Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be allowed to proceed as in a colloquy so we can address one another directly.

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Thune is in the leadership on the Republican side and he is in the Budget Committee and the Defense Committee and is aware of how this all happened. So we are at a point where it appears to me the Defense Department is being asked to take unacceptable, disproportionate reductions in spending that go so far as to create damage rather than improving its efficiency. Isn't it true the Secretary of Defense and all the top officials under the Secretary of Defense are appointed by the President and serve at his pleasure?

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from South Dakota for his leadership, and I was proud to join with him on similar legislation to that in the House. But isn't it true that we agreed last August with the Budget Control Act to reduce spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion; that is, reduce $47 trillion to $45 trillion, and there are no tax increases involved in that? Now we are discovering that late- minute deal has disproportionately impacted the Defense Department, as the President's own Secretary of Defense acknowledged. Should we not be able to expect that the President would enter into discussions about how to deal with this? Does it not seem to the Senator, as an experienced part of the leadership in this Senate, that the President is saying: You Republicans care about the Defense Department. You Republicans care about preserving America. But I am not going to do it unless you agree to my tax increases. I am not going to do, as Commander in Chief, what I ought to be doing and providing the leadership on this because I am going to use this as leverage against you guys to force you to agree to a tax increase; is that the bottom line? I hate to be so frank about it, but that is the way I feel it is sort of developing; am I wrong about that?

Mr. SESSIONS. I think so. I would just say this--and I am so glad our colleague Senator Ayotte is here. One thing more I would say about it is the agreement last August was to raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion and to reduce spending over 10 years $2.1 trillion. It did not include a tax increase. What we are saying is we need to simply reorganize how all those cuts fell so they are more realistic and the government is not so damaged, and we don't need to have agency after agency totally exempt from any cuts. We are glad to have Senator Ayotte here. She is a new member of the Armed Services Committee and the Budget Committee. She is a fabulous new addition to the Senate. Her husband is a military officer. She has contributed greatly to our discussion.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. She made a great series of points. One of the most dramatic, is that we should not be waiting. This is going to cost the Defense Department tremendous amounts of money. Private contractors may well assess against the Department of Defense costs for confusion and delays. I just want to wrap up with these three charts. One of the myths is the reason the United States is running the largest deficit in its history is the wars, the Afghan and Iraqi wars. We ran the numbers on that. The war outlays represent only 4 percent of defense spending. That is a lot, but it is only 4 percent. It is not the biggest part of it. In 2001-2011 it totaled $1.1 trillion during that time; 2001 through 2011 we spent $1.1 trillion on both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During that same time--this represents the rest. The red represents the remaining expenditures of the U.S. Government, 96 percent. It is not so that defense and the war have caused the deficit we are in. Indeed, last year our deficit was about $1.3 trillion. The entire 10 years of the war effort amount to less than 1 year's deficit last year. In fact, we have averaged over $1.2 trillion for the last 4 years in deficits. For one year, you could eliminate the entire Defense Department, all $540 billion of it, and you would not cut the deficit in half. You can add the war costs to it, which is a little over $100 billion, and it is still less than half. It is not so that the reason this country is in financial trouble is that defense and the war have caused the deficit. There are other factors going on. From 2008 through 2010, this shows the growth in spending as a percentage of those budgets. Defense spending, through those 3 years, increased 11 percent. The non-defense discretionary spending increased 24 percent. That is a rate of more than twice as fast. So it is not surging defense spending that is driving up the cost of government as much as the increase in the non- defense spending. One more chart that should make us all nervous. This is a Congressional Budget Office estimate of interest costs on the debt we are now accumulating. We are now at $16 trillion in debt. Every penny of that is borrowed money. We have to pay interest on that $16 trillion. We are adding $1 trillion a year to it. We have added $1.2- plus trillion for each year for the last 4 years. According to the CBO, in 2019, just 7 years from now, interest will exceed the Defense expenditures. The amount of money we spend servicing the debt that we have run up will exceed the Defense Department and surge past it. If we have a situation that could happen as is now happening in Europe, and the interest rates surge faster, that number could be a devastating number to the economy. It is a matter of great concern to us. That is why we have to contain spending. The Defense Department has to reduce spending. We support the $487 billion in cuts they are working on today, but the additional $492 billion is so large that it does damage to the Defense Department and actually will cost us money by making rapid reductions in spending in such a way that cannot be accommodated in any rational way. I believe if we work together, get this thing on the right path, be honest with ourselves about how much we can reduce the defense budget without hurting our security, I believe we can work out something before the end of the year. But I tell you, the President is going to have to get engaged. He cannot just sit back and think he is going to use this for leverage to raise taxes as it appears to me he is doing. I know others want to speak. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation, along with my friend and able colleague, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, that would create a national campaign at the Department of Health and Human Services to bring attention to congenital diaphragmatic hernia. What is CDH? It is a birth defect that occurs when the fetal diaphragm fails to fully develop, allowing abdominal organs to migrate up into the chest. This invasion of organs--including the bowel, stomach, spleen, and liver--may severely limit the growth of a baby's lungs. Regrettably, some have recommended terminating the pregnancy when a woman learns that her unborn child has CDH. This is an important issue, and makes promoting awareness of this birth defect and the positive outcomes of good treatment especially important. CDH will normally be diagnosed by prenatal ultrasound as early as the 16th week of pregnancy. That is important. If undiagnosed before birth, the baby may be born in a facility that is not equipped to treat its compromised respiratory system because many CDH babies need to be placed on a heart-lung bypass machine, which is not available in many hospitals. The lungs of a baby with CDH are often too small, biochemically immature, structurally immature, and the flow in the blood vessels may be constricted, resulting in pulmonary hypertension. As a result, the babies are intubated as soon as they are born, and parents are often unable to hold their babies for weeks or even months at a time. Most babies are repaired with surgery 1 to 5 days after birth, usually with a GORE-TEX patch. The abdominal organs that have migrated into the chest are put back where they are supposed to be and the hole in the diaphragm is closed, hopefully allowing the affected lungs to expand. However, hospitalization often ranges from 3 to 10 weeks, depending on the severity of the condition. Survivors often have difficulty feeding, some require a second surgery to control reflux, others require a feeding tube, and a few will reherniate and require additional repair. Congenital diaphragmatic hernia is a birth defect that occurs in 1 out of every 2,500 babies. Every 10 minutes a baby is born with CDH, adding up to more than 600,000 babies with CDH since just 2000. CDH is a severe, sometimes fatal defect that occurs as often as cystic fibrosis and spina bifida. Yet most people have never heard of CDH. In my opinion, awareness and early diagnosis and skilled treatment are the keys to a greater survival rate in these babies. Fifty percent of the babies born with CDH do not to survive. In 2009, my grandson, Jim Beau, now 2\1/2\ years old, was diagnosed with CDH during my daughter Mary Abigail's 34th week of pregnancy. Although she had both a 20-week and a 30-week ultrasound, the nurses and doctors did not catch the disease