Hearing Of The Senate Committee On Budget - "Bipartisan Process Proposals for Long-Term Fiscal Stability"

Statement

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Gregg, thank you for holding this
hearing on a matter of utmost importance to our nation and its future. Now more
than ever, we must come to terms with the potentially crippling amount of debt on
our nation's books.
We are faced with $12 trillion in national debt and a deficit for the just-
completed fiscal year that exceeded $1.4 trillion, more than three times as high as
last year's record deficit. Congress and the executive branch have nonetheless
committed the nation to a spending plan that will add $9 trillion more to the
nation's debt over the next decade. As no one knows better than you, this course is
unsustainable. We all know it, yet we are not taking the difficult steps or making
the difficult choices that are essential to reverse course.

In the immediate term, to meet our current financial obligations, we will also
be confronted with the need to increase our national debt ceiling limit of $12.1
trillion, which we are rapidly bumping up against. As you know Mr. Chairman,
due in no small part to your leadership on this issue, I and nine of my Democratic
colleagues have joined in submitting a letter to Majority Leader Reid, urging that
any increase in the debt limit only be undertaken in conjunction with putting into
place a special process, such as a commission, to address our nation's long-term
fiscal problems. We must pursue a solution like this to ensure that we do not put
ourselves or the nation into a position where we continually have to increase the
nation's debt ceiling limit to accommodate perpetual deficits and ever-growing
national debt.
At the same time we are faced with this debt and spending problem of
critical importance to our nation's well being, we in Congress are considering
several other major legislative initiatives that will also shape the future of our
economy and the lives of every American citizen: namely, health care reform,
comprehensive climate change legislation, and an overhaul of our financial
regulatory system, whose shortcomings played no small role in contributing to our
current economic woes.
No matter how important these other reform initiatives such as health care
and climate change are--and I believe they are deeply important for this country--

they pale in comparison to the critical problems we will face if we continue to
spend ourselves into a debt crisis from which our economy will not be able to
recover. Simply put, our grandchildren will be responsible for paying the bills for
the massive checks we are writing today. Our children and future generations of
America will bear the brunt of our failure to make the difficult but essential
economic choices: reduced national savings, skyrocketing interest rates, a
drastically weakened dollar, and even more dependence on foreign governments
who currently own half of our nation's publicly held debt, assuming they even
remain willing to finance our fiscally irresponsible habits.
To address the severe fiscal problems we face, Senator Voinovich and I have
introduced the SAFE Commission Act: Securing America's Future Economy
Commission Act. Our proposal is similar in purpose and substance to the other
proposals represented here, and to legislation the Chairman and Ranking Member
introduced in the last Congress. I and many of our colleagues on both sides of the
aisle have become increasingly convinced that the only way we will be able to
make the difficult decisions needed to reduce our national debt is to create a
special commission whose sole focus is to develop solutions to the long-term fiscal
problems that our country faces. We in Congress and the executive branch have
failed to take the necessary steps to get entitlement spending and deficits back in
control, and the challenge and distractions will only grow worse in the face of the

near-term economic problems we must address and the other major legislative
initiatives pending before us.
I strongly support these proposals because they recognize that restoring
long-term fiscal balance to our economy will require a mechanism to insulate the
process from politics and to ensure that the tough decisions that have to be made
can and will be made. This is an approach that has worked in the past, for example
with the politically charged military Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC,
Commission process.
We find the economy at a difficult crossroads, with one path requiring near-
term measures that I support to restore the economy to sound footing, create jobs,
and address the worst job market in more than an quarter of a century. But the
other path requires long-term fiscal restraint and difficult choices to rein in out-of-
control deficits and reduce the national debt to sustainable levels.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I am grateful that you have
convened this hearing to consider this matter that is of critical importance to
finding the right path to ensure our nation's economic well being and the future
competitiveness of the American economy. I am optimistic that we can quickly
come together to bring these issues and proposals before the House and Senate and
send a measure to the President.

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