Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I, too, would like to share my concerns in opposition to Mr. Bernanke's reappointment, and I think my colleague, Senator DeMint, summed it up pretty well. One of the debates has been, did the Central Bank, which is not a free market activity, fail--or did as people say the market fail. I agree with him. I do not believe it is exactly correct to say that. The Fed dabbles in the market in an attempt to manipulate the market. One of the debates has been that Mr. Bernanke allowed the interest rates in 2002 through 2005 to remain too low, which caused the bubble and which caused the burst and put us in this fix. The complaint has been that he violated the Taylor rule, which is the rule that would advise how interest rates should be set by the Central Bank. He made a speech in early January of this year that I think was defensive and went to some length to say he did not violate the Taylor rule and that low-interest rates did not cause the bubble. So it is one thing to make a mistake; it is another thing to make a mistake and refuse to acknowledge the mistake. I will just say as background, the Wall Street Journal said the minutes of the Fed Board meetings prior to his becoming Chairman, when he was merely a member of the Board, indicate he was the advocate for lower interest rates and actually warned of deflation during this period which was wrong. Mr. Taylor responded in the Wall Street Journal. I will just quote what he said: This rule--[the Taylor Rule] calls for central banks to increase interest rates by a certain amount when price inflation rises and to decrease interest rates by a certain amount when the economy goes into a recession. My critique, which I presented at the annual Jackson Hole conference for central bankers in the summer of 2007 is based on the simple observation that the Fed's target for the federal-funds interest rate was well below what the Taylor rule would call for in 2002-2005. Mr. Taylor is the author of it. He warned of it in the summer of 2007. Mr. Bernanke is insisting, just a few weeks before this, that he did not violate the rule. A little later, Mr. Taylor goes on to say: In his speech [on January 3], Mr. Bernanke's main response to this critique was to propose alternatives to the standard Taylor rule--and then to use the alternatives to rationalize-- I would say to justify-- the Fed's policy in 2002-2005. Mr. Taylor goes on to say: In one alternative, which addresses what he describes as his ``most significant concern regarding the use of the standard Taylor rule,'' he puts the Fed's forecasts of future inflation into the Taylor rule rather than actual measured inflation. Because the Fed's inflation forecasts were lower than current inflation during this period, this alternative obviously gives a lower target interest rate and seems to justify the Fed's decisions at the time. So Mr. Bernanke is saying they took his rule and they altered it. They did not use as the factor actual interest rates but what they predicted interest rates to be, and, of course, their prediction was wrong. Mr. Taylor goes on to say: There are other questionable points. Mr. Bernanke's speech raises doubts about the Taylor rule by showing that another version of the rule would have called for very high interest rates in the first few months of 2008 [after the bubble burst]. But using the standard Taylor rule, with the GDP price index as the measure of inflation, interest rates would not be so high-- As Mr. Bernanke was suggesting-- as I testified at the House Financial Services Committee in February 2008. That is Mr. Taylor's view. Mr. Taylor goes on to say: Mr. Bernanke also said that international evidence does not show a statistically significant relationship between policy deviations from the Taylor rule and housing booms. Mr. Bernanke is defending himself still. He said international studies do not show that our deviation from the Taylor rule had anything to do with this mess. But Mr. Taylor responds this way: But his speech does not mention that research at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in March 2008 did find a statistically significant relationship. Mr. Taylor goes on to say: Mr. Bernanke claimed that ``Economists who have investigated the issue have generally found that, based on historical relationships, only a small portion of the increase in house prices earlier this decade can be attributed to the stance of . . . monetary policy.'' He is talking about the Fed policy, that they did not have anything to do with the increase in housing prices. Mr. Taylor calls Mr. Bernanke's hand. Mr. Bernanke was not right in that statement. Mr. Taylor says this: But two of the economists he cites--Frank Smets, director of research at the European Central Bank, and his colleague Marek Jarocinski reported in the July/August issue of the St. Louis Fed Review-- That is the Federal Reserve publication in St. Louis-- They found-- evidence that monetary policy has significant effects on housing investment and house prices and that easy monetary policy designed to stave off perceived risks of deflation in 2002-2004 has contributed to the boom in the housing market in 2004 and 2005. Mr. Bernanke is saying economists around the world do not agree, and that is not accurate. As a matter of fact, they found just the opposite. So remember, the Wall Street Journal said he was the easy money advocate at the Fed. Mr. Greenspan may have been Chairman, but during the early part of the decade, Mr. Bernanke was advocating these low interest rate policies; and they were wrong, and they did lead to a boom--at least it was a significant factor in the boom, and Mr. Bernanke is not acknowledging that. I do not appreciate it. I also am very disappointed he supported President Obama's form of a stimulus package, saying: The incoming administration and the Congress are currently discussing a substantial fiscal package that, if enacted, could provide a significant boost to economic activity. However, according to a CNN poll released just yesterday, 74 percent of Americans believe at least half of the stimulus package was wasted, and 63 percent believe the projects in the plan were included for purely political reasons and will have no economic benefit. I will just say that this stimulus package--$800 billion, every penny of it going to our deficit and increasing our debt--could only be justified if it was the most carefully crafted package that created jobs, but it was not. I knew it at the time, and so did many others, that this was not a jobs-creating package. It was a political package put together by the President. It rewarded a lot of his supporters, but it was not the kind of jobs package we desperately needed. But Mr. Bernanke supported it, and now we have $800 billion added to our debt and very little job creation. So, Mr. President, I will yield the floor and just conclude by saying that I do not think this should be rewarded. I know a lot of people are worried that somebody else might be worse. But I have not seen from him the kind of gravitas, the kind of stability of leadership, the kind of consistent message to the American people about the severe plight we are in and about his plan to get us out of it. Isn't that what he should be doing? Shouldn't we know what he, hopefully working with the President, would do to get us out of this mess? I have not seen it and, therefore, I do not believe we have any burden of maintaining him. In fact, I think this supports the argument that he should not be maintained. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to share a few comments on the Sessions-McCaskill discretionary caps amendment that would limit spending to the budget items and budget levels we passed. Before doing so, I would like to say I was disappointed last night that the President and my good friend and very effective leader of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, have politicized a very important decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Justices didn't take an oath not to reverse bad precedent. They swore an oath of fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, and the first amendment guarantees the right of free speech. For over a decade, I warned against this, and others warned this legislation we were passing violated the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In fact, one of the supporters of the amendment, Senator Feingold, at one point offered a constitutional amendment to amend the first amendment because he recognized this campaign restriction on spending during an election cycle ran afoul of the Constitution, but at some point they decided to go forward with it. I would say two things about it. How it happened was this: During oral arguments on the showing as to whether a corporation which had produced a film about one of the Presidential candidates could show that film before an election and which was being blocked by the court-- where they said you can't show a film about an election candidate, and they objected, saying: This is free speech--the Supreme Court asked this question during oral argument to the government's lawyer who was defending the statute we unwisely passed, and the question was: Well, Counsel, what if a company produced a book and wanted to publish a book, would this statute prohibit that? What was the answer? Yes. Well, the Supreme Court said: Wait a minute. This is a serious thing. So you--Congress--passed a law that prohibits a group of American citizens from publishing a book that might have something to do with an election? This is a big deal. We have laws that protect pornography and all kinds of things, but the first amendment was written for free political speech. Anyway, I don't want to go into it today, I have talked a lot about it before, but I wanted to push back a little. I am very disappointed because my colleague and the President are attempting to politicize a very significant first amendment issue that we knew existed when this bill was passed. The New York Times, which supported it, was a corporation. They can write editorials on the day of an election. But if the Ford Motor Company gets tired of GM getting billions and billions of dollars from the Federal Government, can they not run an ad and say: Don't do this. Anyway, we will be voting soon on a very important piece of legislation, and so I am pleased to be working with Senator Claire McCaskill, my Democratic colleague from Missouri, to say we need to do better about spending, and we do. What happens in this body is, we too often find ways to get around the budgets we pass. Last year, we passed a budget that I thought spent too much, but it passed and it is our budget and it calls for spending over the next 5 years to have around 1 to 2 percent growth. But, historically, we have been violating that. Historically, we find this gimmick, this way to go above that. It is going above that, and I can demonstrate how baseline increases in spending compound themselves over the years and get us into serious financial trouble. What we need to do is stay with our budget. We need to have an option to go outside the budget or above the budget in case of an emergency--there is no doubt about that--but we have too often been able to get around the budget through manipulation and through emergency spending designations. Our bill has a number of Democratic Senators who are supporting