Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. 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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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 briefly wish to share a few thoughts about Judge Thomas Vanaskie, who has been nominated for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals--a very important position. He currently serves on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. I do intend to support his nomination, giving deference to the President, but I would just like to share a thought or two about his testimony before the Judiciary Committee. Judge Vanaskie testified he believed American courts should not use foreign law in interpreting the Constitution, but he did believe the Supreme Court properly used foreign law in cases such as Lawrence v. Texas, and I think that is a bit contradictory. He also testified that the Supreme Court properly used foreign law in Roper v. Simmons, where the Court concluded that the Constitution, because of ``evolving standards of decency,'' would now prohibit States from imposing the death penalty on juveniles who commit murder. I think that is a legitimate public policy issue to discuss, but the question is, Does the Constitution say a State is not able to decide at what age people are executed? Judge Vanaskie said, at another point, that foreign law was relevant to determining fundamental constitutional rights. Well, our Constitution is the one we have, and judges, if they are faithful to their oath, will enforce our Constitution--the one we have. It is difficult for me to comprehend how somebody could conclude that a legal action in the European Union would provide illumination to a judge on how to interpret our Constitution and what the Founders meant and the plain meaning of its words. So I think this is a bad philosophy, and it evidences a detachment of the judiciary from the limited role they are given. We have limited powers, the President has limited powers, and the courts have limited powers. Courts are not empowered to reinterpret our laws and our Constitution based on some better idea they think they may find in France. They are not. This is not a little bitty matter. It is a trend that is occurring in our courts, and I am disappointed that several of the President's nominees seem to be seduced by these ideas, including speeches made by Justice Sotomayor where she talked about how she favored Justice Ginsburg's views about that. So I wish to give this judge the benefit of the doubt. He did say he didn't follow this doctrine to the full extent of it, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt. But also, some of his statements indicate that he may yet be seduced by this idea. He had difficulty articulating any limit on the commerce clause. The commerce clause says Congress can regulate commerce. Does that mean everything? Does regulating commerce mean you can reach down into Oklahoma and tell an individual farmer: You have to have insurance? That raises a serious question of constitutional power, and does that impact interstate commerce? Well, you could theoretically conjure up a way that it could, but I want to know that a judge understands there is some limit to the amount of reach the Federal Government can have. We have had a number of people complaining about the process of confirmation and judges languishing before the Senate. In particular, my friend, Senator Whitehouse, noted the nominations of Judge James Wynn and Judge Albert Diaz to the Fourth Circuit. Senator Whitehouse hasn't been here but since 2006, so maybe he isn't familiar with some of the procedures that have gone on before. Wynn and Diaz's nominations have been pending in the Senate for only 167 days. That is half the time--half the time--that President Bush's circuit court nominees waited--350 days. In fact, four of President Bush's nominees to the Fourth Circuit never received any hearing, and they were highly qualified nominees. Those nominees--Mr. Steve Matthews, Chief Judge Robert Conrad, Judge Glen Conrad, and former Maryland U.S. attorney Rod Rosenstein were well qualified and had the bipartisan support of their home State Senators. Yet they were blocked steadfastly from ever moving forward. President Bush nominated Steve Matthews in September of 2007 to the same seat on the Fourth Circuit for which Judge Diaz has now been nominated and expects to be confirmed--and will be confirmed, I am sure. For Senators to be whining about how long it takes Judge Diaz to move along, in a fairly steadfast way, in light of what was done to Mr. Matthews, is a bit much to me, I just have to tell you. We all know this is a robust body. We don't mind speaking our minds. But Mr. Matthews had the support of his home State Senators and received an ABA rating of ``qualified.'' He was a graduate of Yale Law School, had a distinguished career in private practice, and he waited 485 days for a hearing and never got one. So his nomination was returned and expired in January of 2009. Another of President Bush's nominees, Chief Judge Robert Conrad, was nominated to the seat for which Judge Wynn is now nominated. He had the support of his home State Senators, received an ABA rating of unanimous ``well-qualified,'' which is the highest rating. Judge Conrad met Chairman Leahy's standard for a noncontroversial consensus nominee. He had received bipartisan approval by the committee when he was confirmed by a voice vote to be U.S. attorney and later district court judge for the District of North Carolina. He was then chief judge. Senators Burr and Dole sent letters in support of that confirmation. Yet he was blocked. I know he can make decisions because, if I am not mistaken, I used to say he was the point guard for the University of North Carolina basketball team. I think that was incorrect. I think he was point guard for Clemson. Regardless, anybody who can play a point guard in the ACC can make decisions. He was chosen out of all the prosecutors in America by Attorney General Janet Reno to conduct a very sensitive investigation of President Clinton, when he was accused of some wrongdoing. He conducted that and concluded no charges ought to be brought. This was a highly qualified person. Yet he was blocked. My time is up, but I know every nominee is not brought up immediately or when some people would want to call up the nomination. It requires unanimous consent to bring up a nominee, to immediately get a vote, and unanimous consent isn't always given, so it does slow down people. I do believe we ought not to unnecessarily delay persons, but I would want to say that the alacrity by which President Obama's nominations are moving far surpasses anything like the difficulties that President Bush's nominees had. I have been here, I have seen it, and I know that to be a fact. I hope we can create a climate where judges have a reasonable time on the calendar, that they have hearings in the Judiciary Committee, that there is opportunity to raise objections, when they are made, and the nominee comes to the floor and eventually can be brought up for a final confirmation vote. That would be my request. I see it is time for the vote, and so I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Alexander for his remarks. I share his analysis. He is exactly correct. It is very important for America that we recognize what he has said but even more important now, since I think the American people overwhelmingly understand and support that, that we take some action that would actually help us to get in the game of nuclear power production. I remain baffled by some of the generalized statements of the administration on nuclear power but lack of action that could move us forward and get us out of this funk we are in, where we are not doing anything. We have to start catching up with countries that are serious about nuclear power. It will help make us more productive, help create a lot of high-paying jobs in America, clean power, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no emissions into the atmosphere, no CO2. It has so many benefits that I am convinced we need to move forward. I wish to make remarks on another issue; that is, the nomination of Marisa Demeo to the DC Superior Court. It is not a nomination that comes through the Judiciary Committee, as most Federal judges do. Because she is a DC Superior Court nominee, the nomination went through Homeland Security. Although, it is not a lifetime appointment, if you are an advocate or resident of the District of Columbia who might have to one day appear before a judge, you do want to know that Congress has made certain that once that judge puts on the robe, he or she is capable of putting aside personal views and applying the law evenhandedly. Unfair jurisprudence to one party is detrimental, costly, and painful. We need to make sure our nominees exercise judgment-- objective, fair judgment--and not allow their personal politics or ideologies to influence their decision making. I am not comfortable enough to say that Ms. Demeo is capable of doing that. I am just not. Her background and record raise issues with me. I wish to be fair, but I think we need to talk about them. The DC Superior Court does have broad jurisdiction. It includes trial matters, criminal, civil, family court, landlord, tenant, and so forth. A judge needs to be impartial in all those matters. Ms. Demeo's background provides evidence that she may be more political and strong- willed personally than impartial. Her prior experience includes serving as regional counsel for the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund. In this position, she made a number of troubling statements. For example, she argued that ``governments have a legal obligation to help those who don't speak English well.'' We have an obligation, all of us, to help people who do not speak English, and I think that is so. But as a judge, I am wondering: Does this mean that constitutionally she is saying the government has a legal obligation to do that? That seems, to me, the tone of her statement. During her tenure at MALDEF, the organization sued the State of Texas because high schools did not offer their exit exams in Spanish. One does not have to be a lawful citizen of our country to attend the schools of Texas, even those unlawfully in the country can enroll in high