thune mentioned the Ryan budget, a historic budget which changes the debt course of America and puts us on a path to prosperity and not decline. It is an honest budget, and it fixes this sequester. I would ask Senator Thune, doesn't the budget passed by the House do that? Isn't that proof that if we put our heads together, we can develop a way of dealing with this sequester; that it is not impossible to do?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I do believe we are at a point in history that this Congress has the responsibility. Sequester cannot be carried out in the way it is written today. It will do severe damage to the Defense Department. We are going to fix it at some point. It only makes good sense and good business for us to fix it now, to avoid the disruptions that are ongoing in our Department of Defense. Now I say we will fix it. I know there are a number of friends of the President who have long desired severe cuts in the Defense Department. He said he doesn't, but he at this point is taking action that I can only conclude indicates he favors these reductions to occur. The only way he might not do it is if we have the tax increase he wishes to see occur.

Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator from New Hampshire has campaigned on this and talked about these issues. I guess it has been frustrating to serve on the Budget Committee and the Armed Services Committee and to see as much dysfunction as has occurred.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the Veterans Jobs Corps bill, properly written, could be a positive piece of legislation. And I am not speaking about the intent of the bill, whether it can be done effectively, but as ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, I have to point out that this bill violates the budget. It violates the principles of common sense and good management, and it is the typical reason this government is on an unsustainable financial path. It is the typical reason of why we are going broke. This bill will cost $1 billion over 5 years in spending on a new program. It claims to be offset by new taxes and new revenue sources, but my staff has worked on it and has confirmed there is a 302(f) Budget Act point of order against this Veterans Jobs Corps Act and the managers' amendment, and I am confident that if and when it is raised, the Parliamentarian will agree. There is a budget point of order against this bill because it violates the Veterans Affairs Committee's allocation for budget authority and outlays for what was agreed to in the Budget Control Act. There was a limit to how much we would spend on the Veterans Affairs Committee. They had a limit on the number of dollars they got. It was part of the August agreement--the Budget Control Act--of a little over a year ago this past August. This is serious. We told the American people we would raise the debt ceiling by about $2.1 trillion but we were going to cut spending. We would immediately raise the debt ceiling and allow $2.1 trillion more in spending, but we promised we would reduce spending over the next 10 years by that same amount. That was the agreement. The President signed it, our Democratic colleagues supported it, and it passed. The debt ceiling was raised, so the government continued to go forward. We were borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spent in the U.S. Government. If we had not raised the amount of money we could borrow in this country, the entirety of government expenditures would have been reduced immediately by 40 percent. So that is how big a hole we are in. What this new bill does, with good purpose, is it spends $1 billion more than we agreed to spend. So then what occurs? What occurs is, if a person objects to that and raises the budget point of order, the Senate has to waive it openly, publicly, before the American people. We have to say we can't find money within our budget to spend $1 billion more, but we are going to spend it anyway, and every penny of it either has to be borrowed or will be paid for by increased revenues somewhere. So that's what we are going to vote on. I intend to raise the Budget Point of Order. But it is even worse than that. Some say, ``Well, over 10 years we promise to raise enough money to pay for this, that over the 10-year period we will raise the $1 billion. Don't worry about it. These tax increases and revenue enhancements will pay for it. Count on us.'' I hate to say it, but it is not so. We have in this bill at least one-third the amount of money that would be spent by the jobs corps bill coming from a well-known gimmick, a manipulation of an accounting system around here that allows us to spend more money than we have, and it scores not as an expenditure but as being a proper, valid pay-for. And it is as bogus as a three-dollar bill. I say without danger of contradiction that this is a gimmick. If a private company were to do this and utilize this method to manipulate and mislead stockholders, they would have a lawsuit against the officers of the corporation. They would. It is totally bogus. Let me explain how this is done. This has been done before. I have offered a bill called the Honest Budget Act. Senator Olympia Snowe joined me in that, and that would have eliminated a number of misleading gimmicks and fraudulent activities, including this one. Now, to explain, there is a certain corporate tax revenue we get from corporations, and the drafters of this bill cleverly got the idea that they could just accelerate the amount of money from