domestic discretionary spend or defense spending. as i recall, pretty much everything was on the taifnl they came up with a deficit-reduction plan, 50% ref- 50% revenues, 50% spending. and managed to balance the budget several times in a re. there are four twice balance the budget. cut spending, a second way is to raise revenue. a third way is to grow the heck oust of the economy, and the fourth way is to look in every nook and cranny of the federal government is there a way out of every kind of program, defense programs, domestic programs, entitlement programs is there a way to get better results for less money or better results forbe the same amount of money? and if we pass this agreement, what's being presented to us, before the house this evening, if we actually pass it in the senate and they pass it in the house and the president signed it into larks we're going to see

not the promise proliferate the deficit commission's recommendations medicare part-d i -- cochaired by erskine bowles and alan simpson, but we're going to -- we're not going to see the opportunity to reform our overall entitlements, to reform the tax code, to raise some ref niewrks not by raising taxes but by broadening the base, limbing some of those $15 trillion worth of tax expenditures. but it is what it is. one of the things that we are going to have the opportunity to do and probably a greater need to do is this, we're going to redouble our efforts to look at programs -- domestic, intends defense, entitlements -- and ask that question, how do we get better results with less money? we had the presiding officer, senator shaheen leaving, replaced by another former governor, and senator manchin now the presiding officer knows

what it is like make these tough decisions. he had to do them for eight years. there are two senators from west virginia, born from west virginia, the two of us, two senators that were former governors and former chairs of the national gons association. so we share a very special bond. and, as the presiding officer, i'm talking about what could have been and what still should have been -- that's the deficit commission'commission's recomme. but that's not going to happen. and whether we like it or not, it is not going to havment question is what do we do? my suggestion, mr. president, is that we do at least more of what we're already doing. that's trying to get better results for less money out of all kind of federal programs. the same thing you and i did as governors of our states. the same thing we're trying to do in the subcommittee that i chair, formerly chaired by tom coburn, and we work across party lines. it is actually a very good

example of how you ought to work to get things done. democrats and republicans work together. we work with o.m.b. we worked with the general accountability office, we work with all the i.g i.g.'s across e landscape, we also work with nonprofits like citizens against government waste. we're work on how to get better results for less money, how do we not just identify fraud but how do we get rid of it, how do we put a spotlight on folks who are doing a good job with the money they're spend and how do we put a spotlight on those who aren't and how do we get more good behavior, less bad behavior. and almost everything i do, i know i can do bemplet i think the same is true of all of us. the same is true of our federal programs. we have to really go for it. i like it try to find opportunity and adversity. albert einstein used to say, --

i have a been looking at this deal and trying to say, where is the opportunity? the opportunity is to just do a better job. demand high performance and work had to get that performance. work with the administration and those -- democrats and republicans here in the senate. one of the reasons why i like the deficit commission proposal is because it addresses some of the uncertainty that currently faces the business communities in our nation whether they happen to be large or small. and we've heard -- i've heard -- i'm sure the presiding officer has heard from all kinds of businesses that one of the things they need from us is some certainty, some predictability. businesses need certainty and predictability. i have had any number of c.e.o.'s say to me, the reasons why we're sitting on a pile of cash is because we don't know what you're going to do on the budget, don't know if we will have a default, don't know what

will happen to our tax code don't, know if we will have an energy policy, don't know if the supreme court is going to overturn -- the federal courts are going to overturn health care reform. we don't know if we're going to do something about our infrastructure, all that uncertainty, businesses are reluctant to spend money. one of the things that i loved about the deficit commission recommendations, is it would have addressed predictability t would have been bipartisan. it would actually taken a big step toward providing some expectations and predictability and certainty with respect to our tax code and we could use both of those. we're going to have the opportunity to do -- mr. president, i was actually listening a little bit to the news, and they were talking about who's winning because of this debate and who's losing. i'd like to think that democrats aren't big winners and

republicans aren't big winners. i hope the american people, the folks we're all representing are at least modest-size winners. among one of the things the president did, he didn't want to have us go into default and was willing to bargain long and hard in order to avoid default, and i commend him for that. the president didn't want to have another debate over the debt ceiling until when we get past the next election. he just wants to be able to run the administration and to govern. i remember how hard it was for us in delaware to work in the governor's office on more than two or three big things at a time. it's hard to do. this administration has had their hands full on this issue for months and the inability to work on other things they need to be doing to help run our country and move us forward. the other thing i think is important to the president is he wanted to get us started or continue on the deficit-reduction side and finding more savings and reductions. he didn't want to slam on the

