unanimous consent for the quorum call to be rescinded, please.

the presiding officer: without objection. ms. ayotte: thank you very much, mr. president. mr. president, i have been carefully listening to the speeches of my colleagues, including the statements of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and i feel compelled to come to the floor to speak about what i believe is a red herring and a political ploy. this debate is not about women. as the mother of two children, one of them being my six-year-old daughter, i believe it is unfair and inaccurate to say that this is about women and their health. let's be clear on how we got to this point. last year, even though they majorities in both houses, the democrats failed to pass a budget for 2011 or even a single appropriations bill.

and now the house has passed full funding for our military for the rest of this fiscal year and funding for the rest of our government for one week to allow us to resolve the remaining issues. that proposal doesn't even cut title 10 funding. yet we have heard from speaker after speaker from the other side come to this floor and mischaracterize the potential shutdown of our government as being about women's health. so let's talk about what we know to be true. we can end this potential government shutdown right now if the majority allows us to vote on the proposal that the house has already passed that fully funds our military for the rest of this fiscal year and gives us

a week to resolve the remaining issues and to resolve this oncefor all. then we can move on to the bigger issues that we face in addressing the $14 trillion debt that threatens our economic strength, threatens our national security, as our chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has told us, and as a military spouse, i think we owe it to our men and women in uniform and their families who are right now making sacrifices for us overseas and around the world to immediately pass funding for our military for the remainder of this fiscal year to pass the proposal that the house has ma made. our military deserves better than political ploys and red herrings i yield the floor and

suggest the absence of a quorum. thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. grassley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i ask that the calling of the quorum be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: mr. president, before i speak, is there a time limit in morning business? the presiding officer: ten minutes, sir. mr. grassley: i would ask unanimous consent that i could speak for 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: mr. president, usually on a friday, by this time of a friday or even a little earlier, i always have

the pleasure of going back to iowa every weekend, and i'd much rather be doing that. but obviously we've got problems that have to be worked out here and there's reason for staying around this weekend, particularly for those of us that don't miss votes and we don't want to miss a vote hopefully to keep government functioning. but there is one advantage of not being on the airplane going back to iowa and on a friday when you don't have committee meetings and constituent meetings, i've been able to listen to a lot of the speeches today. and you don't get that opportunity monday through thursday very often. and so it's quite a pleasure to be able to hear my colleagues speak as they have on both sides of the aisle so strongly about different held views in this

body about the budget issues and the subsidiary issue as that are being discussed at this particular time. listening to the debate, i've come to the conclusion that it was one big mistake that we didn't get appropriation bills passed last year. and i would hope that people on the other side of the would realize that if those appropriation bills had been passed, that we wouldn't be here today worrying about shutting down government and reaching some gigantic compromise. and i suppose that on the other side of the aisle, there's a lot of -- of ill feeling about not taking advantage of the fact that last year there were 59 democrats and only 41 republicans in this body so the

majority party could just about anything they wanted to do. and, of course, in the house of representatives, it was overwhelmingly controlled by the other political party. and that control, particularly where appropriation bills pass, you know, but looking back now, i realize that there wasn't any attempt to bring up any appropriation bills, which obviously isn't a good way to run the government. and -- and i did listen to some excuses from the other side of the aisle where -- where people were asked, well, how come no appropriation bills were passed? and the answer from some senators said, well, you know, we only had 59 votes and republicans wouldn't let us bring it up. but then i was in a quandary. there wasn't anything stopping the overwhelming majority of the democratic party in the other

body to pass almost anything they want to. because it's almost a political fact of life, whether you have a republican majority in the house of representatives or a democrat majority in the house of representatives they can get -- as long as they stick together, they can get anything done they want get done. and they can ignore the minority. now, they migh may not have beee to ignore the minority in the senate with 41 republicans would stick together -- but they hardly ever do -- do. what a mistake it must have been now for the democratic party not to pass appropriation bills last year so that we wouldn't be going through this, but it wasn't done, i think, now looking back, because probably they didn't want discussion of budget issues before the

election. because they didn't want the public being reminded about a $1.5 trillion deficit. in other words, we borrow about 42 cents out of every dollar we spend and we take in $2.2 trillion and spend 7.7 trillion and is that in the neighborhood of a $1.5 trillion deficit. they probably didn't want that talked about. so come october the 1st, pass a continuing resolution until december and then get through the election and then get through the election and then we'll take care of it when we get back here. but, you know, the elections are supposed to have consequences, and they do have consequences. i mean, if they don't have consequences representing a government an democracy -- and democracy doesn't mean much.

