John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, earlier this week, as a result of multiple flight cancellations due to the significant snowstorm in Washington, DC, I was unable to vote on Executive Calendar No. 468, the nomination of Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. to be United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit and cloture on Executive Calendar No. 688, the nomination of Craig Becker to be a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Had I been present for these votes, I would have voted to confirm Mr. Greenaway to the Third Circuit, and would have voted against cloture on the nomination of Craig Becker because of my concerns that, based on his previous statements, he would inappropriately bring his far out of the mainstream personal beliefs and agenda to the NLRB.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. As long as we are not on any time limitation, all right, I will.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today the Senate will have an opportunity to indicate to the American people whether they are listening to the American people because we are going to have an opportunity to vote on a debt limit bill later, but earlier, before that, on a series of amendments. The first amendment is an amendment I am offering along with Senator Vitter from Louisiana and Senator Bennett from Utah. They have worked extensively on this. They have already been down here and they spoke on this this morning, as have a number of my colleagues. What is important about this amendment is it will give an indication to the American people about whether their voices are being heard here in Washington as expressed by the voters of Massachusetts. I think what they were saying in that vote a couple of days ago was: We are frustrated. We are concerned about the level at which Washington is spending and taxing and borrowing. We want the brakes put on that. I have an amendment that I offer to the debt limit today that will end TARP. It is a very straightforward way in which we can signal to the American people that we are serious about fiscal responsibility. Just by way of context, if you look at what is being proposed here with this debt limit increase, it is to add $1.9 trillion to the debt limit of our country--$1.9 trillion. Remember, we already raised the debt limit before we left for the Christmas holiday by $290 billion, so if you add that to the $1.9 trillion, you are talking about well over $2 trillion that we will have added to the debt limit in the last 30 days. Bear in mind that the entire Federal budget a decade ago did not exceed that amount of money. We are going to add more to the debt limit in this vote, coupled with the vote we made about 30 days ago, than was spent in the entire Federal budget a decade ago. That is remarkable. It speaks to the whole issue of the amount of spending and the growth of government here in Washington, DC, which I believe has the American taxpayer very concerned--and with good reason. If you look at what has happened in the last several years, starting in 2008 and up through 2010, this year--if you take the end of 2008, the amount of money spent in the appropriations bills here in Washington, and then go to the 2009 appropriations bills and the 2010 appropriations bills, over that time period the entire government grew by 16.8 percent, over a 2-year period. That is excluding the defense and veterans funding, so that is other nondefense discretionary spending. All these increases outpace both inflation and the growth in our economy. To put it in perspective, inflation during that same period, 2008 to 2010, was 3.5 percent. We grew government spending by 16.8 percent. That is stunning. How does any American taxpayer out there in this recession, trying to figure out how to make their budget, how to pay their bills, and having to go about the process of tightening their belts, understand how a Federal Government can grow its size here in Washington, DC, by 16.8 percent when inflation in the country over that same time period was 3.5 percent? These are some remarkable and stunning numbers. That is why we are seeing all this angst at the grassroots level around this country about the direction the country is heading and the peril it is putting future generations in if we continue on this path unabated and we don't do something about spending and we don't do something about the massive amount of borrowing and expansion of government. I also think people are reacting to the process by which Congress conducts its business. The idea that you would have to pass legislation by including special provisions for individual Senators--the so-called cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana purchase, all these other things where individual deals were made in back rooms to get the support of individual Senators to vote in this case for the big health care bill-- is something the American people find very objectionable. I think they are reacting to that too. I think what they are voicing is their disgust with the way Washington operates. One of the reasons we are here today asking for a $1.9 trillion increase in the debt limit and the reason we have a debt that next year will exceed 60 percent of our gross domestic product--which, by the way, would keep us from getting into the European Union--is because we continue to spend and spend and borrow and borrow and frankly use a lot of accounting gimmicks here in Washington, DC, to disguise and shield the amount of borrowing and spending that is going on here. A good example of that was the health care bill which we have been debating now for the last several months. It passed the House of Representatives, it passed the Senate, and it is now in discussions. Negotiations are going on between the leaders in the House and Senate. I am not sure--we have not been privy to those, either--what the state of play is with regard to the health care bill. I think it is important to know that there were a lot of things in that bill designed to understate its true cost. They said it would only cost $1 trillion over the first 10 years, but if you look at the fully implemented cost, because it front-end-loaded some of the increases and back-loaded some of the spending, because it used various accounting gimmicks to understate the true cost of it, if you look at the fully implemented cost over 10 years, it was in fact $2.5 trillion. I think those numbers are starting to sink in with the American people. One of the things that was done in the health care bill--and I think this is an example of some of the things that happen, processes, procedures that happen here in Washington, DC, that defy logic and are very difficult to explain to the American people--one example of that is the way the Medicare issue was debated and handled with regard to the health care debate. About $\1/2\ trillion in Medicare cuts was proposed, along with a Medicare tax increase of .9 percent, all used to finance this new health care entitlement program, to pay for the new $2.5 trillion in spending. The argument was made by the other side that this, in fact, extended the lifespan of Medicare because it was--the cuts to Medicare and the revenue increases were somehow going to expand the lifespan of Medicare. What I thought was interesting about that was the Senator from Alabama asked a question of the Congressional Budget Office toward the end of that debate about, how can you count this as paying for the new entitlement program, the new health care program, and still say you are extending the lifespan of Medicare because obviously you can't use the money twice. In response to that question, the Congressional Budget Office issued a statement and said that the key point is that the savings to the HI trust fund, the Medicare trust fund, under the health care bill would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and at the same time pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs. They went on to say: The unified budget accounting showed that the majority of the HI savings [the trust fund savings] would be used to pay for other spending under the health care bill and would not enhance the ability of the government to redeem the bonds credited to the trust fund, the Medicare trust fund, to pay for future Medicare benefits. To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the government's ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government's fiscal position. That is just an example of one of the unique accounting mechanisms used by the Federal Government in Washington, DC.

Mr. THUNE. The CBO number, as the Senator from Montana knows, has been a moving target because at the end of that debate, they adjusted by about $\1/2\ trillion the amount they considered the deficit would be reduced. But I point out to the Senator from Montana that, yes, the CBO came out and said that because they are using the trust fund accounting conventions we use here in Washington DC, and that is my whole point. I am not disputing what the CBO has said because legally they are correct because of the way we do it under a unified budget accounting in the trust funds. But as a practical matter, as an economic matter, what the CBO is saying in the statement they issued is, you cannot double-count the money. It is spending the same money twice. You are creating a new entitlement program, which is, under the CBO's estimate, $1 trillion over 10 years but when it is fully implemented, $2.5 trillion.

