Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, why are we here voting tonight at 1 a.m. and probably voting all the way to Christmas Eve? I think the answer fundamentally is on the health care matter, that after much talk about a bipartisan health reform effort and some work toward that end, the President and the Democratic leadership in the Congress decided they had the majorities in the House and the Senate and that they would use those majorities to pass the legislation that they wanted without Republican input. I know that has happened on occasion around this Senate, but I don't believe it has ever happened on a matter of such significance. These major kinds of policy matters have historically been bipartisan or had substantial bipartisan support. We are talking about health care, involving every American. We are talking about raiding, not strengthening, Medicare, a program that is already in deep trouble. We are talking about a major governmental intervention into one-sixth of the American economy. These are pretty big issues. Even more significantly, our Democratic colleagues are concerned about the American people, who, by consistent majorities, reject this plan. They are fearful of them. So they want to move this bill forward now, sooner, faster, quicker, with less discussion and less debate. Instead of working together to improve a broken health care system, the decision has been reached to railroad this bill through before Christmas. They say the President promised reform. He was elected and so they will just ram it through no matter what the American people, for that matter, think. Just for example, a recent CNN poll--I do not think that is a rightwing entity--61 percent oppose the Senate bill, only 36 percent support it. Just a little more than one-third support and over 60 percent oppose. Those are lower numbers than President Bush received for his plan to reform Social Security. So, why do they do this? Well, because they think they know better than you do, because they want to make history. And if you object--as the Senator from Rhode Island said this morning--you and the rabble disagree with us, why, you are mean-spirited, coldhearted, and fearful--as to whatever those words were--you are just like those great unwashed whom you represent. So I think there is an unusual amount of disdain here for any political and substantive disagreement about this incredibly important legislation and I think a disdain for the concerns of the American people, as represented in rallies, in tea parties, and in polling data. Is this all just illogical fear? Are these people totally irresponsible to worry about the future financial condition of their children? A colleague of mine showed me this great cartoon that showed a man standing beside Santa Claus, and Santa said: What would you like? I think the man was President Obama. And he said: Health care. And there was also a little boy, sitting on Santa's lap, and he said: What do I get? And Santa said: You get the bill. Well, the people know this is a significant issue for the future direction of our country, and I think they are saying that this what not what they intended during the last campaign. I remember this defining moment--do you not?--when Joe the plumber accosted President Obama, and they discussed redistributing the wealth around. And what an effort there was to suggest that President Obama did not really believe in that idea, but that he believed in freedom and individual responsibility and was not going to tax the average person, and those kinds of things. So the campaign survived that little dust-up. But I think the American people are saying: Fool me once--during the campaign--shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They are not happy with this bill. Polls show the tea parties are more popular than the Republican or Democratic Parties. So I think this use of raw power--the idea that we must get this bill done before Christmas, and we will pay any price necessary to get the votes to do it--is not good. I am amazed that people would criticize those of us who do not agree with this legislation--and I am prepared to talk at some length about the substantive reasons about it--that we are somehow obstructionist because we would like to have more than 1 day, really, to consider a 383-page amendment and see what all was placed in it. So my colleagues have been saying the people are misinformed and they have been subjected to lies and misinformation. Well, just a few days ago, I heard the President declare that if you do not pass this legislation, your insurance premiums are going to go up, which is not untrue. But what he did not convey--and I think most people understand already, however--is that even if the bill passes, premiums will go up some, double digits more than they would have gone up if the bill had not passed. A few people will see a modest--less than 1 percent, maybe some over 1 percent--reduction in the rate of increase in their insurance premium, but a lot of people are going to see double-digit increases in their premium, particularly the people who are not in group plans. Those are the ones for whom insurance premiums are the most unfair and who are getting rooked the most by insurance. We ought to be taking care of this problem because they are not in group plans and they are not in companies that subsidize it. They do not work for the government that subsidizes their health care. But the President has the bully pulpit. He lectured the whole Congress. He hauled us out and talked about it in a joint address to Congress. He got $150 million from the big PhRMA drug companies to advertise in support of this bill, as it has been reported. Robert Reich, a great liberal, Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, scathingly condemned that deal that PhRMA made with the White House over the doughnut hole and their contribution for advertising. I will just have to say, the majority has found no price too high, no depth too low in order to get that 60th vote so they can go forward. And we have got to get it done now, pass this managers' amendment that the majority leader has plopped down--the one that was written in secret and we just saw yesterday morning at about 10 o'clock. Well, I will just say, how should we judge the overall merits of the bill? How should we decide whether to vote for it or against it? I would say that one good way is to judge it by its own promises, to judge it by what the American people have been told the bill will do, how much it will cost, and those kinds of things. Well, there are some facts and some fictions here. We just need to be frank about it. Fiction No. 1: We have been told that the total cost of the legislation is $871 billion. That is a lot of money, $871 billion. But what are the facts? When the new programs created by this bill are fully implemented, the bill will actually cost, over the first 10 years of full implementation, $2.5 trillion--three times as much. Now, who is giving the best numbers here? Since we know most of the benefits do not start until 5 years from now, they score the first 10 years of the budget, the cost of the bill, and say it costs $871 billion. But if you take it from the first 10 years of the bill, as we would normally score a piece of legislation, it is $2.5 trillion-- $2,500 billion. That is a stunning difference. It just shows what a massive piece of legislation this bill is. According to the bill, Medicaid will be expanded up to 133 percent of the poverty level, but that will not happen until 2014. The insurance subsidies funded by the bill do not begin until 2014. So this is how they manipulated the numbers. So they say $871 billion. Not so. In fact, the managers' amendment increases Federal spending on health care to $200 billion rather than $160 billion projected under the original bill that came forward. So we currently spend one-sixth of our GDP on health care. How much more can we afford to pay? And wasn't the original intent to rein in health care spending, to reduce the percentage of GDP going to health care? Mr. President, how much time is left on this side?

Mr. SESSIONS. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. SESSIONS. Exactly. The President looked the American people in the eye and he said: This legislation will not add one dime to the national debt.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Exactly correct. What we are doing, I think you can say fairly--boil it down to this--we are raising taxes over $500 billion, we are cutting Medicare nearly $500 billion--so, around $1 trillion total. And we are using none of that money to fix the doctor payment deficit we know has to be fixed. Instead that money is going to new programs. We cannot cut the doctors 21 percent. Congress has filled that money in every year for nearly 10 years now, and we have to fill it in in the future. Any good health care reform would do what it promised to do from the beginning, which was to eliminate this cut. One proposal has been to do it simply by adding, throwing it to the debt.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, following up on that, I happened to see Governor Schwarzenegger on television today. He said he had initially been inclined to support this legislation until he realized what it would do to his Medicaid budget in California--it would cost them $3 billion and they do not have that $3 billion. Indeed, they didn't have the money necessary to meet their current obligations under Medicare. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and it be in order to offer an amendment to extend to the State of California the same benefit that provides 100 percent Federal funding to the State of Nebraska for their expanded Medicaid Program. This would give the same treatment to California as Nebraska would obtain.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I think I would be remiss if I did not ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and that these provisions be extended to my State of Alabama which is also in a serious condition financially and whose Governor has expressed unequivocal opposition to the burdens on the State Medicaid Program that passing this legislation would impose. I ask unanimous consent that the same benefit that provides 100 percent Federal funding to the State of Nebraska for their expanded Medicaid Program apply to the State of Alabama.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will be pleased to.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I object.