as the president himself said, he took a is shalacking. the new people come in and it's the biggest takeover since 1978 and a lot of people have new things to learn and it doesn't get done until march the 4th and then two weeks to march the 18th and then three weeks until this very day. but what a mistake when overwhelming majorities -- this didn't get done in the usual time when we passed 12 appropriation bills to get things funded. so it was very clear in the election that people wanted to stop this deficit spending, get the spending down, and get the

size of government down. and so the biggest turnover in congress since 1938, they're going to expect some changes to be made and that's what is going on right now on the level of expenditures. now we're led to believe by people on other side that money's not the issue, it's some social policies that being debated and holding this up from happening. but i know this, that the only possibility of not shutting down government, at least that's -- that's partly through, the republicans in congress are the only ones who put forward legislation to reduce spending and to keep government open. it's kind of a commonsense

approach that's used by the other party in sending us a bill that will fund defense through the end of the year, give more time for negotiation on the rest of the budget, and funding defense through the end of the year, you can't fight a war for week to week under how much money you've got to spend. we vote to put in the war on terror, our men and women in danger, you ought to give them as much certainty as you can. and even now the possibility of not being paid or the possibilities of their families not getting the support that they're entitled to. it's just a terrible sin when you ask people to defend the country. so that's the bill that we ought to be taking up. but here we are.

there isn't any desire here to take it up and the president says going to veto a bill. why would the president be vetoing a bill that's going to give certainty to the military, the defense department of what they can have to spend and to do the job that they're supposed to do the most -- the number one function in the federal government, our national security and particularly for the families that are standing behind them. so here we are trying to preempt, as far as domestic expenditures are concerned, the 22% increase that took place in 2009 and 2010. you know, when you only have economic growth of about 2.5% to 3%, you can't be spending money

at 22% increases and that's on top of the stimulus bill that was passed that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8% and hasn't kept unemployment under 8%. so preempt that and go back to the 2008 level of expenditures, and i never heard people complaining in 2008 that there wasn't enough money appropriated to function for the functions of government. that's very necessary that we do that. because you can't incorporate that 22% up here and build that into the base over the 10-year budget window. there's hundreds of billions of dollars difference 2008 level of expenditures and the 2010 levels of expenditures, and that's what it's going to take. we've got to be look ahead for

the next 60 years, not just the next six months. and we need to take this gradual step towards a reduction of spending so the government stops spending money that we don't have. we've got to start making decisions that are necessary about the future of our country and to a great extent washington is responsible for some of this. reduce wasteful government spending. we've got to tighten our belt here in washington as families do at home. one of the rules of digging a hole if -- if you're digging a hole deeper, stop digging. and this bill sent over here from the house will be a first step towards doing that. but for sure the public has a right to know the facts and they don't want us with those facts

that they know that we're leaving our children a bankrupt situation if we don't immediately intervene and do something about it. but also this discussion about getting government spending down has something to do with simpl simply -- simply creating an environment of certainty for our private sector because you have uncertainty in taxes, you have uncertainty in -- in e.p.a. regulations, you have uncertainty from the fiscal policy of the federal government. how much money are we going to continue to borrow and take out, take away from the private sector? all of these things are reluck -- lead to a reluctance

of employers, large and small in this country, to hire people. so this debate is about creating jobs, putting in place a fiscal policy, along with a lot of other sensible policies we ought to do. but, you know, when you use the word sensible policy, people back home might not know this, but this city is an island surrounded by reality. and the only business in this town is government and people in government, including those of us that are elected are in the wagon and somebody else is pulling the wagon and so we have to go home to our districts and bring back some common sense here, and that common sense says that government ought to live like families live.

