Sam Brownback: “the CARFA bill that will be voted on shortly has passed this Senate every Congress since the 107th Congress. It has…”

“the CARFA bill that will be voted on shortly has passed this Senate every Congress since the 107th Congress. It has either passed by rollcall vote or unanimous consent. This is nothing new. It has passed this body multiple times. Now it counts. Now when people vote on it, this will count. The CARFA bill breaks the Federal Government into four pieces. A fourth of the Federal Government is looked at each year, and then recommendations are made in a privileged motion that must be voted on. It is a spending commission. It is targeted at reducing Federal spending, which is clearly where the American public wants us to go. They don't want to raise taxes; they want to focus on getting wasteful spending under control. This is a mechanism we have done before. It is a mechanism that has passed this Congress multiple times in the budget agreement. This time it counts. I ask my colleagues to look at this and say: If you voted for it in the past, do it now. We clearly need to do it. Last night, the President spoke about the need to track the deficit. He was clear that we need to get the deficit under control. The first step in getting the deficit under control is to reduce spending, get spending under control. Here is the latest chart on the gross Federal debt as a percentage of the GDP. This year, we passed the 90-percent threshold of debt to the economy. So of the total economy size, about $14 trillion, 90 percent of that is going to be gross debt.”