Mr. SESSIONS. I object.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. I urge my colleagues to send this bill back and reform it so we can have a clean Defense bill. We need to take these unpaid matters out and make sure they are paid for. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. I object.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, it is very distressing that Senator Stabenow could not finish her remarks and that other Senators such as Senator Whitehouse and Senator Levin and Senator Lieberman have been shorted of time. Why? Because, for some reason, the majority leader feels we should not go past 5:30 tonight. This is a defense bill, and it is important. We need to be talking about the good things that are in it and the things that have been added to it that are not so good. I do not think working a few extra hours is going to hurt anybody. I hear colleagues complain that they cannot work a weekend, they cannot work up to Christmas, they cannot work at night. Well, what about our men and women who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, Christmas and holidays? They are away from their families so I do not have any sympathy for any Member of the Senate who feels this is too hard for them. Also, I do not appreciate the fact that we are shut off from debate tonight to be able to talk about this issue that is before us. I see no reason for that to have to occur. I object to the health care bill. The American people object to the health care bill--sixty-one percent say no. But we are supposed to now agree and go along with the majority? And if we do not, we are some sort of obstructionists? I do not think so. I believe I am representing my constituency. I believe I am representing the best interests of the United States of America. I do not believe this health care bill is part of that. With regard to the armed services bill--I am a member of the Armed Services Committee, and I have been a Member for 12 years; I have been to Iraq six times and Afghanistan six times--I believe it is great we can give our soldiers a pay raise and support them. A lot of things in the bill are good. There are some that are cut too much, but there are a lot of things that are good, and I wish to vote for the bill. But this defense bill has $18 billion in unrelated spending items attached it: increased unemployment, COBRA, food stamps, and loan subsidies for businesses. Two things strike me about this. First, these new expenditures are not paid for. They are not within the budget. They are above the budget. What does that mean? Well, the budget itself has us in deficit. So if it is not paid for in the budget resolution, every penny of this $18 billion goes straight to the debt of the United States of America. We need to stop this. Second, why did they put this kind of spending on the defense bill? Because they want to come down here and say: Anybody who is not willing to go along with this scheme to pad $18 billion straight to the debt of the United States of America--anybody who objects does not love our soldiers. That is wrong, and people are getting tired of that. This is how the debt of this country is surging out of control. This Congress is irresponsible in our spending. We have increased the debt the likes of which this Nation has never seen, and we are spending as if it is going out of style. I would point out one matter here about the interest we pay on the debt. In 2008, the annual deficit was $450 billion--at that time, the largest ever. This past year, the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30 was $1,400 billion, $1.4 trillion. This puts us on the map, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to double the entire debt of America in 5 years, and triple it in 10. Unbelievable. This is a kind of gimmick--attaching unpaid for, nonbudgeted items to the defense bill, then trying to force it through, so we cannot do anything about it. They snicker, I am sure, in their self-confident way that: We got 'em. If they object to the bill, we will say they don't love our soldiers, they don't support America's defense. I am getting tired of it. I think the American people are getting tired of it. I saw a poll where the most popular party in America today is the tea party--more than Republicans or Democrats. Somebody said: Well, $18 billion, Sessions, that is not too much money. But it is done on bill after bill. This is not the only bill that has these kinds of gimmicks in it. Let me show you. I figured this out one day. I put together a chart here a little bit hastily: Baseline Increases: A Destructive Pattern. When we increase funding in these bills above the budgeted amount and increase the debt, people like to think: Well, it is just $18 billion. That is not much. Look how that works when you do it over a period of ten years. So let's say next year, we go over $18 billion. This adds another $18 billion to the national debt. Well, that is not so much. But wait, it is a lot. The State of Alabama's general fund budget is $2 billion. Do not tell me $18 billion in one bill, on top of this defense bill, is not a lot of money. It is a huge amount of money. But it does not work that way. This $18 billion tends to go into the baseline, so the next year, when they talk about increasing the budget, they pad it by another $18 billion. It is not just $18 billion the next year, you see. It is $18 billion on top of what was pumped into the baseline the year before, and that totals out to $36 billion. Then the next year, it is $36 billion, plus $18 billion more. And the next year, it is $54 billion, plus $18 billion more. The next year it is $72 billion, plus $18 billion. The next year, it is $90 billion, plus $18 billion. And the next years, it is $108 billion, $126 billion, $144 billion, and $162 billion if you pad the budget. And this bill is just 1 of 13 accounts: Defense. We have 13 different spending bills. How much is that? It is $900 billion in additional deficits, just because of our inability, our unwillingness, to stay by the numbers that we voted on as our budget limit. The budget itself, as presented by the President and passed by the Democratic majority, put us on a road to having $1.4 trillion in deficit last year, and it looks as though this year we are going to have a another $1.4 trillion deficit. But just this one little gimmick, if it is replicated each year, can add almost $1 trillion more to the debt of America over ten years. That is why we are concerned about it. By the way, when we talk about the scheme that puts us on the road, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to tripling the debt of America by 2019, that does not include the health care bill. The health care bill has not passed. This outlook only includes the things that are in law now. So how much more would those figures be if the debt goes up? I will point to one last thing about the overall financial status of this country: the interest we pay on that debt. This chart shows it. Last year, this Nation paid $170 billion in interest on the borrowings we have as a nation. In that 1 year it was $170 billion. That is a lot of money. As I said, not counting the State education budget, for all the other matters of our State of 4.6 million people-- which is almost one-fiftieth of the Nation's population, an average- sized State--our general fund is $2 billion. However, $170 billion is how much we paid in interest last year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, those numbers will increase to where in 2019, as a result of surging debt, $799 billion will be added to our debt because of interest we must pay; $799 billion just in that 1 year. That is more than the whole defense budget. That is more than the whole U.S. discretionary budget from not too long ago. That is a huge amount of money. It is going to crowd out spending for schools, for highways, for health care, and for other projects. I am very upset about it. We cannot continue. The President has said this is an unsustainable course. Every economist we talk to says it is an unsustainable course. But how do we get there? We get there by taking a Defense bill and tacking on $18 billion worth of unfunded spending. Every penny of that gets added to the debt.

Mr. SESSIONS. Reserving the right to object, if I might, if the Senator would propose her request again.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Will the Senator yield? Those two deans are saying that the entire promises of this bill--that it would reduce cost and improve quality--both are not true?

Mr. SESSIONS. I agree with the Senator completely. As Senator McCain already said, it is baffling. Here we are, all these weeks, and now we are being told the public option is being dropped? Today? And maybe this expansion of Medicare? Oh, we just changed our mind on this? On a bill that is designed to reorganize one-seventh of the entire American economy? This is how we are being led here? I say to Senator McCain, it is historic. I think the American people have rejected this plan. The numbers do not add up. The money is not there to pay for these schemes. I think the American people know it. So I guess I would suggest--my colleague from Tennessee, Senator Alexander, is not here-- rather than jamming forward before Christmas, isn't it time to slow down and think this thing through and start over in a step-by-step process that might actually produce some positive change in health care in America?

Mr. SESSIONS. If the Senator will yield for a question about this deal with big PhRMA, a few days ago I made reference to and quoted from a scathing editorial by Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, who is a leading intellectual liberal Democrat who criticized these deals in the most scathing terms. He used words I was reluctant to use on the floor--as my colleague said, ``unseemly,'' whatever. I would say it goes beyond that. He used the word ``extortion.'' I don't think he used that word lightly. I think it is the kind of process--the Senator has been here and many who are on the floor now have been here for a long time--but it seems to me this is pushing the envelope on dealmaking to the point that really is a dangerous step. It goes beyond anything we should countenance, in my view.

Mr. SESSIONS. I say to Senator Thune, I think you have made the point about the cost curve. And I say to Senator Corker, you hit it right on the head. There is a need for us to work together to help reduce the cost of health care and not hurt its quality at the same time. This bill does not do that. I say to Senator Corker, what businesses tell me is that when you make it more expensive to hire a worker, that makes you less able to hire more workers. If this bill, in effect, is driving up the cost of health care--not to mention the new taxes that are out there--as an economic principle, it does mean we are jeopardizing jobs. Would you agree?

