Pat Toomey

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for allowing me to make a couple points. These are very well-made points about having the opportunity to actually debate and try to improve a bill on the floor. One of the things that disturbs me is that I see a pattern that is playing out today, and this is not the first time. This is just part of why we have not had a budget resolution for 3 consecutive years. The majority party does not want to have to come down and actually cast votes. If there is a budget resolution on the floor, there surely will be amendments. We all come from different places, have different ideas, and we want our constituents to have a chance to get their say. The majority party apparently does not want to have to cast votes. I think that is part of why there has not been a single appropriations bill on this floor, and that is just a shocking abdication of our responsibility. Here we are in mid-December, and while the committee has voted this out--if not every appropriations bill, the vast majority of them--not a single one has been brought to the floor. We have seen this happen on bill after bill. I hear the criticism that Republicans will not allow the body to get on the bill. The motion to proceed passed; the cloture motion passed. We are on the bill. Despite that, there is no opportunity to have a meaningful, substantive debate about ways this could be improved and changed. It is not possible because the distinguished majority leader refuses to permit it. In my view, that is the dysfunction of this body; it is a pattern, and it is a problem. I too had a couple of amendments I would like to have had an opportunity to discuss. I wish to make one other point. On the few occasions when the majority leader has actually permitted an open amendment process--the farm bill, postal reform bill, and Defense authorization come to mind-- we would start with a huge, long list of amendments. Then people say: There are too many. I will give up some of mine. We got to a manageable amount, we dealt with them, and actually all three of those bills passed. The process works when it is allowed to take place, but this is not a very good function. The last point I will make is to urge my colleagues to remember when we are running trillion-dollar deficits as it is, the last thing we ought to do is increase the size of those deficits with a taxpayer bailout of banks, and that is what this ends up amounting to. I urge my colleagues to sustain this point of order. I yield back to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, the pending measure, S. 3637, the Transaction Account Guarantee Act, exceeds the Banking Committee's section 302(a) allocation of new budget authority and outlays deemed by the Budget Control Act of 2011; therefore, I raise a point of order against this measure pursuant to section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on H.J. Res. 117, a continuing resolution to fund Federal agencies for the next 6 months. While I appreciate that this measure avoids the need to negotiate a spending bill during the lame duck session, after careful consideration, I believe the promises I made to the people of Pennsylvania in 2010 compel me to oppose this bill. H.J. Res. 117 establishes discretionary appropriations for fiscal year at $1.047 trillion, an amount equal to the spending cap created by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Unfortunately, this figure is far above what is fiscally responsible, which is one of the reasons I voted against the Budget Control Act last year. Given that the Federal Government has now run deficits in excess of $1 trillion for 4 consecutive years, it would be irresponsible to vote for a bill that increases discretionary spending by about $8 billion. Furthermore, H.J. Res. 117 employs a tired old accounting gimmick called ``changes in mandatory spending programs'' to make discretionary spending appear nearly $20 billion lower. This gimmick does not eliminate mandatory spending; it only delays it, resulting in no actual budgetary savings. The continuing resolution fails to restore recently undermined welfare-to-work provisions within the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--TANF--Program. In 1996, a Republican led Congress and President Clinton enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act--P.L. 104-193, a key component of which established work requirements, helping individuals provide for themselves and their families. On July 12, 2012, the administration unilaterally weakened reporting requirements for TANF, erroneously stipulating that waiver authority provided under section 1115 of the Social Security Act enabled the agency to modify work participation requirements, a provision explicitly outside the scope of waivable provisions. Welfare-to-work provisions have proven instrumental in transitioning millions off welfare. While TANF's work requirements have contributed towards declining welfare rolls, there remain additional opportunities to strengthen and reform the TANF program. By failing to engage in a dialogue, Congress missed a critical opportunity to restore the welfare-to-work requirements and assist more TANF recipients take steps towards independence. Though I am unable to support this continuing resolution, I would note my support for one provision in the underlying legislation. I am happy that a technical correction was included that ensures that States that have not remediated all of their abandoned mine lands do not lose any payments from the Abandoned Mine Lands Trust Fund as a result of the recently enacted Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (Map-21). To pay for MAP-21, conferees inserted a provision intending to cap payments to States that have been certified by the EPA as having remediated all of their abandoned mine lands. After enactment, there was some uncertainty about how this provision would affect noncertified states like Pennsylvania because of the structure of the funding formula. This was clearly not the intent of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office scored the provision as capping payments to certified States only. Therefore, this technical correction ensures that Pennsylvania, the State with more abandoned mine lands than any other, continues to receive its baseline level of funding.