Amendment No. 1521

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, one other thing I wish to speak in favor of is the amendment of Senator Reed, my senior Senator--Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island--to cut the so-called OCO budget gimmick from the Defense bill.

I am on the Budget Committee, and I have heard very passionate protestations from my colleagues on the Budget Committee about the importance of reducing the deficit, not dealing with the national debt, reducing borrowing, deficit spending, and all of that. Well, when it comes to this particular bill, suddenly all of those concerns have gone completely out the window. They are funding a significant portion of this Defense authorization with imaginary money, with an account that is not intended to support ongoing, continuing, baseline defense expenditures, and that is reserved for overseas contingencies and that, therefore, doesn't have to be paid for. So it would be a clear increase to the debt and the deficit to go down this road, and we would very much prefer that instead of using the so-called OCO gimmick to fund this authorization with deficit spending, we sit down and have a mature and consequential discussion between the White House and the Senate and the House on where our spending is going to go and with what accounts we are going to be able to do it. Before we start going account by account through the appropriations process, we have a plan in mind so that we don't find that certain favored accounts get dealt with first and then the rug gets pulled out from under the others.

I think that is a reasonable way, and I support Senator Reed's amendment and his notion that we should have a bipartisan plan to replace the arbitrary sequester cuts with a balanced deficit-reduction strategy that includes, among other things, closing some wasteful tax loopholes.

With that, I yield the floor.

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