[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7-S8]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DISGRACE
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I, too, am pleased that the Senate
passed a continued funding resolution which puts the Federal Government
back to work and puts money into pay stubs for all Federal employees. I
commend the Republican leader for doing that, and I am proud of the
fact that the Democratic leader has also been offering those continuing
resolutions. I am relieved that we have finally taken positive action
to put an end to this national disgrace and the shameful way we have
treated our Federal employees.
I thank everyone who worked on this continuing resolution that has
passed, but I am here to say that we need more than a continuing
resolution. We also need to repair the damage that has been done.
Mr. President, I represent a shutdown State, as does the Senator from
Virginia. What does a shutdown State mean? Of the hundreds of thousands
of Federal employees that are furloughed, many of them are in the State
of Maryland. I represent flagship agencies. What are those flagship
agencies? One is the National Institutes of Health, 13,000 people
working around the clock to find the cure and containment of disease
and they are furloughed. I represent the national space agency at
Goddard, the Social Security agency, the responsibility of which is to
respond to the needs of the elderly in terms of getting out their
Social Security benefits; the health care finance agency, the National
Institute of Standards. I could go on and on.
I can tell you as I have been out meeting with them, visiting with
them, talking with them, they know they are out of work, they are out
of money, and they are out of patience. For those workers who have been
declared essential, what the American taxpayer should know is that
although someone has been declared essential does not mean they are
getting paid.
What are examples of the essential employees? Those are FBI agents,
the DEA agents, the drug enforcement agents. This morning I met with
the FBI team in the Baltimore area. They are on the job. The drug
dealers are getting paid. Burglars are getting theirs, the bank
robbers. But the very people we rely upon to track down the criminals
in the United States of America are not getting paid. They are there.
They are working. They have every right to be paid.
I was at the VA hospital in Baltimore this morning, speaking to the
nurses, the physical therapists, the physicians, the support team. They
are there making sure that every veteran is cared for. They are giving
their time and their life's blood, but those doctors, those nurses, are
not being paid.
Mr. President, that is a national disgrace. When you talk to
constituents as I have, they say to me: Why is it that we can have
peace talks for Bosnia and get it done? Why is it that we can have
Mideast peace talks and get it done? But why is it we cannot have
budget peace talks and get it done?
I do not know. Maybe we have to take the entire Republican and
Democratic leadership including the President and all of us and go down
the Wye River and try to get this settled. We need to be very serious
about this.
Yesterday, when I was at the Social Security Administration, I spoke
with the workers there. They want to work, they want to earn their pay,
and they want to pay their bills. And you know what. They are
absolutely worried. They are worried about how they can meet their
responsibilities while they are trying to answer the phone calls and do
the other work that Social Security requires.
This morning, when I met with those FBI agents and met with the
nurses at the Social Security, I heard incredible talk, stories. At the
VA hospital, I talked with a nurse who has come into the job without
fail to save the lives of veterans and they themselves have no money
for their mortgage. They have no money for their car payment. They have
no money for their child care. They worked Christmas Day. They worked
New Year's Day. Many of them worked the night shift and therefore are
paid a premium for that. They are also prohibited from getting any type
of second job because they are essential employees. How can we turn our
backs on these men and women?
They have given me letters that they want to go into the
Congressional Record talking about how they continue to work and
continue to care for the sick and care for the dying and they want to
know who is going to care for them.
I have a letter from one Federal employee who talks about how, while
they have no pay, they are raising money for those who are also out of
money. I have another letter from a nurse who has dedicated her life to
the sick. I ask unanimous consent that these letters be printed in the
Record, because I want everyone to know the consequences of this.
There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Baltimore, MD.
Hon. Newt Gingrich,
Speaker of the House of Representatives, House of
Representatives, Cannon House Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Speaker, I am a Federal employee at the Baltimore
VA Medical Center, the wife of also another loyal Federal
employee who works for Ft. Howard VAMC. Together we support 2
children, and assist my elderly mother. Our mortgage alone is
greater that \1/2\ our pay. It seems clear to me that no one
serves to profit from this political struggle over the
budget. Remember you cannot have everything, so start by
prioritizing the most valued needs for the good of everyone.
I struggle with the thought that Congress and our President
no longer care about what happens to us, and that the
decisions to allow other Federal employees to be punished for
your inability to perform your job, makes me cringe with
fear. As for my case, the risk of losing my home and those
things I have worked hard for is incomprehensible when you in
the midst of disaster took a vacation. It makes me worry that
if our country was threatened by other beings, would you
hinder and jeopardize our existence. What you are doing is
WRONG . . . It's wrong morally and ethically and you, the
entire Congress and President should know that team work is
what built our country. Divided you will be conquered, United
you will build the new generation, much stronger and able to
lead us through more challenging endeavors.
There has been no negative outcomes directly affecting you,
and why??? Have you created a Them and Us? It is time to earn
your keep? Help me, my family and make the RIGHT choices. You
were selected for your expertise and administrative skills to
manage this task. As we approach the feast of the Three Wise
Men, let God send the Holy Spirit to make wise decisions now.
I came to work for the Federal Gov't 6 years ago searching
for job security, a little premature. I think the Gov't
strategies and methods have to move toward rebuilding a model
that meets the needs of this day and age. If you want a
budget passed, make it contingent on the salaries of those
who must decide this process. It appears that the rules to
this game are mixed up and with every passing day, you leave
Federal workers with the thought that they are not important.