schools. Apparently, the state of Texas decided individuals should do their exit exams in English to get a high school diploma. She opposed that. She opposed the nomination of Miguel Estrada, a fabulous Hispanic nominee. He had superior academic credentials, was a brilliant writer, and testified beautifully, I thought, before the Judiciary Committee. She said this about him: The most difficult situation for an organization like mine is when a President nominates a Latino who does not resonate or associate with the Latino community and who comes with a predisposition to view claims of racial discrimination and unfair treatment with suspicion and with doubt instead of with an open mind. I don't think that is an accurate description of Miguel Estrada, who came here as a young man from Central America. I don't think that is an accurate description of him. I am disappointed she would make that statement about him. I am unaware of any provision in the Constitution which requires that judges show favoritism to one party or another based on their ethnicity. A judge, no matter what their background, racial, ethnic, religious, political, should give everybody before the court the same fair treatment. It is not necessary for a Caucasian to hear a case involving a Caucasian or for a Latino to hear all cases involving Latinos. Every judge puts on a robe, and that robe symbolizes their absolute commitment to objectivity. After the Democrats successfully filibustered Mr. Estrada, one of the first nominees to be blocked by repeated, sustained filibusters--this was not too many years ago, less than 10, about 7 or 8. We still have problems in the Senate as a result of the alteration of Senate tradition where nominees are filibustered. I try not to do that. The Gang of 14 settled that, saying filibusters, under extraordinary circumstances, now become possible. This was after the Estrada nomination. She was proud of blocking Mr. Estrada. She bragged about it. She said: This shows just because we have a Republican President and a Republican Senate, it is still possible to defeat candidates who are so conservative that they take us back in civil rights. I disagree. I disagree with her analysis of Miguel Estrada's position. I heard him testify. I think he would have been a fabulous member of the U.S. courts. Being a liberal means never having to say you are sorry about what you say to other people. In opposing Linda Chavez--a wonderful writer, thinker, and passionate advocate for civil rights--she stated this in opposing Linda Chavez: We generally support the nomination of Latinos to important positions, but Linda Chavez could really turn things backward for the Latino community. I do not appreciate that. Linda Chavez would not have turned things back on the Latino community. I don't know what she means by that. She went on to say: A Spanish sounding surname does not make a person sympathetic to the concerns and needs of the Latino population. She, therefore, would appear to only embrace the kind of Latino nominee who agrees with her politically. It is not truly a question of ethnicity, is it? It is a question of something different, a political approach to government and law. On May 13, 2004, she participated in a press conference with the coalition against discrimination and the Constitution to ``challenge the extremism of the Federal marriage amendment backers.'' I guess that means I am an extremist. Quite a number of Senators in the majority, as I recall, voted to say that a marriage should remain as it has always previously been interpreted: to be a union between a man and a woman. But she says this is an extremism amendment. I don't think so. I know there is a legal dispute about gay marriage, one in the District of Columbia now. She already stated where she is on the matter, declaring it a fundamental right. I do not believe that is a fundamental constitutional right for a same-sex union to be declared a marriage under the law of the United States. It never was for the first 170 years of the existence of this country. Ms. Demeo is no friend of immigration enforcement. When the INA announced a plan to enter into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database the names of 314,000 individuals who had been ordered deported but who fled and absconded and did not submit themselves for deportation, in an effort to simply comply with a judicial final order, she decried that move. She responded that most of the violators who are guilty only of violating civil immigration laws do not pose a threat to national security. I am not saying they pose a threat to national security. They have come into the country illegally. They somehow became apprehended. Maybe they committed some other crime. They were ordered to be deported and they should be deported. If they do not show up and abscond, they should be in the NCIC, just like anybody who has a speeding ticket and they did not pay their fine. She also criticized the government's Operation Tarmac, which identified and ordered the deportation of 600 workers with access to sensitive areas at airports who had violated immigration law. We had 600 workers at airports with access to sensitive areas, and they were found to be illegally here and ordered deported. Indeed, she is an advocate for amnesty openly. I guess we can disagree on that. Good people certainly disagree on that. She is a big fan also of affirmative action programs. There is a fine line between affirmative action and quotas and mandatory racial preferences, and I fear she has crossed that line. During the Clinton administration, when Energy Secretary Frederico Pena announced his resignation, she insisted he be replaced by a Latino, indicating that was necessary for Latino concerns to receive consideration. I think it is all right to ask that happen. But to demand that and to insist that only a person of your ethnicity can give fairness to your ethnic group I think is wrong and goes against fundamental American concepts of law. In a 2000 opinion editorial for the San Diego Tribune, Ms. Demeo fully embraced the concept of dangerous identity politics, in my view. She said: We must create the pressure to move the nominations of Paez-- Who had been nominated to the Federal bench-- and other Latino nominees. . . . Latinos must be appointed in greater numbers at all levels, especially to the appellate courts, where most of the decisions interpreting the Constitution and Federal laws are ultimately made. Without sufficient representation at every level, equal justice for Latinos--or even the perception of justice--will not exist. I think that is overstatement. It is one thing to advocate, and I respect that, advocating for more people, groups who appear to be underrepresented. That is a legitimate factor that would play in a nomination. To use that kind of language, I think, is dangerous because it suggests fairness is not otherwise obtainable. Perhaps Ms. Demeo can set these views aside and be fair on the bench. I think they are extreme in many instances. I am not certain she can. It appears to me she is entrenched in a political approach, a lifestyle of emphasizing rights for one group or another and not so much the idea, the American vision of equal rights for everybody. That is the core American principle; that everybody in a court of law is entitled to equal rights. A judge and our juries are charged to that effect, and judges put on a robe to show they are going to be unbiased and that they are going to follow the law regardless of what their personal views or friendships or so forth might be. So that is my concern and the reason I have decided I will oppose the nomination. I assume she will go on and have her vote soon and will probably have a majority and be confirmed. But if she is confirmed, I hope Judge Demeo will think about some of the issues I have raised and make sure in her own heart of hearts that when she takes that bench, she is not going to favor one party or another based on their religion, their ethnicity, their politics, or her personal social agendas. I believe that is important. I have some quotes from some letters in opposition to Judge Demeo's nomination. Numbers USA has said her nomination ``would be a setback for the nation in terms of seeking to restore the rule of law in immigration.'' The Eagle Forum is a conservative group that has studied the nomination and has written regarding the basis for opposing the nomination as Judge Demeo's advocacy for issues, such as ``in-state tuition for illegal aliens, the handling of the census for purposes of redistricting, photo ID voting laws, official English initiatives, amnesty for illegal aliens, affirmative action, and traditional marriage.'' The Concerned Women of America wrote: Her bias is so ingrained and so much the main thrust of her career that it [is] not rational to believe that she will suddenly change once confirmed as a judge. Rather it is reasonable to conclude she would use her position to implement her own political ideaology. They go on to say: Demeo reveals her own bias and lack of constitutional knowledge by her statement that the Constitution is a ``flawed document that embodied the historical bias of its time.'' Well, it is certainly not a perfect document, we all know that, and it has been amended because it did have some provisions that could not stand historical scrutiny, such as the question of slavery and equal rights for all Americans. But I do think her statement is troubling to me as a whole because I don't think it is a flawed document. Our Constitution is the greatest document ever struck by the hands of man at a given time, somebody once wrote. The Traditional Values Coalition notes that she has ``demonstrated a willingness to undermine our nation's effort to secure our borders against illegal immigrants.'' They go on to make a number of points. Others have written, which I will ask to have printed in the Record. The nominee, whom I don't have anything against personally, if confirmed--and I suspect she will be--will have to think about these issues, commit herself totally and completely to fair and equal justice to everybody who appears before her and put aside some of the advocacy positions that have marked her sustained efforts during her professional career. Mr. President, before I leave the floor, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letters from Concerned Women of America, the Eagle Forum, Numbers USA, and the Traditional Values Coalition.