Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I was a bit surprised--although one is never totally surprised in this body--when my Democratic colleagues were saying this morning that something bad has happened because the historic budget that would change the debt course of America, that has been announced by Congressman Paul Ryan and his House Budget Committee today, violates the Budget Control Act. It spends a few billion dollars less than what was capped in the Budget Control Act. The Budget Control Act that passed put a cap on the roughly $1 trillion of discretionary spending only. And from that $1 trillion-plus cap, the House would reduce spending by $19 billion in the proposed budget today, and this somehow violates good spirit around here and is the wrong thing. But I would just say that when the Budget Control Act passed in the wee hours of the morning at the eleventh hour and the 59th minute before a government shutdown occurred, we knew it wasn't enough of a reduction in spending. It wasn't half of what experts have told us needs to be reduced over the next 10 years to put America on a sound debt path. We are on a disastrous debt path. We are heading to the most predictable financial crisis this Nation has ever faced because we are spending 40 cents per dollar more than we have. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend--borrowing it--just to maintain this level of spending. So the House made some changes or made a proposal to reduce the spending level below the Budget Control Act, and they also recognized that the $1 trillion or so in spending that was covered by the Budget Control Act--and that is the discretionary spending--is only a little over 40 percent of total spending. Over half of the spending is in the entitlement mandatory spending category. They proposed really nothing under the Budget Control Act to make any changes. So the Ryan budget proposed to spend next year $180 billion less than the President's budget proposed that he submitted earlier this year. And did the President's budget adhere to the BCA? My colleagues say, oh, they are mostly disheartened that Republicans would take the spending down below the level by about $19 billion or so under the Budget Control Act numbers. But I didn't hear them complaining when President Obama submitted his budget. Do my colleagues know what the President's budget did? It wiped out over half of the spending cuts in the Budget Control Act. Can my colleagues imagine that? We agreed on $2.1 trillion in spending reductions, and $1 trillion of that was voted on explicitly, and $1.2 trillion was an automatic sequester or an automatic cut in spending if the committee didn't reach a long-term agreement. The committee didn't reach an agreement, so automatically $1.2 trillion in cuts was to be imposed. That is the current law. President Obama's budget wipes it out. Not only does he add, therefore, $1.2 trillion immediately to spending as a result of wiping out the sequester we agreed on just last August, he adds another $500 billion in spending. His budget he submitted just a few weeks ago calls for spending increases of $1.6 trillion more than was in the Budget Control Act. So my good friend Senator Conrad, who chairs the Budget Committee, and our Democratic leadership, who are threatening a government shutdown because Congressman Ryan and the responsible House Budget Committee proposed actually taking a few more billion dollars out of discretionary spending, want to complain about that. I didn't hear them complaining when we had the most astounding event after the President signed the Budget Control Act that passed both Houses at the eleventh hour: a compromise agreement--a compromise we all knew was not sufficient. And 5 months later, before the ink is hardly dry on it, he proposes to wipe it out. No wonder the American people don't trust Congress. We say in August: We are going to save $2.1 trillion--trust us--and we are going to raise the debt ceiling so America can continue to borrow at this extraordinary rate, but we are going to cut spending. We are going to raise the debt ceiling, but don't worry, we promise to cut spending. And the President of the United States, within 5 months of that agreement being reached, submits to us a budget that wipes out half of it. I am amazed that nobody has been talking about it. I have tried to raise the issue. It just points out to me how silly it is that our colleagues in the Senate would complain about Congressman Ryan. The American people gave Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives. We are facing the most systemic debt threat this Nation has ever faced, and they knew it, and they proposed last year and again this year a historic budget that would alter the debt course we are on. It would take us from unsustainability to sustainability. It would take us on a path that we would hope avoids a debt crisis, although we are so close to it, I am not sure we can avoid it. Hopefully, we can avoid a debt crisis, but our debt is tremendous. Our individual, per capita debt is $44,000 per man, woman, and child-- greater than any country in Europe and greater than Greece. We are in the danger zone; clearly, we are. So they proposed this budget last year and again this year, and it laid out a plan. So what happened? The President of the United States calls out Congressman Ryan and castigates him in a speech, and he is sitting right in front of him. The Senate Democrats, who haven't produced a budget in 3 years because they are afraid to, because they don't have the courage to lay out the tough choices that are going to be necessary to save this Republic financially, attacked Congressman Ryan and his House Members for trying to do the right thing. It is unbelievable to me. I am just amazed. Now we have them complaining that he goes a little below the Budget Control Act numbers. Give me a break. Does anybody not know what is going on here? The American people do. They gave a shellacking to a lot of the big spenders in the last election. Surely we would have thought Congress got the message. The House did. Apparently, the Senators have not. Senator Reid, our majority leader, said it would be foolish to have a budget. Foolish to have a budget? The law requires us to have a budget. By April 1, we should have one in the committee. We are not going to be meeting before then. We should have one pass both Houses by April 15. That is the law. It is in the United States Code. Unfortunately, I guess, we don't go to jail as a result of not passing one because we haven't passed one here for 3 consecutive years. We haven't passed a budget in 3 years. Senator Reid said it is foolish to pass a budget. Why? I think he meant politically. It would be foolish for him to allow a budget to come to the floor where there is free debate, an opportunity to offer amendments in large numbers, and actually debate the challenges and vote on them. Senators--in public; not in secret meetings but in public--actually vote on these issues that are important to America and held accountable, and the American people can see how tough the choices are because the choices are tough. It is not going to be easy to balance this budget. I am telling my colleagues, I have seen the numbers. I am ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, and I have sat down with my staff, and I wish I could say it would be easier than it is. It is not going to be easy. So this is a frustrating moment. I am not really surprised. Here we are, going into the summer, trying to deal with a financial systemic threat to America that Admiral Mullen calls the greatest threat to our national security--our debt. We have done nothing about it. The House has. The Republican leadership in the House has done their duty. They produced a courageous, thoughtful, responsible debt course change that will put us on the road to prosperity, not decline. Their budget includes tax simplifications and tax reductions even, while they are doubling the amount of savings President Obama achieves. The House budget, although it doesn't balance in 10 years--and I wish it did, but it doesn't balance in 10 years--adds half the debt in the next 10 years that President Obama's budget proposes. It cuts it more than half. It puts us on a path. And in the outyears, it is even more positive in its effect and clearly takes us out of this disastrous course we are on. So they should be congratulated for being honest and detailed. Speaking of details, why don't we see the Democratic Members of this Senate lay out their budget plan? Last year, Senator Reid called up the House budget so all could vote against it. So Senator McConnell called up the President's budget. Every Democratic Member voted against that. Senator Toomey's thoughtful budget----