brakes right away. if i could use a car analogy, we've been driving around the road for the last couple of years trying to get out of this recession with both feet on the accelerator. what the president didn't want and what i didn't want is to go from both feet on the accelerator to both feet on the brakes. one of the plans being accepted here is we don't tap our foot on the brakes, but eventually put the brakes on. i think on the republican side they wanted deficit reduction, they don't want it to be illusory. neither do we. they are unwilling to raise any revenues, even by reducing those tax loopholes, tax credits and so forth. we get, i think, for the republicans focused on spending, didn't want to do any revenues, even revenues being provided by lowering the rates, they didn't want to go there.

i think maybe for them they can declare a victory. the question is how about rest of us, the people who don't work here and don't focus that much on partisan politics, how do they make out? for them it's sort of a mixed bag here. it's a mixed bag here. if i were a taoefrp giving a grade in a class -- a teacher giving a grade in a class i think i'd assign an incomplete because we have plenty of work. this idea of creating this bipartisan committee, joint committee of ten people, six senators, six republicans, six house members, six others, the total would be 6 democrats and 6 republicans. i hope that works. i think my preference would have been to take the so-called gang of six, the people that worked for a year on the deficit-reduction plan where i think is a whole lot better and make them, if we're going to have a special committee, make them the folks on the committee. that ain't going to happen, unfortunately. they would have been my nominees, my appointees, but it's not my decision to create.

anyway, we're going to create this joint committee. sometimes i think if we can't come to consensus on good public policy, what we're inclined to do around here is just to do more process, and i hope and pray this isn't more process. i hope at the end of the day the men and women who serve on this joint committee will be open to our input, certainly open to the input of some of the senators, including the democrat and republicans who served as, on the deficit commission and who went object to be part of this gang of six. the last thing i think i want to say is this: a lot of times in government, i hope we weren't quite as guilty of this in state government as here, but a lot of times in government we focus on symptoms of problems. we don't focus on the underlying disease or the cause of the problems. i'd like to use a patient. a patient who is observing

certain -- exhibiting certain symptoms. sometimes you can look at those symptoms and find out the cause and try to cure the patient. here the symptom has been all along the debt ceiling, but that's the symptom that the patient is exhibiting or is facing. the underlying cause of the disease is the way we spend money and raise money. and we're, i think, treating the symptom, avoiding the default on the debt ceiling, but i'm not entirely pleased that we're curing the patient, taking the steps to cure the patient. so that is sort of the way i see it, mr. president. i'll close with these words. i see brother demint. i think it's brother demint over there. yes? waiting to speak. i'll wrap up here. a guy who never served in the senate; served over in the house with rahm emanuel from illinois, later chief of staff to president obama for his first

couple of years. rahm emanuel, now the mayor of chicago, has a saying. i think it's his original saying. he likes to say never waste a good crisis. sometimes it takes a crisis around here to get something done. he likes to say never waste a good crisis. we've wasted this crisis. and we should not have done that. and we should have taken the bull by the horns. i wish the president had embraced his own deficit commission sooner more robustly. i wish our leaders, democrat and republican here and over in the house had said, you know, that's a pretty good idea. let's give that a shot. unfortunately, they chose not to do that. it was bipartisan. i think it was bicameral. it's unfortunate. but it is what it is. it is what it is. we need to move forward. and i would just hope that our colleagues will be given the opportunity to provide a lot of input to this bipartisan committee, joint committee

that's being created and maybe in their wisdom reporting back to us in the beginning of december will be some of the elements in deficit reduction captured by that deficit commission that are missing in this deal that is before us today. if that happens, this will have been a better outcome than i might have otherwise hoped for. with that, let me yield the floor and say thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor to my friend from south carolina. mr. demint: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. demint: thank you, mr. president. the last two years, two and a half years really have been remarkable in a lot of ways. we've seen a lost things across our country that are beginning to change the political landscape here in washington. after president obama's election with a lot of fanfare and hope attached, we saw a lot of changes begin here in washington, a lot of new spending with huge stimulus plans that clearly have not worked. we've seen a takeover of the

health care system and the financial system. but what we saw across america is really what encouraged me. we saw millions of americans uniting from all spectrums of politics, coming together for tea party rallies and town halls. they were concerned about our country. they were concerned about the spending and the borrowing and the debt. and in these groups were liberals and libertarians and independents and republicans and democrats, people with all political beliefs knew intuitively, instinctively in their guts we couldn't keep spending more than we were bringing here in washington without bankrupting our country. i joined a lot of those groups around the country, and these were hardly radical people. they were commonsense americans from all walks of life who were just concerned about what we were doing here in washington. they wanted us to get control of the spending and debt.