fiscal year 2014 into fiscal year 2013. They would bring that money back into 2013 and collect it just a little bit earlier, and they could then say: We have another $135 million in revenue in 2013, so we can spend that money, and it doesn't cost anything because we have this new money and it is paid for. So this new Veterans Jobs Corps bill will be partially paid for. About one-third of its total cost will be paid for by collecting corporate revenue taxes sooner. But think about that, if the corporation pays its taxes a few months earlier--it pays it in fiscal year 2013--then it won't owe them in 2014, will it? If they were planning on paying them in 2014, now, they don't have to pay them in 2014. So the hole has moved from 2013 to 2014. We moved the money over here, but we won't have the revenue the next year that we would normally have had. And that is to be done over 5 years. In the fifth year--which is where our colleagues wanted the number to fall--it shows as if we had a $392 million total increase in revenue. The money, added up each year over 5 years, plus increases, totals $392 million. Isn't that great? We didn't raise taxes. All we did is call in a little money a little earlier, and we have netted $392 million, right? Wrong. Year 6 is where the revenue doesn't come in, and in year 6 it shows that we will bring into the U.S. Treasury $392 million less because that money was collected early in the previous year--$392 million less in year 6. It never is a net increase to the U.S. Treasury, although it might appear to be, according to the conventions of accounting the CBO uses around here. And CBO knows this is true. They would tell anyone the same thing if they were to ask about this. They know exactly what this system is. But they follow their rules, and in the fifth year it suggests we have a $392 million surplus from this advance collection of corporate taxes, and that is not so. So, my colleagues, this is a problem for us. We do not need to continue down this pathway. We need to be honest with the American people. The President of the United States should be objecting to this kind of stuff. He should say: No, you can't play that game. The majority leader, Senator Reid, should be saying: No, that is a manipulation. The budget chairman, Senator Conrad, ought to say: No, it violates the Budget Act. This isn't the way to do it. Now, the alternative bill authored by Senator Burr is an honest piece of legislation and would do much of the same thing; however, it does not violate the Budget Act and is therefore not subject to a budget point of order. This legislation could have been crafted that way, too. But being as greedy as I guess we are, rather than having to face up to a little bit of the difficulty of finding a couple of hundred million dollars, out of $3.7 trillion we will spend next year, we would rather manipulate it this way. So what did we mean in August a year ago when we said we were going to cut spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years? Was that just a joke? Is this the kind of thing we are going to do every time a bill comes along that has some appeal to it and we wish to support? Are we not willing to stand up and pay for the legislation? Is there no waste, fraud, and abuse in this government that we couldn't work on? There certainly is. This government is mismanaged, it is out of control, and the Chief Executive spends his days getting on an airplane going somewhere to make a speech. What we need is somebody in the shop managing the taxpayers' money. And when Congress tries to play these gimmicks, we need a President that says, No. That is what this country needs. Until we get that, we are never going to bring spending under control. What do my President and my Democratic colleagues in the Senate say? Send more money. We can't cut anything. We have no ability to find savings. We need more money, American people. Send more to Washington, private sector. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference in an economic sense where it comes from. It is all a further drain out of the private sector, so the public sector can spread the money around and maybe solicit some votes in the process. This is how we got into this fix. I am concerned about it. I do not think we should go forward with the legislation as drafted. Perhaps some compromise can be reached. Senator Burr has worked hard on it. Maybe our Democratic colleagues can get together and put up a veterans jobs bill that is honestly paid for. I know they could. And if it is worth it and we can find ways to make the tough choices that we are paid to do and set priorities, and help veterans find jobs through some sort of mechanism such as this, then let's do it. But let's pay for it, and let's don't use these gimmicks. Let's don't go about it in a way that misleads the American people about how much the legislation is truly costing. I feel strongly about it. I am getting frustrated about it. It is always: Well, it is just a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there, and the bill needs to pass, and don't raise these problems now, we are slowing down the machine, we have a lot of things to do. It doesn't look as if we are so busy right now, but people think we have things to do and they don't want to have to wrestle with the minutiae of a few hundred million dollars a year. But we should do that. If we do that every day and if we stay within the budget amount we agreed to last August, we will have made some improvement in the overall debt course of America. To