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I couldn't agree more about the concerns the Senator raised. Senator Johnson was a successful businessman. He provided health insurance for his employees. He had to purchase it. I will just ask him one quick question. Based on his experience--a year and a half ago he was doing this business. What are the incentives for a business that is already in existence, providing health care, why might they not continue to provide it? Why might a new company, a startup company, a small business that hopes to grow and have hundreds of employees--why might they never start with employer-based health care?

Mr. SESSIONS. I think all of us need to be listening to this because it is something that was not sufficiently considered during the debate; that is, that dramatically more employers may quit providing insurance, new companies that get started will not provide it, people will be on the exchanges, and it will cost far more than was expected. That is an entirely new issue. Assuming the low numbers the Congressional Budget Office said will go into the exchanges, just taking the numbers they assumed, let me point out what Senator Kyl said. President Obama, in an exact quote to the joint session of Congress when he was promoting this legislation, not some off-the-cuff figure, said this: Now, add it all up. And the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years-- This was a deliberate attempt, as has been suggested, to manipulate the figures because the taxes started right away, but the spending was 4 years delayed essentially, so we only have 6 years of spending under the plan. It also excluded many other provisions. For example, the bureaucratic implementation costs were not counted. The amount of effort, even the IRS will have to hire people who have to be involved, and this was not counted. New spending to close the Medicare doughnut hole. We didn't have the money in 2002 or 2003 to fund that provision. We have never been in worse shape. We are borrowing 40 cents of every $1 we spend, far worse than we were. Next year will be the fifth consecutive $1 trillion deficit. We don't have the money. So now we are spending more on that program that we don't have, the new or early retiree program. So once we add all the different provisions in the health care law, total gross spending over the original 10 years, when only 6 years is being paid for--over 10 years is actually 1.4 trillion. Those are the numbers we have. So this was a misrepresentation. This is from 2010 through 2019, 1.4 trillion. But when we add all the costs over the first full 10 years of this health care bill, it will be $2.6 trillion. The point is, the bill is not good health policy. The American people oppose it overwhelmingly. Absolutely, we do not have the money. We have never had a more systemic death threat to America, and it is so painful to see this happen. I thank Senator Johnson for his energy, for the commitment he has brought to this issue. He has seen it on the other side, the real-world side, and he is helping to motivate us all to explain to the American people the dangers of the bill.

