he is telling elmendorf mayday, this is it. we are going in and ditching and tells them where they are. they don't ditch at this point. there will be several times during the flight that matt thinks this is all over. he announces they are ditching. he later says we are still in the air. progressively, they get lower and lower and it becomes more clear they are not going to make it to the air force base. this is the emergency equipment inside the aircraft on the starboard and port side. when they go to abandon the air craft, the kids, and they are kids, the oldest of them is jerry grigsby at 34. the officers are in their 20's. several are on their first fleet tour. reenlisted -- the enlisted crew in the back of the airplane are in their teens, some of them. when they congregate, on the port side their responsibility is to take out the life raft. they will not succeed in detaching the liferaft. from the storage straps. they will not succeed in launching it over the side. on the starboard side, both the seven and 12-man rafts will

now we'll turn to questions last week when cbo director elmendorf testified, he did a good job of simply answering the questions asked by senators so that members on both sides had more questions that they could ask and get answers. i hope you'll follow that model this morning, director, so that we can all have as much asked and answered as possible. i'll alternate recognition between republican and democratic senators following seniority for those who were here when the hearing was gavelled to order. after that i'll recognize members based on order of arrival. if you're not here when your name is called i'll skip you and pencil you in at the end of the question list to be recognized after everyone who was in attendance has the opportunity to ask director donovan questions. with that, director, i'll begin with my first question. you testified that stabilizing the debt as a share of the economy and putting it on a declining path is a key test of fiscal sustainability. but debt still goes up every year in the president's budget in dollar terms and chose little movement as a share of the ec

this is an hour. >> hello, i'm doug l mundorf -- doug elmendorf. the cbo just released its budget projection for the economy over the next 10 years. i will summarize briefly and that my colleagues and i will be happy to take your questions. a federal budget deficit, which has gone sharply in the past few years, is projected to hold steady relative to the size of the economy through 2018. further increasing federal debt relative to the size of the economy which is already historicically high. those projections are based on the assumption that current laws governing taxes and spending will generally remain the same, and they were built upon... output will be essentially elimit nated by the end ofas a result, the unemployment 2017. rate will fall a little further and more people will be encouraged to enter or stay in the labor force. beyond 2017, we project inflation adjusted gross domestic product or real gdp will grow at a rate that is notably less than the average growth during the 198 50s and 1990s. let me address the budget outlook first and then

i'm doug elmendorf, the director of the congressional budget office. cbo has just released its outlook for the budget and the economy overed next ten years. i will summarize the report briefly, and then my colleagues and i will be happy to take your questions. the federal budget deficit which has fallen sharply during the past few years is projected to hold steady relative to the size of the economy, through 2018. beyond that point however, the gap between spending and revenue is projected to grow. further increasing federal debt relative to the size of the economy. which is already historically high. those projections are based on the assumption that current laws governing taxes and spending will generally remain the same. and they are built upon our economic forecast. according to that forecast, the economy will expand at a solid pace in 2015, and for the next few years, to the point that the gap between the nation's output and its potential or maximum sustainable output will be essentially eliminated by the end of 2017. as a result the unemployment

now we'll turn to questions last week when cbo director elmendorf testified, he did a good job of simply answering the questions asked by senators so that members on both sides had more questions that they could ask and get answers. i hope you'll follow that model this morning, director, so that we can all have as much asked and answered as possible. i'll alternate recognition between republican and democratic senators following seniority for those who were here when the hearing was gavelled to order. after that i'll recognize members based on order of arrival. if you're not here when your name is called i'll skip you and pencil you in at the end of the question list to be recognized after everyone who was in attendance has the opportunity to ask director donovan questions. with that, director, i'll begin with my first question. you testified that stabilizing the debt as a share of the economy and putting it on a declining path is a key test of fiscal sustainability. but debt still goes up every year in the president's budget in dollar terms and chose little movement as a share of the ec

the other point i would make is that as director elmendorf no doubt testified under current projections, under current law, over the next ten years debt as a share of gdp would grow substantially. in our baseline we show it growing to almost 81% of gdp. and so with this $1.8 trillion of deficit reduction that our budget would achieve we actually help to not just stabilize, but also begin to bring down the debt by the end of the window. and that is a substantial difference from our current path. >> in looking at it the president's budget never reaches balance. at its low point in 2017 the overspending is $463 billion. and that grows steadily from there, reaching $687 billion in 2025. to secure the middle class and any hope for future generations we need to pay down the debt, and that's not possible with overspending this large. can we pay down the public debt? that is have the dollar amount of debt outstanding be less than the amount in a year earlier without balancing the budget? >> again, senator, the key metric for fiscal sustainability that is not only the measure that we use in the