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, the fact is our economy could be booming right now, should be booming right now. The history of this country is that after a serious recession, the economy comes roaring back. That is exactly what should be happening right now. In fact, our economy should be creating more jobs than there are people to fill them. But that is not what is happening because of the failed leadership of the Democratic majority in control of this body and the President of the United States. Our economy cannot come back the way it should as long as the threat of a complete fiscal disaster looms over it. As long as everybody who might even be contemplating launching a new business or expanding an existing business knows this government is running trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see with no willingness to address this, then people will not make that investment. They will not expand their business. They will not hire that next worker. It is long past time that the Democratic leadership in this body accepts its responsibility to address this problem, pass a budget, get our fiscal house in order so this economy can grow again and Americans can get back to work.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, this Saturday, July 28, 2012, the U.S. Navy will perform a christening ceremony in New Orleans for the future USS Somerset. The USS Somerset is a special ship, bearing the name of the Southwest Pennsylvania county where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001. On that infamous day, a group of defiant and determined Americans challenged a group of al-Qaida hijackers hell bent on crashing the plane into the U.S. Capitol, the White House, or another sensitive DC- area target. The terrorists' goal was not achieved, thanks to the bravery of the Americans onboard. We will never forget their actions in the face of horror. The USS Somerset will serve as an ongoing emblem of their heroism as it races to the aid of our friends and defends American liberty against our foes. This ship also embodies the American spirit local Pennsylvanians demonstrated shortly after the crash, when they raised the Stars and Stripes atop a dragline near the crash site as an unforgettable symbol of our country's resolve during a time of national sorrow. Wherever the USS Somerset goes, so will a piece of southwest Pennsylvania. The bow of the ship includes steel from the dragline adjacent to the crash site in Stonycreek Township, where it was a silent witness to an indelible act of American courage and strength in defiance of those who would do us harm. I wish the U.S. Navy and the future crew of the USS Somerset safe travels and successful missions defending America and freedom worldwide.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I rise to address the same topic that has been under discussion this afternoon by Senator Pryor, Senator Hoeven, and others. I strongly share the concern they have registered. I believe we have seriously flawed legislation in the form of this flood insurance reauthorization bill, and I think we are kind of compounding our problem by apparently inserting this into a transportation conference report rather than doing what we ought to do in the Senate, which is to have a debate about flood insurance. This easily qualifies as a sufficiently important and substantive topic that we ought to bring it to the floor under regular order and consider the underlying policy, including the profound change in policy that is contemplated by the underlying bill and a very important amendment on which Senators Pryor and Hoeven have provided the leadership and of which I am a cosponsor, which I think absolutely deserves a vigorous debate and I would like to see passed. One of the many concerns I have about what we are doing now is we are taking this flood insurance bill and apparently some are considering this bill to be at least a partial offset to some of the expenditures contemplated in the Transportation bill. For the life of me, I can't understand how this could possibly be a legitimate offset for spending. If it is a legitimate offset for spending, then that means it is net new revenue. But we are told this bill is supposed to be actuarially sound. It is supposed to be revenue neutral. The premiums being charged for this flood insurance are supposed to just equal out the payments that will have to be made in honoring claims against this fund. So I don't understand how that nets out to a source of net revenue that can be spent somewhere else. How many times can we spend the same money? The insurance premiums that are collected are supposed to be collected to honor the liabilities the Federal Government is taking on by virtue of this program, so how can it also go to pay for transportation projects? I don't understand that. I also think there is a real fundamental problem that Senators Pryor and Hoeven have addressed, and that is the huge expansion of this mandate. We have in this underlying bill a Federal mandate that forces people to buy homeowner's insurance, and it forces a new category of people to buy homeowner's flood insurance, and the new category is those people who live behind a levee or a dam. A lot of folks have contributed a lot of money over many years to building levees and dams precisely so that they would be protected from the risk of floods. In fact, that works every