- 6/27/2025
In Senate floor remarks on Thursday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) spoke about deficits.
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00:00Is the Senate in a quorum call?
00:02No.
00:03Thank you very much.
00:05Mr. President, I've come tonight to the floor to talk about fiscal responsibility
00:10and how important it is that we preserve or at least advance a structure in which we engage with integrity in budgeting
00:24so we don't run up massive debts that affect the opportunities for the generation to come.
00:31One of the things I've been very aware of during the 17 years I've been here
00:36is that I hear a lot of conversation from my colleagues across the aisle about fiscal responsibility.
00:46But let's be clear.
00:47The majority of the debt run up over the last 20 years has come from the Republican side of the aisle.
00:56It's been the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.
01:00Those alone account for $8 trillion.
01:04And if we turn the clock back just a little bit more,
01:07we had the 2001 Bush tax cuts, the 2003 Bush tax cuts, the 2017 Trump tax cut,
01:19each of them producing an ocean of red ink by cutting taxes for the richest Americans.
01:26Is that any way to run a country?
01:32Cutting programs for families to fund tax breaks for mega-millionaires and billionaires?
01:40Well, apparently, and in the process, massive, massive debt.
01:44Now, my Republican colleagues have engaged repeatedly in this myth.
01:48This myth that somehow the tax breaks for billionaires will result in so much increase in revenue
01:56because the economy will hum along.
01:59And every single time, it's a lie.
02:03It's a deception.
02:04It never happens.
02:05Instead, revenue plummets, and we indebt our country far into the future.
02:13Let's look at another version of the world.
02:17Every time there is a Republican administration,
02:22if you look at the first year compared to the last year, deficits go up.
02:31And every time there's a Democratic administration,
02:35first year to the last year, deficits go down.
02:39And here we are at another moment where we are about to make a decision related to another Republican bill
02:50that will create another Red Sea of debt.
02:56Some 3-plus trillion dollars over 10 years.
03:05Some 30-plus trillion dollars of debt compared to current law over 30 years.
03:14Now, the very fact that I'm mentioning 30 years points out to something new and different being put forward by my Republican colleagues.
03:27That is, that under reconciliation, you've only been allowed under the rules in law under Section 313 of the Budget Act
03:42to incur deficits in the first 10 years, but not after the first 10 years.
03:50So there was no need for a 30-year estimate, because that simply was not allowed.
03:56And as long as we're looking at what's been allowed under the law and how things have changed,
04:04let's look at the structure of what happened to the fairly magnificent 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act.
04:14And why do I say magnificent?
04:17Because all 100 senators, everyone on the blue side of the aisle, everyone on the right side of the aisle,
04:26said we have to get the deficits under control.
04:301974.
04:31Well, what had the deficits been in the 3 years before?
04:34In 1971, 72, 73, they averaged $20 billion.
04:40Now our deficits are about $2 trillion a year.
04:48But back then, there was seriousness about getting the budget under control.
04:54So this Budget Control Act had some interesting features.
04:57First, it had a process for regular budgeting.
05:00And then, it had a separate, very special track called Reconciliation.
05:07And Reconciliation was designed only for reducing deficits.
05:16That's why all 100 senators voted to create a filibuster-free fast track, only to reduce deficits.
05:23Picture Robert Byrd of West Virginia, one of the fiercest defenders of the filibuster.
05:30But even he voted for this special filibuster-free path only for reducing deficits.
05:381974.
05:40That act also produced the Congressional Budget Office.
05:44Because another piece of the vision was let's have honesty in numbers.
05:49You know, every time we come to a budget, one team or the other, whoever's in charge, kind
05:55of uses some smoke and mirrors to pretend that its impact on the budget is more favorable
06:02than it really is.
06:04So we need an organization.
06:06An organization that's impartial, nonpartisan, that will do the modeling and give us the best
06:13information for us to be able to understand the consequences of the provisions in law we're
06:22proposing.
06:23Well, that was 1974 that all of that was done.
06:28And for 22 years that followed, that filibuster-free fast track, that special reconciliation fast
06:36track, was only used for deficit reduction.
06:39Because that's what it was created for.