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes. As a part of the funding for the ObamaCare legislation, there was an increase in Medicare taxes and a cut in Medicare benefits totaling $400 billion. That money was used to fund the new health care bill by the U.S. Treasury, an entirely new program. But it is Medicare's money. It is not the Treasury's money. Medicare has trustees. Medicare loaned the money to the U.S. Treasury. It was borrowed money that was used to fund this bill, not money that came in new and free of charge. Since Medicare is going into default and going to claim its debt in a few years, the Federal Government is simply going to have to either raise taxes, cut spending somewhere else or, more likely, convert the borrowing from Medicare, borrow money on the open market from China and other places, and then pay Medicare back. It is, as the CBO Director told me in a letter, December 23, the night before we voted: You are double counting the money. No wonder this country is going broke. This isn't extra money. Half the original estimate of the bill, $900 billion, was funded by borrowed money from Medicare. This is how this country is surging in its debt and why we are in danger of the entire economy entering into collapse.

Mr. SESSIONS. That is a good point, because in the past we have attempted and claimed we were going to make savings in Medicare and they never occurred. What I am saying is if these savings were to occur and if the new taxes on Medicare go into effect, as they are, that money is what is being used to fund an entirely new health care program. There is real doubt it will ever achieve those savings in Medicare, because if we keep cutting doctors and we keep cutting hospitals, they can't keep doing work. They will start refusing Medicare and Medicaid work. We are in that position already on some of the cuts that we rescind every year because we know the health care system would collapse if those cuts were to go into effect.

