The Budget

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, while he is still in the Chamber, let me express my gratitude to the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Enzi, for his leadership on these very difficult but very important issues.

One of the things I am most concerned about is that there no longer seems to be bipartisan consensus toward how to deal with our spending problems. We look at annual budget deficits and we look at the increase in the debt, and we know we have no current means to pay that back.

While the Federal Reserve has basically made money free--in other words, interest rates are so low now, we don't have to pay our debt holders as much money now as we will in the future--we all know this is a ticking time bomb, with only about 30 percent of our Federal spending being discretionary or appropriated funds and roughly 70 percent being on autopilot. As our interest rates go up more and more, that is going to crowd out more of that 30 percent that we need to spend on our Nation's priorities, like national security.

This is a very serious issue, and I am grateful to the Senator from Wyoming, the chairman of the Budget Committee, for his leadership. I look forward to working with him as we work together to try to come up with meaningful solutions.

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