John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Lauren Haahr, an intern in my Washington, DC office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past couple months. Lauren is a graduate of Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls, SD. Currently, she is attending the University of Iowa, where she is majoring in economics and ethics & public policy. She is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of her internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Lauren for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Philip Henzlik, an intern in my Rapid City, SD office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past couple months. Philip is a graduate of Stevens High School in Rapid City and recently of Wyoming State University in Laramie, WY. He will be attending Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR, majoring in dentistry. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Philip for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Erik Kevin Nyberg, an intern in my Washington, DC office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past couple months. Erik is a graduate of Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls, SD. Currently, he is attending Augustana College, where he is majoring in economics, business administration, and political science. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Erik for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I also had the opportunity to read the very column the Senator from Nebraska is referring to, the Krauthammer column this morning, and I was struck by many of the same things the Senator observed. I think it is important to note that we are a nation historically that has believed in a limited role for the government. That is what distinguishes us in many respects from some of our European allies. I think what this debate on the debt limit does, with the broader debates we need to be having here about spending and debt and budgets--that is, if we ever had a debate on a budget. As the Senator said, we have not had now a budget in 821 days. April 29, 2009, was the last time this Senate passed a budget. So it is hard to talk about these big issues we need to be focused on when you do not even get a budget on the floor of the Senate to have an opportunity to debate and vote upon. In fact, when you think about the fact that we spend $3.7 trillion annually of the American people's tax money, you would think you would have some idea, some blueprint, some path of how you are going to spend that. Yet we have not had that here. So we have not had an opportunity to debate that budget. But this does get at the heart of a very big philosophical difference. Our friends on the other side of the aisle have a view of government that is much more expansive, which is why I think they can explain passing the multitrillion dollar health care bill a year ago and the trillion dollar stimulus bill and the new CLASS Act, which is going to be another entitlement program that will end up running huge deficits into the future. I do not think that is what the American people have as a vision for this country. I think we need to get back to a role, a size for our government that is consistent with the historical average, the historical norm. It might surprise some of my colleagues to know, if you go back to the formative stages of our Nation's history, in the year 1800, we only spent 2 percent of our GDP on our government--2 percent. This year, we are going to spend over 24 percent. Arguably, life has gotten a lot more complicated. There is a lot more going on in this country, and certainly there is a responsibility that government has. But we have gotten away from the concept that I think is the foundation of this great country; that was a belief in a limited role for the Federal Government, not this expansive, sort of Western European social democracy type approach which the Senator from Nebraska alluded to. I certainly think the people in my State of South Dakota, and I would argue in Wyoming and Nebraska, as I said before, have a history and a tradition and a heritage of living within their means. Also, I think they have an understanding of what government should and should not do. I certainly believe the people whom I represent want us to get back to that. And it starts here. It starts now. It starts by getting spending under control, by putting Federal spending on a downward trajectory instead of this consistent incline we have seen. In the last 2 years, we have seen non-national security discretionary spending increase by over 24 percent. If you add the stimulus spending in there, it was 84 percent. That is how much spending has increased in the last 2 years of this administration. That has to stop. I think the American people sent a loud, clear message in November of last year, and it is incumbent upon us to have listened to that message and to do everything we can to get this train turned around. I think we are going to have a big fight over that because the other side believes the way you fix this debt crisis is to increase your revenues, to raise taxes, which would be a huge mistake, particularly now in the middle of an economic downturn. It starts by getting spending under control. It starts by keeping tax rates and regulations low on our job creators in this country, and creating conditions that are favorable to economic growth and job creation, as opposed to what we are seeing now, which is more and more regulation, higher taxes, more mandates--all the things that make it more difficult for our job creators to do what they do the best; that is, to get people in this country back to work.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I certainly echo what has been said by my neighbors, my colleagues from Nebraska and Wyoming. Their States, as well as mine, all have a balanced budget amendment that requires our States to live within our means. Our States do it. They do it the old- fashioned way. They do it by--in our case, in the State of South Dakota, this year--having to make some hard decisions about spending. But they balanced their budget, and they did it without raising taxes, which I think is a great model for what we ought to be doing in Washington, DC. As the Senator from Wyoming has pointed out, this is the largest requested increase in the debt ceiling in history. At $2.4 trillion-- and, of course, I think we are going to be asked at some point to vote on the Democratic leader's proposal, which, as both of my colleagues have pointed out, doesn't get us there. If we even use the standard I think everybody realizes makes a lot of sense--and that is if we are going to increase the debt limit by $2.4 trillion, we also ought to look at how we reduce spending by $2.4 trillion. That way we are getting a dollar-for-dollar reduction in spending, and we are fundamentally addressing the real issue, which isn't the debt limit, it is the debt. We all talk about the debt limit, and it is looming, looking us right in the eye right now. But the real issue is the fact that year over year over year we continue to spend more than we take in. We are not living within our means. Both Senators have talked about a balanced budget amendment. I was here as a freshman Congressman in 1997, the last time that was voted on. It was voted on in the Senate. It never made it to the House because it needed a two-thirds vote, and it got 66 votes in the Senate. Had it been able to pass here and come to the House, I think we would have passed it. I cannot help but think how much better our fiscal situation would be today had we been able to do that back in 1997, because at that time the overall Federal debt was $5 trillion. Today it is $14 trillion. So there has been a $9 trillion increase in the Federal debt in that short amount of time. It is important we tackle this issue. It is important we do it in a way so the American people know we are serious--that this is not gimmicks, this is not smoke and mirrors and all the things that I think make people in this country so cynical about the way Washington, DC, operates. As the Senator mentioned, the Reid proposal on the debt limit essentially counts over $1 trillion in savings that were never going to be spent in the first place. So it is a gimmick and it is not real. It is phony. We all know that. We have to get real. We have to put forward a serious effort if, one, we are going to convince the American people we are serious about this, but, more importantly, if we are going to do something meaningful about getting this spending and debt situation under control. I hope we will be able to defeat that when it comes to the floor and actually do something, if we can get the House bill over here, which has not only spending cuts in the near term but also a process whereby we can get some entitlement reform that deals with the big drivers of Federal spending; that is, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and then also get a vote on a balanced budget amendment such as all of our States have on the books and which has enabled our States to live within their means, not spend money they do not have, and continue to, in spite of this down economy, perform above the average. I think of all of our States, probably in terms of unemployment, in terms of economic performance--if you look at them relative to other areas around the country--living within their means. It is a good model if you want to have a good, strong economy and create jobs for the people in your States. That is something we ought to be doing at the Federal level, and that is why it is so important we take the right approach. The bill that will come over from the House of Representatives does that. The bill that has been proposed by the Senate Democratic leader does not.

