senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, we just passed legislation that would raise the debt ceiling and as a part of that was an effort to reverse the debt trajectory we are on, but it can only be called at best a first step. i think pretty much we could all agree on that. indeed, there was an article in the "financial times" about professors rogoff and reinhart who've written a book that's gotten a great deal of

attention. it's widely respected. describing and analyzing sovereign debt, national countries who've gone -- which have gone bankrupt around the world. and their comments were it's -- much of what occurred in our debate is like those other nations. we -- the other nations scramble around when the pressure's on with something like a debt ceiling and they don't really change anything significantly but they meet the crisis and tell everybody everything's okay. and they say in this article in the "financial times" everything's not okay. indeed, the debt will increase over the next ten years approximately $13 trillion and this package would reduce the increase in our debt from $2.1 trillion to $2.4 trillion. that's not much. but in addition to that, larry

lindsey, former economic advisor to president bush, has done some analysis of the congressional budget office score of what the budget would look like over ten years and he points out that they were predicting nearly 3% growth the first and second quarters of this year, printing that -printing -- predicting ths early as this year. and so now we've had a reanalysis of the first quarter and economic growth wasn't 3%, it was .4%. and the second quarter has initially been scored at only 1.3%, not 3%, not 2.7% or that figure. he says that loss in g.d.p. alone will mean less growth in the economy, means less tax revenue for the government. and over ten years, it puts us on a trajectory that the

government would lose $750 billion, would collect $50 billio 750 billion less, which is about a third of what savings was to occur in the bill. and mr. lindsey says second and third -- third and fourth quarters of this year also are going to be well below that. so maybe we're looking at in this year alone enough decline in g.d.p., unfortunately -- hopefully not -- that would wipe out half, maybe more, of the savings that were just passed. but i wanted to point out that i believe many in our congress, many in the senate are in denial about how serious the debt threat is that we are too often, as rogoff and reinhart said, saying the same things that other nations said before economic crisis hit.

indeed, the name of their book, "this time it's different" refers to what governmental leaders said in those countries, those other countries that went into default, went into debt crisis up until the last minute. they were saying, "we've got it under control. it's not so bad. this time it's different. just because our numbers look like they did in some other country, it's different this time." and immediately out of the blue, a crisis, a loss of confidence occurred and they had a serious problem. something like what happened when people lost confidence in the housing market several years ago that put us in this recession. i just say it's troublesome, it's worrisome. we are not facing a little problem, we're facing a problem that will require our attention steadfastly for a decade to get this country on the right course. well, i'm -- i would note that the president had a press conference today.

in a way, it rejected everything we've been talking about in this debate. it really did not talk about the nature of the crisis that rogoff and reinhart described. he didn't tell the american people that the real problem is spending that's surging out of control. he didn't say you can't continue as a nation borrowing 42 cents of every dollar you spend. we cannot continue spending $3.7 trillion when we take in $2.2 trillion. you can't do that. we didn't -- he's not talked to us honestly about that. he's not sent a signal, he's not sounded the alarm, i think a lot of people, some in congress and some outside of congress, sort of think it must not be so bad. the president hasn't told us it is. but more and more people are

expressing concern and there's a growing unease nationwide as consumer confidence shows, as business investment shows. we just got some bad manufacturing numbers yesterday. so things are not looking good and we've got to be honest with ourselves that this is a difficult, difficult time. he did, however, make repeated statements in his press conference about raising taxes. i don't think that's a good thing to do when the economy's in a fix like it is. he flatly and erroneously, i believe, stated you can't balance a budget with spending cuts. well, you certainly can. you can argue you'd rather have tax increases and less spending cuts, but we can and must balance our budget, we can and must balance our budget, and it can be done with spending reductions. quite a number of plans are out there that would do just that.

