On the recordMay 25, 2011
Mr. President, I appreciate the fine remarks of my friend from Missouri. Seeing the damage that was done by the tornadoes in Alabama, they have far exceeded anything I have seen before. I appreciate more than most the damage and difficulties the people of Missouri are going through. I know there will be emergency funding for that. There is a legitimate question as to whether we ought to not find that emergency spending someplace in our budget where it can be recovered that is not so important. But I know we will process that as we go forward. Unsustainable Budget Path I truly believe our Nation is facing an economic crisis, but it's not so much what I believe but what every expert we have heard from believes and has testified to. Mr. Erskine Bowles, who cochaired the debt commission, who was appointed by President Obama, said, along with Senator Alan Simpson, his cochair, in a written statement to the Budget Committee, that this Nation has never faced such a predictable economic crisis. In other words, the deficit levels we are operating with are so high and they create such danger to the economy that we have to get off this path. Every expert has said we are on an unsustainable path. Many people have thought the problem we are dealing with today places a burden on our children and our grandchildren; therefore, it has removed to some degree the immediacy of the problem. But that is not what Mr. Bowles said.…