Mr. THUNE. The CBO came out and said that the budget deficit would be reduced by $132 billion over the first 10 years. But the point I made earlier is that included, of course, a lot of gimmicks that were used, including taxes began immediately, spending that does not occur until 4 years later, counting revenue from--for example, not taking care of the physician fee increase, which we know is a $250 billion to $350 billion cost which at some point the government is going to have to deal with, as well as creating a new entitlement program called the CLASS Act, under which the CBO assumed about $72 billion of savings in the first 10 years, which they also said would generate deficits in the outyears. So the Senator from Montana may be correct legally under the conventions that are used in trust funds under a unified budget, but as a practical matter, and this is what I think the American people understand and what as an economic matter I understand, you cannot use the same revenue twice. And if you have revenues coming in from Medicare cuts and Medicare payroll tax increases, and you are saying we are going to use those to finance this expansion, this new health care entitlement, and at the same time we are going to use those to preserve and extend the lifespan of Medicare, most people would say you cannot do that. What the CBO said in this statement is, it is double-counting. It is spending the same revenue twice. That is the practical implication of this, notwithstanding the weird gimmicks and the way Washington, DC, goes about accounting for revenues in a unified budget that go into trust funds because essentially what is happening is, you are issuing an IOU to the Medicare trust fund and also taking those revenues and saying we are going to spend them to finance the new health care entitlement. You cannot spend the same money twice. People in South Dakota know that. I think people in Montana know that. But that is why they are so frustrated about this process. They see this dragging on and all of this debate going on and all of these different numbers being thrown out. But the fact is, we are creating a massive new government entitlement program under health care with all kinds of new spending financed with tax increases and Medicare cuts that are supposed to be used to finance the new health care entitlement but are also being credited to the Medicare trust fund, and thereby being used for two purposes. You cannot do that. But I think that point is one of the reasons that most persons become so cynical about Washington, DC. They get very frustrated with what they see as all of this Washington, DC, talk and accounting gimmicks and budgetary techniques that are used to disguise this amount of spending, which has led us to where we are having to raise the debt limit by $1.9 trillion. Face it. That is the reality we are going to face today. We are going to have a vote, if not this week then next week, on this legislation which would increase the amount of the debt limit in this country by $1.9 trillion. My amendment to this legislation, as I said before, is fairly straightforward. It would end TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was created toward the end of 2008 that was designed specifically to bring financial stability to the country at a time when we were worried about imminent financial collapse. There was a concern at the time that there was great systemic risk to our financial system. As a consequence of that, action was taken, authority was given to the Treasury to acquire the distressed nonperforming assets on the balance sheets of many of our banks. What has happened since that time, it has morphed into something entirely different. It has been used now to take equity positions, to take ownership stakes in more and more companies in this country, whether they are financial service companies, insurance companies, auto manufacturers. We have gotten very far afield from what the purpose of the TARP was in the first place. As to where we are today, we have, out of that $700 billion in authority--I have a pie chart that shows what has been spent and what is left. The blue represents the amount of the program, $700 billion, that has been committed or spent already. That is about $545 billion. That is what the blue represents. The other side of the chart, the line part and the orange part, represent the amount that has not been spent or has been paid back. The amount that has not been spent is about $155 billion. The amount that has been paid back is about $165 billion. So you have roughly $320 billion that to date is unobligated balances in the TARP account. What my amendment would do is say that amount, that $320 billion, cannot be spent. It ends. The reason for that is because we are concerned this fund is going to be used for all types of purposes for which it was not intended. Most recently, the House of Representatives passed the stimulus 2 bill, the second stimulus bill, which is going to use as an offset this authority right here. What we are simply saying is, this is $320 billion that we can save the taxpayers of this country, that we can keep from piling on debt to future generations, and keep from adding to the total amount of borrowing we are doing. So let's stop. Let's end this program today and not allow this $320 billion to be spent and further stipulate that anything here in the blue, the $545 billion that is currently spent or committed, if paid back, would go to reduce the Federal debt rather than be recycled and respent and reused again. It is a very straightforward, very simple amendment, but I think it is very important in terms of the message that it sends to the American people about whether we are serious about what this TARP was created for in the first place, its specific statutory purpose, and whether we are going to deviate from that and use it for all other types of spending and ideas that people in Washington, DC, might come up with. So I hope my colleagues today will support this amendment. I happen to believe the TARP has served its purpose. The Treasury had an opportunity to extend it at the end of last year, the end of December of last year. They chose not to let it expire. They chose to extend it. So now this program runs until October of this year. My fear is that this amount of money, this $320 billion, is going to get spent, but it is not going to get spent for the purpose it was intended to be spent for under the TARP authority but, rather, for all kinds of other things that people, politicians in Washington, might come up with. Also, this blue amount here, those funds that are already committed, are spent, when they are paid back, and we hope they will be, although there are some questions now about whether we are going to see a lot of that money being paid back, but assuming it is, that money not be recycled or respent but it be used to retire the Federal debt. That would reduce the total amount by which we would have to raise the debt limit. We are serious about getting this debt under control. We are serious about getting spending under control. This is a very straightforward way to do that. So we are going to have this vote, hopefully, later today, sometime this afternoon. We can save the American taxpayers $320 billion by not spending this amount of money here. We can, hopefully, as these are paid back, save a whole lot more for the American taxpayers. I would urge my colleagues in the Senate to support this amendment and to restore some sense of fiscal discipline to the way we do business in Washington. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE. I would say to the chairman, I will yield in a moment after I make some remarks, but I want to speak to the TARP amendment before I do that. I will be happy to yield at the conclusion of my remarks. I want to say that I know what the chairman is going to say. He is going to say the CBO came back and said it would extend the lifespan of Medicare, and they did, and it would under the mechanisms used in the unified budget when it comes to trust fund accounting.