and he continues to talk as if the problem was the debt ceiling but the debt ceiling is really a signal that we've spent too much and we've borrowed all the congress has allowed the president to borrow and you can't borrow any more unless congress agrees to raise the debt ceiling. but that's not the problem. the problem, as rogoff and reinhart said, is our debt. that's a real problem. it's not going to be easy to fix. i wish it were. it's not going to be easy to fix. but if we work together as a nation, we can do it. this country can rise to meet the challenge. i'm totally convinced of that. the president said -- quote -- today, "and since you can't close the deficit with just

spending cuts, we'll need a balanced approach." that means we need to balance our cuts with tax increases. right? that's what that means. he went on to say, "we can't make it tougher for young people to go to college or ask seniors to pay more for health care." but at some point when you don't have the money, we might not be able to be as generous as we were just a few years ago when we had a better financial condition. you see? isn't that common sense? what do you mean, you can't make any changes in how we do business? we're going to have to make changes in how we do business. he goes on to say, and continues repeatedly to talk about investments. this is a quote just in the press conference -- "yet it also allows us to keep making key investments in things like education and research."

keep going on continuing to make investments in education. does that mean we'll maintain our current level of education, we'll try not to cut it if we have to make reductions in spending? is that what the president means? no, it does not. we just had the spectacle last week of the secretary of education appearing before the senate appropriations committee asking for a 13.5% increase in education funding before the budget committee. i mean, he's defending that just last week. the president's still talking about investments. more. more. more. 13.5%? and you know 90% of education is funded by states, cities and counties anyway. it's not the federal government. it's not our -- the primary role and never has been. we only fund approximately 10% of the money that gets spent on

education. in america. we can't have double-digit increases when you're borrowing 42 cents of every dollar. every penny of that increase will be borrowed money. every penny will be borrowed. doesn't common sense tell us we might not be able to increase spending this year, even if we'd like to? and i would just point out before the budget committee, which i'm ranking republican, we had the secretary of energy testify he wanted a 9.5% increase in the energy department, the department that does more to block energy than create energy. and the state department was projected and was asking for 10.5% in the president's budget and the president's request to us. and the transportation department was to get a 60%

increase in spending. the highway bill last year was about $40 billion. i'll just note that this year the highway -- the interest on our debt will be $240 billion. so i just -- what i would want to say to our colleagues, we are not dealing with reality. americans know when one of th the -- maybe they're lucky they got two wage earners in the family and one loses their job. do they not change the way they do business? they just think they can continue to spend twice as much as their income as if they were both still working? people don't do that, and all over america they're making tough decisions. no wonder they're upset at us for pursuing this idea that we don't have to make any changes in what we do. it's just very, very distressing

to me. the president said, talking about unemployment -- that's --s part of the reason people are so frustrated what's going on in this town. the last few months, the economy has already had to absorb an earthquake in japan, economic headwinds coming from europe, the arab spring and increases in oil prices, all of which have been very challenging to the recovery. but these are things we couldn't control." well, i don't know that those are the big problems around here. rising oil prices are. today oil prices are more than double, just about double, a little more, than what they were when president obama took office. we've shut down virtually new exploration in the gulf. we're blocking the production of natural gas in -- in the -- in

the shale formations that got so much promise for us. we're doing a lot of things that are driving up the cost of energy. then he goes on to say this, which is surprising to me. he is he a the one that said the crisis was so large. and i think it was a national problem. he said, "our economy didn't need washington to come along with a manufactured crisis to make things worse." we had a serious debate over what to do about the debt ceiling that we have reached and congress -- the republican house went and yielded from $6 trillion in cuts over ten years, as they proposed in their budget, to taking $1 trillion in

cuts up front as part of this debt deal. and the president didn't want -- he wanted less cuts than that, apparently. else we could have -- and that's not enough. of course it could be $2.4 trillion if the committee functions correctly, and we hope it will. the presiding officer: under the order, the senators are limited to ten minutes. mr. sessions: mr. president, i'd ask unanimous consent that i have an additional five minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: well, what i wanted to point out in this chart -- and this chart gives some indication of how we're

