3:32:07 to 3:32:28( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: i request to be able to speak as if in morning business for 20 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. voinovich: thank you. madam president, i rise today -- if we could have order in the senate. mr. voinovich: madam president, i rise today again to call attention to the irresponsible and reckless fiscal path we find

3:32:29 to 3:32:50( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: ourselves as a nation and to urge my colleagues to act now to take the first step toward meaningful, comprehensive tax and entitlement reform through the enactment of the saving america's fiscal future commission act. and i introduced with senator joe lieberman.

3:33:12 to 3:33:33( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: federation of independent business, the brookings institution. i think if you can get concord coalition and brookings institution to support a piece of legislation, it's got to be pretty bipartisan and fair. and also the responsible federal budget. all of these back the safe commission concept as the way to tackle tax reform and our entitlement crisis.

3:33:55 to 3:34:18( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: he then went on to call on the u.s. to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of china's assets. madam president, i hope this frightens you as much as it frightens me. china is the united states largest foreign creditor, holding an estimated $1 trillion in u.s. government debt. though it may be unlikely due to

3:34:40 to 3:35:00( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: and the fact is -- and i think this is a statistic most americans are not aware of -- is that foreign creditors have provided 70% of the funds that the u.s. has borrowed since 2001. as a resul 5% of privately held debt is held by

3:35:22 to 3:35:43( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: and as a result, our debt is skyrocketing. when i arrived in the senate in 1999, gross national debt stood at $5.6 trillion, or 61% of our g.d.p. the obama administration recently projected the national debt to more than double to $12.7 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2009.

3:36:09 to 3:36:30( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: to the senate in 1 1999, 200, the 8, the federal debt or 2008, the federal debt or national debt was 70% last year, and today it's at 89%. and you can see that we're going to be very closely to 100% of our g.d.p. on our debt. i call this the pacman that's eating up particularly the

3:36:53 to 3:37:13( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: security as of september 30, 2008. that works out -- listen to this -- to $483,000 per american household, or $184,000 for every man, woman and child in the country to pay for these unfunded in other words, we have $56.4 trillion in total

3:37:39 to 3:37:59( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: president obama, our annual deficit and growing national debt have been problems for some time n to the floor of the senate time and time again to talk about paying down debt, balancing our budget and so forth. and to my knowledge, president bush never once mentioned the debt in any one of his state of the union addresses.

3:38:21 to 3:38:41( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: promise. but under the obama administration, exacerbated the problem with omnibus appropriations bill that includes $408 billion in nonemergency funding, a $787 billion stimulus bill a ten-year proposed budget

3:39:03 to 3:39:24( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: markets, and onward to every corner of our economy. i know it i'm a senator from ohio. we are spending money to get out of this economic mess but we cannot allow that to be an excuse to continue our reckless fiscal path. we have to start finding ways to work harder and smarter, to do

3:39:46 to 3:40:07( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: that's where we're at today. everyone understands that we have a real problem in terms of our unsustainable debt and the cris that we have, but for some reason, we fail to recognize that we have the problem. according to a poll conducted by the peterson foundation, america's concern for the growing national debt takes

3:40:29 to 3:40:51( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: reflect people's concern about our future and inflation and they're up almost 4% today. the obama administration knows that we can no longer ignore cris. and peter orszag, who i consider a friend, obama administration's o.m.b. director, has even

3:41:15 to 3:41:35( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: of federal spending. and, secondly, that if we are on that path inhe future and something like we experiencing today occurred, we would have much less maneuve to fight those fires because we will have already depleted the firetruck." i'd like to say in due respect to the o.m.b. director,

3:41:57 to 3:42:18( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: title would not cause such a memory loss on as important an issue as the financial health of our country. to me it can only mean one thing thing, that peter orszag's boss, serious about addressing the gross national debt or, worse, doesn't understand our fiscal cris or even worse than that,

3:42:41 to 3:43:03( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: when he went to reassure china, the world's largest holder of our treasury debt, as i mentioned, that lending money to the u.s. government is still a wise thing to do. he ar foundations for restoring fiscal sustainability. in a moment that all americans

3:43:25 to 3:43:45( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: title of it is: "no laughing matter: why the u.s. needs to get serious about long-term budget deficits." the presiding officer: without objection. know, president obama announced a plan to reenact statutory

3:44:07 to 3:44:28( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: taxes to make up for it. or in the alternative, cut spending. but you've got to balance them up. unfortunately, in his plan, he exempts the tax cuts,

3:44:50 to 3:45:10( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: folks, i believe this is intellectually dishonest. this does not reflect the high standards the president has set for his administration. and in my opinion, is more like the smoke and mirrors of the past that got us intohe mess that we find ourselves today. the president of the committee for responsible budget put it

3:45:33 to 3:45:54( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: this is still her the end of the quote is, "that's not fiscal responsibility." today i'm reiterating my call for president obama and congress to enact the first pillar of meaningful tax reform through the the safe commission i'm asking my colleagues and their staff to step up and look at this legislation and read the

3:46:20 to 3:46:41( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: that's called i don't know anything that depicts our financial crisis as that d.v.d. does. the safe commission we're talk vehicle much like we do for the brac process, to take on the tough issues of social security, tax reform, and creating, by vote of 13 out of 20 members --

3:47:04 to 3:47:24( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: it would break the logjam in washington and people and the world that we are serious about getting this nation back on track.?? madam president, for the life of me, i cannot understand why president obama does not support this concept. i know that he's getting a hard time from speaker pelosi and

3:47:46 to 3:48:06( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: and the proof of it is we haven't been able to do it thus far. and s we're going to need the commission. everybody understands that we're going as i say, if i were the president, if i were the mayor of cleveland, governor -- and i know the president wants to move on health care. i know he wants to move on climate change.

3:48:28 to 3:48:48( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: health care reform, get the commission formed. it will take the commission at least a year to finish its business. and think commission is able to get 13 out of 18 members to come back with a bip with tax reform

3:49:10 to 3:49:30( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: mean, if i were the governor, as i was for eight years in and something said, governor, you you've got a real problem. and what we're going to do is we're going to put a commission together on a bipartisan basis, and we're going to come back with recommendations to get the job done, i'd kiss him and say wonderful. i could except for two people in

3:49:52 to 3:50:13( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: the administration, more thought being given by the congress. we all say, oh, yeah, we're concerned about the national debt, we've got to do something about it. but when you go home, where are you going to point to, the people, your constituents? and say -- i'm sincere about this, i want to do something about it. then they're going to ask you, what did you do? i think one of the things you

3:50:35 to 3:50:55( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: deficits and with reducing our national debt. and i couple years. madam president, you won't believe this, but in reduced the deficit by billion. really. didn't use social security.

3:51:18 to 3:51:41( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: here today in this room, that they're going to have to look a lot harde than i did in order to maintain the standard of living that i've been able to have because the competition in the w is a lot keener than it was 15 or 20 years ago. so they're just going to have to work harder than they've e had to work before to maintain the kind of standard of living that we'd like to have for them

3:52:03 to 3:52:23( Edit History Discussion )

George Voinovich: going to let you pay for those things to do without or pay for on our own. and to me, that's absolutely immoral. it's absolutely immoral. and one of the things that i would hope is -- and, you know, i feel like i'm a broken record.