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share a few other thoughts in the 5 minutes I believe I have to speak on a different matter than we have been talking about earlier, but it is a very important matter. It is the procurement contract, the request for proposals the Defense Department has put out in order to request proposals for the Defense Department to purchase a new tanker for the U.S. Air Force. It will be perhaps the largest contract purchase in the history of the Defense Department, certainly since World War II. I regret that I must come to the floor today to give this speech, but it is important that we do this right. Earlier, one of our colleagues, Senator Murray, for whom I have great admiration, I understand told NPR: All things considered, I have stood on the line in Everett, Washington, where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody build anything. Well, we are prepared, as I will explain, to construct the finest aircraft for a tanker the world has ever known in Alabama, my area of Mobile, AL, at the old Brookley airfield, which was a fabulous, huge airfield. It was closed 40 years ago, but the runway and the capacity and the location and access by water and rail and interstate are all there. It is going to be a fabulous place, and already there is a significant engineering center constructed there, and there are plans to go forward if and when this contract is awarded. I would note that the people of Alabama get a little bit offended when people suggest they are not able to produce anything of world- class quality. I would remind my colleagues that it was in Alabama that the Saturn V rocket was developed that took a man to the Moon and that virtually everything that goes into space goes through Alabama; that we have some of the finest automobile manufacturing plants in the history of the world, including Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, all producing large amounts of some of the best automobiles in the world. In Mobile, have built a new trimaran ship that can cruise at 40 knots and has fabulous capability for cargo. It is one of the finest new ships of its kind the world has ever known. We have a fabulous workforce second to none of which I am utterly proud. I would just say one of the complaints I have about the Department of Defense's request for a proposal--I have four I plan to talk about, but one I am going to highlight now in light of the comment of my colleague is that I believe there is an inadequate government assessment of acquisition and performance risk. In other words, the government should assess how well we can believe the bidders are able to produce the product at the price and in the time frame in which they would like to see it produced. I am so confident the plant in Alabama could be competitive with any other bidder, that I believe the government should give this aspect higher weight. In fact, they did so in the previous bid process, and the aircraft plant in Alabama came out with a better score on risk than the one in my colleague's State. So there are other matters that are important, but I just wanted to emphasize that point. We are ready, able, willing, and anxious to produce the finest tanker the Air Force has ever seen. This tanker aircraft today is now 50 years old. I regret we are having the kinds of difficulties we are in this bid process. I respect so much the men and women of the Department of Defense, but I do have to say this newly configured bid process is dramatically different from before, and I believe it is in the wrong direction. I believe it has failed our warfighters. I have to express my concerns about it, particularly as reflected in the request for proposal that has been sent out to the two bidders. My intent here is simple. I will point out a few things that I think are significant. In essence, the Department of Defense abandoned, out of the blue and without serious discussion, so far as I can tell, its decision to provide a transformational and game-changing aerial refueling tanker to the warfighter. Those were their words. And how has that resulted in or was the result of major changes in the request for proposals that have been sent out? The bidders are considering those proposals. In doing so, the result, I have to say, evidences a clear bias toward one aircraft over another. I hate to say that. Let me provide a snapshot of what this new RFP does. I asked the Secretary of Defense about it at the hearing a few weeks ago. He indicated that this process for altering the RFP is still ongoing, but I am not sure the Air Force has been listening, so I am concerned about it. Let me provide a snapshot of what our concerns are. Of the six key discriminating features that favored the KC-45 Northrop/EADS aircraft over the Boeing aircraft in the previous competition, five of the six features were either eliminated or changed to a nonmandatory status in the current draft RFP--a bias, I suggest. In contrast, eight features of the Boeing aircraft were upgraded in the new draft RFP, which resulted in seven of those eight areas favoring their aircraft. So what is the bottom line? The very sad conclusion I have had to reach is that this closely watched competition was altered with a purpose, and that purpose was to favor one bidder over another. So we are in a comment period now, and I hope the Department of Defense will listen to the concerns I believe are legitimate and to ensure fairness in this. Replacing the tanker is the Air Force's No. 1 procurement priority and has been for quite a number of years. In fact, the Department of Defense has indicated they understand this, and I think they understand their integrity and the whole acquisition process is at stake in this so closely watched and so important bid. So I will show this chart. I am going to point out something we call a spider chart. It looks a bit like a spider web. The green lines, the inside circle lines, represent the capability of the existing 50-year-old KC-135 tanker in 11 different category areas, such as passengers, fuel offload at 1,000 nautical miles, fuel offload capacity, boom envelope, operational availability--all of these 11 factors. The red represents the latest RFP requirements for this new--what used to be considered--transformational aircraft. It follows almost the same as the current capability. This is really unthinkable to me. It follows those capabilities on point after point after point. In some areas, it is less capable than the current aircraft that is 50 years old. The black line represents the capabilities of the Boeing aircraft. For example, Boeing's offering would carry 190 passengers, whereas the other aircraft, the one that would be built in Alabama if it were to be the winner, would carry 226 passengers. And so, let me say again that I love and respect the men and women of our armed services. But, their leadership, at least so far, has failed them on this matter. All I have ever asked for is that the DOD choose fairly the aircraft that provides the best value. Let me outline my concerns with the disturbing actions taken in the current tanker draft request for proposal, RFP. My intent here is simple. I will outline, through a series of charts, how the Department of Defense abandoned, out of the blue without serious evaluation, its decision to provide a transformational and game changing aerial refueling tanker to the warfighter. This is clearly evidenced by the major changes in the request for proposal sent to the two potential bidders. Furthermore--and in doing so--the result has been a clear bias towards one aircraft over another. Let me provide a snapshot of what the RFP does: Of the key discriminating features that favored the KC-45--Northrup/EADS aircraft--over the 767 Boeing aircraft in the previous competition, five of the six features, 83 percent were either eliminated or changed to nonmandatory in the current draft RFP. In other words, these features are less important to the outcome of the competition. In contrast, eight features of the Boeing aircraft were upgraded in the new draft RFP which resulted in seven of those eight areas, 87.5 percent, favoring the 767--Boeing aircraft--over the KC-45. What is the bottom line? The very, very sad conclusion that one must reach is that this closely watched competition was altered with a purpose, and that purpose was to favor one bidder over the other. The DOD is now in a comment period for this draft RFP for a reason-- to listen to concerns and to ensure fairness in the process. Replacing the tanker is the Air Force's No. 1 acquisition priority and the Department of Defense's most critical acquisition program. In fact, the Department of Defense's integrity in acquisition and contracting are at stake. This effort has stretched for over a decade and has been consumed by controversy, fraud, illegal activity, and political posturing. Let me remind my colleagues--both DOD and Boeing employees were prosecuted, punished, and some even went to jail over the failed attempt at a sole source lease arrangement that would have cost the taxpayers billions. Our national security relies on this critical capability--the men and women in uniform who protect this country deserve the best value, and they deserve a transformational aircraft. Let me now turn to some specific concerns. DOD's latest acquisition strategy for the KC-X aerial refueling tanker replacement competition is, unfortunately, deeply flawed. Instead of the modern, multirole, game-changing, transformational aircraft that the Air Force has said it wants and needs for the past 10 years, the Department's draft RFP specifies an aircraft that is essentially the same as the existing 50-plus-year-old KC-135. This acquisition strategy cannot be justified and the DOD must make changes to ensure fairness. The draft RFP released by the Department of Defense on September 24 is significantly different than the previous RFP created by the Air Force and released in January of 2007. While the GAO sustained 8 of the 111 complaints Boeing raised regarding the previous source selection process, the Department's initial reaction, as stated to Congress, was to fix those 8 flaws, and release a modified RFP to keep the program on track. So how exactly have we arrived at a completely new draft RFP that fundamentally not only changes the acquisition process for the tanker, but is unlike any major procurement in the history of Defense acquisition? The first change is a paramount focus on cost. While controlling costs is important, when it becomes the overwhelming discriminator it has a negative impact on the capability that is produced. Holding cost far above capability, as this draft RFP does, will result in an aircraft without the kind of game-changing capability the Air Force has consistently requested. The new draft RFP has many flaws. While there isn't enough time for me to list every single problem, the RFP's flaws can be summarized in four major themes: 1. The evaluation methodology does not consider best value, but rather lowest cost. 2. This results in a significant bias toward a smaller aircraft. 