on the baby's heartbeat monitor. Thankfully, when Mary Abigail and her Navy officer husband Paul and daughter Jane Ritchie moved to southeast Georgia, the baby's irregular heartbeat was heard at her first appointment with her new OB. She was sent to Jacksonville, FL, for a fetal echo. The technician there told her she wasn't going to do the echo because there was something else wrong with the baby. She asked my daughter if she had ever heard of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Of course, Mary Abigail had not, and at that time our family did not know of this problem or the extent of our grandson's birth defect. The Navy temporarily allowed my daughter and her family to move to Gainesville, FL on November 16, and Jim Beau was born 2 weeks later on November 30. They heard their son cry out twice after he was born, right before they intubated him, but they were not allowed to hold him. The doctors let his little lungs get strong before they did the surgery to correct the hernia, when he was 4 days old. As it turned out, the hole in his diaphragm was large, and his intestines, spleen, and one kidney had moved up into his chest cavity. Thankfully, Jim Beau did not have to go on a heart-lung bypass machine, but he was on a ventilator for 12 days and on oxygen for 36. In total, he was in the NICU--the neonatal intensive care unit--for 43 days before he was able to go home, all under the constant watch of his angel mother. I could not have been prouder of her. She and Paul were wonderful during this time. This country has superb health care--the world's best. Without even our knowledge, this young Navy family had their unborn child diagnosed and sent to a university hospital three hours away the University of Florida's Shands Hospital. Fortunately for my family, and for thousands of other similar families across the United States, there are a number of physicians doing incredible work to combat CDH. By chance, the University of Florida's Shands Children's Hospital is surely one of the world's best--maybe the best. The CDH survival rate at Shands in Gainesville is unprecedented. The survival rate of CDH babies born at Shands is being reported at 80 to 90 percent, while the nationwide average is 50 percent. Dr. David Kays, who directs the CDH program and who was the physician for my grandson's surgery, is a magnificent surgeon and physician. He uses gentle ventilation therapy as opposed to hyperventilation. Gentle ventilation therapy, he has discovered over the years, is less aggressive and therefore protects the underdeveloped lungs. Jim Beau, I have to say, is a wonderful little boy, full of energy and enthusiasm. He is active and happy--one of the most happy young children I have ever seen--and so quick to smile. This weekend, he attended his big sister Jane Ritchie's 5 year birthday party and he was totally happy and running around, climbing over all the playground equipment, with the older children just as though he was one of them. He thought he was in high cotton to be playing with these big boys and girls. While the challenges are many, so are the successes with this condition. Every year more is learned and there are more successes. My family has been very lucky that Jim Beau's defect was caught before he was born and that he was able to go to the right place--a first-rate place--to seek excellent care for his CDH. The bill Senator Cardin and I are introducing today is important because a national campaign for CDH will help bring awareness to this birth defect and save lives, I am convinced of it. Although hundreds of thousands of babies have been diagnosed with this defect, the causes are unknown and more research is needed. The thousands of happy, growing children who have overcome this condition validates what has been accomplished to date and encourages us to do even more. I hope my colleagues will join me and my friend and colleague Senator Cardin in supporting this bill to bring awareness of CDH to the world. I think it will create many more happy and healthy young people in the years to come.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation, along with my friend and able colleague, Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, that would create a national campaign at the Department of Health and Human Services to bring attention to congenital diaphragmatic hernia. What is CDH? It is a birth defect that occurs when the fetal diaphragm fails to fully develop, allowing abdominal organs to migrate up into the chest. This invasion of organs--including the bowel, stomach, spleen, and liver--may severely limit the growth of a baby's lungs. Regrettably, some have recommended terminating the pregnancy when a woman learns that her unborn child has CDH. This is an important issue, and makes promoting awareness of this birth defect and the positive outcomes of good treatment especially important. CDH will normally be diagnosed by prenatal ultrasound as early as the 16th week of pregnancy. That is important. If undiagnosed before birth, the baby may be born in a facility that is not equipped to treat its compromised respiratory system because many CDH babies need to be placed on a heart-lung bypass machine, which is not available in many hospitals. The lungs of a baby with CDH are often too small, biochemically immature, structurally immature, and the flow in the blood vessels may be constricted, resulting in pulmonary hypertension. As a result, the babies are intubated as soon as they are born, and parents are often unable to hold their babies for weeks or even months at a time. Most babies are repaired with surgery 1 to 5 days after birth, usually with a GORE-TEX patch. The abdominal organs that have migrated into the chest are put back where they are supposed to be and the hole in the diaphragm is closed, hopefully allowing the affected lungs to expand. However, hospitalization often ranges from 3 to 10 weeks, depending on the severity of the condition. Survivors often have difficulty feeding, some require a second surgery to control reflux, others require a feeding tube, and a few will reherniate and require additional repair. Congenital diaphragmatic hernia is a birth defect that occurs in 1 out of every 2,500 babies. Every 10 minutes a baby is born with CDH, adding up to more than 600,000 babies with CDH since just 2000. CDH is a severe, sometimes fatal defect that occurs as often as cystic fibrosis and spina bifida. Yet most people have never heard of CDH. In my opinion, awareness and early diagnosis and skilled treatment are the keys to a greater survival rate in these babies. Fifty percent of the babies born with CDH do not to survive. In 2009, my grandson, Jim Beau, now 2\1/2\ years old, was diagnosed with CDH during my daughter Mary Abigail's 34th week of pregnancy. Although she had both a 20-week and a 30-week ultrasound, the nurses and doctors did not catch the disease on the baby's heartbeat monitor. Thankfully, when Mary Abigail and her Navy officer husband Paul and daughter Jane Ritchie moved to southeast Georgia, the baby's irregular heartbeat was heard at her first appointment with her new OB. She was sent to Jacksonville, FL, for a fetal echo. The technician there told her she wasn't going to do the echo because there was something else wrong with the baby. She asked my daughter if she had ever heard of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Of course, Mary Abigail had not, and at that time our family did not know of this problem or the extent of our grandson's birth defect. The Navy temporarily allowed my daughter and her family to move to Gainesville, FL on November 16, and Jim Beau was born 2 weeks later on November 30. They heard their son cry out twice after he was born, right before they intubated him, but they were not allowed to hold him. The doctors let his little lungs get strong before they did the surgery to correct the hernia, when he was 4 days old. As it turned out, the hole in his diaphragm was large, and his intestines, spleen, and one kidney had moved up into his chest cavity. Thankfully, Jim Beau did not have to go on a heart-lung bypass machine, but he was on a ventilator for 12 days and on oxygen for 36. In total, he was in the NICU--the neonatal intensive care unit--for 43 days before he was able to go home, all under the constant watch of his angel mother. I could not have been prouder of her. She and Paul were wonderful during this time. This country has superb health care--the world's best. Without even our knowledge, this young Navy family had their unborn child diagnosed and sent to a university hospital three hours away the University of Florida's Shands Hospital. Fortunately for my family, and for thousands of other similar families across the United States, there are a number of physicians doing incredible work to combat CDH. By chance, the University of Florida's Shands Children's Hospital is surely one of the world's best--maybe the best. The CDH survival rate at Shands in Gainesville is unprecedented. The survival rate of CDH babies born at Shands is being reported at 80 to 90 percent, while the nationwide average is 50 percent. Dr. David Kays, who directs the CDH program and who was the physician for my grandson's surgery, is a magnificent