of ninety one billion dollars somehow you've got to find a way to fill up that well if you're going to offset everything that there's a bipartisan agreement that ought to be offset the eps shot of the analysis in this chart is that no one offsets cover only about forty percent of the revenue needed to carry out p time sensitive tax legislation that there's a great deal of bipartisan support for and bipartisan agreement that ought to pass and some of it ought to be passed on very shortly now some on the other side will probably respond with three counterpoints so i want to anticipate they're not that i'm going to stop them from responding the first will be that the committee tax das will find the additional ninety one billion dollars is needed to fill up the well the second will be a plane that offshore shelter activity is a bass easily tapped revenue source the third counterpoint will be that closing the tax gap can yield the necessary revenue and as far as those three points are concerned in the preceding presentation by the chairman of the committee you heard some of these points expressed already on the first point i'd prefer everyone to the track record of the tax status from the period two thousand and one through two thousand and six during that period i chaired for four and one half years senator bronchus chaired for one and one half years during that period we change the tax shelter rules and clo numers corporate loopholes if you don't believe me then just go down and as the case street crowd of highly paid lobbyist that defended or fought every one of those during a secure period and the finance committee tax staff was able to achieve fifty one billion in enacted revenue raisers that figure should give everyone some perspective of what doable and it's very hard to find that revenue now some on the other side will argue for my second point that the offshore activities will produce up to one hundred billion dollars a year the anecdotal looted two usually referred to are fraudulent activities of course tax fraud is a crime now perhaps we could continue to make progress on this front with more and force money but the figures bandied around have no joint tax or treasury scoring that i'm aware i'll expand on this point in a separate discussion later on in this week when we have some more debate on that point but it's tough to get the revenue that's alluded to in the speech if you're going here this week the third counterpoint asked officials have told us in several hearings the tax gap number currently estimated to be two hundred fifty billion net annually is not the same thing as a revenue estimate they have cautioned us to be careful about the xining tax gap closure measures that are given by on realistic revenue targets in on realistic time frame when we went through the tax gap discussion last year these points were disputed by some on the other side with a senate democratic majority in place for over a year we may have a bit of a yardstick to use just see how much revenue can come in let's take a look at the claims on tax gap revenue and how we've done it's we have three charges that i hope will  help us understand this the first chart is the tax gap reality check so you can see it here see some big numbers there th chart takes the form of an inverted pyramid you're going to see at the top of the chart is gross tax gap that's what appeared in the budget resolution mark the last year that the i r s testified that the improvements in collections have brought the tax gap down by fifty five billion to a net tax gap of two hundred ninety billion as we work our way down the inverted pyramid we go to the tax gap proposals there are two categories the first is the treasury tax gap strategy set of p on an annualized basis these proposals raise three and six tenths billion per year some of these proposals have proved controversial on both sides many are complicated and winery wide raging and may need f ther work it is not by accident that they're still a work in progress the second set of proposals come from the joint tax committee s white book this pamphlet requested by senator baucus and me and we requested this a few years ago was published in late january two thousand and five a note of caution is in order about the charts figures the forty and four tans billion an your lies figure into just many tax expenditure reform proposals some tax cap proponents have strongly opposed the mixing of these proposals with pure tax gap proposals i will speak in more detail about these proposals as we go on in this week's debate if one were diddly dee late the tax expenditure reform proposals from this figure it would drop consider for purposes of this exercise i'm going to use the full set of joint tax proposals if we do that and add them to the treasury proposal we come away with roughly forty four billion dollars per year in tax gap related proposals as a side note a couple of recently enacted tax gap proposals have iranians or rough sledding with the new majority the first proposal is from the two thousand and five joint textbook it deals with with holding on contractor payments enacted in two thousand and six ways and means democrats are seeking  inundation man many house and senate democrats are insisting on repealing another tax gap measure there's one dating in two thousand and four providing supplementary private debt collectors if an enacted the joint tax corps that proposal as actually losing revenue as we work our way further down the inverted pyramid that i call the tax gap reality check we total up in acted tax gap provisions during the fiscal year of the new majority we find five hundred seventy two million dollars of enacted tax gap provision enacted provisions represent two tan's of one percent of that great big gigantic figure that we call taxpayers just two tenths of one percent now that ought give anybody pause when you're putting this year's budget together and you're in to some painting lot of money coming in from this source what experience we've had hasn't produced a lot of revenue now let's take a look at the demands on the tax gap revenue in this budget so we have another chart it totals up their proposed uses of the tax gap revenue this chart is in the shape of a pyramid the way a pyramid ought to be upside down listed in the first fiscal oeuvre listed in the first category or annualized tax receipts all i said that wrong listed in the first category are annualized tax relief and spending demands in the budget that are assumed to be offset by and among other things this tax gap revenues you can see that they total three hundred fourteen billion dollars per year i have accounted for the baucus amendment annualised in back of sixty five billion so the demand on the annual tax gap are about two hundred forty nine billion dollars if you've been following the charts and the arithmetic you can see that the budget uses almost all of the tax gap revenue up to about eighty five for sale keep in mind that the track record is that only five hundred seventy two million of the tax gap raisers were in active last year this gives you perspective you could look at the ratio of demands on tax cap revenue to the revenue raised from enacted provisions and that's what this chart does the ratio is four hundred thirty five to one there are four hundred thirty five dollars of proposed tax cap uses in the budget for every one dollar of enacted tax gap revenue when you look over these numbers it should lead to a healthy skepticism about using tax cap revenue as some sort of instant revenue source to accommodate all the spending that this budget proposes to do we ought to listen to the career statistics of income folks over the internal revenue service when they tell us not to treat the tax gap number like a revenue estimate they're on pretty solid ground doesn't mean that we should aggressive about the tax gap we should good but the thirst for quick and dirty revenue raisers should not drive the strategy for dealing with this important problem i'd like to step back and summarize the last two major points the first point is that this budget does represent the priorities of the democratic leadership it is put forward  stated objectives of achieving fiscal responsibility the budget dramatically raises taxes increases spending considerably above the already generous baseline and  es nothing about entitlements and most experts agree entitlement spending left on checked will cannibalize the rest of the budget from the perspective of the republican caucus this fiscal blueprint then is not fiscal responsibility the second point is that an examination of the budget even from the perspective of its own opponents shows that it doesn't work there is too much pressure on the revenue raising we have raised revenue from closing corporate loopholes we have raised revenue from anti tax shelter ma i'm proud of the finance committee's record in that regard we've enacted fifty one billion and loophole closures and anti shelter measures for the period two thousand and one to two thousand and six there is not however enough loophole closers to offset the time sensitive tax legislation that we've face in the first fiscal year of this budget we've like why he's found revenue and policing offshore filters and other activities but if it's under the umbrella of loophole closures and other tax shelter oversight finally the tax gap is an important problem that needs to tackled but targeting revenue from closing the tax gap needs to be more realistic than it is in this document this budget anticipates revenue that is incredibly out of line with our tax record of bringing in money from the tax gap as worthy is closing the cat tax gap is there's got to be a reality check between what's out there and what people the i r s say we can collect and they're much more aggressive at that because of the leadership of senator baucus but will it bring in the revenue well we've shown that it will not based upon the practice that we've had when you step back from the differences across the aisle on this budget you probably won't be surprised to find similar differences among the presidential candidates of the two parties generally the candidates on the other side have proposed to take heavily from the taxpayer under the guise of fiscal responsibility this true when they're talking about ending the bipartisan tax really plans of two thousand and one and two thousand and three it's true when they're talking about the same loophole closures for myriad number of expansions of existing entitlements or creating new ones nowhere is there discussion of reining in spending so the tax side of the federal ledger is the only route to fiscal responsibility from the perspective of the candidates on the other side i want to give you just one telling example i have a chart here that shows the revenue from the key revenue raisers from one of our colleagues on the other side that proposal would repeal the bipartisan tax relief plans for taxpayers earning above two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year this proposal raises two hundred twenty six billion over five years and ten years a key fact is that the source of that revenue peters out over the next few years because under current law the tax relief sunsets at the end of two thousand pan so you can see it right there there's let the tax laws work the way they want them to work and the revenue doesn't come in like the democratic leadership's budget the candidates on the other side oversubscribed the revenue sources from proposals that are popular with the democratic worried about that revenue secondly the proposed spending plan would need to be abandoned or curtailed there is not much history on that side for doing that taking that avenue and third add to the deficit for the cost of the new programs unfortunately this avenue has been taken far too many times and by both political parties i'm sorry to say we'll hear a lot of criticism or a candidate senator mccain from those on the other side they'll argue like the president's budget a continuation of current long levels of taxation costs the federal government too much revenue they will argue that the spending increases they propose are more important than the restraining levels of the president's budget and they'll argue that despite the record tax hikes in their budget enti reform is a matter for another day i have a chart that i believe helped set the basis of this larger debate it shows a glide path for the revenue under current  it shows that trend in the post war world war two contexts so we're talking about an every well i want to i'm worse stick to my tax you'll see revenues every about eighteen point three percent that's the dotted line across there so for those years since nineteen sixty eight till now and what we propose would be a continuation of that policy we've averaged about the federal government taking in from all sorts of taxes the federal government levies about eighteen point three percent of gross national product that means that five hundred thirty five members of congress were going to decide how to spend eighteen point three percent of all the the total economic the total economy of our country and that the taxpayers are going to spend the other eighty one point seven percent you also see that the state of the economy affects revenues more than anything else there are dips when we have been and recession and peaks when a growth was high our side cares about keeping the revenue line at a reasonable level we don't see the merits of an imperative behind our growing role for government in the economy and i say that because forty year history of about eighteen to nineteen percent of the total economy being used by the federal government has been a level that has not been so high that public revolt against it or they might revolt at times when it gets way high and then we have tax decreases to bring a bag down and also i think you can say at that level of taxation that it hasn't been harmful to the economy as you have seen each generation during this period of time live better than the generation before our economy has done well now when you argue about eighteen point three percent being the right figure you know often the other side disagrees if they don't disagree directly their policies bring us help us draw a different conclusion about where they agree or disagree they imply edley or explicitly reject our premise that the size of government needs to be kept in check we have another chart and as a copy of an editorial dated october twenty second two thousand and seven new york times i suppose that for in small print for the public to read the lead off paragraph says it baz president bush considers himself a champion tax cutter but all the leading republican presidential candidates are eager doubt doing their zeal is misguided this country's meager emphasize meager tax state puts its economic prospects at risk and leaves the government ili quit the face the challenges of globalization the bottom line of the new york times editorial directly states the view behind this budget and the position of democratic candidates for president from this perspective the historical level of taxation is not appropriate as a major the new york times implies that the federal government must grow as a percentage over economy by at least five days a percentage points if we were to follow the passer jessa by the new york times the government share of our economy would grow by one third one third the democratic leadership's budget take some big steps down that path american prosperity and economic strength in our view is derives from vigorous private sector that affords all americans the opportunity to work hard to save and invest money a growing economy is the best policy objective it makes fiscal sense as well so i have one more chart to back up that point that it makes fiscal since my last chart shows  despite criticism to the contrary the bipartisan tax relief plan drove revenue way out after the economic shocks that we suffered in the early part of this decade because of early recession and because of