Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I do appreciate the leadership on the Intelligence Committee and for the leadership that has been there.
I would concur. You have a spot to be able to lead and a task to be able to be done. You have studied this, so that must mean you know it. We look forward to your leadership in the days ahead. I appreciate that very much. National Debt
Mr. President, I do want to speak on a very different subject as well, and it is a subject that we are all going to face in the days ahead. It is this wonderful issue of a government shutdown.
We seem to forget, at times in this body, the issues that press around us, but the one that seems to get slipped under the rug most of the time is that of national debt: where we are and how we are going to try to address this in the days ahead. The conversation comes up--it seems to be on a regular basis now--about are we going to have a government shutdown; and the conversation of a government shutdown ends up being a very small portion of the very large debt that we face.
The challenge is, how do we actually address that based on its size? Well, let me just give you a little bit of context as to what I am talking about.
We are, right now, preparing, within days, to cross into $33 trillion in total Federal debt--$33 trillion. To give some context of that acceleration of Federal debt and what is happening during this time period, from the time of Andrew Jackson--who was the last President who was President when we had no debt at all. From the time of Andrew Jackson until Ronald Reagan, our Nation accumulated $1 trillion in total debt. From Andrew Jackson to Reagan, there was $1 trillion in total debt. From Reagan to the present, now we are $33 trillion in total debt. We are in a rapid acceleration of debt that has not slowed.
To give you again the picture of where things have gone just in the last several years, if you go back 20 years ago to 2003, our total spending was just over $2 trillion. If you go back to 2013, which was 10 years ago, our total spending was less than $3.5 trillion. Our spending this year will be right at $6.5 trillion. So in the past 20 years, our spending has increased from just over $2 trillion to $6.5 trillion.
To give you the acceleration in spending just in the last few years, if I were to go back to 2018--before COVID, the 2018 time period--our total spending was just over $4 trillion. This year's estimated spending is just under $6.5 trillion. That is $2.5 trillion of accelerated spending just from 2018 until now. Again, to set this in context, the revenue that is coming into the Federal Treasury this year is estimated at $4.8 trillion--$4.8 trillion. We are spending an estimated $6.4 trillion.
Now, I know these are a lot of numbers, but let me give you one just as a takeaway. We have almost $1.5 trillion of deficit--that is, overspending--just this year. By some estimates, depending on what happens in the next few weeks, it could be almost $2 trillion in total overspending just this year.
To put this in context, with the record revenue that is coming in this year at about $4.8 trillion, if we were spending the same this year as we did in 2018, which is a short 5 years ago--if we were spending the same this year as we were in 2018, prior to COVID, we would have a $700 billion surplus this year rather than an almost $2 trillion deficit this year. Because of the record amount of revenue coming in this year compared to what our spending was 5 years ago, we would have been in surplus this year; but we are not, and it is $1.5 trillion over that.
We have a very serious issue. We should have very hard conversations about our revenue, about our spending, about the direction in which we are actually heading, and about how we get out of a $33 trillion debt. This is not going to take 1 year or 2 years.
There are folks I have talked to recently even who have talked about the time in the early nineties--when we were at a balance of around $100 billion--of the work that was done by the Bush administration and the Clinton administration--two administrations in a row--to be able to get us back to a balance. Two administrations in a row had to work on that. But here is the frightening thing: Our overspending this year is more than the total spending during the Clinton administration--just our overspending this year. This is not going to be a simple process to be able to come out of. This is not even going to be two administrations in a row making agreements to be able to get back to balance. This is going to take decades. My concern is that many here are not willing to start the first year of decades of work to be able to get us out. So we have work to do on this.
Myself and Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, sat down several years ago and started having a conversation about how do we end government shutdowns and actually get into a real dialogue about how do we actually deal with debt and deficit issues. From those productive conversations, she and I created a piece of legislation that is designed just to prevent government shutdowns. All of the conversation right now among the media seems to be about if a government shutdown is coming at the end of this year. We should not have one at the end of this month, at the end of the fiscal year. We should continue to be able to keep going, but we should also have a debate of what direction we are going to go.
So Senator Hassan and I came up with a very simple proposal. It is not a partisan proposal. It is a completely nonpartisan proposal. It is a simple proposal, quite frankly, that is equivalent to two things I had growing up. One was, if you don't finish your homework at school, you have to actually stay after class to be able to finish it. If you don't finish all of your work that you had to get done there, stay after class; keep finishing it; and when you are done, you can leave. The second one was, when my older brother and I would get into an argument--which, of course, as brothers, we never did get into an argument--but in that rare moment we got into an argument, my mom would put the two of us in a room and say: You guys settle this, and when you are done, you can come out.
