Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. TESTER. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, the Federal budget is a pressing concern for everybody
in this body, including myself, especially given the political climate
we have in Congress. We have been two Houses divided for some time.

Back in 2011, the Republican House and the Democratic Senate agreed
that Federal spending was out of control. They just couldn't agree on
what to do about it. So Members from both Chambers came together to
give Congress two options: either pass a responsible budget to help
reduce the deficit or face drastic cuts to every discretionary Federal
department.

That threat of sequester was supposed to represent the end of the
road, forcing Congress to put differences aside and to work together,
but sometimes even a dead end is not enough to motivate some folks to
do the right thing. Congress failed to come up with a bipartisan, long-
term spending plan and sequestration went into effect 2 years ago.

Sequestration has had devastating effects nationally and in my home
State of Nevada. Take, for instance, sequestration's impact on our
national forests. We have 17 million acres of national forest managed
by the U.S. Forest Service. Under its current structure, the Forest
Service uses the same pool of funds to manage our national forests that
it does to fight wildfires. In bad fire years, suppression can use over
40 percent of the U.S. Forest Service's budget. So it is no surprise
that their budget is still in disarray 2 years after sequestration cuts
$200 million during the hot, dry summer that saw millions of acres of
trees burn across the West.

Sequestration proved to be irresponsible and its impacts long-
lasting, and our forests weren't the own casualties. The Indian Country
was slammed from education to health care, to infrastructure. Indian
Health Service saw its budget cut by a similar amount. Health care in
Indian Country is chronically underfunded anyway. The additional 5-
percent cut to the IHS budget resulted in 800,000 fewer outpatient
visits for Native Americans. Indian schools--many of which are in such
bad shape that nobody in this body would send their kids there--saw
their budgets cut by $67 million, which resulted in bigger class size,
cutbacks to academic programs, cutbacks to building maintenance, and
reduction in technology upgrades. Sequestration was almost as
devastating to the public education system in this country, and it had
its impact on seniors and low-income children and families. It will be
again if Congress doesn't act.

Between now and September 30, Congress must pass a responsible budget
that reduces our deficit, and we have time to agree on that or we will
face greater cuts than we saw last time. The President's budget
proposal makes significant investments in infrastructure and education
and our outdoors. These initiatives will help grow our economy,
particularly in rural States such as Montana, but there is one big
problem. The President's budget fails to reduce the deficit in a smart
and meaningful way, but the other options on the table are worse.

The House last week unveiled its budget proposal. It is the height of
irresponsibility. The House wants to privatize Medicare by turning it
into a voucher program. It wants to turn Medicaid into block grants and
cut those. They want to cut taxes for millionaires and big corporations
while they phase out portions of the earned-income tax credit,
squeezing the wallets of millions of working-class Americans. The
House's plan also cuts the Pell Grant Program.

It repeals the Affordable Care Act--that is no surprise. The House
has voted over 50 times to repeal the ACA, ignoring the fact that we
have some 16 million more Americans that have affordable access to
health care than before the law was passed, but in a show of boundless
hypocrisy, the House balances its budget by counting the $700 billion
in Medicare savings and the $1 trillion in new revenue that the
Affordable Care Act provides.

Now some folks might say, well, that is the House of Representatives.
Look at how they handled the funding for the Department of Homeland
Security this year. They nearly shut down the agency tasked with
protecting our borders and preventing terrorist attacks on America. The
House gave up on responsible governing years ago. But the fact is the
budget before us today in the Senate isn't much different. It repeals
the Affordable Care Act, but again pretends to keep the $700 billion in
savings to Medicare and the $1 trillion of revenue created by the
Affordable Care Act--after it has been repealed. Now, I am a farmer,
not an accountant, but I want to state that this is the kind of new
math that doesn't add up to me.