it, and I think most Republicans will support it. I think we have an opportunity to pass it, and it would provide some integrity to our process. The American people aren't trusting us. I think they are right not to trust us and I am prepared to debate that. I can show they have a right not to trust the budget numbers we put out because we don't stick with them. So this amendment would say that for 5 years we will take the very numbers that were in last year's budget--the budget we are operating under today--and we would place them in a statute by number. The amendment would say how many millions of dollars we will allow to be spent this year in defense numbers and nondefense numbers. When we do that, if there comes an attempt to violate the budget and to spend more, then a Senator could raise a point of order and it would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to override that point of order. I think that is good, sound legislation. Make no mistake, it will put some teeth in the budget. There are those of us who know we have given in too often to the desire to spend more because we get multiple demands from our citizens and we sometimes are unable to say: Well, I do need to help you, but I am going to have to cut over here. What we do say is, I can't reduce anything. Now that would make those people uneasy and unhappy with me. But I want to help this person, so I will just increase my spending and go over on the debt and over the budget limit. I am of the belief that this legislation, though modest, is very consistent with the numbers President Obama talked about last night. In fact, I think it is almost in perfect harmony with the freeze he suggested should happen last night. This would actually allow a 1- to 2-percent increase, as I said, in defense or nondefense spending. This would be the kind of thing that would be in harmony with the President's proposal. The American people are cynical. We say these things--the President says these things, Members of the Senate say these things--but our spending, when we look back at it, doesn't do so well. Last year our domestic discretionary spending, the money we actually controlled in the Senate, increased 12 percent, which is a number above what we can realistically justify. Remember, we also had, on top of that, the stimulus package. A lot of that money hasn't been spent--maybe a third of it. That is pouring into the economy. Now is the time for us to get hold of baseline spending. I believe we can do it. These are some of the objections we have had about it. Would it prevent the Federal Government from responding to emergencies? No. I point out the emergency spending bills that came up before Congress were consistently passed with huge majorities. For example, the Defense bill on the war against terrorism and tsunami relief, 100 to 0; on supplemental veterans health care, we had 99 to 1; the Katrina spending was passed by unanimous vote; the second emergency for Katrina, 97 to 0; another Katrina vote, 93 to 0; supplemental appropriations for disaster loans, no budget point of order even raised; another Hurricane Katrina supplemental, 80 to 14; Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, 74 to 25. The votes have been high. But every one of these things does not need to be passed perhaps at the level initially proposed. Sometimes you may support Katrina or some other supplemental and you think the numbers are too high and you are going to object and the appropriators can come back with a smaller number and it would pass. I say that is the process we work with. We are violating the budget act too much. I urge my colleagues to consider this legislation and vote for it. Would it prevent Congress from adequately funding missions in Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer to that is no. The 67-vote threshold would not apply in Iraq and Afghanistan and our war against al-Qaida because the amendment explicitly states this rule does not apply ``in the case of the defense budgetary authority, if Congress declares war or authorizes the use of force,'' which we have done in these situations. In wartime it does not constrict our ability. We still have to vote for it and make sure we have the vote for it, but we don't have to have a supermajority for votes. I think that is the important part of it. Some would say you are attempting to balance the entire budget by reducing nondefense discretionary spending, which is a relatively small part of the budget. I would say we know this will not fully balance the budget, but I can demonstrate, and have, that the growth in spending that is occurring on the discretionary accounts in the last several years has far exceeded the growth of Medicare and Social Security, and it is crowding out our ability to fund Medicare and Social Security. It is a threat to us, to those programs, as well as to the long-term fiscal status of our country. Finally, I point out that I just left the Budget Committee hearing. Mr. Elmendorf, the CBO Director, testified today and indicated that, if several more things that are likely to occur, which he did not use in his calculations, take place the number would be much worse, much higher. He said we are facing a critical economically threatening force of debt that we have to act better about. Chairman Conrad and Ranking Member Gregg said the same thing in their opening statements. I point out what he reaffirmed, their score, that under the present path we are on, we now pay, in 2009, $200 billion per year in interest. That is what we paid to people who loaned us money, the public debt. In about 2019, 10 years, that debt will triple from $5.7 trillion to over $17 trillion, and the interest we pay in 1 year on that debt is $799 billion. When you think about it, the Federal Highway Program is about $40 billion or $50 billion. The aid to education is not much more than that. This is going to crowd out all kinds of spending that so many of my colleagues would like to see happen. We are either going to have massive increases in taxes or major reductions in spending just so we can budget and pay for the interest on this debt. He says it is unsustainable. This is a nonpartisan person. The Concord Coalition has a great focus on excessive spending in this country. The Concord Coalition supports the amendment that Senator McCaskill and I are offering; so does the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a great bipartisan group that has been watching budget issues for many years and is composed of some of the previous budget directors and experts on these matters, a very responsible, respected group. The Heritage Foundation, a solid group of conservative scholars who have written persuasively about the dangers of debt, as well as the National Taxpayers Union, which represents individual Americans who realize the threat to our country from soaring debt and bigger and bigger spending, all support this legislation. I think it is the kind of bipartisan legislation that will send a message not just to our Congress that we are going to contain spending but also to the whole world that we are putting in place some things that indicate we are going to be serious about avoiding this path we are on. This is not made up. This is based on present commitments of the U.S. Government in law based on projections of income that we will receive and the spending levels that are surging. I hope our colleagues will seize on this. I think it will help the stock market. I think it will help our own focus. It would be a statement by Senators that we are serious about this, and we will work together to get it done. I urge my colleagues to support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will wrap up. I do not want to delay the vote. It will be perfectly appropriate for him to make his remarks at this time. But first, I will point out this chart. Why do we need to contain the reckless growth in spending? This chart shows how much interest we pay on the debt. When we passed a stimulus package of almost $800 billion, we did not have that money. Where did we get it? We borrowed it, and we have to pay interest on it. When we have an emergency, such as Hurricane Katrina--by definition, an emergency is an expenditure for which we do not have the money and it is above our budget. Our budget puts us in deficit. Emergency spending is always deficit funded, funded with borrowed money. In 2009, the interest we paid on our debt was $200 billion. That is the public debt. We have more debt than that. We have internal debt. Under the 10-year proposal President Obama gave us early last year, the Congressional Budget Office concludes that our deficits will surge and that in 10 years, the interest for 1 year would be $799 billion. That is why everybody says we are on an unsustainable path. How do we get off it? Basically, we have to contain our spending. We cannot have $800 billion stimulus packages every year or two. We cannot have spending increases of 10 percent and 12 percent in basic discretionary accounts. If we start taking firm action now, this will not happen. The debt tends to compound. Our deficits tend to compound. They go into the baseline, and then we have an increase over that the next year and the next year, and it compounds a lot more than some of our Members realize. That is why we are getting into the area that threatens the very financial viability of this Nation, as Mr. Greenspan said in December with a statement so strong about the danger we face that it would curl your hair. That is why Senator McCaskill and I think we need to take some action. This is a proven way to do so with statutory caps. I encourage my colleagues to see it for what it is: a bipartisan attempt to be sure we do not rise above the budgetary caps that are in our budget. This amendment would make it hard to go above those levels in our spending. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, our fathers and forefathers made heroic sacrifices so that we one day might enjoy the blessings of liberty and prosperity. Indeed, we have had prosperity through much of our country's history. Their courage during World War II changed the world, making possible the greatest run of economic growth in history. The character and courage they displayed remains an inspiration to us. And there are important lessons to be learned from the way this ``greatest generation'' faced adversity. We have recently been put to the test ourselves. We were--and in many ways continue to be--faced with a national crisis in the form of a historic and severe recession. So what did we do? We could have learned from President Reagan and Paul Volcker, a Democrat who was then Federal Reserve Chairman and is now working with President Obama. They took the political heat in the short run so the free market could correct itself and emerge stronger on the other side. Instead, I think we flinched. We tried to limit the immediate pain by mortgaging our children's future. We borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to finance our standard of living today. We took money from the future so we can spend it today. We tried desperately to mitigate the downturn of a huge economy, even when we know economies are cyclical and do have booms and busts. Every penny we spent on the stimulus package--$800 billion--and other special spending was borrowed and must be paid back. In truth though, there is no plan to pay the debt back--only to pay the soaring interest for as far in the future as we can see. So this is not an academic problem, nor is it just a question of public financing and governmental roles. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said about our debt in December--and I think it is a stunning statement-- The challenge to contain this threat is more urgent than at any time in our history. Our Nation has never before had to confront so formidable a fiscal crisis as is now visible just over the horizon. The policies adopted by Congress and the President have set the Nation now on a dangerous course of spending and borrowing. The budget crisis we face is so severe, the mountain of debt so high, that it threatens to undermine the foundation, as Mr. Greenspan said, of our economic strength and our prosperity. This is reality. For the first time in our Nation's history, our generation stands to bequeath to our children a nation that is less economically sound, less fundamentally strong, and less secure than that which we inherited. And it is not necessary. We can do better if we act today. It would be an unthinkable tragedy and really a moral failure for us to pass on a less strong country. We have responsibilities not just to our own people today but to those who will follow us in the years to come, and we would have no one else to blame but ourselves. The numbers tell a grim story. In fiscal year 2009, our government spent $1.4 trillion more than it took in through revenues. That is the largest deficit in our Nation's history, dwarfing those of previous years. Scaled to the budget of a typical family, the government operated like a household making $50,000 but spending $83,000. That is how much more spending we carried out than we had revenues. Common sense tells us this is unsustainable, and almost every expert you ask would use that very word: ``unsustainable.'' Yet we expect to run deficits over the next decade that average nearly $1 trillion annually--averaging that and not going down. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in the 8th, 9th, and 10th year, the deficit continues to increase. By 2019, we will owe our creditors, including nations such as China and Japan, more than $15 trillion--three times the total debt of America that existed last year. In 2019, the interest payments we will make on the debt we owe outside the government--the public debt to foreign countries and individuals--will be $799 billion, almost $800 billion in one year. That will be up from $202 billion in interest payments last year. $800 billion is about $200 billion more than we spend on defense, and 20 times more than we spend on roads or education. We currently spend about $40 billion a year on roads, and this interest on the debt will cost us $800 billion a year in 10 years--a basis of a tripling of our debt. That growing interest payment will crowd out our ability to fund other important government services, and it will crowd out private borrowers who will need to borrow to create jobs. Given that we have embarked on such a spending spree, is it any surprise that the first item on the Senate agenda this year is the necessary bill, they say, to raise the debt limit to allow us to borrow more money? We have hit the limit. The government has a limit on the amount of debt it can hold by statute, such as a maximum amount on a credit card. America's credit card has a $12.4 trillion limit on internal and external debt and, incredibly we have maxed it out again. It should be a dramatic thing to boost that debt limit, but, interestingly, it has become routine. This will be the seventh time we have done so in 5 years, and it is troubling Americans. The public is rightly angry with Washington's cavalier attitude toward spending. They know ``buy now; pay later'' catches up with you eventually. They know nothing comes from nothing. The American people know that what Stanford University economist Michael Boskin wrote in the Wall Street Journal is true. He said: The explosion of spending, deficits, and debt foreshadows even higher prospective taxes on work, savings, investment and employment. That not only will damage our economic future but is harming jobs and growth now. The American people know that taxes are going to go up, a fact confirmed by David Walker, former Comptroller General and GAO head. He testified recently that taxes would need to double by 2040 to keep up with our current commitments. The American people have made it clear they reject the philosophy of ever increasing debt. They reject taking on such a burden. Why? Because they know it threatens the strength of the American economy. They know it is a cloud over our efforts to rebound economically, and they want us to stop. They want us to stop. To my colleagues, I ask: How much clearer does that message have to be? I do not think anyone doubts it. The good news is, many Senators are worried on both sides of the aisle. They are concerned about what we are doing, and they know we need to do better, and they are listening to their constituents. They will have an opportunity this week to do that by supporting this bipartisan legislation I have offered. I see my colleague Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri in the Chamber, who is a cosponsor of this legislation that will limit the growth of spending. So it is a simple amendment. There are no strings attached. It as a rare opportunity to impose budget discipline on a Congress that is notorious for not having any. That is what makes people angry. Politicians talk a good game but nothing seems to change. But when it comes down to it, the politicians always seem to find a way to spend more, and the taxpayers end up holding the bill. So this amendment would help change that. It would impose, first, binding limits on the 40 percent of Federal spending we control each year, discretionary spending. The amendment would put into law the spending levels approved in the fiscal year 2010 congressional budget, which a majority of the Senate supported. It is basically the Democratic Congress's budget. It had certain limits over 5 years. What we are saying is if you exceed those limits, then you would be violating this amendment, which seeks to control and avoid that. Those spending levels include only our budget increases that are averaging about 2 percent a year annually over 5 years. Contrast that with the 12-percent increases we saw last year in nondefense discretionary appropriations, and the 10 percent the year before. Factoring in the stimulus, government spending on nondefense accounts actually soared by 57 percent, while State and local governments were tightening their belts, some cutting expenses. Each year we increase spending it gets built into the baseline of our budget for the next year, and when we have an increase in the next year, it is an increase on a higher baseline, and it goes up exponentially. For example, last year, on one bill, the defense bill, there was tacked on an $18 billion expenditure for various projects that were not paid for within the budget. It was added, paid for with debt--money we had to borrow. If we do that each year, if we add another $18 billion through that kind of budget-busting activity, it would cost the taxpayers an extra $1 trillion over a decade. It is hard to believe, but that is true. Mr. President, $18 billion one year goes into the baseline; the next year you add another $18 billion, and it is not $18 billion, it is $36 billion more than you would have spent had the first one not been spent. I am convinced we can do better. This amendment is an important step. Second, the amendment would require 67 votes--two-thirds of the Senate--to waive the binding caps. In other words, if we set these caps, we can waive them if there is an emergency. But it takes two- thirds to do so. Two-thirds of the Senate is a strong threshold that will keep these caps in place except in times of true emergency. Finally, this amendment complements efforts to rein in mandatory spending programs that are expected to be insolvent in coming years. Social Security runs a surplus now. Medicare did so until the last few years. Those surpluses are being spent in our discretionary accounts. So these programs have little to do with our record deficits. It is discretionary spending, up until recently, that has driven the entirety of our debt. Deficits for the most part come from discretionary spending, and this statutory caps idea I have proposed is tested and proven. The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 included similar provisions that kept the growth of Federal spending low for 12 years. Its provisions were extended in 1997 because people found they were working. Congress felt they were working. All in all, these budget rules helped to achieve four balanced budgets for 4 consecutive years, from 1998 to 2001. The key component of that, I truly believe, was these statutory caps on spending that were passed during that period. Many currently serving Senators were in this Chamber in the 1990s and recognized the necessity. In 1997, 28 currently serving Democrats, for example, voted for these provisions, including many of the Democratic leaders in the Senate today. I submit that those budget rules are even more needed today. As Mr. Greenspan said, we have never faced such a fiscal crisis looming just over the horizon. I am pleased a number of organizations known for their knowledge and concern about deficits have recognized the merit of this proposal, including the National Taxpayers Union, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Heritage Foundation, and the Concord Coalition. Budget experts Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served under a Republican administration; Alice Rivlin, who served under the Clinton administration at CBO; and Alan Viard also back the plan. President Obama, we learned today is now talking about a 3-year freeze on some discretionary spending. This legislation would only help him achieve that goal because he can make a speech and he can propose it to Congress, but it doesn't necessarily become law. If he supports this and works to support the statement that we understand he will make in the State of the Union Address, this legislation would be a firewall to make sure his promise isn't broken. I say this to my colleagues: We have a budget crisis. It is a calamity so profound that it threatens our economic security. Americans across the country--in red States and blue States--get it. They are deeply concerned about the direction in which we are headed. They know the crushing debt we are incurring will weaken our country, and it will restrict the opportunities our children will have. They are making their voices heard. A vote against this amendment would be a suggestion that a Senator is not serious about maintaining our budget caps but is looking for ways to bust the budget, get around the budget, and spend more. I urge my colleagues to support the legislation as a strong act of fiscal responsibility that will have a good impact. In fact, I am confident it would send a message to the financial community that we are beginning to get our house in order. While I would like to go further and be more frugal in some of our behavior around here--and I do believe we are going to have to go further than this--this amendment will ensure that the limits on spending made last year in the budget passed by this Congress will not be exceeded. It will be a firewall that will save us from our excesses. It will begin to restore financial responsibility to our Nation, a commodity of which we are in desperately short supply. I see Senator McCaskill. She has cast a number of tough votes to question reckless spending since I have observed her in the Senate. I appreciate her leadership and courage in speaking out on this issue. If we do this, it will not solve all our problems, but I think it will make a positive difference for us. It will allow increases as the budget allows for some increases before the firewall kicks in. But it also would make it very difficult to break the budget in any significant way, unless we face a true emergency. I yield the floor and I thank my colleague for her leadership on this legislation.