Mr. THUNE. If you think about what this debate ought to be about, it ought to be about America's economic security. It ought to be about making sure we are putting the country on a sustainable fiscal path and creating the conditions for economic growth, and I would argue there is a direct correlation between those two. If we do not get spending and debt under control, I think we are going to bankrupt the country, we are going to increase interest rates, we are going to make it more difficult and more expensive for businesses in this country to create jobs. So clearly there is a direct correlation between the issue of spending and debt and the economy. But the economy and the implications of what we do here on the economy ought to animate everything we do. We ought to be thinking about: How is this going to impact the economy? We should not be thinking about politics. That is why it was disturbing to hear the President say his prerequisite in all this is that we get through the next election. To me, that was a statement that was profoundly about politics and certainly not about America's economic security, which ought to be first and foremost in our minds. Subsequent to that, even yesterday, you had members of the President's team suggesting this might somehow disrupt the Christmas vacation. I thought: You know, of all the things we ought to be thinking about right now, the next election, the next holiday--those probably are not going to be consequential if we do not take steps to address the issue before us today; that is, this massive increase in our Federal debt, the year-over-year deficits we continue to run, the fact that we continue to live way outside of our means. That is what I think the American people want to see us focused on. I think that is what the people of South Dakota certainly want to see us focused on as well.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I object.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Rapid City, SD. Rapid City has recently been designated America's ``Most Patriotic Town'' by Rand McNally and USA Today in their inaugural Best of the Road competition, which recognizes achievements of small towns across the country. Rapid City will be one of five towns featured on USA Today's Web site, www.bestoftheroad.com, and featured in the new 2013 Rand McNally Atlas. Rapid City is the second-largest city in South Dakota and is located on the eastern slope of the Black Hills in the western part of the State. Nearby Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Ellsworth Air Force Base make Rapid City a patriotic mecca. However, I believe it is not the location but the people of Rapid City that gave the town the honor of being named the most patriotic town in America. The citizens of Rapid City live their lives in support of both their community and their country. This patriotic town strives for excellence while its residents live the American dream. I would like to offer my congratulations to the citizens and the community of Rapid City on this accomplishment and wish them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. There is a path forward in both the House and the Senate for trade adjustment assistance, and we have bipartisan majorities in both Chambers waiting to vote for the Korea, Colombia, and Panama agreements. So why are we still waiting for the White House to do the right thing and send us these agreements? This ongoing delay is having a real impact on American businesses, and it will only get worse. On July 1, the European Union-Korea trade agreement went into effect. According to press reports, European exports to Korea rose 16 percent in the first 13 days after the Korea- EU Free Trade Agreement entered into force. Let's be clear about what this means. Korean consumers are choosing to buy German, French, and British cars, electronics, and agricultural products rather than American-made products because these European products now have a price advantage. This was entirely preventable if we had acted on the U.S.-Korea agreement sooner. Likewise, the Canada-Colombia agreement will go into effect on August 15. This will result in an advantage for Canadian goods, such as construction equipment, aircraft, and a range of other industrial and agricultural products. Much as with Korea, the United States businesses will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage because we have failed to act. Again, this did not have to happen. The administration finalized its labor action plan for Colombia back in April. We have had plenty of time to consider these agreements over the past several months. Instead, we are facing a situation where United States wheat producers are likely to be completely shut out of the Colombian market once the agreement with Canada has gone into effect. This is amazing, when you think about it, when you consider that just a few years ago American wheat producers dominated the market in Colombia with a 73-percent market share. That was as of 2008. In 2010, for the first time in the history of United States-Colombia trade, the United States lost to Argentina its position as Colombia's No. 1 agricultural supplier. Consider the story of three crops we grow in South Dakota: soybeans, corn, and wheat. The combined market share in Colombia for these three U.S. agricultural exports has decreased from 81 percent in 2008 to 19 percent as of 2010--a decline of 62 percentage points in a 2-year period; an 81-percent to a 19-percent market share in corn, wheat, and soybeans, for American agricultural producers. Think about that. That is a staggering collapse, which was totally avoidable, totally preventable, if we had simply acted on these trade agreements much sooner. This is the real cost of our delay while our trading partners continue to pursue new regional and bilateral trade agreements. We are living in a global economy where America cannot afford to stand still on trade. As Senator Baucus noted at a recent Finance Committee hearing, in 1960, exports accounted for only 3.6 percent of our entire U.S. GDP; today, exports account for 12.5 percent of our GDP. Exports of U.S. goods and services support over 10 million American jobs. It is long past time we get back in the game by passing the three pending trade agreements. America's manufacturers, America's farmers, and America's service providers cannot afford to wait any longer. So I call upon the administration to submit the trade agreements to Congress before the August recess. We are not going to be able to consider these agreements until September, but sending them to Congress now will send a strong signal that this administration is finally serious about getting them done. It would also be an important show of good faith to our close allies, South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. These job- creating, market-opening trade agreements should be at the top of the agenda when we get back in September. Again, I want to reemphasize the importance of that in light of these economic numbers, the data that is coming out that points out that in the second quarter of this year our economic growth was a sluggish 1.3 percent, and that the revised estimate now for the first quarter of this year was .4 percent. We will never get the unemployment rate down, we will never get America's economy expanding and back on its feet, we will never start dealing with these massive debt issues we have, one, if we do not cut spending--which is the other issue we are debating today--but also if we are not growing and expanding the American economy. We can do that. There are so many things these trade agreements would do not only for agricultural exporters but for other producers of American goods, and we ought to be doing that. It is high time we at least do some of the things we can do to get the economy growing again. I cannot emphasize enough the lost market opportunities, the lost chance at economic growth, the lost jobs that are associated with the fact that this administration has delayed now, since they have been in office--2\1/2\ years--in submitting these three free trade agreements to Congress, three free trade agreements that have broad bipartisan support from Congress, which we as Republicans have been waiting to act upon now for almost the 4 years since these agreements were negotiated in the first place. So it is high time we change that. It is one thing that we can do to affect the economy in this country, among the other things. I would simply add as sort of a final point, the debate we are having about the debt limit is also one that needs to be dealt with if we are going to get serious about growing the economy and creating jobs. If we look at the economy, we look at this President's economic record, and we look at the data, almost every metric we can measure, he has made this economy much worse. The President has said repeatedly-- and he said it in his speech the other night--he blames the previous administration for where we are today. I do not think anybody here will dispute the fact that he inherited a difficult set of economic circumstances. But there is no question, if we look at every metric, that he has made the situation much worse. Whether that is unemployment, which is up 18 percent--there are 2.1 million more people unemployed today than there were when he took office--whether it is the debt, which has grown by 35 percent since he took office; whether it is the number of Americans who are receiving food stamps, which has gone up by 40 percent since he took office--and I might add in my State of South Dakota, a 58-percent increase in the number of people receiving food stamps. The cost of health care in this country is up 19 percent since this President took office. The cost of gasoline has gone up almost 100 percent--99 percent--since this President took office. The amount of the debt per person in this country has gone up by $11,000. Every American now owes $11,000 more as their share of our Federal debt since this President took office. The economic record of this administration is abysmal. It is high time we took the steps to do something about that. It strikes me at least, as I look at the policies they have been putting in place, that they seem to want to make it more difficult and more expensive for people in this country to create jobs. We see that in regulations coming out of all of these various agencies. We see it in the massive runup in the growth, in the size of government, the new mandates that have been imposed on a lot of our small businesses as a result of the new health care bill, the new taxes that have been imposed on our small businesses as a result of the new health care legislation. At every turn American small businesses, which create the jobs that will get this economy growing again, tell us the economic uncertainty, the job-crushing policies that are coming out of this administration have been a major inhibitor, a major impediment to them