nine eleven i'm referring to the stock market bubble corporate scandals and nine eleven terror attacks all those things that were detrimental to this economy of ours and yet it bounced back the revenue outperformed congressional budget projections by a significant margin and all you have to do is look at what c b l said what happened in the blue line and look at the red line of what actually happened people on our side including our presidential candidate do not take this significant day to day the light believe the bias ought to be against growing government not the other way around another way of saying disabusing people that say that the way to bring more money in is to raise tax rates and if you lower tax rates you bring a decline to revenue in the federal treasury not solve this charge show that you can reduce tax rates you can enhance the entrepreneurial ship of the average american particularly the small people business people in this country that create jobs seventy percent of the jobs at least that are created is enough evidence for me and most americans that it can be done and that we did it  center from north dakota to town mr president first of all i want to say that while i disagree with some of the observations of the senator from iowa i have enormous respect for him and he's earned that respect by the way he conducts himself as a united states senator and while we have policy disagreements i have absolutely no disagreement or question about his motive  because he has proved to me repeatedly that he is trying to do the very best for this country has a mind i just want to go back to some basic facts and i heard the senator talk about a nine percent increase in spending if in his budget i don't know how they came up with that calculation but there is no nine percent increase in spending in this budget if you look at the the spending that is in this resolution over five years and compare it to the president's budget it is two point two percent more than two point two percent that's total spending that's over five years if you look at just the next year two thousand and nine the bush budget calls for three trillion forty billion of spending we call for three trillion eighty billion that is a difference of one percent that's total spending i think what the senator's staff has done is to look at one small part of federal spending just domestic not on defense domestic discretionary spending which is about one seventh one six there one seventh of the budget and look at that but if you look at total spending one percent one percent difference total spending for two thousand and nine ok difference between the president's budget and our budget one percent one percent that is a fact on the comparison of revenues the president's revenue line you see is the red line ours is the green line what is the difference the difference is over five years the president calls for fifteen point two trillion dollars of revenue we call for fifteen point six that is a difference of two point six percent now i believe this revenue can be achieved without any tax increase  believe that why do i believe that because of the three things i mentioned before the tax gap that the senator put up a chart that shows what the tax gap was in two thousand and one the net tax gap in two thousand and one was two hundred ninety billion dollars the senator correctly says very little has been done in the last year to do anything about in fact very little has been done over the last ten years doing about it my belief is the tax gap has done nothing but grew from two thousand and one and so it's not two hundred ninety billion dollars a year anymore i believe over five years tax gap is probably in the range of two trillion dollars i say this is a former tax administrator of my state chair a former chairman of the multistate tax commission and i i believe the tax gap over five years is likely to be two trillion dollars but it doesn't stop there and i put up what the permanent subcommittee on investigations says is the last of the tax havens they say a hundred billion a year without any group growth over five years that would be five hundred billion dollars so with the tax gap and the tax havens that's two and a half trillion dollars over five years then abusive tax shelters over the five years i believe based on the permanent subcommittee on investigations work is another two hundred billion that is a total of two point seven trillion dollars of leakage over five years in the revenue system two point seven trillion if we got fifteen percent of it one five fifteen percent of it one in every seven dollars in the tax gap the tax havens the abusive tax shelters one in every seven dollars we can't do that if we can't do that then the revenue commissioner ought to be replaced and all the rest of us ought to be replaced if we've got designed a tax system that's got damage leakage in it in which the vast majority of us pay what we owe but we're letting a bunch of scoundrels escape shame on us and that's exactly now all this talk about well we're going to have a trillion dollars of tax increases let's look at the record let's go to the record what is this congress controlled by democrats done it's cut taxes one hundred ninety four billion dollars so far with seven billion revenue raisers and loophole closers enacted for that period so i'd say to my colleagues this is just the facts where is most of this most as of the stimulus package that we just passed most of us it was bipartisan but the reference here was the democratic control of the house in the senate one hundred ninety four billion of tax cuts and seven billion of revenue raisers that's been the record of this democratic congress one hundred ninety four billion of tax cuts and seven billion of revenue ra that's not a projection that's not sitting around conjuring up how we can make the other side look as bad as we can make it that is a fact of what's been done now the other side talks about the miracle of the tax cuts producing more revenue well we don't need to look at a projection there either let's just look at the record in two thousand the tax base of the united states was mil two trillion thirty billion now adjusted for inflation it's to drill in fifty billion the revenue base of the country has basically been static for eight years the spending most of it controlled by our colleagues on the other side because they were in charge until last year spending has gone up fifty percent and again you don't have to look at some projection or some gas or some economist estimates let's just look at what's happened on the record revenue flat spending up substantially when our colleagues controlled everything the house the senate the white house and what happened to the debt the debt exploded this isn't a actually this isn't guessing ahead this is what's happened in my friends across the aisle you control everything you control the senate you control the house you control the white house and here's your record the debt exploded that's some projection that's some guesstimate of the future this is what has happened the revenue was flat the ics the spending went up dramatically went up about fifty percent and the debt exploded as a result now that's just that's not a projection that's not a claim that's a fact that's a fact i think my colleagues with the chair please let me know when i've come completed fifteen minutes and secure will so advise i thank you mr president first to commend the senator from north dakota and i will for the way they conduct this debate this is always a model for how the senate  work sometimes toward the end it's not might at least at the beginning it is and what we're supposed to do here is act like grown ups  deal with big issues based arguments on principle and come to results we often are able to do that in these two senators are among the leaders in helping them make that happen this is a week during which we talk about the federal budget but i want to talk more about the family budget because what we do with the federal budget makes a big difference to the family budget and we know what's happening this week in homes in tennessee in north dakota and i with all across america is people talk about family but they're worried they're concerned about whether there'll be enough money at the end of the month to pay the taxes that will be doing april about whether  be enough money to continue to pay gasoline costs that are three and a half dollars a gallon for gasoline or even higher in some parts of the country that we they're worrying about whether there be enough money to afford a reasonable health insurance plan and whether the homes that so many americans have been able to buy will maintain the value they're worried about whether we're going to be able to keep our advantage in brainpower so we keep our jobs from going overseas and what our schools are going to be good enough to help our children have good jobs those are in small businesses are worried about the cost of runaway lawsuits and women who are pregnant rural areas are worried about having to drive sixty miles to a doctor because the high cost of medical malpractise is around the o b g y n doctors out of the rural areas and women are having to go to the big cities or drive long distances for prenatal health care to have their babies those in the work with the capital markets and there are tens of millions of americas americans who do want to revive those capital markets those who are sitting in traffic jams want us to to build roads and bridges and roads and airports we want simpler taxes we'd like to have less government that would affect the family budget and maintaining a good balance in labor management relations for example not getting rid of the secret ballot in labor relations or keeping the right to work law those are important i saw in my own state of tennessee having a right to work law help attract the auto industry and suddenly instead of having very few auto jobs a third of our manufacturing jobs are auto jobs and our family incomes have gone up so let me talk for just a moment about what republicans want to do to help balance the federal budget the the republican the ranking republican on the finance committee and the ranking republican on the budget committee have presented evidence that the democratic budget that is being proposed this week will wreck the federal budget and greatly damage the family budget it will do that by raising taxes by more spending and by more than we've heard those arguments here today and we heard them last week i want to talk about the other picture that's possible and that would be by taking the republican pro growth plan to help balance the family bu set of the democratic budget for more taxes more spending and more debt this week traditionally this budget week when we talk about the federal budget is usually a week in which we're so awash in a blizzard of charts and of speeches and abstractions and of competing statistics it's very difficult to make much sense out of the whole discussion but what i'm suggesting is not very hard to make much sense of out of this is a debate that we hear quite a bit in in december when we abated the energy bill we on this side were willing to join with many democrats and pass a fuel efficiency standards which is the best thing that this congress has done to reduce our dependence on foreign oil thereby reducing our use of oil and thereby helping to stabilize the price of gasoline but first we had to stop an effort from the other side to add twenty billion dollars in tax earlier this year most of us on this side joined with most on the other side to pass the economic stimulus plan but first we had to reject forty billion dollars in more spending that the other side wanted to add to the proposal my point is this is not a new argument that that side would propose more spending more taxes and more debt and  would say let's have less of that but there's another part to the story on the republican side of the aisle and exactly what we would do what is our positive program to to help balance the family budget over this we will be hearing proposals to lower to keep taxes low there variety of proposals to do that one would lower corporate tax rates from twenty five to thirty five percent that would help keep jobs in america that helps the family budget one would index capital gains for inflation that would help keep jobs in america that helps the family budget i would like to see is make permanent the expensing provisions that we passed in the stimulus package that would help keep small businesses healthy in this country create new jobs those incomes would increase family incomes and that would help the family budget we would like to lower energy costs as well and bring some common sense the discussion about energy that would mean from our point of view more nuclear power because that's the cleanest power if we're really serious about climate change in this generation about cleaning up the sulfur in the one trojan in the mercury we need to remember that sixty six percent of all of the clean electricity we produce in america is produced by nuclear power and instead of instead of wasting dollars by spending for example eleven billion dollars to build to subsidize more large wintered we could spend the money to encourage the building of nuclear power we could encourage reprocessing of nuclear waste reduce by ninety five percent the amount of that waste and storage making it easier for nuclear power more oil would increase the supply of oil and reduce the price of oil simple economics tells us that most of us on this side are ready to give states the option to drill for oil and gas off the coast of america you can do that at a distance it can't be seen it can be done safely and then a significant amount of the royalties from the revenue from that can be taken into the state put in a trust fund which would either lower taxes or protect the coastal areas or could be spent to improve the higher education system the state of virginia has said it wants to do that is most of us on this side of the aisle the republican side of the  g bill i would like to see is take some of the money that we're spending and use it to give incentives to utilities to increase in is to increase incentives for using electricity in the off peak hours to put that in plain english the tennessee valley authority uses about twenty seven thousand megawatts of electricity on any given day typical day on the average but it night it has seven or eight thousand megawatts that it doesn't use so if we had ways to plug in hybrid cars at night we wouldn't have to spend money for new plants and we could lower the cost of electricity improve the quality of the air and deal with climate changing at the same climate change at the same time that's part of the republican plan not just republican ideas but the republican plan which we hope is so compelling it attracts democratic support to help balance the family budget on the republican side of the al we want to make sure that every american has health insurance without the government choosing the doctor we have a variety of proposals for doing this but all of them try to make sure that we won't have the government choosing the doctor we want to integrate the idea of every american having access to health insurance with two words private sector and we believe we can do that and do that in a way that lowers the cost of health care and mesa basic health care plans available to every american one way of course to do that would be as i mentioned a little earlier to stop r lawsuits that are driving up the cost of medical malpractise lawsuits and causing o b g y n doctors to leave rural areas we have pregnant women in tennessee who drive sixty or eighty miles to memphis for their prenatal health care that i have their babies because the o b g y n doctors health care costs their medical malpractise costs are so high because of unnecessary lawsuits that they've left town and gone to some other place we could enact a small business health insurance plan which has significant support on both sides of the al