The Debt

Floor Speech

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, last week America's government was brought to the brink of a shutdown, and the shutdown was avoided literally at the eleventh hour just last Friday. The same day, the President called Speaker Boehner to try to advance the talks. According to Politico, the President told Speaker Boehner, ``We are the two most consequential leaders in the U.S. Government.'' The President was right, so why was only one of those two leaders actively trying to lead on the issue of the day? Speaker Boehner was trying for weeks to put together a deal that could serve the American people, but right up until the end, the President was missing in action. Even Senator Manchin, a member of the President's own party, said the President had ``failed to lead this debate.''

Now the President is finally saying he wants to talk about what steps our country needs to take to get our fiscal house in order. I really do hope the President is serious, but I have my doubts. This is a line we have heard from the President before. Back in February 2009, the President called experts to the White House for what he called a fiscal responsibility summit. In his opening remarks, the President said this:

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration, or the next generation.

That was February 2009. For the last 2 years of this administration, all the President did was add trillions of dollars to that debt.

Late last year, the President's debt commission released their report on America's fiscal situation, and the findings were sobering. According to the report, they said the problem is real, the solution will be painful, there is no easy way out, everything must be on the table, and he said Washington must lead. The President ignored the report.

America is done waiting for him to take this issue seriously. Last week, the House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan put forward the first concrete plan to address our debt crisis. Now the President has suddenly decided that crisis needs to be addressed. The President has a national address scheduled for today, and maybe that will be the moment of truth. I hope it will not be another one of the President's recycled speeches; empty words cannot fill America's pockets.

Last November, the American people told us they wanted the truth. They wanted to know their representatives could make tough decisions. That is what we heard on election day. They wanted to make sure there would be a future for their families and for their children. I think the American people deserve results. The President has paid them back with excuses, with delays, and with business as usual.

Republicans have been the leaders on trying to reduce the spending. The President's party has only criticized, complained or, in the final moments, tried to take credit. They refuse to lead and have refused to act.

Now the President's party wants us to raise the debt ceiling in what they call a clean bill. That is a fancy way of saying they want us to borrow more money with no strings attached. The President opposed doing the same thing back in 2006 when he was a Senator. This is what he said then. The President, on the floor of the Senate, said:

The fact that we are on the floor today debating raising the nation's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign the Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.

I would just say that if President Obama thought raising the debt ceiling at a $9 trillion level was a sign of leadership failure, why then is President Obama asking us to raise it beyond the $14 trillion now?

Facts are stubborn things. The numbers do not lie. Every day, this government borrows over $4 billion. We did it yesterday, and we will do it today and tomorrow. Over 40 cents of every dollar Washington spends is borrowed money, much of it from China. Every American child born today and tomorrow and the next day owes over $45,000. Next year, Washington will spend 68 cents of every tax dollar on Social Security, on Medicare, on Medicaid, or interest on the debt. If we as a nation continue on the President's path, Washington will spend all of what it takes in on these items alone. Everything else, from defense to education, will be paid for on a budget of borrowed money. Where is the money going to come from? A lot of it from other countries, countries that do not always have America's best interests at heart.

John F. Kennedy once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.'' In a few years, that could change to, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your country must do for China. Consider this: When John F. Kennedy was President, America only owed 4 percent of its debt to foreign countries. Today, we owe half of our debt to foreign countries.

Debt is not just a disaster for our future; the amount of debt we owe right now, today, is so high that it is hurting our employment at home. Experts tell us our debt is costing us 1 million jobs, and the evidence is clear that our debt is disastrous in the present as well as for the future. A debt such as this makes it harder for American families to buy cars and homes, to pay tuition for their kids to go to college, and then it makes it harder to create jobs for those kids who will be graduating this year and next year until we get the spending under control.

The President's party simply offers more of the same old failed policies that produced the problems in the first place. Some in the President's party have suggested raising taxes to make up for the debt. I expect the President to do that this very day in his speech.