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair, 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. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I shared recently with my colleagues my concern about the surging Federal debt and the ramifications that arise from that, and how it has a damaging effect in ways a lot of people have not considered on our economy and on the quality of life of the American people. A scholar at the Cato Institute published an excellent op ed in yesterday's Washington Times on the impact of borrowing on the American economy. Savings are essential, as we all know, for economic growth because it is from those savings that people borrow, and then they are able to invest in new factories, equipment, research, development, and create businesses that create jobs. That is how we get economic growth. It is part of our tradition of a free economy, and it has served us well. Very few would deny that this is the best way to allocate wealth, rather than trying to have a government-mandated economy. When the government issues debt and private citizens and corporations buy it, that, by definition, steers that money, that savings, from the productive or private sector of the economy toward the government. If the government wasn't issuing the debt, or borrowing the money, people would have money that they would likely invest in private corporations through bonds or stocks. They might place it in a bank and buy a CD, and then the bank would loan that to a private company, or some person who is wishing to build a home or a shopping center, creating jobs and growth in the economy. Some of our colleagues like to think that you can borrow money and you can increase debt and it is free money. But we know that is not true. Nothing comes from nothing. Everything has a cost, and it will be paid for one way or the other, at one time or another. The unprecedented Federal debt that we are dealing with today is unlike anything we have seen before. I think it is fair to say that both parties have blame to share, but I have to say we have never seen anything like the President's 10-year budget and what impact it will have on the debt in our country. Our debt in 2008 was $5.8 billion. In 2012, it is projected to double to $11.6 billion. In 2018, it will triple to 17.6 billion. That is a tripling of the entire debt of the United States in that many years. People would say, well, what does that mean? I say to you it means one thing I can show you. You borrow that money--somebody loaned it to the government. When the government took that loan and borrowed that money, they have to pay interest on it. Just to show what the Congressional Budget Office has told us about what that actually means, in 2009 we paid $187 billion in interest on our debt. That is going to go up every single year, according to them, until 2020 when we will be paying $840 billion in 1 year in interest on the debt. All of us have projects in which we believe. We believe in education or health. We believe in helping seniors or young people. We believe in highways and research and development, national defense, the National Institutes of Health, science and technology, improving our energy use, cleaning up our environment. Those things cost money. According to the projections of the Congressional Budget Office, $840 billion will have to be taken off the top. It will have to be paid first. That will be larger than anything in our budget, including defense, unless it continues to surge, and we hope it does not. It will be larger than any other account. It will be crowding out money we could have been spending on things that work. Some of the money we spend does not work. Too much of it is wasteful Washington spending. Some of this money is very productive, and we like to think we are making the world a better place. We are going to have less of it because of this interest. The unprecedented Federal deficit last year of $1.4 trillion is a stunning number, and the projected $1.5 trillion deficit this year will be taking $3 trillion out of the economy. In fact, the CATO scholar, Richard Rahn, compared the percentage of money the government is taking out of the economy in this recession with how much the government took out of the economy in previous recessions and found that the current depletion of savings that is going to the government is unprecedented over the last 30 years. He says in 2009 the government took 38 percent of all the gross savings in the country by borrowing it, money that might have been available to a shopping center guy or a startup company or a person who needs to buy a home. They would borrow the money. The government is borrowing the money. The number of dollars in savings in this country is limited. We are taking 38 percent of it. By contrast, it did not take more than 15 percent in any other recession in the past 30 years. The average takings have been less than 5 percent. I will show this chart: savings taken by the government during recessions. The average per quarter in the last 30 years is 1 or 2 percent. In the 1982-1983 recession, it hit about 12; in the 1992-1993 recession, it hit about 15 percent; in 2003-2004, about 11 or 12 percent. Look at this, 38 percent in the 2009 recession we are in. Some say this is worse than anything we have ever seen before. It is very bad, and it is unprecedented. If it is so easy, and if there is no cost to borrow, why don't we borrow twice as much? We all know there is a cost. We have to make judgments about how far we can go, how much we can continue to borrow. We borrowed $800 billion for the stimulus package. Now we have a $270 billion stimulus package that is proposed. Since that would not fly as a big package, it is being broken up. We voted to have another $18 billion for a 2-month extension of unemployment insurance, the doctor fix, and some other items. We just borrowed it. We thought when we did the largest expenditure in the history of the Republic, when we borrowed $800 billion for the stimulus package--I thought that was more than we could possibly afford to borrow to try to stimulate ourselves artificially out of this economic slowdown. It worried me. In fact, I supported a plan that I believe would have cost half as much and created more jobs using the studies of the President's adviser on economics, Christina Romer. It would have been more productive than the one Congress did. One of the great tragedies of this whole process is how little stimulus we got out of the $800 billion. As Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize winner, said, it was not a stimulus package. It was not written to create jobs and growth. He predicted it would not create jobs, and he, unfortunately, has turned out to be correct. Senator Coburn and several of us and others opposed this bill because it ought to have been paid for. It should have been paid for out of the stimulus package. Unemployment compensation is certainly one of the items that was in the stimulus package. The doctor fix--what about that? We have to do that, don't we? Yes, we do. We really do. From where should that money come? The failure of compensation to our physicians--please understand--is a result of a law we passed that we now cannot adhere to that if it is in effect would cut physicians' pay for Medicare patients 21 percent. Many physicians are already quitting taking Medicare patients. If this were to pass, we would have very few continuing to take Medicare patients. The whole system would collapse. They are not getting paid enough now. Private insurance pays them much more than the government does. How should we pay the doctors? Don't we have to borrow the money? One of the great flaws in the health care bill was the failure to fix the Medicare doctor payment. That was the crisis always in Medicare. The proposal that passed on a partisan vote in the Senate, the proposal to have a new health care program to raise taxes for Medicare, bringing in more money for Medicare, cut benefits from Medicare. Did they fix the crisis, the doctor payment first, like what had been said had to be done from the beginning? One of the reasons we needed health care reform is because we needed to have a permanent solution to the doctor payments shortfall. Did we use the money for that? No. We took the money and created an entirely new spending program, a new health care program. Our colleagues are proposing that we just borrow the money, the $371 billion it is going to take over 10 years to fix the doctor payments. This is why the American people instinctively understand that we are not in control. We are out of control. We are in denial about how serious our situation is. I think the American people instinctively are right. People say: Oh, the townhall meetings are angry. Some of them are angry. I sense they are just deeply concerned about the country they love, and they have a sense--and it is correct--that we are irresponsibly managing our duties here. As a result, we are saddling them and their children with the largest increase in debt the Nation has ever seen. It has the potential to put a cloud over the long-term growth in our economy. I do believe we are going to get some economic strength from this stimulus package. It is impossible to spend $800 billion and not get some economic growth from it in the short term. In 1 more year it will almost all be spent. I guess before the election we will have a lot of money being spent, and we are going to get some benefit from that, and I hope we will have a long-term positive benefit. The Congressional Budget Office, our group that we ask to analyze spending and score the cost of legislation, analyzed the $800 billion stimulus package and this is what they said. I think it makes sense and I am afraid it is true. For the first 2 or 3 years, we are going to have an economic lift from this flood of money into the economy. But over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the $800 billion in spending will not improve the economy. Their score was that the economy would grow less in 10 years having passed the stimulus package than if we passed nothing--if we didn't spend anything. Why is that? Mr. Elmendorf said the reason is that when you borrow $800 billion, you crowd out borrowing from the private sector, which is where