The Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, a lot of people are still justifiably upset that executives at bailed-out businesses received multimillion-dollar bonuses compliments of the American taxpayer. The Senate will continue to press the question of how to make sure this doesn't ever happen again. But already there are some clear lessons we can draw from this experience. Perhaps the most important one is this: If we can't keep track of $165 million, then it is going to be even harder to keep track of a trillion dollar stimulus bill, and it is going to be even harder still to keep track of the $3.6 trillion that the administration is proposing in this budget we will be voting on next week.

Americans have already heard enough about this budget to know that it taxes too much. That verdict was validated by an unexpected source last week, when the President's own Transportation Secretary, Secretary LaHood, said he doesn't think it is a good idea to raise taxes in a recession.

Americans know this budget spends too much, that the spending figures are simply staggering, and that much of the spending is borrowed money. They know what this, in the end, means. It means that in the middle of a recession, when most Americans are rushing to pay down their credit cards, this budget does the exact opposite; it runs up the national credit card to an extent that we have never seen in our Nation's history. That is the point about this budget that I want to talk on this morning--that it simply borrows far too much.

In all the uproar about bonuses, some people may have forgotten about the budget. But with a vote on this funding blueprint fast approaching, it is time to refocus and review where we are.

A few weeks ago, with the Nation still reeling from the size of a trillion dollar stimulus bill, the administration unveiled a budget that made the stimulus bill look like pocket change. In the midst of a recession, the administration proposed a budget that involved major changes to education, health care, and energy. To pay for it all, they proposed the largest tax hike in history and a new national energy tax that hits everybody who turns on a light bulb.

Yet, even with these tax hikes, we still wouldn't be able to pay for all these changes--not even close. A few days ago, we learned that the amount of money we would have to borrow to enact these policies in the midst of a severe economic downturn is even greater than we thought.

According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the administration's projections were extremely optimistic. The CBO said that based on its projections, the budget would increase the deficit by $2.3 trillion more over 10 years than the administration initially claimed. Now, keep in mind that the total deficit from last year was $459 billion, a record-high figure at the time that only a few months ago everybody agreed was entirely too high for comfort. What we heard from the CBO is that the discrepancy between the administration's budget estimates and the CBO estimates of a deficit over 10 years was more than 4 times the previous record annual budget deficit.

So the administration is asking us to borrow an astonishing amount of money--so much so, in fact, that if we were to pass this budget as it is, the Federal Government, in only 4 years, will have to spend $1 out of every $8 it receives in tax dollars to make interest payments on the debt. It would be as if every worker in America spent the first hour of the workday, every day of the week, working to pay off the finance charge on his or her credit card. Of course, as debt piles up, it only becomes harder to pay down. Under this budget, the debt piles up even more quickly than it has piled up in recent months as a result of all of the spending and all of the bailouts.

As the recession took hold, it took 13 months for the Nation's gross debt to rise from $9 trillion to $10 trillion. It took less than half that time under this administration for the debt to reach the $11 trillion mark. The Nation's debt is at its highest level ever, and it is growing larger and larger. Under the administration's budget, the amount of public debt will double in 5 years and triple in 10 years.

It used to be that our friends on the other side cared quite a bit about the consequences of debt. All this debt is real, and it will have very real and disturbing consequences for our children and our grandchildren. Americans are worried about it, and the CBO report makes them even more worried.

Yet even more worrisome is the fact that so many of our friends on the other side seem completely unfazed by the CBO report that projects oceans of debt as far as the eye can see. I noticed that the Speaker of the House was quoted yesterday, saying that the CBO report wasn't reason to rethink any of the administration's budget priorities. Regardless of the CBO report, she said, ``our priorities are the same.''

The CBO report should have been a wake-up call to Congress. Instead, it is being viewed by some as a mere inconvenience--a distraction from the political goals of those in power. Well, I suggest that if we have learned one thing over the past several months, it is that economic dangers need to be addressed early. In the midst of an economic crisis that could have been averted, Americans expect more from their elected leaders.

This budget borrows too much. Americans are saying so. Congress should listen to those warnings now before it is too late.

I yield the floor.

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