06:44But in 1996, my Republican colleagues had the majority in the House and the majority in
06:51the Senate, and they undertook some, well, some bold new initiatives.
06:57One of those was to do a line-item veto for the President.
07:02And guess what?
07:03The Supreme Court struck that down because the Constitution says it's the responsibility of
07:06Congress, not the President of the United States of America, to lay out the decisions
07:13about how much is going to be spent on what programs.
07:16The executive executes the law, but we here write the law.
07:21The Supreme Court said, no, no, no, you can't do that.
07:24You want to cut a program?
07:25You can't ask the President to do that.
07:27You have to do it yourselves.
07:28And then, there was a second initiative.
07:32And that second initiative was called the Balanced Budget Amendment.
07:37And the idea was that we would put a new clause in the Constitution that essentially forced
07:43us to do, much like a state government does, you have to balance the budget.
07:49Well, there were those on the Appropriations and Revenue Committee that said, yeah, I don't
07:57know that that's the right idea because in a time of crisis, you need to be able to spend
08:02more for national security.
08:04Or in a time of recession or depression, you might need to spend more to stimulate the economy.
08:11Well, that amendment needed two-thirds votes, 67 votes here in the Senate.
08:20It got 66.
08:22So, it did not pass the Senate of the United States of America.
08:27And so, the Republicans at the time, Robert Dole was the majority leader, said, well, you
08:35know what we want to do?
08:35We want to do a massive tax bill with lots of provisions that cut taxes for the richest
08:42Americans.
08:44And then they said, but you know, the problem is, we'll need 60 votes to move that bill off
08:49the floor, and the Democrats are not going to agree to a plan that gives away the treasury
08:54to the richest Americans.
08:55And so, they concocted a plan.
08:59They replaced the parliamentarian.
09:03They replaced the parliamentarian.
09:05In order to get a ruling that said the filibuster-free track, voted by 100 senators only for deficit
09:14reduction, could be used to increase deficits for tax reductions.
09:21Wow.
09:23My Republican colleagues, who were preaching fiscal responsibility, destroyed this powerful
09:30mechanism that all hundred senators had agreed to, to invoke fiscal responsibility and reduce
09:37deficits.
09:39But out of that carnage of 1996, that nuclear option, if you will, came two surviving pieces.
09:49And one of those surviving pieces was that any year after the first 10 years, in any title, you
10:00had to have deficit reductions or deficit neutrality.
10:04So, whereas the deficit could be increased in the first 10 years, it couldn't be increased in any title in any year
10:13following.
10:13So you couldn't even say, well, a surplus in 2011 adjusts for a deficit, or the 11th year adjusts for a deficit in the 12th year.
10:22No, every single year, no, every single year, every single title, deficit neutral.
10:25And the other thing that survived was keeping honest numbers.
10:31Honest numbers.
10:32That we were going to do what Section 313 of the law says.
10:37Section 313 says each provision has to be evaluated in terms of its outlays, that's the spending impact,
10:44or the revenue impact.
10:47So here is a clause in the proposed law.
10:50If we follow that clause, if we enact that law, how will it affect spending?
10:55And how will it affect revenue?
10:59Well, each and every clause has to be costed out in that fashion.
11:04A combination of work by the Joint Committee on Taxation on the revenue side and the Congressional
11:08Budget Office on the program side, every clause.
11:11If the clause in the law, the provision in the law passes, how will it affect things?
11:18If it's not in the law, what happens?
11:21What's the difference between that?
11:23What is the difference between this new proposal and existing law?
11:29Okay.
11:30Well, now, my Republican colleagues, the party that blew up the deficit reducing pathway
11:39all 100 senators agreed to for the first 10 years, want to blow up the remaining two pillars.
11:46Now, they want to be able to produce deficits after the first 10 years.
11:51That's why CBO is doing a 30-year estimate of the debt created by their bill.
11:58No longer is it just a 10-year framework.
12:01That 10-year framework, their bill's going to produce some $3-plus trillion of debt compared
12:08to current law.
12:09But they have to do a 30-year estimate.
12:12Their bill's going to produce over $30 trillion in debt compared to current law.
12:18Because they're destroying that second pillar, no deficits after 10 years.
