national security and foreign policy personnel world for america, that's not what we need. nobody should be for that. nobody should be for that. i want to submit for the record a "washington post" editorial from just a couple days ago. it says simply "confirm mike pompeo." the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sullivan: now the washington has not been a necessarily a strong supporter of the trump administration, but right here their editorial is saying the senate needs to confirm mike pompeo. and they make the point that i'm trying to make here in my remarks, which is by rejecting or delaying pompeo's nomination as mr. trump juggles multiple crises around the world without adequate counsel, this would

probably make an already bad situation worse. mike pompeo should be employed for foggy bottom -- that's the state department -- in the hope that he will fulfill his promise and revive u.s. diplomacy. that's "the washington post". mr. president, bipartisanship is important to move thing along in the senate, whether it's the coast guard bill or well-qualified nominees in the national security world, and it has certainly been a u.s. tradition with regard to the secretary of state that not only goes back decades but goes back centuries.

so i'm hoping that my colleagues sit down, talk to mike pompeo, if they have issues with him, raise them, but let's get to the floor and let's confirm him as secretary of state because the state department needs a well-qualified individual to run that important agency and so does our country. i yield the floor. and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk should call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia due i would ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. perdue: mr. president, i rise today to talk about a milestone here that just happened about three weeks ago. we've had a couple of interesting dates coming. april 15 just passed.

we called it tax day but it was another date. it was also a date that we were supposed to complete the senate budget for fiscal year 2019 that starts in october 1 of this year. well, april 15 came and the i.r.s. deadline did indeed hit, but there was no budget completed. and that's part of the dysfunction that people back home are so upset about. today i want to talk about that, but first i want to talk about the derivative of that broken process. to date, mr. president, in my office we have a debt clock. in that debt clock a few weeks ago it passed a milestone. $21 trillion. and if that weren't bad enough, mr. president, the commitments of this federal government over the last 50 years actually indeed over the last hundred years, the commitments that have been made in the structural programs of this big government bureaucracy have committed us to

some $130 trillion just in the next 30 years. now, that means that for every household in america, that they owe the equivalent of $1 million per household. this is not a thee receiptic number, mr. president. -- a thee receiptic - receipt. these are derived from the commitments made by a lot of our programs that we have passed over the last hundred years in this country. in my opinion we're well passed the tipping point with this debt. the c.b.o. just last week came out with their new forecast for f.y.2018 and beyond. i want to talk about that today because there are some dramatic revelations in there. but at $21 trillion, we're already well passed the tipping point of this crisis, mr. president. you know, when the c.b.o. forecast, they don't do a very good job, in my opinion, of

forecasting revenue. for example, they really take very little account of foreign-direct investment. they underestimate the impact of the repatriation -- change in repatriation tax law that we just paid. i believe the revenue forecast is out of line. but i do agree with their forecast of expenses. and i think therein lies a great learning if we'll pay attention to it. in their forecast, mr. president, on top of the $21 trillion that we just crossed over, their projection is we'll add another $10 trillion or more to this debt. now, whether i might quibble about that a little bit or not, it's directionally correct. because of that, i am on the floor of the senate tonight talking about the crisis and the tipping point that we're well passed because it's -- we're out of time to deal with this. in the past five years -- i'm sorry -- in just the next five years, the interest on this debt alone, mr. president, in the year 2023 will be greater than the amount of money we spend on the defense of this country.

and that assumes a very low forecast for interest rates. one of the reasons for that is that over the -- in the last administration, instead of buying bonds or putting out bonds that were longer in duration, they put out bonds that were shorter in duration because they would have a little lower interest rate. interest rates were fundamentally zero and the rest of the world put out longer bonds. what happened is the shorter bonds are maturing and when they mature, they have to go out and more and more expensive rates. in just the last 18 months, mr. president, the fed fund rate has been increased six times, one-quarter point each. that 150 basis points on our size debt is more than $300 billion a year. as a matter of fact, this year -- this is not a forecast -- this year the interest rate, the interest on our debt, the interest that we pay is $50 billion more than just last year, $50 billion more than we spent last year. $50 billion. mr. president, this is a train

wreck coming at us. congress has been reluctant to deal with it straight up. every year we go through a budget process. i've been on the budget process now for three years since i got here. the first year we did a budget. it took $7.5 trillion out of the expense plan for the next ten years. but it lasted four months. it was weighed by this body in order to get to a grand bargain to the other side would vote for funding the government by the end of that fiscal year so we wouldn't have a shutdown. last year there was no budget done. it was basically deemed so the republicans could do reconciliation. then again the budget for this year was not done. it was deemed so that republicans again could get to reconciliation. i believe reconciliation is being used improperly, mr. president. but we use reconciliation to try to fix health care and try to fix the tax code. our country is at a point where this debt has to now be a number one priority. we have two crises in our country today. one is this debt crisis.