creating jobs and getting people back to work in this country. The trade agreements are just something I would add on to that list. We have three trade agreements that have been teed up. It has been almost 4 years since they were negotiated. This administration has been in office now for 2\1/2\ years. The President continually gets up, as he did at the State of the Union, and talks about wanting to double the trade in 5 years, talks about supporting these three trade agreements. Yet it is a very simple thing. All he has to do is submit them to Congress. The trade agreements are negotiated. All he has to do is send them here. We are ready to act to put Americans back to work, to open up export opportunities to American producers, to get the economy growing again, and create jobs. I hope in addition to dealing with the issue of runaway spending and debt, which, in my view, is the predominant issue we need to deal with--and, clearly, between now and Tuesday we have to get a solution in place that will avert the economic adversity we could be dealing with, the adverse circumstances if we do not deal with that. But that needs to be accompanied by serious reductions in spending, spending reforms. Then we have to be putting in place policies that will enable economic growth in this country, that will make it less expensive, less difficult for small businesses to create jobs, not more difficult. Unfortunately, that is the record to date of this administration. I hope we can change that and start today by sending these trade agreements to the Congress so we can act on them and get these things approved and get American businesses exporting to these three countries. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want to remind my colleagues that this work period was supposed to be our opportunity to finally enact, after years of delay, the Free Trade Agreements with our allies South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. These agreements were signed over 4 years ago, and this administration has had more than 2\1/2\ years to submit them to Congress for consideration, but they have failed to do so. Unfortunately, we are going to have to continue to wait at least until September before we get a vote. Why does it matter that we pass these agreements? It matters for two reasons: first, because expanding trade opportunities creates American jobs; second, because we live in a competitive global economy and other nations are not standing still while we delay. Economists overwhelmingly agree that expanding trade opportunities creates jobs. The Obama White House, for example, estimates that enactment of these three trade agreements will boost exports by at least $12 billion, supporting over 70,000 American jobs. The fact that lowering barriers to U.S. exports will create jobs for American workers is common sense. Consider that our market is already largely open to foreign imports, including those from Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Without trade agreements to ensure similar treatment for our exporters, American businesses will continue to face high tariff and nontariff barriers abroad. Consider one example: the market for agricultural products in Korea, which is the world's thirteenth largest economy. Korea's tariffs on imported agricultural goods average 54 percent, compared to an average 9-percent tariff on these imports into the United States. Mr. President, 54 percent added on for us to get our agricultural products into Korea; only 9 percent for them to get those same products into the United States, that is a 45-percent differential. Passage of the Korea Free Trade Agreement will level this playing field. Yet this administration continues to delay sending the agreements to Congress. The Obama White House would prefer to hold these agreements hostage because of a desire to expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program rather than improve the competitive position of American producers. At a time of near record unemployment and slow economic growth, this delay is unacceptable. I want to put a fine point on that by saying that just this morning the numbers came out. The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance estimate of growth in the inflation- adjusted gross domestic product, GDP, for the second quarter. According to the advance estimate, annualized GDP growth in the second quarter was 1.3 percent. They went back and revised the first quarter of 2011. They revised it downward to .4 percent, down from a reported rate of 1.9 percent. So they have adjusted downward the first quarter growth rate from 1.9 percent down to .4 percent, and we now know, according to the advance estimate at least, that second quarter GDP growth is only 1.3 percent-- way under what the assumptions have been, way under what the estimates have been, and way under what it is going to take for us to get the economy turned around and growing again and get people back to work. Couple that with the job-crushing regulations, the taxes that have come since this administration has taken office, and it is making it very difficult for our economy to recover and to grow and to get back on track. So the administration wishes to hold these agreements hostage because of their desire to expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program rather than get these producers back access to these markets we should have access to in some of these countries, and we cannot afford to wait any longer to do that. The reasons are very clear. We have an economy that is sluggish, that is struggling to get back on its feet. We have three free trade agreements that have been hanging around here languishing literally now for 4 years that would open up export opportunities and, as I said, even according to the President's own estimates, add 70,000 jobs to our economy. The position of Leader McConnell and Republican Senators has been consistent from the beginning. We are happy to have a debate on the merits of expanding trade adjustment assistance and to consider this bill as a stand-alone measure. But we will not hold the trade agreements hostage to consideration of trade adjustment assistance. I want to commend my colleagues Senators Portman and Blunt for the letter they recently spearheaded with 10 other Republican Senators committing to support the necessary procedural votes to consider trade adjustment assistance as a stand-alone measure and on its own merits. In light of this letter, it is very clear the administration has run out of excuses for not submitting the trade agreements to Congress. I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, to have the Portman-Blunt letter printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, later today, we will get a chance--another chance, I should say--to vote to raise the debt limit. My understanding is, the House of Representatives has delayed the time at which they are going to vote on their plan, the so-called Boehner plan. But at some point I suspect that vote will move forward and we will end up receiving that legislation from the House of Representatives, and we will have an opportunity to act on that as well. It will be the second bill we will vote on in the Senate that would raise the debt limit. The first one was the cut, cap, and balance plan that was first approved by the House before being sent to the Senate over 1 week ago. This was a three-pronged approach that would have required a downpayment on our deficits by immediately cutting spending. It would have put us on a path to reform entitlements and cut spending over the medium term by putting a cap on spending as a percentage of our economy. Finally, it would have made sure we do not keep adding to our debt by approving a debt limit increase after a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution was passed by Congress. This was the Republicans' first choice as to how to deal with this crisis. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats killed this commonsense bill which had the support, according to a CNN poll, of 66 percent of Americans. So we did not have an opportunity to debate it, offer amendments or get an up-and-down vote on that legislation. In the interest of solving the problem before us, it was recognized that probably we would have to find another approach. There have been a lot of observations made by the media and others that somehow the Republicans need to compromise more in this situation. My only question would be: Compromise with whom? With themselves? Because they are the only ones out there who have put forward a plan. And, in fact, this current proposal that will come from the House of Representatives actually is a compromise. The spending reductions in that proposal are two-thirds of those that were proposed in the House budget that was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year. So it still addresses the fundamental problem, and Speaker Boehner came up with a new plan that would cut spending by $915 billion and create a process to reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion on top of that. This is not a perfect plan. As I said, it is certainly not our first choice, but it is a plan that cuts spending more than it increases the debt limit, and it does it without raising taxes on job creators. In a little while the Boehner plan will hopefully join the cut, cap, and balance plan as the only plan which has passed a body of Congress. Senate Democrats do not have a plan to cut spending more than they raise the debt limit. Senate Democrats do not have a plan that can pass a single House of Congress. Of course, this is more than the White House can say, because the White House does not have a plan, period. So when the Boehner plan comes up for a vote here in the Senate, hopefully sometime later this evening, I would encourage my colleagues from across the aisle to support this measure. They have been speaking constantly about the need to raise the debt limit, and here is their chance to do so. All they have to do is vote for this bill and send it to the President for his signature and we can put this issue to rest for the time being. Then it puts a pathway in place for us to get, as I said before, to a debate about entitlement reform several months down the road. I understand there are some concerns among my colleagues on the other side about how long it will be before