Mr. THUNE

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

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

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we entered into this debate about the debt limit today. I appreciate the comments of my colleague from New Hampshire with respect to the overall picture of our financial and fiscal condition in the country right now. I think it is important to put that context out there because we are debating now a substitute amendment that the Senator from Montana is offering on the debt limit increase. I think that was originally proposed in the $650 billion range. We are now talking about tripling that--a $1.9 trillion increase in the debt limit--after having just voted on raising the debt limit before we went out for the Christmas holiday by about $290 billion. So we have this proposal on the Senate floor that would increase the total amount of indebtedness of the U.S. Government by $1.9 trillion. As the Senator from New Hampshire very well pointed out, we are looking at deficits now into the foreseeable future that exceed $1 trillion. It doesn't look like in the 10-year window in which we do budgeting in the Senate that we are ever going to have a year where we don't have a deficit that isn't in the $1 trillion range. We had a $1.4 trillion deficit last year and will have another $1.2 trillion deficit this year. We keep racking up more and more debt that gets passed on to future generations and taxpayers. As the Senator from New Hampshire pointed out, for admission into the European Union there are a couple of key thresholds. One is debt as a percentage of GDP, which is 60 percent, which is the threshold for admission into the European Union, and deficits, which is about 3 percent. He pointed out very effectively that we are at a threshold in this country that exceeds dramatically the deficit, the GDP threshold that wouldn't even allow us to get into the European Union, and we are going to blow by the debt to GDP threshold in the next year, which is 60 percent to GDP. My point is, we are getting in perilous territory when it comes to the confidence and trust the American people have in the Federal Government's ability to manage responsibly and exercise fiscal discipline with their tax dollars. We are also getting to a point where I think those who are acquiring U.S. debt--and by that I mean the Chinese who, of course, are a big holder of U.S. debt--get to start saying: If we are going to continue to buy this debt, we are going to get a higher return. The higher our debt goes, the more risk they take on. It is a fundamental rule of economics that we all learned that there is a corresponding relationship between risk and return. If an investor is going to assume more risk, they are going to demand a higher return. What we are doing now by piling up more debt is saying to the people who would buy that debt, the investors out in the world or in this country is, this is becoming a more risky proposition for you. As we pile up more debt, they are going to start saying: OK, if we are going to buy that debt and finance your spending into the future, we are going to need a higher return. That means higher interest rates. Of course, when you start seeing Federal Government debt go up in terms of interest rates, generally what happens is other interest rates in our economy will go up as well. So you will start seeing student loans, for example, and homeowners and small businesses all being impacted by higher interest rates as a result of what inevitably happens when you run these kinds of deficits year after year and add as much as we are to the Federal debt. We are not showing any evidence that there is a willingness to restrain that. In fact, if we look at just the last year--of course, the $1 trillion stimulus bill sort of started off the spending. Then since then we have had an omnibus, or minibus, spending bill, both of which increased spending year over year by about twice the rate of inflation, and sometimes in excess of that. But what we have seen now between fiscal years 2008 and 2010 are astronomical increases in the size of the Federal Government. If we start with the legislative branch appropriations bills between 2008 and 2010--that covers a couple of appropriations years--we are looking at a 17.3-percent increase. If we look at appropriations for the Interior and the Environment, it is an increase of 21.4 percent over that time period; appropriations for Commerce, Science, and Justice, an increase of 24.2 percent. Appropriations for Transportation and HUD increased a whopping 39.1 percent. The State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill beat even that and was increased by 48.7 percent. Taken as a whole, the entire government grew by 16.8 percent during that time period. When I say that, I am talking between 2008 and 2010. We saw a 16.8-percent increase in the size of the Federal Government. That is just speaking to the appropriations bills over those 2 years. Of course, we all know that dramatically outpaces and dwarfs the rate of inflation and the growth we have seen in our economy over that time period. What is even more notable is that none of those increases included the increased funding through the stimulus bill, which I mentioned was an additional $1 trillion. Of course, I am concerned that will be built into the budget baseline into the future, and we will see our appropriators assume that stimulus money is part of the baseline in spending. Of course, those appropriations bills don't include this proposed stimulus 2 that we are hearing about: the bailouts of the banks, the insurance companies, and the car companies, or the $2.5 trillion expansion that would occur with a new health care proposal, or entitlement, in this country. So we have seen this dramatic increase in the growth of government and in spending in Washington, most of which is financed with borrowing. Last year, in fact, 43 cents out of every dollar we spent in the Federal Government was borrowed. We cannot continue to sustain a pattern of borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar we spend. In fact, as American families and households and small businesses are having to tighten their belts, in Washington, DC, the spending continues unabated. What I am hoping to do with this amendment is to at least demonstrate that, as an institution, the Senate is willing to say we are going to take some steps, no matter how modest they are--and I would say my amendment isn't going to go a long way toward eliminating this Federal debt, but certainly I think it demonstrates to the American people that we get it; we are hearing that they are uncomfortable with the massive amount of borrowing and spending and taxes going on here. Americans are going to pay for this in the form of higher taxes and in the form of higher inflation. As I said, it will be also in the form of higher interest rates on mortgages and small business loans and student loans and those sorts of things. So we have a responsibility to demonstrate to the American people that we are serious about getting our fiscal house in order. The most recent example, of course, as I mentioned earlier, in this pattern of expansion of the Federal Government is the health care bill, which is in the process right now of discussions, evidently, between the House and Senate and the negotiations that are ongoing. It passed the House and the Senate before the Christmas holiday. I happen to hope that people will come to their senses and defeat this bill and that it would not emerge in the conference committee, and we can start over and do it the right way--in a step-by-step way, not in a way that expands the size of government by $2.5 trillion. That being said, the $2.5 trillion expansion of the Federal Government includes higher taxes, Medicare cuts, and also at the end of the day, according to the CBO, does very little for most people in this country to actually reduce the cost of their health care insurance. In fact, what we have seen through studies done by CBO and by the CMS Actuary is that for most Americans, they are going to see, at best, their health insurance premiums stay the same. If they are in the individual market, they will see them go up. So the health care bill is an example of this runaway Federal spending. In fact, in the latter part of that debate, we got a response from the CBO to a question posed by the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions, with regard to how the accounting is done in Medicare. One of the arguments we heard throughout the course of the debate was that it would extend the lifespan of Medicare. The question was posed to CBO: What happens with this additional Medicare tax and these Medicare cuts that would be imposed upon providers and senior citizens in this country? The argument was always made that this will extend the lifespan of Medicare. Our question was, how do you spend money to create this entitlement program and pay for the health care expansion and say you are expanding Medicare? The answer that came back was that under the accounting convention regarding trust funds in a unified budget, in fact, there would be notes put into these trust funds that technically, legally speaking, would extend the lifespan of Medicare. But those dollars are also being spent on the new health care expansion. From an economic standpoint, the conclusion you draw is that you cannot spend the same money twice. What they said is that you are spending the same money twice. You are double counting this money. My view is that we have complicated this situation dramatically by this new health care entitlement program. That is why I think it is so important that we reverse course and start over and do this right, in a way that is step by step and gets at the fundamental issue most Americans are concerned about, which is the high cost of health care and providing access to more Americans and a higher quality of care. I say all that as a background to get into this debate about the debt limit and to say I am very concerned. I also think most Americans are concerned about the amount of spending and borrowing and taxing that is occurring in Washington, DC. My amendment, very simply, says the Troubled Asset Relief Program that was enacted in late 2008--a $700 billion authority for the Treasury to use to help bring stability to the financial services industry in this country--would end. We would basically say that job, that mission, and that purpose has been served, completed. In fact, any unobligated funds should not be spent, and we should not allow TARP to become a sort of revolving loan fund, a political slush fund, to be used for all kinds of purposes. Most of the people who voted for it believed it would be used to bring stability to our financial services industry. We were told at the time that if we didn't do