12:25And the third pillar was to use honesty in numbers.
12:30But folks on the other side of the aisle said, we're embarrassed by this massive debt-creating
12:38monster.
12:39But we want to pass it because it gives tax breaks to the richest Americans.
12:43And that's what we're all about.
12:45We're going to cut health care for 16 million Americans to give tax breaks to the richest Americans.
12:51We're going to leave 4 million children hungry to give tax breaks to the richest Americans.
12:58But that's a little embarrassing that we're also going to run up a massive debt of the
13:04United States of America to give tax breaks to the richest Americans.
13:10And you know what?
13:12That not only harms citizens today.
13:17I mean, citizens across this country, when they hear about this bill, they go,
13:21Well, that's just wrong.
13:22It is absolutely wrong to destroy health care or housing or education in order to line the
13:30nest of the already best-off Americans.
13:32It's just wrong.
13:34What happened to government by and for the people?
13:38Why is the Republican Party pursuing government by and for the powerful, the richest?
13:45And that's where this nickname comes from for this bill.
13:50The big, beautiful betrayal.
13:53Why is it a betrayal?
13:55Because President Trump campaigned on helping families.
14:02But the moment that he was sworn into office, who was standing behind him?
14:07Was it champions for the people?
14:10Champions on health care?
14:11No.
14:12No.
14:13No.
14:14Champions on affordable housing?
14:16No.
14:17Champions on food programs or nutrition?
14:20No.
14:21Who was standing behind him?
14:24Billionaires.
14:24Billionaires were standing behind President Trump.
14:28And so it's the big, beautiful betrayal because he campaigned on helping families.
14:33But the bill he's championing instead hurts families and helps billionaires.
14:42Now, how is it that a law that's been in place for now 51 years can be corrupted, corrupted
14:57to allow deficits beyond year 10?
15:01How is it that a law that's been in place for 51 years can be corrupted to stop using the
15:09honest numbers that come evaluating the cost or the revenue impact of each and every provision?
15:16How is that possible?
15:18Well, I'll tell you how that's possible.
15:22And that's the chair of the budget committee said, hey, there's this provision, wasn't
15:29designed for reconciliation.
15:31It was designed to help resolve technical anomalies in regular bills, not for reconciliation, for
15:38regular bills.
15:39But it gave the budget committee the ability to provide some flexibility about evaluating
15:45and solving technical anomalies.
15:49And so the chair of the budget committee has proposed taking that provision that is there
15:56in a section of the bill for regular budgeting that gives some flexibility to the budget committee
16:02to resolve anomalies and transporting it over into this other special filibuster-free pathway
16:10designed to increase deficits to create a phony baseline.
16:14So instead of taking a provision in the proposed law and saying, well, this provision is here,
16:21how much cost would it add?
16:23Instead you say, well, let's take this provision and pretend that if it wasn't here, there'd be
16:29some other provision, maybe an extension of something that actually is expiring.
16:34So we'll create this phony numbers to try to pretend this doesn't create the debt it creates.
16:42So here we are, section 312, the chair's authority on regular budgeting being transported into reconciliation.
16:54Now, stay with me here.
16:57This has never been used in this fashion because the entire law as written,
17:05the instructions for reconciliation say you have to cost out each provision.
17:14If the clause is in the proposal, what it would cost compared to the clause not being in the proposal.
17:21So, here we are, back in regular budgeting, this power that's in section 312 for the chair,
17:31and actually it says the budget committee, not the chair, to resolve an anomaly.
17:36Has it ever before been used in a partisan fashion?
17:40No.
17:41Here are the times it's been used.
17:45Never before has it been a partisan thing.
17:48It's been Democrats and Republicans together saying we have a naughty little technical problem.
17:54For example, like a program that has a new name.
17:57Is that being costed as a new program, but it's actually an existing program that just has a new name?
18:01How do we resolve that?
18:03That type of little technical difficulty.
18:06Always done, worked out, used in a bipartisan fashion.
18:11Again, power that was assigned to the committee, not to the chair.
18:16How else?
18:18Does 312 differ in the past from the present?
18:23Well, it's never been used on a broad bill.
18:27It's been used to resolve individual, small, narrow issues.