we would need to increase the debt limit again. But if you look at the past 20 years or so, 72 percent of the time our debt limit increases have been for less than a year. So this increase is hardly out of the normal time range. If you think about it, almost 75 percent of the time--almost three-fourths of the time--we have raised the debt limit, we have done it for less than a year. What we are talking about here would be something that would take us into next year, at which point we would have to have another vote on the debt limit as we come to a conclusion about the entitlement reform component or element of this particular legislation. So this increase, as I said, is not out of the normal time range. Markets are not going to care about for how long we increase the debt limit. They simply care that we do not breach the debt limit and, more importantly, over the long term we lay out a long-term plan to cut the debt. Many of us have spoken on the floor of the Senate in the past and indicated that the real crisis, the real issue before our country right now is not the debt limit, it is the debt. It is the fact that we are borrowing literally 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend here in Washington, DC, and we continue to pile up and accumulate massive amounts of debt that get passed on to future generations and put in great peril the economy of our country and our ability to create jobs. So a longer term increase is not needed to calm the markets. But what this bill does not do is raise the debt limit past the elections. I think that is where the real rub comes in. Because the President has made it very clear, as have some of my colleagues, that this is one of their major concerns. They want to have a debt limit increase that gets us past the 2012 election. That is a political concern, it is not an economic concern. But today it has arisen that these concerns are more than political, they are personal. You see, the White House is concerned that this would require Congress to approve another debt limit increase sometime in January, which they complain would ruin their Christmas vacation plans. I certainly do not want to ruin the President or anyone else's Christmas vacation plans, but I think it is a bit more important that we prevent our country from adding $9.5 trillion to the debt held by the public, as the President's budget would do. I think it is a bit more important that we prevent our country from being forced to implement severe austerity programs, such as they have had to do in Europe because of their inability to constrain spending. I think it is a bit more important that we reform entitlements so these important programs are around for our children and grandchildren. Finally, I think it is a bit more important that we leave our country in better shape for our children than the one we received. This has been the American ethic. Each generation has sacrificed so that the next generation could have a better quality of life. Today we risk turning that tradition on its head. If we continue to run up debts and deficits such as those proposed, our children and grandchildren will have an astounding burden to pay off to our country's creditors. We do not have to leave them this burden. We have proposed, as I said, the cut, cap, and balance plan, which would make great strides in reducing this debt burden. We will have, hopefully later today--if not today perhaps sometime tomorrow--in front of us the Boehner plan, which will make significant downpayments on these burdens. What I would simply say is that we have consistently now put before this Senate different plans we have had a chance to vote on. We voted on the cut, cap, and balance plan. Unfortunately, it was a tabling motion, it was a procedural motion. It was not an up-and-down vote, because the leader did not want us to get on that legislation and have an opportunity to debate and amend it and ultimately vote on it. But we did have a vote on a tabling motion. Hopefully, we will get a vote on the Boehner plan which, as I said, hopefully will be in front of us in the not too distant future. But my point very simply is there has not been any effort put forward by our colleagues on the other side to, one, put forward a budget which we know now has been I think 820 days since the last time the Senate acted on a budget. You have to go back to April 29 of 2009. That was the last time the Senate voted on a budget. It starts there. It starts there. That is where we set our priorities. That is where we determine how we are going to spend the people's tax dollars. So we have not had a budget. The House of Representatives passed a budget. They did it on schedule. They did it on time. As far as I know, there are no plans here to move a budget any time in the future. Then we have the cut, cap, and balance plan that passed the House of Representatives, which was an attempt to deal with the debt limit increase, but do it in a way that forces us to focus on the real issue, which is spending reductions, spending reforms, puts in place a pathway to get a result on entitlement reform, forces a vote on a balanced budget amendment, which many of us think is a priority if we are going to get long-term spending under control, and then, hopefully later today, we are going to get a vote on the Boehner plan which will come over from the House of Representatives, which is yet another attempt to get the debt limit increased, but do it in a way that actually makes a dent in the long-term challenge facing this country, which again is not the debt limit, it is the debt. That is the problem. That is fundamentally what we have to deal with. It is fundamentally a spending problem. Much has been made about a balanced approach. What does the other side mean when they say balanced? Usually it means we are going to take more of your money and spend it on more government. Many of us would support tax reform that would close tax loopholes, broaden the base, if you could lower the rates at the same time. I happen to believe that is important if we are going to get the economy growing again and creating jobs. I think you would see tremendous growth as a result of tax reform. But if you talk about raising taxes to pay for even more government, that is precisely the wrong approach. That is why we are in the mess we are in today, because we spend more than we take in. We have been doing it year over year. We have got to learn to live within our means and to quit spending money we do not have. Many States have amendments in their constitutions that enable them and force them and require them to do this every single year. It is time our Federal Government started operating in a way that makes fiscal sense. I think the American people understand very clearly what this is about. This is about spending. It is about getting Washington to live within its means, to quit borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends, and to put this country on a path fiscally that will ensure we do not bankrupt the country for future generations, and that we get our economy back in a place where it can start growing and creating the jobs we need to get people in this country back to work. I see the Senator from Utah. I expect he will have some remarks about this subject. There are many of us on this side, I know, who are anxious to vote and certainly are doing everything we can to facilitate this process where we deal with the crisis before us next week, but, importantly, do it in a way that addresses the fundamental issue here which is not the debt limit, it is the debt. It is time Washington started living within its means, started to make sure we have got a pathway in place for not only cutting spending today but dealing with the long-term issue by putting a balanced budget amendment in our Constitution. I hope my colleagues will join us in this legislation that will come before us sometime we hope later today, and it will be yet another attempt to address this issue. I implore my colleagues here, I think we are going to get most of the Republicans to vote for this. I hope there will be some on the other side who will join us in this endeavor. It is too important to the future of this country not to. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado.) The Senator from Utah is recognized.

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, yesterday, I came to the floor to talk about where we have been, where we are and where we are going and to discuss how we are going to get out of this mess. I pointed out the President's disappointing record when it comes to the debt issue. The President originally requested a clean debt ceiling increase that didn't have any spending reductions attached to it. He then submitted a budget that failed to ever balance, and this budget didn't include the recommendations from the Simpson-Bowles commission he had appointed to come up with some suggestions about how to put our country on a more sustainable fiscal path. According to the CBO, his budget didn't even meet his metric of primary balance, which is balancing the budget not including interest costs. After realizing House Republicans were the only ones with a plan to balance our budget and pay down the debt, President Obama decided to give a speech. Of course, it was just a speech. It did not include numbers. He didn't resubmit his budget, despite requests to do so. He just gave a speech. As they say, talk is cheap. We need action. The only action he promised, though, is that he will veto plans that would do something to address our debt and deficit problems. Earlier this month, the administration issued a veto threat for the cut, cap, and balance bill. This was a reasonable proposal that immediately cut spending, put a cap on spending, and would have raised the debt limit after a balanced budget amendment was approved by the Congress. In fact, this was so reasonable that, according to a CNN poll, 66 percent of the people in this country supported this plan. This bill garnered the support of 234 Members of the House of Representatives, including 5 Democrats. But Senate Democrats voted to table the bill after this veto threat was issued by the President. So Speaker Boehner in the House of Representatives unveiled yet another plan. It certainly isn't perfect, but it begins to deal with our spending problem while also increasing the debt limit to provide a period of time for Congress to pass more substantial budget savings. Unfortunately, the administration issued a veto threat for this bill. Their reasoning? It doesn't extend the debt limit past the election. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. It is not because the markets require a longer term increase; they don't. It is not because Congress generally approves long-term increases in the debt limit; we don't. It is not because a long-term increase would force us to cut more spending; it would not. It is because the President has to face reelection next year. That is it--nothing more, nothing less. It is a political consideration, not an economic one. So after months of fearmongering about the risk of not raising our debt limit, the President will actually veto a bill because it casts him in a bad political light. This is unacceptable. Tomorrow, I am hopeful the House of Representatives will pass the Boehner bill. I am hopeful that as soon as we receive it in the Senate, we will take it up, pass it, and send it to the President for his signature. We need to do it not just for the debt limit increase, which we do, but we also need to do it to start cutting spending and creating a process to reform entitlement programs. Already, our economy is feeling the impact of these debts and deficits. We know from the Reinhart and Rogoff study that our economy is growing at 1 percentage point less than it should be because of our debt. This is costing us about 1 million jobs every single year. If we don't take action to cut spending, we know what our future holds: downgrades, interest rate increases, austerity programs filled with tax hikes and Draconian spending cuts, and anemic economic growth. Looking at Europe right now, Ireland pays 12.9 percent interest on 3- year bonds. Portugal pays 19.4 percent. Greece pays an astounding 28.9 percent. These rates would truly bankrupt our country in short order. Unfortunately, as former Bush economic adviser and Federal Reserve Board of Governors member, Larry Lindsey, pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed recently and reiterated it yesterday at a Finance Committee hearing, even a normalization of interest rates in the United States to their historical average for the past 20 years would add $4.9 trillion to our projected debt over the next 10 years. We can't afford the spending we have now, let alone this additional interest. We need to start cutting spending now. Both the cut, cap, and balance plan and the Boehner plan would do this. We also need to create a process to reform entitlements. The cut, cap, and balance plan does this by capping spending, and the Boehner plan does this through the new joint committee that has a firm deadline for congressional action yet this year. I wish I could say there was a plan by the President that does this. There isn't. That is why we in the Senate and in the House of Representatives are going to have to take the leadership in this debate. The President has obviously decided this is more about politics and, unfortunately, has not stepped up with the leadership that is necessary to get our country back on a sustainable fiscal path. We are where we are as a consequence of that, and we are facing a deadline in a few days where we will have to increase the borrowing authority of this country. What I submit to colleagues is, the issue and the challenge and the problem in front of us is not the debt limit, it is the debt. If we don't do something about this debt, we are going to bankrupt this country, we are going to see the kind of interest rates they are seeing in Europe and we are going to see anemic economic growth in this country and it is going to be difficult to get people back to work. So cutting spending, getting our fiscal house in order, making government smaller, not larger, making the government economy smaller and the private economy larger is the way we need to get this country back on track. But it starts by having a plan that puts our fiscal house in order. So we, in the next few days, are going to have a chance to vote yet again on a plan put forward by the House of Representatives because the President has failed to put forward a plan. I hope our colleagues in the Senate will do the right thing for this country and start to get us on that pathway that will enable us to get past the short-term challenges we face, get us to an opportunity to vote on a balanced budget amendment, which I think is desperately needed in this country, which would put the kind of fiscal discipline we need in place for the long term, so we aren't having year-over-year $1.5 trillion deficits that continue to accumulate more and more debt and put this country at a greater risk in future generations and greater jeopardy. I hope my colleagues will support a responsible plan that actually does cut spending, does address the issue of entitlement reform, does it without raising taxes, and make sure that come next Tuesday we have taken the necessary action to protect our economy, shield it from any adverse impacts that could occur as a result of us not raising our debt limit but do it in a way that addresses the fundamental issue, which is the debt. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I am happy to cosponsor the legislation of the Senator from Texas. She is absolutely right, there is no more deserving group of people in this country than our military and we need to make sure under no circumstance they are not paid, and her legislation would do that. I hope we can get it to the floor and that it is acted upon very quickly. We are a week away now from the time in which we would have to request additional borrowing authority in order for our Federal Government to pay its bills. We have known it is coming for some time. We know generally at least when that date is. It strikes me as most Americans observe this debate, the thing they are probably most concerned about is how this is going to impact them and their economic circumstances. Frankly, I think all of us ought to be looking at this with an eye toward how is this going to impact the economy. What is this going to do to get people back to work and to grow the economy? There has been a lot of discussion about that. The President made yet another speech last night in which he tried to claim the high ground in this debate. Frankly, I think the President has relegated himself to the sidelines in this debate simply because many of the things he was proposing to do as a part of this debt limit increase would be very counterproductive when it comes to the economy. I would also add that the President continues to sort of assign blame and blame the previous administration for the circumstances in which we find ourselves and, clearly, he inherited a difficult set of economic circumstances. I think we would all concede that. What I would argue is the President has made that situation worse. He has made it much worse. If you look at since this President took office, we now have 2.1 million more people unemployed than there were when he took office. We have seen the Federal debt grow by 35 percent since this President took office. The number of people receiving food stamps today has gone up by 40 percent since this President took office. He has added $11,000 to the debt of each individual in this country since he took office. Gas prices are up. They increased almost 100 percent since this President took office. The cost of health care has gone up 19 percent since this President took office despite assertions during the debate on the health care bill last year that it was actually going to reduce health care costs. We have seen all of these economic circumstances worsen on this President's watch. It strikes me as we look at this debt debate that we ought to be thinking about what can we do to get out of this economic downturn. We are growing at a very sluggish rate, a little under 2 percent. We have unemployment that is over 9 percent, 9.2 percent. As I said, there are 2.1 million more people unemployed than when the President took office. Clearly the focus of our discussions as we lead up to this vote on the debt limit ought to be about the economy, getting people back to work, growing the economy. Frankly, I think there are a couple of things we have to do to get out of the debt situation. One is we have to cut government spending. Secondly, we have to get the economy growing and expanding again. So, clearly, that ought to be the focus. When I said the President, in his proposal--at least as it has been reported because we haven't seen any proposal from him, but in the reporting about his discussions with congressional leadership, it has been suggested that the President has consistently advocated for more revenues, more taxes, and, in fact, as recently as last Friday, when there was still ``a big deal'' on the table--we were still looking at a possibility of actually striking an agreement--the President upped the ante even further. He moved the goalpost yet again. He wanted $400 billion more in higher taxes. It strikes me, and I think most Americans right now, that the worst thing we can do in an economic downturn and when we have 9.2 percent unemployment is raise taxes. There isn't a tax I can think of that will create a single job in this country. It would only make it more difficult and more expensive for our small businesses to create jobs. So that was a nonstarter. I think it became clear over time that it was going to be a nonstarter despite the President's insistence that tax increases be a part of whatever deal gets struck here. As we find ourselves where we are now, I think it is important to think about where we have come from and to look at the time that has now passed and where we stand today. I think it is important to point out, as we talk about budgets and we talk about spending and we talk about debt, our job is to pass a budget. That is where it all starts. We haven't passed a budget now in 818 days. In fact, the last time the Senate approved a budget was back on April 29, 2009. So it has now been 818 days since the most recent budget was approved by the Senate. So we are operating without a budget. Imagine how complicated it would be for any State government, any business in this country, if they continued to operate without a budget. That is what we have been doing in Washington now for 