Default Prevention Act of 2013 - Motion to Proceed - continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, we are now in the third week of government shutdown. We are facing an imminent debt limit crisis. It seems that it has become a pattern around here that we live from crisis to crisis. I hope we do something about that. We obviously have to deal with the immediate issues in front of us in the next day or so, hopefully no more than that. There have been a lot of discussions that have occurred over the course of the weekend and the last few days to try to bring to a conclusion at least this chapter of this particular crisis we are dealing with.

I am encouraged when I hear our colleagues on both sides of the aisle are meeting and having discussions. We have had a number of those that have gone on, I think so far without result. There have been meetings that have occurred between our two leaders. Also I have been working very hard to try to get a result, something they could take back to their respective caucuses and present, that could ultimately be voted on.

There are also discussions going on in the other body, in the House of Representatives, and have been for some time, trying to find a pathway forward that could get the necessary votes to pass in the House of Representatives and then ultimately here in the Senate. I heard some of my colleagues in the Democratic leadership on the floor this morning denouncing some of those efforts in the House of Representatives, which came as a surprise to many of us because I do not think it should be any shock to anyone that the House of Representatives, created in article I of the Constitution, might decide to perform some things that are consistent with its constitutional role.

They have been working on legislation. We had the leader get up this morning and make some comments on the floor with respect to what was happening in the House of Representatives. He described it as a partisan attempt to appease a small group of tea party Republicans. He described it as an extreme piece of legislation, most of the elements of which, by the way, have been part of the bipartisan agreement here in the Senate. He said it was a blatant attack on bipartisanship.

He went on to say he felt blindsided by the news from the House and that extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives were trying to torpedo the Senate's bipartisan progress with a bill that cannot pass the Senate. He went on to lament the fact he was disappointed in the Speaker of the House.

Again it was a big surprise to many of us. I don't think we should feel blindsided when the House of Representatives tries to find the necessary votes to move legislation that is so important to this country. In fact, it would appear at least that perhaps Democrats here in the Senate and the White House--which, by the way, came out and said it was going to veto the proposal from the House of Representatives, of course before it had ever seen it. There had never been anything in print with respect to that. So the Senate Democrats hadn't seen it, the White House hadn't seen it, but the President came out and said he was going to veto it and the Senate leader said he was blindsided on this, it was extreme, it was an attempt to torpedo bipartisan discussions.

It would appear at least that some of the Democrats around here are a lot more concerned about the political consequences and having the opportunity to dance on the political graves of Republicans than in actually solving a problem that is important to the future of this country and the American people.

I think it is unfortunate that is where we are. I hope in the course of the next few hours--that is about all we have left--we will come to some agreement. Whether that originates in the House of Representatives or originates here in the Senate, one way or the other both are going to have to vote on it. Both are going to have to find the necessary votes to pass something that will avoid the disaster that is facing us if we do not take steps to do that. I guess I am one of many who, when I heard those comments this morning, was more than a little bit surprised to think that we here in the Senate would be shocked and surprised and disappointed and blindsided that the House of Representatives would decide to do some work and try to solve this problem as well. Ultimately we have to have the House and the Senate agree and concur.

I am glad to see the House of Representatives is proceeding in a way that will solve this problem. I hope we will continue in the Senate to try to find a solution in the next few hours, something we can actually pass through both Houses of Congress and put on the President's desk and something he might be able to sign into law.

But when you talk about the various elements of those proposals, most of those things that were denounced and rejected here this morning by the Democratic leaders when they came to the floor were the very things that a bipartisan group here in the Senate had been working on for several days.

I hope when we get through this immediate crisis and hopefully create the process by which we might address the real problems the country faces--because this living from crisis to crisis is not a way to govern the country. It is not a way to provide certainty to our economy. It is certainly not a way to get the economy growing and expanding.

Many of us on this side of the aisle think we ought to have a discussion, when we are raising the debt limit, about how we are going to fix the debt, what are we going to do to reduce the debt, what are we going to do to ensure that we don't continue to pile trillions of dollars of debt on the future generations of this country. We do not seem to get serious about that. I hope we will. I hope when we get past the immediate crisis we will take a look at the long term and say what can we do to put this country on a more sustainable fiscal path?

I think we all know what that entails. It means we have to get spending here in Washington, DC, under control, particularly in the areas of some of the mandatory spending parts of the budget. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office says, over the next 10 years, discretionary spending--which is that small part of the budget that is impacted by the sequester--is going to grow roughly 17 percent. During the same period mandatory spending is going to grow approximately 79 percent or $1.6 trillion over the course of the next decade. So spending on mandatory programs continues to grow. This CBO report underscores that reforming entitlements is absolutely necessary if we are going to get spending under control.

We know what the issues are. It is not like it is a big secret. The Congressional Budget Office gives us insight on regular basis. We have had lots of commissions that have studied these issues, they presented their findings, they put forward recommendations about how to address these long-term crises the country faces, and yet there seems to be the lack, if you will, of political will to try to actually solve the problem.

My own view is that if we can get through this immediate crisis, over the course of the next couple of months, which is basically what we have to work with, we can actually sit down--hopefully with the President engaged in this process--and negotiate in a way that will allow us to put in place solutions that actually do put us on a more sustainable fiscal trajectory for this country's future.