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to share some thoughts on an amendment that Senator McCaskill and I offered earlier today. I note that a number of people are anxious to vote and finish up. If and when that time comes, I will be pleased to yield the floor. The amendment we offered, which would place statutory caps on spending--and that cap level that we picked was in our budget. It is what the Senate passed in the budget last year. It represents an increase each year, which is 1 to 2 percent annually. This is a budget number basically passed by our Democratic colleagues. So what we are saying is, let's adhere to that. If we adhere to that level of spending, then we can begin to make progress. A similar type of statutory cap was placed in 1990, renewed in 1997, helped lead us to the only 4 years of budget surpluses in recent memory, from 1998 through 2001. After that, the statutory caps were allowed to expire. We find this was something that actually worked to help us contain excessive spending. This amendment would say that number that is in the budget for the next 5 years would be firm. We would put it in statutory language, but, of course, it can be exceeded by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, and the statute itself can be reversed by 60 votes of the Senate. It is not something that constitutionally would be firm over managing our system. It is consistent with previous actions of the Congress. It worked, and I believe it will work again. It has been contended today, I understand, that these caps would impose limits on emergency spending that could potentially cripple our ability to respond to emergencies, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks. Well, I just want to say that hurricanes and earthquakes and things of that nature have had huge bipartisan votes for emergency spending. For example, after Katrina, there were two supplemental emergency bills passed. The first was passed by unanimous consent. Nobody objected to it. It was unanimous. The second was passed on a rollcall vote, 97 to 0. There is no doubt in my mind that if we have a serious emergency, we will have a lot of support for responding to that emergency. Also, one week after September 11, the Senate unanimously passed supplemental appropriations in response to that terrorist attack. So the allegation that somehow this would cripple the ability of Congress to respond to emergencies is inaccurate. Second, it was contended earlier today that the amendment contains unrealistic spending caps that would restrict funding needed to support our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not accurate. The amendment includes specific provisions that prevent the caps from restricting funding for our troops in a time of war. It would not block us from doing that. We are in a time of war. It just would not apply in a time of war. We hear it said that everybody is concerned with the growth of the deficit and the need to control debt in the United States, but this amendment--the McCaskill-Sessions amendment--is not the appropriate way to attack this issue. Let me respond to that. For fiscal year 2010, the government spent $2.9 trillion, of which about $1.2 trillion was for discretionary spending. The remaining $1.7 trillion was mandatory spending. That is what we call entitlements. That is when you get 65 and you are entitled to Medicare, and the government has to pay it whether it has any money or not. You are entitled to Social Security payments, and the government has to come up with the money. We don't vote on it again. We already voted on Social Security to set up how much money you are entitled to get. We have to have that money. That is why it is called an entitlement. Now entitlements--Medicare and Social Security--exceed the discretionary account, which includes defense. So of the $1.2 trillion that is in the discretionary account that we actually vote on each year, approximately $526 billion, or a little less than half, is for nondefense purposes. This amendment attempts to reduce the deficit by constraining just 18 percent of total government spending. It can make a much larger difference than many people realize. Five-year discretionary spending caps were passed--what we are proposing today--in 1990 and 1997 with strong bipartisan support. In 1997, 44 currently serving Senators supported the caps, and 26 of them were Democrats. It made a difference. We balanced the budget in 1998 through 2001--4 years. The current majority leader and chairman of the Appropriations Committee both voted, in 1990 and in 1997, for the 5-year caps, which restricted annual discretionary spending to approximately 1 to 2 percent increases. That is basically what our legislation would do. It would contain this discretionary spending to 1 to 2 percent. We know we are out of control. We know that last year discretionary spending increased by 10 percent, and this year it will increase by 12 percent. That is unsustainable. At 7 percent growth, your money will double in 10 years. At 12 percent growth, the amount of money we would be spending in our discretionary account would double in 6 years-- double. We are on an unsustainable growth here. Some say: Where do you come up with this money, Sessions? This limit of 1 to 2 percent is too tough. It is not too tough. It is the budget we voted on. Actually, I didn't vote for it, our Democratic colleagues voted for it. It was their budget, and it passed with almost unanimous Democratic support. It calls for a 1- to 2-percent increase in spending over the next 5 years. That is all Senator McCaskill and I are suggesting we should do. We would make that harder to bust, harder to break it. We put in a firmer cap. If we stay on that level, and if we have an emergency, we will have to meet it. But if we stay at that level, we could end up surprising ourselves how much good we can do in the years to come. From fiscal year 2006 to 2009, the Federal debt was increased by approximately $4.4 trillion. That is a lot. That is almost the total debt of America. We had about $4 trillion in debt in 2006, and we added, in those 3 years, $4.4 trillion. During that time, the total increase in nondefense discretionary spending was approximately $93 billion. This means the increase in nondefense discretionary spending has accounted for 2 percent of the increase in the national debt, our critics say. So it doesn't make much difference, they would say. They are correct about the surging debt, but not that this would make no difference. If it made little difference, then why are they worrying about passing it? Restraining discretionary spending, like we did in the nineties, is the bear minimum Congress can do to be fiscally responsible, in my view. For fiscal year 2010, nondefense, nonveteran discretionary spending increased by 12 percent and in 2009 by 10 percent. Those are huge increases, not including the stimulus package. If we included the stimulus package, nondefense discretionary spending has increased 57 percent since 2008, in 2 years. That is a stunning number. We actually increased discretionary spending by 57 percent in 2 years. The Sessions-McCaskill amendment is similar to the proposal offered by President Obama or what we are hearing he is going to offer--to freeze nondefense discretionary spending for 3 years. This would place a cap on excess. If we break through the President's suggestion and don't freeze and go above that, we hit this cap, and it would take a two-thirds vote to go above that. Apparently, President Obama's suggestion is less spending than this bill would cap. But that is fine, we can always do less. The danger, from my experience, is that we get carried away and do more. Some have said the arbitrary spending caps would impede the delivery of resources needed to keep Americans safe from terrorist attacks and violent crime. Such subjective across-the-board restrictions would hinder our ability to protect our homeland and secure our borders. Well, it does allow for an increase, first and foremost. Second, our congressional process and appropriations process and authorization process should have helped us set priorities within that. It would be unthinkable if this Congress were to somehow take all that money that we need from areas to keep us safe from attack. Surely, we can make judgment decisions about that. Another allegation is that more and more of our service men and women are returning from the battlefield, and this would restrict our ability to provide them the medical care and support they need. This measure provides all the funding in the 2010 budget resolution. It would allow that. If additional resources are needed to care for our returning service men and women, and that has bipartisan support, and certainly if we need to be able to take care of injured and wounded, we could get 67 votes. We can do like most people do when they have a necessary expense. They trim spending somewhere else and fund the more necessary item. Some have said it would impose a roughly $10 billion annual cap on emergency spending. Emergency spending is, by its very nature, impossible to predict. The critics say, to deliberately impede the government's ability to respond to a natural disaster or major terrorist attack is deeply irresponsible. But that is not what we do. In the legislation we proposed as an amendment, Senator McCaskill and I set up a $10 billion a year emergency fund--every year. That would be incorporated in the budget resolution, it would be contained in our amendment, and it would be restricted only by the normal 60-vote requirement on a budget point of order for emergency spending. That money would not be subject to a higher point of order, and it would not change up to the first $10 billion--which is a lot of money. Alabama's budget, including education, is about $7 billion. So we are setting aside $10 billion for emergency funds every year, and if we went above that, we would have to have a supermajority for the kind of emergency that would justify that. I do not think that criticism is valid. Also, some have said that recent history clearly demonstrates the folly of attempting to fix a set price for future emergencies. More than 4 years later, the Gulf Coast is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Over $100 billion in Federal resources has been needed to respond to this disaster alone. Our amendment would have no effect on Hurricane Katrina. The fact is, as I have said before, we have had virtually unanimous votes supporting funding for Katrina. I do not think that is a valid criticism. If we have an emergency, I am confident this Congress will meet it. The recent Christmas Day airline bombing--I see my friend, Senator Leahy. Is he seeking the floor to speak? If so, I will try to wrap up.