the other i would argue is this global security crisis. the world has never been -- hasn't been more dangerous than this in my lifetime, mr. president. i believe the two are interrelated. the fact that congress allowed the last administration to disinvest in the military to a point where we are now in jeopardy of being able to defend our country, it's time for action. in business, if you get into a crisis like this, all hands on deck because it's about survival. would i would argue, mr. president, is it's about that time here. the problem is that we really haven't talked about the problem in its entirety and what we can still do about it. i want to talk about tht what's driving this, mr. president. when you look at the numbers, it's very clear. we raise about $2.2 trillion in taxes. that's income taxes on individuals, income taxes on corporations, and other about $.

now, mr. president, we use the first dollars that we get in that to pay for mandatory expenses. now, mandatory -- we have two types of expenses, mandatory and discretionary. mandatory expenses are those like your home mortgage, your car payment, your insurance payment, things that get deducted automatically out of your paycheck. well, we have that. it's called mandatory expenses. well, what is mandatory expenses? social security, medicare, medicaid, pension benefits for federal employees, federal retirement and so forth, veteran benefits. those are mandatory expenses. and we subsidize those today. even though there are trust fund, the social security a and medicare trust funds, mr. president, are not able to meet the needs of their -- of the citizens who are drawing benefits today. we're subsidizing out of that general account to the tune of about almost a half a trillion dollars a year. and if you include medicaid and obamacare, the health care cost

in that, it's almost a trillion dollars, mr. president, today that we take out of the $2 trillion we collect in taxes, about 25% of those goes to those three line items automatically. then another trillion dollars comes out of our -- $685 billion comes out. so about a -- $1.7 trillion are then taken out. in debt -- and debt service is $316 billion, almost half of what we spend on our military today. after you take all of that out, there's only about half a trillion dollars left. yet, we still got all of the other discretionary expenses that we fuss about when we do the budget. the budget only deals with discretionary spending. i believe that's one of our problems. what is indiscretionary? -- what is in discretionary? defense, veterans and all other domestic discretionary spending. it's $1.2 trillion. ten years ago it was $1.5

trillion because of the budget control act and because of sequestration, discretionary expenses have declined in america over the last decade, probably because of the good work of our appropriators and because of the bills -- or the laws that were put into place. so fundamentally today, about half of what we spend this year on discretionary spending, mili., and all other domestic discretionary spending, that's state department, foreign aid, education, health, welfare, the whole bit comes out of that. half of it is borrowed money, mr. president. over the last decade, 100% of what we spent at our discretionary expenses were bore lowed money. when we -- were borrowed money. when we allocate money for hurricane victims, and we all know we want to do that, but when we do that, every dollar we allocate to that was borrowed money. we had to go to china or some other country and hope that they're going to buy another issue of our government bonds in

order for us to then subsidize our standard of living. i've been arguing this for five years, mr. president, that our standard of living is somewhat artificial because of the amount of federal debt and the amount of household debt in america today. the other thing that is so dis-- that i'm so distraught about, that would be fine if it were just this year. but what we have is a program or a system where we have commitments over the next 30 years that are out of control. this is a chart that shows discretionary spending historically here over the last really 18 years, back to 2000. the red line is discretionary spending. the blue lane in the last 18 years is mandatory. they both went up about the same. mandatory a little bit more. look what happens from here forward. this is c.b.o.'s number, not my number. this is c.b.o. on expenses behind mandatory expenses. again, that's social security, medicare, medicaid, pension and benefits for federal employees

