The Budget

Floor Speech

THE BUDGET -- (Senate - May 21, 2008)

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Ms. STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. President. I wish to, once again, thank Senator Conrad and all the conferees who have worked so hard. I know Senator Gregg and Senator Conrad may have a different view on the budget, but certainly I appreciate our ranking member's professionalism in working across the aisle on so many issues and working to place this budget resolution, the final resolution, in front of us.

The chairman and the conferees are presenting the American people with a budget resolution that lays out the Nation's priorities and focuses on what we ought to be doing to improve our economy. We put together a budget, and as a member of the Budget Committee, I am very proud to have played a role in putting it together. I believe it gets it right. It is about our values and our priorities. It is about investing in our future as Americans.

Today we are saying our Nation's budget, which lays out our values and priorities, will focus on the economy, on jobs, and on the future of the country. I come from the great State of Michigan, where the issue of jobs is very serious and very real. People in Michigan want us to act in a way that is going to allow people to have a good-paying job, to be able to work hard, to be able to pay the bills and pay for the outrageous gas prices and the soaring costs of health care and the cost of college and food and all the other things that are squeezing families on all sides. They want to know they have an opportunity to work. We work hard in Michigan. People across this country, middle-class families every day are working hard, and they want to know that our Federal priorities include creating opportunities for people to work, to be able to care for themselves and their families.

Let me first indicate it gets pretty old. You know, it seems the old, tired refrain comes from colleagues on the other side of the aisle. When in doubt, when you can't say anything about the economy under this White House and 6 of the last 8 years under colleagues on the other side of the aisle, when you can't say anything about soaring deficits, when you can't say anything about the inaction and unwillingness of the White House to work with us in a manner that will quickly respond to the housing crisis; when you can't say anything about any of those things, what do you say about Democrats? Well, it is the tired, old refrain of tax and spend.

I wish to remind my colleagues that this budget resolution is 1 percent higher than the President's budget resolution--1 percent higher--and it returns to a surplus. In other words, we balance the budget in 2012 and in 2013. It is a 1-percent difference. What does that mean? This is not about tax increases on low-income or middle-income families. This is not a budget that is focusing on adding costs to families. This is a budget that focuses on taking costs off families and valuing work and creating opportunity and investing in the future of our children with education, focusing on the things Americans want to see focused on. People in America are saying, what about us? We are seeing a war where we are spending $12 billion a month, unpaid for--hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into rebuilding roads and schools in Iraq, even though they have oil revenues and have not been contributing, as they should, to rebuilding their own country. People in America are saying, what about us, our roads, schools, and jobs in America?

That is what this budget addresses. We focus on the future and on making sure American families have the confidence that we are putting them first. Last year, Congress began fixing the fiscal mess caused by the administration's 6 years of neglecting the homefront. This budget continues that effort by focusing on what is most important to American families.

We have three priorities in this budget: jobs, jobs, and jobs. I am very proud of that.

Today, we are bringing fiscal sanity back to our budget, while at the same time investing in a plan that will create good-paying American jobs, including rebuilding our Nation's aging infrastructure, our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure--in other words, rebuilding American jobs, rebuilding America, with jobs that cannot be outsourced overseas--good-paying jobs, middle-class jobs--investing in America.

Promoting education and job training is so critically needed in this fast-paced, changing world we live in. There is also investment in the future of our energy economy. I am proud my green collar jobs initiative is a part of that. Let me speak to that for a moment. As part of our effort to create jobs and look to the future, I was very pleased that the Senate included my green collar jobs initiative, and that it is substantially intact as it comes out of the conference committee. We focused on 5 areas in the proposal that we put forward: energy efficiency, and conservation, jobs, weatherizing buildings, grants to State and local communities for energy efficiency, and conservation. We can immediately create thousands and thousands of jobs by doing the right thing on energy efficiency and conservation.

Secondly, there is advanced battery technology. When you come from my great State, where we are proud to make automobiles, the buzz word these days is ``batteries.'' If we are going to compete and meet our mandate on fuel efficiency and move away from dependence on foreign oil, we have to be investing in advanced battery technology. Right now, China, Japan, and South Korea are ahead of us. When Ford Motor Company decided to make their first hybrid SUV--and I am proud they did that--they could not find a battery in America. They had to buy that from Japan. With all of the American ingenuity and the smart people we have, we have not been investing in advanced battery technology.

Last year, the President's budget had something like $22 million in it versus the hundreds of million around the world. Our plan that we passed here in the Senate had $250 million in investment in advanced battery technology to make sure we can do the plug-ins, and that GM can quickly move on this technology, and Chrysler is investing in hybrids and other technology, so our companies can compete globally because America invests in our technology.

Retooling older plants. We don't want to say come over and we will build you the plant. We want to keep the jobs in America.

As to biofuel production and access, we know we have spent a lot of energy on biofuel production.

Infrastructure and assets are very important. It is great to make the fuel. We want to grow it in Michigan--and we are--but if you cannot buy it at the pump, it doesn't do much good. This focuses on that as well.

Finally, green job training programs, to create new opportunities. That is what this resolution is all about--value work and looking to the future. This budget provides, as well, $2.5 billion more than the President requested for transportation accounts for rebuilding America. It fully funds the highway and transit programs authorized by the highway bill and includes funding for airport improvement--all things that help us and our communities create safer ways to be able to move around, whether it is airports or roads or whether it is commerce or families going on a vacation or going back and forth to work. These are investments in America. It is about creating good-paying jobs.

The Department of Transportation estimates that for every $1 billion in highway spending, you create 47,500 good-paying middle-class jobs. This budget recognizes that. It also creates $2 billion in economic activity for every $1 billion we invest in infrastructure.

I am glad to see, for the benefit of our country and our families, that the conferees have also invested in other important areas related to education and job training for the future. This is absolutely critical for us.

This budget resolution reflects the values and priorities of the American people. It makes sure we are rejecting the President's efforts to eliminate the COPS program. We want to keep our families safe in their communities, with our children being able to play in parks and on the streets, and know that we have community police officers available to help keep them safe. Then there are the Byrne grants to help our first responders, the firefighters and police officers.

We also, I am proud to say, keep the promise we began last year to fully fund veterans health care as a major priority for our country.

So there is a lot to celebrate in this budget. On top of the new investment and new priorities and changing the way things are done, these investments are paid for because we are following what is called the pay-go rules, which helped balance the budget back in the 1990s and brought us into surplus at the end of the last decade.

We cannot mortgage our children's future, as the administration has done, with soaring deficits and record spending that is not paid for. Instead, we invest in our children's future, in our families, and we balance the budget by 2012.

Again, I congratulate our chairman for his tenacity, his passion, and his commitment to doing the right thing, doing it in a fiscally responsible way. We have all worked so hard to lay out a vision of America that is about jobs, about the future, about investing in America. It is time we did that. The American people expect us to do no less.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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