Budget Negotiations
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I can only imagine that the American people who are watching this drama unfold in Washington, DC, are scratching their heads and are confused, and are wondering why it is that Congress can't perform one of its most basic functions, which is to make sure that the government continues to operate.
I am reminded of an adage from the days I practiced law, and then presided as a judge in the courtroom: If you can't convince them, confuse them.
Whether it is inadvertently or intentionally or by mistake, I think there is a lot of confusion being encouraged and propagated on the floor. The fact of the matter is, there are three things we are talking about. One is the continuing resolution that the House of Representatives passed and sent over here some time ago, which would fund the Federal Government through the end of the fiscal year. That is one thing.
There is a second thing, which is a bill sent over yesterday that would fund the government for 1 more week and the Department of Defense for the remainder of the fiscal year, which the majority leader has the power to bring to the floor today and have us vote on this afternoon or tonight. But the President of the United States has sent out a veto message saying he would veto it.
Then, the third thing that is being discussed--and it may be the most confusing of all--is when Speaker Boehner says it is all about the money, and Majority Leader Reid says, no, it is about the policy riders--well, I submit that it is about the money. It is not about objections to policy, which 49 of our Democratic friends have voted for in the past, which has been signed into law by President Clinton and signed into law by President Obama himself.
The real casualties of this dysfunction here, and the inability of Congress to get its work done, unfortunately, fall on men and women in uniform. In my State, a large Army installation, as the Presiding Officer knows, is located in Killeen, TX, at Fort Hood. On November 5, 2009, a tragedy hit Fort Hood when Major Hassan killed 13 people in what could only be described as a domestic act of terrorism. Shortly after that, a number of our military who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are now in the process of returning. The three corps soldiers are finally returning from Iraq and individuals such as SPC Kevin Gallagher of Tiger Squadron Calvary Regiment, who is a Purple Heart recipient, is just coming back from Iraq. Soldiers of the 20th Engineer Battalion and the 36th Engineer Brigade are returning to Fort Hood from Afghanistan.
I wonder what they are thinking now, along with their families, when, as a result of the Federal Government dealing with its most basic responsibilities, they are not going to get paid--starting tomorrow--unless the majority leader takes up the temporary bill that was passed yesterday in the House and sent over here and we vote on it today to make sure our troops and their families continue to get funded, and get the pay they so richly have earned and deserve.
We have heard, as I said, a lot of talk about riders. The only thing that is contained in this bill that could be called a policy rider, about which there appears to be confusion, is one that 49 Senate Democrats have voted on in the past--a spending bill with regard to abortion funding in the District of Columbia. President Obama has signed it into law, President Clinton signed that into law, and 49 Senate Democrats voted for it in the past. Yet this becomes somehow the obstacle to paying our troops what they have earned.
The argument sounds as if we will not fund our troops like we can't fund abortions in the District of Columbia. I think it is a terrible shame and I think it galvanizes public opinion about everyone in Washington.
I think the President and his advisers are wrong if they think a government shutdown will help Democrats and help him get reelected and hurt Republicans. I think people are saying: a pox on all your houses. You need to work together to solve problems, to cut spending, to cut the deficit, deal with the unsustainable debt, and you need to get on with it now.
The fact of the matter is, we continue to spend 40 cents out of every dollar in Washington as borrowed money. We know that the debt held by the public--and this is under the President's own budget proposal--would double in 5 years, and it would triple in 10 years, because the President himself, who is obligated under the Budget Act to send over his requested budget, does nothing to deal with the debt crisis that is threatening our Nation, threatening our prosperity and our freedom.
As China continues to loan us money, we are subject to the tender mercies of a country that I submit we do not want to be subject to the tender mercies of. We need to deal with this.
Unfortunately, the President and some of my friends across the aisle have been very critical of the proposed budget of Paul Ryan in the House. At least he tries to deal with the reality of the hand we have been dealt, or which some of us have created. The President himself ignores his own fiscal commission report that came out in December of 2010.
On this chart, here is what the wall of debt looks like, unless we deal with this problem. According to the President's own budget, it gets worse and worse. In 1997, it was roughly $5 trillion. Now we are looking at about a $14 trillion debt. If we don't do anything about it, if we continue business as usual in Washington and don't cut spending and deal with the structural and systemic problems facing us and our debt crisis, it will continue to get worse and worse.
This is another sobering chart. This shows when we borrow the money, we have to pay interest to the people who buy that debt. This chart shows that the interest paid by 2021--the last year of the President's proposed budget--that the amount of money paid in interest, at assumed rates, which are now very low, is $931 billion, which is more than transportation, more than defense, and more than Medicare.
We have been told by the experts that if interest rates were to go up--if, for example, we incur a period of inflation, this number could explode into multiples of this figure, putting us into a death spiral--economically speaking--and we could end up like Greece or Portugal. The only problem is that there is nobody out there to bail out the United States of America. The only one that can stop this is us.
Secretary Geithner said the debt limit ceiling has to be raised sometime in the period between middle May and July. That is the big event. What we are talking about now is a preliminary skirmish, albeit very important. I will tell you, I do not intend to vote to increase the credit card limit of the Federal Government, unless we can get systemic reform that will deal with this very real problem.
One of those ways to do that would be to pass a balanced budget amendment. All 47 Senators on our side have now agreed to a constitutional amendment provision that would require a balanced budget. We hope our friends across the aisle will join us in passing it. The last time this was considered, we came within one vote--in 1997--of passing a balanced budget amendment. The deficit was $107 billion. Now it is $1.5 trillion. The debt was around $5 trillion and now it is $14 trillion. So if it was compelling enough that it came that close to passage in 1997, how much more compelling now is the evidence that we need to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution?
In closing, I hope cooler heads will prevail tonight, that those who seek political advantage via the game of ``gotcha''--a world class sport in Washington, DC--will forbear and allow us to get on with the big fights, which are dealing with this unsustainable debt, these huge deficits, and not threaten the paycheck of the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, who are fighting three wars around the world, and whose families are calling my office.
Mr. President, I guess they are calling your office and that of the Senator from Michigan and New York also, saying: What are you doing, and why can't you get this taken care of so that we don't have to add this to our list of burdens while our loved ones are away fighting America's wars.
I yield the floor.
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