but we haven't been able to get a through the congress if it would help one million more americans it is estimated to have health insurance at a lower cost so these are some of the ideas that we believe would make a difference in helping the family budget most americans are concerned today about the values of their home are a number of proposals that would simply add billions of dollars in spending as a way of approaching the housing slow that we would like to see proposals like that of senator isaacson from georgia that would adopt an idea that we had the one nine hundred seventy s or the government did which is give a five thousand dollars tax credit to the homebuyers use the marketplace bring back into the marketplace those who would buy a foreclosed home or or or new homes or the idea that i believe there is substantial agreement with on both sides of the hour which would increase the amount of money that would be available to state housing agencies to help refinance sub prime mortgages or mortgages that are now headed to foreclosure or in foreclosure in terms of education i know i know for a fact that if you want a stronger economy and higher family incomes you have to have a focus on education better schools better colleges better universities mean better jobs and that doesn't always mean more spending for example giving parents more choices of school particularly low income parents with the idea of a pell grant for kids would be one way of helping a hardworking american family make sure that its children had a chance to and a good school another way to do that would be to pay outstanding teachers more money for teaching well this weekend there was a story in the new york times about a charter school in new york city where teachers are being paid one hundred twenty five thousand dollars a year and the manager of the school said i'd rather have a school with thirty kids in the very best teacher rather than a classroom with thirty kids in the very best teacher rather than a classroom with twenty and an average teacher i agree with that mr president and so let us double the amount of money that we would spend for the teachers incentive fun in acted in no child left behind which would give to state and local governments funds to experiment with programs that reward outstanding teaching and app standing school leadership by paying those individuals more we have strong agreement here about the america competes that we understand since world war two that america's technological advantages been the source of its gro and using some of the funding that we have in this budget to have a sufficient amount of funding to give a middle millionaire have children low income low income children an opportunity to take advanced placement tests to higher math and science teachers according to the america competes act and to put us on a path to double funding for the physical sciences all those are things that would be part of a republican pro growth plan to help balance the family budget so madam president what i would say today is that as we begin this debate what we're likely to see is two very different visions of america's future question really is who century will will it be a chinese century or european century or an indian century in manic thank you very much are conclude my remarks and three four minutes in that i ask unanimous consent for another four minutes like abjection so the question is whether whether we will adopt a democratic budget which according to evidence presented by the republican leaders of the budget and finance committee would raise taxes raise spending raised it and wreck the federal budget or whether we will adopt the republican pro growth plan make room for it in the budget which would we begin to keep taxes low which would begin to lower energy costs which would help make it possible for every american family to have health insurance without the government choosing the doctor which would stimulate home but which would make more room for science which would adjust our spending so we're able to reward outstanding teaching and giving parents more choices of good schools that's a different picture of how we move ahead in this country a real we hear a lot of talk about change a real change would be stop more taxes stop excessive spending stop more debt and focus more attention on the family budget as a federal budget that emphasizes lower taxes lower energy costs lower health insurance costs stimulating home buying more for science and more for better schools that's really the way to create better jobs could i think about twenty twenty five minutes i went on i yield such time as the sender may consume and again i want to thank the senator from new jersey who is truly an outstanding member of the budget committee has made incredibly particularly want to thank him for his leadership in structuring a budget that i and convince on life the president's budget speaks to the shared values of the american people speaks to the priorities that our nation needs to pursue meets the challenges that our country has and ultimately goes to the very heart of turning this economy in a much different direction so that it can work for working families and under his leadership we have a budget that i am proud to support on the floor of the senate and that whether you live on east or west or north or south i think that americans will find this budget as they become more fully aware of it as one that has the integrity the honesty and as well as the the the purpose is to meet the challenges and the chairman deserves enormous credit for working with all members on both sides to try to achieve those goals and i appreciate his leadership madam president this week in the united states senate we are fighting for the economic future of america this is the week that we put together on the floor of the senate the federal government's budget and that budget is more than just a balance sheet of revenues and expenditures it is a balance sheet of priorities and values lines of numbers come together to form a bigger picture laying out a vision of where we plan to lead the nation every year when we make the budget we'll look at where our country stands how we can improve the lives of the american people and what we can do to make sound investments that brighten the future of generations to come it is a responsibility that we cannot afford to take like when we create a budget we have to answer some fundamental questions what are the most important problems we face as a nation what are the challenges of middle class working families and how do we meet those challenges together now several weeks ago president bush gave us his answer and his answer was there's nothing wrong with america that can't be fixed by giving away more tax breaks to the wealthy giving away more subsidies to big oil companies continuing the war in iraq and never admitted what it costs the president is fighting to keep taxes low for the wealthy and wants to make it up by charging veterans more for their health care parity that's the answer some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle giving as well they agree with the president at the american people should just cover their eyes for ten their problems don't exist and that everything magically will work itself out i believe madam president that a vote for the president's budget is a vote for the status quo is a vote the way things are going in america in terms of this economy the democrats see things quite differently here's what we see our economy is continuously weakening and tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs the price we pay for health care is spiking through the roof while the value of our homes is falling through the floor baby boomers worry about whether they're going to be able to retire with dignity and seniors to worry that the strong base of social security could crumble right up to them our climate is in crisis and our attachment to an umbilical cord to foreign oil means our entire way of life and by a liquid thread the government is going into debt to the tune of more than ten billion dollars per month to finance a war in iraq that hasn't made any of us safe while local police and fire departments are getting squeezed for funds and crime in our neighborhoods is on the rise if you've worked in newark all your life and just lost your job we hear you if you're scared to walk through your neighborhood and candidly closes violence on the streets we hear if your family might be in danger of losing your home in trenton or long branch or north hollington or if teaching at a school with a budget stretched so far as it can go in hamilton plainfield are asbury park if your commute to work just keeps getting more frustrating in cherry hill if every day you drive by a bear an industrial site that's not being redeveloped intends grove appalls for if it's a struggle to pay your college tuition in new brunswick or pay your heating bill in toms river or pay your health care costs in edison democrats understand what people in new jersey certainly i do and people all across america are going through none of us can stand up here and ten that one budget can be the magic bullet that makes  of these problems disappear one year isn't enough time for that one year can't undo seven years of the bush administration's mismanagement it turned a record surplus into a soaring deficit one year can undo five years of the war in iraq that has claimed thousands of american lives and instead of a bit more than a half a trillion dollars that we could have used to make americans lives better in one budget we can't fully fund all the programs that deserve our support or give the tax relief we want to middle class working families not under this administration but this year we can set the wheels in motion of the long and indispensable process of change we can develop a plan to meet the challenges we face head on and we can start to move our country forward and this is exactly what the senate democratic budget does is a vision that our budget puts forth for our nation a nation that is more prosperous with more affordable health care on the path to energy independence a nation of safer neighborhoods and better schools a nation we can all be proud of above all our budget is designed to get our economy growing get that economy growing and moving again that's the first and foremost priority of this budget the bush budget supported by many of our republican colleagues create jobs in china while the democratic budget creates good paying jobs here in america democratic budget focuses on rebuilding our infrastructure expanding incentives for green initiatives in industries and investing in math science and engineering and technology american businesses create and he the best jobs here in america our budget puts the family budget first it provides middle class tax relief by extending the marriage penalty really a child tax credit patch for the alternative minimum tax that will protect millions of middle class families from paying higher taxes next year it works to make college more affordable by extending tuitions tax credit and it supports job training programs that will prepare the workforce for the twenty first century and this budget moves us down the road to energy independence and helps create a high skilled workforce and green collar jobs now i'm proud to have pushed for funding for the energy efficiency and conservation block grants a provision i off that in our last energy bill to provide cities with support for projects that cost more efficient use of energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions we all know that oil and natural gas prices are sky high sea levels are rising along with the temperature so this program is a key part of our strategy to meet those challenges and the democratic budget recognizes that we can think about national security without thinking about hometown security while our resources are being drained day off today on the streets of baghdad  we're struggling to protect high risk targets on the streets of our own neighborhoods you know our police departments are just the fall call away during an emergency our brave men and women in law enforcement of dedicated themselves to serving and protecting our communities so it's unbelievable to me that the bush administration has reduced or eliminated nearly every major and crime program over the course of the last seven years especially since crime and violence have been on the rise in the country according to the f b i reports crimes going up violent crimes going up the bush administration's cuts to the most essential public safety programs  very essence of homeland security go down what should be going up is going down which should be going down is going up how can we expect law enforcement to carry out their responsibilities and respond in a moment's notice when the federal government is backing out of its responsibility to support law enforcement people in my home state of new jersey remember on september eleventh it wasn't the federal government that provided the immediate response it was the local police and firefighters and emergency management and medical units from our hometowns it in the years after september eleventh the administration has left our local communities to shoulder far too much of the financial burden our budget however will ensure that first responders across the nation will get the resources they need and i was proud to work with chairman conrad to ensure that homeland security grants that our communities rely on most were protected in this budget democratic budget restores more than two billion in misguided cuts the president made the state homeland security grants the port security interoperable communications rail and transit security our budget will ensure that states facing threats from high risk targets or densely populated areas communities that are near ports chemical plants airports cities with mass transit or rail systems will not be shortchanged by restoring more than seven hundred fifty million in cuts to grants to firefighters will also ensure that our fire departments can buy new equipment or ensure that our fire stations or f unlike the president we will keep our commitment to fulfilling the recommendations of the nine eleven commission and will keep our commitment to our first responders and we more than double the funding for the byrne jag program that many local law enforcement officials across the country many of visited me considered the most successful crime prevention program in recent history i'm proud to have introduced an amendment that was passed unanimously in the budget committee setting aside a minimum of five hundred twenty million to fund it and i'm going to ensure that we continue to support this vital program we've also included language to help the f b i cut down its massive backlog in evaluating immigration applications for those who do follow our rules to legally enter the country putting down this backlog is essential that the f b i is going to be able to quickly separate those who have come to pursue the american dream versus those who may have come to destroy us and our budget puts a priority on making health care more affordable and more accessible to all americans we work to create a reserve fund to block president bush's unilateral severely reduce federal health care funds to states for low income families these are this is the very essence of the social safety net that we as a society should be judged by the reserve fund would also help protect new jersey's family care programs from the president's to coney and cuts to children's health coverage scheduled for the summer we've included support for other legislation and this budget includes funding for the patient navigator programs which i worked hard to have passed into law patients are having trouble figuring out a complicated healthcare system wherein they don't know how to get early screening or don't know about options for follow up treatment patient navigators make that someone is there to help our budget also keeps our commitment to our schools our