[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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