live thin withi within their me. those are the president's words, not mine. when he put the budget out early february, he said, government has to live within its means. and then what sort of budget does he put out? a 10-year budget window that increases the national debt from $14 trillion t to $26 trillion. so i hope that we get something agreed to tonight. i hope that the government does not shut down, doesn't save money like people think it should, it costs money. but if you don't remember anything else that this senator says today that elections have

consequences and there were great messages sent in this last election and the people expect us to let them know that we get it and that there aren't any excuses in the process. i yield the floor. mr. shelby: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from the great state -- the great state of montana. mr. tester: than thank you. i rise in support of the troop pay. it is common sense much we owe it to our nation's troops from suffering the consequences at the -- if the house of representatives shuts down this government. if we don't pass this major while we still have time, our troops will continue to serve us overseas. they will always be essential to the united states, but if the government shuts down, our troops won't get paid. that's unacceptable. america's troops are america's heroes. they're serving us in difficult,

t-shirty, dangerous -- dirty, dangerous conditions. they're away from their families, away from their homes and communities, they're risking their lives to answer the call of duty. yet, they still hav responsibils that we all have here at home, they have mortgages to pay, car payments to make, families to take care of. we do our service men and women right by passing this bill. it simply says if there's a shutdown, don't make our troops pay the price for the failures of a few extremists in washington, d.c. make sure their paychecks come in on time. delayed pay is the last thing the members of our military and their families should be burdened with. i know there's talk that the house is trying to push through something similar in an effort to cover some bases, but their plan isn't straightforward as this bipartisan bill. their plan to hold our troops harmless is part of a week-long

spending measure loaded up with a bunch of extreme provisions that this country cannot afford. and because it's part of a temporary bill, if it is passed, we'll be right back here making the same argument next week. mr. president, i am always amazed how dysfunctional this process can be. i've been reminded of that a lot this week. here's an opportunity to throw some common sense back into the mix. i ask my colleagues to pass this measure and pass it now. with that, i yield the floor. a senator: million? the presiding officer: the senator from the great state of arkansas. mr. shelby: thank you, mr. president. one thing i would like to say is that i don't want a shutdown -- mr. pryor: i don't want a shutdown and i don't like where we are tonight, the fact that we are here and our backs are against the wall on a shutdown and i think that we, collectively, have done a great

disservice to the american people. i think they deserve better than what they're getting right now from congress. and i know the people that i represent, they're hardworking, they very sensible, kind of like the folks from your hardworking, very sensible state, but they're also very patriotic. and they believe in this country and they believe in the values and the things that make this country great. and they understand, the people of arkansas, understand that right now we have 90,000 troops in afganistan. and we have more than 45,000 in iraq. and they're there to serve this country and to serve the interests of this country. and i can take something local, like the little rock air force base, and i can say that we have more than 5,600 airmen that are -- and about 640 civilian employees that could be affected in one way or another by this

shutdown. about 2,000 employees of the arkansas national guard will be affected. it's 956 guardsmen on active duty would continue to work without pay. 233 arkansas army reservists are deployed overseas, including, 23 that are designated for libya. so the people in my state do not want to see the military affected in any way by the partisan gamesmanship that you see here in washington. in fact, i would add a note to that. i'd says it's uncontion that will be we should add stress to our -- uncontion that will be we should add stress to our military families right now, especially those that are deployed. this is really just unconscionable that we would do that under the circumstances that we find ourselves in tonight.