teachers and our students and i'm proud that our budget provides the largest increase for elementary and secondary education  six years instead of taking money away from our schools while asking them to do more our budget will fund programs that provide enrichment and opportunity to our students we don't just say education is a prior put our money where our values are by providing free billion dollars more than the president or no child left behind and eight point eight billion more than the president for education and training overall we soundly reject the president's proposal to freeze education funding and eliminate forty eight programs in the parchman of education including education technology from mentoring reading programs and vocational education instead of pretending that our young people aren't facing severe hardships when it comes to paying for college our budget makes the needed investments in grants and scholarships for college and allows for an increase in the pell grant maximum next year that's to support our young people deserve and under this budget that's the support they're going to get i've often said madam president that as someone who grew up poor in a tenement in union city new jersey the first in my family to go to college that would never have happened but for the power of the federal government being able to provide for the opportunities for grants and loans and that power gave me the educational opportunity  foundations that allows me today to be the junior senator from new jersey the reality is is that that should be a birthright for every young person in our country willing to work hard and give something back to their nation this budget meets that madam president let me close by saying our debate over the budget is a debate over the direction of the economy the fulfillment of our shared values and the direction of our country president and those who support him are offering the same old ideas that got us into this mess in the first place ideas that have weakened the economy and hurt the middle class you know if you asked for more of the same it seems to me you get more of the same and those who are happy with the economy that we're in would be happy with the president's budget those who are languishing and that's the overwhelming majority of american families in this country under the president's economic policies the reality is they want to see change and that change is represented in the democratic budget democrats have a fiscally responsible plan to get our economy moving again and strengthen our national security the budget we're putting forth cuts taxes for the middle class create half a million new jobs here in america and we do all of this while working towards a balanced budget and paying down debt it's a plan that puts forth a basic idea about what america should be it should be a country where anyone willing to work hard can get an education and a job a country where everyone has access to services that can keep them healthy a country where a lifetime of hard work guarantees the right to retire with dignity country that knows its past and cares about its future madam president let's invest in the future of pass this budget let's begin the hard work of making that vision a reality and changing the economic circumstances for families in our country that's just a baby it is all about that's what the democratic something he said which i think sets the tone for the discussion of the budget i believe it was on a march fourth two thousand and seven interview on sixty minutes when the distinguished chairman said i believe first of all that we need more revenue now i won't pretend that i know the exact context in which this statement was made but it is not the first time that i've heard democratic colleagues say we need more revenue in one of our informal meetings colleagues said we're going to need a much bigger revenue stream when the next president is elected that individual was presuming of course that it would be a democratic president yes of course just the thought the record straight let me say it very clearly as an independent we need more revenue we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world we have people who are hungry we have mothers who can afford child care yes sir we need more revenue we should ask the wealthiest people in this country to help us come up with that revenue but in prison i'm happy to have the senator from vermont confirm that on the other side of the aisle there is a a belief that the united states government needs more revenue i would actually put it the other way around especially in time of economic difficulties and i think we all agree that our economy is not in great shape right now there is a discussion that we may even be in or very close to a recession and of course the worst thing to do during that period of time is to give the federal government more revenue to take more revenue out of the pockets of taxpayers average americans who have to pay attention to their own budget as a matter of fact our problem is not the lack of federal revenues were collecting more money now at the federal government level than the historic average over the last forty years in this country so i hardly think that the federal government needs more revenue and i would argue that instead our families need to keep more of the hard earned revenue that is a result of the efforts of their families and working hard every day but it is true that because many on the democratic side of the aisle have plans to spend more money as my distinguished colleague from vermont suggested that they therefore see a need to take more money from taxpayer pockets so that we here in washington in our in from that was infinite wisdom can make the decisions about how that money should be spent as i said i think that's the wrong prescription virtually any time but certainly at a time when we may be heading into a recession it at least is the case that our democratic friends in their budget would raise taxes in some cases not all but in some cases to pay for this additional spending that they believe should occur and so as with last year's budget which would have increased taxes by nine hundred billion dollars this year the budget would increase taxes by one point two trillion dollars to one point two trillion dollars the biggest tax hike in the history of the united states of america but once again there is a suggestion out there that we can soak the rich and nobody else will have to bear the burden but i think that the top one percent would pay something like twenty five billion dollars in taxes that that's the amount that we could expect from this budget in zero nine and of course that wouldn't begin to take care of the spending proposals that have been added up on the other side of the aisle every time we try to target the rich in order to collect a lot of money to pay for our spending here in washington we end up hating everybody else and the best example of that is the alternative minimum tax they emptied originally this tax was designed to ensure that even millionaires in this country would always pay some taxes that they couldn't avoid tax liability by taking advantage of write offs and deductions and credits and other provisions of the tax code that anybody's entitled to take advantage of but if those provisions meant that you could write off or offset your income with losses or deductions that therefore there's no tax liability we said no that's not right they a m t will come into play at that point so everybody has to pay some taxes well it seemed like a good idea at the time what's happened in the meantime we all know because it has not been indexed for inflation we now this year had something like twenty three million taxpayers subject to that kind of alternative minimum tax liability something that people on both sides of the aisle have sought to avoid we don't want to tax everybody we don't want to hit the middle class let alone other taxpayers but it's a good example of how when we try to aim at the rich we end up somehow always managing to hit the poor or the middle class and that's the same thing through here in the budget there's a suggestion that we're only going to hit the rich two problems with it number one it's not true as i'll point out after a bit and secondly you wouldn't begin to get the kind of revenue that our colleagues say they need in order to engage in the spending programs that the budget would call for a couple of other examples here the energy and education tax incentives in this budget must be paid for by other tax increases the same applies to middle class tax relief well how much money could we really collect by inforcing the revenue collections everybody owes these taxes and if we just went out and collected the money how much could we really expect to get well the experts said actually not very much you'd have to end up spending more than you would end up collecting in many cases because it's not a matter of just going out and collecting a new debt but rather forcing the kind of bookkeeping on various kinds of small businesses that would probably put most of them out of business they were if they were really to keep the kind of records that would enable us to collect the kind of taxes that we suggest maybe that they go so this business of recouping a portion of the tax gap and using that to pay for these spending programs is one that does not have the support of those who have testified before the finance committee bottom line is we're not going to be able to collect the kind of revenues in the increased taxes that are called for here in order to pay for the spending programs that democrats have  identified and finally there's talk about a so called reserve fund now this is an interesting concept and sort of well there's going to be money out there because we promise we'll put money in it and so we can afford to therefore raise our spending in anticipation that will put money in this reserve fund the amount of reserve funds included in the budget not grown to thirty this year representing up to three hundred billion dollars in new taxes and spending as i said much of that is it looks good on paper but it doesn't come about in reality i'm going to get to a final point in a minute about collecting revenues and what that has to do with the death tax but let me deal with a couple of other items before i talk about the death tax the chairman excuse me the ranking member of the budget committee has noted something that started last year and it certainly included again in this year's budget and that is the fact that the budget enforcement mechanisms which were put into the budget last year among great fanfare about how we're not going to have any sham budgets we're going to have pay go whatever we spend we're going to make sure that we collect in advance turns out that that's been waived more times than it's been abided by and with the budgetary sleights of hand that were put into place last year we find that the same kinds of things roll over into the budget this year with the result that again we have greater debt that isn't really going to be paid for notwithstanding what the budget seems to suggest the house budget included reconciliation instructions pay for a one year extension of t patch by presumably raising taxes on oil and gas companies taxing private equity and codifying this the so called economic substance doctrine the the senate committee did not include reconciliation instructions in the senate budget resolution i presume because of the conclusion that at the end of the year last year the a m t did not need to be paid for obviously there's an understanding in this caucus that those who oppose higher taxes on oil and gas and there are those who oppose higher taxes on oil and black gas and oppose taxes on private equity would be very difficult thing to get such a bill passed here in the senate but no one should be surprised to see that the very same reconciliation instruction could very well magically appear in the united states senate after a conference in order to get around republican opposition to higher taxes that's why you've heard many republicans predict that when the conference report is concluded on this budget if indeed a budget is passed and it comes back here to the senate we're going to see some things that never would have been in the bill at this point in time and which i hope my colleagues would would recognize and would oppose at that period of time i said before that i would get to the matter of who this budget really hurts i said as we have in the past trying to focus on the rich we always end up hurting other people who are some of the other folks that would suffer in this project well that includes families seniors people with low incomes small businesses in other words just about every group in this country that we really don't want to hit with higher taxes but when when that current tax rates expire at the end of two thousand and ten and the democratic budget permits the rates to go back up to where they were before the so called bush tax cuts we're going to see one hundred sixteen million taxpayers start sending more of their paychecks to washington c the poor federal government which needs more revenues as my colleague said earlier for the seven point eight million taxpayers taken off the rolls if the current tax policies are allowed to expire seven point eight million individuals and families who currently don't owe any income taxes because of the way that we constructed the two thousand and three tax cuts they'd be put back on the rolls again so there you've got people in the lower income brackets seven point eight million taxpayers we took off the rolls they would come back as taxpayers under the democratic budget families forty three million working families with children would see their taxes raised by an average of twenty three hundred dollars in the year two thousand and eleven twenty three hundred dollars on average take a security guard earning fifty thousand dollars with a wife and two kids and see his taxes go up by twenty three hundred dollars in two thousand and eleven let's say a widowed teacher's aide with two kids see her taxes go up by eleven hundred dollars in two thousand and eleven well that much may not seem like a lot of money here in washington d c but it's a lot of money for families working very hard to make ends meet worrying each month about where they're going to get the money to do all of the things they need to do we tend to think in the in this body and in the congress generally not in terms of millions anymore or even hundreds of millions but billions of dollars and in fact trillions are starting to creep into our  lexicon we need to get back to focus on what families are really concerned about and the thousand year two thousand there are four thousand here being a lot of money to these families who else is going to get it senior citizens eighteen million senior citizens will see their taxes rise by an average of twenty two hundred dollars under this budget so every democrat to proudly cast a vote in favor of this budget just understand this budget assumes that seniors will have an average tax increase in two thousand and eleven of twenty two hundred dollars and elderly couple with forty thousand dollars in income if the democrats roll back our current tax policy a couple over age sixty five with forty thousand dollars in income will see their taxes go up by twenty two hundred dollars in two thousand and eleven eighteen million seniors will see their taxes increase if the current tax rates are not extended which is not the case under the democratic bill and seniors especially benefit from reasonable capital gains and dividends tax rates because frequently they have small investments they're part of the teacher's pension or some other fund that pays them dividends and thirty percent of taxpaying seniors claim capital gains more than fifty percent of taxpaying seniors claim individual dividends which would of course increase their tax liability under the democratic budget we talk about small businesses small businesses