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Kyl and the Senator from Kansas, as he has indicated, were engaged in this cost curve-bending plan. The essence of the President's proposal--it went to the core of other proposals financially--was that by a Federal Government expansion of our authority, we would bend the cost curve and make health care cheaper for all Americans. That was a fundamental principle that was sold to businesspeople, and some businesspeople thought it was a great idea, but it has not happened. Already the premiums in private health care in America have gone up $2,000, almost $200 a month, and we are going to see it continue to go up. It does not bend the cost curve down. In fact, we are seeing the opposite occur. We have to know that our per-person government debt--Senator Johnson is on the Budget Committee, and he knows this--is worse than any other Western world nation. Per capita, we have more debt than Greece, Spain, Italy, and Ireland, with $44,000 per person that every man, woman, and child owes. And if the President submitted a budget and if it were to be enacted--and certainly it will not be--that would go to $75,000 per person in 10 years. This health care bill is dramatically adding to that. Every expert we have had at the Budget Committee has told us that we are on an unsustainable spending and debt path that will lead to financial collapse. Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who chaired President Obama's debt commission, both issued a written statement that America has never faced a more predictable financial crisis. What they told us was that spending and running up debt as we are today guarantees a financial collapse that could impact every person in America and deeply impact our ability to have health care in this country. So I think we have to recognize that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will unveil a budget plan tomorrow. The Senate is not going to bring up a budget. The Democratic leader said it is foolish to have a budget, so we will go for the third consecutive year without even attempting to pass a budget. It is supposed to be out of the committee by April 1. It is supposed to be passed by April 15. The House is going to do it. They are going to step up to the plate, and they are going to lay out a plan like they did last year, a plan that will change the debt course of America, a plan that would put us on a sustainable path so that we don't have to fear financial collapse. They are going to look at this legislation, and it cannot be imposed. We do not have the money. It is going to make health care worse, as we have heard, but more than that, we simply--even if it were a good idea, a nice thing to have, we do not have the money. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, and they misrepresented the cost. It is far higher than anyone has expected, and it is going to continue. For example, our people have looked at the CBO score--on the Budget Committee--and they have analyzed it fairly, and I am prepared to defend these numbers. Based on CBO's scores, from 2014--the first year the law is really in effect--until 2023, it will cost $2.66 trillion. It is far more than was projected. How much money is that? Over the same 10-year period, we would spend $626 billion on Federal highways. We had been fighting over highways, and we finally passed a highway bill. The Federal money for the whole highway system would be $626 billion, while we are adding a new program that is improperly funded for $2,600 billion. Over the next 10 years, we expect to spend $1,000 billion for education, and this health care cost is going to be $2,600 billion. We have disasters. We spend a lot of money on disasters. It is expected that we will spend $111 billion on disasters, whereas we will spend $2.6 trillion on the health care bill. This is the kind of thing that has the American people asking us: Are you crazy? How can you borrow 40 cents of every dollar you spend, as we are doing today. How can you do that to America? What is the matter with you people? They say people back home are not smart, they are just angry. Well, aren't they right to be angry? We are adding a program that is financially unsound, that is going to make health care worse, and we don't have the money. This money needs to be used to save Medicare and Social Security--programs that are already in great jeopardy. If we have money, we have to use it to save them, not start a new program of massive proportions that, over 60, 75 years, is going to cost far more than anyone imagines. I thank Senator Johnson for raising this, and I am concerned about the costs. I know Senator Boozman and others have talked about the rationing. There are a lot of reasons why we simply can't go forward with this health care bill. It must be eliminated as we know it. We can make reforms, but this legislation cannot go into effect.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank our Republican leader, Senator McConnell, for bringing some perspective to this situation. I have seen the circumstances in the Senate and how the nominations process has changed over time. When I came here, there were no filibusters. Maybe there had been one in which a nomination was delayed and the nomination was withdrawn because it had certain problems, but virtually none. It was the position of the Senate that we did not filibuster nominations, and I still believe in that. But I would point out that in 2001 the Democrats met in conference, and they had a plan to change the ground rules of confirmations. They announced it to the New York Times. Cass Sunstein, Marcia Greenberg, and Laurence Tribe met with them, and they came out and started filibustering systematically the fabulous nominations that President Bush had sent to the Senate. He sent eight nominees early in his administration. Two of them were renominations of President Clinton's nominees. They were promptly confirmed in the Senate. But immediately filibusters of superb nominees such as Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, and others commenced, and we had a long process with that. This was led by the Democrats. Then-Senator Obama was one of them. He filibustered Justice Alito's nomination. We had not done that before. He participated in other filibusters. Senator Reid voted to block an up-or-down vote 26 times. Senator Leahy voted to block an up-or-down vote 27 times. What happened was there was such a controversy over this changing of the rules in the early 2000s that it resulted in a compromise. Fourteen Senators--called the Gang of 14--decided they would break the logjam and create a new rule. It was not a perfect rule. I really think filibusters are not the right thing for judges. But they said: We will have them only in extraordinary circumstances. That sort of became the new rule, and a number of nominees eventually, after years of waiting, were confirmed. Others were not. That is sort of the way we operate today. But that is not the problem. That is not the problem at all. Since President Obama has been in office, he has had about the same percentage of confirmations as President Bush had during the same period of time. He has had fewer lower court nominations because he has submitted fewer nominations--about 20 percent fewer nominations than President Bush. The average time from nomination to confirmation for President Obama's nominees is within a week of the average time from nomination to confirmation for Bush nominees. The process is working here. What is happening? I am telling you, I know what is happening. This Democratic leadership in the Senate--and make no mistake, they control this body--has been trying to create a perception that there is obstruction going on, and they are going to