something, we were on the verge of imminent financial collapse, a financial meltdown. So many of us supported that at the time, with the belief that it would in fact be used to acquire the troubled assets that were on the balance sheets of a lot of financial institutions. What happened is it evolved and morphed into something entirely different. It has been used to take equity positions not only in insurance companies but in auto manufacturers. It was suggested by the Treasury Department, whose interpretation is that they could use this for other purposes. We think the statute is plain about how these funds ought to be used. The Treasury has taken a different interpretation. When they chose to extend this program, it was set to expire at the end of December of last year. The Treasury Department chose to extend it. The assumption most of us made was that they have designs on how to use the funds. If they don't, certainly Members of Congress do. I don't say that as a partisan statement. I think there are probably people on both sides who would love to know there is a few hundred billion dollars available to go toward some program they think is important. I am not saying anybody's ideas about government programs that might serve a particular constituency's needs are not important. They are important in the minds of individual Senators. But if we are thinking about the overall good of the country, we have to begin thinking about what we are doing. This authority that was created under TARP--the $700 billion--is, if we don't shut it down, going to be used for all kinds of other ideas and purposes. We saw that most recently with the stimulus 2 bill that is proposed in the House of Representatives. They wanted to use TARP funding as an offset to pay for the new stimulus bill. We have seen proposals to use it for small businesses. Frankly, I think we need to focus any efforts we make to create jobs in this country on small businesses because, after all, they create two-thirds or three-quarters of the jobs in our economy. Frankly, the TARP program wasn't designed to do that. It had a specific statutory purpose. That purpose is now being adulterated. It is used in all these different ways. I happen to believe--and I hope a majority of my colleagues will as well--we should vote to end this program and not allow it to be used and misused and abused in a way that creates greater liabilities for the American taxpayers, creates more debt and borrowing because, after all, that is what it is. The TARP authority is debt. When we talk about spending TARP money, it is not as if there is a big bank of money out there. What it means is that when TARP authority is used, we go out and borrow the money. Basically, we add to the Federal debt that we continue to pile up. So the ENDTARP program--there is an acronym for everything around here--the ENDTARP program, Erasing Our National Debt Through Accountability and Responsibility Plan, or ENDTARP, is what my amendment embodies. Basically, we believe we ought to, as a body, as an expression of our willingness to, again, demonstrate to the American people we can get our fiscal house in order, vote to end this program. I would like to illustrate, if I may, what I am talking about in graphic terms. This is a pie chart that shows the whole $700 billion that was authorized under TARP. The blue represents that the $545 billion--the latest information we have--has been spent or at least committed. That was as of January 6, 2010. What this side, the red, represents is the unobligated funds. The unobligated funds is a combination of both the authority that was not used, and that was about $155 billion, and payments that have been made back into the fund. That is about $165 billion. So we have about $319 billion--$320 billion in round numbers--of unobligated authority in TARP. What my amendment simply would say is, this amount of money cannot be spent. We would end TARP, and instead of allowing the program to continue through October of this year, at which point, incidentally, they don't have to shut down the spending--the spending can continue to go on. The program, in effect, would shut down in October of this year. But we believe that this unobligated money in here, that we ought to not spend it. When we do not spend it, it is money we do not have to borrow, and that reduces the overall amount of the Federal debt and the amount of debt we are passing on to future generations. Again, this is a way of illustrating what we are talking about, what the amendment would do. The blue represents the amount that has been committed or spent as of January 6. The other side, the red, represents the amount that has not been used, authorized but not spent, and has been paid back--in other words, unobligated balances in the TARP fund of about $320 billion. It is a fairly straightforward amendment. I hope a majority of my colleagues in the Senate will vote with me to say to the American people that we hear you; we do not believe using this program in a way that was not intended, that further aggravates a very serious fiscal situation for this country, ought to be allowed to continue. I think the American people have made it clear that they are tired of the bailouts. There was a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll indicating that 53 percent of Americans are unhappy with the government's current role in the private sector. In fact, 65 percent of Americans are opposed to government intervention by taking a majority stake in General Motors. Again, despite the original projections when TARP was signed into law that we were going to be made whole and this was actually going to generate additional revenue for the American taxpayers, I think we now know the estimates that are coming forward suggest we are going to lose money. The amount of money that was authorized for this program, we are not going to get it all back, but the one thing we can do right now is to cut our losses by making sure that these unobligated funds do not get spent, that they do not go onto the Federal debt, and that they do not go onto additional borrowing. When we are borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar spent in Washington, DC, we need to exercise some fiscal discipline. I hope my colleagues will vote to support this amendment. My understanding is there will be a vote sometime tomorrow on this amendment. I hope to have another opportunity to speak to it tomorrow morning. I wanted to lay the amendment down, make my colleagues aware of it, and encourage them to support it. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk and I ask unanimous consent for its immediate consideration.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize the Aberdeen Federal Credit Union, AFCU, a member-owned not-for-profit financial cooperative located in Aberdeen, SD. Chartered on April 11, 1935, this year marks the 75th anniversary of the AFCU. As a community charter, membership is open to all who live, work, worship, or attend school in Brown County. Building upon their mission of being responsive to their members' needs by providing competitive financial services, their membership has grown to nearly 10,000 Brown County residents. The AFCU has much to be proud of and I am confident that their success will continue well into the future. As a credit union member myself, I understand firsthand the benefit of a credit union membership. Credit unions are a part of the community and they are well aware of the specific needs of their members. Their commitment to providing the best possible service is commendable, especially in the financial environment we are faced with today. The AFCU will commemorate their 75th anniversary during their annual meeting held in Aberdeen, SD, on January 23, 2010. I would like to offer my congratulations to the leaders and membership of the AFCU on this milestone anniversary and wish them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. If the Senator will yield on that suggestion of small business health plans, doesn't that enjoy wide support among small businesses in this country?

Mr. THUNE. If the Senator from Wyoming would yield on that point, that is why I think day after day after day--and I have said--there is a pattern emerging here in the Senate where the majority comes down and establishes the need for health care reform, which we all acknowledge, and illustrates examples of those who have fallen through the cracks, which we all know examples exist--all of us have dealt with those in our individual States--and then proceeds to attack Republicans for not having their own ideas, which we have just mentioned there are lots of good Republican ideas which do not raise taxes, which do not cut Medicare, and actually do something to reduce premiums. But that seems to be the strategy employed and the pattern that emerges in the rhetoric day after day down here from the other side. The one thing I do not hear is them coming down here and talking about what this 2,700-page bill is going to do to reduce health care costs, because if we all submit to the experts on this--which, as I said earlier, the Congressional Budget Office is sort of the referee. They do not have a political agenda, or at least they are not supposed to. The Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services does not have a political agenda, or at least they are not supposed to. They are sort of considered to be an umpire on this. The Joint Committee on Taxation, which looks at the distributional impacts of tax policy, is a referee and is not supposed to have a political agenda in all this. They all come to the same conclusions with regard to premium increases in this bill. So if the overall objective is to reduce the cost of health care, and if, in fact, your legislation, according to all the referees, all the umpires, all the experts, not only increases premiums for most Americans but increases the overall cost of health care, which is what they all conclude, it is pretty hard to come down and defend this product. That is why I think day after day they try to create distractions and counterattacks as opposed to actually coming down and talking about the substance of the bill because the substance of the bill does not accomplish the stated objective, which is to reduce the overall cost of health care and get premiums under control for families and small businesses in this country. It is also hard, I would argue, because of the $518 billion of tax increases that are in here and the unified opposition of the entire small business community, which creates 70 percent of the jobs in this country, to talk about how this can be anything but detrimental to job creation. This is going to cost us jobs. I think every business organization has made that abundantly clear. And all the analysis of this legislation that has been done comes to the same conclusion.