our economic growth is. You take available money that the private sector could have borrowed to run their businesses and factories and the government spends it on pork programs and social programs. This chart shows exactly that. I didn't know that 38 percent of the money that is being saved in this country would be gobbled up by Federal Government borrowing to keep our ship afloat so we can still try to buy our way out of this recession. The experts say recessions are cyclical. If you don't do anything, you will come out of it. We hoped some sort of stimulus package could help us come out of it faster, with less pain, and I was prepared to vote for and I did vote for several packages that would be more job oriented and more targeted to growth. But we didn't pass that kind of bill. We passed a big governmental spending bill. It was predicted not to be growth oriented, it was predicted not to be job creating, and apparently, unfortunately, that has been basically true. So I am hoping we will have some growth for a few years here, but I am confident, and logic tells me, that in the outyears that growth will not be as vigorous as it would otherwise have been because we are going to be carrying an unprecedented amount of debt and we are going to be paying an unprecedented amount of interest every year, and this will crowd out private borrowing and cost the government a stunning amount of interest. That means the government will not be able to do anything to improve the lives of the American people because that money first has to go to pay the interest. I wanted to share that, because there are some people who are saying that those of us who objected to this bill--this small $18 billion debt expansion that passed today--somehow we don't love America and we don't love people in need. We believe and we offered legislation that would have paid for these expenses by taking it from unobligated funds and programs that don't work effectively in our country. So we would have been able to fill this $18 billion need without increasing the debt. But instead of doing that, the majority of the Senate, or Democratic leadership, pushed through legislation that would borrow it. I guess that is the path we are on, to have an $800 billion stimulus, a $270 billion stimulus II, to start a new $2.5 trillion health care bill--with these kinds of bills, more and more spending each year, and more and more debt. But we have got to stop. I know it is hard to say no and hard to make the tough choices, but that is what we have been elected to do. I think we have to get serious about it. I am getting serious about it. I don't intend to continue to vote willy-nilly for these debt- increasing bills. I believe this Congress has got to get serious about our financial future and take some commonsense steps that can lead us into a better future. I thank the Chair, 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, we seem to be muddling along here with short-term extensions and incremental stimulus bills to deal with a failure as this Congress decides what we are going to do about unemployment insurance and physicians' pay and things of that matter that are in the bill. I believe this is an important discussion, I do, and I am worried about where we are. This legislation before us would add another $18.1 billion to the national debt. Just like that, another $18 billion. Oddly, that is almost the same amount of money that was tacked on to the Defense bill last year, and I produced a chart about it and demonstrated what happens when we get into that mode of appropriating, when we forget what our budget is and we treat everything as an emergency and just ignore our budget and spend. The truth is, this cannot continue. Every witness we have had before the Budget Committee--every one-- two-thirds of which are usually called by our Democratic leader, and usually about one-third are Republican witnesses--have all said our spending and our debt is at an unsustainable rate. They didn't say that lightly. What they meant was it is unsustainable. We cannot continue to spend like this and to borrow this amount of money on top of the $800 billion that is now being spent that we appropriated last year--$800 billion. Every penny of that $800 billion is borrowed because we don't have the money. We are already in debt to fund another $800 billion in stimulus, and we will have to, of course, borrow that. I think a lot of people haven't understood that. People tell me, when I am in my State, that they are shocked, stunned, and worried about our spending. They know we are spending too much, but I don't think they know how much we actually are spending and how much we are adding to our debt and that it can threaten the future viability of the American economy for a short-term benefit. I will just remind my colleagues that the history of stimulating an economy with borrowed money has not been too good. If it was, Japan would have a booming economy today. They have been trying this year after year and it has not worked for them. We were told we would have an unemployment rate that would stop at 8 percent if we would just pass this $800 billion and borrow the money and spend it today to stimulate the economy. It sounds so good. It sounds so tempting. But I didn't believe it was an appropriate allocation of that much money, No. 1; and No. 2, that the money we were being asked to spend was going to be spent in ways that would stimulate the economy and create jobs. I cited here before the vote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize winner from the University of Chicago. Mr. Becker said that, in his opinion, the bill fell far short of being the kind of stimulative spending that would create jobs and help this economy bounce back and, therefore, he had to oppose it. Mr. Becker is in his seventies and he was just sharing his experience. He had another person participate with him in the research that led them to that recommendation. Was Mr. Becker proven right or not? The great tragedy--the biggest tragedy with the stimulus package--was what little stimulus we got. If you spend $800 billion, it is breathtaking how much that can be done with it. The Alabama general fund budget for the entire State, including State government and State troopers and all of that is less than $2 billion. But $800 billion? That is huge. So I am worried about what we are doing. At the time the legislation passed--this stimulus package that added so much to our debt--the Congressional Budget Office, whose Director is hired by our Democratic majority, had good people working in that office. They try to do a good job. They have some economists who I think have been successful in years past at predicting things. They said: Yes, if you spend $800 billion in the next 2 to 3 years, you will have an economic benefit during that period, there is no doubt. They didn't predict a lot--not nearly as much as a lot of people said it would do--but they predicted some benefit. But do you know what they said? They said over 10 years that this economic spending, this borrowing to spend, would actually weaken the economy and the total growth over 10 years would be less than if we did not pass the stimulus package at all. It does appear if they were in error, their error was that we did not get as much growth as they predicted in the short run. But when you spend $800 billion, surely you are going to get some benefit--some, economically. But we have not gotten what we need. It was not crafted in that way. It was a bill that said it was going to fix crumbling infrastructure, and what happened? We spent less than 4 percent of this money on bridges and roads. We spent it mostly on social spending, we spent it on State aid, we spent it on a lot of different things. But at least when you build a road you have a highway that is there and it will be there for another 50 or 100 years, making the Nation more productive and efficient. But this other kind of spending has produced so little for us. I express my concern about that. All of this is where we are. The point is simply this. The spending track we are on is unsustainable because in 2008 our total public debt was $5.8 trillion. It is more than that if you consider the gross debt, the internal debt, but this is what is held by private investors from around the world and in the United States--$5.8 trillion. By 2013 it will double to $l1.8 trillion; by 2019 it will be $17.3 trillion, and there is no plan to pay it down. But in 2019, 2020, we are talking about deficits of almost another $1 trillion a year. So we are not even close to moving to a balanced budget, much less paying down this debt. Where does the money come from? As I said, we borrow that. This chart shows what the borrowing costs are. When you borrow money, people pay interest, you pay them interest on the money they give you. They loan you money, you pay them rent on the money. They do not give you money for no good reason. In 2009 we paid $187 billion in interest that 1 year. Remember, Alabama's general fund budget is $2 billion; the Federal highway bill a year or so ago was $40 billion. We spent $187 billion, almost five times the highway bill. But look what happens in 2020 after we spent all this money and run up our debt--$840 billion in interest payments in 1 year. That exceeds the Defense bill, it exceeds any other bill in our budget. It is a stunning number. These are Congressional Budget Office numbers based on the President's budget. Surely something will intervene. We will elect somebody, somewhere--in this Senate, probably--who is going to say no to this because the American people are getting hot about it. Some people are going to be wondering why they are no longer here, if they keep up with this kind of stuff. They say don't worry about this, it is just $18 billion, and after the $800 billion, $18 billion may look small. But let me show you what I demonstrated previously with $18 billion when you cheat, or you add it and bust the budget by one $18 billion expenditure. In 2010 we slipped another $18 billion on the Defense appropriations bill, and added it to the debt. People said don't worry, it is just $18 billion. But it goes into the baseline. It goes into your basic funding of the government. So what happens next year when you say OK, we are not going to spend this $18 billion. They say: You are cutting spending. We cannot