pretend that these 17 nominees, who would have come up for a vote in regular order, are being blocked. This is part of an obstructive tactic, and it is not accurate, and it is not correct. Nominations have been moving at the regular pace. It is a gimmick. It is a political stunt. What ought to be done in the Senate? We need to be working on what is important. We now will have, finally, after 3 weeks, votes today-- maybe--to pass the highway bill. Well, why did it take 3 weeks? We went about 2 weeks without doing anything. We have had about 2 days' worth of votes all of a sudden at the end of 3 weeks, and the bill will be up for final passage. Why was that not done 3 weeks ago? Because Senator Reid obstructed the ability of Senators to offer amendments, and he tried to move this bill forward without amendments, except the ones he picked, and that is not right. The majority leader does not get to pick amendments or how many should be offered to legislation in the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world, the U.S. Senate. He does not have that power. So he tried to move the bill forward, and Republicans said: No, we will not move to a final vote until you agree on amendments. Now he has agreed to 20 or 30 amendments. In about 2 days' time, they will have all been voted on--some of them were withdrawn--and the bill will come up for final passage. Why didn't it happen earlier? Because this is a rope-a-dope. They do not want to talk about the things that this country needs. One of them is a budget. It has been over 1,000 days since this Congress has passed a budget. Why aren't we spending time on that? Senator Reid said it is foolish to pass a budget. It is not foolish to pass a budget. We are required to pass a budget. This country has never needed a budget more than it needs it today--never. We are heading to financial catastrophe. Erskine Bowles chaired the debt commission--President Clinton's Chief of Staff--and he said we are heading to the most predictable financial crisis in our Nation's history. Why? Because of the debt we are running up. And we need to confront that, but Senator Reid did not want to talk about it. He did not want his Members to have to vote. If you bring up a budget, Members have to vote. They get to offer amendments. They will talk about the debt course of America, which is on an unsustainable path. Everybody says that. Why aren't we talking about that? Judicial nominations are moving at a reasonable pace, as they have always moved. There is nothing unusual about President Obama's ability to get his judges confirmed. I have probably voted for 90 percent of them. What is unusual is that we are violating the statutory law of the United States of America that says you should have a budget. We are required to pass a budget. By April 1, it should be before the Senate. It should be passed by April 15. Isn't that perfectly sane, that the United States of America would have a budget? And the Senate does not want to do that. What else should we be talking about? We should be working to have more affordable American energy. We all want to create jobs. Our colleagues on the Democratic side rammed through a big stimulus bill that spent government money, ran up $800 billion--every penny added to the debt of the United States. We were in debt and we spent $800 billion--all borrowed, all adding to our debt. It did not really do anything for the economy. Only 4 percent of it went to roads and bridges. What a tragedy that was. It was supposed to fix our crumbling infrastructure. At least we would have had something concrete to show for it had we built roads and bridges. So now we are in this situation: How do you create jobs? We cannot keep borrowing money. We do not have it. Expert after expert who has testified before the Budget Committee, where I am the ranking Republican, has told us you cannot keep borrowing this kind of money. Experts have told us that the size of the debt we have now--$15 trillion--already is slowing growth in the country. We need economic growth, we do not need it slowed, and it is being slowed because we have run up so much debt, experts tell us. So I am worried about that. We have to deal with it. How do we create growth? One of things we need to do is produce more American energy. We do not need a Secretary of Energy--I have taken to calling it the Department of Anti-Energy--who said in 2008 that he wanted to see the price of energy go up. He was asked I think yesterday in the committee: Do you still believe that? He said: Well, no, I have changed my mind since 2008. You know, the economy is not doing well, and maybe now at this point I don't think energy prices should go up. Can you imagine the Secretary of Energy fundamentally having as his guiding principle that he wants to raise the price of energy? And the President said it himself before he was elected. This is a radical idea driven by extremists who do not understand that the cost of energy hammers the American people. The average American is spending $4,000 a year on gasoline, at almost $400 a month. You were spending $200 a month on your gasoline when President Obama took office. Now you are spending twice as much: $400--$200 a month in the form of a basic tax on you. We are importing oil. But we are finding more in the United States, and we have better techniques for bringing it out of the ground. We can produce a lot more. Privately owned lands are showing increases in energy production and exploration. They are doing a good job. But the government owned lands are down 14 percent because the President is blocking production on government lands, blocking offshore production. He really is. We were projected to have issued lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico on 12 major tracts. That has been reduced to just two in the last 2 years. This is putting us behind. Production of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico is down. Jobs are down. When we allow drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies bid for those rights. They pay money to the U.S. Government. Not only do they create jobs in America, they pay us money to get the right to drill and then they pay us for every barrel of oil they produce. It creates wealth for America. Why do we want to loan money to Brazil to produce oil and gas offshore when we can produce it in our own gulf? So those are things on which we need to be focused. Why aren't we talking about that, in addition to the budget? And taxes. I was talking to a businessman the other day. He said this investment tax credit that encourages you to invest in new machinery and other equipment for his company--he examined that, and he decided he would take advantage of it and accelerate a purchase of some things for his company. He got a big tax credit, but he said the paperwork was this thick. The lawyers and accountants and effort he had to go through cost him at least a third of the advantage he was supposed to get from the government. It is not necessary for things to be that complicated. We need simplified, progrowth tax reform. Why is that not on the floor of the Senate? Isn't that a priority for America? I think everybody can agree that if we simplified our tax procedure, if me made it more growth-oriented, we could create jobs without losing revenue to the Federal Government, create economic growth, and put our country on a path to a sound future. We have to have economic growth, and we cannot get it by continuing to borrow from our children--really borrowing currently--to spend money to try to jump-start through a sugar high the American economy that is dragging along. We have this major problem with governmental regulations. I am hearing it everywhere I go--from farmers who are being told they cannot