The President's speech today comes just a few months after he submitted his budget. After seeing that budget, it is hard to take the President seriously. Don't take my word for it; one writer in the Washington Post said it already:

President Obama's budget was irresponsible, failing to take on entitlements and relying on rosy assumptions.

The international magazine The Economist called the budget "dishonest.''

America needs a President who shows real leadership and a concrete plan. That is what the American people are expecting.

I will not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless some very specific steps are taken. It is time we passed a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Many States have to balance their budgets, families have to balance their budgets, live within their means. Washington needs to do the same.

It is also time for us to place actual legal limits on what we do spend. A statutory limit on total government spending will force Washington to make the hard decisions each year to get us back on track. A hard cap on government spending will start us on the path toward fiscal balance and sustained growth. Ronald Reagan used to talk about starving the beast. That is what we need. Since President Obama took office, the beast has only grown fatter.

The President's party likes to accuse their opponents of being antigovernment, so why didn't the President's party bother to pass a budget or fund the government last year when they should have? And why are they driving our government further into debt, hurting America's standing and our credit on the world stage?

The President's party likes to pretend they are standing up for the little guy. They should have listened to Ronald Reagan when he said: "You can't be for big government and big spending and big taxes and still be for the little guy.'' The President and his party are for big government, big spending, and big taxes, and they are not for the little guy.

The fact is, the President and his party are not that interested in solutions. Instead of solutions, the President's party has hidden behind nasty words, words like ``extreme'' and ``Draconian.'' Many American families are living within the same budget they had in 2008, and Republicans believe the government should do the same. Is spending no more than you did in 2008 extreme or is it extreme to support trillions more in wasteful Washington spending? Is tightening our belts like families do Draconian or is it Draconian to spend money we don't have and force our children to pay it back?

Some members of the President's party have gone even further. One leader of the President's party said that Republicans wanted to starve 6 million seniors. That is a pretty disturbing claim. The problem is, the Washington Post said that she made it up. This same person called the Ryan plan a ``path to poverty''--a ``path to poverty,'' she said--``for America's seniors and children.'' The Ryan plan doesn't affect anyone over the age of 55. It saves Medicare for those who have not gotten there yet, and it stops the spending that puts every American on the path to permanent poverty. Meanwhile, the President says he doesn't want to point fingers. Yet so far his White House has responded to the Ryan plan by doing nothing but point fingers. They went back to their same old bag of tricks, and they tried to scare our seniors and their families.

The President also accused Congress of playing games. Yet his first budget was nothing but a giant game of kick the can, and his address today looks more likely to be just another campaign speech rather than a legitimate plan for the future.

The time has come to lead, not sit on the sidelines. The time has come for the President to act, not just to talk. As a doctor and a Senator, I believe our economy is in need of critical care. Our budget is hemorrhaging. There is not a quick or easy fix. A bandaid will not help this patient. Treatment cannot be delayed. The time to act is now.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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Mr. BARRASSO. Well, it is my impression that in so many ways Washington gets it wrong. The Senator is correct. I appreciate his leadership.

I did have the opportunity to serve in our State legislature in Wyoming for 5 years. The constitution in Wyoming says you have to balance your budget every year.

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, did you do that?

Mr. BARRASSO. We balanced our budget every year, just like the families in Alabama or Wyoming have to balance their budget every year and have to live within their means. That is what we do. You take a look at the revenue, and then you do not spend any more than that. You live within your means. That is what families do. It is what the State does. That is why I was so proud to stand with the Senator as one of the cosponsors of the balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I think this country has to balance its budget and do it every year.

The President's spokesman yesterday--kind of the word of the day at the White House seemed to be ``vision.'' He kept saying the President is going to give his ``vision.'' The day before, the word was ``balance.'' In his press conference, he kept saying the word ``balance.'' I would like to hear a vision that we have to balance the budget of the United States. That is what I want to hear from the President today when he gives his speech at 1:30 this afternoon. I do not want to hear some recycled speech about, well, raise taxes, but that is what I am anticipating from the President.