3. There is an inadequate government assessment of acquisition and performance risk. 4. The wrong contract mechanism is proposed. Evaluation methodology is not best value. The fundamental tenet of the RFP is the winner will be the lowest- priced offer that meets a minimum threshold of specified capabilities. This is a far cry from the ``value-based acquisition,'' as the Department claims and as the warfighter deserves. Additionally, this strategy represents a departure from the normal DOD acquisition process and goes against the generally recognized public policy standards of DOD which seeks the best value and most capability at the best price for the warfighter. Because the options for the tanker aircraft will be based on existing commercial platforms, the ``low cost'' approach provides an inherent advantage to the smallest and least-capable aircraft. Because no additional credit is offered for additional capability--beyond the minimum thresholds of the RFP--additional size and capabilities will almost certainly be a negative because they can only come with some higher price. There is inherent bias in this procurement--beyond the low cost approach--that substantially favors a smaller less capable aircraft. It is extremely troubling that nearly every single key discriminator from the previous competition that would have given additional credit to an aircraft with greater than the minimum capability required has been neutralized or eliminated under this new RFP. The primary measure of tanker effectiveness--the ability to offload fuel at range--will not even be considered in the evaluation beyond a minimum distance requirement that, incidentally, is equal to the current 50-plus-year-old KC-135 aircraft. This defies logic. The very reason for a tanker to exist, and a key discriminator in the previous competition, has now become a ``non-mandatory'' aspect of the aircraft. This change substantially benefits the less capable aircraft and will result in a fleet of tankers that is no better than what we are currently flying. I cannot recall a time when the Department of Defense, instead of enhancing capability when purchasing a new weapons system, made a deliberate decision to procure a new system that is no more capable than the system it is meant to replace, in this case a 50-plus-year-old aircraft. This is especially so where much more capability can be obtained for so little cost. This RFP change defies previous statements of senior Air Force leaders. For example, on November 30, 2005, following his statement at the Defense Logistics Conference, current Air Force Chief of Staff General Schwartz, who at the time was Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, told reporters that the next tanker ``needs to be multi-mission, it cannot be a single-mission airplane.'' On December 1, 2005, Mike Wynne, who was the Secretary of the Air Force, told reporters ``Tankers are not only tankers any more. They are going to be multi-mission aircraft.'' If 4 years ago the senior leadership of the Air Force recognized the need for more capable, multi-role tankers, why have we not been able to structure an acquisition that reflects that need? General Duncan McNabb, Commander, US Transportation Command stated in a press briefing on December 11, 2009: New KC-X tanker aircraft in the Air Force's inventory today would make the enormous task of surging more US troops into Afghanistan by mid 2010 and then sustaining the entire force there easier. As the Air Force envisions it, it would be ``a very efficient cargo and passenger carrier'' in the war zone, in addition to its primary aerial refueling tasks, due to its ``floors, doors, and defensive systems.'' Instead of having to fly commercial aircraft, which lack defensive systems, into outlying places like Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, and then transloading their passengers and palletized cargo onto military transports for delivery into Afghanistan, KC-X aircraft could move them directly there, thereby preserving C-17 transports for moving ``rolling stock'' military equipment.'' The draft RFP does not require any government evaluation of price or schedule risk. Standard acquisition practice allows the government to adjust the proposed pricing and schedules of the offers based on an independent assessment, in order to protect the government's interest against an unreasonable ``low-ball'' offer. This lack of a price and schedule risk evaluation in the new RFP is especially troubling considering that one company--Boeing--has its competitors pricing data from the previous competition and can consider Northrop's data when developing a competitive position. The government should do the prudent thing and evaluate the potential price and schedule risk of each offering. A failure to include this provision, as was done previously without objection, is an abdication of fiduciary duty to the taxpayers, and will undoubtedly result in unreasonable bids that will haunt this program for years. The business and contracting construct of this competition is simply unacceptable. The contracting mechanism used by the Department--an 18- year firm fixed price contract--will require industry to assume many future risks, including inflation and the risk associated with developing a new tanker. The new RFP incorrectly assumes that both tankers are fundamentally nondevelopmental items. While it is true that they are derived from commercial platforms, they are far from nondevelopmental. In fact, this idea is inconsistent with the proposed structure of the program, which includes at least three years and several billion dollars for development. The new RFP will require both companies to make significant changes to the baseline commercial aircraft platforms, including redesigning the cockpits and fire-control equipment. It sounds to me like the Department needs to make up its mind and either buy an off-the-shelf product at a fixed price or properly structure a development contract. Trying to do both will inevitably result in doing neither very well. The bottom line is I am baffled as to why the Department changed the RFP so substantially. Why am I baffled? Let me highlight a few quotes from DOD that illustrate my point: On February 29, 2008, at a DOD news briefing following the previous award to the Northrop Grumman/EADS tanker, General Art Lichte, Light-EE, then commander of the Air Force Air Mobility Command, explained why the Northrop tanker was selected: From a warfighter's perspective, I can sum it up in one word: more. More passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more patients that we can carry, more availability, more flexibility and more dependability. On September 18, 2008, John Young, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the Northrop tanker was selected because it ``provided more tanker capability and offload rate and was substantially cheaper to develop.'' Since then, little has changed to suggest that the capabilities valued during the last competition are no longer necessary. It is even clearer today that we need an aircraft that is more than a tanker; one with enhanced multirole capabilities to meet global challenges, such as the President's decision to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. In fact, before the new and radically different RFP was released, very few people associated with the program had any idea that the needs had changed. During his opening statement in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17, 2009, General Duncan McNabb, Commander of U.S. Transportation Command, testified before Congress: The KC-X will be a game changer. Its value as a tanker will be tremendous. Its value as a multi-role platform to the mobility enterprise will be incomparable. . . . It will be an ultimate mobility force multiplier. In fact, on September 24, 2009, the very same day DOD unveiled the new RFP, the Air Force Air Materiel Command released a white paper that stated the KC-X must be dual mission capable--able to perform airlift and air refueling missions. Yet the new RFP values multirole capabilities far less than the previous RFP and will undoubtedly result in a less capable aircraft. In fact, Air Force Magazine recently quoted USAF General Duncan McNabb, Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command as he addressed defense reporters on December 9, 2009--just last week. General McNabb stated: The KC-X, as the Air Force envisions it, would be a very efficient cargo and passenger carrier. According to General McNabb, the Air Force still wants a game changing aerial refueling tanker. So not allowing additional credit for extra cargo and passenger capacity in the draft request for proposal, RFP, makes no sense. During a DOD press conference after the new draft RFP was released on September 24, 2009, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Bill Lynn assured everyone that the competition would not be a ``Low-Price Technically Acceptable approach,'' and would in fact be a ``Best Value competition, with both price and non-price factors taken into account.'' Now that sounds good, and while they can argue its technically true, it isn't the whole story. While the RFP does allow for consideration of non-price factors, it is a far second to consideration of price. Most non-price factors, including the ability to deliver additional fuel and cargo, won't even be considered if the price difference in the two bids is less than 1 percent. Let's think about that for one moment. Under the current RFP structure, if one aircraft costs 1.1 percent more than the other--even if--it delivers 20 times more fuel and cargo at twice the distance, it would not be selected. This approach turns a blind eye toward providing the most capability to warfighters at the best value for taxpayers. A rational person certainly wouldn't use this approach for buying a family a car, so why is it being used to buy one of our most critical national security assets? Is that the kind of approach we want to use to buy tankers that will be the backbone of our global posture for the next 50 years? The answer should be a resounding ``no.'' Indeed, in the decades to come, the ability of this tanker fleet to transport people and cargo may become even more important than today. And it should prompt us to ask how we got such a bizarre and illogical RFP. While the reasons for the dramatic changes have no rational explanation, their impact on the RFP is clear. The changes favor one company. Following its loss in the previous competition, Boeing filed 111 complaints about the selection process. Although the GAO only upheld eight of these complaints, the Department addressed many more of their complaints in the new RFP to the disadvantage of the Northrop Grumman offering. These include: Boeing complained the methodology used to estimate the refueling capability of each aircraft was flawed. The new RFP has adjusted that methodology to favor its smaller aircraft. Boeing complained fuel costs should be considered over a 40-year time period, not the 25-year time period used in the previous competition. The new RFP has adjusted the time-period used to evaluate fuel costs to 40 years, again to favor its smaller aircraft. Boeing complained about the schedule risk assessment. The new RFP does not include a schedule risk assessment. Boeing complained that the bidders' past performance was too heavily weighted. The new RFP significantly diminishes past performance. Boeing complained that additional credit was given for an aircraft that had much higher capability. The new RFP offers no real additional credit for exceeding minimum capability thresholds. Finally, the price competition has been tainted by the Air Force releasing the Northrop Grumman team's pricing data to Boeing following the previous competition and now refusing to release Boeing's pricing data to Northrop Grumman. For these reasons, I am deeply troubled by the Departments' approach for selecting the next tanker. If the Department continues down the path that it is currently on, warfighters and taxpayers will be done a great disservice. Mr. President, in closing, I would like to return to my initial comment. It is clear to me that the draft RFP abandons the Air Force's need to provide a transformational and game changing aerial refueling tanker to the warfighter. And, furthermore, I must reluctantly conclude, it did so with a bias towards one aircraft over another. If we continue down the path of this draft RFP--without competition--we are moving headlong towards a sole source contract where the warfighter and the taxpayer ultimately pay the price. This will be a stain on the integrity of DOD's procurement process that will not be removed for decades. It is not too late. Secretary Gates has said the purpose for the RFP comment period is to allow for the DOD to correct flaws. The DOD must listen and take action.