18:32Things like the Crime Victims Fund.
18:35Things like the Power Marketing Administration.
18:39Things like double counting of a dairy program.
18:42Little, narrow provisions.
18:44Not on a systematic, bill-wide basis.
18:49Not at all.
18:50No.
18:51Never done.
18:51Again, only in a bipartisan fashion on very narrow provisions.
18:57And how else does it differ?
18:58Well, it's always been used to resolve this technical ambiguity challenge.
19:03Something, some little anomaly that occurs in a bipartisan fashion on a narrow bill.
19:10But here, it's being used systematically across an entire bill to create a fake baseline to pretend that those provisions that cost money don't actually cost money.
19:23Because instead of comparing that provision to the provision not being in the law, we'll compare it to pretending the provision would have been in the law, even if we didn't put it into the law.
19:33That is as phony as it could possibly get.
19:38Destroys integrity completely.
19:42And has it ever been used in a reconciliation bill?
19:47No.
19:49Because there's special instructions for the reconciliation bill.
19:53They're laid out in Section 310 and 313.
19:56312, regular budgeting.
19:58Power to the budget committee, not the chair, but to the committee, to resolve ambiguities.
20:07And finally, let's just look at the type of money that was associated with these narrow programs.
20:13Crime Victims Fund, $73 million.
20:17Sounds like a lot.
20:18The largest provision it's ever been used for is adjustments in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
20:25Again, in a bipartisan basis, on a contained program, $2.8 billion.
20:32Well, what are we talking about now?
20:34We are talking about trying to hide $37 trillion in debt.
20:41New debt.
20:42Wow.
20:43So, to every colleague on either side of the yacht, who has back home said,
20:51we need to get our deficit under control, this is not the bill for you.
20:57This bill creates over $3 trillion in debt compared to current law over just a 10-year period.
21:06Now, our debt is already over 100% of our GDP.
21:13I talked to a number of colleagues, and they said,
21:15well, we've got to hold it to 100% of GDP.
21:17We're already at like 120%, meaning the debt is in the high 30s, about $36.5 trillion.
21:26And our gross domestic product, our entire economy,
21:30everything it creates in a single year, is about $28 trillion.
21:33So, the debt is now much larger than everything our economy produces in a single year.
21:43That's the danger zone, folks, because you start to enter a debt vortex.
21:50And the debt vortex means the debt's gotten so high
21:53that the interest rates are starting to eat up the budget.
21:57So, to fund our military security and our basic health care, housing, and education programs,
22:05well, we have to borrow more money.
22:09And that's what this bill does.
22:10It borrows, borrows, borrows, as far as the eye can see.
22:14So, again, colleagues on both sides of the aisle,
22:18my Democratic colleagues, my Republican colleagues,
22:21if you've ever said a word about fiscal responsibility,
22:25do not accept this corruption of allowing a provision to be used to create a fake baseline.
22:34We solved that together.
22:36100 senators, we solved it 51 years ago
22:40by creating CBO, Congressional Budget Office,
22:43to give us honest, nonpartisan estimates.
22:48Don't create phony baselines.
22:49In the future, which other party?
22:53Maybe it'll be this side of the aisle that wants to use a phony baseline.
22:56We agreed together not to do this.
22:59This was not just a handshake.
23:01This was a vote.
23:02This is the law.
23:04Do not corrupt it.
23:07And work with us for a different vision,
23:09not a vision of families lose,
23:13because that's what happens in this bill.
23:1616 million people losing health care,
23:18four million children going hungry.
23:21Two fun tax breaks and giveaways for the richest Americans.
23:27That's not a vision.
23:28Join us and rewrite this bill.
23:31Let's reduce the deficit it creates.
23:34Let's reduce the total debt it creates.
23:36And certainly, let's not create provisions
23:38that allow there to be deficits beyond the 10-year window.
23:42Let's keep the honesty of using nonpartisan numbers,
23:47not phony baselines.
23:48Let's create the integrity of sticking with the no deficits after 10 years.
23:54Let's do that with the vision of families thriving
23:57and billionaires paying their fair share.
24:00Thank you, Madam President.
24:03Thank you, Madam President.
24:03Amen.
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