09.29.16

Sullivan Joins Conversation On How to Fix Washington’s Broken Budget Process

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) yesterday joined his colleagues, led by Senator David Perdue (R-GA), in a conversation on the Senate floor about fixing Washington’s broken budget process.

Senators Sullivan and Perdue were joined by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Senator James Lankford (R-OK), Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Senator Steve Daines (R-MT).

Click here to watch the Senators’ full speeches.


Highlights: 

Senator Sullivan: “A lot of us ran for office – a lot of us for the first time – because we saw what is going on with this budget process…We have all been working on this for months this is what we need to do to finally get ahold of these enormous budget challenges. I want to encourage all of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, to join in this process to bring your ideas to fix what is clearly a broken process.”

Senator Perdue: “Right now, we have a budget crisis. We have a debt crisis. Fixing the budget process will not solve the debt crisis, but we will not solve the debt crisis unless and until we address the dysfunction in our budget process.”

Senator Tillis: “This is a threat to our national security. This is a threat to our economic security. This is a threat to the security of every man and woman in the United States because they can’t rely on a government that will provide businesses or individuals with any kind of certainty whatsoever. It’s tough to make budget decisions, but they need to be made.”

Senator Lankford: “We’re not going to get a better product, until we have a better process. Let’s solve how we do budgeting and actually get to a better product…Step one—like an AA group—let’s admit there is a problem. There is a problem. Step two—let’s get to work on fixing it and actually resolve the process, and let’s actually get to work balancing and paying off our debt.”

Chairman Enzi: “I remember introducing [Senator Perdue] the first time we had a Budget Committee meeting, and I said, ‘Senator Perdue knows how to balance a budget, he’s been working in the private sector.’ And he said, ‘No, in the private sector you have to show a little bit of a profit.’ Well we’re going to have to show a little bit of profit around here if we’re ever going to get rid of the debt.”

Senator Corker: “We really don’t have a budget process. I mean to even call what we do a budget, per most human beings’ understanding of what a budget is, is obviously not realistic…We have to, in essence, get a process in place that actually works. It’s impossible for the process we have today to work. Today, is a perfect example of that, right?”

Senator Ernst: “We can’t keep spending money we don’t have on things that aren’t necessary. Washington can’t even do the basic business of balancing our own budget…It might just take a complete overhaul of Washington’s ways to help us solve this problem.”  

Senator Rounds: “We have to begin the process of fixing this broken [budget] system and we need to begin now. In 2026, our country turns 250 years old. Wouldn’t it be a marvelous goal if by that time we not only had this process fixed, but it was actually working once again?”

Senator Daines: “The biggest hurdle to balancing the budget are the very rules, the very process, that guides this institution. They are broken…We came here not to accept the status quo but to reject it, and to change the way this country operates truly to save the future of our kids and our grandkids.”

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