do that. You can't cut spending. Besides, we need an increase in spending--inflation was 2 percent. We need at least 2 percent. The State Department got a 30-percent increase in funding this past year. The Environmental Protection Agency got a 30-percent increase in funding. Look at that. What if you do it another year? You come up with another $18 billion. You got around the budget, you declared it an emergency event and you spent another $18 billion. It is not just $18 billion because you have $18 billion in the first baseline, you add another to it and that year it has cost the taxpayers $36 billion. Let's say the next year, 2013, now you are adding $18 billion to $36 billion and it is $54 billion in your baseline. You have another budget gimmick to add $18 billion and you end up with $72 billion that year. This is how we get out of control. And you end up, that $18 billion, when it goes into the baseline and we do not understand how it occurred, increases our spending to a degree that we should not do. So that ends up, if you add it up, to $990 billion from an $18-billion-a- year gimmick, manipulation, violation of the budget. What I want to say is this bill before us today violates the budget. It is for unemployment compensation, it is for other things that are not emergencies. They are part of our governmental operation that needs to be paid for. Luckily, we have some money to pay for it. We have it in an unspent stimulus package. We have some opportunities that our Democratic colleagues have said they could take money from in the past. If we put all those together we could pay for this, fund this bill without having to borrow it all. I am at a point where I am not inclined to go along with this anymore. I think the American people are of the same mind. What we have to do is we have to lead and we have to be responsible like our Governors. They are having to face challenges. Our mayors are having to face challenges. They are making tough decisions. But not us. We spend more, not less. We are spending more. I believe we have done enough. We have gone beyond what is logical and reasonable. We are in the realm of reckless and dangerous and it is time for us to begin having a national discussion in this country and in this Congress about how much we can borrow to spend today to make our life better today and then shift that debt to the future. The reason CBO said that the $800 billion would not advance the economy over 10 years, it actually would hurt the economy over 10 years, is that you crowd out investment. If the government borrows $800 billion, it is not available for private people who need to go out and borrow money. It has already been loaned to the government. It crowds out, the economists said, private borrowing. Also, we have an interest on it that we have to carry and pay every year that is a burden on every generation. Every young person after us will carry that interest burden. It hurts them and makes them less able to prosper and to have economic growth. So it is a moral question: How much can we afford to benefit ourselves this very day and shift it to our children and to what extent do we need to be responsible? I think it is time to get responsible, so reluctantly I feel an obligation to vote no to this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Brannon Woodham was one of the finest people I have ever known. He combined a deep and mature Christian faith, a love of family that constantly showed itself in his conversations and actions, a rich appreciation of the exceptional nature of his country which he had faithfully served for so many years, and a loyalty to his friends and church. We were in the same Sunday School class for over 30 years. Ever positive and welcoming, he was one of the constants--a rock really-- that set the class's tone and direction. This fellowship and spiritual journey meant much to him and enriched his classmates. That on this day Brannon would want no pomp and circumstance, there can be no doubt. But, if it were done, he would say better it be done quickly, and, importantly, honestly because he was indeed an honest man. In fact, I think he would want me to express his love to all of you and to note--what we already know--that if his honesty had offended anyone, he would ask pardon, shaking his head ruefully saying he couldn't help it, that was just the way he was made. In Sunday School class, he was a wise and perceptive participant. He had great spiritual depth, Scriptural knowledge, and mature beliefs. He did not speak too often but when he had something to say, he said it-- in plain words. Often his wit brought a burst of laughter--usually because he had hit the nail on the head. As Jesus might say, ``You are close to the kingdom, brother.'' Importantly, those beliefs that he stated, he lived. Mary and I were honored to be among his friends and were always pleased to have his invitation to his home in the woods when he hosted his storied church supper club. That was a special time of food and fellowship, on his bridge, getting a tour of his workshop--to be at ``his place,'' which he had shared with his beloved Ursula, his partner for 48 years, and to have a direct look into the heart of a great man who lived a good life. Mary and I often enjoyed lunch with Brannon after church at the Whistle Stop or some such place. In those conversations, his principles shone through and he would talk with pride and joy of his children, grandchildren, the baseball games, going to Auburn, working together. They had a unique bond. Brannon believed in honesty and hard work--the Protestant ethic, if you will, for which he made no apology. Politically, he was not a party man, following, I suppose, the best traditions of good civil servants. But he was an encourager to me. He wanted me to be a ``statesman,'' not a politician. I would indeed feel very badly if I had failed him in this regard. You may not know that he was an excellent writer. He wrote me many handwritten letters--long ones--that I cherish. They were filled with wisdom, good values, sound policy ideas, and what he was hearing from the community. A year or so ago, he gave me a copy of a plan he helped write some 40 years ago as part of a committee for the development of Mobile. He was proud of their work, and indeed their concepts and vision are still valid today. His accomplishments are many. One of his most important was the critical role he played in the 'growth and character of Ashland Place United Methodist Church for four decades. As a Southeastern Conference champion wrestler at Auburn, he demonstrated courage, strength, and discipline. There are just two in the ring and only one winner. He was a consistent winner. I have come to understand the importance of our top civilian personnel at our military bases. Generals come and go but able civilians keep the bases running. Our civilian leaders are crucial to our military's success, and they are promoted on merit and on performance. At Robbins Air Force Base, Brannon led the avionics section that consisted of some 2,300 personnel. A place where errors are not allowed. I visited him in the hospital, not long after his heart surgery. I thought he looked good, and he felt confident. But Brannon was no Polyanna. He was a realist. His words and manner conveyed that he well knew that he had had serious surgery, that nothing was guaranteed, and in the scheme of things life is short--``but a vapor'' the Scripture says. Daughter Ursula says later on during his final illness, and as he weakened, he knew the end was near and he was at peace. Of that I have no doubt. See, he knew he had had a good life of family and friends. He had done his best to be true. He was confident in his salvation. He felt blessed. And right he was. So we celebrate honestly this remarkable and good man: a champion and fearless wrestler; a great leader at one of our Nation's military bases; a pillar of his church; a faithful and loving husband; an example to all in love of family; a man of principles and conviction; a man of courage, honesty, and honor; but humble, encouraging, and loving. His values represent the highest and best of our faith, and of our Nation. His family has received a great legacy--which to their credit they fully recognize--and we, his friends, a true lesson in how to live a ``good'' life. Well done, good friend.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate the leadership Senator Coburn has shown. We need to focus on the seriousness of the issue and all that is at stake--why it is important and how it can be done. It's not impossible to pay for this bill and provide these benefits without adding to the debt of the country by containing other spending. There is no reason we can't do this. I thought last night we had reached an agreement that would actually have achieved that, but we were not able to. Let me briefly restate the posture we are in. Senator Grassley offered an amendment a few days ago to extend unemployment insurance for 30 days. It also would include a doctors payment so they don't get cut for their Medicare work; COBRA benefits, FMAP benefits, and other things. He offered that measure, but our Democratic colleagues blocked it. Now, the amendment was paid for. He had an offset, which was I think mostly unspent stimulus money that still remains available to us to spend on this kind of activity. Then yesterday Senator McConnell reintroduced it. He sought to have the Grassley amendment come up for a vote that would have extended unemployment insurance and would have paid for it. That was voted down by our Democratic colleagues. What I first wish to say to my colleagues who have been so vigorous-- almost excessively so--in attacking the Republican side for not dealing with this issue is that we have offered two proposals to do so and they have been blocked. So it is not fair to say Republicans don't want to do unemployment insurance. It is not fair to say that. To do it in an attacking fashion, and to attack those of us who are simply saying let's pay for it, as if we don't care about people who are unemployed, is offensive to me and I object. I know what the deal is. Last night I thought we could reach an agreement on this but it fell apart. The Democratic leadership and Senator Reid decided they will let it lapse, and then they will attack and blame Republicans for it. I just do not think that