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[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 116 (Wednesday, August 1, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5880-S5882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. INHOFE:
  S. 3473. A bill to replace automatic spending cuts with targeted 
reforms, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.

[[Page S5881]]

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am waiting now for them to bring up a 
bill I have filed today and will have a number to go with it which I 
will announce in a moment.
  First of all, let me say that the talk of the whole country right now 
is on the sequestration problems we are having. I would only observe 
that I don't know why it is so difficult for people to understand, but 
President Obama has written four budgets and these budgets have come 
before us, and if we add up all of the deficits in the four budgets, it 
comes to $5.3 trillion worth of deficits. I suggest that is more 
deficit than all Presidents in the history of this country for the past 
200-plus years.
  So, people say, how did we get into this mess? Because when we have 
those kinds of deficits over a period of time, we wonder where it is 
coming from. Let me tell my colleagues where it didn't come from, where 
it wasn't spent, and that is military.
  I went over the first budget President Obama had. I went over to 
Afghanistan so I could make sure I could get the attention of the 
American people and let them know how this disarming of America by 
President Obama is going. Of course, if one of my colleagues was part 
of that first budget, they would know that it cut out our only fifth-
generation fighter, the F-22; our lift capacity, the C-17; the future 
combat system; the ground based interceptor in Poland. That was just 
the first budget. Then it has gotten worse since that time. Since there 
isn't time to go over that detail year by year, I can only say that the 
President has already cut in his budget over the next decade $487 
billion, roughly $500 billion, $\1/2\ trillion--from defense spending 
over the next 10 years.
  I would suggest to my colleagues that the American people--this is 
something that is very frustrating, because they assume that when we 
send our kids into battle, they have the best of equipment, and this 
just flat isn't true. The British have an AS90, a Howitzer that is 
better than ours. The Russians have the 2S19 that is better than ours. 
Even South Africa has a system that is a better nonline-of-sight cannon 
than we have in our arsenal. The Chinese have a J-10 that is better 
than ours. In fact, they are now cranking them out to where they rival 
our F-15s, F-16s, and F/A18s.
  So the point I am making here is there has been no emphasis. If we go 
out and borrow and increase the deficit by $5.3 trillion as this 
President is doing, one would think we would be in a position to have a 
lot more robust military, but the military has been consistently cut 
over that period of time.
  In the event the Obama sequestration as it is designed right now goes 
through, that will be another $\1/2\ trillion that will come out of the 
military. Even the President's own Secretary of Defense, Secretary 
Panetta, has said if these cuts take place--talking about the Obama 
sequestration cuts--in addition to what he has already cut, it would be 
``devastating to the military.'' That means we would have the smallest 
ground fleet since the 1940s, we would have the smallest fleet of ships 
since 1915, and the smallest tactical fighter capability or force in 
the history of the Air Force.
  So if we want the United States to continue providing the type of 
global leadership our people have come to expect and meet the 
expectations of the American people--when we talk to the American 
people, they are shocked when they find out other countries have things 
that are better than we have.
  If we want to beat this, then we are going to have to do something 
about, No. 1, what is happening to the military; and No. 2, the 
sequestration.
  I have it all in one bill. In a minute we will get a number for that 
bill. Anyway, it is called the Sequestration Prevention Act of 2012. It 
replaces the sequestration cuts with some smart reforms, and I am going 
to go over those in a minute to show my colleagues what they are. It 
replaces the $1.2 trillion and then has a lot of money left over.
  Let me just kind of go over what this bill would do. People keep 
saying: We cannot do anything about it. We cannot do anything about the 
sequestration, the cuts.
  We had this great committee that was supposed to be out there finding 
$1.2 trillion over a 10-year period and yet we have a President who was 
able to give us deficits of five times that much over just a 4-year 
period.
  What it does, first of all, to come up with this $1.2 trillion, plus 
rebuilding the military--we want to rebuild the military, in my 
estimation, up to 4 percent of GDP. For the last 100 years, prior to 
1990--for 100 years--the average defense spending constituted 5.7 
percent of GDP. That was the average, in times of war and in times of 
peace. Now it is all the way down, after his sequestration, to below 3 
percent; in other words, about half of that.
  What I wish to do with additional funds that come from this bill I am 
introducing today is put that back into the military and bring us up to 
4 percent of GDP--still considerably less than where we have been over 
the last 100 years.
  The first thing it does is completely repeal ObamaCare and adopts 
Paul Ryan's approach to block granting the Medicaid Program so States 
have complete control over the dollars they use to reach their low-
income populations with health care assistance. Together, these two 
changes will reduce spending by $1.1 trillion over 10 years.
  Secondly, it returns nondefense discretionary spending to the 2006 
levels. When this President came in, the amount of the nondefense 
discretionary spending surged. This would have a savings over that 
period of time of $952 billion.
  The third thing it does is it block grants the Food Stamp Program and 
converts it into a discretionary program so States have complete 
control over the design of their nutrition assistance programs to best 
meet the needs of their low-income populations. This provision reverses 
the massive expansion we have seen of the Food Stamp Program under the 
Obama administration, which has literally doubled in size, up to 100 
percent, since he took office.
  On President Obama's inauguration day, just under 32 million people 
were on food stamps. Today, it is more than 46 million people, and they 
receive these benefits. It is going to have to stop. It will continue 
to go up if we do not do something about it. This provision saves $285 
billion.
  By the way, I think it is important to know, when we look at the farm 
program, the farm program is a welfare program because they increase 
all these provisions and call it part of the farm bill. But that is a 
different subject, and I will talk about it later, not today but later.
  The fourth thing the legislation does is it reduces the Federal 
workforce by 10 percent through attrition. Nobody out there is going to 
be fired. There are not going to be any cuts. In fact, it would 
continue to have some modest increases in payment for those who are 
there. Through attrition, the savings would be about $144 billion over 
10 years.
  The fifth thing the bill does is it repeals the authority of the 
Federal Government to spend taxpayer dollars on climate change or 
global warming. This is kind of interesting because very few people 
know that--even though they remember that every time there has been a 
bill on cap and trade, there is a cost to the American people of 
somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion a year, and people's 
heads start spinning when we talk about these large amounts. Sometimes 
in my State of Oklahoma, what I have done is take the total number of 
families who file Federal tax returns and then I apply this to it. This 
would be about $3,000 per family in my State of Oklahoma. Yet even the 
Director of the EPA admits that if we did this, it would not reduce 
CO2 emissions worldwide. That is the Director of the EPA, 
Lisa Jackson, and that is on the record. I appreciate her honesty in 
that respect.
  If we do this right now--what people do not know is this President 
has spent $68.4 billion since he has been President on all this global 
warming stuff. That is without authority because we have clearly 
defeated all those bills. What he has done through regulations is what 
he could not do through legislation. But nobody knows about it, until 
now. Now they know about it.
  Anyway, if we stop doing that over the next 10 years, that will save 
an additional $83 billion.
  Finally, the legislation includes comprehensive medical malpractice 
and