so let me talk about two leaders who really stepped up to try to solve this problem and try to cut through all the mess that you see in washington, try to cut through the politics as usual. that would be senator hutchison from texas and senator casey from pennsylvania. both of them have worked in a very bipartisan way, as my colleague from montana just mentioned a moment ago, in a very bipartisan way to craft some legislation that would make sure, one way or the other, make sure one way or the other that our troops get paid on time without any disruption. mr. president, we've all heard the word -- or the phrase "hard-earned pay." we will, how does it get any harder earned than by serving in combat for your country? again, it's hard for me to

understand how we are here talking about this tonight and haven't already addressed it. so i think that whatever bill is offered and whether it's a bipartisan bill, which i hope it is bipartisan, whatever gets offered -- and i'm not quite sure at the moment who's going to be the lead sponsor. i have looked at the legislation offered by the two senators i mentioned before. but however it comes down -- and sometimes here in the senate things can change on you for various rngs. but however it comes down, i hope we will not only consider but will pass legislation that will protect our active duty men and women and our reserve component and the coast guard. we can't forget the for-profit guard -- we continent forget the coast guard. they soirve country just like everybody else and they deserve to be included in this. and also we need to give the secretary of defense the

discretion so that he can run his department in a way that won't weaken us. he need needs that discretion. whatever that may mean. again, we may have some differences on the details and one senator may thing one thing. but the bottom line, we need to give him enough discretion to make sure that during that time where we may have to go through a shutdown, i want to make sure that nothing in that shutdown ends up weaning our ability to -- weakening our ability to perform the missions we need to perform and to put our troops in any additional danger more than what they are right now. in conclusion, let me just offer an observation. i have witnessed in the last few weeks on many occasions than i can count senators and congressmen -- and i've even witnessed, you know, the

blogosphere, the comen tarts, the talkingheads, the so-called experts doing exactly what in my rue is wrong with washington. that is, they're playing the blame game. they hold a press conference. they're pointing fingers at everybody else but themselves. it's going on ever everywhere e. we've seen that way too much. the truth is, the folks it's hurting is the american people. our democracy is designed in such a way -- and it has a track record -- where we all know it'll work. and it'll work great and it'll get the job done. and we represent people and we can get in here and debate hard and fight hard and have our differences, but tend of the process we have votes, we make decisions and then we move on. and right now, for whatever reason -- again, this is a problem in both chambers, not just here in the senate, not

just one party that's at fault -- for whatever reason, we're seeing a breakdown in the system. that's not good for the country and that's not good for certainly tongtsz we're talking about our troops. it's certain ly not good for them. mr. president, i could easily spend the next ten minutes at my desk here blaming the republicans for where we are tonight. you know, i know that they've said we hadn't passed anything. that's not true. listen, we've passed extensions six times to keep the government running. six times we've passed extensions. and i -- but i don't want to get into all that because, again, i could spend ten minutes talking about how awful and terrible the republicans are, then i could turn right back around and spend the next ten minutes talking about how terrible the democrats are. because honestly -- and if people would be honest with the american people, both are to blame. i cannot stand here in good

conscience and blame just one person or one party. the fault lies with all of us. and to see that right now here we are because of the partisan bickering, because of the breakdown, here we are quite frankly -- at least my concern would be -- using our military as pawns in this budget fight, again, is something that we should never do. we're not helping anyone. this is not good government. we're not doing our citizens and our people any favors with doing this. so what i would hope, mr. president, i would hope that tonight, before we go out of here, that we would pass something -- again, whatever bill it is, i'm not hung up on who has to be the lead sponsor, what the number of that bill has to be -- i hope we will pass something in some way that will make sure that our troops get paid on time and that it takes

care of our active duty, the reserve, and the coast guard, and it also gives the secretary of defense enough discretion to run his department like it needs to be run. and i think under the circumstances that is not even close to too much to scvment i think that is perfectly within the pounds of reason, and i would hope and pray that tonight before we leave here we could all agree to do that. by the way, i think if we do put that on the floor and we didn't load it up with lots of agenda items, i think we put that on the floor in a clean fashion, i think it would sail out of here probably unanimously. and i think -- i can't speak for the harks but my guess is -- i can't speak for the house you but my guess is we would see the same result down there. so i want to thaifng you and the chamber -- so i want to thank you and the chamber for its time. we may have other senators on

the way to speak. so i would ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business -- for debate only be extended until 9:00 p.m. with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each, with the majority leader to be recognized at 9:00 p.m. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. pryor: mr. president, while we're waitin waiting for r senators, i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. kyl: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: thank you, mr. president. throughout this day, a lot of