is fair. Let's get back to the critical issues that are at stake. Senator Chambliss mentioned that according to the Washington Times today, the Congressional Budget Office--the group we employ to help us understand these issues--says the publicly held debt of the United States will reach 90 percent of the gross domestic product by 2020. Why is that significant? First of all, it is above what Europe expects. They will not allow a country to enter the European Union if it has debt exceeding 60 percent of GDP. More importantly, the Budget Committee had a professor testify from the University of Maryland who has written a book on this subject testify. She was asked by the Democratic chairman to provide expertise to the Budget Committee a couple of weeks ago. What she said is that when your debt reaches 90 percent of GDP, it impacts economic growth adversely. She said that with debt at 90 percent of GDP, the growth of our economy will be reduced by at least 1 percent. That is not a small amount. As we know, 2-percent growth is not a bad thing to have. If you get 3 or 4 percent of GDP growth, you are moving along at a pretty good pace. In a mature economy you almost never get growth exceeding 3 or 4 percent of GDP on a sustained basis. If you are losing 1 percent of your growth, it could be 50 percent or 30 percent of the entire national growth that is being eliminated, pulled down. Why? Because we excessively spending money today, putting our debt off on our children and grandchildren into the future. That is going to make them less able to have a robust economy than they otherwise would have. People will pay. Nothing is created from nothing, as Julie Andrews taught us in that great song. Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. Somebody is going to pay for this. We are enjoying and celebrating today by spending money that is not ours. We do not have it in our bank account. We are having to go out and borrow. That is the problem that I believe is of great importance. Get this, it has also been reported in the press that Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company--I say to Senator LeMieux--can borrow money cheaper than the U.S. Government. The insurance, for those who want to insure the money they loan to the government in case the U.S. Government does not pay it back, has tripled. Our annual deficit, as a percentage of GDP, is about 9.9 percent. The Greeks are in great trouble. Theirs is 12.9 percent of their economy. We are moving too close to that level. Remember, there are people who, when they buy a U.S. Treasury bond, insure themselves against the U.S. Treasury's failure to pay. They are paying three times today what they were paying just a few years ago because the U.S. Government's debt is not sound. Moody's, the company that rates the debt, continues to suggest they may downgrade our debt. This is because we are borrowing too much. It is time for us to put a stop to this and bring it under control. We have offered several amendments that would fix the unemployment insurance and pay for it. Last night, a series of offsets were provided--offsets being things you could do to get the money out of current resources and expenditures instead of borrowing it. Also, it is well known that all the money has not been expended in the $800 billion stimulus plan. A lot of that money is not spent. The stimulus bill, when we passed it, was supposed to do a number of things. One was to deal with our crumbling bridges, our infrastructure, and one was unemployment insurance. That money has not been spent. Why don't we use it? If you don't use it, it allows that unspent money in the stimulus pot to be used as a slush fund to finance whatever other idea on which our leadership desires to spend it. That is what it is. Why won't we use it? Because they still want to use it on other things they have in their minds, of which I have not been fully informed. I will say that I have a lot of county commissioners--and I assume the Senator from Florida has also--talking about roads and highways. I have to tell them how heartbroken I am that the stimulus legislation, which spent an incredible amount of money--$800 billion--only spent 3 or 4 percent on highways and bridges. They are not feeling any growth of a significant nature in their infrastructure improvements. The advantages of money being spent on infrastructure are twofold. It absolutely creates a certain number of jobs. Perhaps not a huge number, but a certain number of jobs are absolutely created to do the construction work, to replace a bridge, to pave a road, or to fix a water sewer system. Those are real jobs. But, more important, when you do that, you have accomplished something. You have obtained a tangible asset that benefits the people in that community and makes that community more productive. It also helps make our Nation more competitive because we have either built new infrastructure we needed or restored infrastructure we were going to have to restore anyway to keep up our productivity. Having so little of the money in the stimulus package go to that sort of thing is one reason we have not seen growth in jobs. It is particularly disheartening to me to think of how little permanent benefit we have gotten from the bill. I see my colleague from Florida, Senator LeMieux, is here. One of the things he and I have talked about a lot--and I think it has been a bit of a shock to him since he has been here--is the extent to which our Nation is increasing our debt. I know he deeply, as a citizen legislator, cares about this situation. In his conversations with me, he has shared with me that is what he thinks is the biggest threat to our country. I know he wants to do everything he can to help us right this ship that is going in the wrong direction. I am pleased to yield the floor at this time to Senator LeMieux.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, President Obama made a promise to the American people that health care legislation would not provide benefits to those illegally in the country.

Mr. SESSIONS. I would call up my amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SESSIONS. I would note that loopholes do remain in the health care legislation. My amendment would simply ensure that the promise that has been made to the American people would be kept. It sets up an effective eligibility verification system consistent with that for other Federal health-related programs. The amendment maintains current law, which prohibits legal immigrants from becoming a public charge on the taxpayers. It also prohibits the Secretary from drafting any regulation that would amend or alter these principles, principles that the President, the Congress, and the American people have said they support. The amendment would reduce fraud and the financial burden of the legislation on the American taxpayers. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her concerns about this matter. I am not a member of the committee and am not personally familiar with the nomination. But I know it is controversial with some Members on our side. I think as to the question of why, it is because we agree with the Senator that the nomination is to an important position, and there is concern about whether this is the right person for it. Therefore, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I understand. I am proud of the commitment the Senator from Oklahoma has made and totally recognize it.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate so much Senator Coburn's leadership on this very important matter. I think we are at a defining moment. I take offense for those who say we have no interest in extending unemployment insurance. My State has high unemployment. We were doing very well, and it has doubled now from where we were in unemployment. My home area is one of the worst in the State. I am well aware of that. Members of the Senate on this side of the aisle strongly favor extending unemployment insurance and actually extending other benefits, too, such as the doctors fix that we need to do, the COBRA and FMAP and matters of that kind which are in the legislation and we believe should be passed into law. There is just one thing that I would raise, and that is that we want it to be in a way that does not increase, again, the debt because here we go again. Our colleagues passed an amendment, passed the pay-go law a few weeks ago, and within a few days they were violating it. This violates it again. What we need to ask ourselves, then, is how we are going to help people who are in need. Are we going to do it in a responsible way or will we take the easy way out, pass the debt on to our children and grandchildren without the least concern, it seems, about how we are going to pay for it? My colleague just recently said we should call it an emergency. Unemployment insurance is fundamentally one of our established government programs, he said, because that allows us to provide this benefit without an offset. That is precisely what the deal is, you understand. He was quite honest about it. We do not have to pay for it; we don't have to look for money; we don't have to cut waste, fraud, and abuse; we don't have to reach into the stimulus bill that we passed, which was announced to be for unemployment insurance as one of its primary motives and use that money that is unspent--and $100 billion or $200 billion still remains unspent. Why don't we use that money? It would not then increase the debt larger than we now have. We proposed a number of other offsets, offsets that our Democratic colleagues have utilized in legislation they have offered. We have suggested to our colleagues, what other containment of spending would you propose, and we would be willing to consider if you would use that to pay for this. But the day of just continuing to increase our debt is passed. This Senate needs to face the truth, and the truth is we will double the entire debt of the United States in 5 years, ending 2013. We will triple the entire debt of the United States in 2019. In 2019 the interest on the debt that we will be paying in that 1 year will be $800 billion. Just last year the interest on the total debt of the United States was $170 billion. We cannot continue this. Every economist who has ever testified before our Budget Committee has said repeatedly this is unsustainable. When do we stop if it is unsustainable? Members of our Senate say it is unsustainable, on both sides of the aisle. When do we stop? Senator Coburn had the courage to say: Now, we can pay for this. We have moneys unspent that we can use to pay for the extension of unemployment insurance, and we will not agree that we will just add more to our debt. I have in my pocket, I just happened to notice, pictures of three of my grandchildren. I have had three--one born in November, one born 2 weeks ago, one born Sunday. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that they are going to have to pay off. It is an addiction and a habit that we must break. This is $9 billion added to the debt. I hope and pray this courage by Senator Coburn that calls us to account and says let's face the music and let's be honest with ourselves is respected, as I respect it. I think the American people respect it. When I am out talking in my townhall meetings and in my communities and in the airplanes, they tell me: You guys are spending recklessly. We can't believe it. What has happened? The American people understand we cannot do this. There is no free lunch. Nothing comes from nothing. Somebody pays, and we cannot just spend and take the easy way every time without facing the consequences of a debt that we create. When we spend more than we take in, we borrow the money. We borrow it on the open market and we pay interest on the debt. I want to say my Democratic colleagues are at it again, spending more and not paying for it. Have the Republicans failed in their responsibility when they had the Presidency and a majority in the Senate? Yes, we should have done much better. But we have never seen the deficits we are seeing today--never, ever. President Bush had a record deficit of $450 billion his last year in office. This year, ending September 30, it was $1.4 trillion--$1,400 billion--three times. This year, when September 30 arrives, our budget experts tell us our annual deficit for this 1 year will be $1.5 trillion, and we will average $1 trillion a year for the years to come, more than twice the highest deficit we have ever had. We cannot do that. This is serious business. I hope and pray the stimulus package will give us some benefit. I know it will. When we spend $800 billion, every penny of it is borrowed, to be paid back someday, or the interest paid back by our children or grandchildren. This stimulus package, hopefully, will give us some lift, but we will carry the debt. Do you know what the Congressional Budget Office told us when they analyzed the $800 billion stimulus package? They said: Yes, it will provide a benefit for a few years. You will get a lift in the economy. But over 10 years, just over 10 years, it will have a net negative to the economy, a slight negative because you have to carry this debt, and it is crowding out private sector borrowing because the government borrowed it first. The government has to pay interest to all these people around the world who loan us this money. There is no easy way out of this. It is time for us to be mature and grown up and make good decisions. It is time to say no to this legislation unless it is paid for, and we can pay for it. There are plenty of places in our budget it can be paid for. I thank colleagues for allowing me to share these thoughts. I thank Senator Coburn for raising this important issue, for his courage in saying it is time to do better. We can do better. We can do this in the right way. We came close tonight to getting it done, I thought, in a paid-for way--so close. If we stand in there, maybe in a week or 2 we will be able to take care of the unemployment insurance and pay for it in a sound way. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, today I pay tribute to William (Bill) Satterfield, counsel for Balch & Bingham LLP in Birmingham, AL. Prior to his position at Balch and Bingham, Bill served as the general counsel of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and as the Associate and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior in Washington, DC. Bill has extensive experience with environmental, natural resources, energy, and public utility law on both the Federal and State levels and has been fighting the good fight for the State of Alabama on a myriad of environmental issues for over three decades. He has used his knowledge of the laws, regulations, and political climate to provide direction on environmental and natural resource issues to individuals, small businesses, and large corporations in Alabama. In a big part of this work, he has been a great advocate for port and waterways issues in Alabama, serving as counsel to Alabama-Tombigbee Rivers Coalition. This organization is made up of 34 members and composed of business, trade associations, and state agencies in Alabama and Mississippi, and it led the charge to challenge the Fish and Wildlife's proposed listing of the Alabama sturgeon as an endangered species. He is also the secretary and counsel of the National Waterways Conference, which focuses on commonsense water resources policies that maximize the economic and environmental value of our inland, coastal and Great Lakes waterways. During his tenure as legal counsel for the National Waterways Conference, a volunteer position, he invested countless hours to ensure that the constitution and bylaws of the organization were preserved to ensure the ongoing integrity of the National Waterways Conference as the only water resources association representing the full spectrum of water resources stakeholders, and thanks to his tireless efforts, the National Waterways Conference continues to prevail as our Nation's leading multifaceted water resource organization. The National Waterways Conference, which was founded in 1960, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and bestowed on Bill Satterfield the title of Counsel Emeritus of the National Waterways Conference on March 9, 2010. Through his work with the National Waterways Conference, he embodied the spirit of our nation's frontiersmen on many occasions. In the ceremony naming him counsel emeritus, he was presented a bronze statue with the following quote: This bronze statue of ``The Trooper on the Plains'' by Frederic Remington is symbolic of the attributes Satterfield exhibited in every situation he encountered throughout his career: Bravery, quick action, strength, courage, and endurance. With a yank of the reins, the rider in this statue is galloping full speed ahead through dangerous territory with a pistol pointed across his torso. The feet of his horse, in this scene, never touch the ground, as he is always moving. He charges towards the enemy camp, fearless and undaunted, with great courage and resolution. His one goal: Achieve the aims set forth by his commanding officer, and win ultimate victory for his army. Colonel Bill Satterfield is a true ``Trooper of the Plains.'' Bill is a great lawyer, a proven professional, a superb public servant, a man of high principle who understands and loves this great Republic which we serve and a good friend. I extend my heartiest congratulations upon his receipt of this special and most deserved honor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to express my appreciation to Senator McCaskill, who is a person of courage and conviction and made a decision that we need to do better in our country about spending. As she said, is a simple truth. Our amendment is a small but significant step. It is a statement that we are going to take some action that will have some benefit in containing the growth, not requiring cuts but containing the growth of spending in our country. Unfortunately, as we have gotten so close to having it passed, now an organized effort appears to be underway to try to see if they can pull back a growing number of votes that have been cast for it. We started out with 56 votes, then went to 59 votes. Every Republican and 18 Democrats voted for it. We just need one more vote and we will be able to take this significant step of having a statutory cap on spending. The level of spending we are limiting it to is the level in the Democratic budget that passed this year. The amount is not anything other than what the budget already calls for that was passed by a Democratic majority. It is the kind of numbers we probably could do better on and we probably could and should cut some programs. Regardless, what we are saying is, one of our big problems is we do not stick to whatever budget we have. We constantly violate the budget. Republicans have done this too. The debt now is spiraling out of control to a degree we have never ever seen in the history of our country. It is not responsible, and we have to stop it. I say this about my colleague from Arkansas--we were celebrating a bipartisan effort just last night when he and I and others worked on balancing the crack and powder cocaine penalties so they are more fair and more realistic. That was a good bipartisan step. I think we are on the way to a bipartisan bill. I am disappointed we now have what can only be referred to as a cover amendment that does not have the teeth or the strength of the amendment we have offered. It provides an opportunity for people to vote for it and say they have voted to contain spending: I was all for it; I didn't vote on the McCaskill-Sessions amendment, but I voted on this other amendment, and it is just as good. It is not just as good, and it does not have as much ability to contain spending. It does not. It should not be substituted. The American people are frustrated with us. The polling numbers for Congress are perhaps as low as we have ever seen in this country. One of the reasons is, they are tired of us manipulating and maneuvering to try to make ourselves look good and the interest of the country takes the hindmost. People are tired of that and in my view they are correct. Some of our colleagues say that is populist; they are just angry; they will go away. Americans have a right to be concerned about what we are doing and how these activities are occurring on the floor of the Senate. The Democratic leadership obviously decided this amendment might be in a position to pass. They didn't want it to pass. They conjured up what we call a cover amendment. It should not be what we adopt. I note the caps are higher in this amendment than the budget resolution passed by Congress--the Democratic budget