Mr. THUNE. I appreciate the Senator for his work on that issue. It is a view I share, a proposal I have been a big advocate of going back to my days in the House of Representatives and one which, as the Senator from Tennessee noted, has tremendous support among small businesses across the country. About the only place it does not have majority support is here in the U.S. Congress because maybe it makes too much sense. But it seems to me there are suggestions and solutions out there which do not require $\1/2\ trillion of tax increases on small businesses, which every small business organization has come out and said: It is going to drive up our cost of doing business, and at the end of the day, it is going to raise our health care costs--and does not require these steep Medicare cuts that the Senator from Wyoming has alluded to over and over again and the impacts those will have on the delivery of health care to seniors across this country but, rather, it would bend the cost curve down without tax increases and Medicare cuts. Another example of that, I would argue, would be allowing for interstate competition, allowing people to buy their insurance across State lines, which is a suggestion we have made over and over on our side of the aisle. According to the Congressional Budget Office, both small business health plans and buying insurance across State lines actually would reduce health care costs and would do it without raising taxes or cutting Medicare, which, to me, would make a lot of sense, especially when you have an economy in recession, 10-percent unemployment, a $1.5 trillion deficit last year and another $1.5 trillion deficit this coming year, and when you are talking about a $2.5 trillion cost in the growth of government here in Washington, DC, to implement these 2,700 pages. Some suggestions along the lines of the one mentioned by the Senator from Tennessee and some of these others would make a lot of sense, and I think they would enjoy tremendous support among small businesses, which create the jobs in this country, as well as among the American public. So I thank the Senator from Tennessee for pointing out one of the many things Republicans are for and which we have tried to get in the debate. I know the Senator from Wyoming has advocated for many of these same types of initiatives and solutions. As he mentioned earlier, he was prepared to offer an amendment to address the issue of premiums, but it looks as if we are going to be prevented from doing that.

Mr. THUNE. If I might continue, the one thing that strikes me about this proposal that, as I said before, now is, in totality, 2,700 pages, is that it does not enjoy any support from any small business organization that I know of. Maybe there are some out there I cannot speak to. But I do know the organizations that represent small businesses that we are all well acquainted with--National Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Wholesalers and Distributors, builders and contractors, electric contractors, franchise associations--I can go right down the list--all say this does nothing to lower their costs. In fact, it increases the cost of doing business, increases the cost of doing health care. What they have argued repeatedly is one of the suggestions the Senator from Tennessee mentioned, that small business health plans would drive their health care costs down, which is why they have been such strong advocates for this over the years. I guess the other question I would ask of my colleague from Tennessee is, would an approach, a suggestion like small business health plans require tax increases that would hit small businesses? Incidentally, the latest version with the managers' amendment, which we just received Saturday, increases the tax increases in the bill that were previously $493 billion and are now $518 billion. As the Senator mentioned, with the tax credit businesses get, they up that a little bit but not enough to help most small businesses in light of the $518 billion in tax increases in the first 10 years, and when it is fully implemented it will be about $1 trillion. But the payroll tax that is going to hit a lot of small businesses was increased dramatically in the managers' amendment. The individual mandate was almost doubled in the managers' amendment. So the taxes in the bill go up with this proposal. I guess my question is, with all these tax increases that are going to have a crushing impact on small businesses, does a suggestion such as the one made by the Senator from Tennessee for small business health plans require tax increases or Medicare cuts, which is what is going to be necessary to finance this 2,700-page behemoth?

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the Senator from Wyoming is correct. Of course, we would like to offer amendments. I know the Senator from Wyoming has deep experience in this field, being a practicing physician, someone who brings great knowledge and background to the debate and obviously has great insight about how this 2,100-page bill could be improved upon. What we have here is the 2,100 pages that we started with, and this represents one-sixth of our entire economy. We are talking about reordering one-sixth of the entire economy. Saturday we received an amendment, a 400-page amendment which nobody up until Saturday had seen. In fact, many of the Democrats hadn't seen it either, including members of the Democratic leadership. There was a discussion on the floor last week between Senator McCain and Senator Durbin in which Senator McCain said: They are writing this amendment behind closed doors. We don't have any idea what is in it. The Senator from Illinois, the No. 2 person in the Democratic leadership, said: I am in the dark just like you are. You had a handful of people who were adding 400 pages of content to the 2,100 pages we already have. In addition, there is another amendment that adds another 300. We are talking about 2,700 pages that will reorder and restructure literally one-sixth of the entire American economy. Right now what we are being told is that we are not going to be allowed to offer amendments to that humongous piece of legislation. When you get this much legislation coming at you and receiving this on Saturday, not having the opportunity to read it for the first time, is why we have been saying we need to push this back and not try to jam it through before the Christmas holiday. You find all kinds of things in these bills. Sometimes people take credit for those being there. Sometimes they don't. We have had a debate about some of the provisions that benefit specifically Nebraska. You have this Medicaid provision that requires the taxpayers of the other 49 States to subsidize and pay the Medicaid matching share for the State of Nebraska which will cost millions and millions of dollars. The Senator from Arizona mentioned this late add, a $100 million item for construction of a university hospital which, again, is being reported as being inserted by the Senator from Connecticut. You have all these sorts of deals that get made to try and get that elusive sixtieth vote that are now coming to light. The American people have a right to know it. Frankly, Members of the Senate who have to vote on this have a right to know what is in these volumes of pages, 2,700 pages, that will spend $2.5 trillion. The original 2,100-page bill spent $1.2 billion per page, $6.8 million per word. It creates 70 new government programs. This is a massive overhaul of health care delivery. What it ought to be about is driving down the cost of health care for people. In fact, we have heard a lot of discussion from the other side about how this drives down the cost of health care. This bends the cost curve down. They can say that, but the experts we rely on, the referees or the umpires, say otherwise. In fact, what the CBO has said is that the cost curve would be bent up by this bill. The blue line on this chart represents the increasing health care costs year over year if we do nothing. The blue line represents what we would be looking at if we continue on the current course which everybody here acknowledges is unacceptable. We all want to see the cost curve go down and see overall health care costs go down. But the ironic thing is, according to the CBO, the red line represents what happens if the bill proposed by the Democratic majority actually becomes law. The cost curve is bent up. We will actually spend more on health care than we are spending today, even the year-by-year twice the rate of inflation increases in health care premiums today. The Senator from Wyoming is absolutely right to be offering amendments to address the issue of premiums. This bill does not do anything to reduce premiums for most Americans. About 10 percent of Americans, because of the subsidies in the bill, would get their premium costs reduced, but 90 percent--we are told by the CBO--would see their premiums stay the same or go up. When I say stay the same, it means go up at the current rate of twice the rate of inflation. Worst- case scenario, if you are buying your insurance in the individual marketplace, you will see your insurance premiums go up above and beyond this by 10 to 13 percent. Health care costs for 90 percent of Americans, the best they can hope for, is the status quo which is year- over-year increases that are twice the rate of inflation. If you are one of the unlucky who buys their insurance in the individual marketplace, your premiums go up by another 10 to 13 percent. This ought to be about driving down health care costs and getting premiums under control. The overall cost of health care in this country represents about one- sixth of our entire economy. If this bill passes, according to the Congressional Budget Office, according to the Actuary of CMS, health care spending will no longer be one-sixth of the economy; it will be more than one-fifth. Because if this bill passes, health care spending will go up to about 21 percent of our gross domestic product. Tell me, what does this bill do then to get costs under control? If we are driving up the cost of health care for individuals in the form of higher premiums, if we are driving up the overall cost of health care as a percentage of our economy, why would we be jamming this