David Perdue

This is not about partisan politics. This is about a crisis that is threatening our very ability to defend our Nation.

I absolutely applaud what you are doing here in terms of looking at this authorization issue.

This is not a partisan issue. That is the encouraging thing about it.

But I am a little confused, because if you just look at the Social Security and Medicare liabilities over 30 years, it is much bigger than $21 trillion.

We have got to go big at this point, given the size of the financial crisis and the irresponsibility we have seen up here over the last 20 years--among both parties.

Good on you and good on the Federal Government to get $100 billion out.

The system of budgeting, authorization, and appropriation by definition was never going to work. It is not working.

That is encouraging.

We need to have a nonpartisan conversation about a party-neutral process to fund the United States Government.

I agree 100 percent with Senator King that if you do not maintain--it is like deferred maintenance.

Our goal should be to solve that as soon as possible.

We have not had any salient conversations about how to save Social Security and Medicare.

I think the characterization that $3 trillion in assets and $21 trillion in liabilities is not the full picture.

So it is bigger than just the accounting issue, and I think you have called that out in this Committee before.

But therein lies the dysfunction in the Federal Government, in my mind.

You cannot convince me that inside $54 billion that organization could not have the absolute best, world-class IT systems available.

We have a budget process that has only worked four times in 40 years.

There are four words that I have not heard up here in one year that I used to hear every day in business, and that is, 'We cannot afford it.'

I am just voicing one person's--and I think I speak for a few other members here--support to try to help you get there.

There are too many easy release valves.

But I want to ask you, I understand there is a problem. My question is: What can we do to break through the impediment to get a balance sheet that will stand up to audit?

I really am asking the question that, you know, if we cannot fund the budget by the deadline, I mean, what consequences are there?

I think he has offered up some very thoughtful and productive recommendations, and I think this is a process that we have got to start.

I finally found something that Senator Whitehouse and I agree on, and I absolutely agree that the process is broken.

I just think we have got to get a picture of this.