resolution just last year. It would allow about $38 billion more in nondefense spending over 3 years than what was in our fiscal year 2010 budget resolution. The side by side, the cover amendment, does not follow the President's proposal to freeze nondefense discretionary spending for 3 years. It waives the fiscal 2012 and 2013 caps. It has only a 51-vote threshold. I wish we could have talked some more about what Senator McCaskill and I have offered. Maybe we could have made some changes to the plan we have. Frankly, this will be the third time we made changes in the legislation to try to assuage concerns Members had that we thought were legitimate and worthy of putting in the bill. I would have liked to have made those changes. The American people are unhappy about this situation. I know polling numbers are not supposed to be the end all in Congress, but we ought to understand we work for our constituents; they do not work for us. That is what I am hearing out there: You work for me, Sessions, and I am concerned about what you are doing up there. We want a better response from you guys. This is a CNN opinion poll: Which of the following comes closer to your view of the budget deficit--the government should run a deficit if necessary when the country is in a recession and at war, or the government should balance the budget even when the country is in a recession and is at war? That is a pretty hard question. I think some people who are very frugal might worry about how to answer that question. But look at the numbers: 67 percent, two-thirds, of the American people said balance the budget. Only 30 percent said run a deficit. I tell you, the American people have it right. The threat to our economy in the long run is one thing: debt--irresponsible, reckless, unsustainable growth in debt. If we would get that under control, the great American entrepreneurial spirit, the work ethic of our people, the exceptional capabilities of our business leaders will allow us to compete with anybody. But if we tax and spend ourselves into debt, we are threatening our future. How big a threat is it? Look at these numbers. This is the debt. In 2008, it was $5.8 trillion. Since the beginning of the American Republic, we had accumulated $5.8 trillion in debt. It was projected by CBO that in 2013, it will be $11.8 trillion. In a little over 3 years, we will be doubling the total American public debt. Finally, by 2019, based on the budget we are operating in today and the laws that are on the books today, it will triple to $17.3 trillion. Consider the interest on that debt--we have to borrow the money. Does anybody understand that? We borrow the money. We are borrowing it on the world market. Interest rates are sure to surge in the years to come. Right now, with the economy shaky, people are willing to buy government bonds, even if they pay low rates. We are getting a bargain on interest rates right now. But this debt isn't going to be a bargain in the future--not a bargain for the good of the country. This chart shows the interest that will be paid. In 2009, last year, we paid $187 billion in interest. In 2020, according to the President's budget analysis that he submitted, it will be $840 billion--$840 billion in interest in 1 year. The Federal highway bill is $40 billion a year. Does that give us some perspective? It is bigger than the defense budget. These are stunning numbers. That is why every economist, Republicans and Democrats, the Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution, former CBO Directors and OMB Directors of both parties all say repeatedly we are on an unsustainable course. The deficits continue to surge in the outyears. They are not coming down. People say: When are we going to pay it back? We are not paying it back. In these years, in the outyears, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, they are projecting steady but lower growth--but growth every year, no recessions. The deficits are going to be about $1 trillion a year. They are not going down. We are still going into debt $1 trillion a year. I guess what I am saying is, what we need to do is focus on discretionary accounts, and this amendment is it. Some say only the mandatory, only the entitlements count. That is not so. As of this moment, this year, every penny of the surging debt--and this year's deficit will be $1.5 trillion--every penny of that debt will be the result of spending in the discretionary accounts, not Social Security and not Medicare. Some say: Oh, that can't be so. Social Security and Medicare together are now still in net surplus. We take the money, that surplus, and we spend it and we give a bond back to Social Security and Medicare. I guess what I am saying is, don't think the discretionary problem is not a big part of the problem. It is the problem today. In the future, it will be an actuarial challenge of monumental proportions because the expenses of Medicare and Social Security are going up and the revenue is going down and we are going to be in serious trouble. We need to deal with this now. I thank my colleagues for the opportunity to share these remarks. I urge my colleagues to take a good vote. Vote for the Sessions-McCaskill amendment and oppose the Pryor amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to briefly comment about the Pryor amendment that has been offered as an alternate, a side-by-side, or cover amendment to the Sessions-McCaskill amendment that would take the budget limits that were passed by this Congress and make those more difficult to violate by creating a two-thirds vote for it. I would say a couple of things about the Pryor amendment. It is not good and we should not vote for it. It pretends to have good motives, and maybe it does have good motives. But in fact it would allow $62 billion more in spending over 3 years than the McCaskill- Sessions amendment. It would instruct the deficit commission to propose tax increases and entitlement cuts to pay for increases in discretionary spending. The deficit commission was not meant for raising taxes and cutting entitlements to pay for new discretionary spending increases. The whole purpose of that was to figure out a way to deal with the surging entitlements that are growing out of control and to contain their growth. How are we going to do that? We are going to do it two ways, primarily. I suppose they will propose some sort of tax increases, increase in Social Security withholding or increase in Medicare withholding, and they will cut Medicare and Social Security benefits. That is what real life is. But this would instruct the commission to cut entitlement benefits, Medicare, and Social Security, to increase taxes, and use it to fund more discretionary spending. That is not good. People should not vote for an amendment that would do that. We are going to have to wrestle with the entitlement commission. It does not have binding authority, it is a recommendation to us, and maybe they will have some recommendations we can all support. But it is not going to be fun. It is not going to be easy. There is no free lunch. Nothing comes from nothing. Somebody must pay to fix the entitlements. They are at the present time in surplus and the surplus they are producing from the revenue from Social Security withholding and Medicare withholding is being spent for discretionary spending. So to raise their income for those accounts and to cut spending in those accounts to allow even more spending on the discretionary side I think would be very unwise. Perhaps that is not what was intended but that is what appears to me to be pretty plainly what is going on in this amendment. Second, the Republican counsel on the Budget Committee has advised that the amendment would not only abandon the two-thirds requirement that Senator McCaskill and I are proposing to violate the budget, but it actually would eliminate the point of order that currently requires 60 votes to violate the budget. Currently, if somebody proposes a spending amount that violates the budget, any Senator can object and it would take 60 votes to waive the budget to allow this extra spending to occur. The way we are reading this amendment is that it would dramatically weaken the existing law and eliminate this point of order that would even require 60 votes. That has not proven to be a very effective tool. The two-thirds vote would be better. I thank my colleagues for the opportunity to share these remarks and urge my colleagues to resist the Democratic leadership's injunctions and pressures to vote against the Sessions-McCaskill amendment. I know 18 Democrats have already voted for it. It is a bipartisan bill. We worked at it together in a good way. It has the ability to take a significant, though not dramatic, but a solid step in the right direction. I am disappointed we are now proposing an alternative amendment that will not be as effective and that the leadership on the Democratic side is opposing. If Senator Reid and Senator Durbin said: Fine, you can vote for this if you like or: We are going to vote for it, do what you want, Senator, it would pass like that. But it is their leadership decision that has put us in a difficult position and makes it more difficult for us to get 60 votes. I hope we can, but it may not occur. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SESSIONS. I say to Senator Kyl, you have worked on this issue for many years. You are one of the Senate's leaders, the assistant Republican leader, and a leader in the Finance Committee. Isn't it true we have known for some time that we are losing doctors who are declining to do Medicare work and that if we do not take action, they will have a dramatic 20-plus percent cut in their pay? Every year we have known that cannot happen, so we have found the money to put back into it. One of the announced purposes for the President's health care reform was to fix this problem. First, I understand from your conversation with Senator Alexander that this problem has not been fixed in the bill at all. Then of course, when you figure out how much the bill costs, it does not reflect that we need, under the new estimates, $300 billion more. So if they are claiming the bill is going to create a surplus of $130 billion, you would have a $200 billion or so deficit on the doctor fix alone; is that correct?

Mr. SESSIONS. I have one more question of the distinguished Senator.