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank my colleague for her fine remarks. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS. The amendment is proposed by myself and Senators McCaskill and Kyl.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Judd Gregg, former chairman of the Budget Committee and ranking member, be added as a cosponsor to this legislation.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to share a few remarks on the reappointment of Mr. Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. I do believe we should state our views about it. I stand in opposition to his nomination; I intend to vote against it. First, I believe the financial debacle this Nation is desperately attempting to work its way through did not have to happen. That free economies have a tendency to boom and bust, there can be no doubt. But sound Federal economic and fiscal policy that promotes stability and a sound dollar can mitigate against the excesses of market cycles and keep them from ratcheting out of control, as we have seen here. What role did Mr. Bernanke play before the bubble burst? For 3 years, he served on the Federal Reserve Board, where much of our Nation's financial policy is set and, in 2006, he followed Mr. Greenspan as Chairman. The American people have a right to ask: How did he perform during that period? Did he see this crisis coming, did he give warning, and did he take any actions that could have ameliorated or avoided the catastrophe that has befallen us? The minutes of the Federal Reserve Board during the critical 2003 time period show he was what the Wall Street Journal called ``the intellectual architect'' of the loose money policies that, as the Journal notes, kept: . . . monetary policy exceptionally easy for far too long as the economy grew rapidly from 2003-2005. He imagined a ``deflation'' that never occurred, ignored the asset bubbles in commodities and housing, dismissed concerns about dollar weakness, and in the process stoked the credit mania that led to the financial panic. That is what the Wall Street Journal said about it, and I think that has to be considered an accurate and fair comment. Only responsible actions, perhaps painful to us now in the short run, founded on mature understanding of the forces that actually control world economies will do today. The time for artificial government policies and spending and stimulus is past. Nothing comes from nothing. Reducing deficits significantly will be necessary and will be painful, but only such a policy, resolutely executed, will inspire real confidence that we are on the right track. Transferring massive private debt to massive government debt, as we have done, tripling our total national debt in 10 years--as we are on the path to do under the President's own budget--is wrong and unacceptable. Experts and the normal person know such policies will only end poorly. We need the kind of responsible policies the bipartisan team of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and President Reagan executed, policies that led eventually to 20 years of sound growth. But, for sure, stabilizing an economy in turmoil was difficult for them and for the American people at the time, for a while. But the people understood sound policy was needed in the early 1980s, and they stayed with their strong leaders through the tough times. The people knew then we had acted irresponsibly--as we have today--and they knew a steep hill had to be climbed to get us on sound footing. They met the challenge. I am not seeing that kind of leadership today. President Reagan knew he would be criticized, but he knew this great Nation would rebound. He had confidence in our people and in free markets. He did not, for one moment, believe expanding government would lead to economic growth. During this time of economic turmoil, I don't think we are hearing that kind of economic straight, honest talk. We are told not to worry; that we are going to spend our way out of debt. We will have the government stimulate the economy. Well, if that is so easy, why don't we do it every day--just spend, spend, spend forever? If that doesn't work, we can have another stimulus package, they tell us. Deficits don't matter. Debt doesn't matter. We will worry about the consequences of that later. The President of the European Union said this strategy was the economic ``road to hell.'' And I think that is an embarrassment to the United States. The Chinese are aghast. But this is the plan of the President and Mr. Bernanke--spend it now, worry later. Mr. Bernanke's nomination is before us today. He was the prime architect of the policies that got us into this mess. He did not see it coming. He supported the disastrous $800 billion stimulus package, every penny of which was mainly social spending--had to be borrowed, and it has not produced the kind of jobs and growth we needed because it was not focused sufficiently on job creation. Mr. Bernanke also supported the $182 billion bailout of AIG, and now we know most of that money was used to compensate AIG's counterparties, such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank at 100 cents on the dollar, which I think is unthinkable. Last November, the TARP inspector general, Neil Barofsky, reported that the Federal Reserve did not believe AIG's counterparties posed a systemic risk to the economy, which frankly calls into question the entire justification for the bailout. Amazingly, Chairman Bernanke has learned little from these errors, and that worries me. Tragically, he is supporting or acquiescing in policies that I think have proven not to work and are contrary to sound common sense. If there is any dispute about his leadership, I call my colleagues' attention to his speech on January 3. There he plainly refused to acknowledge his loose money policies were a significant factor in creating the bubble and the inevitable bust. Incredibly, he relied on half-truths to justify his abandonment of the Taylor rule, a formula that has proven to work to contain the temptation for excessively low interest rates. While anyone can make a mistake, becoming too insulated, too arrogant, too political, and coming to believe tried and true principles no longer apply in the new world of today, is especially dangerous. He has not admitted his mistakes nor is he calling us to the tried and true. Sound money, low taxes, solid, steady growth, and increased productivity based on the historic principles of a free economy--principles that are as immutable as the law of gravity--are the foundation of economic growth, not government spending and Fed maneuvering. At one of my townhall meetings, a man offered that his daddy always said, ``You can't borrow your way out of debt.'' How true. Shouldn't we be hearing such common sense from the Fed? You can't produce something from nothing. There is no free lunch. Somebody will pay. Our ``masters of the universe'' think these rules don't apply to them--a most dangerous arrogance indeed. Right now, the American people, our constituents, are the ones paying. It is time for the ``masters of the universe'' who are responsible to pay--those who rejected the tried and true; those who believe that since we are blessed with their leadership, with their brilliance, America doesn't have to move forward steadily and soundly; that the old verities do not apply and, if things get a bit dicey, why by exercising their skill and exceptional knowledge they can fix it before anything bad happens. Did that happen before, in 2007? They were not so smart then. I think these are the most dangerous leaders--the ones who know the rules but believe they are so brilliant that they may ignore them. Mr. Taylor, the one of the rule, laid it out in the Wall Street Journal on January 11, 2010. I don't see how anyone can seriously argue that keeping interest rates so low, maintaining easy money, during the 2002-2005 period did not play a significant role in the bubble and the resulting bust. Not only was Chairman Bernanke intimately involved in the creation of these disastrous policies, as was President Obama's Secretary of Treasury Geithner, but he maintains today his violation of the Taylor rule was no harm no foul. Chairman Bernanke should be rejected for his grievous previous mistakes that helped cause this economic debacle, and he should be rejected, even more emphatically, for his failure to learn from his mistakes. In December, former Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, saying: The challenge to contain this threat is more urgent than at any time in our history. Our nation has never before had to confront so formidable a fiscal crisis as is now visible just over the horizon. That is a real warning. We need a courageous Chairman of the Fed, of the quality and firmness of Chairman Volcker, one who average Americans, and importantly, our top corporate leaders, will recognize as being a consistent voice and force for sound financial policy--one who knows he is not so brilliant that he can cease to be bound by the iron laws of economics and markets. We need a courageous Fed Chairman who has the firmness of Mr. Volcker to lead us through this period. I have not seen that in Mr. Bernanke and will oppose his nomination. 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. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I want to share a few thoughts at this time about the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which was announced today. Some comments were made about the decision in the Judiciary Committee earlier today, and some of those comments were critical of the decision. I just want to say that I think it is a sound decision, a decision that is consistent with our Constitution and the first amendment. I know sometimes people are irritated by seeing ads on television. I know politicians are not happy when people run ads against them. But this is a free country. We are not immune to criticism and people seeking to promote their point of view throughout our Nation. I think the Supreme Court's opinion today deals with the reality of free speech that simply is not going away. In Citizens United, the Court overruled two recent precedents that had themselves undermined and were inconsistent with this Nation's long tradition of protecting political speech. In doing so, the Court recognized that political speech is protected by the first amendment regardless of whether the speaker is an individual or is acting in corporate form. Over the years, there have been some dubious arguments made under the first amendment, such as arguments that pornography, and even child pornography, are protected under the free speech clause; however, there can be no doubt that the Founding Fathers, when they wrote the Constitution, contemplated the protection of people's right to have robust a political debate. There can also be no doubt that robust political debate includes criticizing political candidates when they are running for office. The decision today was an interesting matter. It shows how far some congressionally passed laws reach. The decision may indicate that sometimes these bills reach farther than we intended for them to reach when we wrote them. For example, the Citizens United case revolved around a film that was