July 25, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 126 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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DEBT CEILING; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 126
(Senate - July 25, 2019)
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[Pages S5095-S5097] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] DEBT CEILING Mr. LEE. Mr. President, there is a quote that has long been attributed to St. Augustine, who, during his conversion to Christianity, famously uttered a prayer: Lord, help me be chaste. Grant me chastity, but not yet. The idea behind this is as old as human nature itself, which is that it is easier to have a thought of doing something later than to do that thing now, especially when it is a difficult task. [[Page S5096]] It is one of the reasons New Year's resolutions often result in a spike, an abrupt increase in gym enrollments and memberships. People develop New Year's resolutions; they decide they are going to lose weight; they are going to exercise more; they are going to eat less. Then it becomes more difficult as time goes by, and perhaps over time, some of them might find it easier to say: Well, I will lose weight later in the year. After starting the new year off to a good start, they might say: Well, I will lose more weight in the last half of the year. Later in the year it might occur to them that they will lose more weight in the last 2 months of the year. Regardless, as they continue to delay that moment, the task doesn't get easier; it often gets harder. The budget and spending and debt limit deal that was announced earlier this week reminds me a little bit of this aspect of human nature. It is understandable why this happens. It is especially understandable why it happens in a place where people are elected and where people want to be liked, where supporting greater government spending often results in praise, and calling for even a mild tapping on the brakes often results in rather severe criticism in the press, even by one's own constituents. But that doesn't mean that we can pretend things are different than they really are. So, yes, you can suspend the debt ceiling, and you can waive budget rules, but you can't suspend or waive or ignore the laws of mathematics. We have to remember that at a time when we are talking about a significant expansion of the role of the Federal Government, when we are talking about suspending the debt ceiling for an additional 2 years, we are talking about paving the way for us to spend a whole lot more money through the Federal Government than we would otherwise spend. This is occurring at a time when Americans are already required to work many weeks and, in some cases, many months out of every year just to pay their Federal taxes. In addition to this, after that they are told: By the way, that is not enough. It is not nearly enough because, for a long time, the Federal Government has been spending a lot more money than it takes in. Lately, it has been to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars a year. We have never in our history brought in more money or as much money into the Federal Government's coffers as we are bringing in right now. We are at the very top of the business cycle. We have nearly record-low unemployment, in the range of roughly 4 percent or a little below, which is, we are told by economists, basically full employment in America. At a time when all of these things seem to be going our way and we are enjoying a period of relative peace in the world and in our country, we have record-breaking deficits, and this budget and debt ceiling deal would expand the path, would pave the path for even more of that. That begs the question: If we can't control spending now, when the economy is performing about as well as it possibly can, then when can we? To borrow a phrase from John F. Kennedy, ``If not us, who? If not now, when?'' Let's talk for a minute about America's history with expanding its debt limit, expanding its debt footprint. What we see through this chart that I have to my right is that during a number of periods of crisis in American history, we have accumulated more debt--that is, a more-than-average amount of debt--as a percentage of our gross domestic product. We see various peaks, most of them following and brought about as a result of a major war and, in some cases, some other type of crisis. We have the Revolutionary War. The Revolutionary War was fought and, mercifully, won, and our debt as a percentage of GDP went down. It peaked a little bit a few years later when we had to fight the War of 1812. We won that war, too, and then debt as a percentage of our GDP went down. It remained low for many decades. When we fought the Civil War, it peaked again. It went back to close to 40 percent of our gross domestic product. The Civil War ended, and it went back down. It peaked again at World War I and then went back down. It peaked to a very significant degree at World War II and then promptly went back down. See, through this period of time following World War II--the late forties into the fifties--we had a whole lot of revenue coming in. We weren't accumulating new debt, and we were paying off our debt at the same time that our economy was expanding. Consequently, even though every year didn't result in a balanced budget, our debt held by the public as a Federal Government went down as a percentage of our gross domestic product. But in each of these instances that I described, there was a reason; there was a distinct, unmistakable, finite reason why these things happened. Once those reasons went away, once we had won the wars in question, our debt as a percentage of our gross domestic product--that is, the volume of economic activity in America--went back down. We saw a couple of other peaks. We had the Gulf war and a recession in roughly the same period. It resulted in an increase of debt as a percentage of GDP. That war ended, and that recession went away, and it went back down. Something interesting has been happening. In the last few years, as we came out of the great recession, as we have enjoyed a very significant, historic recovery in our economy, the economy has been expanding, and jobs abound. The economy in which we now live has more people employed in basically every demographic than we would have considered likely a few years ago. Yet, notwithstanding that fact, our debt as a percentage of our gross domestic product continues to go up. This graph in some ways even understates the matter relative to where we were at World War II. We hit the peak during World War II at, I believe, 106, 107 percent of gross domestic product. We are not quite at that level yet today by standard metrics, but if you include in this figure not only the debt held by the public--that is, the debt held by those who purchase U.S. security bonds and U.S. Treasury instruments generally--if you add to that the so-called intragovernmental debt, the IOUs the Federal Government has written to Social Security and Medicare to try to make up for funds that Congress wants access to but doesn't have, we are actually well over 100 percent in terms of our debt-to-GDP ratio. In other words, we are about where we were at the peak of the crisis we were addressing during World War II. That begs the questions: When does this