Capitol Words a project of the Sunlight Foundation

Sen. Jeff Sessions

Mr. President, today, state of the Union day, marks 1,000 days since this Senate has fulfilled its statutory responsibility of passing a budget. This is not a little bitty matter, and it implicates the leadership of the Democratically controlled Senate and their willingness to address the American people honestly and effectively concerning the very significant financial threats this Nation faces.

Indeed, President Obama, on April 29, 2009, when we last had a budget, said this:

A budget serves as an economic blueprint for the Nation's future.

That is true. It is not an insignificant document that just has a bunch of numbers; it is a blueprint for the Nation's future. We either have one or we don't. He went on to say a budget is necessary ``to lay a new foundation for growth and to strengthen our economy.''

I believe that is certainly true because the whole world, our own economy, U.S. businesses and investment, and the American people are concerned that we don't have a plan for our future that gets us off of the debt path--some would say an economic growth death path--that we are on. They want to see that we have a plan to do better.

We will have a speech tonight. I suspect it will be grand in sound and have some popular phrases. But the question is, when it is over will we have a plan that can be examined? Will we have a plan that will lead us on an improved--dramatically improved--debt path or will we remain in business-as-usual mode, in denial?

A budget resolution is legally required by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. It was passed because Congress hadn't been passing budgets effectively. So the Congress passed a law and said we must do it. We are going to require ourselves to do it.

By law the President must submit a budget to the Congress by the first Monday in February. The President has submitted one for 2012. He submitted it to the Congress last year. It was not a good budget. It was what I have called the most irresponsible budget ever submitted to Congress. I chose those words carefully because we have never been, as a nation, in a more systemic danger from debt as we are today. Our population is aging. Our growth is not solid. The number of people on Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security has increased. We need growth and prosperity. We are in danger if we don't change it. That is why the world is worried about the United States. That is also why Europe is having such a serious problem. So it is important that we have a budget and we lay this out.

So the law requires the President to submit the budget to the Congress by the first Monday in February. We did it last year. It was not a good budget because it increased spending, it increased taxes, and it increased spending more than taxes. Over the 10-year budgetary window or plan, it increased the debt more than if we had not had the budget, if we had just gone on automatic pilot for spending growth in our country. That is why it was a failed budget plan. When the Senate finally voted on it--I brought it up after the majority leader brought up the House budget to try to defeat it. I brought up the President's budget and asked my Democratic colleagues if they supported their President's budget. It failed 97 to 0. Not a single Senator voted for that plan because it was irresponsible. It put us on a worse course than we were already on, and nobody wanted to be on record as voting for it.

Now, once the President's budget has come in, the Senate Budget Committee, by law, is required to report a budget resolution to the Senate by April 1. Congress is required to complete action on a concurrent resolution on the budget no later than April 15. It is a challenge. In the past it has been a real challenge. People have worked hard to meet that goal.

Last year, while the Senate did not act, the Republican House met its requirements under the Budget Act to consider and pass a budget resolution in both their Budget Committee--Congressman Paul Ryan's committee--and in the full House of Representatives. The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, however, did not even offer a budget for consideration in committee, which precluded its consideration before the full Senate.

The budget process exists in one respect to compel the President and Congress to set forth a plan for the disposition of the taxpayers' money for the upcoming fiscal year and a minimum of 4 fiscal years. The budget has to be a 5-year budget. Often it is 10 years. The President submitted a 10-year budget which I think is preferable to a 5-year budget, and most people agree. Setting forth such a plan requires setting priorities; does it not? A household does a budget. A city, county, or State does a budget. They have to choose with their limited resources the priorities they can fund and determine how to use those scarce dollars, which in our case includes discretionary spending which is subject to the annual appropriation process, as well as the mandatory spending programs which are provided for under the rules set forth in permanent law. Those programs include food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and a lot of other programs.

So mandatory spending programs currently comprise almost 60 percent of our spending. They are on automatic pilot. If a person reaches a certain age or if a person loses their job or their income falls below a certain level, they are entitled to certain benefits. A person can walk into a government office and ask for food stamps or ask for governmental assistance, and if that person qualifies it must be given whether the government has any money or not. If those programs are out of control and are growing too fast and are not properly managed, Congress has to change laws, not just change the budget to deal with it. So this is almost 60 percent of our budget today, the mandatory part.