are the engine of our economy they provide more employment opportunities than all of the big businesses combined and yet they pay the income tax rate at the highest level which is the level of the quote rich so whenever democrats talk about taxing the rich understand that there are shot  also includes all of the small businesses because that's the rate that they pay out so in the tax world small businesses are the same thing as high income individuals is that who we want harm especially at a time when our economy being in jeopardy as it is it has to rely upon the jobs created by small businesses well seventy five percent of all individual returns in the top one percent of income include business income in fact eighty three percent of all individual returns above a million dollars included business income think about that that means that the bulk of the people who are reporting income in this category include business income small businesses pay fifty four percent of all individual income taxes this man a president is is one of the worst things about the democratic budget not just for the lack of equity not just because it hurts individuals but because it has a devastating impact on our economy at this critical time if tax rates are allowed to rise to their pre two thousand and one levels twenty seven million small businesses will see their tax bill increased by over four thousand dollars i'll repeat it twenty seven million small businesses will see their tax increase by over four thousand dollars i might just no parent statically that there is a direct correlation by the way between high taxes and high unemployment in the united states we've had relatively low taxes because of the bush tax cuts we collect about thirty four percent of revenues as a percent of g d p in fact exactly thirty four point two percent and our unemployment rate is four point eight percent in the european union the tax rates are more than ten percent above that they collect forty five point four percent of revenues as a percent of their g d p and their unemployment rate is almost eight percent and seven point nine percent right at the at this moment so if we want higher unemployment then raise taxes it's a pretty sure way to get there i want to conclude by discussing briefly what this budget does with respect to the death tax because this has been a matter of particular concern to me and i've talked to chairman baucus about this matter in the finance committee i offered an amendment to reform the death tax and in exchange for my green delay the amendment aside because the other side didn't want to vote on it the chairman agreed to hold hearings with the goal of trying to report out a death tax reform proposal sometime this spring he's now advised me that that's not going to happen we'll have a hearing but we won't have a markup to put out a bill that's very very disappointing and yet the budget actually assumes that such a bill will pass the budget as i understand it has a provision for  death tax for so called death tax reform it's not very good reform because it would freeze the rate at forty five percent which is a very high rate of taxation it would set the exemption level at three point five million dollars which is not bad but it could be better i have a better idea about what real reform would look like what i'd like to do is to set the exempted amount at five million dollars per person index that for inflation i put the top death tax rate at no more than thirty five percent i think it ought to be closer to twenty five but in the spirit of trying to reach a compromise here i'll propose that we at least have no higher than thirty five percent this would protect  almost one hundred twenty thousand families family businesses and family farms from having to pay the death tax each and every year and it would promote continued economic growth and job creation it's interesting to me that  united states has the third highest estate tax rate in the world and is thirty seven percent above the international average twenty four nations have no estate tax there are only two countries that have  higher than ours ours is would be forty five percent of the democrat budget in france it's only forty percent the average is about thirteen percent and one of the reasons that other countries don't have this kind of  tax at the time of death is because of the amount of money that people will spend to try to avoid it and it's been estimated as a matter of fact that there is almost an equal amount of money spent each year in an effort to try to avoid payment of tax as there is paying the tax itself and by trying to avoid it i mean hiring lawyers and accountants and buying insurance policies all of which cost a lot of money but due to some extent but let me just conclude my point on this by if i might do i do appreciate the intercession of my colleague earlier acknowledging that folks on your side of the aisle would like to see a lot more revenue because of the spending you'd like to accomplish let me just finish this point about the death tax the united states treasury estimates that the estate tax reduces bequests by fourteen percent individuals are either choosing to save less or rely heavily on estate planning which is a large dead weight loss to the economy a death tax cost more money to comply with than it estimates it takes about thirty eight hours to complete form seven o six the federal estate tax return the planning for businesses can range from five thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars for a family limited partnerships and up to a million dollars for closely held businesses fifty two percent of the states who file or return were required to incur sizable legal accounting and other professional expenses even though they owed no no tax so the man president might my point about the death tax here is that almost no one thinks that it's fair almost everybody acknowledges that it should be reformed we've tried year after year to reform it we have not been able to get the necessary votes to accomplish that though virtually every republican has supported reform the finance committee assured us that we would work toward the goal of getting a bill this year but now says there won't be a goal and a quote reform in the budget here it turns out to be very little reform at all in fact it was the same reform that we passed last year as part of the budget but as everybody knows the budget isn't a lot of budget as a goal and we didn't follow up on that goal when i tried to do so i was asked to back off or a future commitment here that we try to work on it this year now we're told we're not really going to do it this year so let's just understand that what we would be doing in passing a budget that theoretically has a proposal for death tax reform isn't really serious we're not really going to have death tax reform and for those who vote for the amendment which  will be offered here to suggest that there will be death tax reform understand that if you don't follow it up with real action to pass a bill that reforms the death tax then this is nothing more than than an un kept promise it's my colleagues as they think about this to recognize that will be held accountable and we now have a year of experience following the democratic budget that was passed last year and we see all of the unfulfilled commitments that were made in that budget now and since the budget tracks so carefully this year what we did last year one hask to ask the same questions is it going to be the same this year where on death tax for example we're not able to get relief but as i said i'll propose an amendment that i think takes a little bit better stab at death tax relief i would hope that we could get support as we have from some of our democratic colleagues on that to demonstrate that we really want to do something substantive this year on that subject rather than simply put it in the budget and claim that we have to have done something when in fact everybody knows that just putting in the budget doesn't actually change anything we just close man a president by saying i have to yield but i'll be happy to stop and let my colleague from vermont just go ahead if you'd like to do that i want to acknowledge the hard work of the chairman the budget committee who's here i know he's very much committed to trying his very best but at a time when as he acknowledged many folks on his side of the aisle think the federal government needs more revenue we're just in a in a debate in which we have to agree to disagree he always does so in an amiable way and i respect that but i just believe that it's the american taxpayer who deserve more revenue not the united states government and therefore reluctantly i'll be opposing this budget in the form that it's in and hope that we can make substantial changes to it in a true spirit of bipartisanship and i think  that a president the senator began by quoting me about the need for more revenue and was kind enough to indicate he didn't know the context of it i just thought i'd provide the context because this was a sixty minutes interview sixty minutes program interview and they were asking me in the context of the controller general the united states warning the american people we're on an utterly unsustainable fiscal course because the debt is soaring before the baby boomers retire and that we face a very serious consequence if we don't deal with it so the one question put to me was do you think taxes ought to be raised senator conrad i believe first of all we need more revenue the next sentence with the senator did not provide we need to be tough on spending and the next and after that also the center did not provide and we need to reform the entitlement programs we need to do all of the let me just say i'm not alone in q the ranking republican on the budget committee said this at a hearing on our long term fiscal challenges this is the republican ranking member we also know revenues are going to have to go up if you're going to maintain a stable economy in a productive economy because of the simple fact that you're going to have this huge generation that has to be paid for so the senator's reference to my quote was in the context of dealing with the enormous imbalance between the revenues of this government and the expenditures of this government and my response was yes you're going to have to do something about revenue and yes you're going to have to be tough on spending and yes you're going to have to reform the entitlement programs and also i said in this interview none of which aired was the first place to look for revenues not a tax increase first place to look for revenues to go after the gap the difference between what's owed and what's paid to go after these offshore tax havens and abusive tax shelters that was the context within which i said it now let me just indicate why this matters certainly agree with the distinguished chairman of the budget committee on both of the subsequent two comments one that we should reduce spending and to that we should have entitlement reform and i would only make the point that i don't see a lot of reduced spending in entitlement reform in the budget but perhaps the chairman could go on to discuss that as well and i thank you for your doubt and i thank the gentleman for his courtesy i would say to him i do not believe in title meant reform is ever going to happen long term entitlement reform in a five year budget resolution i believe the only way we're going to get entitle not refer form is a bipartisan effort that's what senator gregg the ranking republican and i have offered which is a task force of sixteen members equally divided republicans and democrats to come up with a long term plan and i'll be very candid and i think the truth is it is going to require more revenue again i would say before any tax increase first place i'd look at these places where people are not paying what they legitimately owe when the vast majority of us do now i must say i i used to be a tax commissioner i was the elected tax commissioner of my state i was chairman for several terms of the multistate tax commission senator dorgan and i are probably the only ones who have voted the books and records of companies and individuals i can tell you there is loads of money out there one reason i was elected the united states senate is i found for my state lots of money that wasn't being paid over to the state of north dakota because people were fudging large companies were fudging and senator dorgan and i and part made our reputations by going after them and very successfully collecting money from taxpayers who weren't paying what they legitimately and i could go through chapter and verse of what i found as i examined the books and records of major companies i've shown some of it here on the floor a little hot a little five story building and cayman islands the claims it's the home of twelve thousand six hundred companies now they're not they're not doing business out of that little building in the cayman islands they're doing monkey business they're avoiding their taxes i showed earlier another building in the cayman islands five story building that we now know is being used by one company alone to dodge hundreds of millions of taxes they owe to the united states and that's not right i would also say with respect to the tax cuts that have been promoted by this administration over whelming lee they've gone to the wealthiest among us here in two thousand and seven those earning over a million dollars a year on average got a tax break of almost one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year i don't think that's right i mean i've got very wealthy friends as i think probably all of us in this chamber knew who said to me i don't need it i don't need that hundred twenty thousand dollars tax cut i'm much more worried about the debt that is being sent to our kids senator sanders well thank you senator from arizona has just left the the floor unfortunately but i did want to point out make two points he has referred to something he calls the death tax which is what we call the estate tax which was developed by president teddy roosevelt way back when what he forgot to mention is that this a state tax and as i understand it the senator from arizona if he had all of his wish fulfilled would repeal the estate tax completely it benefits only the wealthiest three tenths of one percent of the population so all of the concerns about the onerous impact of the estate tax it benefits three tenths of one percent ninety nine point seven percent of the families will not pay will not benefit at all from the repeal of the estate tax and the second point is if the estate tax were completely repealed mr chairman of the estimate is that over a twenty year period it would add about a trillion dollars to our debt eight trillion dollars which like the war in iraq is simply not paid for so when people talk about fiscal responsibility i find that a little bit hard  to and how they could dump on all the trillion dollars in one national debt which benefits only the top three tenths of one percent of the population which means that will be the middle class and working families obliged to have to pay that off over many years so i think sometimes what our friends on the republican side talk about fiscal responsibility i'm not quite sure where they are coming from a mr president i thank you by what a budget is about all the values of our country and all of the priorities of our country and within that context it's important to understand what in fact is going on in america right now and the simple reality is that the middle class is collapsing everybody who gets out of gets into their car in the morning and pays three dollars and twenty cents for a gallon of gas goes to work and finds that they're paying a lot more for their health insurance than they used to understand they don't have a pension where one time they were promised a pension understands that over eight million americans since bush has been president have lost their health insurance the middle class is in collapse wages all going