our constituents back home have been watching the debate, and i wonder maybe if they're a little frustrated. i talked early this morning about flowing rotten apples at each other. there's been a lot of that here today. i suggested this morning that one of the things we could do while we're waiting to see whether or not an agreement can be reached to fund the government through the end of this fiscal year was to try to shed some light on the process, which undoubtedly is a bit confusing to people. what exactly is it that we're arguing about? how did we get here and what do we have in the future? we talk add little bit about what we are talking about today and hoping to achieve tonight is an agreement that would determine how much we will spend to fund the federal government for the next approximately six months, through the end of september, which is the entdz o- which is the end of the fiscal year that begins each october 1. that is an important propositi

proposition. it is important enough that there's been a lot of very difficult debate about that, as people have seen over the last several days and certainly today. it appears that there is still a bit of a deadlock on exactly how much money should be saved in the last six months of this fiscal year. but when we've concluded this particular debate and determined how much we're going to spend to fund the government through the end of september, we're going to turn to some even more important issues, and they are really going to require our concentration, our reaching across the aisle to talk to each other, to the other body, both members -- both bodies of the congress to speak to the president. we're really going to have to listen to the american people and try to reach important understandings then because then we're talking about funding the government for the entire fiscal year, for 2012, and also trying

to figure out what to do with the president's request to extend the debt ceiling. and as i mentioned this morning briefly, extending the debt ceiling is a little bit like going to your credit card company and saying, all right, i have used up all of my available credit, but i want to buy something else. will you let me spend a little bit more on the credit card? and that's what the president has asked congress to do, to extend the debt ceiling. we'll have a robust debate about that. but let me just see if i can put what we're doing here in this context. we will at least for the year 2011, which we're halfway through, we will have reduced spending by a pretty dramatic amount, somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 billion to $50 billion. don't know exactly how much until we're all done. but when you add that to what we call around here the baseline and multiply it times ten years, you get substantial savings. just on the $10 billion that we saved earlier this month, over

ten years, that $10 billion equates to $140 billion saved over the ten-year period. so, we are talking about substantial money here. but that probably pales in comparison to what we're going to need to save in the entire budget for the fiscal year 2012. and there's no shortage of problems that have attracted our attention, for example, the trillions of dollars in unfuntdzed liabilities coming from the -- unfunded liebilityds coming from the mandatory spending side of our ledger flyings to the wait that we're trying to save money just to keep the government running here. mandatory would mean programs reich medicare, medicaid, social security, some veterans spend and so on. i talked about the estimate of hitting our debt limit. the treasury secretary estimates that we'll hit that debt limit -- in other words, thement that we borrowed on our credit card and can't exceed, that's the

total amount of u.s. legal debt -- no later than may 16 of this year. so may 16 the president says we need to address the debt ceiling. if you're not keeping track, the current debt limit is about $14.3 trillion. so we're going to be pressing up against $14.3 trillion, and we're going to have to borrow more money if we're going to spend more in the next year. so republicans offered a variety of ideas on this, and i just want to alert my colleagues to what some of these ideas are so we can begin thinking about them and hopefully acting on them in the run-up to the debate about what to do about the debt ceiling. there's very little enthusiasm around here for increasing the debt ceiling if we don't also do something to constrain future spending because we don't want to come up against a debt ceiling every few months or years. we need to decide that's going to be it. we're not going to incur any more debt. in fact, we're going to begin to

lower the debt. but to do that, we're going to have to constrain ourselves in some way, to rein in our aptaout for spending -- our appetite for spending. one of the ways to do that that almost passed about, well, just a few years ago in the senate here -- i've forgotten the vote we voted on it but it failed by one vote, and that's the balanced budget amendment. a lot of people think the balanced budget amendment would be a good way for congress to tie our hands so we cannot spend more than we take in. so every single republican has cosponsored a balanced budget amendment. we hope we'll get a lot of support from our friends on the other side of the aisle as well because it clearly would require the federal government to live within its means each year, just as most american families have to do. there's also something that i believe is also a very, very good idea, and that's a constitutional spending limit. in other words, you don't have to require that the budget is balanced if you limit spending