critical of one of the main candidates in the 2008 Presidential election. A group called Citizens United produced the film, and they wanted to broadcast it; however, under the recent so- called bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, it was illegal for Citizens United to broadcast the film during the 30 days before the election because the group had received money from U.S. corporations. Citizens United became the plaintiffs in a lawsuit and, eventually, the question of whether Congress could constitutionally prohibit them from broadcasting the film wound up before the Supreme Court. I think Chief Justice Roberts, correctly summed up the holding of today's opinion in his concurrence. We will probably talk more about it in detail as we go forward and have a little more time to examine it, but he says: Congress violates the First Amendment when it decrees that some speakers may not engage in political speech at election time, when it matters most. Or, as Justice Scalia characterized today's holding in his concurring opinion: A documentary film, critical of a potential presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature as such does not change simply because it was funded by a corporation. We hear speech that irritates and frustrates us a lot of times, but we have to put up with it because it is a free country in which we live. I would not want anyone putting a film like the one at issue in Citizens United out against me, but it is a free country, and I don't think it is justified to say that Americans who come together in some corporate body can no longer speak. I will just add that the current administration has been a bit insensitive about this matter. We had the incidents earlier in the year when an insurance company published material to people they insured that pointed out criticisms of the health care bill. The administration tried to get a federal agency to threaten them with a loss of business if they didn't stop expressing an opinion. The insurance company was engaged in a business impacted by the bill. The people they were communicating with bought this kind of insurance coverage. I think they had every right as free Americans to send out a notice that said: This is not good for our company or for you, we think. They are not allowed to do this? They are going to be threatened by the White House with punishment if they communicate to the people with whom they do business? That is no little matter. We have to get our heads straight. The first amendment protects speech--real substantive speech--about important issues, issues like health insurance and who is going to be elected President. And it protects them regardless of whether the speaker is an individual or whether the speaker is acting in corporate form. Justice Scalia dissented in McConnell v. FEC, a 2005 case that was reversed by the court's opinion today, and Justice Scalia has a knack for going straight to the heart of the matter. In that dissent he wrote: In the modern world, giving the government power to exclude corporations from the political debate enables it effectively to muffle the voices that best represent the most significant segments of the economy and the most passionately held social and political views. He goes on to say: People who associate--who pool their financial resources-- for purposes of economic enterprise overwhelmingly do so in the corporate form; and with increasing frequency, incorporation is chosen by those who associate to defend and promote particular ideas--such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association, parties to these cases. I agree with Justice Scalia. We cannot allow the government to suppress speech simply because it is near an election time and corporations have given some money to put it on. I think that is not healthy. In fact, I think our whole approach to constricting and limiting people in pooling their money and running ads is clearly in conflict with the first amendment. I would just say this: The Supreme Court made it clear that all the limits we have placed on corporations giving to political campaigns were not struck down. That is a separate issue, I suppose, but the issue the Supreme Court decided in its opinion today is a very important one. We have had a debate on this issue for a long time. We have roared about it in this Senate for many years, and people have passionately argued about the first amendment and whether some of our laws mean an evisceration of it. I used to say in my speeches that I just don't think it is right to tell an American, or even a group of Americans who come together in corporate form, that they can't buy an ad, even on the eve of an election, and say that Jeff Sessions is bad for our business, bad for our State, bad for our Nation, and ought to be thrown out of office. It can, perhaps, be a problem sometimes--if someone took out an ad like I just described I might think it is a problem--but the balancing test we use is the plain language of the first amendment, and it says that the right to free speech shall not be abridged. That right is important. We incur great danger when we say: Well, you can talk, but we are not going to let you make a political message 30 days before the campaign. You can contribute but only under our rules. A clear case can be made that the law at issue in Citizens United favored political incumbents. It gave an advantage to politicians already in office, who have an edge in obtaining individual, ``hard money'' contributions. I myself am an incumbent--I myself have been fortunate enough to receive many such contributions--but that does not change the clear mandate of our Constitution. I think the Supreme Court's opinion should be respected for the fact that it takes the text of the first amendment very seriously. The opinion addresses very fundamental questions about what power politicians in Washington have to constrict the right of Americans, either individually or corporately, to defend their interest and speak out. That freedom is fundamental to the preservation of our Constitution. Think about it. The New York Times. What is the New York Times? Is it a corporation? Yes, it is. Can the New York Times run an editorial every day saying they don't like this party or they don't like this Senator and criticize them repeatedly? Why, sure they can. But can Ford Motor Company defend its interests? Can it run an ad and say: We are getting a little bit tired of the Federal Government giving another $3 billion to General Motors Acceptance Corporation and we don't get any money from the Federal Government to help Ford Motor Credit. Under the law the Supreme Court was dealing with in Citizens United the answer was no. That was wrong, and it threatened our Constitution. Under our constitution people ought to be free to push back and defend their interests, whether they do it individually or through a corporation. Otherwise, I think it allows us in Washington to appropriate power to ourselves--the power to benefit one another and avoid being criticized for it. I think that is the exact opposite of the robust political debate the Founding Fathers intended. That is my two cents' worth. I think the case is one of significance. It is one we have debated here for so long. I know Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, has been so eloquent and consistent for probably 15 years in debating this issue. In many ways, this opinion validates some of the principal constitutional arguments he made. 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 wish to speak on the nomination of Judge Beverly Baldwin Martin who President Obama nominated to the Eleventh Circuit on June 19. I remain at a loss as to why it has taken this long for her nomination to come before the full Senate for a vote. Judge Martin's nomination is one of the few that has had strong bipartisan support. Both of her home State Senators, Senator Chambliss and Senator Isakson, have expressed their support for the President's nominee from the beginning. I have also expressed my support for Judge Martin and I believe she will be easily confirmed when the vote occurs. As I have said many times, Republicans have been and are ready and willing to proceed to a roll call vote on her nomination for months but, for whatever reason, our Democratic colleagues, the leadership, would not take yes for an answer. Instead, they chose to force votes on controversial nominees such as David Hamilton and Andre Davis. Given those nominees' records, it was no secret they would engender opposition and that it would take some time for their records to be examined and to be prepared for debate. I do not know the reasons for not calling up Judge Martin's nomination sooner. I hope it wasn't to purposely delay this noncontroversial nomination in order to create an illusion that a lot of judges are being obstructed. Certainly we have been accused of obstructing nominations in the last few months and we have heard these allegations repeated on the Senate floor and in the press, often supported by inaccurate and misleading information. Some of my Democratic colleagues have said they want to confirm judicial nominees at the same pace the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed President Bush's nominees. I think my colleagues should be careful what they wish for, because President Obama's nominees have fared far better than President Bush's. For those who were not here then, and for those who don't--or won't--remember, I wish to take a moment to describe exactly what happened during that time. President Bush began his Presidency by extending an olive branch and renominating two prior Clinton nominees to seats on the Circuit Courts of Appeal--one step removed from the Supreme Court. He renominated Democratic nominees. How was he repaid for that? The Democrats took the olive branch and broke it and gave it back to him. It began soon after President Bush was elected when a group of well-known professors-- liberal activist professors--Laurence Tribe, Marsha Greenberger, and Cass Sunstein, met with the Democratic leadership and proposed changing the ground rules of the confirmation process in a meeting, apparently-- certainly not open to the public. They proposed that Senators should consider a nominee's ideology--this had not been historically done--and for the first time in the history of the country, they proposed that the burden be shifted to the nominee to somehow prove they were worthy of the appointment instead of having the Senate respect the presumptive power of the President to make nominations and then object if that nomination was a concern to them. So it was clear to me then that as a result of that meeting, a majority of the Democrat Members of this body agreed to what they proposed. After the Democrats took control in the 107th Congress, then-Majority Leader Daschle promised to ``use whatever means necessary'' to defeat President Bush's judicial nominees. Before the 2001 August recess, the Democrats granted hearings for only two circuit court nominees, and one was Roger Gregory, a former Clinton nominee who was renominated. They even refused to hold a hearing for now-Chief Justice John Roberts. His nomination at the time was to the District of Columbia circuit which had been scheduled for a hearing before the change in the Senate majority. Then, in an unprecedented and, I think, partisan move, our Democratic colleagues