day all across America. Yet we are going to ask those people to also pay as though there were no levee there. This strikes me as a profoundly flawed approach. It completely ignores the investments these communities have made for years, and in the process it discourages future flood-mitigation measures. It discourages the maintenance of existing levees and dams. It discourages the building of additional ones. I think this is a bad idea. It is bad to create these kinds of incentives. I will say candidly that this disproportionately has an adverse effect on States that have over the years a long history of building levees and dams. Pennsylvania would certainly be among those States. If you look at this map, it shows the counties in which there are levees and dams, and almost the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is shaded in because we have levees and dams all across the Commonwealth. They work and they hold and people have invested to have that security, that protection. Frankly, there are a lot of communities that would like to have additional levees and dams to have more protection than they have today. What this measure would do is it would say: Don't do that. What good does it do? You are still going to have to pay for flood insurance. I think this is a badly flawed approach. Let me say once again that there is something very wrong with this process. This is a big deal. To ask 1 million to 2 million additional new Pennsylvanians--not to ask, to force them into a program where they would be forced to buy an insurance product whether they want it or not--by the way, nothing stops them from voluntarily choosing to purchase flood insurance, but that is not what this bill is about; the bill is about forcing them to buy this product. To think we are going to create this huge new mandate on what could be 2 million Pennsylvanians alone and many more millions across the country, to do it without a full debate on the Senate floor, without the opportunity to consider this legislation, without the opportunity to consider and debate and vote on amendments, I think is a big mistake. I urge my colleagues to take a look at this map and to consider strongly insisting that the transportation conference report not include this legislation and that we proceed under regular order to debate a very important measure, which would be the reauthorization of the Flood Insurance Program. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2247.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, water systems are currently required to mail reports every year that detail in great specificity all the minute trace chemicals that are inevitably in the water supply. This is at a great cost and it is a problem, particularly for rural water systems. What my amendment would do is permit the water companies, provided there are no violations, to inform their customers in each and every monthly bill that they can obtain this information on the Web site. There are absolutely no changes whatsoever in water standards, of course, and every company would still have to mail these detailed reports if the water failed to comply with the State or Federal standards. This is a way we can free up tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary mailing costs and make that available for infrastructure investment. I am happy to yield to my colleague, the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. TOOMEY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, this is an amendment that repeals the Biorefinery Assistance Program. This is a program that primarily provides loan guarantees to cellulosic ethanol plants. The fact is the taxpayers are already subsidizing ethanol plants in many ways. The Federal Government already provides a tax credit of $1 a gallon to ethanol. The Federal Government creates a mandate that forces consumers to buy this product whether they want to or not, thereby creating a market for ethanol. We provide grants for ethanol. Do taxpayers also have to risk their money by guaranteeing loans to subsidize this activity? I do not think that is a good idea. This is the same idea that got us into trouble in so many ways. A similar loan program was the source of hundreds of millions of dollars of losses to Solyndra. And just this year, this very program cost $40 million with the bankruptcy of Range Fuels. I urge my colleagues to vote for a modest reform here. Repeal this one narrow program, the Biorefinery Assistance Program. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2226, which is at the desk.

Mr. TOOMEY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I call up amendment No. 2433.

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I will claim the first minute and yield the first 30 seconds to the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. TOOMEY. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. Let me point out that this amendment is such a modest reform. It lowers the price support on raw sugar, for instance, from 18.75 cents per pound all the way down to 18 cents per pound. This is an amendment that will save consumers money, save taxpayers money and, most importantly, it will save jobs. As the Department of Commerce pointed out, for every job saved by the sugar program, three jobs are lost. It is a modest amendment that simply restores us to the policy prior to 2008.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2217.