818 days. So January 6 of this year came around and we knew this debt limit vote was coming and was out there. Secretary Geithner wrote to Congress asking that the debt limit be increased. That was back in January. At that time, the Obama administration was also pushing for a clean debt limit increase; in other words, a debt limit increase that did not include any kind of spending reductions or spending reform. He just wanted a $2.4 trillion blank check to raise the debt by that amount. Well, we came to February of this year--of 2011--when it came time for the President to submit his budget to Congress. That budget seemed to be in complete denial of the reality we find ourselves in today because that budget would spend $46 trillion and add almost $10 trillion to the publicly held debt over the next decade, as well as increase taxes by somewhere on the order of $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion. So it had more spending, more debt, and higher taxes at a time when we are in an economic downturn, when we have high unemployment, and we have year over year deficits that are adding massively to the debt in this country. So the President's budget was met with a thud, as one would expect, when it was presented to the Congress. As we went on in the year, in March of this year--March 31 to be exact--the Senate Republicans introduced a balanced budget amendment. We recognized that in order for us to get our fiscal house in order, to start living within our means, to quit spending money we don't have, we have to have some kind of a discipline imposed on the Congress, a requirement that we balance our budget every year, as do so many States. There are 49 States in this country that have some form of a balanced budget amendment in their constitution, some sort of requirement that forces them to make their books balance at the end of the year. So we introduced a balanced budget amendment, and we still hope at some point to get a vote on that. That hasn't happened yet, but that is certainly something we want to enter into this debate because we think it is important not only to deal with the spending in the near term, but also to come up with a solution in the long term, and a balanced budget amendment would certainly accomplish that. On April 11 of this year, Chairman Paul Ryan of the House Budget Committee introduced his budget in the House of Representatives. Of course, on April 13, right after the submission of that budget, the President then gave a ``revised budget'' speech. It was interesting because Congressional Budget Office Director Elmendorf later stated that the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--doesn't score speeches, so they really couldn't attach any sort of numbers to the President's speech because they don't score speeches. We have yet to see any kind of an actual submission of a plan from the President prior to his provisional budget submission, which, as I said, came in with higher taxes, higher spending, and higher debt. On April 15, in accordance with the schedule required under the Budget Act, the House passed their budget. So the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee asked the President to submit a revised budget based upon his speech. That revised budget was never submitted. We had a House-passed budget. We had the President's sort of on the sidelines, out of the debate, and then in May of this year Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee--and I am on that Senate Budget Committee--were told to expect a budget markup which never materialized. So we still didn't have a budget in the Senate. The budget passed by the House of Representatives was roundly criticized by the Senate and by Democrats in Washington. But it is the only budget proposal--actual proposal-- that has been voted on and that we have literally seen in over 818 days now. We knew this vote on the debt limit was starting to get closer, so discussions picked up in terms of having some meetings to determine how we might proceed and what we might do to put a package in place that would allow us to raise the debt limit, but do it with significant spending reforms and spending reductions. Vice President Biden held his very first meeting on May 5 of this year--2011--and those discussions continued on for some time. We also had on the floor of the Senate on May 25 of this year the President's budget he submitted to Congress back in February. So we actually had a vote on that. That vote was 97 to 0 in opposition to the President's budget. There wasn't a single Republican or a single Democrat in the Senate who said the President's original budget submission was something they wanted to be associated with or wanted to support. So not a single vote in the Senate for the President's original budget submission. So we continued on into June, and I think there was hope there would be some agreement between the President and congressional leadership on how to proceed with this debt limit vote that comes up ahead of us now sometime next week. Those discussions continued, as I said, as recently as last week and finally started to unravel and fell apart, at which point it became clear we were going to need a solution and an answer. So, again, the House Republicans put together and passed a proposal called cut, cap, and balance which would have cut spending now, immediately, capped spending in future years, and put in place a balanced budget amendment which would ensure that in later years we would have the kind of discipline that is so important and so lacking in Washington. That was on July 19, 2011, when the House passed that legislation. So it came over to the Senate. We had a vote on it in the Senate on July 22, last week, and the Senate Democrats voted to table the cut, cap, and balance approach and denounced it as not a serious effort to do anything about the fiscal circumstance in which we find ourselves. We didn't get a chance to debate it and get to an up-or-down vote. We had a tabling motion and a vote on a tabling motion by the Democratic leader and as a consequence it was defeated. So we don't have anything yet in place that would deal with the debt limit coming up ahead of us next week. So that is where we are today. As I said, the House Republicans have again taken the leadership and put forward yet another proposal, and I expect they are going to vote on it sometime later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. We evidently now have before us something the Senate leadership, Senator Reid, has put forward we may end up having a vote on this week. But somehow, some way, we have to get to where we solve this before next Tuesday. I am not among those who believe it is an option for us to get past next Tuesday and then try and figure out what happens next. I believe we need to act. We need to act in a way that is responsible, but we need to act in a way that addresses the real issue, which is not the debt limit but the debt. I wish to point out when the President originally requested--and I think he reiterated that request in April--a clean debt limit, there was an assumption that Congress would just give him a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit without any kind of attempt to rein in the real problem, which is the debt. So we have been consistently advocating to try to get spending reductions, spending reforms into this equation. The President has consistently advocated in favor of tax increases. To him, this is defined as a revenue problem, not a spending problem. Most of us see this as a spending problem. When we have spending as a percentage of the entire economy that is literally at the highest level since World War II, we have, fundamentally, a spending problem. It cannot be resolved by raising taxes on small businesses; it needs to be resolved by cutting spending. When we cut spending, I believe we will also put in place the confidence the economy needs to start picking up and growing again, and we will get the other component, the other element that is so important to getting out of this mess; that is, an expanding, growing, vital economy that is creating jobs and creating greater prosperity for the American people. So this is where we are. We are in the last week. I think the President is essentially missing in action. His proposal to raise taxes which he talked about again last night in his speech is old news. It is yesterday's news. We know that is not going to pass in the House of Representatives, and it probably wouldn't pass in the Senate. Right now, the simple math is we have to be able to pass something by next Tuesday. We have to put something forward that can secure 217 votes in the House of Representatives and 60 votes in the Senate. Some of us maybe aren't going to like certain elements of what is going to be put forward. But what I can tell my colleagues is, we have come a long way in terms of steering this debate away from the President's original budget proposal which, as I said, doubled the debt over 10 years, massively increased spending, massively increased taxes, and from the point where the President was asking for a debt limit increase devoid of any spending cuts or spending reforms-- simply a $2.4 trillion blank check that would allow him to raise the debt limit--to a time where we are actually talking about significant reductions in spending both in the near term and in the long term. Whether the proposal that passes the House this week ends up being what we ultimately vote on in the Senate, it is the only viable option out there. The President doesn't have a plan. He never has had a plan. The Senate Democrats don't have a plan. They haven't had a budget in 818 days and have yet to put forward anything until, as I said, this most recent idea Senator Reid came up with. But we are up against the clock. We need to get this done. The American people expect us to get it done. The market expects us to get it done. Not doing so would put at great risk our credit rating and our ability as a great nation to function and to attract the type of credit we need to keep our government going, unfortunately. I hope in the end what comes out of this is some reforms that will put us on a path where we are starting to take that debt down, where we are not literally borrowing over 40 cents out of every dollar this government spends. That is where we need to end up. But for now at