[[Page S5882]]

tort reform. That is the same thing that was passed by the House of 
Representatives and that would save $74 billion over 10 years.
  All told, all the savings generated would be $2.6 trillion--not $1.2 
trillion--$2.6 trillion over 10 years. So do not let anyone tell you, 
we cannot get there from here. Clearly, we can get there from here.
  We use the remaining amount to beef up the military to get back to 
our 4-percent level. I believe if we were to talk to the average 
American, they would say: Yes, let's go ahead and do this. Why aren't 
we doing it now?
  Let me mention one other thing before I conclude; that is, we have 
something called the WARN Act. What that does is require the 
employers--who know because of sequestration there are going to be 
layoffs--to give pink slips at least 60 days prior to the time that 
will happen. Under sequestration, if they do not adopt my act, if they 
do that, then those pink slips would have to be out there by the 2nd of 
November.
  The President does not want that to happen. He does not want the 
Obama sequestration to be pointed out and identified as to what is 
causing them to lose their jobs, so he is trying to get companies not 
to comply with the WARN Act.
  Clearly, the WARN Act says ``an employer shall not order a plant 
closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period after the 
employer serves written notice of such an order.''
  The WARN Act states--this is very significant because if there are 
companies out there that are listening to the President when he is 
asking them not to issue the pink slips, this is what would happen to 
them--it states that ``any employer who orders a plant closing or mass 
layoff in violation of Section 3 . . . shall be liable to each 
aggrieved employee who suffers an employment loss as a result of such 
closing or layoff.''
  In other words, if they do not do it, then that opens the doors for 
all the trial lawyers to come in. Just imagine the cases. At Lockheed 
Martin, they say they are going to have to let go of some 120,000 
people. If they had a class action suit, each one who was let go would 
receive something like $1,000. That would be $120 million that company 
would have to pay. I cannot imagine the board of directors of any 
company anywhere in America not complying with this legal act called 
the WARN Act.
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