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, the bill we are debating today has a provision called the Organic Certification Cost Share and Agricultural Management Assistance Program. This creates $115 million of mandatory spending over the next 5 years. It continues existing policy except at a much higher spending level. It is a 53-percent increase over the 2008 farm bill. Half of the funding goes to pay producers. Half of this funding goes to have taxpayers pay the cost of producers that want to certify that they grow an organic product. I have nothing against organic farming, but it is a $31 billion industry. It has had a 50- percent growth rate just since 2008, and this applies only to large producers because small producers are not required to seek this certification. This is a great market. There is a great deal of interest in organic products, but I think these large producers can pay for their own certification. The other half goes to duplicative conservation efforts.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise to discuss a particular amendment-- perhaps a couple of amendments--on the farm bill, specifically the amendments to the sugar portion. There are a number of titles, it is a big, complicated bill, and there is a great deal of discussion about the many reforms that are contained in this bill. There is one very glaring exception. There is one huge program that has no reforms whatsoever in the underlying bill, and it just so happens to be in, in my view, one of the most egregiously flawed programs in the entire agricultural sector, maybe in government as a whole, and it is the Sugar Program. This is a program which systematically forces American consumers to pay much more than the global price for sugar. It is a huge transfer of wealth from consumers, including the poorest American consumers, to a handful of wealthy sugar producers. It is completely wrong, it is ill-conceived in the first place, it is perpetuated in this bill, and I think that is just unconscionable. Some of the specific ways in which the existing program has the government completely manipulating the market for sugar include explicit limits on how much sugar can be produced domestically. There is a de facto government-imposed price floor on sugar rather than allowing the price to reflect whatever supply and demand would lead to. It puts strict limits on how much sugar can be imported without forcing Americans to pay taxes on those imports in the form of duties. It mandates that the government purchase excess sugar and then sell it at a loss to ethanol producers. All of these are features of the existing sugar policy, and all of them are left completely unchanged by this bill. So it is screaming for some amendments to provide some commonsense reforms to this very badly flawed program. Let me be very clear. At the end of the day, the net effect of all of these machinations in which the government manipulates the market for sugar is that U.S. consumers end up paying much more, often about double the going rate that everyone else in the world who doesn't manipulate their markets pays for sugar. By the way, that should be reason enough to end this program entirely, but there are other reasons. For instance, the existing sugar policy--as I said, unchanged in this bill--is absolutely costing us jobs in the United States. That is not even disputable. It is, on balance, a job killer. It is costing us jobs today specifically in manufacturing--the manufacturing of products that include sugar, of which there are many. Here is a simple observation from the CEO of a candy manufacturer in Pennsylvania who uses sugar as an import. He points out: These sugar subsidies artificially inflate the price of one of the staples of the candy industry and force us, and any other companies, to choose between absorbing the higher costs, passing the costs on to consumers, or producing elsewhere. The fact is that some people inevitably choose to produce elsewhere. The next chart illustrates a point that has been made by the U.S. Department of Commerce. We are not just making these things up. Many U.S.--essentially sugar-consuming producers--manufacturers have already closed or relocated to Canada, where sugar prices are less than half of the United States. Why? Because Canada chooses not to have a ridiculous sugar program. So we lose jobs as manufacturers go to Canada, use market-priced sugar at much lower costs to produce candies, and then import them into the United States. The next chart quantifies this. It is very simple. For every job that is protected somewhere where they are growing beets or cane sugar, three manufacturing jobs are lost. Again, these are statistics from the Department of Commerce. This is very clear. This is not really refutable. The final chart illustrates this in another way. The Canadian Government has figured this out, and they advertise the fact that they have a huge competitive advantage because they choose not to create an artificially high price for sugar, and as a result they are constantly trying to persuade manufacturers to move up to Canada where they can have lower costs. By the way, for many of these companies, the cost of sugar in the United States is the single biggest cost they pay. The other point that we should stress and that I would like to underline is that not only do we lose jobs systematically because of this program, it also hurts consumers. Think about it. Everybody consumes sugar. There is sugar in so many products that it is impossible to avoid this inflated cost. It should be seen as equivalent to a tax. It is as though the Federal Government is imposing a tax on sugar. It doesn't work literally that way, but it has that economic effect. It is completely equivalent. Who gets hit the hardest? It is the lowest income Americans. It is as regressive a tax as we can have. Think about that. Wealthy people devote a small percentage of their income to food. They have plenty of money to spend on other things. If you are a low-income American, then you necessarily are devoting a large part of your income to food, and so much of it is artificially inflated in cost by our own Federal Government. This is what is so egregious about it. The GAO said in 2000 that the existing sugar policy forced Americans to pay $2 billion in additional