and health care and health care expenses that are obligated -- the obligation to the federal government. this is a 20-year schedule here. the blue line is mandatory expenses. the red line again is discretionary expenses. it goes from about $2.5 trillion this year on mandatory expenses and in a ten-year period it goes over $8 trillion, mr. president. and that's in line with what happened in the last just 16 years really. in 2,000, the size of -- 2000, the size of our government was $2.4 trillion. the size of our government, really 2016, the last year of president obama was $ $4.2 trillion. one republican and one democratic president. this is what we face. there is no way -- you can't tax enough. you can't grow enough. you can't cut enough. there is no way that we can do -- deal with this, mr. president, without failing to

meet the obligations that this country has made to its senior citizens, to its people in need for the last 50 years. what are you going to tell people when you have to tell them, oh, by the way, the social security trust fund went to zero. when medicare -- the medicare and social security trust funds go to zero, mr. president. we subsidized half a million out of the taxes we raised. we were never intended to do that. it was never supposed to happen. but because past generations liberalized those programs to such a degree that the income coming in doesn't cover the outgo of those programs. my mother is a great example. she lived until she was 93. she passed away last year. she worked for 30 years. she was retired for 30 years. there's no way the math works when that happens. in the 1930's when they put social security in, mr. president, it was intended to be

a last resort insurance supplement, not a primary go-to retirement plan. the life expectancy at that time was about 59. this program started at 62. so you can see the math was on their side. today life expectancy is in the 80's, and we have a retirement age of 67. we know the math don't work. this cannot happen. but the good news is there are five things that i believe, five areas of work that i believe that congress and the administration need to begin to focus on and now. first, i believe that our budget process is broken. i've been on the budget committee now for three years. i know it doesn't work. it hasn't worked but four times in 44 years to fund the federal government. we're supposed to appropriate 12 bills a year, mr. president. we've averaged two and a half over the last 44 years. let me say that again. in any business, any enterprise, medical office, it doesn't matter, if you were charged to do 12 items and you did two and a half, you would fix something.

you'd have to fix it or you'd be out of business. we've used continuing resolutions over 180 times. actually, congress has shut the government down, the federal government has not funded the government 20 times in that 44-year history, 20 times. i had no idea that was the case. we don't even deal with every dollar we spend in the budget. we only deal with 25% of what we spend. that is what we deal with the budget down here. this is never covered in the budget by law. we don't talk about it. we can no longer do this. we have to fix the budget process, and we have to get after redundant agencies. g.a.o. thinks that we have $700 billion or $800 billion of wasted spending. i believe that.

the third thing you have to do is grow the economy. and president trump said last year we need to focus on growing the economy. the economy started growing in the last 12 months we had 12% gross domestic product growth. that is 120 basis point above what we enjoyed the last eight years, the lowest u.s. economic performance in our history. we believe with future work on these things, the economy will continue to grow. we need to work on infrastructure, trade to continue this to work. the biggest item, the fourth item we need to work on is we can solve these items and that is we have to save social security and medicaid. when i say save, we have to plan for the time and fix it now before the trust funds go to zero. when the trust funds go to zero, there's no way that benefits can be paid in full. if we don't do that today, there is a crisis of a magnitude i don't want to imagine if we let

this get to that point. that is the fourth thing. the fifth area of work is that we have to get at the spiraling driver of our health care costs, not the insurance that we've been fussing about here for the last eight years, but we've got to make a serious, concerted attempt in america to get after the drivers of health care costs. those are the five areas. i'm convinced that when faced with a crisis americans are always the best in history in dealing with the crisis we're just not always the first to recognize we're in one. my role tonight, and haas been for the last -- has been for the last three years is to call this crisis out. the c.b.o. has the numbers, whether you believe them or not, they are correct. some might argue with their expenses, but bottom line, you know with a $21 trillion debt the interest expense is going to grow to $1 trillion almost over the next ten years and if we don't do something within this planning period, the c.b.o. said

that our interest expense will go to $1 trillion. there is no way this can happen. we have to change the broken system, plm. i there -- mr. president. i think the realization is there, c.b.o. gave up the opportunities and measured the opportunities. i think the political will is such that they realize that we have a debt crisis. they have more courage, i think to face it than elected officials do. what drives this town is the next cycle. in the house it's two years and in the senate it's six years. oh, my goodness, with we can't hurt the cycle. we have to put that behind us. this can't be solved with a partisan solution. my good friend from rhode island, senator whitehouse and i have he could sponsored a bill that goes after parts of the solution. there's a select committee formed by the leadership, democrat, republican, house and