Mr. SESSIONS. This is a matter of such importance that I will need to speak about it again in the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the vote we had earlier this morning, moving forward onto the omnibus spending bill that is before us, is a stunning statement that we are not listening to the American people; that we are unaware or indifferent to the level of spending that is occurring in this country, which is unlike anything that has occurred before. Many have complained that President Bush overspent, and on some occasions he did. One expert told me recently that they have compared President Bush's misdemeanors to felony murder when you look at the seriousness of the spending levels that we are now undertaking in the baseline budgets of the various Federal agencies. This is different from the stimulus package that is already out there--to spend $800 billion in stimulus funding that has been poured into this economy--on top of the baseline budget spending items. So not only do we have this unprecedented stimulus package from earlier this year--the largest single spending bill in the history of the American Republic--but we are now moving forward with baseline budget items that have increases that are stunning, unjustified, irresponsible, and put us on a pathway to double domestic spending in far less than 10 years. This is unthinkable. I have to go back to the core threat we are facing, as more and more experts and economists are reminding us of it. This is based on the Congressional Budget Office study; it is based on the budget presented by the President of the United States over 10 years. Earlier this year, he presented us a budget. And what did it show? It showed our total American debt in 2008 was $5.8 trillion. That is a tremendous amount of money. That is what the total debt from the founding of the American Republic was--$5.8 trillion. They project that by 2013 that debt will increase to $11.8 trillion--doubling in 5 years--and increasing to $17.3 trillion in the year 10 of the President's budget--tripling the national debt. They say: Well, we have an economic recession. Well, we have had recessions before. We have a recession more often than every decade. We had thought that, hopefully, we could maybe figure a way to avoid them, but we haven't done that yet. I guess blame can go around to a lot of different people. But I would say this does not project another recession in the 10 years we are tripling the debt. As I have said, we are on an unprecedented course of spending that has never been seen in our country before. The only thing like it was during World War II and we were in a life-and-death struggle, fighting wars on both the Pacific and Atlantic, and Africa--around the world. Virtually every able-bodied person was either in the military or building ships and airplanes and weaponry to send to our soldiers. The whole country was mobilized. We never did this to our deficit then, and we did it in a way that commenced a pay-down of those debts after it was over. What I wanted to emphasize was--many of my colleagues have heard it stated, people seem to all admit it--we are on an unsustainable path. This is not a sustainable spending schedule. Then how do we get off of it? When do we get off of it, if it is unsustainable? Is it by producing a bill that we just voted on that increases spending at 12 percent, a rate of spending that would double those six discretionary spending bills' accounts in 5, 6, or 7 years? It would double it. Is that the way to get spending under control? I don't think so. Remember, I am not counting in this 12-percent increase the stimulus package that was passed. I would also note, under the budget the President submitted, the deficits in the outyears are not going down. There is no projection in those 10 years that we would have a recession, but there is also no projection that the deficits would be falling. In fact, the deficit, in 1 year, in 2019, would be over $1 trillion. So these are stunning numbers. The highest deficit we have ever had was at $450 billion. The year before this year--we just concluded in September 30 of this year--$1.4 trillion. Next year it will be $1.5 trillion. There should be some dip, we hope, for a few years, and then it is going back up on an unsustainable path. It is just stunning. We cannot do this. That is one of the big things that is occurring in the streets of America with our tea parties and others. People are saying: Congress, what is the matter with you? Don't you understand you are mortgaging our children's future; you are devaluing the dollar; you are placing our economy at risk, as virtually every expert economist you talk to says, including Mr. Bernanke--not very aggressively, in my view, but he said that recently. This is a bad path. What does that mean when you have a big debt? The debt goes up. How do you get the money? Where does the money come from? You have to borrow it. We put on the market Treasury bills and notes, and we ask people to loan us the money so we can spend, spend, spend more than we take in, year after year. Some say it is the entitlements that are causing this, and entitlements are growing. That is our Social Security and our Medicare. One reason those are growing is, frankly--it is a very serious reason-- we have more seniors and they are living longer. They have been going up 6 or 7 percent a year. We are troubled by that. But the truth is, Social Security and Medicare have been in surplus. What has happened to the surplus? It has been spent on discretionary spending. We are spending the Social Security surplus and Medicare surplus--but it is going caput. Medicare is fading fast, and by 2017 the trust fund will be exhausted. So we are not going to have a surplus to spend. So you borrow the money; this is what you do. In 2009, we paid interest on the money that people loaned us--much of it from China and oil-rich States, many of which are not friendly to us. We are paying them huge amounts of interest--$170 billion. How much is that? That is a lot of money. My State of Alabama is about an average size State. We are a frugal State. We don't have huge government. We have some pretty good economic growth as a result of that. But we have a $2 billion annual general fund budget--$2 billion. We paid $170 billion, the United States of America, in interest alone in 2009. Look what CBO says, our objective Budget Office. It is under the control, really, of the Democratic majority, but they take pride in giving us numbers that are valid and reliable. I think they do that for the most part. Look at this. They say by 2019, the interest we will be paying on the debt will not be $170 billion but $799 billion because we cannot stop spending. It is just unthinkable. People say we have to do better. This is unsustainable. We need to do something. When? We just voted this morning for a bill. I don't have a chart on that, but I will just read the numbers to you. It increases spending on 6 of the 13 appropriations bills. We try to pass them individually, 13 appropriations bills that fund the Federal Government. When we get to the end, it is easier sometimes for the leadership just to cobble all six of them together in a big package and put it out there and say vote up or down. That is what we have done. That is not a good policy. We need to do better than that. We really need 2-year budgeting, and then we would have time to bring up these bills one by one and give them the scrutiny they deserve. But if we look at the overall spending in these 6 bills, 6 of the 13 that have been put together in a package, it shows that the percentage of growth in spending on the baseline level is 12 percent. That is a stunning figure, when you think about it. What is the inflation rate today? Zero. We do not have inflation. The last number was .2 percent deflation over the past year. The average family is containing their spending. Ask the average city mayor. Aren't they trying to contain spending and be more efficient and be leaner and more effective? What about our State governments? The same thing. They are facing real problems, and they are trying to contain the growth of spending and we increase it by 12 percent. What kind of increase did the average working American get in their salary? Probably zero and lucky to hold it. If they had been getting overtime, they are probably not getting overtime today. Maybe in the family two people were working, maybe now only one is working. What about the State Department and foreign operations, what kind of increase did they get? A 33-percent increase in spending, most of which I assume will be spent around the world somewhere. What about Transportation and HUD? I have a chart on that. I just have the last 2 years since our colleagues have been in the majority. Last year it was a 12.3-percent increase--a stunning increase. Look at this year, 2010--23-percent increase on HUD, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation; 23 percent on top of 12. This is the kind of spending that would double the HUD budget in 3 to 4 years. The foreign operations, I just mentioned, at the rate of increase we have, it would double in 2 to 3 years. The whole budget would double in 2 to 3 years. Let's talk about Transportation/HUD. Did they get any money out of the stimulus package? You are counting that in here, aren't you, Senator Sessions, the money that Transportation/HUD got out of it? No, I am not. This is baseline spending. What did they get? The total Transportation/HUD budget--I hope my colleagues will think about these numbers--is $68 billion this year. Remember, I just noted interest in 2019 would be $800 billion. That gives some perspective on the level of spending we have. But, again, that is just the baseline spending, and it does not count the $62 billion of spending that came out of the stimulus package, according to this chart. Remember, only a small percentage of the stimulus package went to highways. They said it was for bridges and infrastructure and highways, and I think about 4 percent of the overall amount went to highways. Now they are claiming we don't have enough money for highways and they talk about another stimulus bill of another couple of hundred billion dollars--just another $100 billion, $200 billion. Remember, $100 billion--the entire Transportation-HUD expenditure this year is $68 billion. I don't think this is any kind of exaggeration. I am not an alarmist, but I am alarmed because I am telling the truth about these numbers. What have we done on previous spending bills that have come through the Senate? Two other bills have already come through the Senate and had stunning increases in them. Look at this. This is Interior and the Environment expenditures--Department of the Interior and the Environment--EPA, basically. Look at that: 16.6 percent increase in 1 year. It had a tight budget last year, but it had a 16-percent increase this year. The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, which now is claiming the ability to regulate CO2, they got a 33-percent increase in spending. EPA got a 33-percent increase in spending. We have never seen those kinds of numbers before. Look at these expenditure growth items over the last number of years. When President Bush was in, everybody said he was a spendthrift, that President Bush put us in debt. Democrats say: We are not doing anything. This is a President Bush-- it is all his fault. He was a big spender. I criticized him some for overspending. A lot of Republicans have. But look at his averages for those Interior and Environment appropriations. It averaged 1 percent from 2001 to 2009, so he was holding the line. He had some 5-percent years, 5.6, but some negative years too. So the average was a modest 1 percent. Remember, 16 percent growth in spending at a time when inflation is zero. Another example of that--let's take the Agriculture bill. I believe in agriculture. I have tried to support most of these bills. I have worried sometimes that we