Over the course of the last 4 1/2 years we have seen the publicly held debt of this country double. It took 230-some years of American history and 43 Presidents to get to the first $6.3 trillion in debt, and that has literally doubled in the last 4 1/2 years under this administration.

We have a huge debt problem. We added $1 trillion a year for the first 4 years. This year everybody is patting each other on the back and saying: Gee, the deficit is down to $650 or $700 billion, as if that is some sort of major accomplishment. That is literally the fifth largest deficit in history behind the first 4 years of this administration, which were the four largest deficits in American history.

We have an out-of-control debt. We have an out-of-control deficit that is growing as a percentage of our economy and getting to the point where it is literally going to drown our economy if we don't do something about it.

Controlling the spending part of the equation is essential. The other part that is essential is getting the economy growing and expanding. When the economy is growing and expanding, it means that people are working, people are investing, people are making money, people are paying taxes, government revenues go up, and that makes a lot of these problems look much smaller by comparison too.

We can't have an economy growing at 1 to 2 percent and an unemployment rate that is chronically at about 7 1/2 percent. When we factor in the people who have quit looking for work or are working part time who would rather be working full time, that unemployment rate gets up into the double digits.

We have chronically high unemployment, massive amounts of debt, and a sluggish economy. Those are all things on which we should be focused. In order to get the economy growing and expanding again, we have to create the economic conditions for small businesses to invest, hire more people, put their capital to work, and try to get that economic growth rate back up to where it would allow us to deal not only with our deficits but also to do something that would really improve the quality of life and the standard of living for people in this country. A growth rate in the 3- to 4-percent range is significantly different--dramatically different than a growth rate in the 1- to 2-percent range, and that means a big difference in the take-home pay of middle-class Americans.

If we want to see middle-class Americans do better in this economy, we have to get the economy growing again, and that means reforming our Tax Code, broadening the tax base, and lowering those marginal income tax rates. We have the highest business tax in the world. It makes us noncompetitive in the global environment. We lose jobs every single day to other countries around the world. We need to do things that would lessen the cost of doing business in this country. We need to make it less expensive and less difficult to create jobs, not more expensive and more difficult.

One of the concerns many of us have with respect to ObamaCare is that it is making it more expensive and difficult to create jobs. It has higher taxes. There are higher insurance premiums. Obviously, that translates into fewer jobs.

Getting the cost of regulation to a more reasonable level, keeping the tax rates at a more reasonable level, and doing what is necessary to unleash this economy is the way we will improve the fiscal picture in this country, coupled with good fiscal discipline and constraints on Federal spending, and that means we have to tackle the mandatory part of the budget. That part was not affected--or at least not affected very much--by the sequester.

Those are the ingredients, components, and elements, if you will, that will lead us to a situation where we are not having a crisis every few months where we are worrying about a debt limit increase or how we are going to fund the government. We ought to get to a place where we are in a more systematic way doing what we should be doing in the first place. We should be passing appropriations bills. We didn't pass a single appropriations bill this year, which is why we are here at the eleventh hour trying to come up with a continuing resolution to fund the government.

Those are the things we need to do if we are going to get this fiscal situation improved for our country and get the economy up and growing again and creating jobs and doing what is necessary to improve the lives of the American people. That is what I think the public wants to see.

Actually, if we look at public opinion polls--and there has been a lot of discussion about that lately--by a 2-to-1 margin, people in this country believe that if you are going to raise the debt limit, you ought to do something about the debt. I saw a survey just last week by CBS News that said 55 percent of the people in this country believe that when you are going to raise the debt limit, you ought to do something to reduce spending. I think that only 23 percent of the people surveyed said they supported a clean debt limit increase.

The American people get it. The people in my State of South Dakota understand that you can't spend money you don't have. You have to live within your means, and we have to, as a Federal Government, do the same families across this country have to do on a regular basis. They get this. They understand what this is about.

I hope that in the next few weeks and months we will be able--with the involvement and engagement of the President of the United States--to sit down and negotiate the resolutions, if you will, and proposals and solutions to this debt crisis and get this country on a more sustainable fiscal path and at a place where the economy is growing at a faster rate and creating the types of good-paying jobs that will help middle-class Americans in this economy prosper.

If we look at what happened to take-home pay or household income over the past several years, it has gone down, not up. We have seen the average household income go down by $3,700 since the President took office. It is time we changed that and got the American people back to work, incomes coming up, and jobs that will keep the young people in this country not only employed but looking with confidence and optimism toward their future, which is something we don't see today. Let's deal with the immediate crisis, but let's work together on that.

Instead of coming over here and denouncing what is happening in the House of Representatives or using extreme language to characterize what is happening in the House of Representatives, understand we have to function together. We are the Congress of the United States, and in order for anything to get done here, we have to move legislation through both the House and Senate. It seems to me, at least, that there ought to be a recognition of that in the Senate. As I listened this morning to the comments of some of our leaders on the other side when they came down here and denounced what was happening in the House of Representatives, it struck me that that is not a productive or constructive way to get where we need to go in the next few hours. I hope we can do that, and I looking forward to the kind of bipartisan cooperation that will solve this problem.

I yield the floor.

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