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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today referring to a speech that Senator Biden gave on this Senate floor 39 years ago today. The scene was this: It developed over several months of that year before May 2, 1984.

I had this idea which would be considered crazy today, that we need to get control of the budget by just freezing everything across the board. And I recruited Nancy Kassebaum, a Senator from Kansas, and Senator Biden to help in that effort.

Senator Biden gave the longest speech that day on justifying it, and most of his comments at that time were trying to justify that you could actually freeze the defense budget, and also it included the freeze on the COLAs for Social Security.

But Senator Biden spent most of his speech fighting off giants of the military industrial complex at that time, by the names of Senator Goldwater, Senator Towers, and Senator Stevens of Alaska. So that is the background of what I am talking about today.

So on this day, 39 years ago, then-Senator Biden spoke on the Senate floor saying that he was ``outraged''--that is his words--that our national debt would soon be near $2 trillion. He urged fellow Senators to ``do something . . . before the debt limit increase comes up.'' The ``something'' that he advocated for was a Federal spending freeze.

Today, our national debt stands at $31.5 trillion compared to that $2 trillion in 1984. But in a few years, public debt as a share of our economy is expected to exceed record levels set in the wake of World War II. However, instead of urging immediate action this year, President Biden wants to kick the can down the road. I think, today, we would all consider that to be irresponsible and unacceptable.

In contrast, House Republicans are tackling our debt crisis head-on. Legislation the House passed last week would rein in excessive government spending, lift the debt ceiling, and impose meaningful fiscal controls moving forward. President Biden and Senate Democrats must get off the sidelines and negotiate. We can't continue to live high on the hog at the expense of future generations.

To put our current national debt in perspective, a gross Federal debt of $31.5 trillion equates to $95,000 for each man, woman, and child living in the United States today. By comparison, the average cost of a 4-year public college degree in 2023 is about $90,000. Both are more than we should be asking young people to bear. Looked at in terms of the American taxpayers, our government debt comes to a staggering $247,000 per tax filer, and I think the number of tax filers would be close to 160 million or just a few more. That is $52,000 more than the average home value in my State of Iowa.

Our growing national debt is unsustainable. In its most recent budget outlook, the Congressional Budget Office estimates interest on the debt will be near $1 trillion in 2028--an amount exceeding what our Nation is expected to spend that year on national defense. Absent action, interest costs will continue to mount at an alarming rate. Looking well into the future, by 2044, interest will exceed $2.9 trillion, surpassing what we are projected to spend on Medicare. By 2050, interest will become our Nation's single largest expense, even surpassing Social Security.

Interest costs of this size would have been unfathomable to my then- Senate colleague Joe Biden. Remember how he said he was outraged that the national debt would reach $2 trillion? While Senator Biden was expressing outrage over a $2 trillion national debt, he was also lamenting the prospects of $219 billion in annual interest costs. Yet, today, President Biden barely bats an eyelash at interest projected to blow past $1 trillion, on a path to $3 trillion.

At the same time our interest costs are set to soar, several major Federal programs are barreling toward insolvency. According to the trustees of Social Security and Medicare, in the report they introduced this spring, Social Security's primary trust fund will become insolvent in 2033, while Medicare's trust fund will go broke in 2031.

Contrary to what some Democrats claim, doing nothing to address these programs is not an option. The Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, which consists solely of President Biden's administration officials, has made it clear that congressional inaction means automatic benefit cuts within the next 10 years. Yet President Biden has accused any Republican who mentions the words ``Social Security'' of wanting to gut the program, although nothing could be further from the truth.

In 1984, Senator Joe Biden sang a much different tune. He understood that a dire fiscal situation required bold action from this Congress. The Federal spending freeze he advocated for applied across the board. It would have frozen spending on Social Security, Medicare, defense, and much more.

Nothing any Republican has proposed today comes close to the broad- based spending cuts advocated by then-Senator Biden. What Republicans have put forward likely wouldn't go far enough for the 1984 Joe Biden. Today, our debt, our deficits, and our interest costs are all on a far bleaker path than they were in 1984. Yet President Biden refuses to entertain even modest spending cuts. That should be unacceptable and is unacceptable to most Americans.

We can't continue to ignore our current fiscal trajectory. We must get our fiscal house in order. Failure to act puts children born today in a position that they will never be able to recover from financially. This Congress must come together to fix our broken budget system and return to regular order. As the ranking member of the Senate's Budget Committee, I stand ready to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to put us on a more sustainable path.

Unfortunately, the White House doesn't seem to want to address the issues we are facing. The President's budget request continues our Nation on a path to fiscal ruin. Under the administration's budget proposals, public debt as a share of our economy will set a new record in 2027.

We owe it to the Nation's young people to leave them a country that is on solid financial ground. We cannot ask the generation of tomorrow to pay for the gluttony of today.

Here are the words of then-Senator Biden in 1984: ``I, myself, am outraged . . . I hope that all those other Senators who share my outrage will also share my determination to do something'' about our unsustainable debt.

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