end? How does this end? There is not a world war in which we are involved right now. We are experiencing relative peace. There is not a recession. We are in the middle of one of the greatest peacetime economic recoveries this land has ever seen. So if not us, then who? And if not now, then when? Why is it that we now have to suspend our debt ceiling in order to essentially transfer to younger Americans, to subsequent generations the responsibility of financing the government that we have today? One can easily defend those things when talking about the survival of a nation or about a world war or about a war in which our Nation's survival is at stake. We are not involved in any such effort right now. We are involved in some conflicts around the world, but those are not really what is driving this. What is driving this is that we have a government that is too big and too expensive. This means a lot of things to a lot of people. It is something that should weigh on every American seriously. I believe it weighs especially heavily on younger Americans, not just younger Americans themselves, but people who have children and grandchildren. I represent a State with the lowest median age in the entire country, the State of Utah. We are also the State with the largest percentage of people under the age of 18. I would like to speak to some of those people right now--those people under the age of 18, especially in my State where they are disproportionately represented. Young Americans, those who have not yet attained the age of 18, have had all this debt accumulate--some $22 trillion now by the Federal Government--that they are going to be responsible for, notwithstanding the fact that all [[Page S5097]] of that debt has been accumulated at periods in their life either before they were born or before they were old enough to vote. It amounts to, in a sense, a really pernicious form of taxation without representation. We fought a war over that principle, and we won that war. We shouldn't be doing this defiantly without a plan for turning it around, without a reason to have to do that--a reason that has to do with our very survival--without some sort of plan for getting out of it. But instead of getting out it, we are accelerating into it, and that is troubling. Some might argue, and, in fact, some within this body and in the House of Representatives have argued that so-called discretionary spending is not worth worrying about. Discretionary spending, for those of you not familiar with the term, refers to that part of the government that Congress decides on each and every year that isn't predecided the way our entitlement programs are. In other words, mandatory or entitlement spending, spending on things like Social Security and Medicare that are already set aside--those are things we don't have discretion over. They are already called for by law. We already have to spend money on them. There are those in Congress who will maintain that we shouldn't worry about discretionary spending, which is the primary focus of this measure, of this budget caps deal, and of this debt ceiling deal, because, really, the bigger picture, the bigger concern, and the bigger threat is, in fact, about mandatory spending. It is the entitlement programs, they will say, that really are driving the looming debt crisis. But it is important to point out that we are not reforming those either. We couldn't even stick to the budget caps that both parties in both Houses and the White House agreed to just a few years ago. It defies logic and reason, in my mind, for people to say: Well, we shouldn't worry about discretionary spending because mandatory spending is really where the problem is. No one would ever advise someone struggling with alcohol consumption that they shouldn't worry about consuming too much alcohol if they are also addicted to something else--meth or heroin or some other terribly addictive substance that might also be harmful to them. The fact that you are dealing with one problem doesn't mean that you don't also have to face the other problem. That is the concern I have with this deal. That is the reason I plan to vote against it. I know and I will be the first to admit that there are no easy solutions here. There are no solutions that anyone would look to and say: Yes, that sounds like a lot of fun. I don't want to do that. It reminds me of a time when my sister, Stephanie, was enrolled in a new school shortly after my family moved back to Utah. Stephanie was in kindergarten. Stephanie was asked by the teacher, as they were testing her to try to figure out which class she should be in, to take out her favorite color of crayon and write down her name. My mom watched from a distance as the teacher administered this test. She knew that Stephanie knew full well how to write her name. She watched in a certain degree of agony as Stephanie sat there and didn't pick up a single crayon. After the test was complete and the teacher concluded, mistakenly, that Stephanie didn't know how to write her name, my mom asked her: Why didn't you write your name? She said: The lady asked me to pick out my favorite color of crayon, and they didn't have pink. So I didn't write my name. Sometimes I wonder whether Congress is in the same position as my sister Stephanie when she was at that young age being tested. We don't see our favorite color of crayon. We don't see our favorite option. We don't see any easy options there. In fact, we see a whole lot of options that would involve putting a dent in this problem--this growing, building problem that I have pointed out in the graph--and we see criticism that would likely ensue from any one of those options. Now, I understand that. It doesn't mean that the laws of mathematics will not eventually catch up to us. Winston Churchill is known to have said of the American people that the American people will always make the right choice after they have exhausted every other alternative. Now, I don't know whether he, in fact, said that. If he did, in fact, say it, I don't think he meant it as a compliment to the American people, but I take it as such. It is a compliment. It is what differentiates us from other countries. We do, in fact, make the right choice. We are great not because of who we are but because of what we do, and, generally, at least after we have exhausted other alternatives, we do make the right choice--a choice that reflects the principles of liberty that really have always defined us as a nation. Those principles cannot coexist with an effort that suggests to us that our government is so big and has to be so big that there is nothing we can do about the fact that Americans are required to work weeks or months out of every year just to pay their Federal taxes and then be told that we are $22 trillion in debt. By the time the 2 years contemplated under this deal have passed, we may well be at $23 trillion, $24 trillion, or, perhaps, approaching $25 trillion in debt. Is it going to be any easier then to deal with the problem than it is now? I think not. If not us, who? If not now, when? The way we start making steps in the right direction is to vote against a bill--a bill that, like this one, does not meaningfully address the problem. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from Indiana. ____________________
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