Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want us to remember why we are here. The reason we are here right now debating this issue is because last year the Democratic majority failed to pass a budget. They did not pass a budget and did not pass a single appropriations bill. This is a $3.7 trillion enterprise called the Federal Government. Last year, we did not pass a budget. We did not pass a single appropriations bill. So this is cleaning up the unfinished business of last year.
It was always said that we could not do this before the election. So when the election was over with, instead of dealing with these important budget issues, we did a START treaty, which, of course, was important to debate; don't ask, don't tell; the DREAM Act; all kinds of other things but never the budget. We did not deal with the budget. So here we are dealing with last year's unfinished business.
So when my colleagues come in here and make all these arguments about how terrible it is that we are having to do this and the House Republicans have sent us this budget that shaves $60 billion from last year's spending levels, the reason we are having to go through this exercise in the first place is because last year the Democratic majority did not even pass a budget.
Where does that leave us today? Well, we all know we have a $14 trillion debt--$14 trillion. I think that has sunk in with the American people. To put that into perspective, historically, this last month--the month of February--our debt was $223 billion. Our deficit, in other words--what we added to the debt--was $223 billion in 1 month--the largest single monthly total ever. We added more to the debt last month than we did from the founding of our country until 1945--in just 1 month.
The projected deficit for this entire year is $1.65 trillion--the largest ever in nominal terms. And OMB predicts it to be the largest as a share of our economy since World War II. That is as much debt as we ran up from the founding of our country until 1985. This is the dimension of the problem we are dealing with.
There is an old saying that if you are in a hole, stop digging. Well, we continue to dig the hole deeper and deeper and deeper. So we are going to have votes today on a couple of alternatives.
One is the alternative that was sent over from the House of Representatives which shaves $60 billion off of last year's spending level. So there are lots of people coming down here, and there is all kinds of gnashing of teeth and statements of how Draconian these various cuts are going to be. Mr. President, $60 billion, remember, in a $3.7 trillion budget is less than 2 percent. Now, to the average American, if they were like we are at the Federal level and out of every dollar they spent, they were borrowing over 40 cents and running $1.5 trillion and $1.6 trillion deficits year over year over year, I think they would figure out a way to tighten their belts a little bit and be able to absorb a 1.5-percent cut over last year's spending level.
Now, couple that with the fact that since 2008 spending has increased by 22 percent. Nondefense discretionary spending, which is what we are talking about here, has gone up 22 percent--10 times the rate of inflation. All we are talking about here is going back to 2008 levels. This is not Draconian. I think the American people think this is reasonable.
So what does the other side put forward? The other side said: Well, we think this is Draconian, and so we are going to put forward a proposal that cuts $4.7 billion--$4.7 billion compared to $60 billion. Mr. President, $4.7 billion is what the other side puts on the table in terms of spending reduction in trying to do something about our runaway Federal debt.
Well, if you look at the clock today, it is 2:45 p.m. By this time tomorrow--2:45 p.m. tomorrow--we will have added over $4 billion to the debt--almost as much as they are proposing to save for the balance of this entire year. So they are laying forward savings of $4.7 billion for the rest of the fiscal year, when between now and this time tomorrow we will add over $4 billion to the Federal debt. That is the dimension of what we are talking about.
It is so bad that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said recently that he views the probability or the possibility of a debt crisis occurring in the next 2 to 3 years to be 50 percent--debt crisis. If that is not enough, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military official in this country, ADM Mike Mullen, said a few months back that the greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt. How much more do we have to hear? It is not just a threat to our future and to future generations; it is a threat to our national security, and it is a threat to our economy.
We have all kinds of evidence out there that this level of spending and this amount of debt costs jobs in our economy. Everybody says the most important thing we want to focus on is the economy and job creation. I agree with that. One of the best ways to do that is to start getting spending and debt under control. There is a great variety of research out there that studied the last eight centuries of governments and concluded that when your gross debt reaches the 90-percent level of your total economy--in other words, gross debt to GDP equals 90 percent--that it costs you about 1 percentage point of economic growth every year. According to Christina Romer, the former economic adviser to the President, every time you lose 1 percentage point of economic growth, you lose 1 million jobs. So if we continue to sustain this level of debt, it is costing us economic growth, which is costing us literally jobs every single day.
A couple of weeks ago the Government Accountability Office issued a report and in it they looked at the government and the various agencies of government and how much it costs and looked for duplication and redundancy and inefficiency. What did they conclude? They concluded that there are 82 programs in this country across 10 different agencies and departments of government that are designed to improve teacher quality; granted, a very noble goal, but does it take 82 Federal programs and 10 agencies or departments to administer programs improving teacher quality? There are 56 Federal programs out there which teach people how to manage their finances. When you are running a $14 trillion debt, arguably this is probably the last place that ought to be advising people about managing their finances. But 56 Federal programs? The American people have to be looking at this, and it is incomprehensible to them, I think, to see what their Federal Government wastes money on.
What we are talking about here is a fairly reasonable reduction in nondefense, nonnational security discretionary spending. I hope today we will take a step forward and demonstrate we are serious. What the Democrats put forward, $4.7 billion, isn't serious. It completely ignores and appears to be in denial of the dimensions of this problem, which I think are wholly grasped by the American people. In fact, we had testimony yesterday in front of the Senate Budget Committee from Erskine Bowles and Senator Al Simpson who headed the debt commission and said this is the most predictable crisis we have ever had. We see it coming. We know it is coming. We can do something about it, and we are trying to today.
It is about jobs. People have gotten up on the other side and said, Well, it is going to cut this or cut that. The majority leader said yesterday we can't do this because it would cut funding at the Cowboy Poetry Festival. When you are out of every dollar you are spending, borrowing more than 40 cents; when you are running a $14 trillion debt--there are priorities, arguably, that are important in terms of Federal priorities. I don't think that probably counts as one of them and I don't think the American people would think so either.
The Senator from Montana said this is going to cut people from Medicare Advantage. What about the health care reform bill last year? That cut $2 billion in Medicare Advantage and would leave literally a quarter of those people who get benefits under Medicare Advantage without that coverage today. That wasn't a big talking point for the other side when we were doing health care reform last year. Yet, today, again, we hear typical rhetorical scare tactics. But what I want to remind my colleagues of and remind the American people of is that over the last 2 years, nondefense discretionary spending has increased 22 percent.
All we are talking about is going back to 2008 levels. Since that time, it has increased 10 times the rate of inflation. We need to start living within our means. We cannot continue to spend money we don't have.
I hope my colleagues will support H.R. 1 and let the American people know we are serious about getting our fiscal house in order.
I yield the floor.
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