On the recordJuly 5, 2011
this weekend, a local newspaper in Mississippi ran a lead editorial that wondered aloud whether the cancellation of the Senate's Independence Day recess signaled a ``serious effort on the part of Senate leaders'' and the White House to make headway in addressing the Federal debt. Regrettably, the answer to that question is obviously no. For that reason, I wish to announce at this point that I will be voting no this afternoon on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to a debate on Libya. Clearly, Libya is an important issue. I am a member of the Armed Services Committee. I have the greatest of respect for both my chairman and the ranking member. But I will remind colleagues what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently: The most important national security issue facing the United States of America is the national debt and we should not move to a vote on Libya and to a discussion on Libya--which, frankly, is almost academic at this point--until we debate the crucial issue facing the Senate; that is, the issue of the national debt. If we had a serious effort to talk about the national debt, in this week of recess that has been canceled, we would be convening the Budget Committee today and asking them to report a budget on the floor for the first time in almost 800 days so we could have a debate on the floor about the budget. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has used 2 minutes.