make clear, the Budget Control Act agreement called for a reduction of $2.1 trillion in spending over 10 years. During that time, we were projected to spend $47 trillion. So the net reduction would be from $47 trillion to $45 trillion. Surely the Republic is not going to sink into the ocean if we reduce our spending from $47 trillion to $45 trillion. Surely we can find that. It is not enough. We need to do about three times that much at a minimum, and we can do that, too. This is still a substantial increase in spending. This is not a cut in spending over 10 years. At the current rate of spending, we spend about $37 trillion. So we are going from $47 trillion to $45 trillion over 10 years instead of $37 trillion over 10 years. It is still a major increase in spending over 10 years, but we are told that is impossible; all we can possibly do is $2.1 trillion in reductions. The President was claiming credit for reaching this agreement, but the budget he submitted this year wiped out the entire $2.1 trillion. It wiped out the entire sequester and raised taxes by $1.5 trillion in increased spending and about $1.8 trillion in increased taxes; no cuts at all under his budget; actually a spending increase over the trajectory we were already on, which is an unsustainable trajectory. I know I am being frank about this. Some can say this is a political argument. Well, we are in a political season, and I believe what I have said is accurate. I believe what I have said is true. I believe a budget point of order lies against this bill because it spends more than the Veterans' Affairs is allocated to spend, and we need to vote on it. It is this kind of breaking the budget and spending more than we agreed that has helped put us in this fix, and we need somebody to help bring order out of chaos. We are on an unsustainable path. This Nation is on the wrong track. We are on the track to decline and debt and financial crisis, not the road to prosperity. We cannot continue in this path. Erskine Bowles and Senator Simpson before the Budget Committee told us that we have never faced in this country a more predictable debt crisis. That was their joint statement, ``never faced a more predictable financial crisis.'' What they told us was: We are on an unsustainable path. If we stay on this path, we will have some sort of debt crisis, another 2008 or 2007 recession caused by a financial bubble. And for the U.S. Government, what a disaster that would be if, as we are struggling to get people back to work and get the economy on the rise, we have a financial crisis again putting us back into recession. We need to avoid that. We have got to be mature and honest about our money. We have got to get our debt under control. This bill violates the deemed allocations included in the Budget Control Act. It violates sound principles of financial policy. It contains a major gimmick, really a bogus allocation of over $300 million that claims to exist that does not exist at all. We need to fix that. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, it was reported today that Iraq has denied the request of the United States to extradite senior Hezbollah field commander and confessed terrorist Ali Mussa Daqduq, who was recently ordered released by the Iraqi court after our government turned him over to Iraqi custody when our troops left the country. The administration had years to transfer Daqduq to our detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but because the President seemed to lack the political will to do so--I think because of campaign promises he improvidently made--one of the most dangerous, reprehensible terrorists ever in our custody will likely be allowed to go free. We should never have been in this position. I and others saw this coming and we pleaded with the administration not to allow it to happen. Sadly, our warnings fell on deaf ears and, sadly, we were proven correct. Daqduq is responsible for the torture and murder of five American servicemen in Karbala, Iraq, including PVT Jonathan Millican of Locust Fork, AL, who was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action as he attempted to protect his comrades from Daqduq's terrorist actions outside the rules of war. Daqduq and his followers wore American uniforms--an action that he directed. His actions were clearly against the laws of war and he can be held not only as a prisoner of war but as a violator of the rules of war and can be tried and should have been tried before an American military commission. When U.S. forces captured Daqduq, then the most senior Hezbollah figure in U.S. custody, he provided detailed testimony about the support and training provided by Iran to Iraqi insurgents and admitted to violating the laws of war. He is not a criminal defendant. He is not a member of an organized crime syndicate or some drug dealer. He is a confessed terrorist who committed atrocities against American soldiers during a war duly authorized by Congress. That makes him an unlawful enemy combatant who may be detained until the conclusion of the war or subjected to trial by a military commission. He could be imprisoned for up to life or he could be executed. Once the military determined he was no longer of use for intelligence purposes when he was in Iraq, he should have been brought to Guantanamo Bay. That was the perfect place for him to be detained. This should have been an open-and-shut case. But President Obama and Attorney General Holder have obstinately clung to the failed law enforcement approach to