to in this case 18% of the gross domestic product. the advantage of that is that there will be a desire on the part of everyone who wants to spend more money to have a more robust economy because every percentage of growth or every dollar of growth in the gross domestic product means more money you can spend at the federal government level. so i would imagine if we want to spend more money at the federal government level, we'll be supporting regulatory policies that don't wipe out whole industries like the coal industry. we'll support tax policies that promote progrowth, try to keep tax rates at a lower level and not punish companies here in the united states so they have to move operations abroad and so on. in other words, there are things we can do to promote economic growth. that means we have a bigger g.d.p. and if you have a bigger g.d.p., then you can spend more money at the federal government level. but if you don't have a bigger g.d.p., then you can't. it's -- we can only spend 18% of

the g.d.p. under this proposal. that, by the way, is about the historic average of what we have to spend. in the last year and a half, unfortunately, we've gone way above that. we're spending around 22% of g.d.p. it's going up to 24% or 25%, and that's not sustainable, as almost everyone agrees. another idea that is sponsored by senators corker and mccaskill, a republican and a democrat, is they call it the cap act. and that cap act would cap both mandatory and discretionary spending. it would put all government spending, in other words, on the table. it wouldn't just take the discretionary spending that we're talking about tonight to keep the government funded. we would also include all of the other spending. beginning in the year 2013 the cap act would stare federal spending tkeuplts that over ten -- limits that over ten years would reduce spending to

20.6% of the gross domestic product. calculated a little differently, that is an average of the last 40 years of spending. what it would do is create a glide path by which we could gradually reduce the spending so that you don't have to do it all at once. the reality is if we try to be too strong here in the way we're going to reduce spending, we're not going to be successful because people just won't stand for it. you've already seen the debate today and yesterday. oh, my tkpw-dness, you're going it -- my goodness you're going to cut money from this and that. you can't do that. there will always be resistance to reducing spending, and so it's got to be done, in my view -- and both senators corker and mccaskill will agree -- it has to be done in a way senators will agree to each year rather than deciding this is too hard, we're going to give up. since it's only statutory, we could give up. we could waive it by 60 votes

and say too hard, we're going to give up. so it has to be at levels that are tough but over a ten-year period gradually we can reduce. it's a little bit like going on a diet. you didn't get the weight you have overnight and you're not going to lose it overnight. it makes more sense to do it in a way that keeps you healthy, keeps a consensus around here but for sure gets us to the goal that we want to be on so that our kids and grandkids don't have to pay for all of the things that we have purchased. so, this cap act, by the way, has a lot of good provisions like a definition of emergency spending so that we can't game it every year when we decide we want to spend more, we just say well, this is emergency spending and then we don't have to include it in our other calculations. i'd like to see more dramatic reductions. i know other people would too. but as i said, this is the kind of really mainstream proposal that should attract a lot of

attention, i think, on both sides of the aisle. these are just three ideas: the balanced budget amendment, the constitutional spending limit and this statutory cap act. there are a lot of other good ideas, and we, frankly, are going to have to have a good debate about what those ideas are because i will predict that there's no way that that ceiling is going to be increased without congress adopting some of these constraints and the president signing those into law so that we'll know that in the future we don't have to keep raising the debt ceiling. the last point i'd like to make, mr. president, is that there are really two big reasons why we're trying to reduce the deficit. first, we all know we just can't keep spending what we're spending. the interest on the national debt in a little over ten years is going to approach $1 trillion a year. it's over $200 billion this year. it will be close to $250 billion next year. and it keeps going up about $60

billion, $80 billion a year to the point that in the tenth year it's $900 billion-something. well, think about that. you want to spend money on education, you want to spend money on health care, you want to spend money on defense? sorry, we have to spend it on interest on our national debt. this is money we're paying to the chinese or to anybody else that happened to purchase american debt. but it's going to crowd out spending in other areas that we really want to spend money on. that's not good. and as a result, we've got to get this spending under control while we still have an opportunity. but there's a second reason that it's so important, and that is that the more money in effect sucked up by governments, and that includes the federal government, the more money out of the economy that the federal government demands, the less money there is for private-sector growth and