have dust on their farms. When Senator Roberts asked an EPA witness how are we going to keep dust down, they said, well, you can have a water truck and go by and water it. Now, how silly is that? They have work rules that keep children in families from helping out on the farm. They have rules dealing with a ditch, calling it a navigable stream. This is regulatory overreach of a monumental degree, and I am hearing it from business, I am hearing it from taxpayers, I am hearing it from farmers all over. Every regulation needs to be examined. If it produces a positive result for America in terms of health and safety and the general welfare, OK, I am for it. But if it is the kind of regulation that does not produce a benefit but adds to the cost of doing business--costs that add up for the average American consumer--then it needs to be eliminated. It would help create jobs and help make us more productive, as we work on producing American energy, which creates jobs in itself. That additional production of energy does have the tendency to pull down prices. There is no doubt about it. It may not happen day to day. But as energy reserves are increased, as energy productions and exploration occur and more is produced, it tends to bring down prices. So we need to focus on things that bring down prices of energy. We do not need to be mandating forms of energy that cost 2, 3, 4, 8, 10 times as much as the basic energy we have today. We cannot afford it. It adds to the cost of doing business. The consumers pay it with their pocketbooks when they go to the store, and when businesses look for a place to build a plant, they look at the rest of the world. If our energy prices are lower and reliable, then they can afford to invest here, hire American workers. But if our energy prices are too high--and I can cite examples of investments in my State of Alabama that were determined one way or the other based on energy prices. If the price of energy is too high, they go somewhere else. They cannot afford it. They have to seek the lowest price. That creates jobs and growth. We need to have an Energy Secretary who understands his job is to protect the health and safety of America and produce as much energy as we can at the lowest possible price, not to be engaged in some social engineering. I have to tell you, it troubles me that the Secretary of Energy does not even own a car, he rides a bike. I mean, this is who is running this country. It is the kind of idea that is not realistic for the average American citizen. People with big salaries and so forth, when the price of energy goes up, it does not bother them. But the average guy, the high prices hit his rent payment, hit his health care, his food, and he has to pay $100 more a month, $150 more a month for the same amount of gasoline. We have small business paying more. Tell me that does not hurt this economy. Tell me that does not raise unemployment. It absolutely does. It is stupid. We do not need to be doing things that do not make sense. We cannot afford it. This Senate needs to be focused not on some unprecedented, unheard of, gimmicked-up complaint that we are now going to have 17 cloture votes on judges, many of whom have been on the Senate floor less than 1 month. Half the nominees who have made it to the Senate today are now in committee. Senator Leahy, our Democratic chairman, has not moved them out of committee yet. They will move. He moves them very fast, frankly. How can it be Senator McConnell's fault that they have not been confirmed? It is a lifetime appointment. Judges are not entitled just to be given a lifetime appointment like that. People running for Congress, they work for months and years trying to achieve the job, putting a record out there. So it does not hurt for a judge to be sitting on the floor for a while. Maybe someone will come forward and say: Let me tell you what that judge did to me or this is what he did wrong or something. Sometimes that happens. So we need a steady process, and we are moving forward well within the traditions of this Senate. But what has happened is this Senate is obstructing legislation that is coming out of the House that would fix energy, that helps tax reform. There are small business growth proposals that are on the floor now, they are not even being brought up. They are being obstructed by Senator Reid and the Democrats. That is a fact. I am not making this up. So this is a body that is not doing its job. The House produced a budget. They produced a historic budget. That was realistic. I would like to have seen them go a little further, frankly. We may not have agreed with everything in it. But it was a historic budget. It changed the debt trajectory of America. It began to bring our debt on a downward path instead of this surging, upward path we are on. They did it last year and they are going to do it again this year. What is the Senate going to do? Nothing. We are not going to have a budget for the United States of America. It is a sad day. I feel strongly about this. I have seen the debates over judges. I saw fabulous judges, like Justice Alito on the Supreme Court, be filibustered. I saw Chief Justice Roberts' nomination sit for a long period of time when he was nominated for the circuit bench. Alabama's fabulous Justice Bill Pryor, now on the Eleventh Circuit, was blocked for months and months and months. Janice Rogers Brown, Supreme Court of California, African-American, great justice; Priscilla Owens, ``unanimously well qualified,'' Supreme Court Justice of Texas. She was fabulous. They held them all. The only ones they confirmed were the two judges President Bush had graciously reappointed, whom President Clinton had nominated but were not confirmed at the end of his term. I will close by saying we do need to work on this issue of what the Senate needs to be focusing on. I believe it needs to be focusing on a budget, energy, taxes, regulations, things that will make a difference for America, make our country stronger and healthier and more productive and more competitive without adding to the debt. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, it has not been that long since the President's health care proposal has been passed. If we recall, it was passed on Christmas Eve, after a long battle. We were told: Don't worry what is in it; we will have to pass it first to find out what is in it. I remember Senator Brown was running in the State of Massachusetts, a liberal State. He said, If you elect me--and he was running in the special election--I will vote against it and provide the vote that kills it. But the matter was delayed--his appointment and confirmation, after he won his election. It was put off and the interim Senator cast a vote for the bill and it passed by a single vote and the result was 60 to 40. I think it was a dangerous step for America. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee and the Senator from Wisconsin is a member of that committee. We have serious concerns about what is in this bill now that we are beginning to read it and beginning to apply it and see what might happen. Senator Johnson is a successful businessman who ran for the Senate and joined us just a little over 1 year ago. He came here to do something. I have been exceedingly impressed with his approach to business. He had looked at these numbers and challenged the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Sebelius, on some numbers last week. The situation was quite troubling. Maybe Senator Johnson can tell us about his concern and what he raised last week--the economic impact of what happened with jobs, the American economy, and the debt of our country. Maybe we can begin our discussion with where he is coming from and what he observed from his exchange last week.

Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator has been in the real world, having to make a payroll and manage a company. If he, as a CEO, made a representation that this was going to reduce the cost of insurance for your employees by $2,500, and it increases by 2,200, that would be a stunning event, would it not? Does it bother the Senator, as a person from the real world--and this is the first time he has been in elected office--to have people walking around with numbers that are so divergent, promising to reduce health care costs, and they actually are driving costs up?

Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator is right. I was here. There was a promise made to achieve passage of the bill. A lot of Americans didn't believe these promises and thought they were inflated to begin with, and this promise--a fundamental promise--has already been proven to be wildly inaccurate. And thank you for raising that.

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, the promise was that--and it was repeated here, and the President went on national TV, and I believe he said it at the State of the Union--this bill would not add one dime to the deficit. If you drop out the $80 or so billion--and he estimated that his plan, if passed, would actually create $143 billion in surplus, in extra revenue for the Treasury; it wouldn't cost anything, it would create more money. So you lose $80 or so billion because the CLASS Act has proven to be the Ponzi scheme Senator Conrad said it would be, and we just saw in the President's budget a request for $111 billion more for the exchanges. Well, that already wipes out entirely, does it not, the promise that it wouldn't add to the deficit? Even before the bill is implemented, the projections are that it would cost money rather than make money for the Treasury. Is that the Senator's analysis so far?