operating in the senate and the congress and really driven in substantial part by the president's desires. it's the -- a chart that shows the growth in certain programs that are exempt from the cuts, automatic cuts that would occur if a budget agreement is not reached as part of the legislation we just passed. programs, all of which we like and hope and wish we could allow to continue to grow every year. unfortunately we are not going to have the money to continue to do that. we're going to have to deal with these programs as well as all spending, defense as well and other programs, no doubt about it. so you've got, first, over here the civil service retirement disability fund. the average annual percentage increase of that fund's cost has

been 4.9%. the average annual increase in that fund each year since 2005-2010 has been 4.9%. now during this time we've calculated the inflation. the average inflation rate during this time is 2.5%. so that's about twice the inflation rate. the next fund that's here -- those of us who so value the military, i think all of us do, the military retirement fund. it has increased at the average annual rate of 5.4%. inflation is 2.5%. medicaid, a program that is administered by states but 70% funded by the federal government, medicaid will -- has been increasing at 8.5% each

year. and i think most of us know the rule of seven, where if your money in the bank draws 7% interest, that money will double in ten years. so this means in about eight or nine years, the entire medicaid program will double at that kind of rate of increase. inflation is 2.5%. children's health, the chip program, an insurance program, it has been increasing at 9% a year, and the snap program, the food stamp program, has been increasing at 16.6% a year for the last five years. 16.6%. so is this sustainable, i ask. we're borrowing 42 cents out of

every dollar. the economy is not going to be growing as much as we would have hoped and expect. and this is not going to bail us out of this so we can sustain this kind of spending level. so all of these are programs we value. we hate to talk about, don't want to mention, but the odd thing about it was, in the agreement that was just passed earlier today, at the insistence of our democratic colleagues, these programs would receive no reductions if an agreement to cut spending is not reached by the committee. under the rule, if the committee can't reach an agreement, there'll be some automatic cuts across the board, except it's not evenly cut across the board. these programs are untouched. they are untouchable because our democratic colleagues said, we can't deal with them. well, it's time for us to look under the hood of food stamps.

i got to tell you, how can it be increasing at 16.6% a year for five years? how could that happen? don't we need to examine it, be looking at it? we've had no hearings, done nothing this year to confront that surging program. and what about imhaid an medicad chip? those are surging. maybe we could save a little on those other programs that are going above inflation. what i would say to you, the military, now, is online, under the bill that just passed, if an agreement isn't met, the military takes a 10% cut. that -- that's the baseline military. it does not include iraq and afghanistan. that number is coming down and projected to come down dramatically. so i guess i would say, forgive me if i'm a little bit taken

aback here about our priorities and about the willingness of congress to deal with spending that's out of control. i'll tell you what ..., that's a good deal of money here we're talking about. the medicaid program is $270 billion a year. food stamps have more than doubled. it's now $78 billion a year. alabama's general fund budget is about $2 billion. i thank the chair. i would ask for one additional minute. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: i notice no one else is here, and i would -- i've already yielded the floor, had there been someone -- the presiding officer: the senator from florida is here. mr. sessions: oh, i'm sorry. i didn't see that. wcialg i should long ago have yielded the floor because he's

got something worthwhile to say, i'm sure. so, mr. president, i just would say that we're not dealing honestly with the crisis we're in. the president is in denial. he's not looking the pee peoplen the eye and telling us what a serious fix we're in and challenging us all to deal with the reality that we're going to have to change the way we do business. that's what i say and i hate to say it but i believe that's true. and we've got to do better. i thank the chair and would be pleased to yield to one of our more talented, insightful new members, senator rubio from florida. mr. rubio: mr. chairman? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. rubio: thank you, to my colleague from alabama, who does a fabulous job of outlining the economics of it. i understand according to sornlings i might be the last speaker today or one of the