we saw a lot of people here in washington ignore what was going on. but across the country, many republicans and even some democrats were listening to what they were saying and made strong commitments that if they were elected to the house or the senate that they would come here and get control of the spending and the borrowing and the debt and try to return to some fiscal sanity. some concept of constitutional limited government that we promised people when we take our oath of office, that we would stand by. so, we saw many new republicans come to the house and to the senate with a commitment to get control of the spending and debt, to save our country from this obvious bankruptcy that we're headed towards. the tea party was involved with that it's hard for me to listen to a lot of the criticism of the tea party and their desire to

balance the budget. there is no one tea party. what we're talking about are thousands of citizen groups across this country who are being vigilant about their government, which is what our founders asked them to be. they're not radical people. they're very commonsense people, and they understand that what we're doing here in washington is about to destroy the country. the term the tea party is being used here a lot to suggest it's a small, radical group that is controlling some in the republican party. over 70% of americans agree with me that we should balance our budget and we should cut spending and send a balanced budget amendment to the states to ratify. for every person who says they're part of a tea party, there are hundreds of americans who feel the same way, who share those ideals of constitutional limited government and the concern and real fear that what

we've been doing here in washington has taken our country literally to the brink. it's deeply disturbing to hear the vice president refer to tea parties as terrorists as did he today, holding a gun to the heads of republicans and forcing us to make cuts. clearly vice president biden and many here are not listening to what americans are saying and are trying to diminish what americans are saying by suggesting this is part of one small group. the president showed right away this year, even after the november election, that he wasn't listening. he sent a budget here to congress that increased the debt another $10 trillion by his measures but really another $15 trillion if you look at it in any kind of objective way. and when the republicans in the house demanded that they keep their commitment to cut $100

billion the first year, what did the president do? he said he would meet halfway at like $30 billion. he doesn't think we need to cut anything. he thinks we need to increase spending. and that's what he's been doing. this is a second crisis we've had this year. the first was this year's budget where we came right to the edge of closing the government because the president and the democrats do not want to cut anything. at least in the negotiations we see if they're going to meet us halfway between 100, they start below zero if they end up at 30. they're not with us, and it's hard to negotiate with people who don't understand that we really do have a problem here. washington, as senator rubio has said, has a debt problem, but america has a jobs problem. but one of the things we need to understand is if we could stop growing the government, we could start growing the economy.

more jobs would mean more tax revenue and less debt. but, unfortunately, this president continues to make things much, much worse. he wants to continue to spend and borrow, but he won't take responsibility for his spending. he has failed to lead, and he loves to blame others. sure he inherited some problems. every president does. george w. bush before him inherited a recession. reagan inherited double-digit inflation. double-digit. interest rates, if they moved to solve the problem. the difference here is that obama continues after two and a half years to blame others, and his policies continue to make things worse. let's talk about this debt ceiling for a minute, this debt crisis, and try to set the record straight. and clearly, president obama has failed to lead in this whole

process. we do need to remember while he's trying to blame others for this debt ceiling problem that it was a democrat congress and the president who signed into law the current debt limit that waoefplt this was not a -- that we have. this was not a republican-created problem that we have. and for the last four and a half years, obama and the democrats have controlled spending. so they set the debt limit and they've spent the money to take us up to the debt limit. we've known for the last six months that we needed to deal with this problem. yet, the president submitted no plan at all. he just asked congress to rubber stamp an increase of $2.4 trillion in our debt, to borrow another $2.4 trillion. and he said with no strings attached. he didn't want to cut anything twhe whole debate -- anything when this whole debate started. no leadership. six months, no plan.

just speeches, trying to shift the blame. and he likes to ignore the fact that the house passed a bill that would solve our problem. it was a bill called cut, cap, and balance. it cut spending right now. it controls spending out over the next ten years. and it sends a balanced budget amendment to the constitution to ratify. the response from the democrats here in the senate and president obama was truly astounding. the president says he wants a balanced solution, but he does not want a balanced budget. he's actually called us extreme for wanting to balance the budget, and has said we can do our job without a constitutional requirement to balance the budget -- budget. we can do a job on america, but we're not doing the job we were sent here to do, and we certainly have proved we cannot control spending unless it's by law that requires us to do that.