least we have to get a measure in place by next week that doesn't raise taxes in a way that would hurt the economy; that gets discretionary, nondefense spending, and, for that matter, defense spending under control in the near term and puts in place a process by which we can get a result on reforming entitlement programs and dealing with what we call the mandatory part of our budget. So that is where we came from. It has been an interesting path to get here, but there is a lot of revisionist history that gets put forward, and I wish to remind my colleagues where we came from because I think it is important and informs the decisions we will make today. For the President to suggest for a minute that somehow the House Republicans are to blame for where we are today is not consistent--in fact, it is completely contradictory--with the facts. It is the House Republicans who passed a budget on time back in April. It is the House Republicans who passed a plan last week, a cut, cap, and balance plan to deal with this debt limit. It is the House Republicans who tomorrow who will vote on yet another proposal put forward after the President upped the ante last week and made it clear that the only way he would accept a deal would be with significant tax increases on the American people and the American economy at a time when we can ill-afford it. So I hope as we proceed into this week--and the days are numbered--we will get a piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate that can secure the 60 votes necessary for us to avoid having to meet that trigger next week and to do something that would address the long-term issue of spending and debt, get spending under control, and actually, in my view, put the conditions in place that would enable economic growth and job creation in this country; so we can cut spending and grow the economy, which, in my view, are the two elements we need to put the country back on a better path. So with that, I ask my colleagues to work with us this week against this deadline to get in place a solution to this problem that deals with the fundamental issue; that is, the issue of Washington's overspending, and start to rein that in. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I echo the comments of my colleagues from Nebraska and Indiana who have expressed their support for the cut, cap, and balance approach to dealing with our debt crisis. It had 234 votes in the House, and it is the only plan out there. As my colleague from Indiana said, the Democratic leadership in the Senate has yet to produce a plan that will meaningfully deal with the greatest crisis our country has faced in my service in the Congress; that is, this massive, out-of-control debt the Senator from Nebraska pointed out which could lead to much higher interest rates along the lines of what we are seeing in some of the European countries, which would absolutely crush this economy. If we are serious about growing the economy and creating jobs, we have to get Federal spending under control. We need a smaller Federal economy and a larger private economy. What has been happening since this President took office is that we continue to grow government. We have added 35 percent to the debt. Spending has increased by 24 percent--non-national security discretionary spending--at a time when inflation was 2 percent. Federal spending has been growing at 10 times the rate of inflation. The number of people receiving food stamps has gone up by 40 percent. The unemployment rate is up by 18 percent, and 2.1 million more people are unemployed today than when this President took office. The policies of this administration are not working when it comes to getting people back to work and getting spending and debt under control. I was listening to my colleague from North Dakota with great interest when he was here earlier denouncing the whole idea of a balanced budget amendment--like it was coming from some foreign planet. He talked about how ill-conceived and ill-considered and stupid this approach is--cut, cap, and balance. Well, my observation about that is, the failure of the Democrats to produce a budget in over 800 days is exhibit No. 1 for why we need a balanced budget amendment. We ought to be embarrassed in Washington, DC; we are not doing the people's work; we have not passed a budget in over 800 days. Yet the other side comes down here and denounces the idea of a balanced budget amendment, which all 49 States have some form of, that requires them to balance their budgets every single year. My colleague from North Dakota knows that. His State has it and my State of South Dakota has it. It is a very straightforward concept that the people of this country clearly understand. Now, he takes issue with the way this particular balanced budget amendment is written. Fine. Come up with your own proposal. But don't suggest that having a constitutional amendment that requires this place to do something that it hasn't been doing for the last 25 or 30 years is literally a bad idea. What we have today is dysfunctional. It is broken. It doesn't work for the American people. It is an embarrassment. That is why we need to put something on the books that will impose a discipline on this Congress to get spending and debt back under control and help us do something about the runaway debt that is putting a crushing burden on future generations of Americans. If you don't like this balanced budget amendment and think the cut, cap, and balance proposal is not prescriptive about this particular balanced budget amendment that many of us are cosponsors of, then come up with another one. But let's put something in place that enshrines a responsibility and obligation and a requirement for us to live within our means every single year. We cannot continue to spend money we don't have. We have demonstrated year after year around here that we continue to add more and more and more to this debt. Under the President's budget proposal, that debt would have doubled in the next decade. That is why I think when his budget proposal was put on the floor of the Senate it got zero votes. Not a single Democrat or Republican voted in favor of what this President put forward in his budget submission earlier this year. Since that time there has been an absolute lack of leadership out of the White House. The President has been completely missing in action. The Democratic leadership has put forward no plan of their own. We have in front of us something that achieved majority support in the House a few nights ago when 234 Members of the House voted for this proposal. It is a serious, meaningful effort to cut spending now, cap it in future years, and put in place a balanced budget amendment which is long overdue and, frankly, if it had passed 15 years ago in the Senate, we would not be in the position we are today. It failed by a single vote--one vote--in the Senate in 1997. I cannot help but think how much better off we would be today in terms of the spending situation had we gotten the necessary two-thirds vote in 1997. But it is never too late to do the right thing. We have an opportunity to do that today. To hear our colleagues on the other side get up and belittle the effort that has been made by a lot of people who are trying to do something about a problem that will wreck this country if we don't fix it is not befitting of this institution. This is going to be a tabling motion instead of a debate on cut, cap, and balance because my colleagues have decided this isn't worthy of consideration on the floor of the Senate. I think it is a terrible reflection on this institution, when something is brought forward in good faith--a serious, meaningful effort to address spending and debt and to put this country back on a sustainable fiscal course--and we are not even going to debate it. We are going to have a tabling motion in a few minutes. I hope my colleagues will defeat that motion and allow us to continue to debate this proposal and get an up-or-down vote on what will meaningfully address the problems this country faces.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Isabel, SD. The town of Isabel will commemorate the 100th anniversary of its founding this year. Isabel was founded in 1911 and named after the daughter of a railroad agent. Located in Dewey County, it was a booming community in the early years when the town served as the last western stop on the Milwaukee railroad. Isabel became a home for settlers looking for a place to successfully raise livestock and farm. Today, the community of Isabel continues to carry on their strong agricultural heritage and grow their local businesses. Isabel has been a successful and thriving community for the past 100 years, and I am confident that it will continue to serve as an example of South Dakota values and traditions. I would like to offer my congratulations to the citizens of Isabel on this landmark occasion and wish them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the issue the Senate is going to be considering for the next couple of days and ultimately voting on, it sounds like, possibly sometime on Saturday; that is, the cut, cap, and balance proposal that has been put forward by the House of Representatives. The House passed this particular proposal the night before last. It is now pending under consideration in the Senate. What I would suggest to my colleagues in the Senate is this: It is the only proposal out there. It is the only plan we have to vote on. It has now been about 813 days--I think is the correct number of days--since a budget was passed in the Senate. The Democratic majority has not submitted one for consideration here. We have not had votes on a budget. We have been operating without a budget. There is no plan. The House of Representatives passed a budget earlier this year. It was criticized by many people here--Democrats--as being something they didn't want to support. There wasn't an alternative put forward by the Senate Democrats or by the President. The President did put a budget forward in his annual budget release earlier this year, but the Senate voted it down 97 to 0. There wasn't a single Member, Republican or Democrat, who voted in favor of the President's budget proposal. Why? Because it would have raised spending, raised the debt--almost doubled the debt over the next 10 years, and it would have increased taxes by over $1 