were spending too much on agriculture. But I can't vote for this. We have already moved this legislation through the Senate, the Agriculture appropriations discretionary spending. Here we had in 2004 a minus 1 percent, zero in 2005, zero in 2006, a 6-percent jump in 2007, 1.1 percent in 2008, now 15 and 14.5 percent increases. How can we say we are responsible when we are doing that? We were having deficits through these years. We have never seen deficits averaging $1 trillion a year, which is basically what is going to occur under President Obama's budget. I wish it weren't so. I wish I didn't have to make this speech, because these deficits are dangerous to the American economy. These numbers remain here are stunning numbers. The only one that got a modest increase was for the men and women in uniform of the Defense Department. But State and Foreign Ops, 32.8-33 percent; Interior, 16.6; Commerce-Justice-Science, 12.3 percent; T-HUD, 23 percent; Agriculture, 14 percent; Defense, 4.1. That should tell us something about maybe where the priorities are around here. It is troubling to me. What do the American people think about this? I have heard a lot of my colleagues say: We have a recession and we have this war that is going on. We just have to spend more. The American people understand that. It is all right. We just want to do this, and let's do it. Look at this poll that came out recently. Actually, it was November, last month, a CNN poll. The question was, Which of the following comes close to your view of the budget deficit: The government should run a deficit, if necessary, when the country is in a recession and at war or the government should balance the budget even when the country is in a recession and is at war. Sixty-seven percent say balance the budget. First, they know this isn't World War II. We have a very expensive war. We need to make sure our men and women are well funded. But it is not the driving factor in the deficits we are having today. Only 30 percent said, run a deficit. Four percent had no opinion. Sixty-seven percent said we ought to have a balanced budget, even in a time of war and recession. There are other problems. There are ramifications that arise from this kind of reckless spending. It has been a catch line for a number of our colleagues who support this health care bill that it would reduce the deficit. Past history with entitlements has shown that is not so. Estimates don't prove to be accurate, No. 1. No. 2, there are gimmicks in this health care bill that hide its true cost. I will mention one of them for the moment. One of the big ones is that we don't pay the doctors. The doctors are projected, after this next year and for 9 years under this budget scheme, to take a 23-percent cut in their payments for the work they do for Medicare--a 23-percent cut. Many doctors already are leaving Medicare and Medicaid because they are not paid enough. They are paid substantially less by the U.S. Government for Medicare and Medicaid than private insurance companies pay them for the work they do. That was part of the plan to fix Medicare, to fix permanently the payments for our physicians. When the numbers didn't add up--and if you paid the physicians what you are supposed to pay them, it would cost $250 billion over 10 years--they attempted to take the doctor fix payment and put it in a separate bill, every penny of it going to the debt, saying: Our health care bill is deficit neutral. The health care bill is deficit neutral. I am voting for a bill that is not going to impact the debt. Well, when you move a $250 billion hole out of your bill and put it over here, that is one way to hide what you are doing. If you count that, we have a $120 billion deficit in the bill by the scoring of our own colleagues. They just took that out because the numbers wouldn't add up if it were in. It is wrong. It is the kind of gimmicks and manipulation the American people are getting tired of. Some people are going to pay at the ballot box for continuing this kind of thing. Let me give some examples of how even the estimates of these bills fundamentally turn out to be wrong. In 1967, the estimate for how much Medicare would cost in 1990 was $12 billion. They projected how much Medicare would cost in 1990. What was the actual cost in 1990? It was $98 billion, not $12 billion. That means the estimates were off by a factor of 8. In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid payments to hospitals would cost $1 billion in 1992. That was just 5 years out. The 5-year projection was Medicaid payments to hospitals would be $1 billion. What was the actual cost? It was $17 billion, meaning the estimate was off by a factor of 17 in only 5 years. This kind of recklessness jeopardizes our economy. I don't think this spending is helping our economy because I think what is occurring is that people who invest in the future, hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars in big factories, are worried about our recklessness. They are worried about future economic stability. They are not as willing to invest because we are not acting responsibly. Stanford University economist Michael Boskin stated in a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal: The explosion of spending, deficits and debt foreshadows even higher prospective taxes on work, saving, investment and employment. That not only will damage our economic future but is harming jobs and growth now. There is too much truth in that. Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation, on October 6, in the Washington Times, did an op-ed that said that estimates on the size of the deficits I have just given are likely to be wildly optimistic. When I said the debt triples from $5.8 to $17.3 trillion, I am not including health care in those numbers. It hasn't passed. That is not current law. They didn't count that in the numbers when they were scoring it. He notes that the President assumed that spending would only increase at the rate of inflation for 9 years after 2010, after he included an 8-percent increase for spending in 2010. The President's deficit estimates also assume interest rates lower than those in the 1980s or 1990s. Once all the factors in Mr. Riedl's analysis are added up, he projects a total deficit for the next 10 years to be $13 trillion--an unsustainable level for sure and well above what CBO has scored. He is projecting higher interest rates on the debt because so much money would be borrowed worldwide. How do you induce people to loan you money? You have to offer them higher interest rates to get them to loan you money. They will not be loaning money at the low interest rates we have today because of this economic slowdown. Interest rates are going up. CBO acknowledges that in their score. The Heritage scholar said it is going to go up higher than CBO had scored. An October 14 New York Times article said that the reason we are not pressing China to appreciate its currency, to stop devaluing its currency against ours is because we rely on them to purchase our debt. Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, said: Obama's interest is not to push China to appreciate its currency, but to get them to pay the bills. In other words, to get them to keep buying our Treasury bills so we can keep borrowing money. Small manufacturers all over the country, including Alabama, have suffered from China's undervalued currency. They not only have a wage advantage over us to a significant degree, they also don't have the environmental laws we have. They also devalue their currency--all of which makes them more able to undercut American companies' manufacturing and adversely compete against them. I am constantly hearing about it from my State. I know others are hearing the same thing. However, China and other countries may not be able to keep financing our debt in the future. Professor Allan Meltzer, a well-known scholar on the Federal Reserve and monetary policy, noted in a column in the Wall Street Journal that our current and projected deficits are too large relative to current and prospective world savings to rely on other countries being able to finance them for the next 10 years. We just can't expect to be able to have that much wealth out there in terms of our own citizens saving money to buy the Treasury bills and debt of the United States. Other countries are not going to have it either. In a Budget Committee hearing on budget reform, November 10, former Comptroller of the Currency and GAO David Walker testified that by 2040--time flies faster than we like to admit--we will have to double taxes to keep current with our commitments. This is the former Comptroller General of the United States, the head of the GAO, the Government Accountability Office. He knows these numbers, and he has been very concerned about our reckless spending for quite a number of years. He is basically committing himself to trying to get this country on a sound financial track. Mr. Walker stated that in 12 years, interest will be the single biggest line item in the budget, even assuming interest rates don't change from today's low rates. But interest rates are going to go up, at least some. He also said that debt and deficits are the public's largest concern by 20 points in the opinion polls. That is what I am hearing from my constituents. They want some leadership up here. They want us to say: We would like to be able to provide more for this, that, and the other. But we simply have to get our house in order. And in the long run, if we hold the line now, we can get this house back into order. I believe we can. But we cannot on the path we are today. In a Financial Times editorial in May of this year, Mr. Walker warned that the United States is in danger of losing its triple- A financial credit rating. Well, is that possible that the United States of America would not have the highest credit rating in the world? Mr. Walker said it is possible. He made that comment in May of this year. Of course, if you do not have the highest credit rating, you have to pay higher interest rates to get people to buy your debt, to loan you money. So if you want to loan two people money, and one is rock solid, you might loan it to them for 4 percent. But if another person is risky, you may want 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 percent from them. So Moody's rates people to see how reliable they are in paying their debt back with dollars worth the same as you loan them. Mr. Walker warned that our reckless spending was putting us on a path where we would no longer have our triple-a credit rating. Well, sure enough, in a report just this week, the big rating service, Moody's, stated that the U.S. is in danger of losing its triple-A credit rating. Pierre Cailleteau, chief international economist at Moody's, stated that unlike several years ago, ``now the question of a potential downgrade of the U.S. is not inconceivable.'' Well, that would make the interest payment of $799 billion for 1 year, in 2019, be low. If we get downgraded, that interest payment is going to go up. So under the most pessimistic scenario put forward by Moody's, the United States would lose its top rating in 2013. This is a great country. We have such dynamic people and economy. They are willing to work. They are willing to compete. They are willing to save and all. But we need some leadership, and we need some leadership from Congress. We are oblivious to what the American people are telling us, and we are oblivious to the massive debt increases we are putting on the American people. Therefore, this bill that cloture was invoked on today, should not pass because having a 12-percent increase in spending, which would double that whole bill's financial spending in--what?