down what tens of millions of americans during the bush administration private sector job growth has averaged less than fifty thousand per month compared with over two hundred twenty thousand under the clinton administration since president bush has been in office from two thousand and one nearly five million more americans slipped into poverty median household income for working age families down by twenty five hundred dollars a half million americans watched their health insurance three million watched their pensions the annual trade deficit has more than doubled and over three million good paying manufacturing jobs have been was the price of gas at the pump at home eating oil has more than doubled while exxon mobil made forty billion in profits last year wasn't any country any company in the history of the world the personal savings rate recently defo low zero something that hasn't happened since the great depression and home foreclosures across a now the highest on record turning the american dream of homeownership into an american nightmare for millions the reason that i raise these issues is to point going it is important to put the bait over the budget in a general context this is not some abstraction this is not some academic exercise what we're talking about are the priorities of the american people within the context of what is really happening to the middle class and working families and added to that i found it interesting that my good friend from our zon talked about the european union tried to compare the united states in terms of tax policy does a country's well let me also compare the united states to some other countries today the united states has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth we have the highest infant mortality rate of any major country on earth we have the highest overall poverty rate of any major country on earth we have a lot just gap between the rich and the poor the most people behind bars and we are the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program but i wonder if my friends will get up here and talk about the european union might on occasion mention the kind of health care systems that exist in ever every single one of those countries which guarantee health care to all of their people try to describe the types of parental leave programs that exist when families have a baby americans could not understand the extent to which those countries are so far ahead of us in terms of family values so while the middle class in this country declines while poverty increases while we have the highest infant mortality rate of any other country while seventeen thousand americans die because they don't have any health insurance there is another reality in american society today a reality that we should also be talking about here and that is this the president that's the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good since the nineteen twenty s according to forbes magazine the collective net worth of the wealthiest four hundred americans increased by two hundred ninety billion last year four hundred families two hundred and ninety billion dollars increase last year to one point by one point five four trillion dollars in addition the top one percent now owns more wealth than the bottom ninety percent you know sometimes my republican friends talk about averages and so forth but that's not the reality here if you look at the american economy like one would look at a football game or a baseball game the important question to ask is who is winning who is losing well let me be very clear the middle class is losing working families are losing the people on top have never had it so good since the one nine hundred twenty s they are winning and they are winning big time and to ignore that reality is to ignore what is happening in american society the question then becomes given that reality where do we go from where the where do we go from there what we do know is the president has given us his answer president has brought forth a budget he has told us that in his budget we don't have enough money to meet the health can needs of this country so at a time when our health care system is the same degrading the president has decided that we cannot adequately fund the children's health insurance program and that we should cut medicare and medicaid by more than six hundred billion over the next decade think about health care system disintegrating more and more people uninsured more and more people high deductibles and copayments the president's response let's make a terrible situation even worse the president has said this budget that we need to reduce the number of children with receiving child care by two hundred thousand kids any model any parent understands that our current child care situation in america today is an absolute disaster we to single mom go out and work but we forget to ask what are those bob suppose though with their two year old or their three year olds should we leave the home alone in the apartment or should we provide quality child care for them well in vermont and all over this country it is increasingly difficult for families to secure quality affordable childcare at the president's brilliant response is let's cut the number of children receiving child care assistance by two hundred and i would hope that every member of the senate would be deeply you million needed and embarrassed about that reality taking place within this country there is a housing crisis all over america in vermont over america i'm not just talking about  foreclosures talking about the needs of working families supplying safe and affordable housing president's response to the middle of this process let's provide one hundred thousand fewer sector and eight thousand vouchers to low income families the president in his budget has said not enough money with special education we made a promise to school districts all over america decades ago where you said if you mainstream kids which i think is a great idea we will pick off the very high cost of special education that was the promise and today in vermont all over america more and walk it's all coming in with special ed needs school districts are paying outrageously high property taxes to accommodate those kids i think it is time to keep the promise that we made to school districts that adequately fund national education yeah i think we should do that i think we should adequately fund heads thought so that all the families in america want their kids to get a decent thought so that they're not behind when they add to the first grade have that opportunity but somehow in the midst of not funding the needs of our kids not funding housing not funding why he's not funding virtually every need of low and middle income families while the president does have some money available if you are rich the president has money available for you the president believes that we have enough money to provide eight hundred twelve billion dollars in tax cuts for households earning more than one million per year over the next decades not for our children not for the homeless not for the hungry but for people who are earning over a million dollars a year that is an absurd and obscene sense of priorities fortunately while the budget resolution we will be debating this week is not perfect it is a vast improvement over the request for education including the law just increase for elementary and secondary education programs since two thousand and two and starting kind of that of cutting back on the needs of our veterans which has long been the history of the bush administration this budget resolution provides three point two billion a grief over the president's budget for our veterans and set of ignoring the urgent need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels this budget resolution provides eight point four five billion to invest in clean energy create millions of good paying green collar jobs and energy efficiency instead of cutting back on our nation's enormous infrastructure needs can you imagine can you imagine the engineer's civil engineers tell us we have over a trillion dollars in unmet infrastructure needs and this white house is refusing to even acknowledge the severity of the program is asking the cities and towns of the hard pressed to come up with the money this budget resolution provides almost nine billion dollars more than the president for our roads bridges highways sewers and clean water improvements not enough but it is a step forward but mr president i think that over the long term we can do even better than that we've made progress in this budget we can do better one area that i'll be paying particular attention to is our children mr president it is not acceptable to me as i said earlier that we have the highest rate of child poverty among got children where are all of those people keep talking about family values and family values how do they continue to ignore the reality that by fall we have the highest rate of trial major country nearly one one out of every five children in this country lives in poverty that a a family values that it's a national disgrace and what happens to these kids when they become adults will many of them will do well but many of them will not you may have seen mr president recently and autos in the papers talking about the fact that the united states has more people behind bars at great expense great expense but states for the federal government that any other country more than china it but i happen to believe that there was a correlation between the fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty where kids drop off the wagon when they are young they drop out of society they do drugs they did the struct of activity they end up in jail we spent fifty thousand dollars a year keeping them in jail rather than providing the child care and the educational opportunities that we need the president in my opinion there are three major trends  american society that we should be addressing in this budget process first the fact that the united states has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country and the gap between the bear was very rich and everyone else is growing wider second this i mentioned earlier that we have the highest rate of trials of poverty and third and i know the presiding officer has made this point over and over and over again that we have a nine point two trillion dollars national debt which is soaring to ten trillion dollars but under the bush administration we've seen a three trillion dollars increase in the national debt this is a debt that is unsustainable economically it is a debt that is immoral because it was simply piling it up and leaving it to our kids and our grandchildren and i think those us some of the trends in american society that we should be dealing with in this in this budget this the president of this week i will be offering an amendment which as being co sponsored by senators durbin a costly and box of which is a very simple amendment doesn't go as far as i personally would like to go but it is a step forward perhaps in changing the nature of the debate that we have here on the floor of the senate it puts the needs of our kids working families persons with disabilities and senior citizens on fixed incomes ahead of the wealthy that's what it does specifically this amendment would restore the top income tax bracket to thirty nine point six percent for households earning more than a million dollars per year that's all the only group of people impacted households earning more than a million dollars the that is three tenths of one percent of our population and we use that revenue to begin to address the most urgent unmet needs of our kids dealing with job creation and deficit reduction according to the joint tax committee restoring the top income tax bracket with people making more than a million what it was  thousand before the bush tax breaks for the wealthy would increase revenue by thirty two point five billion over the next three years including ten point eight billion in fiscal year two thousand alone we have a choice we have a choice as  we can give thirty two point five billion dollars for the top three tenths of one percent people making at least a million a year including billionaire as that's one thing we could do or else we could do something else with this money and let me suggest that we should do something else let me suggest that in time when all of the presidential candidates are talking about change change change when the american people want to move our country in a new direction then they maybe decide it can begin that journey of taking with this nation in a new way which is more equitable it is more fair and it begins to address longstanding social needs so he has the option thirty two and a half billion dollars more in tax relief for millionaires and billionaires one option i suspect many of our friends on the republican so i think that's a great idea or there is a no other option let me suggest the other option ten billion dollars over a three year period to go into the program of special e this will not only allow school districts the opportunity to better educate kids with special ed needs it will also lower property taxes the local taxes and most importantly it will keep the promise made to school districts all over this country the federal government made a promise that it would fund forty percent of the course the special ed of fortunate today or about it seventeen percent want to raise credibility let's keep the promise we made to school districts all over america let's take care of some of our most vulnerable kids ten billion dollars goes to that then this amendment would also increase head spot by five billion over the next three years every study indicates that a head thought works it gives kids it gives kids will otherwise don't have the intellectual and emotional environment the chance to do well when they get to school aid is a good investment better investing five billion and had thought that five billion in jail that this  would provide for billion dollar increase for the childcare development block grant program so that working families all of this country when i was shake a fair shot at trying to find affordable child care this amendment puts three point five billion dollars increase into the food stamp program in my view hunger in america is not something that we should be about this will take us a small step toward addressing hondo this program but also put four billion dollars into the light the program because nobody in the united states of america should go cold so cold in the winter or die of heat exposure when the weather gets one hundred twenty and you don't have an air conditioner and this program this amendment would also provide three billion for school construction create good paying jobs in process to make sure that our kids are good schools in which to learn and also mr president this amendment would reduce the deficit by three billion dollars so that's what we do we reduce the deficit we protect our children we protect the most vulnerable people one option or give another thirty two billion in tax relief to people who don't need it i think the choice is pretty clear and i hope this amendment will receive widespread support  mr president senator from michigan thank you mr president first i want to thank our colleague from vermont for his passion for caring deeply about the people of the country about the future about the children of the country and i could not agree with him more about what has been an underfunding or a very very important investment and that isn't special education the federal government was supposed to pay forty percent of special education has never i believe gotten over eighteen or nineteen percent and so i want to thank him for the amendment that he will be offering later i also want to thank a distinguished budget chairman who is someone who does such an extraordinary job on a daily basis on such a wide range of issues but there is no one more committed to the long term fiscal health of the country no one more committed