Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I offered an amendment a week ago during the debate on the extenders legislation that is still on the floor of the Senate that would have paid for all the things the Senator from Michigan would like to see paid for, and we have things we need to do, such as unemployment insurance, an extension of that. We need to deal with the issue of these expiring tax provisions.

What we would do is simply say we start paying for things around here. So I offered an amendment that would do that. It was defeated here in the Senate. But at 8:15, I intend to come back here and offer that again as an alternative because I think probably everybody in the Senate agrees we need to address the concern of people who are unemployed in this economy, but we should do it in a way that is fiscally responsible. That is what my amendment will do. So, Mr. President, I object.

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would like to speak to the amendment I just proffered to the other side which was objected to.

I think there is a consensus in the Senate that we need to fix some of these problems we are facing, one of which is the expiration of unemployment insurance for people who are unemployed. There are a lot of tax provisions that are expiring that need to be extended, things such as the research and development tax credit, which is critical to innovation and competitiveness in this country, and a whole range of other tax credits which affect a broad range of our economy.

Also, I believe it is important that we provide some certainty to people who depend upon Federal policy, and one of those groups would be the physicians in this country who rely upon Medicare reimbursements for much of their survival because they treat so many Medicare patients. Much of the patient base for many of the physicians in my area of the country, where we have a high elderly population, is Medicare. Obviously, physicians have been facing--up until last week--a 21-percent cut. That was addressed for 6 months, so we have fixed that. We have dealt with it for 6 months. Obviously, that is an issue that will come up again. What my amendment would have done was to solve that issue not just for the next 6 months but to the end of the year 2012. So physicians in this country would have gotten an additional 2 years of relief, so to speak, with regard to their reimbursement.

So I would suggest that inasmuch as these are all things we agree need to be done, the real basic disagreement here revolves around how do we do that.

What the other side has put forward is a series of proposals, starting with the first one, that had $70 billion in tax increases and almost $80 billion added to the Federal debt. The last proposal that was put forward by the Democratic majority had $50 billion in tax increases and $55 billion added to the Federal debt. We hope that this week we are going to see that slim down even further, and I would suggest we are making progress in the right direction. But I think it is still fair to say these things need to be paid for.

As many of my colleagues have pointed out, we have $13 trillion in debt that we owe. That includes debt that is owed between governmental agencies--we call that intergovernmental debt--as well as debt held by the public. If you can find it, the debt held just by the public is about $8.6 trillion. But remember, we are talking about trillions and trillions of dollars.

As my colleague from Tennessee just pointed out, it took 43 Presidents 232 years to get to $5.8 trillion. The amount of debt we compiled and accumulated between 1776 and 2008--232 years of American history--was $5.8 trillion. Now, under this President's budget, we will equal that amount in the next 5 years and double it in 10. In other words, we will double the Federal debt today in 5 years and triple it in 10. That is an astounding number. If you think about all of American history up until the year 2008--232 years and 43 Presidents to get to $5.8 trillion--we are going to double that amount in 5 years and triple it in 10. Staggering.

Under this new administration, we have already racked up enormous amounts of new debt because we added $1 trillion to the debt to pay for a stimulus bill which has not shown any evidence of job creation other than jobs that have been created here in Washington, DC, at the Federal Government level. I think you could argue that Washington's economy has benefited because we have created some government jobs, most of which are temporary census jobs. But if you look at the overall job statistics, we have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million jobs since the passage of the stimulus bill.

We passed health care expansion, which was sold as health care reform but, frankly, does little to reform health care and certainly doesn't do anything consequential to reduce health care costs. I think most Americans now realize, as insurance premiums continue to go up and as the Actuary and the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Tax Committee all attest to the fact, we are going to see the cost curve bend up, not down, as a result of the passage of health care reform. This is a $2 1/2 trillion expansion over a 10-year period, when it is fully implemented.

That is a massive new entitlement program on top of the entitlement programs that are already bearing down on us and leading us toward a situation where, in a very few years if we don't take some serious steps, this country is going to be bankrupt. We are going to be belly-up. It is as simple as that. You cannot continue to sustain trillion-dollar deficits year after year after year, which is what we are facing for the foreseeable and long-term future, and expect that we are not going to completely drive this country into the ditch.