surgeon and physician. He uses gentle ventilation therapy as opposed to hyperventilation. Gentle ventilation therapy, he has discovered over the years, is less aggressive and therefore protects the underdeveloped lungs. Jim Beau, I have to say, is a wonderful little boy, full of energy and enthusiasm. He is active and happy--one of the most happy young children I have ever seen--and so quick to smile. This weekend, he attended his big sister Jane Ritchie's 5 year birthday party and he was totally happy and running around, climbing over all the playground equipment, with the older children just as though he was one of them. He thought he was in high cotton to be playing with these big boys and girls. While the challenges are many, so are the successes with this condition. Every year more is learned and there are more successes. My family has been very lucky that Jim Beau's defect was caught before he was born and that he was able to go to the right place--a first-rate place--to seek excellent care for his CDH. The bill Senator Cardin and I are introducing today is important because a national campaign for CDH will help bring awareness to this birth defect and save lives, I am convinced of it. Although hundreds of thousands of babies have been diagnosed with this defect, the causes are unknown and more research is needed. The thousands of happy, growing children who have overcome this condition validates what has been accomplished to date and encourages us to do even more. I hope my colleagues will join me and my friend and colleague Senator Cardin in supporting this bill to bring awareness of CDH to the world. I think it will create many more happy and healthy young people in the years to come.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my Defense fellow, CDR Jeff Bennett, be granted the privilege of the floor for debate on sequestration and consideration of the Defense authorization bill and the Defense appropriations bill.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to thank Senator McConnell for his remarks and the fundamental truth of those remarks that this administration and the majority in this Senate want to raise taxes. They think that raising taxes and spending more through the government will somehow lift the economy. We have been shown that is not so. Our Democratic colleagues stayed here last night talking about an issue that doesn't have the support to pass, and they should have been talking about the fundamental threat to our economy: not having a budget. Why aren't we moving forward with a budget? Why aren't we moving forward with the appropriations bills that are necessary to fund the government come October 1? The majority leader, Senator Reid, has announced he has no intention to pass a single one, not even to bring them up. So we will end up, in late September, passing a continuing resolution to fund the government--there is no telling what else will be tied up in that--which will create instability and uncertainty because this Democratic-led Senate has refused to pass a budget, refused to lay out a plan for the future, and refused to move the appropriations bills. I have been here 15 years. This is the first time I have ever seen us not move a single appropriations bill. When I first came here, we would move almost every 1 of the appropriations bills before September 30. It is hard work. We have to bring up the bill, decide how much we want for the Department of Defense, or the Department of Agriculture, or the Department of Education, and members offer amendments and debate and do their work. That is what we are supposed to be doing, but we are not. Today I want to talk about and call attention to another serious-- scandalous, really--development in the way the Democratic leadership in this Senate is systemically dismantling the statutorily required budget process. It is a tale of how we are going broke. Let me begin with a review of the situation. Last summer, Congress and the President faced a serious crisis as a result of the fact that surging government spending had driven our debt to the highest level allowed--the debt ceiling. We were hitting the debt ceiling. Do you remember that? A deal was struck then to raise the debt ceiling. That is what the President wanted. He didn't want to cut spending 40 percent. We were borrowing--and we still borrow--almost 40 cents of every dollar we spend. All government programs would have had to have been cut 40 percent if we didn't raise the debt ceiling. Amazing as that sounds, this is undisputable. Republicans prevailed in their insistence that spending should be reduced over 10 years by an amount equal to the increase in the debt ceiling last August. The legislation this deal produced, the Budget Control Act, set certain spending limits in the absence of a budget resolution that we should have passed in the Senate as required by law. So these spending limits came into effect when the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, filed the allocation numbers into the Congressional Record, telling every Senate committee how much it was allowed to spend. That is the power given to the Budget Committee chairman. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, and Senator Conrad chairs the Budget Committee. So the Budget Control Act plainly dictates that beginning on October 1 of this year, spending limits would be derived from the Congressional Budget Office's baseline. This is crucial because the CBO baseline contains the $2.1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years--really, reductions in spending growth, and not so much cuts--that the deal was supposed to implement in exchange for the immediate $2.1 trillion raising of the debt ceiling. Herein lies the scandal. Although it was buried in the spending allocation that Senator Conrad sent out, my staff on the Senate Budget Committee discovered that Senator Conrad did not file an outlay limit based on the CBO baseline. Instead, the outlay total he filed was $14 billion higher--curiously matching exactly the spending levels that President Obama had requested in the budget he submitted to Congress in February. Although this discovery was not readily apparent, Chairman Conrad, to his credit--he is an honorable man--does not dispute it. He simply asserts that it is within his discretion to unilaterally set a higher total. Again, because the CBO baseline reflects the spending reductions passed by Congress and signed into law, an increase above the baseline--as the allocation that he submitted allows--is an abrogation of the bipartisan agreement we reached last August. We told the American people: OK, we raised the debt ceiling. A lot of people didn't want to do it. A lot of Americans were hot about it. We said: But we are going to cut spending by that amount over 10 years. As reported by the publication, CQ: Conrad did not counter Sessions' claim that the elevated outlay limit would allow higher spending in fiscal year 2013. But let me emphasize, this is not just the fault of Senator Conrad. This large violation of the Budget Control Act is without doubt the decision of Senator Reid, the Democratic leader, his leadership team, and the members of the Democratic caucus who support him. Remember, outlays are the spending figures which directly register on the debt. Mr. President, $14 billion in higher outlays in 2013 means $14 billion added to the debt. It is just that simple. In fact, the higher debt that will accrue next year as a result of the higher spending level means the amount of interest we pay on the debt we accrue will be greater and will also exceed CBO baseline limits. As a result, the chairman had to also boost spending authority for the Finance Committee by $79 million to compensate for the higher interest payments on the $14 billion added to the debt. This shows that the debt deal legislation has been violated not only in spirit but in letter. Why? Because if we increase discretionary outlays, we increase the debt, and therefore increase the interest needed to service the debt. It is crystal clear that the legislation provides no flexibility whatsoever to inflate spending authority for this interest payment. It is a direct violation of the Budget Control Act, but he had to do that to justify and account for the $14 billion increase over the level that was agreed to last August. I sent two letters to Chairman Conrad urging him to correct and re- file the proper numbers, but it is evident that the chairman does not intend to do so. So we will be looking for an alternative course. This is a matter that ought to be considered by the full Senate, so I plan to pursue a vote on the inflated spending levels. Each Senator will therefore have to examine their own conscience and consider their duty to their constituents, to the Nation, and to the financial future of our country. Plainly, this action violates the spirit and the terms of the 10-year Budget Control Act agreement that was made last August, just 11 months ago. At that time, Congress declared that we would exercise some spending restraint. And $2.1 trillion in reduced spending is really a reduction in the growth of spending and not an elimination of all growth in spending. We would go from something like $37 