senate, there are 16 members. i'm privileged to be on that. i believe there are things we can do in the select committee to fix the process and help us deal with the additional things that we are adding to this debt crisis. make no mistake, that will not solve the debt crisis. you will not solve the debt crisis by fixing the fujt process -- fixing the budget process alone. the same thing applies to growing the economy, the same thing is involved with the other items we can look at in terms of redundant agencies in the health care costs of this country. mr. president, america has come too far to fail now. we owe it to our kids and grandkids and the kids and grandkids of our kids and tbrand kids to deal with this -- grandkids to deal with this now. i met with mr. greenspan and he reminded me in 1983 they had a solution and if we had done it in 1983, it would be nearly as

onerous as it is now. in the 1990's, bill clinton, knew the gingrich -- newt gingrich had an agreement but it fell apart because of the political nonsense in this town. i believe the time is now to put our differences aside, live with an 80% solution and deal with this problem right now. if we don't -- we will not be able to hand this to our kids. that's the last thing i want to close with. people say, we are leaving our kids and grandkids a problem, yeah, we are. in this planning period in the next ten years when interest rates are higher than what we're spending on national defense, mr. president, that crisis is right here. it's now. we are going toe see if in the next decade in my opinion, it will make 2008 and 2009 pale in comparison. i have never seen a time, mr. president, when a crisis would pull us together any more than this one right now. the question is will we recognize that we're in a moment

of crisis? thank you. i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk should call the roll. quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator -- majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that further proceedings under the qoark be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate resume legislative session for a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the appointments at the desk appear separately in the record as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 478 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 478 designating the week of april 21, 2018, through april 29, 2018, as national park week. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate shall proceed to the measure. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be

considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the foreign relations committee be discharged from further consideration and the senate now proceed to s. res. 431. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 431 supporting the goals and ideals of international prevental child abduction month and so forth. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee has discharged and the senate shall proceed to the measure. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h. con. res. 115 which was received from the house. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: house concurrent resolution 115 authorizing the use of the capitol grounds for

the national peace officers memorial service and the national honor guard and pipe band exhibition. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate shall proceed to the measure. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: now, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3:00 p.m. monday, april 23, further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed. finally, i ask that following leader remarks, the senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the duncan nomination. finally, notwithstanding the provisions of rule 22, the cloture vote on the duncan nomination occur at 5:30 on

monday. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the the presiding officer: the the senate confirmed the next nasa administrator. senator tammy duckworth made her first appearance since giving birth and brought her baby to the floor following the adoption of a rule to allow infants under 1-year-old. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> the senate judiciary committee met consider requiring cause before a justice administrator can be fired. two republicans and two democrats are sponsoring the bill which would limit president trump's ability to fire robert muller, the special counsel investigating russian interference in the election. you can see it tonight at eight eastern on c-span. coming up tonight, the senate armed services committee with

richard spencer, testifying about the navy's budget and readiness. that's at ten eastern on c-span2. perceived liberal access and disenchantment with the size of government gave rise to the particle right. the resurgence of richard nixon and a presidential victory in 1958. c-span weekly series, america and turmoil continues tomorrow night on conservative politics. author of the right moment, ronald reagan's first victory, and the decisive turning point in american politics, and robert mary, editor of the american conservative take part in the forum. watch tomorrow night at eight eastern on c-span. also coming up an interview with and spoke. [inaudible] he talks about his family growing up in connecticut, the beginnings of politics and the connection between the media and the white house as well is what it's like working for president trump. that interview will air friday

at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> this weekend, live coverage on book to be of the l.a. times festival of books. saturday at 1:00 p.m. eastern with the book stranger. the challenge of a latino immigrant in the trump era. : : :

>> watch our weekend long coverage of the 22nd annual alley times festival of books live on c-span2's booktv. >> former missouri secretary of state and potential democratic presidential candidate jason can't recently spoke at the annual new hampshire democratic party fundraiser. he talked about his deployment to afghanistan, the mission of the voting advocacy group he founded an democratic party priority. members of the states congressional delegation also spoke. >> it's a reminder i can see all of you so i know who is sitting and he was still talking. good evening. welcome to the 2018 mcintyre dinner. [applause] >> two month