We slammed those two ideas together into one simple proposal on how to end government shutdowns. If we get to the end of the fiscal year and the appropriations work is not done, like it is this year, we stay in session 7 days a week, and the only bills that can actually come up, that actually can be called up during that time period, are appropriations bills. The second part of it is, there is no travel for anyone, so we couldn't fly home and fly back. No official or campaign funds could be used to be able to travel.
So we are in session 7 days a week. The only bills that are allowed to be brought up are appropriations bills. There is no travel.
The next part of it is simple. There is what is called a continuing resolution to maintain the government to be open so that the American people and Federal workers are held harmless. It puts the pressure on this room, not on Federal workers who are working for FAA, not on people who are working for the Housing Administration, not on our Border Patrol. Those individuals don't get a vote on this. They should not feel the pressure of a government shutdown.
We can keep the system moving while we still have our arguments to be able to resolve those things.
Why is this so important? A couple of reasons. One is, we are the United States of America. We should actually have an organized system because the rest of the world watches us to try to figure out how to do government. When we look dysfunctional, the rest of the world says: How are we going to figure this out if even the Americans can't figure this out? We, as Americans, lose track of that at times, but the rest of the world is watching us.
We should have our arguments. We are a representative republic. Every single voice counts, and we don't all agree. Great. Bring it. That demonstrates us at our best. But let's actually resolve those issues rather than having government shutdowns and chaos ensuing, because we need to set a better example for the world.
The second issue is much closer to home. We need to stop having government shutdowns because the American people are calling Federal Agencies and expecting someone to answer the phone, expecting to get help with passports or permits or whatever process it may be that they have to interact with the Federal Government. They need to be able to get somebody to answer the phone to be able to resolve that. This puts the American people struggling to be able to just get basic answers.
The third is the Federal workforce. We have millions of people who work in the Federal family. They work all over the country. When there is a government shutdown, there are two sets of things that actually occur. If you are a contractor, you are just out. Those contractors may be doing janitorial services in one of our buildings or they may be supplying food services to someone. They are just out. They don't get repaid; they just lose money, period.
Those who are actually on the Federal payroll--they don't get their check during that time period. They have this crazy, weird, essential, nonessential, some people laid off, some people not, but everyone is in chaos in that process.
For those folks who are in the Federal family, even though they may be declared essential or nonessential, do you know what--their car payments still come in, their mortgage still comes in, they still have to put food on the table, but they are not getting a check during the time of a government shutdown. So those individuals who live paycheck to paycheck, like many Americans do, suddenly have a gap--not by fault of their own but because this body couldn't resolve what we were going to do on the budgeting issues.
The fourth issue I have already partially mentioned, and that is the contractors. Let me just give you an example of what this means. Our southern border right now has the worst border crisis that we have ever faced as a nation. To give you a perspective on it, in the last few days, we have had up to 9,000 people illegally crossing our border a day--a day in the last few days. We have one border crossing area just in Tucson where they had 2,000 people who crossed in a day. Those folks are being cut loose and released into the country. It is chaos along our border.
Our Border Patrol and CBP and all those folks who are in law enforcement are doing their best to be able to help watch for safety and security of Americans while literally thousands of people are being cut loose into the country. They depend on some folks who are contractors in that area to help sometimes with transportation, with processing, with food, with medical care--all those things. Those contractors are very important to be able to help our Border Patrol in the chaos of what is actually happening. When there is a government shutdown, those contractors aren't going to be there, and the chaotic border we have now will be even more chaotic at that moment. That should not happen because we can't resolve our differences here. We need the national security on that.
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Mr. LANKFORD. I would yield to Senator Cornyn.
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Mr. LANKFORD. That is possible.
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Mr. LANKFORD. That is possible.
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Mr. LANKFORD. If the current rate sustains, yes.
Yielding back my time for Senator Cornyn and for others as well, 2 weeks ago, our Nation crossed a threshold that most people just missed. We have just over 6 million people who have illegally crossed our southern border in less than 3 years under the Biden administration--just over 6 million people. That 6 million number is the same as both terms of the Obama administration and the Trump administration combined. The Biden administration has allowed more people to illegally cross our border in less than 3 years than the previous 12 years along our border.
Border Patrol needs help right now. They don't need a government shutdown; they need help coming alongside them.
So what Senator Hassan and I have done is proposed a very simple proposal. Let's stop government shutdowns. Let's end those. Let's not have the drama and the countdown clocks on 24-hour cable news TV. Let's have the arguments we need to have. Let's talk through the appropriations that need to be done. That is work we are required to do. But let's hold the Federal workers harmless in the process, and let's hold Federal contractors harmless in the process so we can settle the issues and do real planning.
This ending-government-shutdowns bill is very straightforward. We just want to prevent government shutdowns. We just want to be able to stop the chaos and actually show the American people that this body can have the arguments, resolve our differences, and move forward.
This is something we should be bringing to a vote. This is something that has wide bipartisan support. Let's resolve this piece while we still have more to be done.
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