So the amendment I offer pays for things. It says: Let's change the way we do things around here. Let's quit handing the bill to our children and grandchildren. Let's quit putting it on the credit card and saying to the next generation: You pay this.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the things the other side is trying to accomplish. As I said, I think there is consensus about addressing these serious needs in our economy right now. But the difference of opinion exists here about, how do you do that? We are simply saying: Let's pay for things. Let's start doing something different here in Washington. Let's do what the American family has to do, what the American small businesses have to do. Let's pay for things, for crying out loud. That is what my amendment would do. It would say: Here are some ways we can shave some savings and we can cut spending here in Washington, DC, and do all these things we think we ought to do without adding to the debt and without raising taxes in the process.

A few months back, here in the Senate, we passed legislation which was labeled as historic and passed to great fanfare. It was called pay-go legislation, and it created pay-go rules that suggested that from now on we are going to start paying for things. What has happened since the passage of pay-go? The Senate has approved, if you count the not-paid-for portions of the bill that is on the floor right now--of course, that hasn't been approved yet, but assuming it were--nearly $200 billion of new debt. From the time we said we are going to start paying for things, which was a few short months ago, we have waived the very rules that were going to put us on a path to fiscal responsibility and fiscal discipline, declared everything an emergency, and added almost $200 billion to the Federal debt.

So here we are today debating yet again another measure that will add more to the Federal debt, that will impose taxes on small businesses in our economy at a time when they are trying to get some momentum to help churn us out of this recession, get us back to where we are creating jobs and to a period of economic growth. All we are doing is piling new taxes on them--taxes on investment, taxes on small businesses, and taxes, of course, with the recent passage of the health care bill, literally on everybody because all those tax increases are going to get passed on to the American consumer.

So where are we? Here is where we are. There are a number of things that can be done that would do what the other side wants to do--to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits. One of those things would be that we could save the necessary amount of money to pay for this now.

The cost of extending unemployment benefits in the Democratic proposal, by the way, is $33 billion. That is a substantial amount of money, but there are many ways in which that could be paid for, all of which were included in my amendment last week, but let me suggest a couple of discrete parts of that amendment that might be stripped out and used to pay just for the unemployment insurance.

We can pay for the extension of the unemployment benefits by returning unspent stimulus funds, which would save $34.5 billion. So the $33 billion in unemployment benefits that need to be extended to people who have lost jobs in the recession could be paid for by returning unspent stimulus funds to the tune of $34.5 billion. So there would be enough to pay for the unemployment benefits and some left over.

It could also be paid for through a 5-percent cut to the 2010 appropriations and an expansion of the affordability exemption to the individual mandate in the health care reform law, which together would save $33.5 billion. So that would give the $33 billion that would be necessary to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits.

Alternatively, it could be paid for with the rescission of other unspent Federal funds, which would pay for it by saving $56 billion. So you could take care of the unemployment benefits, you would have $33 billion that is necessary to pay for that and $23 billion left over, hopefully to be put toward the Federal debt, which would be the best thing we could do for our children and grandchildren.

Finally, it could also be paid for with the inclusion in this bill of medical malpractice reform, which was also included in my amendment last week. That would save about $50 billion. So you would have $50 billion to pay for
the $33 billion in unemployment benefits and have $17 billion left over to put toward the Federal debt, which again would be the best thing we could do for our children and grandchildren.

So all these arguments that are made by my Democratic colleagues that these things are Draconian just aren't true. These are commonsense things that would give us the necessary resources to take care of the problem that is in front of us today but do it in a way that doesn't add billions and billions of dollars to the Federal debt, exacerbating what is already a very serious circumstance facing our children and grandchildren, which the Senator from Tennessee did a very good job of outlining. If you are a child under 18 in America today, the amount of debt you own is about $85,000. By the year 2017, that is going to be $196,000. So if you are a young person in America today who is under the age of 18, your share of the Federal debt is $85,000. Ten years from now, that will be $196,000--in fact, less than 10 years from now; in the year 2017.