--5, 6, or 7 years, is unthinkable at this point in time, and I am against it. I hate to be against it. I see a lot of things in there I like. But I do not believe the Republic is going to sink into the ocean if we would have a 1- or 2-percent increase in spending for these six bills. I do not believe everything is going to collapse if we were to have a little frugality around here--give up some of our pork spending, give up some of our special projects and focus on what is the national interest for a change, and try to contain the surging growth of spending. I do not know when it is going to occur. Everybody says we have to stop. So when? I say now. I say, let's send this bill back. Let's do not pass this bill. Let's send it back to the conferees and the appropriators and say: Come back with a bill that is more responsible. Then we will pass it. We are not going to not pass legislation to fund these things. Don't let anybody say that. But the question is, What kind of increases can we justify? I am worried about it. The American people are worried about it. Soon Congress needs to get worried about it. If not, we are going to have some new people in Congress, and some new people are going to fix it because it can be fixed if we show determination. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we are considering the omnibus bill. Once again, I have to say that we are heading recklessly, at a high rate of speed, toward the most reckless spending this Nation has ever seen. We saw some big spending during World War II but nothing like this, in the kind of environment we are in today. Plus, then we had the whole Nation working to win that life-and-death struggle. I will just say a few things about this omnibus bill. First, I don't think any of us should support it. Why? It is unacceptable. Why? It is the kind of spending that has caused the American people to be outraged and to go out in the streets. People told me they had never been to a rally before in their lives, but they went out because they are afraid for their country. Look at the package of spending that is in this legislation--the Commerce, Justice, and Science bill has been cobbled together with the others. There are 6 of the 13 appropriations bills all packaged together into 1 to see if they can't ram it through during the last days before Christmas so nobody will have the gumption to cause a fuss about it and so we can just get this done. What is it that is contained in the legislation that causes such angst on my part and on the part of others? I will explain it for you. Here are the numbers. The Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill contains $64 billion in spending. The percent of growth over last year's spending is 12 percent. Just to recall for my colleagues, if you know the rule of seven, which you learn in accounting: at a 7-percent growth rate--or if you have an interest rate of 7 percent--your money will double in value in 10 years. Here we have a 12-percent increase. That means the expenditure line of Commerce, Justice, and Science increases at 12 percent, which would double that whole amount in about 7 years. Do you think that is what the American people want? This does not count the stimulus package we passed earlier this year. My wife says: Quit saying we passed, when you voted against it. I didn't vote for it. It was $800 billion, and $15 billion went into Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations. So we go from $64 billion in this bill and add $15 billion on top of that amount, which is already being spent. What about a second one--financial services. It has a 7-percent increase. The rate of inflation is what, 1 percent? On top of this bill, we add about a $7 billion infusion in financial services from the stimulus package. Last year, the spending was $22 billion; this year, it is $24 billion. Add $6.9 billion on top of that and you have about $31 billion, which is a massive increase. Labor, HHS, and Education also increased at 7 percent, and it received $72 billion extra from the stimulus package. I am not counting the stimulus when I say it is a 7-percent increase. I am talking about the baseline budget. Military Construction and Veterans Affairs is oddly the lowest. It only received a 5-percent raise. Well, 5 percent is still a big increase when the inflation rate is below 2, and it received $4 billion from the stimulus, which is not much. The stimulus gave very little to military matters. What about the State Department and Foreign Operations? How much did that budget line increase over last year? Thirty-three percent. We don't have to increase State and Foreign Operations 33 percent. This is beyond a reasonable amount by any stretch of the imagination, and it also received an increase in the stimulus package. What about Transportation and Housing and Urban Development? What kind of increase did they get in this year's budget, in a time when the American people are having to cut their budgets, when they try to save more than they ever saved before, trying to find work if they or family members are losing jobs, when they are not getting overtime like they did before, when other things are tightening them up and the fear of unemployment is out there; what does Transportation and HUD get in the baseline budget? Not counting the stimulus money: 23 percent increase. With a 23-percent increase you double the whole Transportation-HUD budget in 4 years. This is not responsible. By the way, the baseline Transportation-HUD budget in 2009 was $54 billion. It was $54 billion, and the stimulus package added $61.8 billion on top of that. The omnibus bill in all of the spending lines amounts to an increase of 12 percent. This is unsustainable, and the 12 percent does not include the huge amount of money that was funded through the stimulus package. I see my colleague here, one of our stalwart Members of this Senate. I will yield to him, but I just want to be on record saying I would love to vote for these bills. I voted for many of these funding bills in years past, but I am not going to vote for a package that increases spending of the Federal Government at 12 percent when the average American is lucky to have a job and inflation in this country is 1 or 2 percent. This makes no sense to me. Remember, this spending is in addition to the amount of money approved in the stimulus package--$800 billion. If you would like to know how much money $800 billion amounts to, the general fund budget in my State of Alabama--we are an average size State--is less than $2 billion. The entire total spending of these six bills in this omnibus package is $445 billion, and we spent in February--this Congress approved without my support $800 billion extra to try to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, it has been frittered away without the kind of impact we need. I am worried what we are doing. I appreciate having this opportunity to share those comments, and I will speak more about it in the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. So we are spending the reserves in Social Security, which will be exhausted by 2017.

Mr. SESSIONS. Medicare. Excuse me. I am going to yield the floor to Senator Grassley. I say to the Senator, I appreciate your leadership and insight into this issue. I value your whole approach to it. I think most Americans--if they understood this information as the Senator does and as the Senator has articulated, the opposition to the bill would be even greater than it is. I urge my colleagues to examine the fact that the bill simply does not do what it sets out to do. It does not meet its promises, and as a result, we absolutely should not go down this road to a major Federal takeover of health care, with ramifications that go far beyond what it might appear today. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I see my good friends, Senators Kaufman and Klobuchar, had talked about actions we could take to deal with fraud in health care. I support that. I had the opportunity in the past, as U.S. attorney, to lead a group that would do that. But something is troubling me today a great deal. I am uneasy about it. It goes to the heart of how the legislation that is before us today has been put together. Earlier today, we had Senator McCain offering an amendment to say that every State should have the same policies with regard to Medicare Advantage that the State of Florida will under this bill. Presumably, that was an effort to gain some support. We have seen other situations such as that with Louisiana and other places getting special advantages. Let me tell you about something that is particularly troubling to me. It was written about by Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor in President Clinton's Cabinet. He is a prolific writer about economic and health care matters. He starts his Sunday August 9 article this way on his blog. It says: I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance-- He is not pulling any punches there. He believes in a single-payer government policy. Then he goes on to say-- and a fan of the Obama administration. But I am appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support. That is a pretty serious charge. He goes on to say: Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it had promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the Government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That's basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it's proven a bonanza for the drug industry. I will say, as I recall, that Mr. Reich was a critic of that at the time. Right or wrong, it was done and he was a critic of it. I give him credit for it. He said a continuation of that would be an even larger bonanza. He goes on to describe why he thinks it is a bonanza. Right or wrong, as a matter of policy and so forth, it is no doubt that is something Big Pharma would like. He goes on to say this: In return, Big Pharma isn't just supporting universal health care. It's also spending lots of money on TV and radio advertising in support. Sunday's New York Times reports that Big Pharma has budgeted $150 million for TV ads promoting universal health insurance, starting this August-- I am quoting him-- (that's more money than John McCain spent on TV advertising in last year's presidential campaign), after having already spent a bundle through advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA. I don't know what has happened. There is a memorandum in, I believe, one of the blogs here, the Huffington Post. That is supposed to be the memorandum that documents the agreement. I don't know what the facts are, but I know this, it is not a healthy thing, as somebody who has been involved in Federal law enforcement, for a government official, under color of right, to say to a private individual that you will help me with an advertising campaign and spend your private money, or I will do you a favor in exchange for an $150-million television campaign. I wish to tell you that is not good. That is beyond the pale. If things such as this have been done in the past, it is not the kind of thing that ought to be continued. I think it is a big deal. The New York Times has reported, as they go forward: Shortly after striking that agreement, the trade group--the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA--also set aside $150 million for advertising to support health care legislation. I am quoting a New York Times article by Duff Wilson. But an industry official involved in the discussions said the group and its advertising money would now be aimed specifically at the approach being pushed by Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Is that the way this thing is being done? I hope not. I will examine these circumstances in more detail, but I would like to say, right now and today, that I am not happy about it. I don't like the looks of it, it doesn't smell good to me, it does not strike me as something that is legitimate, and I think maybe we need to find out more about it, frankly. I wish to share with my colleagues a fundamental concern I have with this health care bill. Supporters of the bill have made a great deal of promises. They alleged it would do a lot of very great sounding