elmendorf was here, he h said the most significant factorant fa in the reduction in potential growth and gdp was the demographic trend. so the move to immigration reform is something that if we -- were in place i assume b would cause cbo to increase their estimate of gdp growth. >> absolutely. they show significant growth, not only in the number of workers which really goes directly to the demographic we challenge that we have but also increases in productivity for our economy as well. so there are lots of ways that pr it's pro growth.itsel cbo itself, we use their numbers in the budget. they, last week did an analysis of the president's executive actions, which obviously -- nly because they only focus on a ler smaller group of folks in terms of visas and other things and many who are already here have acbo smaller effect, still, cbo said $7.5 billion of savings would come out of the president's executive actions. >> one quick question about tax policy. you also moved the tax rate to 28% on dividend income. you talked in your opening statement about keeping money in work. isn't that

i want to hear from douglas elmendorf from the legit office. he gave me a ceo score because it was submitted late and they need to consider it. we will consider it without a cbo score. four years ago my republican friends passed the bill in the house that required all of the appropriate committees to report back to the house legislation that would constitute a replacement to the affordable care act. that was four years ago. i don't know what the hell people have been doing, maybe we consume them for not doing their job. we can go through this one more time, to me it is a waste of taxpayer money. i think the affordable care act is a good bill and i'm proud i voted for it. millions of people have health insurance today that did not have it before. you may think that is a problem, i think it is good. i'm glad people have insurance. we have controlled the rise and health-care coverage. being a woman is no longer considered having a pre-existing condition. i think that is good. allowing children to stay on the health insurance until they are 26 and

i have a letter here from douglas elmendorf of the congressional budget office. they can't even give the cbo score on this because it was minutes away than they need more time to put it together so we will consider this another cbo score. the other thing is four years ago my republican friends passed a bill in the house that required all of the appropriate committees to report back to the house legislation that would constitute a replacement for the affordable care act. that was four years ago. i don't know what the hell people have been doing. maybe we can sue them because they haven't done their job but going through this one more time is to me a waste of taxpayer money. i would just say one thing. i think the affordable care act is a good bill and i'm proud i voted for it. millions of people have health insurance today that didn't have it before then. you may think that's a problem. i think that's good and i'm glad people have health insurance. we controlled the rate of increase in health care costs. i think that's a good thing. being a woman is no longer cons

elmendorf from the congressional budget office our nonpartisan agency that we deal with to talk about budgetary matters. specifically, i asked the question of dr. elmendorf about the recovery act we passed in this congress a number of years ago and he said thanks to that recovery act over three million jobs were saved or created because of the investment we put into our nation's infrastructure. in my state of wisconsin, i was at the state legislature at the time and we had a report from the road building industry and the vertical construction industry that said 54,000 jobs just in wisconsin were saved or created because of the recovery act that happened. and as much as that helped provide a boost to our economy and helped fulfill our infrastructure needs, we still have so many more to take care of. we've been given a grade of d-plus by the very engineering society that grades our nation's infrastructure. we've been told that we have 100,000 bridges in this country, 16% of the bridges in this country that are old enough they could qualify for medicare. and as we have known from recent

indeed director elmendorf of the nonpartisan congressional budget office recently said -- quote -- "ifyou want to help both programs, you're not going to accomplish that by just moving money around between them." unquote. rather than engaging in yet another unnecessary partisan battle we need to take this opportunity to work together to see what can be done in a bipartisan way to address the impending exhaustion of reserves in the d.i. trust fund. once again i urge the administration and my friends on the other side of the aisle to work with me on this issue. mr. president, i'll have more to say on this issue in the coming days and for now i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. flake: mr. president, i want to take this opportunity to express sorrow both mine and that of the people of arizona at the news that one of our own kayla mueller prescott has died at the hands of isil. kayla's entire adult life cut short at the tender age of 26, has been dedicated to the service of others ending that suffering. when she was taken hostage in 2013 kayla was leaving

last week, congressional budget office director douglas elmendorf testified before the house budget committee noting that the national debt is expected to swell by another $7.6 trillion, with a t trillion dollars over the next ten years. he said -- let me just refer to this chart. he said -- "such large and growing national debt would have serious negative consequences, including increasing federal spending for interest payments, restraining economic growth in the long term, giving policymakers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges and eventually heightening the risk of a fiscal crisis." he is the director of the congressional budget office, and he said this on january 21, 2015. just think about that. that is a -- and he's a democrat. he has been a very good budget director, as far as i'm concerned. and i have enjoyed looking at his analyses over the years. our nation is on an unsustainable path, and we simply cannot wait any longer to make responsible decisions for our future. second washington will not keep our fiscal house in order unless required to do so by the constitutio