food costs. And if we use their same methodology and we move it ahead to today, AEI projects that those costs are now $3.5 billion. This is a simple straightforward transfer of wealth from low- and middle-income and ordinary American consumers to a handful of wealthy producers. It is as simple as that. There is one other feature. There is also an ongoing risk to taxpayers. Because of that feature I alluded to earlier in which the Federal Government buys what is deemed to be excess sugar and then sells it at a loss to ethanol makers, CBO projects this will lose $193 million for taxpayers over the next decade. We have an amendment that would address this, the Shaheen amendment. I think Senator Shaheen has actually offered more than one amendment on this topic, one would repeal the entire program. I salute her. I agree with her. I support that. My understanding is that we will soon be voting on a motion to table that amendment. I think it is quite unfortunate that Senator Reid would choose to take this amendment off the table, so to speak, to put it aside. A vote to table the amendment is, of course, a vote to kill it. I think we ought to be passing this amendment and end the practice of forcing American consumers to transfer this wealth in this fashion. But I wish to also stress that I am concerned about the process that has gotten us here. I am concerned that Senator Reid has intentionally chosen an amendment that is going to be very difficult to pass. As strong as its merits are, from my point of view, I know it is difficult to get a majority in this body to support the full repeal of this program. I hope we can succeed in that, but I don't know that we can. If we cannot, Senator Shaheen has another amendment that I have joined her on which would push back some of the excesses of this program--push us back to where we were back in 2008, prior to the most recent farm bill. The amendment makes some modest changes and just scales back some of these excesses. I certainly hope we get a chance to vote on that. If we can't pass full repeal, we have every right--and I would argue every responsibility in this body--to try to at least improve on what is such an egregiously flawed program. Again, I would underscore the fact that the current bill is silent; in other words, it perpetuates, it continues this spectacularly flawed program that is so unfair to American consumers. We will have an opportunity to vote later today on a motion to table. I hope we defeat the motion to table so we can take up this amendment and do away with this program. But failing that, it is very important that we have an opportunity to at least amend the program. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to submit for the record my views on roll call vote No. 118, the nomination of Andrew Hurwitz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I am deeply concerned with Mr. Hurwitz's role in advancing a constitutionally flawed doctrine that would become the framework for Roe v. Wade. His actions constitute a brand of judicial activism unfit for the Court. I do not believe Mr. Hurwitz holds the requisite traits necessary to be an objective arbiter of the law. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, Human Events, the nation's oldest conservative weekly publication, has been a staple of the post-war conservative movement. I want to congratulate Human Events on its many years of providing incisive coverage and on its recent relaunch. According to the publication's mission, Human Events ``looks at events through eyes that favor limited constitutional government, local self- government, private enterprise and individual freedom. These were the principles that inspired the Founding Fathers.'' These are the values that have made and will continue to keep America great.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, the vote we are about to cast is on a motion to proceed to the budget I have introduced, one of the important features of which is within the customary 10-year budget window this budget would balance. It does not happen overnight. It takes 8 years to get there. But it does, in fact, balance, and it does it by essentially containing the rate of growth in spending. Only in the first year is there a spending cut, and that is less than 3 percent. Every year thereafter spending grows in this budget, but it grows a little more slowly than the alternative. It grows at a sustainable pace so that with normal economic growth we will reach a balance within 8 years and a modest surplus thereafter. It does call for some of these structural entitlement reforms we need. Specifically, it would call for adopting the bipartisan Medicare reform plan that I would remind everyone permits senior citizens to continue to choose the traditional fee-for-service Medicare they have now--if that is their choice--but it does make other options we think would be more cost effective available as well. It also adopts the President's recommendation by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more for the Medicare benefits they enjoy. It asks for tax reform that we all know we need to generate economic growth, and it puts our budget on a sustainable path. I urge Members to vote in favor of this motion.