Our Budget Process

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, first, I want to start by thanking my colleagues here today, particularly Chairman Enzi, who leads the Budget Committee, as well as Senator Perdue for not only being the only freshman who serves on the Budget Committee but for leading us on the floor in the discussion of this very important topic of our Federal broken budget system.

Once again, today, Congress has just met our deadline to fund the government past the end of the fiscal year. While many of us in the Chamber, as well as the American people, are rightly frustrated by this requirement for a last-minute reprieve, it is a reminder of our broken Federal budget process and why we can no longer afford to continue down this dangerous path.

I spent a great deal of time holding different meetings across South Dakota during August, meeting with folks all over the State. During that time, our soaring national debt and runaway spending has continued to be a concern to me. What I relayed to them about our country's fiscal future and what I would relay to you now is that it is just not very pretty.

I shared with them a report from the Congressional Budget Office, which, in January of this year, released an indepth analysis of our debt and our deficit. It found that, by 2026, annual deficits will double the share of GDP to 4.9 percent--more than tripling in dollar terms to $1.37 trillion, or $1,370 billion, as the chairman of the Budget Committee likes to put it.

It also found that in 2026, just 10 short years from now, 99 percent of revenue that comes into the Federal Government--income taxes, both personal and corporate, all the gas taxes, all the fees--will go back out in mandatory payments and net interest spending, leaving no room to pay for roads, bridges, health care, our Armed Forces, and other vital needs within our Nation. That 99 percent number, as they projected in 10 years, is a crisis. I would suggest to my colleagues that crisis is not in 10 years. That crisis is now.

Earlier, we heard Senator Corker explain very, very eloquently the fact that it takes time to move things here. I suggest that time is of the essence, and we no longer have a 10-year cycle in which to make these changes. We have to begin the process of fixing this broken system, and we need to begin now.

In 2026, our country turns 250 years old. Wouldn't it be a marvelous goal if, by that time, we not only had this process fixed, but it was actually working once again?

The CBO report concluded that the driver for this rising debt is largely from growing mandatory payments, as we heard our colleagues say. That is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as interest on our debt. Yet here in the Senate, when we work through the appropriations process to determine the best way to spend Americans' hard-earned money, we don't even vote on mandatory payments, which are mandatory payments on mandatory programs. Today, those mandatory payments account for nearly three-quarters of all Federal spending.

That means the continuing resolution we just did is based upon about 28 percent of the total amount we will spend next year. It is simply not acceptable that we continue to look at and try to balance yearly deficits of $500-plus billion every single year when we only look at 28 percent of the total spending that goes on.
Let me suggest this. In order to fix this, as my colleagues have said today, we have to begin a process with expectations that the process actually works once again and that there are timelines established well in advance of the end of the fiscal year. But even more than that, any process we use in the future also has to bring in accountability, authorization, and appropriations together. Why is it that when we talk about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--well, we just don't talk about it. There is no place in which we can actually sit down in a committee assigned specifically for Social Security, a committee assigned specifically for Medicare, or one for Medicaid. Why is it that, in States like South Dakota, where we have the South Dakota Retirement System--a retirement system which is one of the best funded and best run in the entire United States, and it has been there since the 1970s--it gets looked at every single year. Yet, as to Social Security, which is such a huge and important part of a lot of people's lives in the United States, we are afraid to touch. It is not a matter of cutting it. It is a matter of managing and making it more efficient and delivering the services and actually keeping it up to date-- revenues and expenses--so that the people a generation from now can count on it being there.

It is irresponsible for us to sit back here and to say that we are going to balance our budgets this year and make a commitment without looking at all of the programs that are out there because we simply can't balance a budget. We can't take care of those programs--Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid--unless we actively participate in managing them and in making good decisions. Again, the buy-in from the public is that what we are trying to do is to make it better for them long term and that we have their best interests at heart.
With that, I say thank you. I think this is a critically important thing for all of us. Last year, we did an omnibus bill at the end of the year, and a group of us got together and said no more. In our freshmen bear den, as we call it, we said: It is time we have a meeting with our leadership. I cannot tell you how pleased I was with the reception that we received from our leadership, who said: Look, we agree. You guys work together and put this through. I give Senator Perdue huge accolades for actually doing the hard work to get this done. This is important to our country, and this is one way in which we can begin to build credibility once again with the citizens of our Nation. I thank the Senator for the work he is doing, and I certainly look forward to working with our colleagues to fix a broken budget system--not only in the Senate but in Congress--and to get on with actually sending back to the American people on a regular basis a budget they believe in and they can count on.

With that, I yield the floor.

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