trillion. Overall, I don't think those are the elements you want to be in a budget. You want to reduce spending and put a plan into place that starts getting a trajectory in place that starts reducing the amount of debt we have. You certainly don't want to raise taxes in an economic downturn, when you are dealing with 9.2 percent unemployment. That is the only budget submission we have seen from the President. As I said, there has not been anything in the context of the debt limit debate put forward by the Democrats in the Senate or by the President. The only proposal we have in front of us is the Cut, Cap, and Balance proposal passed by the House of Representatives. You can say the House arguably has done its work. They have put forward a plan that we need to act on. To suggest for a minute that there isn't an alternative, that the Republicans are being unreasonable in all this, I think completely misses the point, because that is the only plan out there. If you don't like that one, where is your budget? We have had 813 days without a budget. We don't have a plan to deal with the debt limit. What we have to vote on and consider and debate today is the Cut, Cap, and Balance proposal. That is significant for a number of reasons. One, I believe the way to deal with the crisis we have in this country today--a debt crisis that gets worse by the day--is to get spending under control. I believe fundamentally that the problem we have in this country is not a question of not enough revenue, it is a question of too much spending. The government has gotten too big, has grown too fast. It is spinning out of control, in the minds of most Americans. They want to see us rein it in and get government spending and debt under control. Yesterday, I read this on the floor, but I want to read it again. Ironically, it is a letter I got from a Boy Scout in South Dakota who is earning his merit badge. He wrote me a letter and said this: I feel that the Federal Government needs a balanced budget. If we don't, the debt gets larger each year. I feel that there are two solutions for this. In our house, we are careful to only spend what my mom and dad earn. That needs come first and what is left is for wants. Many times we were told no when we ask for something. With my allowance and lawn mowing money, I divide it between donations, saving, and spending. I can't spend more than I make. I think there are a couple of very powerful observations in this statement. The first is, obviously, it is not lost even on this young American how important it is to live within your means, and that you cannot spend money you don't have. That is clearly a lesson he has already learned. We need to learn that in Washington, DC. Second is how profoundly this issue impacts the next generation. If, in fact, we fail to act to get spending and debt under control and to put us on a sustainable fiscal course, the next generation is going to pay a powerful price for our irresponsibility. I submit again to my colleagues this is fundamentally a spending issue. A lot of folks talk about the need for more revenue. The President talks about wanting more revenue. The majority leader just said the House is out of town and how that is terrible because revenue measures have to originate in the House. Many of us believe this can be solved without more revenue, that we don't have to raise taxes on the American people or American small businesses to solve what is inherently and fundamentally a spending problem. If we want to balance the budget, we have to get spending under control. Five times since 1969 the budget was balanced in this country. In each case, the average amount we spent was just under 18.7 percent of our GDP, so that is kind of the benchmark for the five times in our history since 1969 when the budget has been balanced. The 40-year average of spending to GDP in this country is 20.6 percent. That is the 40-year average. The five times we balanced the budget, it was 18.7 percent of GDP. This year, we are spending 24.3 percent of GDP. If you look at the President's budget--and even what are, in my view, optimistic assumptions about economic growth--you are still looking at that sort of a course for the foreseeable future. With what I think are going to be the exploding costs of the health care bill that was passed last year, it could be much higher than that. My point is this: If you can balance your budget at 18.7 percent Federal spending as a percentage of GDP, and we are spending at 24.3 percent this year, we are 30 percent higher in terms of what we spend than those times in which we were able to balance the budget. If you are talking about balancing the budget, it means getting spending under control, reining in out-of-control Washington spending. For a long time, I have believed that we need not only what is proposed in the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill, in terms of an immediate reduction in spending, caps on spending in the future years, but also a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That is something I have campaigned on my entire political career. I believe it is necessary. Washington has not demonstrated in the past the political courage that is necessary to get spending under control. The consequence of that is we now have a Federal debt that is over $14 trillion, and we are actually talking about raising the borrowing authority of this country simply because we get further and further into debt every year. We are running $1 trillion deficits, and at that rate you are obviously going to continue to accumulate enormous amounts of debt. It means getting your budget balanced. We don't do that around here. Most States--49 of them--have some form of a balanced budget amendment that requires them to make sure their spending doesn't exceed the amount of revenue they have coming in. I think that is needed. When I first got to the Congress as a freshman Congressman in 1997, there was a vote in the Senate on a balanced budget amendment. It failed by one vote. It needs two-thirds votes in the House and Senate, and then has to be sent to the States for ratification. If 38 States ratify, it would be added to the Constitution. We would have a requirement that the Federal Government balance its budget as so many States have to do every single year. Well, that vote in the Senate in 1997 failed by 1 vote. It got 66 votes in the Senate, which is 1 short of the 67 necessary to send it on to the House. At that time, I was a Member of the House of Representatives, and had the Senate passed it and sent it to the House, I believe we would have gotten a two-thirds majority in the House and been able to send it to the States. What has happened in the last 15 years? At that time, the accumulated debt was $5 trillion. Today, it is $14 trillion. We have seen a $9 trillion increase in the amount of debt. I can't help but think that had we had a balanced budget amendment in place, we would be much better off today. The cut, cap, and balance approach strikes at the very heart of the issue, which is that this is fundamentally a spending issue that needs to be addressed in the near term by cutting spending, capping spending in future years, and putting in place the mechanism that requires Congress to have the discipline to balance the budget for future generations. I hope we will get an affirmative vote when the time comes, and that my colleagues will support the measure I think will get this country back on a sustainable fiscal track and create prosperity for this generation and future generations, as well. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Mellette County in South Dakota. Mellette County will commemorate the 100th anniversary of its founding this year. Mellette County was organized in 1911 and named after Arthur C. Mellette, the first Governor of the State of South Dakota. The county seat, White River, is home to the annual Frontier Days celebration and rodeo. In celebration of the centennial, the communities of Norris, White River, and Wood will be hosting many events to mark this important milestone. Mellette County has been a successful and thriving example of South Dakota values and traditions for the past 100 years, and I am confident that it will continue that tradition. I would like to offer my congratulations to the citizens of Mellette County on this landmark occasion and wish them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I think our colleagues in the House have shown us the way. They passed this last night. They have given us an opportunity now to have this vote, and it is long overdue. In my view--and I think the numbers bear this out--this is not a revenue problem. This is not a problem of having too little tax revenue. This is not a problem, as I pointed out, that can be solved by tax increases, which would devastate the job creators in this country and make it more difficult for our economy to recover and to get people back to work. But this is really about spending. This is about getting Federal spending back to a level that is historically normal. If we could do that, we will have done a great thing for the future of this country, for our children and grandchildren. It is so important, in my view, that we not wait any longer. We can't afford to wait. The time is now. We are going to have this vote coming up, it looks like probably on Saturday. I hope we will have a big bipartisan vote in support of this approach that would cut spending today, cap it in the future, and get a balanced budget amendment on the books. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Delmont, SD. The town of Delmont will commemorate the 125th anniversary of its founding this year. Delmont was founded in 1886 after the first train passed through. Located in Douglas County, it boasts community members dedicated to supporting and growing local business. It is also home to the annual Kuchen Festival and the Harvest Festival. The citizens of Delmont have committed themselves to developing their strong heritage and traditions. Delmont has been a successful and thriving community for the past 125 years, and I am confident that it will continue to serve as an example of South Dakota values and traditions. I would like to offer my congratulations to the citizens of Delmont on this landmark date and wish them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from New Hampshire.