indiscriminately returned every single one of President Bush's 40 pending judicial nominations. There was no consideration of an individual nominee's record. There was no consideration of bipartisan support for the nominee. It was a simple obstruction, it appeared to me. Thirty of these nominees were later confirmed by voice vote or by a substantial majority. This was followed by another unprecedented event: the systematic filibuster of highly qualified nominees, many of whom were later confirmed by voice vote or a substantial majority. The Democrats filibustered 30 attempts to hold up-or-down votes on at least 17 judicial nominees, highly qualified nominees--some rated unanimously well qualified by the American Bar Association. Senator Reid summed up what they were doing during the filibuster of Priscilla Owen--a fabulous nominee; a justice on the Texas Supreme Court; a great lady-- he opposed her nomination and he said in his quote: ``There is not a number of hours in the universe that would be sufficient'' to debate her nomination. So, today, we hear outrage that President Obama's nominees have been waiting for weeks or months for a confirmation vote. President Bush's nominees to the circuit courts waited an average of 350 days--almost a year, on average; I was here--from nomination to confirmation. That was just the average. The majority of President Bush's first nominees to the circuit courts waited years for confirmation votes and some never even received a hearing in committee, despite being highly qualified, outstanding nominees. Priscilla Owen, Justice Owen of the Texas Supreme Court, waited 4 years for a confirmation vote. John Roberts, Jeffrey Sutton, and Deborah Cook all waited 2 years. Dennis Shedd and Michael McConnell waited for more than a year and a half. Terrence Boyle, who was nominated by President Bush for the Fourth Circuit, languished close to 8 years and never received a vote, even though he passed out of the Judiciary Committee with a majority, and the Democrats had the majority. Miguel Estrada, rated unanimously well qualified by the American Bar Association, was filibustered through seven cloture votes and never confirmed. Charles Pickering, Carolyn Kuhl, Williams Myers, Henry Saad, William Haynes--all I think outstanding nominees--all were filibustered and never confirmed. So I ask my Democratic colleagues: Did we have any outrage from that side then? Let's look at the current pace of nominations. Unlike President Bush, President Obama did not extend an olive branch by renominating any of the outstanding pending nominees President Bush had submitted who were being held up. In fact, he ignored a request by all of the Republican Members of this body to do that. Instead, he chose Judge David Hamilton as his first nominee. He could hardly be characterized as a consensus nominee. Thirty-nine Senators--all Republicans--voted against him after a full debate. The treatment of President Obama's and President Bush's nominees for the Fourth Circuit will illustrate what I am saying. During the 110th Congress, despite the 33-percent vacancy rate on that court, four of President Bush's well-qualified, consensus nominees to that court, the Fourth Circuit, were needlessly delayed and ultimately blocked. President Bush nominated Steve Matthews in September of 2007. Despite his stellar qualifications, he was forced to wait 485 days to even get a hearing and the hearing never came. His nomination was returned in January of 2009. Chief Judge Robert Conrad of the district court had the support of his home State Senators and received an ABA rating of unanimously well qualified. Despite overwhelming support and exceptional qualifications, including having played point guard for Clemson in the ACC, he waited 585 days for a hearing that never came. His nomination was returned. Judge Glen Conrad had been chosen by Janet Reno, President Clinton's Attorney General, to investigate one of the allegations against President Clinton. Out of all of the prosecutors in America, she chose Judge Conrad. It is an outrage that he was not confirmed. He was a stellar nominee and should have been confirmed. The bar respected him and so did the Democratic administration. Finally, Rod Rosenstein, whom the ABA rated unanimously well- qualified and who served in the Department of Justice in both Democrat and Republican administrations, waited 414 days for a hearing that never came. His nomination was returned on January 2, 2009. President Obama's Fourth Circuit nominees have fared far better. Take Judge Andre Davis. He received a hearing a mere 27 days after his nomination, a committee vote just 36 days later, and was confirmed in early November of last year. Justice Barbara Milano Keenan was nominated on September 14, 2009. She received a hearing just 22 days later and was voted out of committee 23 days after that. Both Judge Albert Diaz and Judge James Wynn were nominated on November 4, 2009. The committee quickly held their hearing on December 16, 2009--despite the fact that the Senate was consumed with the healthcare debate--and their nominations are listed on the committee's agenda for this week. The raw numbers also demonstrate that this is not the simple ``apples to apples'' comparison that some have tried to make it out to be. President Obama has nominated little more than half the judicial nominees that President Bush had nominated at this point in his Presidency. Despite holding a time consuming Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the Judiciary Committee has still managed to hold hearings for all of President Obama's nominees, except for the few that were nominated just before the recess last month and were not ripe for hearings before the break. Compare that to this point under President Bush when 31 of his judicial nominees had yet to receive hearings. And, not only has the Senate confirmed nearly the same percentage of President Obama's judicial nominees as were confirmed at this point under President Bush, but we are moving faster. Indeed, President Obama's circuit court nominees have received confirmation votes mere months after being nominated--far quicker than President Bush's circuit court nominees, who waited an average of 350 days. Many waited years and many never even received an up-or-down vote. The simple fact is that President Obama has nominated fewer and we have confirmed more. All of this is not to lay the groundwork for some sort of payback, but to set the record straight. Republicans have not held a private retreat to plot how to block judicial nominees. We have not taken orders from outside groups to block nominees based on their ideology. We have not blocked nominees because we do not want them to sit on a specific case. We have not once attempted to filibuster nominees in the Judiciary Committee. That is how Democrats treated President Bush's nominees. Those are the facts. We have not and will not do any of those things. Instead, we will continue to thoroughly analyze the records of President Obama's nominees, and hold fair and rigorous hearings to ensure that each nominee possesses the impartiality, the commitment to the rule of law, the integrity, the legal expertise, and the judicial restraint necessary to sit on our Nation's judiciary. As ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, I look forward to continuing to work with the chairman to process nominations in the bipartisan manner that we have established over the past year. I yield the floor. I see our outstanding chairman, Senator Leahy, is here. I know he wants to get back to the committee. I appreciate his leadership. He is a person I enjoy working with. We spat a little over these nominations, but he allows us to have full and fair hearings when we have them, and I think I can't ask for more than that. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to share some thoughts on a central issue to this health care reform legislation. It is something that has gotten away from us. I do not believe we fully comprehended it. It is a critical issue. It seems to me we are double-counting the money. We are counting money twice--maybe the largest amount of money ever having been counted twice in the history of the world. It is very dangerous with regard to the financial viability of the legislation we are looking at today. It was promised by the President that this legislation would not add one dime to the national debt. He said yesterday that this legislation would strengthen Medicare. This is his quote: . . . and Medicare will be stronger and its solvency extended by nearly a decade. I don't think that is accurate. We have had other Members of the Democratic leadership say that. What we know is we have, I think it is about $460 billion in tax increases and $490 billion in tax increases and a little less than that, $400-and-some-odd billion in savings to Medicare, and that accounts for the $871 billion the bill is supposed to cost in the first 10 years. Of course, that is not an accurate ultimate cost since most of the benefits in the bill do not start until the fifth year. So when you go the first full 10 years of the bill, it costs $2.5 trillion. But, regardless, let's take this first 10 years. The assertion is that Medicare can be improved and that we can take money from it and that this is going to make Medicare stronger and that somehow this is going to extend the solvency of Medicare, which is going insolvent by 2017. That is because more and more people are retiring and people are living longer, among other reasons. So the cost of Medicare goes up. I guess what I am framing now is what I believe to be a matter of the greatest importance. The argument is that somehow, by cutting benefits in Medicare by almost $\1/2\ trillion, we are somehow strengthening Medicare. That would be true if the money that was taken out of Medicare Programs and benefits and providers who are providing the benefits--if that money were maintained in Medicare. They go to the CMS, the institution that keeps up with Medicare costs, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Chief Actuary there, Mr. Richard Foster, and they ask him: Won't these reductions in Medicare expenses extend the life of Medicare? And he said yes. OK. He said yes. He writes this: We estimate that the aggregate net savings to the Part A trust fund under the PPACA-- That is the health care reform bill-- would postpone the exhaustion of the trust fund assets by 9 years--that is from 2017 under current law to 2026 under the proposed legislation. Great. That is not a bad result. But then he goes on. I think he was simply asked: If you reduce spending in Medicare by effecting these cuts and reductions in Medicare, will it extend the life? And he said it would. However, I think he felt he might have been used, and so he didn't leave it right there. I think he believed there was something else afoot in this deal. He goes on to say this: In practice, the improved Part A financing-- That is what he is talking about, these cuts-- . . . the improved Part A financing cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions under the PPACA)-- The health care bill-- and to extend the trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions. Maybe I am wrong about this. I am happy to have a lot of people look at it. Wait a minute, we have the President of the United States yesterday saying that Medicare will be stronger and its solvency extended