to getting our priorities right no one who works more effectively cross the aisle to try to bring people together to do the right saying and so i want to thank our distinguished colleague as chairman of the budget committee for all of his incredible leadership and pointing us in the right direction in creating a budget resolution that i'm extremely sooner you'll be happy i just want to thank the single lady from the state of michigan who is an incredibly valuable member of the budget committee also incredibly important member of the finance committee and the agriculture committee were able to serve on three committees together that's rare around here and my admiration for her grows every day in terms of her leadership we could not have produced a budget resolution as responsible as this one one that embraces the needs of the american people and i think the values of the american people as closely as does this one without the leadership of the senator from michigan and i just want to tell her how much i appreciated thank you thank you that means a lot i appreciate those comments and mr president i'm going to take just a few minutes this evening because i expect to have multiple opportunities in which to participate in and talk about various parts of this budget resolution which i believe really does conflict the values and the priorities of the american people that's what budgets are that's what our own individual budgets are when we look at our own checkbooks where we spend the money we hope it reflects the values that we want to project  sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't in my own budget my own checkbook but the reality is that that's our job in terms of the federal budget and where we invest where we invest that makes sense for american families i have to say that listening to colleagues tonight as i had the opportunity to preside colleagues in the other side of the aisle what i hear unfortunately mr president is more the same more of the same that we have seen now for the last eight years six of those eight years have been  completely dominated by colleagues on the other side of the aisle live a republican president republican congress and unfortunately in my mind when we talk about what they're going to propose unfortunately and totality and what we have seen what we see is more debt we see more tax cuts for the wealthiest among us we see more spending in iraq at the same time less in vestment in america that's exactly the opposite of what we ought to be doing and our budget changes that it focuses on balancing the budget by two thousand and twelve and two thousand and thirteen it provides middle class tax cuts so that we can make sure the folks who really are trying to hold things together everybody talks on the floor about middle class families people being squeezed on all sides people saying their gas prices go up their health care costs go up child care costs go up gas prices go up and yet the reality is unfortunately that the budgets have been put forward by this president don't help them at all the help them at all i'm proud to say that we have a budget that in fact investors invest in america and i want to speak to just one piece of that last year we set up three main priorities for our budget and was very proud of those wonderfully fun veterans health care to make sure that we are keeping the promises to the veterans of america we did that last year we are doing it again this year and will continue as long as we are in the majority to make sure that's the case we said we want to make sure more people have the opportunity to go to college and we passed the largest financial aid package since a g i bill after world war two that was number two the number three was children's health insurance which we passed on a bipartisan basis it was an extraordinary effort now bipartisan way we actually had the votes to overturn a presidential veto could not do that in the house of representatives but we made children's health insurance adding ten million children of working families to the give them the opportunity to be able to make sure their children had health insurance this year we we continue those items but we have three more items the three items that we have checked and mr president just to be simple what i would say is our priorities are jobs jobs jobs and i can tell you  coming from the great city michigan that's what we want our focus to be certainly we're talking about middle income families who are struggling and the net the best stimulus that you can possibly give somebody is a good paying job so they can pay their bills take care of their family send the kids a college be able to have the american dream and i'm very proud of the fact that our budget focuses on three priorities jobs jobs jobs how do we do that well we have three pieces in our budget we focus on green collar jobs and i'm very proud of the fact that an initiative i put forward is incorporated into the budget and pieces of that i know that our presiding officer has been passionate about pieces of this and lead on this as well but we've said we know there's a new academy we know that alternative energy and moving forward and ways that are going to address global warming and stop our dependence on foreign oil can create jobs as well and so we have a major new initiative in this bill for what we're calling green collar jobs secondly jobs rebuilding america watter projects sewer roads bridges we're at a point in our country where we have aging infrastructure a lot of us baby boomers are aging as well but at the same time so is the infrastructure around us and the great thing about investing and rebuilding america is these are not jobs you can outsource to another country these are jobs right here in america good paying jobs rebuilding america that's our second priority our third priority is to continue our focus on education and on job training we know there are new jobs we need to be focused on job training we need to be focused on those who lost their jobs because of trade fully funding trade adjustment assistance for people to go back to school and gain new opportunities so mr chairman we are saying jobs jobs jobs and i want to focus specifically on the piece that i have been most involved in and this is very exciting we passed an energy bill last year with a number of programs and it that we're not funded but there were great ideas this year we come back we say let's make it a reality let's make those things a reality in this budget energy efficiency and conservation providing over one point one billion for state and local communities to not only focus on energy effi scene conservation buildings weather is a sion song which we know there's a huge amount of energy savings to be had by focusing in this area but it also creates jobs blatz and lots of jobs putting people to work weatherizing buildings and focusing on energy efficiency secondly advanced battery technology this is something near and dear to my heart because for us to go where we want to go in terms of new alternative fuel vehicles it involves focusing on advanced battery technologies we are doing that but not nearly as fast as other countries in the american budget last year there was twenty two million dollars and yet you can look over to china japan south korea hundreds of millions of dollars being spent now as a result of that we see very tangible things happening when ford motor company came forward with the first ford escape hybrid american s unfortunately even though the brainpower came from here the engineering came from here the battery came from japan because we aren't making them here we don't want to change from dependence on foreign oil to dependence on foreign technology so investing in the future and with battery technology is incredibly important not only for vehicles but battery storage is critical for other kinds of things when turbans so other kinds of areas where we need to be able to move forward with alternative energy battery storage is critical so i'm so proud the fact that we put forward for the first time an aggressive investment in innovation and in production here at home retooling older plants we want as we have new standards for fuel efficiency coming into play we want to make sure that we are retooling our older plants to keep american jobs here biofuel production and access meaning infrastructure you know it's great i come from the state we're growing the biofuels we're making the automobiles but if you can't drive up to the service station and fuel with eighty five revile fuel it's really in the end doesn't going to matter so being able to have that infrastructure and investments in infrastructure is absolutely critical and then finally a green job training program to foot refocus those jobs that we know are there for the future again the presiding officer has been a passionate advocate and i know believes strongly that jobs and energy and energy focus focusing on global warming and jobs can go together and that's what this does this says we're going to take this first step to focus on the american people so mr president what i would say again as we go forward there are many many things that are in this budget that are very important but what i'm very proud of is the fact that we have put forward a budget resolution with three very simple priorities jobs jobs jobs and that's right where the american people are people want american jobs but i can care for their families they can have the dignity of work they can have good wages and be able to have the american dream and this budget resolution is leg laser focused on senator from oklahoma thank you mr president i'm going to spend a few minutes tonight just with some observations my hope is over the next couple of days is that outside something has never been done on the senate floor before and that is to discuss or we as a body fail where all the time telling the american people what we do great or how bad the other side is but rarely do we take a look at ourselves and say what's going on one of the problems we face i had a great weekend this weekend in oklahoma we had part of oklahoma got snow but part of it had sixty five degrees and sun and no wind but i had some experiences i wanted to share because i think they're pertinent and also pointed to the issue that we're discussing i also would note that i've been listening to the debate all afternoon and the debates nothing but finger pointing one budget the other budget how bad somebody is what somebody didn't do what somebody wants to do and it strikes me that as i reflect on the people let us all this weekend in their hopes and dreams that most of this debate don't have anything to do with it most of this debate has to do with us partisanship based on children not partisanship based on the future but who can quiet who can manipulate it who can create doubt and  undermine someone else's position and as a traveler oklahoma city my brother's been in the hospital for sixteen days he had a major operation called of what will takes a long time to get over for pancreatic  carcinomas that's what they operate do that operation for him and i got to thinkin he has four kids and he has four grandkids and one on the way and i've got to think it is a lay there with an energy t minute feeding tube through his jejunum what does he want for his kids what would he like for us to be talking about for the future we'll put that one up and down the halls were a whole lot of other people just like him p sixty one years old and he's not thinking about himself as he lay there in the hospital is think about what's the future first grandkids  f one of my longest term friends visited with this weekend and he's not thinking about him self right now he's thinking about his grandkids he's he's got one and one on the way  be delivered this next weekend and he did mention one thing about me about himself and he mentioned about what the future was for its kids i think about the ladies that i saw this morning in my medical office about to have babies you know their hopes and their dreams or about the generation that's become about how this miracle births going to take place over the next couple of weeks for both these ladies one of the names natalie and one was named brooke and one is a first time mom and the others of second time mom and the things that they're looking forward to with their children is totally dependent on whether or not we act as adults in this body and i've just been struck at how far off the mark we are i think is a great guy i looked at what he did last year he's a pretty fiscally conservative guy here it can can't sponsored less than twenty billion dollars worth of new spending over the next five years co sponsorship  and many times in the last three or four years we've had debates about how we handled the problems so you know it's the differences between us aren't that great what guides us though and what is destroying our country i fear is the fact that we're putting political parties and the benefits of the political budget ahead of the best interest of our kids now one of the things that i hope to do tomorrow is to outline to the american public in this body everything i've found in the last three years in terms of waste on an annualized basis now what i want to hear that again everything i found in terms of waste where we don't do it right where we're wasting taxpayers dollars every year and i can conservatively just on what i found and i can fully document i want you to understand that not tom coburn opinion it is the opinion of the g a o the see below oversight committees and other committees of congress that are documenting what i'm about to share tomorrow and what i'm going to share is how we failed because we're talking about a budget today and i don't want to game it i told can con i'm not out the game his budget you know it will spend more money and we will go that's not a whole lot different than what we've been  but how dare we spend another penny when i can document and none of you can refute three hundred sixty six billion dollars a year of waste or fraud three hundred sixty six billion dollars here now let's explain what that means to the average consumer if you're if you're at home today and you're in a twenty five percent tax bracket  in terms of income tax what that means is is that about nine percent of the money you pay we blow so that's one third that's nine out of the twenty eight percent one third of all the money you pay the federal got not count yourself security medicare taxes but if your income taxes one third of it we blow the and says is there any areas where we save money we're not doing well but we could be more efficient or we could improve things we've had a rescission package since one thousand nine hundred five that's thirteen years that we've not had a rescission package lots of reasons for that none of them are good and that matter which party's interest to control there hadn't been a rescission package before that for thirteen years so it's not about parties it's it's not about game and somebody because somebody is a democrat or somebody is a republican our our problems in our nation today are much more serious than partisanship they're much greater then the beneficial effects of winning an election based on how you can make somebody else look lousy one of the important things that i hope will come out as we go through this in the next couple of days is whether or not we really care about what's going to happen you know you look at the stock markets it's got weak knees today you look at prosecute montes they're rising there's no question that we're in a significant time of economic weakness depression is  described as two quarters successfully in a row that where they were probably there we maybe nobody knows nobody has the crystal ball to know that but the fact is is what we're leaving right now  don't say that like we're leaving them a gift according to the government accounting office if you're born tomorrow you've been herit four hundred thousand dollars  unfunded liabilities does anybody know anybody who is working and struggling