Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes here on the Senate floor discussing the debt ceiling agreement reached between the Republican majority in the House and the Biden White House, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the bill that, presumably, we will be further debating, perhaps amending, and voting on yet today or tomorrow.

I fully recognize that governing in a divided government is a challenging amount of work. The American people have given us that circumstance. This circumstance requires negotiation and finding common ground; otherwise, we can do nothing.

Unfortunately, President Biden, for way too long, refused to negotiate with House Republicans. He refused for months to negotiate with House Republicans--I suppose in an effort to intimidate Republicans and pass an unaltered debt ceiling increase. This would have opened the door for more Democratic majority spending--in fact, spending even more money with perhaps no, but certainly fewer, strings attached. Fortunately, that tactic did not work, and the House Republicans acted to pass their own debt limit legislation. Without a realistic plan, a plan that could pass Congress, the Biden administration finally conceded and negotiated with House Republicans to create a deal, the deal that is before us now.

My view: Defaulting on the national debt would send a message that we are a nation that cannot be trusted to pay our bills. Default would be highly dangerous to our national security and to our currency and to our economy. China and other countries, those countries that are on the fence in today's world, are watching. They are watching how the American government operates. They want to diminish our role in the world. China would love for our standing in the world to be damaged due to default, for the United States and its economy to be in chaos.

It is vital to our economy and to our national security that we do not default and that we preserve the U.S. dollar as the primary currency, the ``reserve currency''--not the yen or any other country's currency. The implications of what happens here today in regard to a default has a consequence upon our national well-being vis-a-vis the rest of the world and, most importantly, determines the relationship we have with other countries and the role that China is able to further play in the world order.

China and these countries that are on the fence are watching. It is time--it is vital to our economy and national security that we do not default and that we preserve that dollar.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act isn't the legislation that I personally would introduce. It does not sufficiently cap long-term discretionary spending; it continues to tie our defense budget to spending less than the rate of inflation; and it fails to address reforms needed to mandatory programs. But it does accomplish key conservative priorities that will benefit America and help put our Nation on a better path toward fiscal responsibility.

In addition to the debt ceiling issue, reckless spending can also be the demise of our country's well-being, and endless deficit spending will eliminate the American dream for many Americans and the American dream as seen by the rest of the world.

As a fiscal conservative, the Federal Government must spend less, must grow its spending less rapidly, must set limits on our appetite, and must stop wasteful spending. Our Nation has had a spending problem for the last several decades--probably even longer than that. It used to be that everyone understood that deficit spending was a damaging thing to the economy. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, perhaps the first progressive President, understood that World War II had to be paid for. It was a given that we paid our bills with nearly current revenue.

It seems, over time, that many--particularly, in my view, in the Democratic Party--decided that deficit spending was not that much of a problem. And I worry that, too often, Republicans want to look the other way as well. We accelerated that spending during COVID. Perhaps with the uncertainty of what COVID meant to us, government spending rose rapidly, and we spent too much money. But Congress was slow--even as COVID began returning to the rearview mirror, we were too slow to turn off that COVID spending spigot.

Coupled with reckless tax-and-spending sprees driven by the Biden administration, out-of-control spending has led to record-high inflation. Inflation is like a tax on every American and is damaging to the poorest among us.

Here in Congress, we talk about spending in terms of millions and billions--sometimes even trillions. But folks back home in Kansas talk about spending in dollars and cents. And for everyday Americans, those dollars add up, make it harder to buy the groceries, to pay the rent, or to put gas in their vehicles. We see it every day in our family, and I hear about it from everyday Kansans all the time.

Reducing inflation requires reductions to spending. The cause of inflation is when we spend more than we have to spend and we borrow money, pumping more Federal spending, government spending, into the economy.

However, we need to fulfill the most important responsibility to the Federal Government, and that is to protect and defend our Nation and to keep our promises to those who served in the military that defends us. My colleagues and I on the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs have consistently said we would provide the VA with the funding it needs to provide care and services to the men and women who have served our Nation. I have heard it said many times here in the Senate and elsewhere that it is too easy for us to go to war and never easy enough for us to pay for the bills for those who sacrificed so much during war.

The debt ceiling deal delivers on our commitment to support veterans. The deal also secures the full funding of the toxic-exposed veterans that was authorized by the just recently passed PACT Act.

In regard to government waste, this legislation will slow the rate of spending and recoup unspent funding, starting with COVID funds, to the tune of billions of dollars. The pandemic is basically behind us, and there is no reason for us to keep spending under the rubric--under the title--of COVID relief funding.