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, Senator Johnson has been talking about this issue for some time, and it looks as though reports are coming along to validate his concerns. But the administration estimated that only 1 million would go into the exchanges, and these are the areas where, if you don't have employer-based health care, the government will subsidize your health care program for you, and it costs the Treasury money. This is how we get in financial trouble, when we make bad estimates. The Senator thinks the numbers that go into the exchanges could dwarf 1 million. How many could it be, based on the reports the Senator has seen?

Mr. SESSIONS. That is astounding.

Mr. SESSIONS. Now, for example, $400 billion a year over a 10-year window would be $4 trillion. If the Budget Control Act that we worked on so hard last summer, which the President is already undermining, were to take place, it would only reduce spending over 10 years by $2 trillion. And this would be an unexpected $5 trillion, $4 trillion added on top of that, would it not?

Mr. SESSIONS. And it is not baked into the numbers now. We are not assuming it is going to be $4 trillion or $5 trillion more under Obamacare, we are assuming only 1, I guess.

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, is it too late? Is this a fait accompli, this health care law that was passed? Can we not reverse it or is it, in the Senator's opinion, practical at this point for us to pull back from this path?

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, the Senator raised these issues with Secretary Sebelius last week in the committee, and the exchange has been on the TV and on the Web and has become a bit of a sensation, really. People have been looking at it, and it has been very troubling. Would the Senator tell us what troubles him about Secretary Sebelius's answers--or her lack of them--and what you think we should do next?

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, a $111 billion error is a big deal. You think about it. We brought in $2,200 billion, and this is $100 billion--about 5 percent of the entire estimated revenue we had in the government last year. To miss that on one part of one bill is very troubling to me. We are fighting every day, wrestling with a highway bill, and we came up $2 billion short over 2 years. And the whole bill is held up, votes on it, points of order raised on it, and here, blithely, into the President's budget comes another $111 billion. I am sure there can be some explanation for it, but I really do think the American people, don't you, are owed a prepared Secretary before the Budget Committee who can lay out explanations for what this is so we will know how much over cost we already are on this plan.

Mr. SESSIONS. So you are an employer. You have employees, and you have been helping them, you have been providing health coverage, and you realize, well, I can cancel my employer contributions, let the employee go to the exchanges, and they will be subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Mr. SESSIONS. Where is the money coming from that will provide the extra money they will need to get full coverage?

Mr. SESSIONS. What about a new business--some small business starts up, and they are thinking about whether they are going to provide health care for their employees, and they have the option of the exchanges. Do you think a new business would be even more likely to not provide coverage and let the employee go to the subsidized exchange?

Mr. SESSIONS. I had a number of people in a meeting I was at explain the realities of it. They told us the whole fear of regulation and the health care bill and the revenue that is going to be extracted from them to pay for it would result in lesser employees, making it impossible for them to provide the coverage. One told me they could lose as many as 70 employees. I remember that figure.

Mr. SESSIONS. It is not fully implemented yet. There are a lot of opportunities for us to get off this train before a disaster occurs. I truly believe it is not too late for us to alter the course. I think the American people have never been happy with it. They have been told they wouldn't have to give up their health care. They were told it was going to bring down the cost curve and reduce the costs, and they were told it was going to pay for itself; there would be more money coming in than the bill would cost. Would the Senator say all three of those promises have now already been proven false?