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the budget resolution I have introduced and on which we will have a vote later today, at least on a motion to proceed. I want to start with underscoring the magnitude of the challenge we face. We have a full-blown crisis that awaits. It could arrive at any moment virtually if we do not change the course we are on. The deficit we have in 2012, $1.3 trillion, is the fourth consecutive year with a deficit of over $1 trillion. We are now routinely running deficits that are 7, 8, 9 percent of GDP. Of course, every year we run a deficit, the excessive spending over the tax revenue has to be funded by more borrowing. So we have the mounting debt that is now at stunning levels. For much of the post-war era, after the big repayment of debt after World War II, the national debt fluctuated somewhere around 40 percent of our total economic output. Today our actual debt held by the public is 73 percent of our total economic output, and that is just the publicly held debt. That does not include the liabilities within the government, which, if you add that, is up to 100 percent of our total economic output. This has never ended well for a country that last chose to run up massive deficits and massive debt. I would argue that we are seeing exactly how this typically plays out. We are seeing it across the Atlantic in Europe where countries are a little further down this road than we are today, having run big structural deficits for longer than we have, and having accumulated more debt as a percentage of GDP than we have thus far. We see what has happened, especially in countries such as Greece where it is particularly acute, and other countries, especially on the periphery of Europe, that arguably are not terribly far behind. This is completely unsustainable, and I think what we are witnessing today on the Senate floor is that there is one party in this Chamber that is addressing the problem. There is one party that is proposing very specific solutions. It is perfectly reasonable to have objections and disagreements with any number of elements in my budget resolution or Senator Paul's or Senator Lee's or the Ryan budget. But what I do not understand is how the majority party, the party that is actually in control of this Chamber, can think that it is OK not to have an alternative, not to offer a vision, not to offer a solution to the biggest problem we face as a nation and one that is imminent; one that if left unaddressed certainly will result in a crisis. It is just a question of when. So I think this is an unacceptable abdication of responsibility. But that is where we are. I would argue that what got us into this problem is too much spending. Look at the numbers. They speak volumes. Since 2000, Federal spending has more than doubled. We took spending, which was as recently as 2007 only a little over 19 percent of our total economic output, and grew that to 24 percent of our economic output. That is a tremendous surge, not just in the absolute dollars in spending but in the relative size of spending relative to our economy. President Obama's budget is not a serious attempt to deal with this. It was put on the floor of the House of Representatives and got precisely zero votes. It failed 414 to 0, meaning not a single Democrat wanted to vote for the President's proposal. I can understand why. The President's proposal is to increase spending, increase taxes, and increase debt. The President's proposal claims to level off debt as a percentage of GDP for a brief time but then starts to grow again. The reason the President absolutely refuses to offer a budget resolution that solves this problem is because he refuses to deal with the real underlying driver of this, which we all know are the big entitlement programs. The current structure of these programs is unsustainable. If anyone doubts it, look at what CBO has shown us and has told us. By 2021, 9 years from now, if we take three categories of Federal spending: the Social Security Program, interest on our debt, and health care entitlements, those three things combined will consume almost 90 percent of all of the revenue we can realistically hope to collect, if the last several decades are any indication of what we are going to collect. How could it possibly be that we would continue down this path where those three categories are going to consume virtually the entire budget? I would also observe it is a simple matter of arithmetic that no significant Federal Government program can grow faster than the economy for very long because everything has to be paid for by the economy. In fact, it has to be paid for by some fraction of the economy. If we have a big program that is consistently growing much faster than the economy, well, it will consume everything. Then these programs will collapse, and then what are we going to do? Rather than waiting for that day to come, some of us are proposing specific solutions for this problem. Medicare is growing much faster than the economy. Medicaid is growing, arguably, at least two times as fast as the economy. Other mandatory health care programs, if President Obama gets his way, will grow even faster. This is all completely unsustainable, and we are going to fix this problem. The question is whether we fix it while we have this window of time, when we are still able to borrow the massive sums that we are borrowing, or will we wait until we have a full blown crisis, the bond market shuts us down, and then we have sudden Draconian and very disruptive and painful decisions to make. I would rather do this while we have this moment, change the course we are on, and establish a sustainable fiscal path. So I have submitted a budget for the second consecutive year that puts us on a path to balance. My budget balances within the 10-year historical window of the budget resolutions. It actually balances in the eighth year and runs a very modest budget surplus in the ninth year. I do that in part by reducing the total level of spending relative to GDP as compared to the alternative budgets, specifically the President's alternative or CBO's. I cannot compare it to the Senate's Democratic alternative budget because that does not exist. We have no idea what the Senate Democratic proposal is, but I have one. So I will elaborate on that a little bit. My proposal is that we get spending down to about 18.3 percent of GDP. That is about the same level revenue has been historically, which thereby brings our budget into balance. Some of