things, and we were asked to support it on the basis of their promises. But a careful examination of the legislation shows it fails to deliver on almost all the major promises it made and is likely to cause a great deal of adverse, unanticipated consequences. As a result, I think the American people have intuitively understood this; that is, why they are so strongly opposed to it. They cannot imagine why the leadership of this Senate continues to try to push down on their brow this piece of legislation that does not do what it promised to do. For example, the sponsors of the legislation say the bill's total cost is $848 billion. However, they do not begin the benefits of the bill until 5 years after enactment and that $848 billion is the cost of expenditures over 10 years. So when you move forward to when the benefits actually start for those who will be receiving them and go 10 years from that point, the total costs are not $848 billion, they are $2.5 trillion. That is a huge difference. It is a monumental difference. It is a difference so large I cannot understand how we can, with a straight face, try to contend that we have a sound budget-minded bill that is going to cost $848 billion, and we have tax increases of about half of that, and raids on Medicare for about half of that and that is how we are going to pay for it. It is not working in that way, in my view. Another promise for the bill that was made by the President in the joint session to the Congress, he said this: This bill will not add one dime to the deficit. That is just not accurate. You can make anything deficit neutral if you pay for it by slashing Medicare and taking the money from Medicare to pay for it. Or you can make a bill be deficit neutral if you raise enough taxes. So they are raising $494 billion in taxes. They are cutting Medicare by $465 billion. That is the plan. They claim they have a $130 billion surplus. So don't worry about the budget. We have created a bill that is going to reduce the deficit. That is what they have said repeatedly. But they forgot something. They forgot we have to pay our physicians. That was always supposed to be part of health care reform. In fact, the physician groups were told they were going to be paid. But under this bill, to show you how it has been doctored--and this has been done before, Republicans have participated in this in the past, and it has been something that has been going on for a decade, but it is really relevant today, particularly in this legislation because this legislation was supposed to fix this problem--they keep the physician rates slightly above last year's rate for 1 year. Then for 9 years in the 10-year budget, they assume that doctor payments, physician reimbursements are going to be cut 23 percent. That is unthinkable. We are not going to cut physicians 23 percent. We can't cut the physicians at all because they are already wondering whether they will continue to take Medicare patients and, even more so, Medicaid patients, where they get paid less. We could have a mass walkout of physicians who couldn't afford to see seniors if we were to cut their pay by 23 percent. In fact, we are not going to do that. We all know this. So what did they do? I know they were meeting down in the hallways somewhere, and they were plotting out this bill. They said: The President said it will not add to the debt. What are we going to do? The numbers don't add up. We can't raise taxes any more. We can't cut Medicare any more. We have done all we can do. What are we going to do? So what they obviously decided was to take the physician pay portion of the bill out, that one that would have fixed this aberrational law we have that requires it to be cut 23 percent, and so they put it in a separate bill. Every penny of this separate bill would be paid for by increased debt, so not really paid for at all. They offered that bill on the Senate floor, and it got voted down because Republicans all voted against it as being utterly fiscally irresponsible. Enough Democrats joined in to kill the bill. They wouldn't support it either. A number of Democrats know the budget has to have some rationality. So they failed to do that. But if you put the doctor fix in, you are increasing the costs of the bill by $250 billion, so the $130 billion surplus is reduced to a $120 billion deficit. So it does add to the deficit. It adds more than one dime to the debt; it adds $120 billion to the debt. Another fiction was their promise that they would fix the physician payments and make a permanent policy of paying them so every year they wouldn't have to run to Congress and hire lobbyists to come here and meet with Senators to beg them not to have a 23-percent cut. That happens every year. It is ridiculous. But this bill does not deal with that. It only has a 1-year fix, and for 9 years it is reduced just like it has been done in the past. There is no reform in that part of health care that needs to be done. Another fiction is that they are not cutting Medicare benefits. They say: We are not cutting Medicare benefits. We are cutting that bad old Medicare Advantage that 11 million seniors are benefiting from and enjoy and participate in. They are cutting that $100-plus billion which is about one-fourth of what the cuts to Medicare are. They say that is not truly cutting Medicare. But that clearly is cutting Medicare because Medicare Advantage is part of the Medicare Program. It is cutting Medicare. However you feel about Medicare Advantage, this is a cut to Medicare Programs that millions of seniors favor. That is why Florida didn't want to have their Medicare Advantage cut. So they got a special deal in this legislation. Everybody else in America won't get that. They want to keep it. Let's go on a little bit further just to show you why the American people are unhappy with Congress. They have a right to be unhappy. People say: Those people out there at the tea parties and townhall meetings, they were just upset. They are poor Americans. They are not good Americans. Good Americans would come in and say: How much more money can we give you, big government, to take care of all our needs from cradle to the grave? The people at the tea parties understand the kind of games that are being played here. They understand the cuts to home health care, to hospice programs, to hospitals, the hospitals that care for a disproportionate share of the poor people, and the $23 billion from just general Medicare accounts represent cuts to Medicare, which is our seniors program. How is it, then, that we have this disagreement? How is it possible that you can't agree on where $465 billion comes from? The sponsors of the bill, this is what they say. They say: We promised we wouldn't cut Medicare benefits. Any guaranteed benefit any senior citizen has, we promised not to cut it. All we are doing is cutting the providers, the people who provide the benefit. Give me a break. So you come in and you cut hospice, nursing homes, other providers, $118 billion from Medicare Advantage, $192 billion from the hospices, nursing homes, and other providers, $43 billion from hospitals that serve a disproportionate number of poor and uninsured, $23 billion from unspecified Medicare accounts, and that this doesn't weaken Medicare. If we could cut that, why haven't we done it already? If this didn't reduce the quality of care for seniors, if we could reduce these hospitals and others and they could still provide care to our seniors, why haven't we done it already? Mike Horsley, head of our hospital association in Alabama, tells me that as a result of an abominable wage index program that helps to determine how much hospitals get paid primarily and lien payments in general, two-thirds of the hospitals in Alabama are operating in the red. They don't need to be cut any more. I guess what I would say is, this is the way the game has been played. My colleagues are saying we are not cutting guaranteed benefits. We are just cutting the money from the people who provide the benefits. How many of them are going to keep doing so, as the CMS Actuary's report questioned? How many of those will give it up? Fiction No. 6--I have 10, and I will not go through all of them tonight--is that hospitals that treat the poorest and sickest will somehow be better off under this program. But they are not feeling that way. They are not feeling they are going to make up for the fact that the hospitals that qualify as disproportionate share hospitals, those who serve a high percentage of individuals who are very low income or who have no insurance, they are going to lose $43 billion in cuts under this bill. These hospitals that provide so much charity care and provide a safety net in the communities are going to suffer under this legislation. They are telling me that. I don't know who in Washington may say they are not, but that is what they are telling me. I think they are telling the truth. Fiction No. 5 is that average family premiums are going to decrease. Have you heard that through this proposal? Senator Evan Bayh asked the CBO about this, and they said families who do not receive coverage from their employer would see their premiums rise ``about 10 to 13 percent higher by 2016'' than under the current law. The ones who claim they are seeing some reductions, those reductions are only the slightest reduction, less than 3 percent in most cases, of the 5- or 6- percent increase expected to occur every year under current law. So instead of going up 5.56 percent, it goes up 5.41 percent. They are claiming, I guess, that is some sort of cut. But it is misrepresentation to say that family premiums are going to decrease, when people who are not in group health plans through their employers are the ones who are going to see the largest increases, perhaps 10 to 13 percent by 2016, more than would occur under present law. I am pleased to be able to serve in the Senate with Senator Grassley who chaired the Finance Committee, is ranking member now, who does over 100 townhall meetings a year or something in the counties in Iowa. He met with thousands of people and got the same message I got, which is you people are irresponsible. The debt is surging and will double in 5 years, the whole debt of America, and triple in 10. I want to say that the American people are concerned about this. Senator Grassley worked so hard to see if he could get a bill that would be bipartisan, that we all could support, or large numbers of the Senate could support. But we got off track. I talked to one person who dealt with this issue. He said the way things got off track was that we abandoned ways to legitimately contain costs increases. The way to create more competition, the more personal stake in your health care, other things that would actually help reduce the cost of health care, is what we got away from, and it became driven by President Obama's determination to have a government option. That, in my estimation, may have been the decisive event in the negotiations breaking down. This is a serious piece of legislation. It seeks to alter one-sixth of the American economy. It does not do what it promises. It surges spending. It increases taxes dramatically. It represents a major governmental takeover and will ultimately undermine the special relationship between patients and their doctors. It will also substantially threaten the viability of Medicare. This money that is being taken out of Medicare will only accelerate its insolvency. By 2017, Medicare--I believe Senator Grassley will agree--is expected to go into default. It will go down rapidly, actually. Is that correct, Senator Grassley, that by 2017, under current law, Medicare is projected to go into default and go rapidly into default, and if we could save any money out of Medicare, if we can save $400 billion, shouldn't it be kept in the Medicare Program to try to extend its life and make it a viable program that seniors can rely on rather than creating a whole new spending program with that money?