for nearly a decade. We have Senator Durbin and I think Senator Baucus and others saying the same thing. We are talking about $400 billion. So I would think this Congress can get a straight answer somewhere. Don't you? Well, I have been asking staff, and they say it is double counting. I said: What do you mean it is double counting? Well, Senator Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee-- former chairman of the Budget Committee--said it is double accounting. He offered an amendment, a simple amendment that said any money that is saved in Medicare stays in Medicare. Did that pass? No. They voted that down. That should be a signal, I submit. That should be a red flag. So now I am looking at this really, really hard because the way I see the financial accounting of the bill, perhaps the largest bogus part of it is to say that the money that is being saved from Medicare is going to create this new program and, at the same time, saying the savings in Medicare are going to be used to extend the life of Medicare. You cannot do both. That is what Mr. Foster said in his letter of December 10: In practice, the improved Part A financing-- He is talking about the improved Part A financing of Medicare by these cuts-- the improved Part A financing cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions under the PPACA) and to extend the trust fund. . . . All right. You got it? Let's go back and leave out the parentheses: . . . the improved Part A financing cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays . . . and to extend the trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions. So they got CBO to score it as if the money is going into the new health care reform, and they got CMS to score it as if it is saving Medicare. Now, I was a Federal prosecutor for a long time. I know the responsibilities placed on presidents of corporations. If the president of a corporation were to issue a prospectus and ask people to invest money in his company and support his program, his agenda, and he said: I have $400 billion or $400,000 I am going to spend in it, and he knew the money was being spent on something else and he did not really have that money, that is a criminal offense, and people would go to jail for it. I am worried about it; I really am. This is unbelievable. So we are going to get to the bottom of this. If I am wrong, I would like to see where the money is coming from. So my question to my colleagues is--and apparently this has been asked by staff for weeks and they have never gotten a straight answer--where do you get this $871 billion? How much of that are you counting coming from savings in Medicare; and where, precisely, are you getting it from Medicare? If you are going to spend it on the new program, how are you going to say it is going to strengthen Medicare as to its insolvency problem? You cannot count the money twice, and I believe that is what Mr. Foster was suggesting; that you cannot simultaneously count the money ``despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.'' What he is saying is, CBO is following proper accounting conventions for their scoring and CMS is doing it their way and it gives the appearance that you have some money that can be spent twice. But he said you cannot simultaneously use the same money. Now, isn't that true? But in this body, I do not know. What is another fundamental matter of budgetary importance that goes with it? The President has repeatedly said that not one dime will be added to the national debt, and it should not be. We cannot continue to do that. So when this legislation started, the idea was we needed to reform a lot of problems in our health care situation. One of the problems everybody recognized was that the doctors are not getting paid in a proper fashion for the work they do. Under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, we effected rules on how much doctors should be paid, and if those rules went into effect today, doctors would have a 21-percent pay cut on all Medicare work. Already Medicare physicians are leaving the practice because they get paid much less from the Federal Medicare Program than they do from private health insurance. So they would rather do private work than Medicare. But they do Medicare--most doctors do--but if you took them another 21 percent down, they would not. Every year, they come here and ask the Congress to waive this cut, and Congress--as part of the duplicity of this body that has gone on under both parties, but each year it gets worse and worse--we fix it, and we do not execute the cut. But we only do it for 1 year. So when we have a budget, it assumes a 10-year budget. As President Obama submitted it to us, it assumes in the first year you pay the physicians and you do not cut their pay. Then for 9 years you assume they get a 21-percent reduction. It is a gimmick because you cannot cut the physicians 21 percent; and we know that. If we budgeted for the full amount, we are going to have to pay physicians, and we are going to pay physicians, then there would be a big hole because we do not have the money and we either have to cut something else, raise taxes, or raise the debt. What we have been doing is paying for it with more debt. Well, each year, the doctors get all upset because they are staring at a 21-percent pay cut. All their representatives in the AMA and everybody come up every year and tell us: Don't cut our pay, and we do not--1 year at a time. This is a misrepresentation. It hides the financial precariousness of our position. It is not good. It should never continue. It needs to be permanently fixed, and that was supposed to be part of health care reform from the beginning. The President said that is what he was going to do. The leadership on the other side said that is what they were going to do. But what happened--when they met in their secret rooms, and they all wheeled and dealed and tried to add up these numbers and see how they could manipulate numbers and scores and accounting to make it add up so they could say it would not add one penny to the debt--they could not get around the $250 billion it takes to pay the doctors. They could not do it. They say, under this bill, there is a $130 billion surplus over the first 10 years. But it does not fix the doctor payments for Medicare in health care work, Medicaid. It does not fix it. So when you fix it, it costs $250 billion. There is no dispute about that. We have analyzed that. The accounting numbers are clear: $250 billion. So what the Democrats tried to do--it was a clever--Senator Ensign referred to it the other day as a shell game. They moved the doctor fix out of the health care reform--just took it out--and so, therefore, you do not have the $250 billion hole and you just put it over here. They thought they would be clever, they would just pass it, and we would add it all to the debt. They tried to do so, so they could tell the doctors they tried to vote to have a permanent fix of their payments. ``Doctors, we are going to take care of it. We'll just pass it, and every penny of this will add to the debt.'' Well, 13 Democrats would not swallow that, and I think every Republican opposed it, and it went down. So now I think we have a 2- month fix. Two months is where we are working from today, so we would not have a slashing of payments to physicians by failure to fix it. So they just took it out, and I assume we are going to have some other gimmick to hide that $250 billion. So if you put the $250 billion cost into health care reform, you end up with a $120 billion deficit right off the bat. Then, when you get into this double accounting of $450 billion, you have really got a mess. They are estimating $871 billion in income for the first 10 years of this plan. As I analyze it, you have a $250 billion hole from not paying the doctors, and then you have a $400-plus billion double accounting--the savings from Medicare. So it is just not good. I am telling you, we only have one President. He has a lot of things on his mind, and it is very frustrating. But I will say one more thing he said at that press conference. He said, and he has repeatedly stated: It is going to reduce health care premiums for your insurance. Right? This was yesterday, after this bill passed. He says he is tired of people carping about the cost of the bill. Remember him saying that--tired of these carpers? I guess he is talking about me because I have been carping about the cost of it for some time because the numbers do not add up. All right. They claim the legislation will reduce insurance costs. This is the score of the CBO about small businesses. What about insurance premiums? If you are small businesses, the average premiums today for a family is $13,300. If the Reid bill passes, by 2016 the premiums will be $19,200. Is that cutting premiums? Well, yes, it is because under the Reid bill it would increase, on average, 5.38 percent. But if we did not pass any bill at all, it would increase it 5.46 percent. So it saved money; it reduced your premium. It will be $19,200 instead of $19,300. That is for small businesses. What about for large businesses? Does it cut insurance premiums there? For large business plans, under the Reid bill, the increase, if we pass this legislation, would be 5.41 percent per year in your premiums. If you do not pass the bill at all, it would be 5.56 percent. Is that a savings? Very little. Instead of $21,100, under the Reid bill you would pay $20,300. Then, finally, the individual market--this is the people who already are the ones who are getting hurt because they are not in group plans; they don't have employers paying a third, a half, or whatever, for insurance; they don't get the same tax breaks. They are getting killed. Barbers, individual people who can't get into group plans, it is horrible for them. What happens to the individual market? Under the Reid bill, their premiums would go up 7.77 percent per year. They would go up more than the others. What about if we didn't do anything? How much would their bills go up then, their insurance bills? Only 5.51 percent. Theirs go up more than 2 percent. So I am just saying this legislation may have a great vision, it may have a great idea about trying to make the system work better, but it doesn't. These are huge costs. It is not financially sound. It is not going to reduce our premiums. It is going to increase the percentage of wealth in America going to health care instead of reducing it as I thought we were supposed to do from the beginning. I see my colleague, Senator Kyl, here. I would just leave it at that. I thank my colleagues. But if I am correct about these numbers, we shouldn't vote for the bill. People should change their vote. If I am in error, I would like to be informed of how I am in error. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. So the President promised to end the doctors coming to Washington every year to try to make sure they don't get cut 21 percent, but he has not done it. This bill's promises simply do not add up. This bill, when you assume the doctor fix, clearly adds to the debt. It must be added as part of the reform. There are a number of reasons to oppose the legislation, and I urge my colleagues to do so. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, if I could ask for 30 seconds to finish.

Mr. SESSIONS. That is correct.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will be pleased to.