So the budget process, through the use of reconciliation, is the only mechanism available to Congress to compel oversight and review of mandatory spending programs. Without the discipline provided by the budget process, these programs proceed on automatic pilot. So, importantly, the numbers that were deemed by the Budget Control Act, which was passed last summer in the wee hours of the morning just to avoid a governmental shutdown, that Budget Control Act, not subject to any amendments and not brought up for debate, set spending levels. But it could only set the number for discretionary spending.

The Budget Control Act effectively told Chairman Conrad to provide discretionary spending at the levels of the Budget Control Act caps and for mandatory--the 60 percent--to stay the same, and revenue policies--taxing policies--at levels estimated in the Congressional Budget Office March 2011 baseline. So mandatory spending and tax increases and tax policies would be controlled by the Congressional Budget Office baseline, business as usual--the definition of business as usual for 60 percent of our budget.

So the so-called deemed budget is not a real budget, and the process used to adopt it is not the kind of process that is legitimate. It is not the kind of process that is required. In the Budget Act, we must have a committee markup. We must have 50 hours of guaranteed debate on the floor of the Senate and an unlimited number of amendments can be offered--a public, open discussion about the dangers facing this country and how Senators are going to deal with them, and they have to vote and they have to vote multiple times. The Democratic leadership, supported by Democratic Members, did not want to go through that process. That is why the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, said it is foolish to have a budget. He did not mean it was foolish for America to have a budget. He meant it was foolish for them to have to vote publicly and be accountable for the serious challenges facing this country. I think that was a big reason for the shellacking a lot of Members of Congress took in the last election.

The American people want Congress to be accountable. Congress works for them. We are not on our own up here to do whatever we want to. The American people are watching us. Forty cents of every $1 we spend is borrowed. Are the American people not legitimately unhappy with us? Why should they be satisfied with Congress? Why should we be looked up to as people who are leading the country effectively? We will not even bring up a budget.

I just want to say, the Republicans fought for a budget. I am the ranking Republican member of the Budget Committee. We pleaded with the majority. We protested. But the leadership in the Senate has the power to set the agenda, and a minority cannot call a budget hearing in the Budget Committee, nor can they require a real budget to be brought forth for full debate on the floor of the Senate.

So this is where we are, I just have to say, because our colleague, whom I truly respect and like, Senator Conrad, was saying we do not need a budget today. Apparently, they are not going to produce one again this year. That is not right. We do need a budget, and we need to go through the process because the American people need to know what the debt commission told us; which is, we do not have the money to keep spending as we are spending today.

So a real budget would have required a weighing of the spending demands placed on the Federal Government and the available revenues and reached a consensus on what activities the government would pursue and how the government would pay for it, including the amount that would be added to the debt--how much are we going to increase the debt and how much will be left to future generations.

So the failure of our Democratic leadership in the Senate is to not seriously and credibly address our mandatory spending programs, which all experts and observers tell us are on an unsustainable course. Everyone tells us that. What we are doing today is unsustainable. For example, the budget the President submitted calls for deficits every single year for the next decade. It goes from about $1.3 trillion now--it was going to drop down, for the lowest single year, to a deficit of $740 billion, and in years 7, 8, 9, and 10, it would be going back again to almost $1 trillion.

We spend this year $650 billion on Social Security. By the 10th year, according to the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the President's budget, the interest we would pay on the debt alone--just the interest--would be $940 billion. Today it is $240 billion. This is how we get into the European crisis. This is why experts and economists have told us our spending and debt situation is unsustainable. That is not a frivolous word. They mean it is unsustainable.

Contending that the creation of the supercommittee absolved the Senate of that responsibility to produce a budget is laughable and it is not credible and I reject that. Instead, we are told that the deeming of a budget and spending caps--and only discretionary spending--determined in secret and brought out in the eleventh hour before the Senate for an up-or-down vote, without amendment, to avoid a government shutdown--to contend that meets the requirements placed on this Chamber for responsibility and fiscal rectitude just cannot be sustained. Nothing could be further from the truth. Passing a real budget is indeed not easy, particularly now because we have such a serious financial crisis. Tough decisions are going to have to be made. Perhaps our Democratic leadership does not want to show Americans how much their big spending agenda truly costs. That is what a budget shows over 10 years: how much we plan to spend, how much we are going to cut, how much we are going to tax. Maybe they do not want the people to know how much they intend to raise taxes and how much of that falls not just on the rich but on the middle class. I can show you the budget the President submitted. It goes beyond the rich. It was a big tax increase.

