Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my friends from New Hampshire and Arizona and South Carolina regarding the sequestration. I will say the reason we are in this sequestration mode is that six Republicans and six Democrats could not figure out a way, over a 10-year period, to cut $1.2 trillion in spending out of $45 trillion that is going to be spent by the Federal Government during that period of time. So I do hope there is a way to resolve that. But I am here to speak about something related, but in some ways very different.

Today we are getting ready to vote on some legislation dealing with flood insurance, dealing with student lending, dealing with highways. And these are all very popular programs.

What people who are listening, who may be paying attention to what the Senate is doing today, what they may not know is that for the third time, in a bipartisan way, this body is getting ready to spend more money than was deemed by the budget that was ultimately created by the Budget Control Act last year when the country almost shut down trying to save a mere $900 billion over the next 10 years. So a vote today for this piece of legislation is basically a vote to say the Senate cannot be entrusted to carry out what it laid out last August to keep us from spending money we do not have. I know there are going to be some budget points of order that will be brought forth at some point later today.

I want to say as one Senator from Tennessee, it continues to be unbelievable to me that this body does not have the courage, does not have the will, does not have the discipline to even live within a very modest budget that was laid out last August. Today I am certain we are going to pass legislation that spends billions of dollars more than we agreed to in the Budget Control Act and especially the deemed budget that came after that, the deemed budget that was put in place as a result of what we passed last August.

I would say all those who vote for this today are basically saying we do not have the discipline to live within our means. The problems our Nation faces fiscally are only going to get worse. I think this is a very sad day for our country if that, in fact, is what happens within the next 2 or 3 hours on the Senate floor.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, if I could have everybody's attention, according to CBO, this is paid for the old way, where we spend all the money in a year or two and then it is paid for over 10.

This body came together last August in a bipartisan way to put in place the Budget Control Act, and this bill violates the deemed budget by $2.5 billion. This will be the third time we violate the Budget Control Act deemed budget. For all of those people who are meeting in the evenings, meeting in groups in rooms trying to solve our Nation's fiscal issues, a vote to waive this motion says we don't have the discipline, the courage, or the will to do what we told the American people we would do to try to get our fiscal house in order.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this motion to waive right now.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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