counterterrorism. They just have. It has been a dispute all the way through the campaign and since they took office. They believe in treating foreign enemy combatants as normal criminal defendants entitled to U.S. constitutional protections and civilian trials. This is contrary to history and contrary to the laws of war. It is contrary to our treaty obligations. Other nations don't do this. The problem began when, upon taking office, the President decided to ban any new additions to the prisoner population at Guantanamo Bay. We remember that. He didn't like Guantanamo Bay. He thought that was some bad place. So if he transferred Daqduq, or anyone else, for that matter, to Gitmo, he would anger certain of his supporters and violate some of his improvident campaign promises, one of which was to the effect that Gitmo was a cause of terrorism, not a way to prevent terrorism and prevent terrorists from murdering innocent civilians and attacking our military. So when the report surfaced that the administration planned to transfer Daqduq to the United States for a civilian trial--that was the first report, that he would be brought here for a civilian trial--my colleagues and I wrote to the Attorney General urging him to reconsider and try him before a military commission. For a time, the Attorney General appeared to have relented. But a few months later, it was reported that instead of transferring him to Gitmo, the administration decided to release Daqduq to Iraqi custody. This time, we wrote to Secretary of Defense Panetta asking him to reconsider that decision. We warned that the Iraqi Government previously had released terrorists who later returned to the battlefield to kill American servicemen. Yet as the deadline for the United States withdrawal from Iraq approached, it became clear the President had no intention of removing Daqduq from Iraq. The President then struck a deal with Prime Minister al-Maliki to charge Daqduq before an Iraqi criminal court for his acts of terrorism, forgery, and illegal entry, and other offenses. Now the Iraqi court has had a trial and ordered him released, in spite of the volume of evidence turned over by the United States to be used in the trial, including his uncoerced confessions detailing his role in training the insurgents and his role in the Karbala massacre that I referred to. It appears that it is only a matter of time before he will now be set free. Recent press reports indicate that the Iraqi authorities are trying to find a way to release Daqduq without angering the White House or embarrassing the President ahead of the election. Well, no one should be surprised that Iraq will not turn him over. We were concerned from the beginning that this would happen. The administration knew well before it handed over Daqduq that its decision was an abdication of its responsibility to prosecute a terrorist for war crimes against American soldiers--the murder of American soldiers. The administration knew if the Iraqi courts failed to bring him to justice, we may never get a second chance. That was known. And they knew that Iraq would not agree to an extradition request. That has been their policy. So the fact of the matter is we wouldn't be in this position if we had prosecuted Daqduq when we had the opportunity. But now, not only is justice perverted, but he could be returned to the battlefield to kill more Americans, Iraqis, and others. Unfortunately, Daqduq was not the first, nor will he be the last, example of this administration's unwillingness to confront dangerous terrorists effectively and to process them effectively. In July of 2009, Senator Jon Kyl and I wrote President Obama urging him to adhere to this Nation's longstanding policy of not negotiating with terrorists and not to release the Khazali brothers--two of the top Iraqi terrorists trained by Daqduq who were complicit in the Karbala massacre in 2009; but they went forward--in exchange for the release of British hostages held by the terrorist organization called the League of the Righteous. President Obama authorized the Khazalis' release as part of what the Iraqi Government called its ``reconciliation efforts'' with insurgent groups. But in reality, this release was a thinly veiled ploy to use Iraq as a middleman in a terrorist-for-hostage exchange in direct violation of President Reagan's policy not to negotiate with terrorists. In fact, there was an Executive order he issued to that effect. When Iraq released the Khazalis to the League of the Righteous, the terrorist group responded by releasing five British hostages, but, sadly, four of them had already been executed. Qais Khazali immediately, upon his release, resumed his position as leader of the terrorist group and orchestrated the kidnapping of a U.S. civilian contractor in Baghdad less than a month after his release, and Abdul Reza Shahlai, an Iranian Quds Force officer now in Iraq--the Quds Force is one of the most loyal and vicious parts of the Iranian regime-- helped Khazali and Daqduq plan the Karbala massacre and helped coordinate the attempt to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States on U.S. soil. Do you remember that? That is the same guy. Despite this alarming track record and the obvious lessons to be learned from its previous mistakes, the administration recently insisted on engaging in negotiations with the Taliban to release five terrorist detainees from Guantanamo Bay--detainees who were categorized previously as ``too dangerous to transfer'' by the administration's own Guantanamo Review Task