The Senate budget--similar to the House--also guts the Pell Grant
Program by one-third. Why is that important? Well, in Montana, students
are graduating from college with more than $27,000 in debt in student
loans. The last thing they need are less Pell grants and more student
debt, which is exactly what will happen if this Senate budget passes.

It also puts States on the hook for over $1 trillion in Medicaid
funding. What does that mean? It means we are not going to take care of
it anymore. We are going to push it off on States and act like it
doesn't exist. Just like the House, it raises taxes on the lowest wrung
of the economic ladder by repealing the extension of the earned-income
tax credit and child tax credit. These credits keep over 13 million
Americans--working families with relatively low incomes--out of
poverty.

While this rhetoric about passing a balanced budget sounds good--and
I do support a balanced budget--the reality is this budget doesn't cut
it. It does not balance. Why? Because this budget relies on gimmicks
such as using the Overseas Contingency Fund, which is supposed to fund
the war on Afghanistan and action against ISIS but instead has become a
slush fund for the Department of Defense. This budget assumes hundreds
of billions of dollars in ``unallocated cuts.'' That is great messaging. We are going to slash the budget by hundreds of billions of dollars, but we are not going to tell you where we cut it out. We can talk about cuts, but when it gets to specifics--the real tough decisions--we are not going to talk about those. We are not even going to tell you where they are. It is not only secretive, but it is bad policy, and these kinds of smoke and mirrors are the worst Washington has to offer.

While the President's budget spends far too much, at least it is
honest, open, and transparent. The House and Senate budgets are just a
display of bad mathematics. They lack any sort of realistic plan to
keep our economy growing by investing in America. Instead of balancing
the budget on the backs of middle-class families and seniors and
students and our Nation's most vulnerable, we need to fully invest in
the measures that will help this economy go, such as roads, bridges,
our outdoor economy, education for our kids and our grandkids because
that is the only way they are going to be able to compete in this
global economy. In 2015, every nation is interconnected. Business
transactions occur between multinational corporations, scientific
discovery is shared between universities on different continents, clean
air and clean water and carbon emission standards are achieved by
international agreements, but global security seems to be a battle that
we--the United States--are fighting alone--and at what cost?

Last week, my Appropriations subcommittee on military construction
held a hearing on the Defense Department's construction budget. The
United States spends more on defense than the next nine nations
combined. Let me say it one more time. The United States spends more on
defense than the next nine nations combined, including the United
Kingdom, Germany, India, and--yes--China. Two of America's greatest
international threats, ISIS and a nuclear Iran, pose a grave threat to
us but also to our allies in the Middle East and Europe. Yet we are the
ones paying the overwhelming majority of these costs. This budget hides those costs from the American people. With 47 Senators pushing us to go to war with Iran, I think the American people deserve to know how we are spending their dollars overseas.

Do not misunderstand me. Congress's foremost concern should be with
protecting our Nation and in keeping our communities safe, but that
should also be the foremost concern of our allies around the world.
Time and time again, though, it is the U.S. taxpayer and American lives
who are on the line, and that price is far too high. It is not just
dollars and cents. It is the lives of our kids. It is the wounds they
will face when they return from war, if they return from war at all.
These are pricetags we cannot afford.

While we send our troops and our treasures overseas, our allies are
free to invest significantly in more public education, health care,
infrastructure, research and development, and lower taxes. Why? Because
we are paying the bill. Their economies grow in relation to our
deficit. As Congress looks to responsibly cut spending, we must look at
the billions we waste overseas, and we need to level with the American
people about the true cost of war. While caring for our veterans is a
cost we absolutely should bear, we can no longer afford to fight and
fund every international conflict. We have to stop paying for war on
our children's credit.

We need to think about the future and invest in public education,
health care, and infrastructure, in sound forest management, and in
lower taxes. A global economy and a global defense will allow us to
invest in middle-class families, educating our children, protecting our
seniors, and making sure Americans can afford food and shelter. These
are investments we must make, but the budget before us stops investing
in America.

We can do better, and we must do better.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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