even though this bill passed the house by a large number with some democrat support and it gave the president a a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit, but only if we cut spending and controlled it and created some permanent accountability. we sent it to the senate, and the leader of the democrat party would not even allow it on the floor for any debate because he saw the polls. he saw that already within just a couple of days that 70% or nearly 70% of americans supported the approach of cutting and controlling spending and creating some permanent accountability. so it was pushed aside so that we could make some more back room deals, with no transparency, no accountability, no leadership. i commend speaker boehner, leader mcconnell, the republicans that have worked

through this process. dealing with people who won't put a plan on the table is very difficult. the republicans passed cut, cap and balance, then they followed it up with another plan that wasn't so good but it was a plan and it didn't even get past the front door here in the senate. for six months, no plan from the president, no plan from the democrats. now we have -- we have gotten a deal with a partner who does not want to cut spending. after a november election where we were sent here and the country pleaded with us to get control of spending, borrowing and debt. you can look at this deal two ways. there are really two realities here. from any washington standard, this is an historic sea change in the way we do business. instead of what we were doing last year when we were talking about how much more we could

spend and how much pork-barrel bacon we could take home, at least this year we're talking about the fact that we need to cut spending. so we can say the deal makes progress in that respect, but in the real world, a dollars and cents world, we have to realize that our country is on a path towards bankruptcy right now. we are projecting adding another another $10 trillion or $15 trillion to our debt. no one's going to lend us that amount of money. we don't have ten years. this deal does not change that trajectory at all. we will still borrow borrow $10 trillion or more in the next ten years. we will still add $1 trillion a year to our debt. we cannot call this a debt reduction bill. we can really not even call it a spending reduction bill. for the next couple of years, it

hardly cuts anything, and when we talk about cutting in washington, we're not cutting spending from where it is today. we're reducing the rate of increase that is planned. so it's important that we tell the truth to the american people that while this deal may be the best that we can do with the leadership in the white house or lack thereof, as well as the leadership or lack thereof here in the senate, it may be the best political solution that we can get but it does not solve america's problem. it certainly does not solve america's job problem, and it does nothing but add another another $10 trillion to our debt if we are able to go that far. i will be voting against this bill because i do not believe we have ten years to try to get it right. i think it's very likely over the next year or two or three that we're going to reach a very real debt limit when no one will

lend us any more money. today in america, we have to borrow $140 billion a month in order to pay our regular bills, and the people who are adding to that debt every month think it's extreme to balance your checkbook. it is time we get our house in order and force this congress by the constitution to balance its budget. we can't continue to spend more than we're bringing in and a -- and expect to reduce our debt. that's the inside washington mentality. this deal is not a good deal for america. it may be the best deal that washington can come up with with the current leadership, but it puts our country at risk. but in a washington where there

is no leadership in the white house, there is no accountability and there is someone sitting in the office -- oval office who will not take responsibility for anything, this may be a deal that we have to accept for now. i intend to vote against it because it's important that we tell america the truth, that this puts our country at risk. it's time that we do what's best for america, not what makes the best deal here in washington. i would encourage my colleagues to vote against this deal even though i know they already have the votes, but i hope when this is passed that we will not think for one minute that we have solved the problem, that we will not try to convince americans that now we have a few more years to spend and borrow without any repercussions. we need to immediately get back to the debate that was getting america involved the last

election, which was balancing our budget and getting some fiscal sanity here in washington. and while we're in desperate straits i think in our country right now and we see our economy getting worse because of the policies of this administration, the good news is this. we can solve this problem with one more good election, and that's what i'm looking forward to, is taking my case to the american people and the case that they sent us up here to make to this congress, that we need one more election to finish the job they started in 2010. if they want us to get control of spending and borrowing and debt, we need a few more good people like the house freshmen who have stood their ground on this whole debate and those that have come in here to the senate and have led the way for a balanced budget. it's that day i'm looking forward to because on that day we will once again hopefully listen to america, get our house in order, balance our budget and

do what's best for our country. i thank you, mr. president, and i yield back. mr. demint: mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from new york. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed

with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: mr. president, first, i know you care a lot about dr. agnes faris as well, so as soon as i speak i will take the chair so you may say a few words about her as well. i would like to say some words about a great american, a wonderful new yorker, a