Additionally, this legislation will cut significant funding to the Biden administration's plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents. I am an appropriator, and I have long been an advocate for what we around here call regular order, what folks back home would just call doing your job.

The way this process is supposed to work is we have a budget that outlines how much money we can spend, what the revenues are to pay for it; and then we divide up that money that we are going to spend in discretionary spending among 12 bills that the Appropriations Committee and, ultimately, the Senate and the House and the President then have something to say about.

I have been an advocate for passing those separate 12 bills. We haven't done that very well many times. For far too long, we have relied on continuing resolutions and massive omnibus packages to fund our government. Those omnibus packages allow for a small group of Members of Congress to make major decisions for the rest of us. It adds to the uncertainty of what is in a bill when it is such a massive piece of legislation, and it creates--rightfully so--cynicism among my constituents about ``What is in there?'' and ``Did you read the bill?''

These measures, the way we do it--the way we have done it in the past--are not good government, and they lead to the ease of additional spending. It becomes too easy to add something to such a massive bill.

This legislation would encourage Congress to do its job by passing 12 separate appropriation bills or face automatic caps on spending. Whatever happens on this piece of legislation, I hope the outcome, with the leadership of the Appropriations Committee that we have today, means that we are going to do 12 separate bills, each with the scrutiny of an appropriations subcommittee and the opportunity for amendments by all Senators on the Senate floor.

Working to spend less will help stop this runaway inflation. But this legislation goes a step further by stimulating the economy and protecting Americans from new taxes.

Unleashing American energy is a key to reducing energy prices, stimulating our economy, and strengthening our national security. The permitting reforms included in this bill will help get energy projects approved more quickly rather than being bogged down in a set of bureaucratic regulations. Things that should take months or a few years--hopefully, it will be the case and not take years or decades.

Raising the debt limit is not something I or any of my colleagues should take lightly. Why have a debt ceiling if it is just automatically increased every time it is met? Don't we wish that would work in our credit card bills that we receive? We have a limit on what we can spend because sometimes people, and always government, need to be told no.

We are seeing firsthand the consequence for spending outside our means. And there will continue to be more consequences. But no deal is not a solution either. This is really the clash of a bad outcome of a default and the bad outcome of more spending, more inflation, and a greater challenge to our country and its economy.

No deal is not a solution. And defaulting--I can't see any way that is helpful to Kansans or Americans. The American people elected a divided government. That is what we work in every day here. Democrats hold the White House and the Senate. The House Republicans deserve credit for negotiating a deal with a reluctant President and passing an agreement with reasonable caps on Federal spending.

This bill represents progress and is that proverbial step in the right direction. We cannot continue to borrow money we don't have and saddle future generations with the consequences.

The debate cannot end here, however, with this vote. However the outcome of this legislation in Congress, we should never have to wait for a crisis--an economic crisis, the debt ceiling--to take fiscally responsible measures. It should be part of a way of life here. Those responsible measures need to become the norm for every Member of Congress and for this and every other President.

Without a serious long-term plan and subsequent action to reduce spending, we will be back in this position way too soon, and we will jeopardize the American dream. It threatens our children and our grandchildren's futures as well as our Nation's ability to defend itself against global threats.

I always tell myself that my responsibility as a citizen of this country--not as a Senator necessarily but just as a citizen--is to do what we can do to make sure that the American dream is alive and well and liberties and freedoms that we enjoy as Americans through the sacrifice and service of many and the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in the Constitution of the United States--our job is to make certain those liberties and freedoms are protected for people we will never meet and that the American dream is alive and well for people today and their children and grandchildren.

America still stands as a beacon for others around the world, and there are others in other countries who are trying to live the American dream. They are envious of what we have. But it is fragile, and it can go away.

It is our responsibility to make sure that is not the case. We can't let this happen. We have to confront our threats head-on.

And, yes, it is easy to take a side and defend that side and advocate for that side. It is what we do here. There are times in which it is necessary for us, for the well-being not of us as individuals or us as elected officials but for the well-being of the country, to find a path forward. And in today's environment, in today's world, it requires bipartisan cooperation. And bipartisan agreement is a blueprint to develop more fiscally responsible legislative agenda.

We will debate this bill. We will, potentially and perhaps hopefully, amend this bill, but our work is cut out for us. The American people deserve for us to make the decisions that protect us from our adversaries, keep the American dream alive, and make certain that our children and grandchildren and those we have never met have a brighter future. The issue before us is one of those that has a consequence in all those arenas.

I will work with my colleagues today as we move forward on this legislation to make sure that the outcome is something that advances a cause that is important to me and to the people I represent.

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