Prepared Floor Remarks by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Grassley: President Biden Should Remember His Words 39 Years Ago: Do Something About National Debt
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Mr./Madame President
I come to the floor today referring to a speech that Senator Biden gave on this Senate floor 39 years ago today. The scene was kind of this that had developed over several months of that year before May 2, of 1984. I had this idea that would be considered crazy today but it passed the Senate on a one vote margin then. We need to get control of the budget by just freezing everything across the board. I recruited Nancy Kassebaum, Senator from Kansas and Senator Biden to help in that effort.
Senator Biden gave a speech that day justifying it. Most of his comments were to justify that you could actually freeze the defense budget and it also included a freeze on the COLAs for Social Security. Like I said, it passed by one vote margin and obviously died in the House of Representatives. But Senator Biden spent most of his speech fighting off giants of the military industrial complex at that time by the name of Senator Goldwater, Senator Towers and Senator Stevens of Alaska. So that is the background for what I am talking about today.
On this day 39 years ago, then-Senator Biden spoke on the Senate floor saying he was “outraged” that our national debt would soon near $2 trillion. He urged fellow senators to “do something…before the debt limit increase comes up.” The “something” he advocated for was a federal spending freeze.
Today, our national debt stands at $31.5 trillion. And in a few years, public debt as a share of our economy is expected to exceed record levels set in the wake of World War II. However, instead of urging immediate action this year, President Biden wants to kick the can down the road. I think today we would all consider that irresponsible and unacceptable.
In contrast, House Republicans are tackling our debt crisis head-on.
Legislation the House passed last week would rein in excessive government spending, lift the debt ceiling and impose meaningful fiscal controls moving forward.
President Biden and Senate Democrats must get off the sidelines and negotiate. We can’t continue to live high on the hog at the expense of future generations.
To put our current national debt in perspective - a gross federal debt of $31.5 trillion equates to $95 thousand for each man, woman and child living in America today.
In comparison, the average cost of a four-year public college degree in 2023 is $90 thousand. Both are more than we should be asking young Americans to bear.
Looked at in terms of American taxpayers, our government debt comes to a staggering $247 thousand per tax filer. That’s $52 thousand more than the average home value in my state of Iowa.
Our growing national debt is unsustainable. In its most recent budget outlook, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates interest on the debt will near $1 trillion in 2028 – an amount exceeding what our nation is expected to spend that year on national defense.
Absent action, interest costs will continue to mount at an alarming rate. Looking well into the future, by 2044, interest will exceed $2.9 trillion, surpassing what we’re projected to spend on Medicare. By 2050, interest will become our nation’s single largest expense, surpassing Social Security.
Interest costs of this size would have been unfathomable to my then-Senate colleague Joe Biden.
While he was expressing outrage over a $2 trillion national debt, he was also lamenting the prospect of $219 billion in annual interest costs. Yet today he barely bats an eyelash at interest projected to blow past $1 trillion on a path to $3 trillion.
At the same time our interest costs are set to soar, several major federal programs are barreling towards insolvency. According to the Social Security and Medicare Trustees report issued this spring, Social Security’s primary trust fund will become insolvent in 2033, while Medicare’s trust fund goes broke in 2031.
Contrary to what some Democrats claim, doing nothing to address these programs is not an option.
The Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees - which consists solely of Biden administration officials - have made it clear that congressional inaction means automatic benefit cuts within the next ten years.
Yet President Biden has accused any Republican that mentions the words Social Security of wanting to gut the program – though nothing could be further from the truth.
In 1984, Senator Joe Biden sang a much different tune. He understood a dire fiscal situation required bold action from Congress. The federal spending freeze he advocated for applied across –the board. It would’ve frozen spending on Social Security, Medicare, defense and much more.
Nothing any Republican has proposed today comes close to the broad-based spending cuts advocated by then-Senator Biden. What Republicans have put forward likely wouldn’t go far enough for 1984 Joe Biden.
Today our debt, deficits and interest costs are all on a far bleaker path than they were in 1984. Yet President Biden refuses to entertain even modest spending cuts. That’s unacceptable.
We can’t continue to ignore our current fiscal trajectory. We must get our fiscal house in order. Failure to act puts children born today in a position that they will never be able to recover from financially.
This Congress must come together to fix our broken budget system and return to regular order.
As the Ranking Member on the Senate’s Budget Committee, I stand ready to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to put us on a more sustainable path.
Unfortunately, the White House doesn’t seem to want to address the issues we’re facing.
The president’s budget request continues our nation on a path to fiscal ruin. Under the administration’s budget proposals, public debt as a share of our economy will set a new record in 2027.
We owe it to the nation’s youth to leave them a country that is on solid financial ground. We cannot ask the generation of tomorrow to pay for the gluttony of today.
So, in the words of then-Senator Joe Biden, “I, myself, am outraged... I hope that all those other senators who share my outrage will also share my determination to do something” about our unsustainable debt.
I yield the floor.
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