trillion being spent over 10 years to $35 trillion. It is not going to break America. But to hear the wails that come about, you would think it would. So the test will be, in this first year since the passage of the debt deal will we adhere to its modest restrictions or will we blink? We have Members of Congress--and I have raised this issue over the years--who seem to take it as a personal challenge to see how they can spend more money than they are allocated. It happens every year. This is how a country goes broke. The consequences of the annual manipulations and gimmicks have great impact over time. These are not small matters. Think about it. This is a chart I put together. This year we are adding $14 billion more to the baseline spending in our country than agreed to, and this gimmick adds $14 billion to the baseline next year. One may think: It is only $14 billion, Jeff. Calm down. Alabama's general fund budget, not including education, is less than $2 billion. To us $14 billion is a lot of money, and we are an average- sized State. This is how we need to think about these manipulations because it is very significant as time goes by. If we violate the baseline next year, in 2013, by $14 billion, that goes into the spending level for the next year. Then if next year we violate it again, it is not just $14 billion, we are adding $14 billion on top of the $14 billion gimmick in the spending level this year. It is $28 billion next year. Added to the $14 billion we ripped off the taxpayers the previous year, it is $42 billion. Do you see how that goes up? Each year is adding to it, and we have been doing this kind of thing consistently. If we gimmick the budget $14 billion a year--and I remember doing a chart similar to this about 10 years ago, and we gimmicked the budget $18 billion that year and there are probably other gimmicks we are not including--this $14 billion gimmick puts us on a track to add $770 billion to the debt of the United States over 10 years. We have to adhere to the agreements we make. If we do not stand with those agreements, then we make a mockery of law, we make a mockery of the Senate, we undermine the respect and trust the American people have in us. If we run up $770 billion more, we pay interest on that, estimated at $112 billion, that $14 billion gimmicked-up spending adds $900 billion to the debt. Remember, we are in debt today. Every $1 we spend more than what we agree to is borrowed. Any more spending is borrowed because we are in debt now--nearly 40 percent of the money we spend is borrowed. We spend about $3.7 trillion and we take in about $2.4 trillion and we borrow the rest. It is unsustainable. Meanwhile, the President continues his call for higher taxes, saying that taxing more will reduce the deficit. But his plan for the new taxes he has proposed is to fund more spending, more gimmicks and more fraud and waste in government. I know you think that is not so--surely, that is not so. That is not what the President is proposing. But, unlike the Democratic Senate, the President did comply with the law and submitted a budget as every President has done since the Congressional Budget Act was passed. He submitted a budget. What did his budget call for? It called for new taxes all right. It called for $1.8 trillion in new taxes over 10 years. But it also increased spending by $1.6 trillion. Do you see what is happening there? The President's proposal calls for $1.6 trillion in new spending, above the Budget Control Act level we agreed to in August. He proposes to wipe out the cuts. He proposes to spend $1.6 trillion more than we agreed to in August, and he pays for it with $1.8 trillion in new taxes. He didn't use his new taxes to pay down the debt. He used the new taxes to fund more government, more spending. That is not what we need to be doing at this point in history. We should have stayed here last night talking about the debt threat to America and not some controversial issue on campaign finance. For 3 consecutive years, this Senate Democratic majority has refused to bring forth a budget plan as required by common sense and law. They refuse even to write a budget and bring it to the floor for consideration. They have no financial plan for the future of America. Senator Reid, what is your plan? He blocked Senator Conrad, who was willing and prepared to lay out a budget plan for the Democrats. He called on him not to do so. For 3 years they have not had a budget. We did not even bring one up this year. They treat any effort to rein in waste and abuse as evidencing a hatred for those who are suffering and truly in need. We want to help people in need. But anybody who knows these programs, such as some of the stuff that is coming out now on food stamps, knows there is waste, fraud and abuse and we can clean them up and save money and not hurt people truly in need. From the IRS checks sent to illegal aliens that the inspector general of the U.S. Treasury Department said has to end, to lavish GSA parties in Las Vegas, reckless abuse in the food stamp program, and now this surreptitious 14 billion debt increase, there is no financial accountability in Washington. I will be working to erase this $14 billion spending increase. It is important. I urge my colleagues to join me so our actions will be consistent with our promises to the American people made last August; otherwise we are breaching this agreement the first year. It is always a gimmick and a danger to spend today and promise to pay for it in the future--spend more today than the agreement called for, but we are going to pay for it in the future. It is the first year in our agreement and it has already been breached. The best avenue may be to raise a point of order, and we will look at that to see how to bring this matter before the Senate. I will be looking for that opportunity. But I truly believe it is a defining moment for us if we cannot adhere 1 full year to the agreement we reached last August and that we told the American people we would abide by. I think the distrust and lack of confidence by the American people, already felt in Congress, will continue to further erode. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to be notified when I have used 5 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I understand we will have a set vote on the DISCLOSE Act. It got 51 votes previously. We need 60 votes to move forward to pass this bill. It is not likely to happen. Our Democratic colleagues were down here last night into the midnight hour talking about the DISCLOSE Act, which is something that is political and campaign-related that we have a significant difference of opinion about, and it is not going to pass. I would like to ask my friends and colleagues what is it we ought to be disclosing? Is it the amount of money some individual American made honestly and spent or maybe there are some other issues we ought to disclose. I would say this Senate ought to disclose to the American people what its budget plan is for the future of this country. We haven't had a budget in 3 years. Senator Reid said it would be foolish to bring up a budget--foolish because we don't have time. We had time to spend all night last night debating this bill--or half the night-- and we are having a second vote on the same bill again today. Why don't we spend some of that time on something important such as dealing with our $16 billion debt. Why don't our Democratic leaders disclose to us what their plan is to deal with this surging debt, a debt that is increasing at $1.3 trillion a year. It is unsustainable, as every estimate we have ever been told and every witness has testified to before the Budget Committee and other committees--unsustainable. Yet they refuse to even lay out a plan for how we are going to confront that. The House has. They laid out a historic plan. Congressman Ryan and his team and the House has passed a long-term budget plan that will alter the debt course of America and put us on a responsible path--not so in the Senate, even though they talked about it in secret amongst themselves that they had a plan. Let's disclose it. Why don't we have a disclosure of it. October 1 is coming up pretty fast, particularly since we are going to be in recess virtually the entire month of August and it looks like the entire month of October. By October 1, the Congress has a duty and a responsibility to pass legislation that funds the government because the new government fiscal year begins October 1. Senator Reid just announced he is not going to produce a single appropriations bill. When I first came here, we tried to pass all 13 every year, before October 1, when the year starts. We are not even going to attempt it. I think the American people ought to ask: What do you plan to spend your money on next year? The country is suffering substantially. Why don't you disclose, Senator Reid, what the appropriations bills are going to be, how much money you are going to spend on each one of the items, and subitems and subitems and subitems, so we can examine it, bring it up on the floor, and offer amendments, as the Senate is supposed to operate. Why don't you disclose that? Isn't that important for America? I have to say, since I have been here, this will be the least performing, most disappointing year of the Senate in our history. No budget, no attempt to bring up a budget, no appropriations. Those are the bread-and-butter requirements of any Senator. Food stamps, the SNAP program. In 2000, we were spending about $17 billion on the food stamp program. Last year, we spent $79 billion. It has gone up repeatedly. It is out of control. It needs to be managed. It needs to be focusing more on helping people in need, not just subsidizing people in need--helping them move forward to independence and responsibility. Why don't my colleagues disclose a plan for that? Isn't that important to America? I think it is. There are a lot of other things that ought to be on the table.