The failure to propose and openly debate on the floor a detailed, long-term fiscal plan may be considered by some to be smart. But it is sending our country toward the fiscal cliff. Our Democratic colleagues wish to pretend for the Nation that they have an actual budget plan. If they want to do that, they must find in their files the secret document they produced last year and finally, once and for all, make it public.

Senator Conrad said: I have a budget. He said: We are going to have a committee markup, and I am going to present to our conferences the majority's budget plan to the Budget Committee. He was prepared to do that. He was prepared to do that, I thought. I was ready to get prepared to have the hearing. So when we got ready, somehow it did not happen. It got put off. It got put off again. Then, in the days that followed and we made a fuss, Senator Reid eventually said, basically: I made that decision not to have a budget. It is foolish to have a budget.

So we never saw this budget. He said publicly they had one. Are they ashamed of it? Were they afraid to bring it out? Did no one want to see it? We were prepared with our little calculators to see how much taxes were going to increase, how much spending was going to increase, how much debt was going to increase. When are we going to change our debt trajectory and make the country better, put us on a sounder path? That is what we wanted to know, and we were told we were going to get it. We did not.

So instead of an open, accountable process, where the public votes are taken, where our constituents can hold us responsible for the leadership we provide, we got, at the eleventh hour, deals, a month of secret meetings, and political maneuvers. The primary aim of the process, it looks to me, was political advantage, not the advantage for the people of the United States.

So I believe when the majority leader and his majority colleagues chose to block the lawfully mandated budget process and not bring up a budget--not have committee hearings and actual votes, not have 50 hours of floor debate, not being able to allow amendments that deal with the budget and spending--they put politics over the Nation's interest. They rejected a duty they have, by all just deserts in logic and also by law. They did so for their political convenience.

I think if they continue to fail to produce a budget, to allow it to be discussed, to show what their plans are for the future, they have forfeited the leadership they have asked for in the Senate. If they cannot produce a budget and they do not have the gumption to lay out their plan for the future and have numbers that can be studied and examined, added and subtracted--if they cannot do that, if they are not willing to face up to that responsibility, they do not deserve to lead the Senate because, at this point in history, I think it is the most significant matter we face.

Our economy is not doing well. Our debt is surging. This year, the debt came in, as of September 30, another $1.3 trillion. Three consecutive years of deficits over $1 trillion, averaging $1.3 trillion. Can you imagine that? The highest deficit President Bush ever had--and it was too high--was $450 billion. But for 3 years we have averaged $1.3 trillion.

The debt is surging out of control, and the Budget Control Act that purports to change that trajectory only reduced the projected deficit over 10 years by $2.1 trillion, when every expert--Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives--before our Budget Committee told us we need to have $4 trillion over 10 years in reduced deficits.

Because under the projections we have from the Congressional Budget Office, we are on track to add $13 trillion more to the debt in 10 years--$13 trillion more--doubling the now over $13 trillion in debt we have.

That is why we cannot continue. We need a plan to change that. Instead, we got a minimum reduction, I guess, from approximately $13 trillion to $11 trillion out of the Budget Committee. So we will add $11 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years rather than $13 trillion. That is not enough change. Mr. President, $4 trillion, in my opinion, based on the studies and the hearings and the testimony of the witnesses I have heard, is not enough. We need to do a good bit more than that. The House proposed a better plan by far. It would have changed our debt course, but the Senate did not do its responsibility to meet that challenge or the position of the House.

I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts. We look forward tonight to the President's State of the Union. I hope he will do more than do his normal eloquent processes and lay out a real plan, a plan that can be studied, a plan that can be evaluated, to put this Nation on a sound fiscal course. Because until we do that, jobs will not be created, and we will not see growth. There is a lack of confidence in our economy, and the greatest foundation of that lack of confidence is the debt.

I will just add briefly, there are things we can do to create growth and jobs without an increase in spending and without increase in debt. How do we do it? We eliminate every single regulation that is unwise. We reform our Tax Code into a growth-oriented Tax Code as much as possible. We produce more American energy and stop making policies that prohibit the production of American energy, creating American jobs, creating wealth in the United States, stopping the export of that wealth to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or other places such as that.

We have to end this health care bill that was passed. Already, health care premiums for average Americans have gone up--for a family of four: $2,400. Already? It was supposed to bring those costs down. That is a hammer blow to the middle class.

So we are talking about jobs, growth, progress. Those are the kinds of things we need. We can do it without more government debt and more government spending. That is what I will be looking for tonight.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.