thing through before the Christmas holiday, these 2,700 pages, spending $2.5 trillion of taxpayer money, raising taxes on small businesses, which obviously have weighed in on this, and the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents a lot of small businesses around the country, has said, if enacted, this bill would cost us 1.6 million jobs because of all the new taxes it imposes--you are raising taxes, when fully implemented, by about $1 trillion, cutting Medicare by about $1 trillion. After all that, what do you have? You have the same or worse insurance premiums for 90 percent of Americans. I argue that is a bad deal for the American people. Coming back to the special deals, this is not the way to legislate. To carve out deals, to go and try and find or buy or however you want to characterize it that sixtieth vote is essentially what we are talking about. These are special goodies packed into this bill essentially because the majority decided that rather than trying to include Republicans and pass it with Republican votes, they had to pass it with all Democrats which meant that every one of the Democrats had tremendous leverage. Clearly, they decided to use it. There are lots of carve-outs, lots of special deals in this that cost the American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in additional spending simply because they wanted to get this done by an artificial deadline and wanted to do it with all Democratic votes. I say to my colleagues, this process itself, when the American people find out about particularly this latest deal, smells. I don't think they are going to like it. I don't think they are going to like the end product when they find out it will raise insurance premiums.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, which will celebrate their 125th anniversary in 2010. Located in Rapid City, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology has been a national leader in preparing world-class engineers and scientists since 1885. Graduates design, construct, and operate the most modern technology to meet complex challenges such as climate change, bioenergy, mineral extraction and processing, advanced materials, environmental quality, and national defense. School of Mines alumni are held in the highest regard by their fellow leaders in industry, consulting, government, health, research, and education. The School of Mines is proud to be a leading partner in bringing the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, DUSEL, from an extraordinary vision to a phenomenal reality. The longstanding connections between the School of Mines and the Homestake Mine began in 1885 when the university was established to meet the growing research needs of the mining industry, led by Homestake. These connections continued when nearly a decade ago, the School of Mines helped champion the conversion of the mine into a national laboratory. Today, as we continue to prepare leaders in engineering and science, we are collaborating with our colleagues to transform Homestake into a world- class laboratory to further exceptional research and discoveries not yet imagined. Rugged individuals and pioneers in engineering and science founded the School of Mines' intellectual environment more than a century ago. The university's faculty, staff, students, and alumni carry on that tradition today. In 2010, the School of Mines celebrates 125 years of award-winning faculty, staff, and students collaborating to solve issues of critical importance to South Dakota, the nation, and the world. Please join me as we celebrate their legacy of educating the leaders of tomorrow.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Texas, and my colleague from Wyoming prior to that. Many have come down here, as our colleagues on our side have, day after day, time after time, and continue to point out what we believe is wrong with the approach that is being taken by the majority, and also pointing out where we would do things differently. Remember, this is the first bill: 2,100 pages long; $1.2 billion per page; $6.8 million actually per word. Then yesterday, we got the managers' amendment: another 400 pages. You add yet another amendment that is going to go on this stack, and you are talking about 2,700 pages of bill language. What I think is interesting--and I see a pattern emerging here almost every single day--it is like deja vu all over again. The other side comes down here and talks about the need for health care reform, which we all concede. We all believe we need to reform health care in this country. We all hear from our small businesses. We all hear from individuals and families who are having a difficult time keeping up with the high cost of health care. So that is something on which there is broad agreement on both sides. Yet that seems to be sort of the MO for the other side, to come down here and talk about how we need to do health care reform. We agree with that. The other strategy is to come down here and attack Republicans for not having their own ideas. We have been trying to offer amendments to this bill forever. We had several amendments offered today. We asked consent to bring up amendments, to get them pending, to get them voted on. They were blocked by the other side. We have full alternatives to the current bill. Senator Burr and Senator Coburn have an alternative, a comprehensive alternative they would like to offer, being blocked by the other side. So the recurring pattern that has emerged day after day in the debate in the Senate is Democrats come down here and talk about how bad the current system is and point out examples of those who are falling through the cracks in the current system. Exactly. We agree with that. We have acknowledged there is a problem. They come down here and attack Republicans for not having alternatives. In fact, the Senator from Rhode Island this afternoon essentially said that Republicans have been coming down here and telling lies. What the Republicans have been doing day after day after day is coming down and talking about the bill and the impact the bill would have on health care delivery, the impact the bill would have on the economy, the impact the bill would have on small businesses and their ability to create jobs. We have been talking about the Congressional Budget Office report that describes the cost of the bill and goes into great detail about how it will impact individual families as well as the overall cost of health care in this country. We have come down here day after day to talk about the CMS Actuary's report, the Center for Medicare Services, about the cost of the bill and how it would impact the cost of health care in this country. So we continue to come down here and talk about the bill. The other side--the one thing they don't do is they don't come down here and talk about the bill. I don't hear Democrats coming down here and offering full-throated defenses for this bill, because the bill is indefensible. It is 2,700 pages, and it doesn't do anything to lower the cost of health care, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So we come down here day after day and talk about the Congressional Budget Office report, come down here and talk about the CMS Actuary's report. They come down and talk about how bad the current system is, say this is going to fix it, but then when they are challenged on the CMS Actuary's report and the Congressional Budget Office report, they can't defend that. What they should be doing instead of accusing the Republicans of telling lies and attacking Republicans is accusing the CMS Actuary and the Congressional Budget Office. They ought to be coming down and attacking them because all we are doing is pointing out the facts as they pertain to the current bill that is before the Senate, this 2,700 pages right here. What I would like to point out are some of the promises that have been made by the President and by Democrats with regard to this bill. The President made it very clear, when he was running for President: I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase--not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. Yet the Joint Committee on Taxation analysis--by the way, that is another report, and maybe they ought to be coming down here and attacking that report rather than attacking Republicans who are quoting from the report. The Joint Committee on Taxation analysis shows those people earning less than $200,000 a year will see a tax increase under the Reid bill. Even after you account for taxpayers who are going to receive the premium tax credit, 24 percent of tax returns under $200,000 will, on average, see their taxes go up. There are 42 million Americans who are going to see higher taxes who make less than 200,000 a year. So the no tax increase for the middle class we would have to say is a broken promise. The second thing they say is that it will lower health care costs. We all know--and the President said this as recently as June 23: And I've said very clearly: If any bill arrives from Congress that is not controlling costs, that's not a bill I can support. It's going to have to control costs. It's going to have to be paid for. So the Democrats have shifted the benchmarks about what that means and what impact it is going to have on America's health care premiums. The President's first promise, going back to the campaign, was that the typical family's premiums would go down by $2,500 per year--a $2,500-per-year reduction, according to the President when he was campaigning--and that everybody would be covered. Well, we all know that even this bill, which is touted as expanding coverage--well, it does expand coverage. It puts 15 million more people on Medicaid; that is one way it expands coverage. But under this bill, there are still 23 million Americans who don't get health insurance coverage. So the President's promise that he was going to cover everybody, that he was going to lower health care costs, again, you would have to say it is a broken promise. I want to show my colleagues how this would impact a typical family's insurance costs. If you are a family who is paying $13,300 today and you are getting your insurance in the large employer market--in other words, if you work for a large employer, you get it in