I have talked to people in Wyoming after church on Sunday morning, and they have seen you, I say to the Senator, on Sunday morning talk shows--I think last week with Bob Schieffer; "Meet the Press'' the week before that.

They say: Do you know that Senator?

I say: Yes, I do.

They say: Well, he makes us proud because he talks about the kinds of values we have--living within our means, balancing our budgets, not leaving our children or our grandchildren with mountains of debt.

They agree with the Senator when he makes his statement about--I think the Senator quoted someone from the budget commission about this is a predictable crisis that is coming.
Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the greatest threat to our Nation's security is the debt. And look how much we owe to foreign countries, significant amounts to China. You cannot continue to be a great nation with a debt like that to foreign countries, often moneys owed to people who are not our friends, who do not necessarily have our own best interest at heart.

So it is incumbent upon us as a nation to get this spending under control. That is what I see as the main issue. Hearing Senator Isakson on the floor and Senator Blunt and others talking about this, it is why all 47 Republican Senators together unanimously endorsed the idea and cosponsored a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, because we know that is the responsible thing to do.

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Mr. BARRASSO. Well, they would want to know if whoever would say such a thing was actually still connected to the reality of the real world and trying to live within our means. You cannot do that. You cannot do that for very long at all.

When you look at the President's budget, when you look at the spending that has come out of this administration and you look at the debt our country has accumulated since the time
George Washington became President, what you see is that from the time George Washington became President until the time George W. Bush left the White House, this President, through his spending and his budgets, has doubled the national debt in 5 years and tripling it in 10. That is what this budget he had submitted to the Congress just not that long ago--a couple months ago--has done.

Now we are going to hear a new--I am not sure what we are going to hear today. Are we going to hear him standing behind the budget? The President put together a debt commission to take a look at this. I am still not sure where he stands on his own commission--the President's own commission--what his position is on that, because they have taken some strong positions, where he is in relationship to the reality we are facing today with this predictable crisis coming. So it will be interesting to hear what the President says this afternoon and what his new vision might be.

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Mr. BARRASSO. My impression is that he should have a responsibility to do that and do it for Congress.

Last week, there was going to be a major speech--last week or the week before--on energy at a local university. He went and made a speech on energy, and the headline was that it was the same old speech on the same old issues, and very little new was there. So the concern today is, we are not hearing anything in front of Congress. It is a speech at a local university. I am hoping to hear what a real vision is. What is the roadmap and the specifics?

The other Chairman of the debt commission--you mentioned Erskine Bowles--the other was Senator Al Simpson from Wyoming. He was quoted today to say: We need specifics. If the President just talks in generalities, that is not going to go very far.

I think specifics is what the Senator just outlined. As the ranking member of the Budget Committee, you would actually like to see numbers on a piece of paper that can be scored, and we can go look through it and say: Will this work? Will this not work? How do the numbers add up? Let's get into the specific details because that is what we are looking at. When you have a nation that is spending $3.8 trillion or $3.7 trillion and only bringing in $2.2 trillion, the problem is we are spending too much.

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Mr. BARRASSO. I think that would be the only responsible thing to do because right now the Congress is dealing with the budget that was submitted a couple months ago. That is the confines in which we are working. So it will be interesting to hear what the President says a little further down the line from now.

I see Senator Coats from Indiana is joining us on the floor. He knows that in Indiana, families who are trying to live within their means and make ends meet and paying more for gasoline now due to the President's energy policies--about $700 more per family a year for gasoline. If they are trying to deal with bills and the mortgage and kids, it makes it that much harder. So families get it. Families know what happens when there is a squeeze, and they cut back on their spending for other things. That is what this country needs to do right now. That is what we need to do as a nation.

I am so glad Senator Coats has returned to the Senate because he had been here previously and has now returned to join us to give us some of his sage advice and recommendations, and it is really wonderful to work with him.

I say to the Senator from Alabama, I know you welcome him as well. But with that, let me say thank you so much for your leadership. As I told the Senator, the people of Wyoming after church say: Do you know that guy who was on television this morning? He sure did express the values we all have.

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