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. There are a lot of other things on the table we need to be dealing with and talking about and being honest about. It is time to disclose what our financial plans for the future are. It is time to disclose what we are going to do about this debt, what we are going to do about wasteful spending. It is not being done. It is a disappointing year. I thank the Chair and yield is floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, if the Senator would make that 10 minutes, I think that will be fine.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, this afternoon the House of Representatives voted 244 to 185 to repeal the President's health care law, the Affordable Care Act. It was a bipartisan vote. A number of Democrats voted in support of the law, although not as many as voted originally to pass it, because a lot of the Democrats, even those who voted against it, got shellacked in the last election, and it was a pretty rough, intense debate. The American people never felt comfortable with this legislation. I believe it will be repealed. I do not believe it will be implemented. The reason is, whether one likes it or not, we simply do not have the money. I wish to talk about that today. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, and I wish to share some thoughts with my colleagues as we wrestle with what to do on health care and how to undo the legislation that passed by the narrowest single margin in this Senate on Christmas Eve and was based on false accounting. President Obama promised, before a joint session of Congress in 2009, to spend $900 billion over 10 years on the law. He said: Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years. $900 billion is a lot of money. It is almost twice the defense budget. The President went on to say in support of this health care legislation that it would reduce the debt of the United States. We are going to add all of these new people to the insurance rolls, and it is going to pay for itself and reduce the debt. No one really believed that, but that is what the arguments were and the representations that were made. But once we add up all the different spending provisions in the health care law, including closing the doughnut hole, implementation costs, including all of those IRS agents and other spending in the legislation, the total gross spending for the law over the 2010-2019 period--the 10-year budget window used at the time it was enacted--was actually $1.4 trillion. I will just show this to my colleagues with this chart because it is very important. The President promised the American people in his speech before a joint session of Congress that it would cost $900 billion. People knew it would cost more. But even then, in the initial 10 year budget window, as he proposed, when we count up all the spending in the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the legislation, including the enforcement mechanism through the IRS agents, closing the doughnut hole and other spending in the law outside of the major coverage provisions, the law spends $1.4 trillion over that same 10 year period. That is almost 50 percent more right there. I think that fact is indisputable. I will ask my colleagues to come tell me if I am wrong. I would just note parenthetically, one of the most important components of health care reform should have been resolving the doc fix. Under current law, we are projected, without legislation that takes effect, to reduce Medicare payments to doctors by roughly 30 percent by the end of this year. At the time the health care law passed, the cost of a permanent doc fix added up to about $200 billion to $250 billion over a 10 year period. Democrats originally included the doc fix in earlier drafts of the bill. But in the end when they looked at the numbers, if they included the doc fix--which is critical and needs to be fixed permanently; not continuing to hang out there every year and to be fixed by borrowed money--then the bill couldn't have continued in surplus. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it wouldn't continue to be paid for as the President was saying. So they just didn't do it. They just decided they wouldn't fix one of the most important issues in health care, and it remains that way today. So, as I work through this, we are using nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office numbers. Most of the major spending provisions in the law, as our colleagues should know, do not take effect until 2014. So the true 10-year score should be 2014 through 2023. That is the 10-year window of full implementation. How much will the bill cost then? Each year it goes up because until 2014 we don't really see a 10-year full cost of the legislation. So what Democrats did was--and the President deliberately did, with help from his OMB Director, Mr. Peter Orszag--they manipulated CBO's scoring conventions. In the initial 10 year budget window they only included 6 years of spending on the major coverage provisions so that CBO would appear to score it over 10 years and say it would only cost $900 billion. That delay tactic was a pure budget gimmick. So we can look at this chart and see that from 2014 through 2023, each year these red lines represent a situation in which we are closer and closer to 10 years of full implementation and how much the cost will be. So we go from 2014, and the next 10 years, as the bill is fully implemented, and it will cost $2.6 trillion, almost three times the amount the President promised it would cost. So people ask: How do we get in a situation where we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend? This kind of deception. A CEO in a court of law would go to jail if he proposed using that kind of accounting in his business practice and asked people to invest in his stock. Analysis by my staff on the Budget Committee, based on the estimates and growth rates the Congressional Budget Office utilizes, finds that the total spending under the law, including the other spending not directly related to the coverage provisions, will amount to at least $2.6 trillion, and could be much more. Now, how did they get this done? It is a sad state of affairs, frankly. The Obama administration, Mr. Orszag, the Office of Management and Budget Director who works directly for the President, also asserted that ``health care reform is entitlement reform.'' In other words, this is going to fix an entitlement danger--the problems we have with Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid; entitlement programs, each one of which are growing at fast rates that are unsustainable, that will head to bankruptcy in the years to come. However, a simple comparison of the Federal Government's unfunded obligations for health care programs, before and after the health care law was enacted, clearly proves that the President's health care reform is not entitlement reform. It will not improve our long term spending trajectory. It will not make these programs more viable in the future. It did not put Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid on a sustainable path. Those programs remain disastrously unsustainable. The President does not even talk about that any more. Here we are running into a reelection campaign and the country is facing a colossal financial danger from unsustainable debt, and the President would not even talk about it. He says things are getting along fine. I think it is a failure of leadership for him not to talk honestly with the American people about our fiscal challenges. So before the President's health care law was enacted, unfunded obligations for the Federal health care programs totaled $65 trillion over a 75-year period. That is how much we are going to run short in money to pay for the obligations we have incurred under Medicare and Medicaid--and some other programs, but those are the big ones. After the recent passage of this health care bill, however, the figure, according to my staff's estimates, has gone up to $82 trillion. So the difference in the two numbers is what has been added to the unfunded liabilities of the United States. By the way, $17 trillion is 2\1/2\ times the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, which is $7 trillion. If my colleagues think I am in error about any of these numbers, I hope they will correct me. Perhaps I am, but we work hard to be accurate about them, and I don't believe I am off in any substantial degree. The bottom line is this: We cannot afford this law and the additional burden it places on our country's finances. We must repeal this health care law in its entirety and replace it with reforms that will improve our finances and reduce health care costs for Americans, not drive up their costs. This bill, whether you like it or not, will not be implemented. We simply do not have the money. At this time of high unemployment, and almost no growth, it will be hard to do the things that are necessary, that we have to do: fix Social Security, fix Medicare, provide for the common defense. Those things have to be done. We have no money to pay for a $2.6 trillion program over a 10-year period. We have to save these programs we are committed to first. The President's health care law will not be fully implemented until 2014. It is not too late to stop it now. And we are going to have to, simply because the finances of this country will not allow for it to go forward. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Paul for raising these issues. We are mismanaging the American people's money. It is good to see Senator Lee, who just spoke, and Senator Paul, both new Members of the Senate, who have been out talking to the American people and made commitments that they are going to work to try to improve the process here. I celebrate their activity, their vigor, and their determination, and a lot of others feel the same way in our body. Shortly we will be moving a cobbled-together bill. An attempt will be made to accomplish this. I expect budget points of order and another point of order to be raised. I want to share some thoughts about how it is we do business and some of the efforts that are not legitimate as we go about our business and are dangerous to the financial health of America. Let's take what we call the LUST fund. I know it is an odd name. The true name of it is the leaking underground storage tank fund. People who have them have to pay fees, and it goes into a fund. The idea of the fund is to be available when cleanups need to be done. When the company or other companies have gone bankrupt and there is no money, this fund will pay to clean up the waste. Maybe it makes sense. It has been operating for quite a number of years. It has run up a surplus. That surplus is in the LUST trust fund--leaking underground storage tank fund--and where does it go? What do you do with that money? The Treasury of the United States is spending more money every year than it takes in. This year we will spend approximately $3.7 trillion. We take in about $2.4 trillion, and we have a $1,300 billion deficit. That is how much we are spending. We spend around $3.7 trillion and are taking in about $2.4 trillion, and we have about a $1.3 trillion deficit this year--the fourth consecutive year that we have had almost a $1,000 billion deficit. We will have a big one again next year because we are systematically overspending. But let's look at this fund--it has some real money in it, a number of billions of dollars--and what happens to it. Well, when the government spends more money than it takes in, it takes the money from the LUST fund. Well, how does it get it? It borrows it. So there is actually a debt instrument from the United States Treasury to the trustees or the holders or managers of the LUST trust fund, and they have loaned the money. They do not need it today, so they loan it to the government so they can spend it. And it has been borrowed and has been spent. The assets in the LUST fund are nothing more than debt instruments from the U.S. Treasury. But on the books, it appears this LUST fund has assets. I guess in a sense it does. It has U.S. Treasury notes. So the people looking around to spend money and to try to meet the demands of our constituents--to build highways in this case--decided they could take that money. And you know something, it does not score as an expenditure in that fashion. It is an odd way this is done. It is seen as found money that they can go over and spend. But where does the money come from? The money is not in the fund, remember? The fund holds Treasury bills. But the highway trust fund doesn't want Treasury bills, it wants money that can be spent. So what happens is the U.S. Treasury, which has been borrowing money from another government agency and giving a debt instrument in return, has to come up with the money now. It is going to be spent. It is going to be taken out of the trust fund. So where do they get the money? They convert an internal debt to an external debt. The only thing they will do is borrow more money. So it will be this many billions of dollars more than $1.2 trillion or $1.3 trillion that we have. The debt is converted to a public debt, and somebody in China or in Japan or in New York will loan money to the government and they will use that money to pay the highway trust fund with it. You see how circular that is? It allows the money to be double counted. And that is actually what happened with President Obama's health care bill. That $400 billion was funded this way. Social Security still has a surplus. Although it has been drawn down, it still has a surplus in its account--or Medicare does. So the Medicare trustees raise Medicare taxes, they cut Medicare benefits, and they save $400 billion, And that would be money of the Medicare and the trustees. It is their money. But what happened with it? Under the conventions of accounting, the money was available to be spent by the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Treasury then would spend it on the new health care bill. The Congressional Budget Office Director, Mr. Elmendorf, wrote me a letter the night before the bill passed--Christmas Eve--and he said this is double counting the money. You can't simultaneously count it as making Medicare better and providing new money to fund the health care bill. Four hundred billion dollars on the night before the vote he announces this is double counting. If a private business were to do it, they would be in big trouble, I suggest. They might be sued for fraud. They would be sued for fraud. So the money was done in that fashion, and the way it happened was Mr. Elmendorf said it is double counting the money. You cannot simultaneously benefit Medicare and fund a new health care program, although the conventions of accounting might suggest otherwise. So the real smart financiers, what did they do? They figured out how to use the conventions of accounting in a way that obscured the fact they didn't have the $400 billion and that it was, in truth, borrowed money. Mr. President, I see my colleagues on the floor, and I 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, I want to share a few thoughts about the Supreme Court's ruling today and the status of the health care bill. I believe the health care bill cannot be justified as written and will have to be changed. It will have to be repealed, and we have to start over. It is just that simple. As ranking member of the Budget Committee, I began to look at the numbers we have had. Our team is going to redouble their effort in the weeks to come so we can know precisely how much this legislation will cost. As that becomes more and more understood by the American people, it will be clear that we do not have the money to pass the bill. I know a lot of people are confident that it will undermine the right of an individual American to see the doctor of their choice, despite the President's protestations. Even I believe today that people will not be able to continue to keep their insurance--at least not all people will be able to--and there will be other different problems. There is a real concern that under the legislation the quality of health care will go down. I believe that is accurate for a lot of reasons, and people like Dr. Barrasso and Dr. Coburn have explained that in great detail. As a member of the Budget Committee, I want to share some thoughts about the financing of the legislation to raise the issue of why we cannot go forward with it. The President promised the American people before a joint session of Congress, right down the hall in the House Chamber: ``Now, add it all up, and the plan that I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.'' Now, $900 billion is a lot of money, there is no doubt about that. He said that is how much it would cost over a 10-year period. As we have all learned, that was a gimmicked-up number. It was fundamentally gimmicked up as a result of the fact that the cost of the bill where it begins to pay out money and will have real cost and the implementation of the bill was delayed 4 years. So you take a 10-year window, and the bill is going to be out there for 6 of those 10 years, and you announce it is only going cost $900 billion. That is not the right question, is it. The right question for the American people to actually understand the impact of the legislation would be to ask how much it would cost over the first 10 years of full implementation. That is what you should be asking. We all know that the numbers have come in on that. Under the CBO estimate strictly adhering only to the insurance portion of the bill, I believe they came in as saying not $900 billion but $1,400 billion would be the cost over the first 10 years, but the true cost of the health care