the large group market--and you are looking at the year 2016, you are going to be paying over $20,000 a year for insurance. That doesn't lower health care costs; that increases health care costs. What they will say is: Well, this is better than it would have been if we had done nothing. The honest truth is that if we do nothing, we still would have 5 percent to 6 percent increases year over year in the cost of health insurance for most Americans whether you get your insurance in the large group market or the small group market. You are still going to have a 5- to 6-percent increase in the cost of your health insurance if this bill is passed. You don't see any improvement. The best you can hope for is the status quo, which is year-over-year increases that are twice the rate of inflation. That is the impact on an average family. So the whole notion that this is going to lower health care costs just doesn't pass the truth test, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The next promise that was made is that it would bend the cost curve down. What is interesting about that--and, of course, this was the President in the joint session of Congress on September 9 of this year: The plan I am announcing tonight . . . will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, again--and if my colleagues want to attack us, let's have them attack the Congressional Budget Office, the CMS Actuary, the Joint Tax Committee, because everything I am saying tonight I am quoting from those reports. According to the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Reid amendment, the cost curve bends up, not down. In fact, in the first 10 years, the net increase would be about $200 billion a year in overall health care costs. This is an outdated chart, I have to say, because this is the chart we used before this amendment was added. This is the managers' amendment, the 400-page amendment I alluded to earlier that was just added to the 2,100 page bill. In the 2,100 page bill, the Congressional Budget Office said the cost of health care in this country is going to go up, not down, by $160 billion. So what is the cost of doing nothing? The blue line represents the cost of doing nothing. That is Federal health care spending today and what it is projected to be into the future if we do nothing. The red line, according to the Congressional Budget Office, represents what health care costs would do if the Reid bill passes. The ironic thing is that with the 400-page amendment that was added yesterday, this number gets bigger, not smaller. I said this is an outdated chart. This only represents a $160 billion increase in the cost of health care. According to CBO's analysis on the amendment, it increases the cost of health care by $200 billion. The CMS Actuary came to a slightly different conclusion. They said health care costs would go up in the next 10 years by $234 billion. So you have all the experts--the Congressional Budget Office, the CMS Actuary--all coming to the same conclusion; that is, health care costs go up, not down. So we would have to say that is yet another broken promise. The other thing that has been said throughout the course of this debate is that you could keep the insurance you have. In his joint session of Congress address on September 9, the President said: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have. Well, interestingly enough, according, again, to the Congressional Budget Office, between 9 million and 10 million people who would be covered by an employment-based plan under current law would not have an offer of such coverage under the proposal, the Reid proposal. So we have 10 million people, according to CBO, who are going to lose their employer-based coverage, and you also have the 11 million people who get Medicare Advantage which is being cut. They aren't going to be able to keep what they have. You can argue that maybe their benefits are too rich today. That has been the argument made by the other side. But you can't say they are going to be able to keep what they have. If you are going to cut $118 billion out of Medicare Advantage, the 11 million people in this country who get Medicare Advantage are going to see their benefits cut. They are not going to be able to keep what they have. In fact, the Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Casey, said recently on these Medicare Advantage cuts: We are not going to be able to say if you like what you have you can keep it, and that basic commitment that a lot of us around here have made will be called into question. Eleven million people who get Medicare Advantage aren't going to be able to keep what they have, nor are the 10 million people, according to the CBO, who are going to lose their employer-based coverage if this plan passes--another broken promise. No cuts to Medicare--we all know about that. We talked about that for about a week here and offered amendments to get rid of the Medicare cuts. The President said when he was running for office: I want to assure [you] we're not talking about cutting Medicare benefits. He reiterated that in his State of the Union Address. This bill, as we know, cuts $470 billion out of Medicare in the first 10 years, and when it is fully implemented, it cuts over $1 trillion out of Medicare. In the first 10 years, $135 billion out of hospitals; $120 billion, as I said earlier, out of Medicare Advantage; $15 billion out of nursing homes; $40 billion out of home health care; and $7 billion out of hospice care--these are all Medicare cuts. These are all going to affect people in a very real way whether you get Medicare Advantage or whether you are a provider. These are just the facts of this legislation. I am talking about the bill. I am talking about the bill, and I am talking about what the experts have said about the bill. So we would have to say, another broken promise. The first of the last two here: open and transparent process. We all know that when the President campaigned, he said: We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so that approach I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process. That was what the President said when he was campaigning. We all know this bill, almost in its entirety, has been written behind closed doors. We just saw this 400-page amendment yesterday. It was interesting; earlier--it was last week, I guess--in a discussion on the floor between Senator McCain and Senator Durbin, Senator Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the leadership on the Democratic side, said: I would say to the Senator from Arizona that I am in the dark almost as much as he is and I am in the leadership. Even some of the leaders on the other side--there are only three people, four people sitting in a room writing this bill, and what is the most offensive thing about this came out yesterday when we found out that the Senator from Nebraska had carved out a special sweetheart deal with a goody for his State that all the rest of the States get to pay for. He gets his Medicaid for his State paid for entirely by the Federal taxpayers, and no other State gets that particular arrangement. So the Federal taxpayers in every other State, in my State of South Dakota--Nebraska borders South Dakota. I think the people in our part of the country are going to say this really smells. This is the way they are doing business in Washington, DC? This is business as usual. The final thing I will say is this: The argument was that it won't add a dime to the deficit. Well, here I give the Democrats a little bit of credit because they did raise taxes enough and cut Medicare enough that they could actually raise quite a bit of revenue. But saying it won't add a dime to the deficit assumes there isn't going to be any payment to physicians. The physicians' fee fix, which takes about $250 billion, was completely cut out of here. They are going to have to fix that at some point. So we are not counting that. We are counting $72 billion from a program called the CLASS Act which the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, the Democrat from North Dakota, Kent Conrad, called a ``Ponzi scheme of the first order,'' something Bernie Madoff would be proud of. The CBO says of the CLASS Act: The program would add to future budget deficits in large and growing fashion. Even the Washington Post has editorialized about this, and they came to the same conclusion: The CLASS Act is a gimmick designed to pretend that health care is fully paid for. It goes on to say: The money that flows in during the 10-year budget window will flow back out again. These are not savings that can honestly be counted on the budget sheet of reform. Then we all know we have 10 years of revenue coming in, with only 6 years of spending in the first 10 years. Phony budgeting, gimmicks--all of these things are used to mask the true size of the cost of this program: $2.5 trillion over 10 years when it is fully implemented. So if you do not use the gimmicks, if you do not use the CLASS Act, if you discount the doc fix and don't count that in there, sure, you can make it look like it doesn't add to the deficit, but the American people know better, and they have come to the conclusion this is going to add to the deficit. Even David Broder, who is the Pulitzer Prize winner for his commentary, said: While the CBO said that both the House-passed bill and the one Reid has drafted meet the test by being budget-neutral, every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters. This is going to add to the deficit. These are all broken promises. That is why this bill needs to be voted down. We need to vote it down tonight. I am hoping there is a courageous Democrat or two who will join us and defeat this bad legislation and move forward to something we can pass that will meaningfully lower health care costs for the American people. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I appreciate that. I appreciate and share the Senator's view with regard to the changes or proposal that was unveiled this morning and how it treats the issue of abortion. As was noted, the House of Representatives and Congressman Stupak came up with a clear, unequivocal policy position that extends the policy, essentially, that has been in place now for the past 30 years in this country regarding the use of taxpayer funds for abortions. The language that supposedly was negotiated between the Senator from Nebraska and the Democratic majority does not follow through or maintain that policy and, in fact, opens the door to allowing Federal funding to be used for abortions. Irrespective of which side you come down on, on this issue, there has been widespread and broad American support for a very long time. I think it is something both Republicans and Democrats have agreed upon, and we should not deviate from that. The American people have made it very plain that they believe--60 to 70 percent, in most surveys--the Federal Government should not be using taxpayer funds to finance abortions. The funding is clearly in the Senate version that now has been negotiated. As the Senator from Oklahoma mentioned, the opposition comes from the Catholic Bishops, the opposition comes from the National Right to Life. It is very clear that this provision that is now included in the managers' amendment does not maintain the long-held policy we have had in this country supported by so many Americans that we not use taxpayer funds for abortions. So that, too, is something this bill falls short on, along with all of the other many things I have mentioned. I think we are going to have many opportunities over the course of the next several days to continue to discuss this issue. We just received the managers' amendment this morning, and I think it is important, as the debate over the managers' amendment begins and we have some votes that are going to be coming up in the next few days, that we continue to talk about why this is the wrong approach for America, why it is the wrong approach for health care, why it is the wrong approach for our economy, and why it is the wrong approach for jobs. We can do so much better by the American people. This needs to be done in a step-by-step way. It needs to be done right. This legislation takes us in the wrong direction for the future of this country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE. Before the Senator from Oklahoma leaves--and I understand the staff needs to get out of here, and the weather is not cooperating in Washington today--I am interested in his discussion and the points he was making about the liabilities we continue to rack up and how that is going to impact future generations. I wonder if the Senator from Oklahoma might respond to a question with regard to the current debate. Because it strikes me, in light of all the spending and borrowing the country is doing, the concerns it is now creating about not only the economy in the near term but also the impact this could have on our country's strength in the long term, the way some of our creditors, the people who actually buy our debt, are viewing the debate about health care--in fact, when the President was in Asia recently, the discussion with the Chinese was more about, their interest was about what is going to happen with health care in this country, not because they cared about whether there was a public option in the bill, not because they cared about whether it was universal coverage, but because they were interested in what it was going to do to the debt, what it was going to do to the deficit. They were worried about their investments. I think it is fair to say having this last fiscal year rack up a $1.5 trillion deficit--and looking to be somewhere in that ballpark again this year--that we cannot sustain over time this pace we are on of borrowing, spending, and continuing just to mortgage the future of future generations, and that bears on the debate we are having today. Because under the best case scenario, this health care expansion, when it is fully implemented, is going to be a $2.5 trillion expansion. And the managers' amendment, which was laid down today, actually increases the cost. I do not know if the Senator from Oklahoma has--I am sure he has looked at this, but it was $848 billion, and now it is $871 billion. That is their first 10-year number, which I suspect means the fully implemented number, the $2.5 trillion number --

Mr. THUNE. I am happy to yield.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, if I might say, the Senator from Oklahoma has put forward a comprehensive approach to health care reform. It has been argued here many times on the floor that Republicans do not have their own ideas. We have argued throughout the course of this debate that we ought to be approaching this not in sort of a radical overhaul of an expansion of the Federal Government's role in our health care delivery system, which this legislation would do, but, rather, look at ways we can provide more competition and create a more robust private sector health care delivery system. Instead, this approach relies heavily on growing the government footprint with regard to health care, as is evidenced by the $2.5 trillion cost of the legislation. But the Senator from Oklahoma and our colleague from North Carolina have come up with a comprehensive solution, which is very, in my view, bold and does represent true reform that moves us away from the system we have today, which has demonstrated, as the Senator from Oklahoma has pointed out, that it continues to increase in cost and continues to probably--I think it will be argued--deliver less in terms of quality and makes the failures in the current system even bigger and worse, without doing anything to address the fundamental underlying problem or disease. So I would say that inasmuch as the Senator from Oklahoma has a comprehensive solution, we also support what I would call more step-by- step approaches. One, of course, is interstate competition, allowing people to buy insurance across States lines. One would allow pooling, allowing small businesses to join a larger group, thereby getting the benefit of group purchasing power. As the Senator from Oklahoma mentioned, medical malpractice reform is something we all believe needs to be done. The Congressional Budget Office, by the way, has said all these various solutions bend the cost curve down, not up. But those are all things we could be doing to improve upon the system we have today. Frankly, I think we need to have a fair debate of the proposal of the Senator from Oklahoma, which is a comprehensive approach, which does take us away from the employer-based system, which empowers individuals through the form of tax credits to buy their own health insurance to make them more informed consumers. We always talk about a consumer- driven model. That is exactly the approach that his legislation and his reform proposal would employ. So I would like to see us have an opportunity to debate that. We are not going to get that chance, I do not think, because it sounds as if the amendment tree has been filled. The bill that is before us now with the managers' amendment will prevent other alternatives, other amendments from being offered. That is unfortunate because I think the direction we are headed is a train wreck, as has been described by many, because it leads to more spending, more taxing, Medicare cuts, and I would argue, in the end, more borrowing, frankly, does little to solve the underlying problems that exist in our health care system today.

Mr. THUNE. If anything, to address that problem. So I simply would ask the Senator from Oklahoma, some of the things the Senator talks about in terms of actually attacking the disease could be the basis upon which we could put together a consensus bill around here that actually does reform health care in a way that drives down the cost rather than raise it and does not rely on all these tax increases, does not rely on the $1 trillion in Medicare cuts, which the CMS Actuary says are unlikely to be substained on a permanent basis, therefore, again putting more and more of the burden of the cost of this new expansion on future generations. I just see this as a very dangerous path to be on when you are running $1.5 trillion deficits, when you have an economy in recession, and unemployment is about 10 percent. We are talking about tax increases that are going to be passed on in the form of higher premiums for most Americans. To be fair, there will be some Americans who will benefit. Most will not. Most will see their premiums go up. We are going to see Medicare cuts. The program will be cut, but not to reform it or make it more sustainable or extend its life but, rather, to create a new entitlement program. How can we move forward with legislation such as this and call it reform? Wouldn't it be fair to suggest that if our colleagues on the other side were serious about reforming health care, they would sit down with us in a way that is constructive that would actually represent the common ground we could find and not write these bills, as they have, behind closed doors and then spring it on us today on a Saturday morning, and try to push this thing through to passage before Thursday of next week or Friday on Christmas Day?

Mr. THUNE.--is equally larger. The tax increases went up as well. The taxes that were in the original bill were $493 billion. It is now $518 billion. The Medicare payroll tax, which was going to be a half a point increase is now nine-tenths of a point. That, of course, impacts the Medicare trust fund, for which this will be the first time I think that a payroll tax will be levied that does not go to the trust fund; it actually goes to create a new entitlement program. But I just wonder what the Senator from Oklahoma thinks about how the health care debate and the spending that is going to be associated with that is going to impact the scenario he was describing, the fiscal condition of our country as we head into the future, and whether we will be able to really keep the cost at the $2.5 trillion, and whether the tax and the Medicare cuts--which the CMS Actuary says it is unlikely, on a permanent basis, that those cuts will be sustainable-- how does this thing get paid for? It seems to me it gets paid for by putting more on the debt, by putting more on future generations. I am interested in the reaction of the Senator from Oklahoma to that.

Mr. THUNE.--will be 21 percent. It is currently about 17 percent or in that ballpark. So it seems to me, at least, we have done very little----