investment. and it is of course in the private sector where most of the new jobs are created. and that's why we need to leave more money in the private sector. we're not reducing federal spending in order to engage in some big austerity program to try to punish people by providing less for them and so on. we're doing it to create more prosperity. the whole idea is prosperity. mr. president, could i just ask unanimous consent for a couple more stph-pbts. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: thank you. in other words, the idea here is to spend less money at the federal government level. thereby, allowing more for the private sector to invest in job creation. thereby, growing the economy, making us a more wealthy nation and helping our families and job creators in the process. i have cited a "wall street journal" op-ed many times, mr. president, and i will close with this.

it's an op-ed that was written by gary becker, george p. shultz, former secretaries of -- he was secretary of three things, including treasury; and john taylor, who is a stanford economics professor. they wrote this op-ed in the "wall street journal." i'll just quote two short paragraphs. they start out by saying "wanted: a strategy for economic growth, full employment and deficit reduction all without inflation." they say "experience shows how to get there. credible actions that reduce the rapid growth of federal spending and debt will raise economic growth and lower the unemployment rate, higher private investment, not more government purchases, is the surest way to increase prosperity. when private investment is high, unemployment is low. above all, they say, the federal government needs a credible and transparent budget strategy. it's time for a game changeer, a

budget action that will stop the recent discretionary spending binge before it gets entrenched in government agencies." and they conclude by saying "we need to lay out a path for total federal government spending growth for the next year and later years that will gradually bring spending into balance with the amount of tax revenues generated in later years by the current tax system. assurance that the current tax system will remain in place pending genuine reform in corporate and personal income taxes will be an immediate stimulus." mr. president, i think this is an excellent strategy for a long-term growth policy. it's predicated on the fact that congress will work in the short term, i.e., tonight to reduce the spending for the remaining six months of this fiscal year. we'll then begin work on a budget that will reduce spending over the course of the next 12 months. and in the context of the debt

ceiling debate, we'll also act on other programs to constrain government spending. it could be a balanced budget amendment. a constitutional spending limit, the cap act that i talked about, or any other idea that people can bring to the senate and house floors and get passed here to begin to constrain the spending not just so that we'll have the money to spend on in the government on the things that we want to do, but also so that we can free up the great energy of the private sector so that investment can once again flow, people can be hired, we can have economic growth and a real sense of prosperity in this country in the years to come. that's the challenge that we face after the agreement is reached tonight. mr. president, i know you share my hope that an agreement will soon be announced and that we can then move on to the other items that i'm talking about here this evening.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from the great state of colorado. mr. udall: thank you, mr. president. i rise tonight as so many of my colleagues have through this long day to urge all of us to join together to prevent a government shutdown. we've all expressed a growing amount of frustration here with what i would characterize as politics as usual under the dome of this great capitol in which

we're so fortunate to serve. but it sure seems like these are the kind of politics where the goal posts get continually moved and no amount of civility can seemingly overcome the impasse that is unfolding down the corridors in the house of representatives. now, i know the presiding officer operates in this way and the american public operates in this way, and they expect us to work together. they expect us to pass an appropriations bill that funds our government. but it appears like some unrelated policy riders that aren't about appropriating money but are about setting policy that they're leading to an impasse that could lead to an unnecessary and costly shutdown of government operations and services. last night -- i don't know where the presiding officer was, but my colleague, senator bennet, was down here. he highlighted how petty this

situation has become. he pointed out that if you and i went to applebee's for dinner tonight and we had a $20 dinner for two and we had a fight over the bill, we would be fighting over 4 cents. i have some news. it looks like today we've got an agreement we reached on the actual numbers, but now the house wants to add some controversial policy riders into the mix. it's as if that same check arrived when we were at applebee's and after having finally agreed on who's going to pay the 4 cents, we're now arguing over whether the waitress, who is a hardworking american, should receive health care. i just -- i've got to say people watching this, they're scratching their heads. i sure am. and we all face an impending government shutdown, and as i've said, some members seem to want to inject very controversial policy issues into the debate. these issues have divided us for too many