bill is yet higher still. A complete and honest assessment of the cost of the President's health care bill would include a full 10 years of spending starting in 2014. Adding up CBO's estimates for the different provisions in the bill, the President's health care bill will amount to at least $2,600 billion--$2.6 trillion, not $900 billion. It is almost three times the estimated costs over the true 10-year period. Now, that is how we go broke in this country. That is how this country is going broke. We go through a whole debate, and the President insisted that is how much the bill was going to cost. When the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, they had 60 Democratic Senators, and they insisted it was going to pay for itself. They said there was more revenue than needed to pay for the cost of the bill, so don't worry about it, be happy. On Christmas Eve, without amendments and after much secret debate and a bill plopped on the floor, the bill was voted up or down, 60 votes to 40. Every single Democrat voted for it, and every single Republican voted against it. I just have to say that the first 10 years of the bill is going to cost three times what was estimated. In addition to delaying the major spending provisions during the original window of the legislation, here are some of the other accounting gimmicks, tricks, and maneuvers that the drafters used to manipulate the score the Congressional Budget Office gave to the bill, to manipulate how much they would say the bill cost and to hide its impact. Well, one of the most significant things is a double-counted $400 billion. Can you imagine that? The U.S. Government, according to the score manipulation and the way it was done by the CBO, utilizing complex rules of the CBO to its advantage, the way it was analyzed, they double-counted $400 billion. So they cut Medicare expenses, they raised Medicare taxes, but they took the money and used it to fund the new bill and said they made Medicare more solvent. In some ways, we could argue they did make Medicare insolvent because the money that was spent on the health care bill was borrowed from Medicare. They are debt instruments for Medicare. So my analysis of the legislation is that Medicare got a benefit, but there was no money for the health care bill. Yet they counted it as being $400 billion free to be spent without adding to the debt of the United States, but it does add to the debt. Medicare is going broke. Medicare is going to call the debt from the United States. It increases the debt of the United States $400 billion. It was counted both places--as income from Medicare and income available to be spent on the health care provision. That is a stunning development. I got a letter from the head of the CBO the night before we voted, December 23, and he said, in effect--not in effect, I think this is a direct quote: It is double-counting the money, although the conventions of accounting might indicate otherwise. He told us in a letter before we voted that it was double-counting the money, but under the unified budget process rule that was utilized here, it didn't score. In addition, they counted $70 billion of extra income that would come from the CLASS Act, which was designed for young people. The net result of that was that in the first decade or so of the CLASS Act's implementation, healthy young people wouldn't make many claims and there would be a surplus of $70 billion. But over 20, 30, 40 years, the CLASS Act goes into serious decline. Its actuarially unsound. It was referred to as a Ponzi scheme by the Democratic budget chairman, Senator Conrad. Finally, the Secretary of HHS could not certify it as a sound program, so $70 billion has been wiped off that as income available to be spent. They included--unrelated to this bill--student loan savings of $19 billion. They relied on off-budget Social Security revenue for $29 billion, not scored toward the cost of the bill. They ignored the cost of implementing the law. Imagine that. I mean, you have a bill. How much is it going to cost? It is going to cost $900 billion. Well, do you not score the cost of it? What about all these IRS agents? There will be 1,000-plus to 2,000 IRS agents who have to be hired and paid for, which is $115 billion not counted in the cost of the bill. Is this why we are going broke in this country? We score a bill, say it only costs $900 billion, and we have $115 billion of administrative costs not even counted. Then there was no permanent solution to the doctor reimbursement figure. To pay the doctors at the rate they needed to be paid--and I agree they need to be paid at this rate--would cost $208 billion over the current level of expected spending. If we don't have this doc fix, as we call it, doctors would receive a 20-plus percent cut in pay for doing Medicare work immediately. They are already paid less for Medicare work than they are paid for private insurance. Doctors would quit doing Medicare work if they took a 20- or 25-percent reduction in fee payments. That is $200 billion. That was one of the main reasons we were supposed to have comprehensive health care reform, to deal permanently with this doctor fix that was being fixed every year, but not permanently. The bill didn't do it. The bill never fixed it, therefore leaving a $208 billion hole in the plan that we have to find money for, and it is an essential part of all of that. So I would just say to my colleagues that this cost is unsustainable. It will put us on a debt course we cannot continue to be on. We are going to continue to look at the numbers, and I am going to ask people, if they desire, to come to the Senate floor and show me if I am wrong. Let me see where I am wrong. But I don't think they can show that we are wrong because I and my staff are working as hard as we can to make sure what we say about the cost of this bill is accurate and fair. What does this do to the long-term debt of our country? That is a matter of great importance. One of the things our government does now is analyze the unfunded obligations of the U.S. Government. When we pass a law that says when everybody reaches a certain age, they get to draw a Social Security check of so much money, and it increases on a percentage basis each year, that is an obligation of the United States. That is an entitlement program, we call it. People are entitled to that whether the government has any money to pay it. So the health care bill is an entitlement. It has a guaranteed right for an individual American to receive certain subsidized health care benefits under this plan, and it is a permanent program, but it doesn't have a permanent source of income dedicated to paying for it in any significant fashion. So it creates what the Congressional Budget Office refers to as an unfunded liability, unfunded obligations. To show Americans and Congress the true state of our long-term financial health, they do it over 75 years. It is not a perfect estimate, but it is a pretty good estimate of whether the programs are actuarially sound and what they will do to the debt of America over 75 years. Under the numbers we have seen from the CBO and the work of our committee, it is pretty clear the health care bill that was passed by this Congress will add $17 trillion to the unfunded liabilities of the United States of America--$17 trillion--not a little amount of money, a huge amount of money. To give perspective on how large it is, the Social Security unfunded liability over 75 years is only--only--$7 trillion. This is 2\1/2\ times as large an unfunded liability addition to our government as Social Security, and we are wondering how we are going to save Social Security. It is more than half of the unfunded liabilities of Medicare or half of the unfunded liabilities of Medicare over 75 years. At a time when we have a serious demonstrated requirement that we reduce the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, this bill would add $17 trillion to it. This is why every expert has told us this Nation is on an unsustainable course. The total unfunded liabilities before the passage of the health care bill were $65 trillion over 75 years. That trend, experts tell us, is unsustainable and threatens the future of our children and grandchildren. After the bill passes, it is $82 trillion. We don't have the money to do health care reform in this way, with 2,700 pages and $17 trillion in additional cost to the Treasury. We don't need to affirm and repass legislation that was said to cost $900 billion in the first 10 years. In truth, in the first 10 years of its obligation-- beginning the year after next--for the first 10 years it will cost almost three times that much--$2,600 billion. So it is a matter of great concern to me. As to the Court decision today, I am going to look at the Court decision and evaluate it. But I think it is additional proof that this health care legislation, from the beginning and in its entirety--a 2,700-page Rube Goldberg contraption--will never work. It is further proof of that. Even the fundamental justification for the legislation that it was not a tax but a mandate has been rejected by the Court. The law was only upheld by saying it is not a mandate. In effect, it is a tax that the sponsors of the