my colleagues have suggested there are Draconian spending cuts that will get us there. Well, let me be very specific about what spending cuts are necessary to achieve this. In 2013, spending in my budget is 2.9 percent below what it is in 2012, which means the Federal Government will spend--under my budget, it would spend 97.1 percent of everything it spent the previous year. People can decide whether that constitutes Draconian cuts. Now, here is the amazing thing. After that, on average, over the 10- year window, my budget calls for Federal spending to increase--in fact, to increase at about a rate of 3 percent per year nominally. See, this is my point. This is a solvable problem. All we need to do is cut out some of the excess, restructure certain programs, and allow the government spending to grow. It just cannot grow quite as rapidly as it is currently projected to do. If we get that under control, we can put ourselves on a sustainable path. Another part of this is to have policies that maximize economic growth. I mean that is an important goal in and of itself, but it is also a path to restoring balance because stronger growth generates more revenue for the Treasury. Well, my budget would do that without raising taxes. What I would do is have progrowth tax reform. That is comparable in spirit and in the right direction. It goes to all of the bipartisan commissions that have looked at this, whether it is Simpson-Bowles or Rivlin-Domenici or any of the others. I know there is broad bipartisan consensus on the principle that we would have stronger economic growth if we simplified the code, broaden the base on which we apply taxes, and then apply those taxes but at lower marginal rates. That is what my budget calls for. It should not be all that controversial to move in this direction of tax simplification, lowering marginal rates, and offsetting the lost revenue by reducing the value of deductions and loopholes and writeoffs. That is what my budget asks for. There are a couple of areas that I think are important where there is bipartisan support for elements within my budget. One is, the President of the United States suggested in his budget that very wealthy senior citizens contribute a little bit more for the Medicare benefits that they obtain. Some means testing already occurs within Medicare. But I happen to agree with the President that it is reasonable, especially under these circumstances, to ask the wealthiest members of our society to pay a little more for the benefits they are getting from the government. So my budget adopts the President's proposal of expanding means testing, expanding the contribution we would ask from the wealthiest Americans for their Medicare benefits. I also include in my budget long-term reform for Medicare that makes it more viable. This has been much maligned despite the fact that one of our Democratic colleagues, Senator Wyden, supports this approach as well. I wish to emphasize that this is a different plan than what it was last year. Last year there was a criticism that any premium support model that establishes the amount of money given to seniors to purchase health care at a fixed dollar amount was a flawed approach because what if health care costs rose more rapidly than that amount could afford to pay for? That is a valid concern. There is a different dynamic, a different mechanism in the House- passed budget, and in my budget, and I think it is part of the reason a Democratic Senator has embraced this, and Alice Rivlin, a former senior member of the Clinton administration, supports this. You set the premium based on the second lowest bid for the health care services we want to provide, thereby ensuring that a senior citizen would have enough money to purchase that plan. Not only that but we go further and include the traditional fee-for-service Medicare system to which seniors are currently accustomed--we include that as one of the plans that could bid. So it is absolutely the case that any senior citizen who wanted to stay with the traditional fee-for-service Medicare Program could do so under the reform plan. I happen to believe that in an innovative marketplace, there will be more attractive options. I happen to know that under this system, a lot of seniors--my parents included--have to wait forever to see a doctor, and part of the problem is the dysfunctional system we have now. It is already costing us access and quality in health care. I think this reform will make Medicare a better program for the people who need it. Yes, we will ask the wealthy to pay a little more for it. That is reasonable. Those seniors who want to stay in traditional Medicare can do that too. In the process, you can put this on a sustainable path. It has some bipartisan support. Mr. President, we don't really know the extent of that because our Democratic colleagues refuse to put a budget or mark up a budget in committee, present one on the floor. I will close with this request, which is to vote for the motion to proceed. Let's get on to my budget and have a debate about this, and let's see where people are. I don't know how we are ever going to reach the compromise we need to reach to put us on a sustainable path if one party is consistently putting out a whole range of ideas and the other party refuses. How do you negotiate with somebody who doesn't have a position? How do you have that discussion? I don't know how many of my Democratic colleagues agree with the President of the United States and my own thought that we ought to ask wealthy seniors to pay a little more for Medicare benefits. If we get on the bill, we could have a debate and have amendments. I think this is too big and too important an issue not to address. The way to address it is to vote yes on the motion to proceed to get on a budget resolution, and then let's have that discussion and let the American people see it. Let's take their ideas and all of the ideas we have and see if we can make some progress. There is an unambiguous fact that I want to underscore. There is one party showing up at this debate--the three Republican Senators who are proposing budget resolutions, comprehensive documents that address the entitlement reform we need, the discretionary spending limit we need, and the tax reform that will help grow this economy and generate the revenue we need. We have done that. As I say, it is perfectly fair and legitimate to criticize any aspect of any of that, but I think there is an obligation especially of the majority to offer its view, its alternative. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this motion to proceed and allow us to get on with addressing the single most pressing problem facing our country, which is restoring a fiscally viable path that allows us to have strong economic growth.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, this is an amendment that deals with the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I think it is a very important measure to begin the process of phasing out a very unfortunate practice that we participate in, as do many of our trading partners, which is the active taxpayer subsidization of exports. I want to be very clear. There is a very real risk that is carried by American taxpayers, and that risk is systematically underpriced. The fact is the Ex-Im Bank extends loans and provides guarantees to countries and companies buying American exports. It provides those loans and those loan guarantees under terms that are not available in the private sector. There is a reason those terms are not available in the private sector. It is because the private sector necessarily requires full compensation for whatever risks they take, and there is a risk in any loan. The Ex-Im Bank underprices these loans systematically, and that is why it is important, that is why it exists, and that is why it does business that the private sector cannot win away from the Ex-Im Bank. The Ex-Im Bank necessarily and systematically underprices the risks that taxpayers are on the hook for. This is what many of us object to, the risk that the taxpayers are forced to bear. In addition to enforcing taxpayers to incur this risk, it is quite unfair to American companies that have to compete with the foreign companies that get the subsidized financing. This isn't just theoretical. This happens all the time. Some years ago I was involved in a dispute because the Ex-Im Bank was going to finance the acquisition of equipment by a foreign--I think it was a Chinese steelmaker--which would enable them to make steel at lower prices than American steelmakers could make because the American companies wouldn't be able to obtain this equipment with the subsidy that the Chinese companies could obtain through the Ex-Im Bank. More recently is the case of Delta Airlines, which has observed that the price they have to pay for jets is higher than the price paid by other countries that are operating competing routes but buying their aircraft through the subsidies of the Ex-Im Bank. In 2008 President Obama, referring to Ex-Im Bank, said this is ``little more than a fund for corporate welfare.'' I think that is a little bit harsh. I understand how this has come to be, I understand why it has been extended, and I understand why people believe we have to subsidize our exports. It is because other countries around the world subsidize theirs. In other words, if our German and French and Chinese and Russian taxpayers are made to take a risk in subsidizing the sales of their manufacturers, then our taxpayers ought to take a similar risk. I think there is a logical solution. Let's require the administration to sit down with our trading competitors and negotiate a mutual phaseout of all of these export subsidies. Frankly, it is in everybody's interest. We could have a level playing field on which no taxpayers are subject to this risk, no taxpayers are asked to subsidize the sales of private companies, and I think that is what we ought to do. This is what my amendment would accomplish. My amendment says we will go ahead with the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, but the first increase in the lending limit we are currently at--the bump-up of $20 billion that is contemplated in this bill that has passed the House--would be contingent upon the administration informing Congress that they have begun the process of negotiating a phaseout of all export subsidies. I recognize this phaseout would not occur immediately but would be a gradual process that would happen over time. So under my amendment the second increase would only occur when the administration came back and informed Congress that they had, in fact, reached an agreement with our leading trading partners on a framework that would phase out subsidization of exports. I think this is a very sensible way to deal with the only compelling argument I have heard in favor of forcing taxpayers to continue to take this risk; that is, well, everyone does it, so we must. Since that is the only reason, then let's start the process of persuading everyone else not to do it. We have tremendous leverage in both bilateral and multinational trade negotiations of all sorts. There are ways that the administration--if it makes this issue a priority--can persuade our trading partners that this is the right direction to go. Each of our trading partners has their own constituency of taxpayers who would probably rather not be forced to subsidize this process just as we do. I think this amendment does it in a careful fashion that allows businesses to continue for now provided we start in a different direction, a direction that will avoid continuing to put taxpayers at risk. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment numbered 2104. I yield the floor.