Force--and they were to be released in exchange for the Taliban's promise in Afghanistan to ``begin'' talks with the Afghan Government. Negotiating, I suggest, with terrorists is not a profitable enterprise, and in effect that is what that was. Three of the five have ties to al-Qaida. Another met with Iranian officials on behalf of the Taliban immediately following 9/11 to discuss Iran's offer of weapons and support to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Another detainee then under consideration, Mohammad Fazl, is a close friend of the supreme Taliban commander, Mullah Omar, who is accused of killing thousands of Afghan Shiites, and who was responsible for the prison revolt that claimed the life of CIA Officer Johnny Michael Spann, the first American killed in Afghanistan and, incidentally, another brave Alabamian. As time has passed, it has become clear that the policy of not negotiating with terrorists is sound and essential, and the administration's actions in violation of that policy have failed and they are dangerous. Indeed, the administration's failed terrorist detention policies appear to have led to a policy that favors killing rather than capture and interrogation of enemy combatants. It is an odd event, but it does appear to have some truth to it. So today we face a situation in Afghanistan that is similar to that which we faced in Iraq in 2009. Parwan Prison currently houses roughly 2,000 to 3,000 individuals, including high-value detainees. In August 2011, the Washington Post--last August--reported: U.S. officials say that giving Afghans control over the fates of suspected insurgents would allow dangerous Taliban fighters to slip through the cracks of an undeveloped legal system. I will tell you what that means. It means they will not be able to keep them in those jails. History shows that. They will get their way out of there--through violence, through bribery, through threats, or some other mechanism, and that is what is continuing to happen. It is a big concern of the military. As a Federal prosecutor, who observed this particular issue over the years in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been a source of concern to me. In March of this year, the administration agreed to a gradual transfer of control of the prison to the Afghan Government over a period of 6 months, with the United States holding veto power over the release of certain prisoners. However, the Washington Post reported in May--just May of this year--that the administration has been secretly releasing high-value detainees held in Afghanistan in exchange for certain ``promises of support'' from leaders of insurgent groups. Now, how long do you think that will last? Once we release the prisoner, they are out, but the promises by some Taliban or some terrorists are not going to be honored. Not only do some of these prisoners have ties to Iran or al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that continue to attack our troops, but their release is not even conditioned on them severing their contact with the insurgent groups. According to the Washington Post, the administration has approved these releases in part because they do not require congressional approval. That is what they report. It also has been reported that the administration is attempting to repatriate some of the 50 most dangerous militants over which the United States currently retains custody to Pakistan and other Arab countries--this in the face of reports from the Director of National Intelligence that nearly 28 percent of former Gitmo detainees are either confirmed or suspected to have returned to the battlefield to attack America and our allies. That is 28 percent. How many are doing so and we have not yet proven that they have been in the game? I suspect many more than that 28 percent. So the question inevitably arises: When American detention operations in Afghanistan come to an end, where will the administration take those 50 or so dangerous prisoners, assuming it has not already negotiated with other insurgent groups for their release? If they are not going to release them, what are they going to do with them? Once again, the administration has kicked the can down the road, just as it did in Iraq, which eventually culminated in the Daqduq mess. The country cannot afford to continue down this dangerous path, especially in light of the impending withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan and the administration's agreement to transfer detainees in U.S. custody to the Kabul Government. The same unacceptable result will surely occur. The President is the Commander in Chief. He has serious responsibilities, and one is to defend the honor, the dignity, and the credibility of the United States. I do not believe we are doing so when we are dealing with terrorists who double-cross us at every turn. He has a duty to those magnificent troops who have answered his call to go into harm's way to execute U.S. policy. Part of that duty is not to give away what they have fought and bled for, not to give it away after they fought and bled for it, and captured these people. That includes not giving up prisoners whom these soldiers, at great risk and effort, have captured--terrorists who seek to destroy what we have, terrorists we have worked so hard to capture, terrorists who may return to kill more Americans and more Afghans. This policy cannot be defended. It has to end. So I urge the President and his team to act forcefully now. It may not be too late. With strong action we may be