bill directly said it was not. Indeed, the President said it was not a tax himself, directly. So certainly this opinion that allowed the legislation to stand, by the narrow margin of 5 to 4, in no way is an affirmation of the wisdom of the bill but is in fact demonstration that the people who cobbled it together and who rammed it through without full floor debate and amendments, that that scheme was flawed from the beginning and it will not work. Indeed, there are 1,700 references in that legislation to regulations to be issued by the Secretary of HHS. In other words, once the bill is passed, we will turn over huge sections of it to unknown bureaucrats who will issue regulations to administer this monstrosity. It is just not a practical and decent way to do business. So I believed the bill clearly violated the interstate commerce power granted to the Federal Government. The Federal Government can only act and pass legislation if it has been specifically authorized by the Constitution. One of the authorized powers was to regulate interstate commerce. But if a person is sitting on the creek bank in Alabama, not buying insurance, not participating, can he be made to buy a product in interstate commerce when he is explicitly not participating in that? I didn't believe it could be done, and the Court agreed. The Court rejected the Obama administration's argument that it did. They said the Federal Government has no power to compel a person to participate in a commercial market when a person doesn't participate. If a person participates, maybe they can regulate it. But if a person doesn't participate, they can't tell a person to participate because this is a government of limited power. It was a historic and important ruling that the Supreme Court made clear: that there are limits to the power of the U.S. Government. I felt good about that. But now that Chief Justice Roberts and other members of the Court concluded that it may look like a mandate, but we call it a tax--and I haven't done the technical analysis they went through to reach their opinion, but that doesn't seem correct to me. It seems as though it is still a mandate, a mandate to buy something a person doesn't want to buy. That doesn't sound like a tax to me. Maybe it is. Maybe they can defend it that way, but I don't see how that is a tax. It sounds like a mandate and a penalty. So scholars will be reading that opinion for some time, and we will know whether Chief Justice Roberts announces that this apparent mandate, apparent requirement that the President said was not a tax, now it is a tax and the law is constitutional because of it. We will wrestle with that. But it does deal with the fundamental question: Can we afford this legislation. I say we cannot. I believe the facts are crystal clear that we cannot. We absolutely have to reform it, start over, create a health care system that works at a reasonable cost for the American people and does not burden our children with exorbitant debt that could throw us into a debt crisis at most any time, and in the long term destabilize the health of the Nation we love so much. Flood Insurance

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Inhofe, who has been such a leader on these issues and has contributed so much to the national discussion as we wrestle with the challenges of trying to have affordable energy for Americans to maintain our business competitiveness and improve the quality of our air and environment. And we can do those things. We have been doing those things, and we are going to continue to do those things. But this Senate Joint Resolution 37 dealing with Utility MACT provides us an opportunity to make a strong statement and reject the program the EPA has adopted that will damage this economy, will drive up the cost of energy for every American throughout this country, drive up the cost of energy for American businesses that are struggling now to hire workers and be competitive. If we have an advantage on the world market today, every expert tells us it is because of a decline in natural gas prices, and we have competitive electricity prices from coal. So we have competitive electricity prices from our largest source--coal--and we have surprising, wonderful new finds in natural gas that are allowing our energy to be cheaper too. This helps us create jobs and growth. Yet we have within the administration a number of people--and, I hate to say, all the way to the top--who seem to believe that cheap energy is not a goal, that cheap energy is not something that should be brought forth, I guess because that would make their alternative sources--solar and wind and other things--even less competitive than they are today. We will develop those programs. We can seek to advance those programs. But in truth, we should not be mandating these much higher costs on the American people, hammering our economy, which, in effect, is a tax increase on the American economy. So this is a $90 billion rule--the most expensive environmental rule in our Nation's history. And $90 billion is the amount the EPA acknowledges this rule will cost. The Congressional Review Act that Senator Inhofe has triggered says we can have this vote, this review of any regulation over $100 million, and $90 billion is 900 times larger than $100 million. It is the largest rule in American history. It changes the course of our economy. It is the kind of thing that Members who are elected to answer to the American people should be voting on, not having it done within basically a bureaucratic process, without having elected individuals engaged in it. But the Congressional Review Act has a fundamental weakness. That weakness is that if the Congress votes to overturn an act, the President can veto it. We have this odd situation where the President appoints the bureaucrats. He appoints the head of the EPA. And all the people working throughout the executive branch and for the President, directly or indirectly--directly, really--produce the regulations the President desires they produce. They do not produce regulations he does not desire they produce. So the result is that Congress has an awfully difficult time overturning it because the President can veto what we pass. We need something like the REINS Act that would actually replace this unconstitutional, nontraditional procedure of impacting our economy with monumental regulations and putting that back to the Congress so that Congress is required to vote on the regulation. My time, I know, is running out, but I want to reiterate that the impact of the regulations, if not changed, will drive up the cost of energy for every single American and for all businesses in America. It will achieve only a modest improvement in mercury reductions over what President Bush proposed, and it is so extreme that it hammers coal processing and energy production in America, basically making coal no longer a realistic way to produce electricity in America. That is a huge event that impacts the economy. Fundamentally, this regulation would say that, yes, we have reduced mercury emissions by 50 percent.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2174.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, food stamp spending has quadrupled--gone up four times--since 2001, increasing twice the rate that the other major poverty program, Medicaid, has increased. It is now the second largest Federal welfare program. An individual on food stamps, with all other government programs they may be eligible for, can receive as much as $25,000 a year. Under this bill food stamps will average $80 billion a year for 10 years; whereas, the agriculture farm programs will average $20 billion a year. It is by far the dominant factor in this entire piece of legislation. Amendment No. 2174 deals with the problem through a system known as categorical eligibility. Forty-three States now provide benefits to individuals whose income exceeds the statutory limit--incomes and assets. Only 11 States did that in 2007. I ask that we be able to fix this problem, and I urge my colleagues to vote for it.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate my good friend's amendment. I do not think it deals with the problem completely and appropriately. I have offered amendment No. 2172, which would end the bonus payments for increasing registration on the Food Stamp Program. States currently receive bonuses for increasing enrollment in the Food Stamp Program. This amendment would end that policy and would save a modest $480 million--if you call that modest--out of $800 billion being spent on this program over 10 years, according to the CBO. One of the problems we have with the Food Stamp Program, if you just think about it, is that all the money comes from the Federal Government but all the administration comes from the States. They have no incentive to manage the program in a way to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. It really helps their economy if more money comes in from out of State. For the Federal Government to have a program that rewards States on top of their natural incentives would be wrong. I urge support of my amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask for the yeas and nays and call up amendment No. 2172.