I think all that leaves us with a very clear choice when it comes to how we solve problems here in Congress, here in the Senate, and how we deal with the immediate question before us this evening: How do we extend unemployment benefits to those who have lost jobs in the recession?

The other side has come forward with a proposal, again with billions and billions and billions of dollars that are not paid for, and that does go on the debt and that does get passed on to our children and grandchildren.

What we are offering are some commonsense ways, which means the Congress and the Federal Government may have to live on a little bit less. They are things that would require the Federal Government to go on a diet, if you will, in the same way the American people are having to go on a diet. The American people are being asked, because of this tough economy, to make hard choices with regard to their family budgets, with regard to their individual and personal lifestyles, with regard to their businesses. Everybody in this country is having to make decisions about cutting back a little bit. We could address this issue by just asking the Federal Government to take a little bit of a haircut, put the Federal Government on a little bit of a diet. We can achieve the savings necessary to pay for the proposal that is before us.

Again, as I said, $33 billion fixes the unemployment benefit issue, and I have just named four ways that could be paid for, with money left over that could be put toward the Federal debts. That is what this is about. That is what the discussion here is. This is very straightforward.

My colleagues on the other side have come up here this evening and will continue to offer unanimous consent requests to go ahead and do this but not pay for it, and people on our side are getting up and saying: Wait a minute. No, I object, and here is why. And the reason is because we believe in a very straightforward way that we ought to start doing what I think the American people expect of us, and that is for us to live within our means in the same way they do.

Unfortunately, regrettably, today, that is not what is happening here in the Congress. Year over year over year, we continue to spend and spend and spend and borrow and borrow and borrow like there is no tomorrow. Well, the chickens are going to come home to roost. Someday, the bills have to be paid. People where I come from in South Dakota understand that. There is no free lunch. When you borrow money, it has to be paid back. You can't spend money you don't have.

Those are all things that are happening here in Washington, DC today. We are spending money we don't have and we are borrowing money we don't have any idea about how we are going to pay it back. All we are simply doing is giving it to the next generation so they will have a bill facing them and a future that will shackle them with debt that they will be dealing with for their lifetimes and probably the lives of their children and grandchildren as well.

By way of illustration, because I think it is important to put things into perspective--sometimes I think it is very difficult to come to grips with what is $1 billion, what is $1 million, what is $1 trillion. I tried to break that down, to put it in perspective for myself so I can understand a little better what we are talking about. The numbers, the number of zeros on the end of that number, can be almost mind boggling to the average person in this country. Most of us are not used to dealing with numbers that are in that ballpark of $1 trillion.

What a trillion seconds is--if you took a trillion seconds, what would that translate into, by way of illustration and example--a trillion seconds, if you broke that down into years, would be almost 31,000 years; 31,746 years is what a trillion second is. If you take $1 trillion and you make a second a dollar and try to put it into terms I think the average American can understand, a trillion seconds represents 31,746 years.

Since most of us here are probably not going to live much more than 80 years--hopefully if we are lucky, we will live beyond that. Most of us here are going to live under 100 years. When you talk about a trillion seconds, which in the last--we have seen about 15 seconds pass here, and you add that up to a trillion, that is 31,746 years. Think about what $1 trillion represents, how much that is, the scale, the dimension we are talking about and what we are doing to future generations of Americans if we do not start taking the steps that are necessary to pay the bills around here.

This amendment I offered and that was objected to by the other side would have done that. It would have fixed the physician fee issue, not just until November of this year but for another 2 years beyond that, to the end of the year 2012. It would have addressed the issue of the expiring tax provisions which we are all concerned about. It is an important tax policy that needs to be extended that has expired and needs to be addressed. Also, as I said earlier, there is of course the issue before us this evening of unemployment benefits which, at a cost of $33 billion, could easily be offset by any of a number of things I suggested this evening.

I see my colleague from Utah has arrived on the floor. I know he too has an amendment he wishes to offer that I think makes a lot of sense. When it comes to creating jobs, he is someone with a small business background and understands what job creation is about and I understand he will have a request he will make of our colleagues on the other side as well, so at this point I yield the remainder of my time.

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