and making a middle class income or even an upper income who's going to be able to afford that just paying the interest on it is twenty eight thousand dollars a year and you've got to absorb all that by the time you get old enough to work if you're talking about another six hundred thousand dollars where the interest before you ever start paying off any principles so in essence the heritage through our incompetence and our big green and our partisanship because we've got to show somebody up the heritage is is every kid this morning by the time they get a chance to work is going to be accumulated about a million dollars for the debt and the question you have to ask yourself is this what happens to what happens to the dream of a brook or a natalie at the same time we see that in the last eight years the price of gold relative to the dollar is four fold what does that tell us is there a shortage  to be able to pay back the seventy nine trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities that we have left so if we come to a budget for the united states and we pass one which we will probably and we do it absent the why of lookin at three hundred sixty billion dollars plus that is wasted every year three hundred and sixty billion dollars people may say well what is that well it's pretty easy it's how about medicare fraud eighty billion dollars a year how about medicare improper payments we pay people when they don't deserve to be paid not fraud just incompeten ten billion dollars a year there's there's ninety billion dollars in one program there's nothing in this budget that fixes that nevers nothing in the republican budgets that fix that why not i know the answer to why not answer it is why not is because we were too busy making political gains political structures we were too busy being partisan the time for partisanship in our country's pas we may not believe that but history's going to show it david walker on wednesday the controller general the united states one of the fairest most open minded men i believe i've ever met  life is leaving that position now why is he done that he's got a guaranteed job two thousand and twelve great job head of an agency that really is stellar and what it does in this performance when you leave and he because he's scared to death for our country because nobody is listening in positions of power nobody's paying attention to the unsustainable course under which we find ourselves we're not we haven't in the budget we didn't in our b we're not we don't on the supplementals that come through here to fund the quote the war because we load up anywhere from twenty to thirty billion dollars more debt right on top of our kids we hear all these faults in numbers yes i said faults the budget numbers are games the president's numbers about his deficit is wrong the budget committees numbers about the deficits are wrong they're not realistic they don't take into account the fact that we're going to steal about one hundred seventy billion dollars worth of so security money this year hundred sixty three i think is the accurate number we're going to write an iou and then we're not going to tell the american people that we actually increase the debt another hundred sixty three billion we're just going to pass that on to our kids you know just some little little things for you to think about as we outline this is two point five billion dollars a year and so security disability fraud there's another billion improper payments doesn't think about this two point five billion dollars just two point five billion dollars just twenty five hundred millions this twenty five or two million five hundred thousand thousand pretty hard numbers to get our hands a hold of so many hand the next few days i'm going to list down one by one i'm going to go through everything that we've seen in the last three years that continues daily in this federal government that this body want to tack when we offer amendments in this body they're either accepted so they can be thrown out in conference when they actually do something like the census amendment that was in the senate we're now going to be asked for about two billion dollars more for the census even though we've been saying all along there was a problem there we ignored it house conference conferees with the senate conferees ignored it and now we're going to spend two billion dollars more but we're going to do is outline thoroughly just one office is one senate office has found over three years in terms of what it's all going to be fully documented with that most you can see exactly where it came from it's going to be in yourself if you're an american out there struggling to pay your gas not looking like things are looking great for the next six months for you what would you think if all the senators did the had and we really did get rid of all the waste fraud and abuse in the federal government or at least a meaningful component of it and that we really probably could cut six hundred billion dollars out of our budget which would mean we it either do if you want to bigger government you can do more or if you want to pay your taxes you can pay less but most importantly we could live up to the heritage that is ours which is creating an opportunity for children and grandchildren in the future you know i'm convinced that americans aren't really asking for higher taxes what they're asking for is smart spending hard work by us to make sure what we  spend is one what they're asking for is no more earmarks that's what eighty five percent of them are asking for and they're asking for no more bridges to nowhere and what it symbolizes in terms of excess in terms of the lack of common sense or a lack of caring i don't know which it is but the fact is is we're on a collision course that's going to undermine the future of this country will durant's said historian that democracies never fail and are never collapse from without until they have moral decay that cause the collapse from what than when we're spending money of our grandchildren today and not doing anything about it the waste that we have in our budget the question has to be asked is are we already there and we already risen to the point where the political class the little leitz care so much about their positions both parties that they're willing to throw the future of the next two generations of this great country under the bus the next year is critical for this nation as we see what happened today in the stock market and other lower areas as we see consumer confidence decline wouldn't it be nice if the senate stood up to the challenge that's facing this country and did so without the first partisan word about parties and said let's fix it let's  you know i've i've had an ongoing study since i've been in government is to ask federal employees this question and i've never had a different answer and the question is this if you're federal employee no matter where you work or what branch you work and what you do if you had to tomorrow for the sake of our future the come five percent more efficient in other words not spend one out of twenty dollars could you do it you realize i've asked that question thousands of times i've never been told no once i've never been told not once well if that's the case why are we doing it when we are going to have a six so we're now we've got ten trillion dollars worth of debt seventy nine trillion dollars under fifty of unfunded liabilities and talk about that how is it that we find ourselves allowing such things as the military to continue to hang on to buildings they don't want at to the tune of two to three billion dollars a year just in maintenance costs how is it that we have eighteen billion dollars worth of buildings that we don't want but we can't sell because the roadblocks that we've put in the way to be able to sell them how is it that the pentagon pays performance bonuses of eight billion dollars a year to companies who don't meet the requirements  how is it that we are allowing that to continue to happen with none of that for three years why is it happening oh and by the way what's the big stir right now the big stir is boeing didn't get the contract and  or e a d s did nobody's asking the right question on that it doesn't matter who got the contract it's a cost plus contract if we don't know what we want in a refueling tanker now after eight years of study in it we're never going to know and so a thirty five being contract is going to become a forty five billion contract just like all the rest so instead we ought to be insisting if you're doing business with the federal government and making money you have to take some risk there ought to be no more cost plus contracts on procurements like that there would be no whoever has that contract ought to take part of the risk for the american people because they're having a great benefit in terms of the profits are going to make so we have a lot of things in front of us what is three hundred fifty billion dollars in annual waste what does that mean here's what it means means three thousand dollars three thousand dollars for every family that's what we're wasting three thousand dollars for every family in this country were bought were painted away because we care more about partisanship than we do the future we care more about making the executive branch look bad and we do the future we care more about our earmarks than we do the future you know the debate over earmarks there's a legitimate role for the federal government to have the senate senate and the couse direct spending that's not the dispute but the way you do it best is t eight has been earmarks because when you're mark you don't vote against bills because what happens is the next time you're mark the committee chairman comes up to and say you didn't vote for my bill last time sorry can't feel a thing so what we have is this almost extortion like process where as earmarks are granted to you if you vote for a bill you're either looking at the total bill you're looking at do our children and have the next do our children deserve better are they worth our sacrifice is it really worth it for us to not necessarily get what we want if we can secure the future y i'm having trouble knowing whether this body really believes that we we've outlined to appropriation committees we've everybody's been sent port of everything we've found in the last three years it's been essentially ignored because we're too interested in making sure we beat the path to looking good at home you know when you take an oath to be a u s senator and i don't think this is set off enough there's nothing in that old that says anything about your st e not here to represent the vital interests of oklahoma i was elected by oklahomans to represent the vital interest of this country and when i get confused about where my loyalties lie our country suffers and that's exactly what's happening to us right now we've gone from six hundred earmarks in  a high of fourteen thousand eight hundred seventy almost twelve thousand last year what is going on where's the common sense people from vermont to oklahoma says california to new mexico to montana they know the so the special interests of the few are being advantaged while we sacrifice those that come after us now that's a farm  indictment but you can't continue to waste three hundred sixty billion dollars a year ignore oversight not do anything about it and then puff up and say republican democrat i'm going to pass a budget and i'm never going to look at any of that well that's exactly what my party's done that's exactly what the party in charge today is doing we're ignoring the rare very real factor that this government needs hands on management it needs a gross eve overside and it needs this three hundred sixty billion dollars worth of waste eliminated in this budget and if we pass this budget or any other by of whether my party offer one or not anybody even the president but if we pass any budget the dead take into account for this what we're doing is spitting all over the hopes and dreams of the youngest americans in our country were saying you don't count what we got ours you'll have to worry about getting yours we'll take you'll have to give and oh by the way we're sorry there's not going to be enough resources left for you to have a college education or to own a home or for us to defend ourselves or for you to have health care like many of us are going to have as we wander off at sixty five no one that you're going to be working hard through increased payroll taxes just to pay for the promises that we couldn't make a fission and that we over promised so mr president i know i've carried on some tonight but i think our problems are much more severe than what our behavior would i think the degree to difficulty we find ourselves today is directly attributable to our lack of courage we're more interested not offend and somebody than we are securing our kids and grandkids children future that's not something i want to be accused them so i'll take the ridicule of this body for b n dr no we're saying we're not going to spend more money on new things we're not going to have more programs until we can pay for the programs we've got and if it takes one person say and i'm not going to agree to pass bills under unanimous consent i'm not going to agree to not have the opportunity to amend them then so be it the three thousand dollars per family per year is enough to make a difference a big difference in their future i think brooke and natalie's babies are worth it i don't know about you all i'm ready to give up something most of all i'm ready to give up my seat in the u s senate for doing what i think is right in the long term for our country if i do what's politically expedient and win reelection what good is it if i am thinks the very real problems that are facing our country it's time for a gut check in this country it's time for the american people to look at  and say are you really do one for us or you really just do one for you my accusation the as is too often we do for us and not for the generations to come mr president i yield the floor and on saying that that i will be back to outline in detail for this three hundred sixty million dollars let me make sure there bandstand three hundred sixty billion dollars worth of a waste fraud and abuse occurs every year in our budget and we've done nothing let me say it again we've done nothing about how dare us talk about raising taxes how dare us talk about anything except doing the business that should be at hand which is being good stewards of our children's future thank you m the clerk will read the titles of the bills for the first time on blocks as twenty seven thirty eight a bill to identify or native criminal aliens incarcerated in correctional facilities the united states and for other purposes as twenty seven thirty nine a bill to authorize certain programs and activities in the department of the interior the forest service in the department energy and so forth and for other purposes i now ask for second reading on block but i object to my own and request and block objection is h will report senate resolution one seventy eight expressing the sympathy of it at the senate to the families of women and girls murdered in guatemala and encouraging the united states to work with guatemala to bring an end to these crimes is their objection to proceeding to the measure following the print pledge journal proceedings be approved today the money or be deemed expired time for the two leaders be reserved for the use later in the day that the senate proceed to appear to morning business for up to an hour the centers permitted speak their own for up to ten minutes each time equally divided  time as we've already entered into the record in order time into two fifteen be for debate only regarding the budget resolution we've already gotten consent that the recess be from twelve thirty to fifteen for the weekly caucus luncheons and that all time during any morning business period count against time allotted for the budget resolution so that order has already been honored mr president