Continuing Appropriations
Floor Speech
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Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I wish to thank the distinguished Senator from Illinois, the distinguished majority whip, for bringing up Chaplain Barry Black's name and the article that appeared in the New York Times. I know Senator Durbin and I do a lot of things together. One of those things is just about every Wednesday morning we attend the Senate Prayer Breakfast. Replete through all of Barry's prayers at that breakfast is always one word, and that is ``humility.'' I think the message in that article in the New York Times and the message in the prayers in the last 7 or 8 days in the Senate and the message to all of us right now is that we need to grasp a little humility and find common ground among consternation and move this country forward.
To that end, I want to make my suggestion, for what it is worth, and I want to make mine as an inspiration with Senator Collins, the other Senator from the State of Maine who last week made her proposal. If we can't find common ground with the arguments we have today, let's proffer a new proposal to give us a chance to solve our problem.
Susan Collins made a great suggestion, to replace the medical device tax with other revenue so it doesn't cut the revenue and to get back to sequestration but only by cutting defense agencies, not by cutting across the board. That made a lot of sense. It provides a way to absorb those cuts but does so in a professional way.
So I come to the floor in a Robert Frost moment. You know the poem:
``Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. ..... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.''
We have been traveling down the wrong road for far too long. We are here today, in large measure, arguing over a CR we shouldn't have to be arguing over. Had we been doing our appropriations and doing our budgets over the last 4 years, the money would have been spent, the regular order would have been in place, the fiscal year moneys would have been appropriated, and there would be no need for a CR.
There is bipartisan responsibility for not having done a budget or an appropriations act. The leadership, obviously, controls the floor, so they can bring the appropriations act forward and that is their responsibility. But we have also cried out on our side for a budget. Year after year, let's have a budget. Now we have a budget, one approved by the House and one approved by the Senate, but an inability to go to conference because we can't get agreement on preconditions. Once again, this is another situation of not negotiating over something that is important to the American people.
So I have a suggestion, a suggestion that two-thirds of this Senate agreed to in the budget debate we had in March, a decision that 20 States have exercised in our country that has made them better, a decision the State of Israel made 2 or 3 years ago when they got into such dire financial conditions and went to the World Bank for suggestions; that is, let's force our CR and add to it a simple resolution that changes our way of doing business to a biennial budget and appropriations act, where we force ourselves to appropriate over 2 years and not 1, and make those appropriations in the odd-numbered years so that in the even-numbered years we do only oversight.
It would make a lot of difference for the American people if we were arguing over not how much bacon we were bringing home but how much money we were saving through oversight, savings, and fiscal accountability. I have introduced that legislation, along with Senator Shaheen--a Democrat from New Hampshire and a Governor who ran a State under a biennial budget. It makes sense, it is humble, it is the right way to do business, and it ends this necessity of having continuing resolutions at the last minute because we didn't do our job.
Let's face it. We are here today in the conundrum we are in because we did not do our job. We did not pass a budget and go to a conference committee, we didn't have appropriations acts, so we are doing a continuing resolution into a new fiscal year. That is no way to run the greatest country on the face of this Earth. Four years and running we have shirked our responsibility. It is time for a new day in the Senate. It is time for a biennial budget. It worked for Israel. If it worked for 20 States, it will work for us. It establishes priorities, it ends waste, fraud, and abuse, and it brings about good decisions.
Last night on ``60 Minutes,'' Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma was featured, and the feature was about SSI disability and the fact that we now pay $135 billion a year in SSI disability payments--a trebling of those costs in just a few years--and fully 25 to 40 percent we know is fraudulent. Twenty-five to forty percent is $40 to $60 billion. You can do a lot with $40 to $60 billion. That is where transparency and oversight works.
There is nobody better than the Senator from Oklahoma in terms of oversight and nobody more humble than the Senator from Oklahoma, but when he knows he is right, he is going to work hard to do what is right, and that is what all of us should be doing.
Referring to the Senator from Oklahoma, I go back to the Workforce Investment Act, which Senator Murray and I are working very hard to bring to the floor. In that, Senator Coburn found forty-four duplicative job training programs in nine different agencies--over and over again. We are appropriating money forty-four different times to nine different agencies to do workforce training when we really only ought to be doing one. If we were budgeting on a 2-year basis and doing other oversight in even-numbered years, there would be no limit to the successes we could have, the transparency we could enforce, the agreements we could come to, and the lack of cliff management we are in today.
The debt ceiling we face in about 10 days is a debt ceiling we face because we are having to borrow more money to run our government. We are having to borrow more money to run our government because we are not doing fiscal accountability, we are not doing appropriating, and we are going to continue for that to grow and grow.
As a businessman and a saver, I know what the time value of money is. The time value of money means that if you put away a little bit of money every year and save for your kids' education, for your health care, or whatever it might be, when the time comes and you need it, you will have it. But I also know what the time cost of money is: when you are borrowing money to pay off borrowed money--and that is where we are in the United States of America today. So that is why this debt ceiling crisis is such a big issue.
I would submit, and humbly, that the Shaheen-Isakson legislation that forces us to do our regular order of business of appropriating, forces us to budget, and forces us to do it every year puts us back to the kind of discipline and job responsibility we really need around this place. Instead of arguing about what we can't agree upon, we ought to find common ground and run our country's household the way American families run their households. If we had to do here in Washington what every American family has to do year in and year out, this place would be a whole lot different.
It is time that we find humility, find common ground, do what 20 of the 50 States do, do what the State of Israel has done, and do what 67 Senators said we ought to do in the budget debate back in March; that is, pass a biennial and appropriations act, end this foolishness, and gain back some of the humility we richly deserve.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 2 extra minutes to pay tribute to a physician in my county.
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