The long term effect is a work force that has little
motivation and a lot of anger and resentment. Trying to
remotivate staff AIN'T EASY.
I guess I personally want you to hear how it feels to be
one of the Federal employees. It's like the story ``JUNGLE
BOOK'' when the little boy raised by animals in the jungle
walks into a room filled with the stuffed
[[Page S8]]
heads of game, and starts to tear. He says if this is civilization, let
me stay an animal, we hunt for food, you hunt for game. . . .
Unfortunately, the behavior of you leaders isolated out the
Federal Employees (and select groups of them), making us the
game. It really hurts to part of them right now. I guess I
believed in the UNITED States of America. Unite now, work
diligently to restore our confidence for this country.
Yours Truly,
Marlene Siemek.
____
Mike Holy, R.N., M.S.,
Baltimore, MD, January 3, 1996.
Hon. Barbara Mikulski,
Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Mikulski: I am a registered nurse, employed at
the Baltimore V.A., once furloughed back in November, and
now, since December 15th, presently working without pay. I
have repeatedly over the past few weeks heard derogatory and
mean-spirited comments directed at the federal workforce from
a variety of sources. The latest, and what I would consider
one of the most reprehensible, came this past Sunday, when on
Meet the Press Phil Gramm asked, ``Has anyone really missed
the federal workers?''
Perhaps, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Gramm has not ``missed'' the
workforce because, dedicated to the mission, and despite the
lack of pay, they continue to come to work, continue the
mission, and in the case of the staff at Baltimore's V.A.,
continue to minister to the needs of our country's veterans!
I would challenge Mr. Gramm, or any of the other detractors
of the federal workers, to produce comparable examples of
such dedication in the private sector.
I would like to share with you, in the hopes that you may
share with others, one additional example of the dedication
to the community which is evidenced here at the Baltimore
V.A. Just five days before Xmas a thirty year old mother of
five lost her life in a tragic vehicular/pedestrian accident.
Hearing of the news, and the five orphaned children, and
aware of what the pay situation would be regarding their own
forthcoming paychecks, in a period of just two and a half
days V.A. employees contributed and raised one-thousand-
fourteen dollars (and thirty-five cents) for the family. The
money was hand delivered to a local radio station, to be
given to the family, that Friday afternoon, three days before
Xmas. Such, Ms. Mikulski, is the ``stuff'' of which the
Baltimore V.A. employees are made!
I share with you the above, again, in the hopes that you
may share it with others who may be unaware of the caliber of
the people involved. In spite of the politics within the
Washington Beltway, at the Baltimore V.A., the mission
continues--``Putting the Veteran First!''
Thank you for your continued efforts and advocacy on our
behalf!
Sincerely,
Mike Holy, R.N., M.S.
Ms. MIKULSKI. The Senator from Virginia also talked about phone
calls. I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of phone calls coming
into my office. We have even had to bring in, in some very emotional
and highly charged situations, a suicide intervention team because of
the desperation that we are facing.
Not everybody is a high-paid Federal employee. One of my
constituents, one of the nurses, got a paycheck yesterday for 7 cents--
7 cents--after all the deductions were taken out. Another cannot pay
her car insurance, and she is not getting paid, and she needs to drive
her car to work. I have another Federal employee who is deaf, cannot
pay her rent, and they are not accepting the fact that she is
furloughed.
These are real stories about real people. And why are they not
getting paid? They are not getting paid because some refuse to pass a
continuing resolution until we pass a balanced budget. Sure, we want to
pass a balanced budget, but we also need not destroy civil service. And
while the civil servants are on the job, the Federal contractors are
also losing their wages.
Who are they? They are people like the cafeteria workers at NASA who
work at the minimum wage. They work for a contractor. They are never
going to get caught up. They are the small businesspeople who, again,
are Federal contractors and are not being paid. There are people like
the small business lady who has a small photography shop outside of the
Baltimore passport office. Because there are no passports, nothing is
happening. She still has to pay her rent. She has lost 75 percent of
her business.
Mr. President, this cannot go on. This is why I am pleased that the
Republican leader passed a no-frills, get-back-to-work continuing
resolution.
Today I hope that the House of Representatives passes this bill. I am
appalled that the House of Representatives is stalling and is hinting
that they will not pass this. We must end this financial nightmare for
nearly a million Federal employees and contractors. They want to be
back to work. For those who are working, they want to be paid. Let them
have the pay that they have earned.
If this does not work, I will come back and offer a CR myself. We
need to stop playing games with people's lives and get down to
business. It is time to stop holding Federal employees hostage.
Mr. President, in conclusion, I have a great deal of respect for the
Senate, and I do not want to engage in any histrionics on the floor.
But yesterday the Social Security workers, those who want to answer
those hotlines, those that want to deal with the million-person
backlog, gave me a lock. They gave me a lock, and they gave me some
chains. What did they do as a symbolic thing? They wanted to lock us in
and chain the door until we get the Government back to work. They want
us to go back to work, balancing the budget of the United States.
So, Mr. President, I hope today that the House of Representatives
passes this continuing resolution and that the leadership can come to a
resolution on this budget crisis. I thank the Chair, and I yield back
such time as I might have.
Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
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