able to ensure that Daqduq is not released, that he is able to be tried for the murders he committed and the American soldiers he killed. I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to a dedicated individual in Alabama, Mayor Ted Jennings of Brewton, AL. Ted has been a successful businessman, pharmacist, and community, State, and national leader. When he retires this year, he will have served as the mayor of Brewton for 24 years. During that time, he has grown Brewton both economically and technologically. But in addition to his success as a mayor, he has been a successful business owner and pharmacist. He is also well known in Alabama as former president and an active officer of the Alabama League of Municipalities and nationally has served on the board and in many other positions in the National League of Cities. He has, in both capacities, represented Brewton and Alabama as a strong advocate on matters of economic development. On a personal level, I want to express my appreciation to Ted for his friendship, advice, and counsel on matters critical to the area. All of us who have come to know him over the years have observed his dedication to public service, his hard work, and his effective leadership. He has a host of friends and admirers--this Senator is one. I thank him for his service and know that, even in retirement, he will be a strong advocate for rural economic development and Alabama. I extend my best wishes to Ted and family as you begin your next adventure.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. The Secretary of Defense now has said this would be a disaster to the Defense Department for these cuts to take effect. Isn't it true that the President is the Commander in Chief of all our military forces?

Mr. SESSIONS. Isn't it true that we are at a situation at this point in history where we are heading toward a sequester, and the Commander in Chief is utterly silent on how to fix the problem?

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

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS. Would the Senator yield for a question? From the Senator's perspective--as the Senator has been on this committee a long time, he has served in the military, and he is the ranking Republican on the committee--in the Senator's judgment, based on the obligations we have--and I know the Senator has openly and aggressively condemned waste and abuse in the Defense Department--but does the Senator think the Defense Department can maintain its responsibilities with this cut?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I value Senator McCain's judgment because he has been engaged in these debates for many years. Mr. President, I want to yield to Senator Inhofe because I know he wants to share his thoughts at this time.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Inhofe referred to this chart and I have now had it brought over at his request. This is something we prepared, and it dispels the myth that the reason this government is running such huge deficits is surges in military spending. That is an inaccurate event. The base defense budget from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 increased about 10 percent. Medicaid, during the same time, increased 37 percent; and food stamps, during this same 4-year period, doubled--a 100-percent increase. Under the sequester, food stamps get not a dime of cuts; Medicaid gets not a dime worth of cuts. These cuts are disproportionately targeted at the Defense Department. The Defense Department, as the Senator says, has already taken a $487 billion reduction under the BCA, and due to sequestration it would be another $492 billion. That is why, I believe, it has gone from belt tightening, waste reducing, and efficiency to producing the damage to the Defense Department.

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes. Senator McCain asks we look at this chart. This again shows what would happen under the sequester. Our budget staff has worked hard to correctly do these numbers. Under the sequester, the additional $492 billion in cuts, adjusted for inflation, the defense budget over 10 years would be reduced by a real 11 percent. That is, one-sixth of the Federal Government's spending is defense. The remaining five-sixths of the Federal Government would increase 35 percent under the sequestration and current BCA policies. So again, I think that is clear proof the Defense Department is disproportionately being asked to reduce. Senator McCain suggests another chart. He likes my charts. How about the 50-year switch? It is so dramatic. And the American people have to know this. I wish it were not so. I wish I could be more optimistic about our financial future and the ease with which we can get ourselves on the right track, but it is not going to be easy, and this chart indicates that. In 1963, defense made up 48 percent of the outlays of the United States--48 percent in 1963. This was not at the height of Vietnam or the Korean war or anything. The entitlements of America amounted to 26 percent of the budget. What has happened in the past 50 years? Entitlements have now reached 60 percent of the budget and the Defense Department is 19 percent of the budget. This is a dramatic alteration of where we are. Some of this is normal and natural. But I think what Senator McCain is saying is that defending America is a core function of government and we need to be sure this alteration does not put us in the position where America is not properly defended. I thank the Senator from Arizona.